Set in Darkness

  ‘And the painters – Gillies, McTaggart, Maxwell.’ She smiled. ‘Sparks always flew. We were lucky with the Festival, it brought visitors to the galleries. The Edinburgh School, we called ourselves. It was a different country then, you know. Trapped between one world war and the threat of another. Hard to bring up children with the A-bomb hanging over your head. It affected my work, I think.’

  ‘Were your children interested in art?’

  ‘Lorna dabbled, maybe she still does. But not the boys. Cammo always had his cronies around him, almost like a Praetorian Guard. Roddy liked the company of grown-ups, always so deferential and willing to listen.’

  ‘And Alasdair?’

  She angled her head. ‘Alasdair was a painter’s nightmare, an angelic tearaway. I never captured that. You always knew he was up to something, but you didn’t mind because it was Alasdair. Do you see?’

  ‘I think so.’ Rebus knew a few young villains like that: charming and cheeky, but always on the make and take. ‘He keeps in touch, doesn’t he?’

  ‘Oh, yes.’

  ‘Why did he leave home?’

  ‘He wasn’t strictly at home. He had a flat of his own near the foot of the Canongate. When he’d gone, we found out it was a furnished rental, practically none of it was his. He took a suitcase of clothes, some books, and that was it.’

  ‘He didn’t say why he was leaving?’

  ‘No, just phoned out of the blue. Told me he’d be in touch.’

  Rebus heard the front door open and close, the words ‘I’m back’ drifting up the stairs.

  ‘I’d better be going,’ he said.

  Alicia Grieve looked as though she’d already dismissed him. ‘I wish I knew where it was,’ she said to herself, replacing the marmalade jar in its box. ‘Dear me, if only I knew . . .’

  Seona Grieve was halfway up the stairs when he met her.

  ‘Is everything all right?’

  ‘Everything’s fine,’ he assured her. ‘Mrs Grieve’s just lost something, that’s all.’

  Seona stared up towards the landing. ‘Inspector, she’s lost practically everything. It’s just that she doesn’t know it yet . . .’

  15

  It was an office much like any other.

  Grant Hood and Ellen Wylie shared a look. They’d been expecting a builder’s yard – glaur and breeze-blocks, an Alsatian tethered and barking. Wylie even had wellies in the car, just in case. But this was the third floor of a 1960s office block halfway down Leith Walk. Wylie had asked Hood, would it be all right to nip into Valvona and Crolla’s after? He’d told her yes, no problem, but wasn’t it expensive?

  ‘Quality costs.’ That’s what she’d said, like an advertising slogan.

  They were doing the rounds of Edinburgh’s building contractors, starting with the largest and longest established. Phone calls first, and if there was anyone in the firm who could help, then it was time for a visit.

  Wylie: ‘Maybe John’s right when he calls us the Time Team. Never saw myself as an archaeologist.’

  ‘Twenty years, it’s hardly prehistory.’

  Hood had found that their conversation flowed. No awkward pauses or slips of the tongue. They’d had one disagreement, over whether they were on a dead-end case.

  Wylie: ‘We should be working the Grieve inquiry. That’s where all the attention is.’

  Hood: ‘But if we get a result here, it’s something special, isn’t it? And it’s all ours.’

  Wylie: ‘Any leads we get, I’ll bet we end up relegated. We’re DCs, Grant. That’s too low in the league to get any medals that might be going.’

  ‘You like football?’

  ‘I might.’

  ‘Who do you support?’

  ‘You first.’

  Hood: ‘I’ve always been Rangers. You?’

  Grinning: ‘Celtic.’

  Sharing a laugh. Then Wylie again: ‘What is it they say about opposites attracting?’

  A line Grant Hood carried with him as they sat in the waiting room. Opposites attracting.

  Peter Kirkwall of Kirkwall Construction was in his early thirties and wore an immaculate pinstripe suit. It was impossible to picture him with a shovel in one of his smooth hands, yet there he was in a series of framed photographs around the walls of his office.

  ‘The first one’, he said, leading them as if through an exhibition, ‘is me at seven, mixing concrete in Dad’s yard.’ Dad being Jack Kirkwall, who’d founded the company back in the 1950s. He was in some of the photos, too. But the focus was on Peter: Peter bricklaying during a summer break from college; Peter with the plans of one of the city’s office blocks, his first Kirkwall project; Peter meeting dignitaries . . . and behind the wheel of a Mercedes CLK . . . and on the day of Jack Kirkwall’s retirement.

