Set in Darkness

  Hood sprang to his feet. ‘I can get you . . .’

  Rebus shook his head. Still, it was good to see Hood so keen. Two empty polystyrene beakers on the table: he wondered who’d fetched them. Even money on Hood; Wylie at three to one.

  ‘Latest news?’ he asked.

  ‘Very little blood in the fireplace,’ Wylie said. ‘Chances are, Skelly was killed elsewhere.’

  ‘Which means less chance of the SOCOs coming up with anything useful.’ Rebus was thoughtful for a moment. ‘So why the secrecy?’ he asked.

  ‘No secrecy, sir. It’s just that when we found out Professor Sendak was going to be here this afternoon for a meeting . . .’

  ‘Seemed too good to miss, sir,’ Hood concluded.

  ‘And who’s Professor Sendak when he’s at home?’

  ‘Glasgow University, sir. Head of Forensic Pathology.’

  Rebus raised an eyebrow. ‘Glasgow? Listen, if Gates and Curt find out, it’s your heads, not mine, okay?’

  ‘We cleared it with the Procurator Fiscal’s office.’

  ‘So what can this Sendak do that our own boffins can’t?’

  There was a knock at the door.

  ‘Maybe we’ll let the professor explain,’ Hood said, not quite disguising the relief in his voice.

  Professor Ross Sendak was approaching sixty, but still boasted a head of thick black hair. The shortest person in the room, he carried himself with weight and confidence, demanding respect. Introductions complete, he settled himself on a chair and spread his hands out on the table.

  ‘You think I can help you,’ he stated, ‘and perhaps you’re right. I’ll need the skull brought to Glasgow. Can that be arranged?’

  Wylie and Hood shared a look. Rebus cleared his throat.

  ‘I’m afraid the Time Team here haven’t had time to brief me, Professor.’

  Sendak nodded, took a deep breath. ‘Laser technology, Inspector.’ He reached into his briefcase, slid out a laptop computer and switched it on. ‘Forensic facial reconstruction. Your forensic colleagues here have already ascertained that the decedent’s hair was brown. That’s a start. What we would do in Glasgow is place the skull on a revolving plinth. We then aim a laser at the skull, feeding the information into a computer, building up details. From these, the facial contours are formed. Other information – the decedent’s general physique; his age at date of death – help with the final image.’ He turned the computer around so it was facing Rebus. ‘And what you get is something like this.’

  Rebus had to get up. From where he was sitting, the screen seemed blank. Hood and Wylie did likewise, until all three of them were jockeying for position, the better to make out the face which flickered at them. By moving a few inches to right or left, the image faded, disappeared, but when in focus it was clearly the face of a young man. There was something of the mannequin about it, a deadness to the eyes, the one visible ear not quite right and the hair clearly an afterthought.

  ‘This poor devil rotted on a hillside in the Highlands. He was past normal means of ID by the time he was found. Animals and the elements had taken their toll.’

  ‘But you think this is what he looked like in life?’

  ‘I’d say it’s close. Eyes and hairstyle are speculative, but the overall structure of the face is true.’

  ‘Amazing,’ Hood said.

  ‘Using the inset screen,’ Sendak went on, ‘we can reconfigure the face – change hairstyle, add a moustache or beard, even change eye colour. The variations can be printed out and used for a public appeal.’ Sendak pointed to the small grey square in the top right corner of the screen. It contained what looked like a children’s version of an identikit: the rough outline of a head, plus hats, facial hairstyles, glasses.

  Rebus looked to Hood and Wylie. They were looking at him now, seeking his okay.

  ‘So how much is this going to cost?’ he asked, turning back to the screen.

  ‘It’s not an expensive process,’ Sendak said. ‘I appreciate that funds are being soaked up by the Grieve case.’

  Rebus glanced towards Wylie. ‘Someone’s been whispering.’

  ‘It’s not like we’re spending money on anything else,’ Wylie argued. Rebus saw anger in her eyes. She was beginning to feel sidelined. Any other time of year, Skelly would have been big news, but not with Roddy Grieve as competition.

  In the end, Rebus gave the nod.

  Afterwards, there was just time for a coffee. Sendak explained that his Human Identification Centre had helped with war crimes cases in Rwanda and the former Yugoslavia. In fact, he was flying out to The Hague at the end of the week to testify in a war crimes trial.

