SIOBHAN What?
REBUS Twenty-five years since I started mentoring your illustrious career.
SIOBHAN Oh is that what you were doing?
REBUS Helping you scale the heights of Police Scotland, Shiv.
SIOBHAN Keeping me on the brink of investigation for professional misconduct.
REBUS The edge that sharpens the detective senses.
SIOBHAN Is it really twenty-five years?
REBUS I counted.
SIOBHAN You’re right. It must be. Because I arrived just after the first time we tried to convict Mordaunt.
REBUS Is that what’s got you in this state? The Mordaunt case?
SIOBHAN I’m not in a state. Alright. I want the right result this time. I want that a lot. But you must be feeling that. You were part of the original investigation...
REBUS I was just a baby detective. All I did was a wee bit of the leg work. But everyone was part of it... Something about it, it got to everyone. You know that last lassie he killed... Angela... (trying to get name) Jesus... dying brain...
SIOBHAN (cutting in) Angela Simpson.
REBUS Aye. That was her first proper night out you know. First time her Mum and Dad let her stay out past eleven. A sixteen year old lassie just excited to be out on a Saturday... Is it the Dad you’re getting ready for court?
SIOBHAN Yes.
REBUS How’s he doing?
SIOBHAN He’s still blaming himself: ‘If I’d known she was going drinking...’ Sixteen. You ought to be able to sneak into a pub kidding on you’re old enough, laughing with all your mates. That shouldn’t get you killed.
REBUS Sixteen. Still new. Still daft enough to fall for it when some older guy starts chatting you up. Young enough to swallow the lines...
SIOBHAN But Jesus, look at Mordaunt!
REBUS Aye. Even when he was young he looked like a feral weasel that lived in a sewer. He must have had some chat up lines.
SIOBHAN He’d’ve had confidence by the time he murdered Angela wouldn’t he? He’d already got away with rape and murder twice.
REBUS He was a cocky swaggering little prick. Then and now.
SIOBHAN Now we’ll get him. The forensics will get him.
REBUS Is it from the tights? Is the evidence on the tights he strangled them with?
SIOBHAN Come on John, I’m not supposed to talk about ongoing...
REBUS (cutting in) Aw come on yourself, that’s no even me guessing. He strangled those girls with their own tights. There must be traces the forensics weren’t good enough to catch at the time, but you can prove the bastard’s hands were on the knots now.
SIOBHAN Alright. Good guess. Hopefully, finally, we can do a proper job of putting him away.
REBUS You don’t think we did a proper job back in 1992?
SIOBHAN I’m not saying that...
REBUS Sounds like you are.
SIOBHAN Look, I can’t help adding up the evidence the original detectives had. They had Mordaunt’s plumbers’ van parked up near where the young women vanished, three times. Every murder, there’s his van...
REBUS And there’s his wife, giving him an alibi, every time.
SIOBHAN And, ok, you find yourself thinking, ‘How hard did they lean on his wife?’ Because she must have known.
REBUS Why would you want to know a thing like that? Way I heard it she was like concrete. They couldny budge her. Mordaunt was drinking with her, apparently, every time.
SIOBHAN CCTV evidence might’ve knocked a hole in that lie now. Forensics would have nailed him, will nail him now... if nothing goes wrong.
REBUS What might go wrong?
SIOBHAN The trial starts Monday.
REBUS I know. And what might go wrong? What’re you worried about?
SIOBHAN Nothing. Nothing at all. Do I look worried?
REBUS Yes.
SIOBHAN You see you think you can read me but this just proves...
REBUS (cutting her off) Why haven’t I been called to give evidence?
SIOBHAN You just said it. You weren’t doing more than door to door back then. You weren’t the lead detective. Steve Cant was.
REBUS Steve Cant couldny lead his own shite out his arse. It’s thanks to him we never nailed the pervy weasel the day we lifted him. He was so busy worrying about playing it by the book he barely asked Mordaunt his name and address...
SIOBHAN (cutting in) It’s thanks to him and the forensic pathologist at the time that the evidence of the Angela’s clothing has been preserved properly all these years. Stored properly, logged properly, and believe me that’s going to be an issue for the defence.
Something in her tone alerts REBUS.
REBUS What’s happened?
SIOBHAN You did put Mordaunt away John. You got him the same year Angela died. For assault.
REBUS Aye. What about it?
SIOBHAN What made you so sure it was him?
REBUS I could see rapist murdering scum beneath that cheery plumber exterior.
SIOBHAN And could you really see the kind of man that could lay out a man twice his size? A man like Morris Gerald Cafferty?
REBUS Cafferty was hit from behind.
SIOBHAN True.
REBUS And that was twenty-five years ago. Cafferty wasn’t the behemoth of crime and chaos he was in his prime.
SIOBHAN He was a big man. And a lethal one.
REBUS He turned his back for two minutes. All it took.
SIOBHAN But I never understood why he let Mordaunt get away with it.