‘Mrs Coghill, you heard about the body in the fireplace at Queensberry House?’
‘Yes.’
‘Your husband’s firm worked there twenty years ago. Would there be any records, or anyone who worked for your husband that we could talk to?’
‘You think it has something to do with Callan?’
‘The first thing we need’, Hood said, ‘is to identify the body.’
‘Do you remember your husband working there, Mrs Coghill?’ Wylie asked. ‘Maybe he mentioned someone disappearing from the job. .?’
When Mrs Coghill started shaking her head, Wylie looked to Hood, who smiled. Yes, that would have been too easy. She got the feeling this would be one of those cases where you never got a lucky break.
‘His business came here in the end,’ Mrs Coghill said. ‘Maybe that will help you.’
And when Ellen Wylie asked what she meant, Meg Coghill said it might be easier if she showed them.
‘I can’t drive,’ the widow explained. ‘I sold Dean’s cars. He had two of them, one for work and one for pleasure.’ She smiled at some private memory. They were walking across the mono-blocked drive in front of the house. It was an elongated bungalow on Frogston Road, with views to the snowcapped Pentland Hills to the south.
‘He had his men build this double garage,’ Mrs Coghill went on. ‘They extended the house, too, added a couple of rooms to either side of the original.’
The two CID officers nodded, still unsure why they were headed for the twin garage. There was a door to the side. Mrs Coghill unlocked it and reached in to turn on a light. The large space had been almost completely filled with tea chests, office furniture and tools. There were pickaxes and crowbars, hammers and boxes filled with screws and nails. Industrial drills, a couple of pneumatics, even steel pails splashed with mortar. Mrs Coghill rested her hand on one of the tea chests.
‘All the paperwork. There’s a filing-cabinet somewhere, too...’
‘Under that blanket maybe?’ Wylie suggested, pointing towards the far corner.
‘If you want to know anything about Queensberry House, it’ll be here somewhere.’
Wylie and Hood shared a look. Hood puffed out his cheeks.
‘Another job for the Time Team,’ Ellen Wylie said.
Hood nodded, looked around. ‘Any heating in here, Mrs Coghill?’
‘I could bring you out an electric fire.’
‘Show me where it is,’ Hood said, ‘I’ll fetch it.’
‘And something tells me you wouldn’t say no to that cup of tea now,’ said Mrs Coghill, seeming delighted by the thought of their company.
Siobhan Clarke sat at her desk with ‘Supertramp’s effects spread before her. To wit: the contents of his carrier bag, his building society passbook, the briefcase (which its most recent owner hadn’t given up without a fight) and the photographs. She also had a pile of crank letters and telephone messages, including three from Gerald Sithing.
It was one of the tabloids who had coined the name Supertramp. They’d also dragged up the sex-on-church-steps story, with an archive photo of Dezzi. Siobhan knew the vultures would be out there, trying to track Dezzi down for an interview, for some juicy morsel. Maybe Dezzi would tell them about the briefcase. It wouldn’t be chequebook journalism — she doubted Dezzi had a bank account. Call it cashpoint journalism then. Maybe they’d talk to Rachel Drew, too. She wouldn’t say no to a cheque. A few more titbits for the readers and gold-diggers.
And as long as the story ran, the letters and calls would keep coming.
She rose from the desk, pushed at her spine until the vertebrae clicked. It was gone six, and the office was empty. She’d had to move desks — the Grieve murder had taken priority — and was squeezed into a corner of the long, narrow room. No window near by. Mind you, Hood and Wylie had it even worse: no natural light at all in the shoebox they’d been given. The Chief Super had been blunt with her this afternoon: take a few more days, but if there was no ID on Supertramp by then, that was an end of it. The cash went to the Treasury; the suicide, Mackie’s whole prehistory, would remain unexplained.
‘We’ve got real work to be getting on with,’ her boss had said. He looked like a candidate for a stroke. ‘Dossers kill themselves every day.’
‘No suspicious circumstances, sir?’ she’d dared to ask.
‘The money doesn’t make for suspicious circumstances, Siobhan. It’s a mystery, that’s all. Life’s full of them.’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘You’ve been too close to John Rebus for too long.’
She’d looked up, frowning. ‘Meaning?’
‘Meaning you’re looking for something here that probably doesn’t exist.’
‘The money exists. He walked into a building society, all of it in cash. Next thing he’s living as a down and out.’
‘A rich eccentric; money does strange things to some people.’
‘He erased his past. It’s like he was in hiding.’
‘You think the money was stolen? Then why didn’t he spend it?’
‘That’s just one other question, sir.’
A sigh; a scratch of the nose. ‘A few more days, Siobhan. All right?’
She’d nodded. ‘Yes, sir,’ she’d said...
‘Evening all.’
John Rebus was standing in the doorway.
She glanced at her watch. ‘How long have you been there?’
‘How long have you been staring at that wall?’
She realised she was halfway down the office, and had been gazing at photos of the Grieve locus. ‘I was dreaming. What are you doing here?’
‘Working, same as you.’ He came into the office, leaned against one of the desks with his arms folded.
You’ve been too close to John Rebus for too long.
‘How’s the Grieve case?’ she asked.
He shrugged. ‘Shouldn’t your first question be “How’s Derek?”’
She half-turned from him, cheeks reddening slightly.
‘Sorry,’ he said. ‘That was bad taste, even for me.’
‘We just didn’t hit it off,’ she told him. ‘I’m having the selfsame problem.’
She turned to him. ‘Is Derek the problem though, or is it you?’
He feigned a pained look, then winked and walked up the central aisle between the rows of desks. ‘Is this your man’s stuff?’ he asked. She followed him back to her desk. She could smell whisky.
‘They’re calling him Supertramp.’
‘Who are?’
‘The media.’
He was smiling. She asked him why.
‘Supertramp: I saw them in concert once. Usher Hall, I think it was.’
‘Before my time.’
‘So what’s the story with Mr Supertramp anyway?’
‘He had all this money he either couldn’t spend or didn’t want to. He took on a new identity. My theory is that he was hiding.’
‘Maybe.’ He was rifling through the scraps on the desk. She folded her arms, gave him a hard look which he failed to notice. He opened the bread bag and shook out the contents: disposable razor, a sliver of soap, toothbrush. ‘An organised mind,’ he said. ‘Makes himself a washbag. Doesn’t like being dirty.’
‘It’s like he was acting the part,’ she said.
He caught her tone, looked up. ‘What is it?’ he asked.
‘Nothing.’ She couldn’t say the words: my case, my pitch.
Rebus lifted the arrest photograph. ‘What did he do?’ She told him and he laughed.
‘I’ve tracked him back as far as 1980. That was when “Chris Mackie” was born.’
‘You should talk to Hood and Wylie. They’re checking MisPers from ’78 and ’79.’
‘Maybe I’ll do that.’
‘You sound tired. What if I offered to buy you dinner?’