  ‘Thirty Serb victims buried in a mass grave. We helped identify the victims and prove they were shot at close range.’

  ‘Sort of puts things into perspective, doesn’t it?’ Rebus said afterwards, eyes on Wylie. Hood was off finding a phone. He needed to talk to the Procurator Fiscal’s office again, tell them what was happening.

  ‘You’ll have to tell Prof. Gates what’s happening,’ Rebus went on.

  ‘Yes, sir. Will that be a problem?’

  Rebus shook his head. ‘I’ll have a word. He won’t like the fact that Glasgow have got something he hasn’t . . . but he’ll live with it.’ He winked at her. ‘After all, we’ve got everything else.’

  13

  The Murder Room at St Leonard’s was fully operational – computers, civilian support, extra phone lines – with an additional Portakabin parked on the pavement outside Queensberry House. Chief Superintendent Watson was kept busy in a series of meetings with Fettes brass and politicians. He’d lost the head at one of the junior officers, shouting the odds before marching off to his office and slamming the door. Nobody’d seen him like that before. DS Frazer’s comment: ‘Get Rebus back here, we need to offer a sacrifice.’ Joe Dickie had nudged him: ‘Any news on overtime?’ He had a blank expenses form ready on his desk.

  Gill Templer had been put in charge of press briefings. Her background was in liaison work. So far she’d managed to tamp down a couple of the wilder conspiracy theories. ACC Carswell had come to inspect the troops, given the tour by Derek Linford. Space at the station was cramped, and Linford didn’t even have his own office. Twelve CID officers were attached to the case, along with a further dozen uniforms. The uniforms were there to search the area around the locus and help with door-to-door. Secretarial support came extra, and Linford was still waiting to hear what budget the case would merit. He wasn’t stinting, not yet: he reckoned this was a flier, meaning it would justify any amount of staffing and overtime.

  All the same, he liked to keep an eye on the money side. It didn’t help that he was playing away from home. He ignored the looks and comments, but they got to him all the same. Fettes bastard . . . thinks he can tell us how to run our station. It was all about territory. Not that Rebus seemed to mind. Rebus had given him the run of the place, had admitted that Linford was the better administrator. His exact words: ‘Derek, to be honest, no one’s ever accused me of being able to mind the store.’

  Linford made a circuit of the room now: wall charts; staff rotas; crime scene photographs; telephone numbers. Three officers sat silently at their computers, tapping the latest gen into the database. An investigation like this was all about information, its gathering and cross-referencing. Detection lay in making connections, and it could be a painstaking business. He wondered if anyone else in the room felt the same electricity he did. Back to the rota: DS Roy Frazer was in charge of the Holyrood operation, managing the house-to-house inquiries, interviewing the demolition teams and builders. Another DS, George Silvers, was plotting the deceased’s final movements. Roddy Grieve had lived in Cramond, had told his wife he was going out for a drink. Nothing unusual in that, and he’d acted naturally. Had taken his mobile with him. Not that there’d been any reason to check up on him. At midnight she’d turned in for the night. Next morning when he wasn’t there, she’d begun to worry, but had decided to leave
it an hour or two; might be some rational explanation . . . Sleeping it off somewhere.

  ‘Did that often happen?’ Silvers had asked.

  ‘Once or twice.’

  ‘And where did he end up sleeping?’

  Answer: at his mother’s; or on a friend’s sofa.

  Silvers didn’t look like he put much effort into anything. You couldn’t imagine him in a hurry. But he gave himself time to form questions and strategies.

  Time, too, for the interviewee to start twitching.

  Grieve’s press officer was a young man called Hamish Hall, and Linford had interviewed him. Playing it back in his head afterwards, Linford reckoned he’d come off second best in the encounter. Hall, in his sharp suit and with a sharp, bright face, had snapped out his answers, as if dismissing the questions. Linford had snapped another question back at him, taking him on rather than playing to his own strengths.

  ‘How did you get on with Mr Grieve?’

  ‘Fine.’

  ‘Never any problems?’

  ‘Never.’

  ‘And Ms Banks?’

  ‘Do you mean how did I get along with her, or how did she get along with Roddy?’ Light glinting from the circular chrome frames of his spectacles.

  ‘Both, I suppose.’

  ‘Fine.’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘That’s my answer to both questions: we got along fine.’

  ‘Right.’

