‘Christ, you’ve got some gall.’ He switched the kettle off. ‘Why are you here?’ He checked his watch, saw he hadn’t put it on yet, and glanced instead at the wall-clock. ‘Half a minute, then you’re on your way.’
‘We want the file you’ve compiled,’ Rebus said, ‘and the tape Sir lain made. I think that’ll do for now.’
Gunner looked to Flower. ‘He’s roped you in, eh? You must be mad. I could have you both up before the chief constable.’
‘We’d like nothing better,’ Flower said. He threw the remains of the toast into the bin. ‘You lied to me.’
‘If we don’t get the file and the tape,’ Rebus said, ‘we take it further anyway. We’re going to kick up such a stink, you’ll think your drains have backed up. It’ll be everywhere, believe me. There won’t be enough clothes-pegs to go round.’
‘You are mad. I’m not going to give you anything.’
‘We’ll start with the chief constable and the newspapers.’
Gunner folded his arms. ‘Be my guests. You’ve just dug yourselves a very deep hole.’
‘Holes have their uses,’ Rebus said, ‘when the bullets start to fly.’
‘Get out!’ Gunner snarled.
They got out.
‘Think we were too obliging?’ Flower muttered as they walked back down the path. ‘We could have been harder on him.’
‘It went fine. It’s down to him now. Is he watching?’ Flower glanced back. ‘Bedroom window.’
‘Right.’
They walked to Rebus’s car, got in and drove off.
A hundred yards along the road, Rebus stopped long enough to let Flower out. Flower’s own car was parked there, and he got into it quickly. Rebus checked in his rearview, but Gunner hadn’t come out of the house to check their departure, not on a morning like this. He drove on, went around the block, and ended up on the other side of Gunner’s house.
They daren’t trust to police frequencies, so had borrowed a couple of on-line cellular phones from a dealer who’d owed Rebus a favour. Rebus’s phone rang, and he picked it up.
‘Any sign of him?’ Flower said.
‘Not yet.’
‘Maybe he’s on the mark-two toast.’
‘I don’t think he’ll have much of an appetite.’
It was five minutes more before Rebus heard a door bang shut. Then Gunner’s gate opened. His Rover 800 was directly outside, and he unlocked it, got in, and started the engine.
‘Bingo,’ said Rebus.
‘Has he anything with him?’
‘A briefcase.’
‘Well, here’s hoping.’
Rebus had parked away from the street-lighting, and was careful not to start his engine until Gunner was already on the move. Smoke billowed from his exhaust, hanging in the sub-zero air. Gunner’s back windscreen was frosted over, and he hadn’t taken time to scrape it.
‘Fall in behind me,’ Rebus told Flower, just before passing his stationary car.
Soon they joined a slow-moving stream of commuter traffic heading into town. The Rover’s rear de-mister had taken care of the frost. When they came to a section of dual carriageway, Flower overtook Rebus.
‘Where’s he headed?’
‘Not to work,’ Rebus said. ‘Not this way.’
They’d discussed routes he might take, places he might go. Princes Street hadn’t figured in their calculations. There was light in the sky now, a deep bruise hanging over the Castle and the Old Town. Rebus’s heater wasn’t working properly — it only did that in the summer — and he curled his toes inside his shoes.
‘He’s signalling,’ Flower said. ‘Turning left on to Waverley Bridge. Maybe he’s got a train to catch.’
Rebus thought he knew. ‘No, but he’s headed for the station.’
A long line of black taxis crept up from the subterranean concourse of Waverley Station, waiting their turn to take the commuters to business appointments and power breakfasts. They headed past the taxis, down the steep slope until they were underground. Gunner drove past the pick-up/drop-off point, and looked for a moment as if he was going to head up the exit ramp and back on to Waverley Bridge. But he took a left instead, and found a parking bay towards the back of the station.
‘Find yourself a space,’ Rebus told Flower, ‘and follow on foot.’
‘What if he sees me?’
‘Get on to the platform, walk down it.’
‘What if he goes on to the platform?’
‘He hasn’t come here for the trains. Hey, and take your phone with you.’
Rebus parked and headed round the other side of the concourse, anti-clockwise to Gunner’s clockwise. He managed a light jog, as if he was fighting a tight schedule. He walked down a platform towards the rear of the station, the telephone up to his face, as much for camouflage as anything.
‘Oh, yes,’ Flower said. And then Rebus was in position. In the distance, he could see Flower, and halfway between them Allan Gunner. He was where Rebus had guessed he’d be — at the Left Luggage counter. Rebus stood half-hidden by a billboard advertising industrial space to let. The irony wasn’t lost on him as he watched Gunner hand over the briefcase and accept a ticket. When Gunner headed back the way he’d come, Rebus came from around the advertising hoarding and walked briskly towards Left Luggage, just in time to see the employee place the case on a rack right at the front.
‘Well?’ Flower said.
‘Let him go.’
‘Is it there?’
‘Sweet as a nut, Flower. Sweet as a nut.’
Rico Briggs took some persuading.
Between them, in their many and various ways, Rebus and Flower were expert at the art of persuasion. Well, hadn’t they panicked — persuaded — Gunner into getting rid of the evidence? If he’d had time to think, if it hadn’t been early morning, he might have thought of a better hiding place. Left Luggage was a stop-gap — he just didn’t want the stuff in his house. Rebus had read him just right, and in fact a Left Luggage office wasn’t bad, not as a stop-gap.
Rebus and Flower took turns keeping the office under surveillance. Surveillance was easy in a railway station: there were so many people just hanging around. They didn’t want Gunner coming back and lifting the case without them knowing, though Rebus’s guess was that it would stay there overnight. Gunner would work the day like any other, then go home and think about it, maybe make a few telephone calls — calls he wouldn’t want to make from his own office. With the briefcase and its contents out of the way, he’d feel more confident. He’d want to use that time to think things through.
So the briefcase would be there overnight.
Rebus called Rico and got him to come down to the station. They met in the bar. Rebus had already consumed too much coffee and junk food, and the smell of stale alcohol in the bar almost did for him. The bar smelt the way bars always did at the start of a new day’s business — of the previous day, of accumulation; too much smoke and spilt beer.
‘Pint of lager,’ Rico told the barman. The barman tried not to stare too hard at his customer’s tattooed cheeks. Rico gave them a brisk rub while his drink was poured. When he saw there was a gaming machine in the bar, he walked over to it and fed in some coins. Rebus paid for the drink and carried it over to Rico. He had his cellphone in his free hand. I look like a businessman on the way down, he thought.
Maybe he was, at that.
Rebus explained the situation to Rico while Rico played the machine. When Rico ran out of coins, Rebus gave him more. Then his cellphone beeped.
‘What does he say?’ Flower asked.
‘So far, he says no.’
‘Let me talk to him.’
So Rebus relieved Flower. He let twenty minutes pass, then phoned the bar.
‘Well?’
‘He’s just about cleaned me out of money,’ Flower reported. And in the end it was the gaming machine that was the real persuader. It persuaded Rico to borrow money from Flower — real money — and suddenly Rico owed the policeman twenty pounds.
For the promise of more money, and a clean slate on his debt, Rico said he’d meet them at one in the morning.