‘Then why am I doing this?’ Seona Grieve said quietly, her hands in her lap. Jo Banks reached out and touched her hand.
‘Because it makes sense,’ she said.
When Seona Grieve looked up at Rebus, there were tears in her eyes. Rebus looked away.
‘This may not seem like the time,’ he said, ‘but you told us your husband didn’t drink. I believe at one time his drinking may have been a problem.’
‘For heaven’s sake,’ Jo Banks hissed.
Seona Grieve blew her nose, sniffed. ‘You’ve been talking to Billie.’
‘Yes,’ he acknowledged.
‘Trying to blacken a dead man’s name,’ Jo Banks muttered.
Rebus looked at her. ‘See, there’s a problem, Ms Banks. We don’t know what Roddy Grieve was doing in the hours prior to his death. So far we’ve a sighting of him in one pub, just the one, drinking on his own. We need to know if that’s the kind of man he was: a solitary drinker. Then maybe we can stop wasting our time trying to locate the friends we’ve been told he would be out drinking with.’
‘It’s all right, Jo,’ Seona Grieve said quietly. Then, to Rebus: ‘He said he felt he sometimes had to get out of himself.’
‘Where would he have gone?’
She shook her head. ‘He never said.’
‘The times he stayed out all night...?’
‘I think maybe he went to hotels, or slept in the car.’
Rebus nodded, and she seemed to read his thoughts. ‘Maybe he wasn’t alone in doing that, Inspector?’
‘Maybe,’ he conceded. Some mornings, he’d woken in his car and didn’t even know where he was... country roads, the middle of nowhere... ‘Is there anything else we should know?’
She shook her head slowly.
‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘I really am. I’m sorry.’
Rebus laid his coffee cup on the table, got up, and left the room.
By the time Linford caught up with him, Rebus was seated in his Saab, window down, smoking. Linford leaned down so their faces were almost touching. Rebus blew some smoke past his ear.
‘So what do you think?’ Linford asked.
Rebus considered his answer. Late afternoon; light had died from the sky. ‘I think we’re in the dark,’ he said, ‘swiping at things we think might be bats.’
‘What does that mean?’ The young man sounding genuinely annoyed.
‘It means we’ll never understand one another,’ Rebus answered, starting his engine.
Linford stood at the kerbside, watching the Saab move off. He reached into his pocket for his mobile, put in a call to ACC Carswell at Fettes. He had the words formed and waiting in his head: I think maybe Rebus is going to be a problem after all. But as he waited to be put through, he had another thought: in saying as much to Carswell, he’d be admitting defeat, showing weakness. Carswell might understand, but that didn’t mean he wouldn’t see it as such: defeat; weakness. Linford cut the call, switched the phone off. This was his problem. It was up to him to think of a way round it.
19
Dean Coghill was dead. His building firm had been wound up, the company office now a design consultancy, the builders’ yard turned into a three-storey block of flats. Hood and Wylie eventually tracked down an address for Coghill’s widow.
‘All these dead guys...’ Grant Hood had commented.
Ellen Wylie’s reply: ‘The male of the species doesn’t live as long as the female.’
They couldn’t get a phone number for the widow, so went to the last known address.
‘Probably died or retired to Benidorm,’ Wylie said.
‘Is there a difference then?’
Wylie smiled, brought the car in to the kerbside and pulled on the handbrake. Hood opened his door a fraction and peered down.
‘No,’ he said, ‘this is fine. I can walk to the kerb from here.’
Wylie gave his arm a thump. He suspected it would bruise.
Meg Coghill was a short, spry woman in her early seventies. Though it didn’t look like she was going out or ready for visitors, she was dressed immaculately and had made up her face. As she led them into the sitting room, there were noises from the kitchen.
‘My cleaner,’ Mrs Coghill explained. Hood felt like asking if she always dressed up for the cleaner, but thought he probably knew the answer already.
‘Do you want a cup of tea or something?’
‘No, thank you, Mrs Coghill.’ Ellen Wylie sat on the sofa. Hood remained standing, while Mrs Coghill sank into an armchair big enough to accommodate someone three times her size. Hood was looking at some framed photographs on a wall unit.
‘Is this Mr Coghill?’
‘That’s Dean. I still miss him, you know.’
Hood guessed that the chair the widow now sat in had been her husband’s. The photos showed a bear of a man, thick arms and neck, back held straight, the chest prominent and gut sucked in. His face told you he’d be fair as long as you didn’t muck him around. Cropped silver hair. Jewellery around his neck and on his left wrist, a fat Rolex on the right.
‘When did he pass away?’ Wylie was asking, her voice trained in dealing with the bereaved.
‘Best part of a decade ago.’
‘Was it a medical condition?’
‘He’d had problems with his heart before. Hospitals, specialists. He couldn’t slow down, you see. Had to keep working.’
Wylie nodded slowly. ‘It’s hard for some people.’
‘Were there any partners in the business, Mrs Coghill?’
Hood had rested his backside on the arm of the sofa.
‘No.’ Mrs Coghill paused. ‘Dean had hopes for Alexander.’
Hood turned to look again at the photos: family groups, a boy and girl from their pre-teens through to their twenties. ‘Your son?’ he asked.
‘But Alex had other ideas. He’s in America, married. He works in a car showroom, only over there they call them automobiles.’
‘Mrs Coghill,’ Wylie said, ‘did your husband know a man called Bryce Callan?’
‘Is that why you’re here?’
‘You know the name then?’
‘He was some kind of gangster, wasn’t he?’
‘He had that reputation, certainly.’
Meg Coghill got up, fussed with some ornaments on the mantelpiece. Little china animals: cats playing with balls of wool; spaniels with floppy ears.
‘Is there something you want to tell us, Mrs Coghill?’ Hood spoke quietly, his eyes meeting Wylie’s.
‘It’s too late now, isn’t it?’ There was a tremor in Meg Coghill’s voice. She kept her back to her visitors. Wylie wondered if she took any tablets for nerves.
‘You tell us, Mrs Coghill,’ she suggested.
The widow’s hands kept busy with the ornaments as she spoke.
‘Bryce Callan was a thug, wasn’t he? You paid up, or you got in trouble. Tools would disappear, or the tyres on the van would be slashed. The job you were working on might end up vandalised, only they weren’t just vandals, they were Bryce Callan’s men.’
‘Your husband paid protection to Bryce Callan?’
She turned towards them. ‘You didn’t know my Dean. He was the only one who stood up to Callan. And I think it killed him. All the extra work and worry... Bryce Callan as good as stuck his hand into Dean’s chest and squeezed his heart dry.’
‘Your husband told you this?’
‘Lord, no. He never said a word, liked to keep me separate from anything to do with the business. Family on one hand, work on the other, he’d say. That’s why he needed an office, didn’t want work coming home with him.’
‘He wanted his family kept separate,’ Wylie said, ‘yet he thought maybe Alex would help in the business?’
‘That was in the early days, before Callan.’