Gray picked up his pint, raised it. “Here’s tae us, wha’s like us?”
“Nobody,” Rebus commented. “Or they’d be stuck on this damned course.”
“Just got to grin and bear it,” Barclay said. He was late thirties, thickening around the waist. Salt-and-pepper hair brushed back from the forehead. Rebus knew him from a couple of cases: Falkirk and Edinburgh were only thirty minutes apart.
“I wonder if Wee Andrea grins when she bares it,” Stu Sutherland said.
“No sexism, please.” Francis Gray was wagging a finger.
“Besides,” McCullough added, “we don’t want to stoke John’s fantasies.”
Gray raised an eyebrow. “That right, John? Got the hots for your counselor? Better watch, you might make Allan jealous.”
Allan Ward looked up from the cigarette he was lighting, just glowered.
“That your sheep-frightening look, Allan?” Gray said. “Not much to do down in Dumfries, is there, except round up the usual ewes?”
More laughter. It wasn’t that Francis Gray had made himself the center of attention; it seemed to happen naturally. He’d been first into his seat, and the others had congregated around him, Rebus sitting directly opposite. Gray was a big man, and the years told on his face. And because he said everything with a smile, a wink or a glint in his eye, he got away with it. Rebus hadn’t heard anyone making a joke about Gray himself yet, though they’d all been his target. It was as if he were challenging them, testing them. The way they took his comments would tell him everything he needed to know about them. Rebus wondered how the big man would react to a jibe or joke directed against him.
Maybe he’d have to find out.
McCullough’s mobile sounded, and he got up, moving away.
“His wife, odds-on,” Gray stated. He was halfway down his pint of lager. Didn’t smoke, told Rebus he’d given up a decade back. The two of them had been outside during a break, Rebus offering the packet. Ward and Barclay smoked too. Three out of six: it meant Rebus could feel comfortable lighting up.
“She’s keeping tabs on him?” Stu Sutherland was saying.
“Proof of a deep and loving relationship,” Gray commented, tipping the glass to his mouth again. He was one of those drinkers, you never saw them swallow: it was as if they could hold their throat open and just pour the stuff down.
“You two know each other?” Sutherland asked. Gray glanced over his shoulder to where McCullough was standing, his head bowed towards the mobile phone.
“I know the type” was all Gray said by way of answer.
Rebus knew better. He rose to his feet. “Same again?”
Two lagers, three IPAs. On his way to the bar, Rebus pointed towards McCullough, who shook his head. He still had most of his cola, didn’t want another. Rebus heard the words “I’ll be on the road in ten minutes . . .” Yes, he was on the phone to his wife. Rebus had a call he wanted to make too. Jean was probably finishing work right around now. Rush hour, the journey from the museum to her home in Portobello might take half an hour.
The barman knew the order: this was their third round of the evening. The previous two nights, they’d stuck to the college premises. First night, Gray had produced a good bottle of malt, and they’d sat in the common room, getting to know one another. Tuesday, they’d met in the college’s own bar for an after-dinner session, McCullough sticking to soft drinks and then heading out for his car.
But at lunchtime today, Tam Barclay had mentioned a bar in the village, good rep.
“No trouble with the locals” was the way he’d put it. So here they were. The barman looked comfortable, which told Rebus he’d dealt with intakes from the college before. He was efficient, not over-friendly. Midweek, only half a dozen regulars in the place. Three at one table, two at one end of the bar, another standing alone next to Rebus. The man turned to him.
“Up at the cop school, are you?”
Rebus nodded.
“Bit old for recruits.”
Rebus glanced at the man. He was tall, completely bald, his head shining. Gray mustache, eyes which seemed to be retracting into the skull. He was drinking a bottle of beer with what looked like a dark rum in the glass next to it.
“Force is desperate these days,” Rebus explained. “Next thing, they’ll be press-ganging.”
The man smiled. “I think you’re having me on.”
Rebus shrugged. “We’re here on a refresher course,” he admitted.
“Teaching old dogs new tricks, eh?” The man lifted his beer.
“Get you one?” Rebus offered. The man shook his head. So Rebus paid the barman and, deciding against a tray, hoisted three of the pints, making a triangle of them between his hands. Went to the table, came back for the last two, including his own. Thinking: best not leave it too late to phone Jean. He didn’t want her to hear him drunk. Not that he was planning on getting drunk, but you could never tell . . .
“This you celebrating the end of the course?” the man asked.
“Just the beginning,” Rebus told him.
St. Leonard’s police station was midevening quiet. There were prisoners in the holding cells waiting for next morning’s court appearance and two teenagers being booked for shoplifting. Upstairs, the CID offices were almost empty. The Marber inquiry had wound down for the day, and only Siobhan Clarke was left, in front of a computer, staring at a screen saver in the form of a banner message: WHAT WILL SIOBHAN DO WITHOUT HER SUGAR DADDY? She didn’t know who had written it: one of the team, having a bit of a laugh. She surmised it referred to John Rebus, but couldn’t quite work out the meaning. Did the author know what a sugar daddy was? Or did it just mean that Rebus looked after her, watched out for her? She was annoyed to find herself so irritated by the message.
She went into the screen-saver options and clicked on “banner,” erased the present message and replaced it with one of her own: I KNOW WHO YOU ARE, SUCKER. Then she checked a couple of other terminals, but their screen savers were asteroids and wavy lines. When the phone on her desk started ringing, she considered not answering. Probably another crank wanting to confess, or ready with spurious information. A respectable middle-aged gent had called yesterday and accused his upstairs neighbors of the crime. Turned out they were students, played their music too loud and too often. The man had been warned that wasting police time was a serious matter.
“Mind you,” one of the uniforms had commented afterwards, “if I’d to listen to Slipknot all day, I’d probably do worse.”
Siobhan sat down in front of her computer, lifted the receiver.
“CID, DS Clarke speaking.”
“One thing they teach at Tulliallan,” the voice said, “is the importance of the quick pickup.”
She smiled. “I prefer to be wooed.”
“A quick pickup,” Rebus explained, “means picking up the phone within half a dozen rings.”
“How did you know I was here?”
“I didn’t. Tried your flat first, got the answering machine.”
“And somehow sensed I wasn’t out on the town?” She settled back in her chair. “Sounds like you’re in a bar.”
“In beautiful downtown Kincardine.”
“And yet you’ve dragged yourself from your pint to call me?”
“I called Jean first. Had a spare twenty-pence piece . . .”
“I’m flattered. A whole twenty pee?” She listened to him snort.
“So . . . how’s it going?” he asked.
“Never mind that, how’s Tulliallan?”
“As some of the teachers would say, we have a new tricks–old dog interface scenario.”
She laughed. “They don’t talk like that, do they?”
“Some of them do. We’re being taught crime management and victim empathy response.”
“And yet you still have time for a drink?”
Silence on the line; she wondered if she’d touched a nerve.
“How do you know I’m not on fresh orange?” he said at last.
“I just do.”
“Go on then, impress me with your detective skills.”