Set in Darkness

‘In point of fact, it’s the widow we’d talk to first.’

  ‘Seona? You’ll have to get in the queue. She’s a media darling now, you know. Papers, TV . . . falling over themselves for a photo of the “brave widow”, carrying on where her husband left off.’ She modulated her voice, imitating Seona Grieve: ‘“It’s what Roddy would have wanted.” Like hell it is.’

  ‘How do you mean?’

  ‘Roddy may have seemed the quiet type, but there was steel in him, too. His wife running for MSP? He wouldn’t have wanted that. It turns her into the martyr rather than him. He’s already being forgotten about, except when she dusts off the corpse in the great cause of publicity!’

  There were only the two of them in the bar; all the same, the barmaid gave a warning look.

  ‘Easy,’ Rebus said.

  Her eyes were liquid with tears. Rebus got the feeling they weren’t for anyone but Lorna herself: the lost one, the forgotten one. ‘I’ve got the right to know what’s going on.’ Her eyes were clearing as she looked at him. ‘Special rights,’ she said in a low voice.

  ‘Look,’ he said, ‘what happened that night—’

  ‘I don’t want to hear it.’ She shook her head, steadied herself with another gulp of Bloody Mary, reducing it to ice.

  ‘Whatever you’re going through, if I can help I will, but don’t resort to blackm—’

  She was on her feet. ‘I don’t know why I came.’

  He stood up, grabbed her hands. ‘What have you taken, Lorna?’

  ‘Just some . . . My doctor prescribed them. Not supposed to mix with alcohol.’ Her eyes were everywhere but on him. ‘That’s all it is.’

  ‘I’ll get a patrol car to run you—’

  ‘No, no, I’ll find a cab. Don’t worry.’ She modelled a smile for him. ‘Don’t worry,’ she repeated.

  He picked her bags up for her; she seemed to have forgotten they were there. ‘Lorna,’ he said, ‘have you ever met a man called Gerald Sithing?’

  ‘I don’t know. Who is he?’

  ‘I think Hugh knows him. He runs a group called the Knights of Rosslyn.’

  ‘Hugh keeps that side of his life separate. He knows I’d laugh at him.’ She was on the verge of laughing now; she was on the verge of more than laughter. Rebus led her from the bar.

  ‘Why do you ask?’ she said.

  ‘Doesn’t matter.’ He saw Grant Hood waving from across the road. In the distance, Siobhan Clarke and Ellen Wylie were unloading their cars. Hood dodged the traffic.

  ‘What’s up?’ Rebus asked.

  ‘The reconstruction,’ Hood told him breathlessly. ‘We’ve got a printout.’

  Rebus nodded thoughtfully, then looked towards Lorna Grieve. ‘Maybe you should see this,’ he said.

  So they went into St Leonard’s and took her to an empty office. Hood fetched the computer graphic while Rebus provided tea. She wanted two sugars; he added a third, watched her drink.

  ‘What’s the mystery?’ she asked.

  ‘It’s a face,’ he explained slowly, studying her. ‘The university in Glasgow put it together for us from a skull.’

  ‘Queensberry House?’ she guessed, amused by his look of surprise. ‘Not all the brain cells have emigrated to a better place. Why do you want me to see it?’ Then that, too, came to her. ‘You think it might be Alasdair?’ She started shaking; Rebus realised his mistake.

  ‘Maybe it’d be better if—’

  Rising to her feet, she knocked the tea on to the floor, but seemed not to notice. ‘Why? What would Alasdair be doing . . . ? He sends postcards.’

  Rebus was cursing himself for being an insensitive bastard, short-sighted, unsubtle, twisted.

  And then Grant Hood was in the doorway, brandishing the picture. She snatched it from him, stared at it intently, then burst out laughing.

  ‘It’s nothing like him,’ she said. ‘You bloody imbecile.’

  Imbecile: he hadn’t got to that one yet. He took the sheet from her. It was a good likeness of someone, but he had to agree: judging by the paintings in Alicia Grieve’s studio, this was not her son. The face was a completely different shape, hair a different colour . . . cheekbones, chin, forehead . . . No, whoever it was in the fireplace, it wasn’t Alasdair Grieve.

  That would have been too simple. Rebus’s life had never been simple; no reason to suppose it would start now.

  Wylie was in the doorway, too, alerted by the laughter: not a regular sound in a police station.

  ‘He thought it was Alasdair,’ Lorna Grieve was saying, pointing at Rebus. ‘He told me my brother was dead! As if one wasn’t enough.’ There was poison in her eyes. ‘Well, you’ve had your little laugh, and I hope you’re happy.’ She stormed out of the office and down the corridor.

  ‘Go after her,’ Rebus told Wylie. ‘Make sure she finds the way out. And here . . .’ He stooped down, retrieved the shopping bags. ‘Give her these.’

  She stared at him for a moment.

  ‘Go!’ he yelled.

  ‘I hear and obey,’ Ellen Wylie muttered. After she’d gone, Rebus slumped back down on his chair, rubbed both hands through his hair. Grant Hood was watching him.

  ‘Not looking for tips, I hope,’ Rebus told him.

  ‘No, sir.’

  ‘Because if you are, here’s the best I can offer: study what I do, and then strive to do the exact fucking opposite. That way, you might make something of yourself.’ He dragged his hands down his face, stared at the picture.

  ‘Who the hell are you?’ he asked. For some reason, he knew Skelly was the key, not just to Hastings’ suicide and the four hundred grand, but to Roddy Grieve’s murder, too . . . and maybe a lot more besides.

