Even dogs in the wild

  Fox’s eyes narrowed. ‘My dad?’

  ‘And your sister Jude. Not too close to her, are you?’ Bell gave a sly smile. ‘Ricky needed certain assurances that he knew the kind of man he was getting. Your boss came through with a potted biography. Now if that had been Ricky, he’d have handed over a minimum of detail with a few howlers mixed in.

  DCI Maxtone proved to be a lot more accommodating.

  Remember that when you make your next report. Some chiefs are better than others, and some teams really are teams. The sooner you stop acting as Maxtone’s snitch, the sooner you’ll find that out.’

  ‘Is that a fact?’

  ‘Think about it. You said yourself you’re one step above pariah status here. Maybe we can offer you something better for a time.’

  ‘Better than Angry Birds?’

  ‘I’ll let you be the judge of that,’ Bell said, opening the lid of his laptop again.

  ‘Papers called him the “tragic lottery victim”,’ Christine Esson said. ‘Makes it sound as if it was the lottery that did for him.’

  ‘Which, if someone killed him for his money, is almost true,’ Clarke replied. The new-build two-storey brick house was surrounded by a high wall and electric gates. These gates had been left open for them. The driveway was short and led to a paved parking circle. To the right of the house stood a three-car garage. Clarke stopped her Astra in front of it, next to a BMW 3

  Series. The man who got out of the Beemer straightened his tie and did up a button on his suit.

  ‘DS Grant?’ Clarke checked. The man nodded. ‘I’m DI Clarke, this is DC Esson. Thanks for meeting us.’

  ‘No trouble at all.’ Grant ducked back into his car long enough to produce a folder, which he handed over.

  ‘Post-mortem examination, crime scene stuff and the forensic report.’

  ‘Much appreciated. The case is still active, yes?’

  ‘Absolutely.’

  ‘I’m not a reporter, Jim. You can tell the truth here.’

  Grant gave a thin smile. ‘I suppose we’ve reached the treading water stage. Team’s been cut to the bare minimum.

  We’ve interviewed everyone we can think of, put feelers out, studied CCTV from the town centre and the routes in and out of Linlithgow . . .’

  ‘Much the same as we’ve been doing in Edinburgh.’

  ‘High-profile victims, that’s the only solid connection that I can see.’

  ‘And men who lived alone,’ Esson chipped in.

  ‘Michael Tolland wasn’t a bachelor like your Lord Minton, though,’ Grant countered. ‘Married quarter of a century. Wife was already ill when they scooped the lottery. Liver cancer.

  Didn’t live long enough to get any good from it, but her husband wrote a six-figure cheque to charity after she passed on.’

  ‘Between that and the house, he wouldn’t have had a lot left over.’

  ‘About two hundred and seventy-five thousand.’

  ‘Any children?’

  Grant shook his head. ‘His sister’s kids look like getting the lot. Sister passed away eight months ago.’

  ‘Not the luckiest of families, despite appearances.’ Clarke was studying the front of the house.

  ‘Want to go inside?’ Grant jangled a key chain.

  ‘Lead the way.’

  There were still bloodstains on the beige hall carpet. Clarke took out the crime scene photos, sharing them with Esson.

  Beyond the hall there was a large living room, dominated by an oversized TV screen and surround-sound speakers. There were a few ornaments, but not many. A single framed photo of

  husband and wife at their registry office wedding. Ella Tolland had worked as an administrator for the local council. A decade younger than her husband. In the photo she was managing to smile, but her mouth was closed, in contrast to her husband’s toothy grin. He gripped her upper arm as if to stop her heading for the hills.

  ‘Happy marriage, was it?’ Clarke enquired.

  ‘No reason to think otherwise. I’ve stuck a DVD in the folder, a couple of interviews they did after hitting the jackpot.’

  ‘Thanks.’

  Grant led them through to the kitchen, showing them where the door had been forced. The door itself had been removed as evidence and replaced with something more basic.

  ‘We’re thinking a crowbar or similar.’

  ‘And that’s what was used to attack the victim?’