  ‘If you want it first-hand,’ he said, easing into his chair and business both, ‘you need to talk to Dad.’ He paused. ‘Coffee? Tea?’ Seemed pleased when they shook their heads: his was a busy schedule.

  ‘We appreciate you taking the trouble, sir,’ Wylie said, not above a bit of soft-soap. ‘Business good, is it?’

  ‘Phenomenal. What with the Holyrood redevelopment and the Western Approach corridor, Gyle, Wester Hailes, and now the plans for Granton . . .’ He shook his head. ‘We can hardly keep up. Every week we’re making bids on some project or other.’ He waved towards where some plans lay on the room’s conference table. ‘Know how my dad started? He built garages and extensions. Now it looks like we might get a finger in a pie as big as London Docklands.’ He rubbed his hands with what looked to Hood like glee.

  ‘But in the seventies, the firm worked on Queensberry House?’ Wylie was first with the question. It pulled Kirkwall back down to earth.

  ‘Yes, sorry. Once you get me started, I don’t know when to stop.’ He cleared his throat, composed himself. ‘I did look up our records . . .’ Reaching into a drawer, bringing out an old ledger, some notebooks and a card index. ‘Late in ’78, we were one of the firms renovating the hospital. Not me, of course, I was still at school. And now you’ve found a skeleton, eh?’

  Hood handed over photographs of the two fireplaces. ‘The room to the far end of the basement. It was originally the kitchen.’

  ‘And that’s where the body was?’

  ‘We estimate it’s been there twenty years,’ Wylie said, easing into her role: talker to Hood’s silent type. ‘Which would coincide with the building works.’

  ‘Well, I’ve had my secretary dig up what she can.’ He smiled to let them know the pun was deliberate. Kirkwall – striped shirt, oval glasses, groomed black hair – was, Wylie presumed, trying for the sophisticated look. But there was something uncomfortable and ill-defined about him. She’d seen footballers turned TV pundits: they could wear the clothes but failed to carry the style.

  ‘It’s not much, I’m afraid,’ Kirkwall was saying, reaching into a drawer. He unrolled the plan so it faced them, weighting its corners with pieces of polished stone. ‘I collect one from each job I do,’ he explained. ‘Get it cleaned and varnished.’ Then: ‘This is Queensberry House. The blue shaded areas were our project, plus the red lines.’

  ‘It looks like exterior work.’

  ‘It was. Downpipes, cracks in the masonry, and one summer house to be built from scratch. It’s like that sometimes with public works, they like to spread the contract around.’

  ‘You obviously weren’t greasing enough palms at the council,’ Hood muttered.

  Kirkwall glared at him.

  ‘So another firm was doing the internal work?’ Wylie was studying the plan.

  ‘Firm or firms. I’ve no record. Like I say, you’d have to ask Dad.’

  ‘Then that’s what we’ll do, Mr Kirkwall,’ Ellen Wylie said.

  But first they hit Valvona’s, where Wylie did her shopping before asking if Hood fancied a bite to eat. He made show of checking his watch.

  ‘Come on,’ she said. ‘There’s an empty table, and I’ve been here often enough to know tha
t must be a sign.’

  So they ate salad and pizza and shared a bottle of mineral water. Around them, couples were doing the same thing. Hood smiled.

  ‘We don’t stick out,’ he commented.

  She looked at his stomach. ‘Well, I don’t.’

  He sucked in some gut and decided to leave the last slice of pizza. ‘You know what I mean,’ he said.

  Yes, she knew. Being a cop, being around people who knew cops, you always felt they could spot you, and you came to think everyone had the knack.

  ‘Bit of a shock to find you’re not a social leper?’

  Hood looked at his plate. ‘More of a shock to find I can actually leave food.’

  Afterwards, they headed out to the house Jack Kirkwall had built for his retirement. It sat in countryside on the edge of South Queensferry, with both bridges visible in the distance. The house was angular with tall windows. When Wylie stated that it was like a scaled-down cathedral, Hood knew what she meant.