  And on it went, like machine-gun fire. Hall’s background: party man, single-minded, economics degree. Economy his strong point when speaking, too.

  ‘Press agent . . . Is that like a spin doctor?’

  A bending of the mouth. ‘That’s a cheap shot, Inspector Linford.’

  ‘Who else was in Mr Grieve’s retinue? I’m assuming there’d be local volunteers . . . ?’

  ‘Not yet. Electioneering proper doesn’t start until April. That’s when we’d have needed canvassers.’

  ‘You had people in mind?’

  ‘Not my bailiwick. Ask Jo.’

  ‘Jo?’

  ‘Josephine Banks, his election agent. That’s what we called her: Jo.’ A glance at his watch, loud exhalation.

  ‘So what will you do now, Mr Hall?’

  ‘You mean when I leave here?’

  ‘I mean now your employer’s dead.’

  ‘Find another one.’ A genuine smile this time. ‘There’ll be no shortage of takers.’

  Linford could see Hall five or ten years down the line, standing just behind some dignitary, maybe even the Prime Minister, murmuring something which the PM would utter aloud mere seconds later. Always in shot; always close to the power.

  When the two men stood up, Linford shook Hall’s hand warmly, offered him a grin and a cup of tea or coffee.

  ‘Really appreciate . . . sorry to have . . . wish you all the best . . .’

  Because you never knew. Five, ten years on, you just never could tell . . .

  ‘Tell me this is a joke.’

  Ellen Wylie was examining the dimly lit interior of one of the downstairs interview rooms. It was half-filled with broken equipment: chairs with missing castors; golf-ball typewriters.

  ‘It’s been used for storage, as you can see.’

  She turned to the desk sergeant, who’d unlocked the door for her and turned on the light. ‘I’d never have guessed.’

  ‘So where do we put all this stuff?’ Grant Hood asked.

  ‘Maybe you can work around it?’ the desk sergeant offered.

  ‘We’re working a murder inquiry,’ Wylie hissed at him. Then she looked around the room again, before turning to her partner. ‘And this is how they treat us, Grant.’

  ‘Well, it’s all yours,’ the desk sergeant said, removing the key from the lock and handing it to Hood. ‘Have fun.’

  Hood watched him retreat, then held the key up in front of Wylie. ‘It’s all ours, he says.’

  ‘Can we complain to the management?’ Wylie kicked at one of the chairs, whose arm promptly fell off.

  ‘I know the brochure said sea view,’ her partner said, ‘but with any luck, we won’t be spending much time here.’

  ‘Those bastards upstairs have got a coffee-maker,’ Wylie said. Then she burst out laughing. ‘What am I saying? We haven’t even got any phones!’

  ‘Maybe so,’ Hood informed her, ‘but if I’m not mistaken, we’ve just cornered the global market in electric typewriters.’

  Siobhan Clarke had insisted on somewhere ‘a bit fancy’ for their drink, and when she told him about her day, Derek Linford thought he understood. Her last couple of working hours had been spent questioning dossers.

  ‘Not easy,’ he said. ‘You were all right, though?’ She looked at him. ‘I mean, they didn’t bite?’

  ‘No, they were just . . .’ She tipped her neck back, inspecting the spectacular ceiling of The Dome Bar and Grill as if expecting the rest of the sentence to be painted there. ‘I mean, they weren’t even smelly for the most part. But it was the past.’ Now she nodded to herself.

  ‘How do you mean?’ He was using his swizzle-stick to chase a sliver of lime around his glass.

  ‘I mean the stories, all the tragedies and tiny mishaps and wrong turns that had brought them there. Nobody’s born homeless, not that I know of.’

  ‘I know what you mean. They needn’t be homeless, the majority of them. The support system’s out there.’ She was looking at him, but he didn’t notice. ‘I never give them money, it’s a sort of principle with me. Some of them probably make more a week than we do. You can make two hundred a day, just begging on Princes Street.’ He shook his head slowly, saw the look on her face. ‘What?’

  She studied her own drink, a large gin and tonic to his lime juice and soda. ‘Nothing.’

  ‘What did I say?’

  ‘Maybe it’s just . . .’

  ‘Been a rough day?’

  She glowered. ‘I was going to say, maybe it’s just your attitude.’