  ‘No weapon recovered, so we can only speculate, but the pathologist reckoned it would be consistent. You said on the phone, though – you think a hammer in Edinburgh?’

  ‘Now you’ve brought up the crowbar, we may revisit that.’

  ‘No weapon found?’

  ‘We’ve searched the streets nearby, back gardens, communal bins, even the Water of Leith.’

  ‘Same here. We had a dozen men walk the road between here and the highway – fields, ditches, you name it.’

  ‘Any thoughts, Christine?’ Clarke said.

  ‘Does DS Grant know about the note?’

  Grant himself decided to answer. ‘Yes, but there was nothing like that found here.’

  Clarke had opened the fridge. ‘Wasn’t much of a cook, was he?’

  ‘From talking to friends, he seemed to eat in the pub a lot, or else grab takeaway.’ Grant opened a drawer and lifted out a pile of menus. ‘Preference for Chinese and Indian – and not all local, either. Then again, if you’ve got money, distance is no object.’

  ‘You’ve searched the house from top to bottom?’ Clarke checked. ‘The note would’ve been easy to miss.’

  ‘I could see about giving it another go, if my boss will lend me the bodies.’

  Clarke looked to Esson. ‘What do you think?’

  ‘I think the chances of the two cases being linked are slim.’

  ‘How slim?’

  ‘Catwalk supermodel. We’ve got two victims with nothing to connect them – they didn’t know one another and moved in very different social circles.’

  Clarke was sifting through the contents of the file. ‘Mr Tolland was never in trouble with the law? No court appearances?’

  ‘Clean as a whistle, though I dare say some of the people he looked after might not be strangers to a summons.’

  ‘How do you mean?’

  ‘He was a care worker – people with problems, that sort of thing.’

  ‘Could any of them have carried a grudge?’

  ‘Lord Minton never handled that sort of case,’ Esson cautioned.

  ‘Maybe back in the day he did,’ Clarke replied.

  ‘I don’t think this was personal,’ Grant stated. ‘Breaking and entering gone wrong, rather than hamesucken.’

  Clarke almost smiled at his use of the word – the Scots legal term for breaking into someone’s house with intent to harm them.

  ‘So what did they take?’ she asked, closing the file once more. ‘Not even his laptop or iPhone is missing. Credit cards, cash, Breitling watch – all still here, same as in Lord Minton’s house. Why didn’t the perpetrator just wait till the place was empty? Not another house for half a mile – nobody to hear anything. For some reason, the victim has to be home.’ She paused. ‘Who found the body, by the way?’

  ‘An old friend. Tolland had missed a pub quiz – he was team captain and he took it seriously. When he didn’t answer his phone, the friend dropped round. Gates locked, but when he hoisted himself up on to the wall, he could see the TV was on.

  Eventually he wandered around the back and found the door open.’

  ‘How old a friend?’

  ‘Since school, I think.’

  ‘Maybe talk to him again. If Tolland had received any kind of threat, he might have confided. At the very least, he’d probably have appeared anxious or out of sorts.’

  ‘Okay,’ Grant said.

  ‘In which case, I think we’re done here.’ Clarke shook Grant’s hand. ‘And thanks again for meeting us.’

  ‘My pleasure,’ Grant said.

&n
bsp; As the Astra turned back down the driveway, Clarke asked Esson what she thought.

  ‘Not really my type – probably irons his underpants.’

  ‘He did have a look of the tailor’s dummy about him, didn’t he? Reckon he really will talk to the friend again?’

  ‘Yes, but only because it gives him an excuse to get back to us. When you turned away to open the fridge . . .’

  ‘What?’

  ‘His eyes were doing everything short of stripping the clothes off you.’

  Clarke squirmed. ‘I thought you were the one he liked.’

  ‘I’d say the man’s not had a woman for a while. Has he got your mobile number?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Probably not the very next text, then, but the one after that.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘It won’t be about work – trust me.’

  Clarke made a face.

  ‘If you’re the betting type, I’ll gladly take your money,’

  Esson teased.

  ‘Not the next text but the one after? A text rather than an actual phone call?’

  ‘Twenty quid says one or the other.’