  Jack Kirkwall welcomed them by insisting that he be remembered to John Rebus.

  ‘You know Inspector Rebus?’ Wylie asked.

  ‘He did me a good turn once.’ Kirkwall chuckled.

  ‘You might be able to return the favour, sir,’ Hood said. ‘Depending on how good your memory is.’

  ‘Nothing wrong with the napper,’ Kirkwall grumbled.

  Wylie shot her partner a warning look. ‘What DC Hood meant, Mr Kirkwall, is that we’re in the dark and you’re our one ray of light.’

  Kirkwall perked up, settled into an easy chair and motioned for them to be seated.

  The sofa was cream leather and smelt brand new. The lounge was large and bright with inch-thick white shag pile and a whole wall of French windows. To Wylie’s eye, there seemed very little of Kirkwall’s past on display: no photos or old-looking ornaments or furniture. It was as though, in later life, he had decided to reinvent himself. There was something anonymous about it all. Then Wylie realised: it was a show house. Prospective clients could be shown around, Kirkwall Construction workmanship evident everywhere.

  And no place for individual personality.

  She wondered if that explained the sad depths to Jack Kirkwall’s face. No way was this his idea of retirement: in the choice of fabrics and furnishings she saw the son, Peter.

  ‘Your firm’, she said, ‘did some work at Queensberry House in 1979.’

  ‘The hospital?’ She nodded. ‘Started work in ’78, finished it in ’79. What a hellish time that was.’ He peered at them. ‘Likely you’re too young to remember. That winter there was a rubbish strike, teachers’ strike, even the mortuary was on strike.’ He snorted at the memory, looked to Hood. Tapping his head, he said: ‘See, son? Nothing wrong with the napper. Remember it like it was yesterday. We started in December, finished in March. The eighth, to be precise.’

  Wylie smiled. ‘That’s incredible.’

  Kirkwall accepted her praise. He was a big man, broad-shouldered, chisel-jawed. He’d probably never been handsome, but she could imagine him having power and presence.

  ‘Know why I remember?’ He shook his head. ‘You’ll be too young.’

  ‘The referendum?’ Hood guessed.

  Kirkwall looked deflated. Wylie gave another warning look: they needed him on their side.

  ‘It was March first, wasn’t it?’ Hood continued.

  ‘Aye, it was. And we won the vote but lost the war.’

  ‘A temporary setback,’ Wylie felt bound to add.

  He glared at her. ‘If you can call twenty years temporary. We had dreams . . .’ Wylie thought he was turning wistful, but he surprised her. ‘Just think what it would have meant: inward investment, new homes and businesses.’

  ‘A building boom?’

  Kirkwall was shaking his head at the thought of so much opportunity wasted.

  ‘The boom’s happening now, according to your son,’ Wylie said.

  ‘Aye.’

  She doubted she’d ever heard so much bitterness in a single syllable. Had Jack Kirkwall gone willingly, or had he been pushed?

  ‘We’re interested in the hospital’s interior,’ Hood said. ‘Which firms had the contracts?’

  ‘Roofing was Caspian,’ Kirkwall said tonelessly, still lost in thought. ‘Scaffolding was Macgregor. Coghill’s did a lot of the inside work: replastering, a few new partition walls.’

  ‘Was this in the basement?’

  Kirkwall nodded. ‘A new laundry room and a boiler.’

  ‘Do you remember any of the original walls being exposed?’ Wylie handed over the photo of the fireplaces. ‘Like this?’ Kirkwall looked, shook his head. ‘But the work in the basement was done by a firm called Coghill’s?’

  Kirkwall nodded again. ‘Gone now. Firm went bust.’

  ‘Is Mr Coghill still around?’

  Kirkwall shrugged. ‘Shouldn’t have gone bust really. Good firm. Dean knew his stuff.’

  ‘The building trade’s a tough game,’ Wylie agreed.

  ‘It’s not that.’ He looked at her.

  ‘What then?’

  ‘I might be speaking out of turn.’ He considered this. ‘But at my age, who cares?’ Took a deep, noisy breath. ‘It’s just that, way I heard it, Dean fell foul of Mr Big.’

  Wylie and Hood responded as one voice. ‘Mr Big?’