  They sat in silence for a while after that. Not that anyone in The Dome minded. It was the cocktail hour: George Street suits; black two-pieces with matching tights. Everyone focused on their own little group: office blather. Clarke took a long swallow. There was never enough gin; you could order a double and still not feel the kick. At home, she poured half and half, gin to tonic. Lots of ice, and a wedge of lemon rather than something that looked like it had been pared with a razor blade.

  ‘Your accent changes,’ Linford said at last. ‘Modulates to suit the occasion. It’s a clever trick.’

  ‘How do you mean?’

  ‘Well, you’ve got an English accent, right? But in some company, at the station for example, you manage to bring in some Scots.’

  It was true: she knew she did it. She’d been a bit of a mimic even at school and college, knowing she did it so she’d fit in with whoever she was talking to, whichever peer group. Used to be, she could hear herself switching, but not now. The question she’d asked herself was: why the need to change, just to fit in? Was she that desperate, that lonely as a girl?

  Was she?

  ‘Where were you born?’

  ‘Liverpool,’ she said. ‘My parents were lecturers. The week after I was born, they moved to Edinburgh.’

  ‘Mid-seventies?’

  ‘Late sixties, and flattery will get you nowhere.’ But she managed a smile. ‘We only stayed a couple of years, then it was Nottingham. I got most of my schooling there, finished off in London.’

  ‘Is that where your parents live now?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Lecturers, eh? What do they make of you?’

  It was a perceptive question, but she didn’t know him well enough to answer it. Just as she’d always let people assume that her New Town flat was a rental. When she’d eventually sold it and got her own mortgage on a place half the size, she’d put the money back into her parents’ bank account. She’d never explained to them why she’d done it. They’d only asked the once.

  ‘I came back h
ere to go to college,’ she told Linford. ‘Fell in love with the city.’

  ‘And chose a career where you’d always see its mucky underwear?’

  She chose to ignore this question, too.

  ‘So that makes you a settler . . . one of the New Scots. I think that’s what the Nationalists call them. You will be voting Scot Nat, I trust?’

  ‘Oh, are you SNP?’

  ‘No.’ He laughed. ‘I just wondered if you were.’

  ‘It’s a pretty underhand way of finding out.’

  He shrugged, finished his drink. ‘Another?’

  She was still studying him, feeling suddenly enervated. All the other drinkers, the nine-to-fives, were winding down, a few drinks before home. Why did people do that? They could get a drink at home, couldn’t they? Feet up in front of the telly. Instead of which, they stuck close to their office building and had a drink with their work-mates. Was it so hard to let go? Or was home something less than a refuge? You needed a drink before facing it, courage to confront the evening’s redundancy? Was that what she was doing here?

  ‘I think I’ll head off,’ she said suddenly. Her jacket was on the back of her chair. A while back, someone had been stabbed outside this place. She’d worked the case. Just another act of violence, another life wasted.

  ‘Got plans?’ He looked expectant, nervous, childlike in his ignorance and egotism. What could she tell him? Belle and Sebastian on the hi-fi; another gin and tonic; the last third of an Isla Dewar novel. Tough competition for any man.

  ‘What are you smiling at?’

  ‘Nothing,’ she said.

  ‘Must be something.’

  ‘Women have to have some secrets, Derek.’ She had her jacket on now, was wrapping her scarf around her neck.

  ‘I thought a bite to eat,’ he blurted out. ‘You know, make an evening of it.’

  She looked at him. ‘I don’t think so.’ Hoping her tone would alert him to the missing final word: ever .

  And she walked.

  He’d offered to see her home, but she’d declined. Offered to call her a cab, but she lived a stone’s throw away. It wasn’t even seven thirty, and he was all at once alone. The noise around him was suddenly deafening, skull-crushing. Voices, laughter, chiming glasses. She hadn’t asked about his day. Hadn’t said much at all, really, except when prompted. His drink looked fake yellow, the colour of children’s sweets. Sticky-tasting and souring his stomach, corroding his teeth. He walked to the bar, ordered a whisky. Didn’t put any water in it. Looking around, he saw that another couple had already taken his table. Well, that was fine. He didn’t stand out so much here at the bar. Could belong to one of the office parties either side of him. But he didn’t, and he knew he didn’t. He was an outsider in this place, same as in St Leonard’s. When you worked as hard as he did, that was what happened: you got the promotions, but lost the intimacy. People steered a course past you, either out of fear or jealousy. The ACC had pulled him aside at the end of the St Leonard’s tour.