‘What do the doctors say?’ Clarke asked.
‘We’re waiting to hear.’
‘Darryl’s not been conscious at all? Able to speak?’
‘What do you need to hear from him? You know as well as I do this is Cafferty’s doing.’
‘Best not jump to conclusions.’
Gail McKie gave a snort of derision, pulling herself upright as two white coats, one male and one female, brushed past Clarke.
‘I’m going to suggest a scan as well as a chest X-ray. Far as we can tell, the upper half of the body took the brunt of the blows.’ The female doctor broke off, eyes on Clarke.
‘CID,’ Clarke explained.
‘Not our immediate priority,’ the doctor said, signalling for her male colleague to draw the curtain, leaving Clarke on the outside. She stood her ground for a few moments, trying to listen, but there were too many moans and cries all around her. With a sigh, she retreated to the waiting area. A couple of uniforms were taking details from the paramedics. Clarke showed her ID and checked that they were discussing Christie.
‘He was on the ground at the driver’s side, between the Range Rover and the wall,’ one uniform began to explain. ‘Car locked and the key fob still in his hand. Gates are electric and he’d obviously closed them after driving through.’
‘Where are we talking about exactly?’ Clarke interrupted.
‘Inverleith Place. It looks on to Inverleith Park, just by the Botanic Gardens. Detached house.’
‘Neighbours?’
‘Not spoken to them yet. His mum called it in. He couldn’t have been lying there more than a few minutes...’
‘She called the police?’
The constable shook his head.
‘It was us she asked for,’ the male paramedic answered. He was dressed in green and looked exhausted, as did his female colleague. ‘Soon as we saw him, we got on to your lot.’
‘Hard day?’ Clarke enquired, watching as he rubbed at his eyes.
‘No more than usual.’
‘So his mum lives with him,’ Clarke went on. ‘Anyone else?’
‘Two younger brothers. The mum was going daft trying to stop them getting a close look.’
Clarke turned to the constables. ‘Asked the brothers any questions yet?’
Shakes of both heads.
‘Professional hit, do you reckon?’ the female paramedic asked. Then, without waiting for an answer: ‘I mean, lying in wait like that... Baseball bat, maybe a crowbar or hammer, and then out of there before anybody’s the wiser.’
Clarke ignored her. ‘Cameras?’ she asked.
‘At the corners of the house,’ the second of the constables confirmed.
‘Well, that’s something,’ Clarke said.
‘We all know, though, don’t we?’
Clarke stared at the female paramedic. ‘What do we know exactly?’
‘It was meant to be fatal, or else it was a warning, and in either case...’
‘Yes?’
‘Big Ger Cafferty,’ the woman said with a shrug.
‘I keep hearing that name.’
‘Victim’s mother seemed fairly sure of it,’ the male paramedic commented. ‘Shouting it from the bloody rooftops, she was. And a few choice blasphemies besides.’
‘Nothing but speculation at this stage,’ Clarke warned them.
‘You have to speculate to accumulate, though,’ the female paramedic said, her smile fading as she caught the look Clarke was giving her.
Rebus sat on the bed in his flat’s spare bedroom. It had been his daughter Sammy’s room back in the day, before his wife took her away. Sammy was a mother herself now and Rebus a grandfather. Not that he saw much of them. The bedroom had been cleared of its various posters but was otherwise little changed. Same wallpaper, the mattress stripped, duvet folded in the wardrobe along with a single pillow, ready for use should a visitor need to stay the night. He couldn’t remember the last time that had happened, though, which was just as well, as the place was no more welcoming than a storeroom. There were boxes on top of the bed and under it, atop the wardrobe and flanking it. They rose halfway up the window, too, making it impossible for him to close the wooden shutters. He knew he should do something about them, but knew, too, that he never would. They would be someone else’s problem — Sammy’s probably — after he was gone.
He had finally found the relevant box and was seated with it on a corner of the bed, his dog Brillo at his feet. October 1978. Maria Turquand. Strangled in Room 316 of the Caledonian Hotel. Rebus had worked the case for a short time, until he’d had a run-in with a superior. Sidelined, he’d still taken an interest, collecting newspaper cuttings and jotting down pieces of information, mostly rumours and gossip shared by fellow officers. One reason he remembered it: almost exactly a year before that, two teenage girls had been murdered after a night out at the World’s End pub. Their case had seen little or no progress and the investigation was being wound down, but in 1978 there was a last-gasp effort to see if the anniversary jogged memories or stirred somebody’s conscience. Rebus’s punishment for insubordination: a lengthy and solitary stint on one of the telephones, waiting for it to ring. And it had, but only with cranks. Meantime, colleagues were traipsing through the Caley, pausing for tea and biscuits between interviews.
Maria Turquand had been born Maria Frazer. Wealthy parents, private education. She had married a young man with prospects. His name was John Turquand and he worked for a private bank called Brough’s. Brough’s was home to a lot of Scotland’s old money, its chequebook held only by those with deep and trusted pockets. It was secretive but becoming less so as its coffers filled and it looked for new investment opportunities. Turned out it had even been eyeing up a takeover of the Royal Bank of Scotland, the equivalent of David landing a knockout blow on Goliath’s bigger, brawnier brother. Maria Turquand’s murder had seen Brough’s land on the front pages of the nation’s newspapers, and stay there as stories of her tempestuous private life emerged. There had been a string of lovers, usually entertained in a room she kept at the Caley. Some of Rebus’s jottings referred to names he’d heard — unsubstantiated, but including a Conservative MP.
Did her husband know? It didn’t seem so. He had an alibi anyway, having been in an all-day meeting with the head of the bank, Sir Magnus Brough. Maria’s most recent lover, a playboy wheeler-and-dealer called Peter Attwood — who happened to be a friend of her husband’s — was on shaky ground for a while, unable to account for his movements on the afternoon in question, until a new lover had surfaced, a married woman he’d been trying to protect.
Decent of him, Rebus mused.
All of which would have been enough to give the story traction, without the incidental appearance of a music star in a supporting role. But Bruce Collier had also been staying at the Caley with his band and management, the hotel being handy for the Usher Hall where he was due to perform. Collier had been in a rock group in the early 1970s. They were called Blacksmith, and Rebus had seen them play. Somewhere he almost certainly still had their three albums. There had been shock when Collier had quit the group to go solo, opting for a mellower sound and covering a slew of 1950s and 60s pop hits with growing success. His comeback gig in his home town, kicking off a sell-out UK tour, had brought with it journalists and TV crews from across the country and further afield.
Sifting through the cuttings, Rebus found plenty of photographs. Collier sporting big hair and skinny jeans, his neck festooned with silk scarves, captured in flashlight glare as he climbed the steps of the hotel. Then out walking in his old neighbourhood, stopping at the terraced house where he’d grown up. Questioned by the press, he’d admitted that the police were readying to interview him. The piece was accompanied by a photograph of Maria Turquand (taken at a party) that had been used a lot in the weeks after her death. She wore a short dress, cut very low, and was pouting for the camera, cigarette in one hand, drink in the other. Plenty of column inches discussed her ‘racy lifestyle’, the string of lovers and admirers, the holidays to ski resorts and Caribbean islands. Few lingered over her end, the fear she must have felt, the searing pain as her airway was crushed by her killer’s hands.