  The Oxford Bar was busy when Rebus arrived. He’d already had one drink at The Maltings, leaving before the evening influx of students, and two drinks at Swany’s on Causewayside. In Swany’s he’d bumped into an old colleague, recently retired.

  ‘You look too young,’ Rebus had chided him.

  ‘Same age as you, John,’ had been the reply.

  But Rebus didn’t have thirty years in; had joined the force in his mid-twenties. Two or three more years, he could be a gentleman of leisure. Rebus got a round in, then sneaked out into the cold blast of winter. Headlamps piercing the darkness; recent rainfall threatening ice. A fifteen-minute walk home. Across the street, a taxi filling up at the petrol station.

  Retirement. The word bouncing around in his skull. Jesus, but what would he do with himself? One man’s retirement was another’s redundancy. He thought of the Farmer, then waved down the taxi, asked to be taken to the Oxford Bar.

  No sign of Doc and Salty, Rebus’s usual drinking partners, but plenty of faces he knew. The place was buzzing, bodies crammed in the front room. Football on the TV: a game from down south. A regular called Muir was standing close by the door. He nodded a greeting.

  ‘Your wife has a gallery, doesn’t she?’ Rebus asked. Muir nodded again. ‘Ever sell any stuff by Alicia Rankeillor?’

  Muir snorted. ‘If only. Rankeillor’s stuff, as you call it, fetches tens of thousands. Every city in the western world wants something of hers in its collection – preferably something from the forties or fifties. Even her limited prints fetch a grand or two apiece.’ Muir looked up. ‘Don’t know anyone who wants to sell, do you?’

  ‘I’ll let you know.’

  The Two Margarets were behind the bar, busy in their confinement. Rebus’s IPA arrived, and he ordered a whisky to go with it. Music from the back room. He could just make it out: acoustic guitar, young woman on vocals. But here was his favourite duet: a pint and a dram. He added water to the whisky, removing the edge. A deep swallow, coating his throat. One of the Margarets was back with his change.

  ‘Friend of yours through the back.’

  Rebus frowned. ‘Singing?’

  She smiled, shook her head. ‘Up by the cigarette machine.’

  He looked. Saw a wall of bodies. The ciggie machine was in an alcove, up three steps and next to the toilets. Fruit machine there, too. But all he could see were men’s backs, meaning someone had an audience.

  ‘Who is it?’

  Margaret shrugged. ‘Said she knew you.’

  ‘Siobhan?’

  Another shrug. He craned his neck. A new round was being got in. The backs half-turned. Rebus saw faces he knew: regulars. Glazed smiles and cigar
ette smoke. And behind them, relaxed, leaning against the fruit machine, Lorna Grieve. A tall drink was raised to her lips. It looked like neat whisky or brandy, three measures at least. She smacked her lips; her eyes met his and she smiled, raising her glass. He smiled back, raised his own glass to her. A sudden flash of memory: as a kid, he’d been coming home from school. Passing a street corner by the sweet shop, a crowd of older boys hemming in a girl from his class. He couldn’t see what was going on. Her eyes, suddenly catching his between the heads of two of the boys. Not panicked, but not enjoying herself either . . .

  Lorna Grieve touched one of her suitors on the arm, said something to him. His name was Gordon, a Fifer like Rebus. Probably young enough to be her son.

  Now she was walking forwards, negotiating the steps. Squeezing through the crowd, touching arms and shoulders and backs; each touch enough to aid her progress.

  ‘Well, well,’ she said, ‘fancy seeing you here.’

  ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘just fancy.’ He’d finished the whisky. She asked if he wanted another. He shook his head, lifted the pint.

  ‘I don’t think I’ve ever been here,’ she said, leaning into the bar. ‘I’ve just been hearing about the old owner, how he wouldn’t serve women or people with English accents. I think I might have liked him.’

  ‘He was an acquired taste.’

  ‘The best kind, don’t you think?’ Her eyes were on him. ‘I’ve been hearing about you, too. I may have to stop calling you Monkey Man.’

  ‘Why’s that?’

  ‘Because from what I’ve been told, not many people make a monkey out of you.’

  He smiled. ‘Bars are great places for tall stories.’

  ‘There you go, Lorna.’ It was Gordon, presenting her with another drink. Armagnac: Rebus had watched Margaret pouring. ‘All right, John? You never told us you knew famous people.’