“There’s nothing illegal about commercial loans, Miss Henderson, secret or not.” Pennen was still swinging the club.
“Doesn’t stop it from being a scandal, once the papers get hold of it,” Mairie retorted. “And like I say, who knows what else will come bubbling to the surface?”
Pennen brought the clubhead down with force against the partition. “Do you know how hard I’ve worked this week, arranging contracts worth tens of millions to UK industry? And what have you been doing, apart from some useless muckraking?”
“We all have our place in the food chain, Mr. Pennen.” She smiled. “Won’t be Mr. for much longer, will it? Money you’ve been shelling out, that peerage can’t be far off. Mind you, once Blair finds out you’re bankrolling his enemies…”
“Any trouble here, sir?”
Mairie turned to see three police uniforms. The one who’d spoken was looking at Pennen; the other two had eyes for her and her alone.
Unfriendly eyes.
“I think this woman was just leaving,” Pennen muttered.
Mairie made a show of peering over the partition. “Got a magic lamp there or something? Any time I’ve ever called the cops, they’ve taken half an hour.”
“Routine patrol,” the group’s leader stated.
Mairie looked him up and down: no markings on his uniform. The face tanned, hair cropped, jaw set.
“One question,” she said. “Do any of you know the penalty for impersonating a police officer?”
The leader scowled and made a grab at her. Mairie wriggled free and ran from the safety of the driving area onto the grass surface itself. Fled toward the exit, dodging shots from the first two bays, the players yelling in outrage. She reached the door just before her pursuers. The woman at the register asked where her three-wood was. Mairie didn’t answer. Pushed open another door and found herself in the parking lot. Ran to her car, stabbing the remote. No time to look around. Into the driver’s seat and all four doors locked. Key in the ignition. A fist thumping at her window. The lead uniform trying the handle, then shuffling around to the front of the car. Mairie gave him a look that said she didn’t care. Gunned the accelerator.
“Watch out, Jacko! The bint’s crazy!”
Jacko had to dive sideways; that or be killed. In the wing mirror, she could see him picking himself up. A car had drawn up alongside him. No markings on it either. Mairie screamed out onto the main highway-airport to her left, city to the right. The road back into Edinburgh gave her more options, more chances to lose them.
Jacko: she’d remember that name. Bint, one of the others had called her. It was a term she’d only heard from the mouths of soldiers. Ex-military…with tans picked up in hot climes.
Iraq.
Private security disguised as constabulary.
She looked in the rearview: no sign of them. Didn’t mean they weren’t there. A8 to the bypass, breaking the speed limit all the way, flashing her lights to let the drivers in front know she was coming.
Where to next, though? It would be easy for them to get her address; absurdly easy for a man like Richard Pennen. Allan was on a job, wouldn’t be back in town until Monday. Nothing to stop her driving to the Scotsman and working on her article. Her laptop was in the trunk, all the information inside it. Notes and quotes and her rough drafts. She could stay in the office all night if need be, topped up by coffee and snacks, cocooned from the outside world.
Writing Richard Pennen’s destruction.
It was Ellen Wylie who gave Rebus the news. He in turn called Siobhan, who picked him up in her car twenty minutes later. They drove to Niddrie in silence through the dusk. The Jack Kane Center ’s campground had been dismantled. No tents, no showers or toilets. Half the fencing had been removed, and the security guards were gone, replaced for the moment by uniformed officers, ambulance men, and the same two morgue assistants who had collected Ben Webster’s shattered remains from the foot of Castle Rock. Siobhan parked alongside the line of vehicles. Rebus recognized some of the detectives-they were from St. Leonard ’s and Craigmillar. They nodded a greeting toward the new arrivals.
“Not exactly your turf,” one of them commented.
“Let’s just say we’ve an interest in the deceased,” Rebus replied. Siobhan was by his side. She leaned toward him so as not to be overheard.
“News hasn’t leaked that we’re on suspension.”
Rebus just nodded. They were nearing a circle of crouched Scene of Crime officers. The duty doctor had pronounced death and was signing his name to some forms on a clipboard. Flash photographs were being taken, flashlights scouring the grass for clues. Onlookers were being kept at a distance by a dozen uniforms while the area was taped off. Kids on bikes, mums with their toddlers in carriages. Nothing drew a crowd quite like a crime scene.
Siobhan was getting her bearings. “This is pretty much where my parents’ tent was pitched,” she told Rebus.
“I’m assuming they’re not the ones who left the mess.” He flicked an empty plastic bottle into the air with his toe. Plenty of other debris strewn across the park: discarded banners and leaflets, fast-food cartons, a scarf and a single glove, a baby’s rattle and a rolled-up diaper…Some of it was being bagged by the SOCOs, to be checked for blood or fingerprints.
“Love to see them get the DNA from that,” Rebus said, nodding toward a used condom. “You think maybe your mum and dad…?”
Siobhan gave him a look. “I’m not going any closer.”
He shrugged, and left her behind. Councilman Gareth Tench was growing cold on the ground. He lay on his front, legs bent as if he’d collapsed in a heap. His head was turned to one side, eyes not quite shut. There was a dark stain on the back of his jacket.
“I’m guessing stabbed,” Rebus told the doctor.
“Three times,” the man confirmed. “In the back. Wounds don’t look all that deep to me.”
“Doesn’t take much,” Rebus stated. “What sort of knife?”
“Hard to tell as yet.” The doctor peered over his half-moon glasses. “Blade about an inch wide, maybe a little less.”
“Anything missing?”
“He’s got some cash on him…credit cards and such. Made identification that bit easier.” The doctor gave a tired smile and turned his clipboard toward Rebus. “If you could countersign here, Inspector.”
But Rebus held his hands up. “Not my case, Doc.” The doctor looked toward Siobhan, but Rebus shook his head slowly and walked off to join her.
“Three stab wounds,” he informed her.
She was staring at Tench’s face, and seemed to be trembling a little.
“Feeling the chill?” he asked.
“It’s really him,” she said quietly.
“You thought he was indestructible?”
“Not quite.” She couldn’t tear her eyes away from the body.
“I suppose we should tell someone.” He looked around for a likely candidate.
“Tell them what?”
“That we’ve been giving Tench a bit of grief. Bound to come out sooner or-”
She had snatched his hand and was dragging him toward the sports center’s gray concrete wall.
“What’s up?”
But she wasn’t about to answer, not until she felt they were far enough away. Even then, she stood so close to him that they could have been readying to waltz. Her face was hidden in shadow.
“Siobhan?” he prompted her.
“You must know who did this,” she said.
“Who?”
“Keith Carberry,” she growled. Then, when he didn’t respond, she raised her face to the heavens and screwed shut her eyes. Rebus noticed that her hands had become clenched fists, her whole body tensed.