McAllister looked up and frowned. ‘How?’
So Rebus sat down again and told him.
It was Sir Iain he wanted. He’d cancelled out all the other numbers in the equation, except Charters and Sir Iain. And Sir Iain was one possible route to Derry Charters. Rebus wanted him. He wanted him because people like Sir Iain Hunter were always in the right, even when they were wrong. Sir lain lived and worked by the same ground rules a lot of villains swore by. He was selfish without appearing to be, full of arguments and self-justifications. He espoused the public good, but lined his pockets with the public’s money. He wasn’t so very different from the likes of Paul Duggan. If Rebus tried hard enough, he found he could blame Sir lain for the fates of Willie Coyle and Dixie Taylor. Kirstie had run away from home because her father had been shown the city’s corrupt heart, and wasn’t going to do anything about it. But the heart was artificial, and Sir lain Hunter was working the bellows.
When Rebus climbed the stairs to his flat, he found someone huddled in his doorway. It was Sammy. His hand on her shoulder woke her up, and she sprang to her feet.
‘What’s happened?’ he asked.
‘I’ve been phoning you all day. I was worried about you.’ There were dried tearstains down both her cheeks. ‘I thought I’d wait for you here.’
He let her in. She looked around the living room and saw the duvet on the chair. ‘Is this where you sleep?’
‘Some nights,’ Rebus said, lighting the fire.
‘You can’t get much rest there.’
‘It’s all right. Do you want anything to drink?’ She shook her head.
‘Are you all right?’ she asked.
He puffed out his cheeks, then exhaled. ‘I think so, just about.’ He sank into his chair. ‘I’m a bit scared, that’s all. I’m going to do something tomorrow; it may not turn out the way I want.’
‘One reason I wanted to see you,’ she began. ‘I can’t get it out of my mind, that note … and what happened. I thought maybe if you could tell me the story, it would help.’
Rebus smiled. ‘It’s not exactly a bedtime story.’
His daughter had curled up in front of the fire, and held a cushion against her chest. ‘Tell me anyway,’ she said.
So Rebus told her, leaving nothing out — it was no less than she deserved. And afterwards, she fell asleep still clutching the cushion. Rebus placed the duvet over her, turned the fire down low, and sat down in his chair again, tears falling so softly that he knew he wouldn’t wake her.
He was wearing his best suit.
Flower had phoned first thing to say he wasn’t going. He didn’t explain, didn’t need to. Rebus didn’t need any more from him. Flower was thinking tactically: if it all went wrong — as it well might — Flower would be in the foxhole. He still had Rebus’s promise: chief inspector. If it all worked out.
Sammy had helped him with his grooming. He hadn’t had much sleep, but he didn’t look too bad considering, and the suit definitely helped.
‘Patience chose it for me,’ he told his daughter.
‘She has good taste,’ Sammy agreed.
He phoned first, stressing secrecy and urgency. There were problems, but finally he was given fifteen minutes in the mid-morning. Fifteen precious minutes. He had a bit of time to kill, so paced the flat, emptied the jar and put it back under the radiator, found his dental appointment card and tore it up.
Sammy gave him a good luck kiss as he left the flat.
‘We’re not so very different,’ she told him.
‘Like father and daughter,’ he said, returning the kiss.
He parked at the front of St Andrew’s House, and a guard came out and told him he couldn’t do that. Rebus showed his warrant card, but the guard was adamant, and directed him to the visitors’ parking.
‘Tell me,’ Rebus said, ‘if I was Sir Iain Hunter, would I still have to move the car?’
‘No,’ said the guard, ‘that would be different.’
And Rebus smiled, feeling a little of the tension leaving him. The man was right: that would be different.
He walked up the steps to the building. Close up, it didn’t look so much like a power station or the Reichstag. He was signed in at the desk and given a visitor’s pass. Security had to check the contents of his bag — just some papers and a cassette. Someone came down to escort him upstairs, where he was passed on to someone else who took him to a secretary’s office. On the way, in a short narrow corridor, his escort nearly bumped into Sir Iain Hunter. She apologised, but Sir lain wasn’t paying her any attention. Rebus winked at him and smiled as he passed. He didn’t look back, but he could feel the eyes boring into him, right between the shoulder-blades.
This, he thought, is for Willie and Dixie, and for Tom Gillespie. And for everyone who doesn’t know the way the system works, the way it makes room for lying and cheating and stealing.
But he knew, above all, that he was doing it for himself.
There was no secretary in the secretary’s office, just Rory McAllister, looking very ill-at-ease but there, as he’d promised. Rebus found another wink to spare. Then the secretary came in and ushered them into an ante-chamber. She knocked on the door in front of them and opened it.
He’d joked with the security man about the contents of his bag — ‘I’d hardly be carrying a bomb in a Spar carrier-bag’ — but now he walked into the room with the booby-trap tucked under his arm.
‘Good of you to find time to see us, sir.’
He meant it, too. Dugald Niven, Secretary of State for Scotland, had a busy schedule. Rebus was sure it would go ahead as usual, no matter what.
The End