  ‘Twenty quid it is.’ Clarke took her hand off the steering wheel long enough for the two women to shake on it.

  Ten

  Rebus drove past Cafferty’s house and saw the car in the driveway, just inside the open gates. Two men in the front, watching him as he watched them. He parked on a meter and walked back to the house. The men didn’t move as he passed them, but he felt their eyes on him as he walked up to the front door and rang the bell. The living room window had been replaced, but the brick-coloured putty had yet to be painted.

  Cafferty opened the door.

  ‘I take it you told them I was coming?’ Rebus nodded towards the car. ‘Wise to get a bit of security.’

  ‘Come in.’ Cafferty led the way into the living room. The painting hiding the bullet hole had been removed, the hole filled in. The plaster looked fresh, but would need repainting.

  ‘You sounded a bit frazzled on the phone,’ Rebus said. ‘Has something happened?’

  Cafferty had settled on the edge of an armchair. Rebus sat down opposite him.

  ‘You seen the paper?’ The Scotsman was on the coffee table.

  Cafferty turned it round so it faced Rebus. There was a photo of David Minton, and a headline about the threat on his life.

  ‘I’ve seen it.’

  Cafferty eased something from his trouser pocket and placed it on the coffee table. It was the bullet prised from the wall, half wrapped in a piece of paper.

  ‘What am I supposed to do with that? I’m not a cop, remember.’

  ‘Look at the paper.’

  Rebus narrowed his eyes, then reached forward and unfolded the note.

  ‘Christ,’ he said. ‘Siobhan needs to see this.’

  ‘Is she working the Minton case?’ Cafferty watched as Rebus nodded, his eyes still on the note and its bald threat: I’M GOING TO KILL YOU FOR WHAT YOU DID.

  ‘Where did it come from?’ Rebus asked.

  ‘It was just lying inside the front door one morning.’

  ‘Folded like this?’

  ‘No. It was lying flat, message-side up, like someone had pushed it under the door rather than using the letter box. Meant I’d see it straight off.’

  ‘You don’t have any cameras?’

  ‘CCTV, you mean? Any idea how useless that is?’

  Rebus looked at the note again. ‘How long ago?’

  ‘Five days back.’

  Handwritten capitals in what looked like black biro.

  ‘So who sent it?’

  ‘The same person who took a shot at me.’

  ‘You know that for sure, or are you just guessing?’

  ‘I’m putting two and two together.’

  ‘Guy who killed Lord Minton didn’t use a gun.’

  ‘And yet we both got identical notes. You saying the shooter may not be the same person?’

  ‘I’m not saying anything . . .’ Rebus had been about to call Cafferty by his first name, but stopped himself. Big Ger?

  Morris? Gerald? He was Morris Gerald Cafferty. He was Big Ger. Nothing would have sounded quite right.

  ‘John,’ Cafferty said quietly. ‘What the hell is this about?’

  ‘Someone thinks you and David Minton wronged them in some way, and they’re intent on making you pay.’

  ‘I didn’t know who Minton was until the news told me he was dead.’

  ‘You never faced him across a courtroom? He never locked up any of your men?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘He’s the law, you’re a gangster – already there’s a connection.’ Rebus realised he had taken out his cigarettes, the pack and a lighter clutched in the same hand.

  ‘Go ahead if you really need to,’ Cafferty said.

  ‘I can wait.’ Rebus put them away again. ‘The bullet will go to ballistics. It’s pretty beaten up, but if the gun’s been used before, we might get a match.’

  ‘Okay.’

  ‘And Siobhan’s going to need a proper interview with you – on the record.’

  ‘She has to promise the news won’t leak. Last thing I need is reporters climbing over me.’

  ‘You know what investigations are like.’

  ‘I know they’re about as watertight as a paper boat.’

  ‘Meaning you’ll have to take your chances. Siobhan will do what she can. But if she thinks it’ll help the inquiry to go public . . .’

  ‘Aye, fair enough.’ Cafferty looked suddenly tired and old.

  ‘Those two gorillas out front may not be enough. If I were you, I’d find somewhere with a bit more anonymity.’

  ‘Maybe a guest house, eh? With the Starks along the corridor.’

