‘So it had nothing to do with Frank Hammell, then?’
‘Why should it?’
‘That photo of you and him enjoying a friendly drink,’ Tony Kaye suggested.
‘Just a coincidence.’
‘Don’t take us for mugs.’
Rebus switched his attention to Fox, waiting for the man to speak.
‘Morris Gerald Cafferty,’ Fox obliged, ‘and now Francis Hammell. You don’t half pick your friends, Rebus.’
‘They’re as much my friends as you are.’
‘Funny, that,’ said Kaye, ‘because we’ve not been to any pubs with you, while you’ve been spotted drinking with both of them.’
Rebus kept his eyes on Fox. ‘We’re wasting each other’s time here.’
‘SCRU’s being wound up, I hear. That’s you off the force again.’ Fox paused. ‘Unless you’re serious about reapplying.’
‘Being a civilian suddenly has its merits,’ Rebus said, turning and heading for the door. ‘Means I don’t have to listen to you and your shit.’
‘Enjoy the rest of your life, Rebus,’ Kaye called out to him. ‘What’s left of it, that is. .’
When he got home that evening, a note had been pushed under his door. He unfolded it. It was from MGC — Morris Gerald Cafferty — and it was just to let Rebus know how disappointed Cafferty was in him for ‘consorting with scum like Frank Hammell’, the word ‘scum’ underlined three times for emphasis. Rebus scooped up the rest of the mail and went into the living room. It felt stuffy, so he prised open one of the sash windows, then turned up the radiator to compensate. The hi-fi’s turntable had been left switched on, rotating lazily. Rebus added a Bert Jansch album and lowered the stylus on to the vinyl. Then he started charging his phone before heading to the bedroom and emptying his overnight bag, filling a couple of polythene carriers with laundry. It would be another hour before the nearest launderette closed, so he decided to drop the stuff off — and collect some food on the way home. Leaving his phone behind and lifting the tone-arm from the record, he locked the flat and walked down the two flights of stairs.
‘Yes, I know,’ he apologised to the Saab as he approached it. He’d just tossed the laundry on to the back seat when he heard someone call his name. Tensing, he turned and saw Darryl Christie getting out of a black Mercedes M-Class. The driver stayed behind the steering wheel, but lowered his window the better to keep a close eye on proceedings. Rebus recognised him as the lippy doorman from Jo-Jo Binkie’s — Marcus or something like that.
‘Hello, Darryl,’ Rebus said, resting his back against the Saab. ‘Is it worth me asking how you come to know where I live?’
‘This is the information age, if you hadn’t noticed.’
‘How’s your mum doing? And the rest of the family?’
‘There’s a funeral needs planning.’
‘There’s also a friend of your mother’s who needs calming down.’
‘You think I’m bothered about him?’
‘I think you’ve got a head on your shoulders. In a lot of ways, you’re smarter than Frank Hammell. Someone needs to bring him back from Inverness.’
‘Tomorrow,’ Christie stated. He was dressed in the same dark suit, with a fresh white shirt but no tie. He slipped his hands into his trouser pockets and studied Rebus. ‘Frank says you might be okay.’
‘I’m flattered.’
‘Despite being Cafferty’s man.’
‘I’m not.’
‘Doesn’t matter. Frank’s wondering if you might keep your ears open, on behalf of the family.’
‘Oh?’
‘Any names that come into the frame — all we’d need is a head start.’
‘Frank wants his hands on them before they can be brought into custody?’
Christie nodded slowly. ‘But I don’t want that to happen.’
‘No?’
‘Things could get messy afterwards, and I don’t want my mum being more upset than she already is.’
‘Frank Hammell has a pretty good track record, Darryl. If he gets hold of someone, there’s not going to be a trace of them afterwards — not for a long time.’
‘This is different. I’ve not seen him lose it the way he’s been doing.’
It was Rebus’s turn to study the young man in front of him. ‘You really are smarter, aren’t you?’
‘I’m just a bit more rational at this point in time. Plus it’ll put my job on the line if he does something stupid.’
‘It’s more than that, though. I’d say you’re canny by nature. My bet is, you kept your head down in school, did well in exams. But always watchful, learning how things are and what makes people tick.’
Darryl Christie offered a shrug of the shoulders. When he removed his hands from his pockets, he was holding a card in one. ‘I’ve got lots of phones,’ he said. ‘If you ring this number, I’ll know it’s you.’
‘You really think I’m going to hand over whoever did this?’
‘A name and an address; that’s all.’ He looked through the windows of the Saab at the carrier bags on the rear seat. ‘You never know — there might be the price of a washing machine in it. .’
Rebus watched him turn and head back to the Merc. No swagger to the walk, just an easy confidence. The driver’s eyes were on Rebus, as if daring him to go against Christie’s wishes, whatever those wishes might be. Rebus managed a wink as the window began to slide up, then got into the front seat of the Saab and started the engine. By the time he’d reversed out of his parking space and reached the junction at the foot of Arden Street, the Merc was nowhere to be seen.
The guy in the launderette told him it might be a couple of days. Rebus remonstrated that he didn’t have a couple of days, to which the owner responded by waving his arms in the direction of the backlog of service washes.
‘Way things are,’ he said, ‘I’d almost pay you to load the machine yourself.’
On the way back to the flat, it was a three-way contest between fish and chips, Indian and Chinese. Indian won, and Rebus stopped at Pataka’s, ordering a rogan josh and saying he would wait. He was offered a lager but turned it down. The place was doing good business, the booths filled with couples sharing platters of food and bottles of chilled wine. There were three or four pubs within a two-minute walk, but Rebus flicked through that day’s Evening News instead. By the time he’d finished, his food was ready. He drove back to Arden Street with Maggie Bell playing on the radio. He wondered if she was still going strong. .
His kitchen filled with aromas as he opened the containers, scooping out the meat, sauce and rice on to a plate. There were beers in the cupboard, so he opened one and added it to the tray, which he carried through to the dining table. The living room felt a bit better, so he closed the window again and put the Bert Jansch album back on. His phone sounded, letting him know he had a message. He decided it could wait. A couple of minutes later, it issued another reminder and this time he got up to check the screen. One missed call; one voicemail.
It was Nina Hazlitt.
‘Guess where I am,’ she was saying.
55
They met at an old-fashioned bar behind the railway station. She was booked on to the sleeper service down to London, a couple of hours still to kill before boarding. She was seated at the bar when he arrived. The pint she’d bought him had been there some time and had gone flat. Rebus said it would be fine anyway.
‘I thought you’d still be in Inverness,’ she told him.
‘Surplus to requirements.’
‘They’ve identified all the bodies now?’
He nodded and took a sip of beer.
‘No sign of Sally,’ she went on, lowering her eyes.
‘Meaning she’s unconnected to the case,’ he offered.
‘But she has to be! Wasn’t I the first person to see it?’
The barman cast a warning look towards them: this wasn’t a place for raised voices. Rebus noticed that the couple at the table next to the window were readying to leave. He picked up his own glass and Nina Hazlitt’s suitcase. After a moment she followed him, carrying her vodka and tonic. When they were settled, she waited for him to meet her gaze. Her eyes were bloodshot, her face sallow and taut, lacking sleep and answers.