  ‘You know where they are?’

  ‘I made a few calls – know thy enemy and all that.’

  ‘You think they . . .?’

  ‘How the hell do I know what I think? I think everything.

  Every bastard I ever did wrong to – know how long that list is?’

  ‘A good few of them must be dead – some, only you’ll know where the bodies are.’

  ‘You’re about as funny as a coronary.’

  ‘I’d say you’re well on your way to one of those. But getting riled isn’t going to help. You’ve really no idea why someone would send you that note?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘And when the shot was fired, you didn’t see whoever did it?’

  ‘I saw . . . maybe the vaguest shape. A padded coat with a hood pulled down low over the head.’

  ‘Male?’

  ‘Judging by the build.’

  ‘Age?’

  ‘No idea. Maybe six foot tall. Just a glimpse as the window smashed. But I was ducking, too, and making for the door. I wanted to get out of that bloody room.’

  ‘Twenty years ago, you’d have been out of the house and chasing him down the street.’

  Cafferty managed a smile. ‘With a cleaver in my hand.’

  ‘If we were to get to the bottom of this, I’d want it to go to trial. Wouldn’t look good if the suspect died while on remand.’

  ‘Might be a deal-breaker.’

  Rebus was holding up his phone. ‘Before I call Siobhan, I need you to promise.’

  ‘That I won’t whack whoever tried to whack me? I’ll promise that if you promise the media won’t get wind of that note.’

  ‘Why is it such a problem?’

  ‘Use your loaf, John. With the Starks circling the city? And Darryl Christie – I’m assuming you talked to him?’

  ‘He said the bullet was nothing to do with him. He seemed antsy, though.’

  ‘Because of the Starks?’

  ‘He seems to think they might try muscling in – with your blessing.’

  Cafferty shook his head slowly. ‘Whatever’s going on, I can’t afford to look weak, or like I’m suddenly cosying up to the law and order brigade.’

  ‘You’ve no
t completely left the game, then?’

  ‘Neither of us has – or ever could.’ Cafferty managed another smile.

  ‘You still reckon one or the other might be behind this?’

  ‘Everything is possible.’

  ‘So where does Lord Minton fit in?’

  ‘Maybe he’d taken backhanders somewhere down the line – let off the Starks’ men, or Christie’s. Thinking of making a clean breast of it towards the end of his life . . .’ Cafferty shrugged. ‘I’m not the detective here.’

  ‘Then maybe it’s time I called one,’ Rebus suggested.

  ‘Maybe it is,’ Cafferty conceded, leaning back in his chair.

  *

  Clarke arrived with Christine Esson. This, too, was apparently a deal-breaker, and Esson was sent to wait in the car. Both note and bullet still sat on the coffee table, and Clarke noted them immediately.

  ‘Okay,’ she said, exchanging looks with both men. ‘Which one of you wants to do the talking?’

  ‘He does,’ Rebus said, nodding towards Cafferty. ‘I need to feed the meter and have a smoke.’

  He headed back outdoors, passing the bodyguards’ car. Only one of them was inside. The other had his back to Rebus as he walked sentry-style towards the rear garden. Rebus tapped on the window and the man in the driver’s seat obliged by lowering it an inch.

  ‘Just the two of you?’ Rebus enquired.

  ‘We’re working shifts with another pair. Mr Cafferty tells us you used to be a cop.’ He watched as Rebus got a cigarette going.

  ‘I was army before that – Parachute Regiment.’ Rebus exhaled smoke. ‘How about you?’

  The man gave a slow nod.

  ‘I can usually tell.’

  ‘Same way I can usually spot a cop. Is it serious, what’s happening with Mr Cafferty?’

  ‘Might be.’

  ‘He’s a sitting target as long as he stays here.’

  ‘Just what I’ve been telling him.’ Rebus flicked ash on the driveway. ‘Keep up the good work, eh?’

  As he walked up the road, digging change from his pocket, he saw Christine Esson crouched on the pavement next to Clarke’s Astra. She was patting the wire-haired terrier.

  ‘Looks like you’ve made a friend,’ Rebus commented.