  They sat in the cramped interview room, door closed to passers-by. People in the station were beginning to talk about them, calling them ‘the Manson family’, ‘the Lodge’, ‘the swingers’ club’. Hood was seated in the corner. He had the computer set up. Its screen was weird: black background, orange writing. He’d warned that the disks might be corrupted. Rebus, Wylie and Clarke sat round the centre table, box-files at their feet, the computer-generated image of the Queensberry House victim in front of them.

  ‘You know what we have to do?’ Rebus told them. Wylie and Clarke shared a look, sceptical of that ‘we’.

  ‘MisPers,’ Wylie guessed. ‘Back into the files and try to match this with one of the photos.’

  Rebus nodded; Wylie shook her head. He turned to Hood: ‘Any problems?’

  ‘Seems to be running fine,’ Hood said, hammering keys two-fingered. ‘Printer connection’s a problem. None of the ones we’ve got will fit. Might have to scour the second-hand shops.’

  ‘So what’s on the disks?’ Siobhan Clarke asked.

  He looked at her. ‘Give me a chance.’ And got back to work. Ellen Wylie lifted the first box-file on to the table and opened it. Rebus hoisted up three more, patted them.

  ‘I’ve already done these,’ he said. The others looked at him. ‘Late night,’ he said, winking.

  Just so they knew he wasn’t slacking.

  Lunch consisted of sandwiches. By the time they broke at three for coffee, Hood was beginning to get somewhere with the disks.

  ‘The good news’, he said, unwrapping a chocolate bar, ‘is that the computer was a late addition to Hastings’ office.’

  ‘How do you work that out?’

  ‘The stuff on the disks, it’s all dated ’78, early ’79.’

  ‘My box-file goes back to ’75,’ Siobhan Clarke complained.

  ‘Wish You Were Here,’ Rebus said. ‘Pink Floyd. September, I think it was. Much underrated.’

  ‘Thank you, Professor,’ Wylie said.

  ‘You lot were still at nursery, I presume?’

  ‘I’d really like to print this stuff out,’ Grant Hood mused. ‘Maybe if I phoned around the computer shops . . .’

  ‘What sort of stuff are we talking about?’ Rebus asked.

  ‘Bids on land. You know, gap sites, all that.’


  ‘Where?’

  ‘Calton Road, Abbey Mount, Hillside . . .’

  ‘What was he planning to do with them?’

  ‘Doesn’t say.’

  ‘He wanted all of them?’

  ‘Looks that way.’

  ‘That’s a lot of property,’ Wylie commented.

  ‘Well, a lot of building sites anyway.’

  Rebus left the room, came back with an A–Z. He circled Calton Road, Abbey Mount and Hillside Crescent. ‘Tell me he had plans for Greenside,’ he said. Hood sat back down at the computer. They waited.

  ‘Yep,’ he said. ‘How did you know?’

  ‘Take a look. He was drawing a circle around Calton Hill.’

  ‘Why would he do that?’ Wylie asked.

  ‘1979,’ Rebus stated. ‘The devolution referendum.’

  ‘With the parliament sited there?’ Siobhan guessed.

  Rebus nodded. ‘The old Royal High School.’

  Wylie was seeing it now. ‘With the parliament there, all that land would have been worth a fortune.’

  ‘He took a gamble on Scotland voting Yes,’ Siobhan said. ‘And he lost.’

  ‘I wonder,’ Rebus said. ‘Did he have the money in the first place? Even back in the seventies – which is prehistory for you lot – those areas weren’t exactly cheap.’

  ‘What if he didn’t have the money?’ Hood asked.

  It was Ellen Wylie who answered: ‘Then someone else did.’

  They knew what they were after now: financial records; clues that someone other than Hastings and Alasdair Grieve had been a partner in the business. They stayed late, Rebus reminding them that they could head home if they liked. But they were working as a team – uncomplaining, focused – and no one was about to break the spell. He got the feeling it had nothing to do with overtime. Out in the corridor, taking a breather, he found himself alone with Ellen Wylie.

  ‘Still feel hard-done-by?’ he asked.

  She stopped, looked at him. ‘How do you mean?’

  ‘You thought I was using the pair of you; just wondering if that’s still how you feel.’

  ‘Keep wondering,’ she said, moving off.

  At seven o’clock, he treated them to dinner at Howie’s Restaurant. They discussed the case, progress and theories. Siobhan asked when the devolution vote had taken place.

  ‘March first,’ Rebus told her.

  ‘And Skelly was killed early in ’79. Could it have happened straight after the election?’

  Rebus shrugged.

  ‘They finished in the basement at Queensberry House on March eighth,’ Wylie said. ‘A week or so later, Freddy Hastings and Alasdair Grieve do a runner.’

  ‘As far as we know,’ Rebus added.

  Hood, cutting into his gammon, just nodded. Rebus, big spender, had splashed out on a bottle of the house white, but they weren’t making inroads. Siobhan was sticking to water; Wylie had taken a glass of wine but had yet to touch it. Hood had finished his glass but refused a refill.

  ‘Why is it I’m seeing Bryce Callan?’ Rebus said.

  There was silence around the table for a moment, then Siobhan: ‘Because you want to?’

  ‘What would have happened to the land?’ Rebus asked.

  Hood: ‘It would have been developed.’

  ‘And what does Callan’s nephew do?’

  Clarke: ‘He’s a developer. But back then he was a labourer.’

  ‘Learning the ropes.’ Rebus swallowed some wine. ‘Land around Holyrood, any idea what it’s worth now they’re building the parliament there rather than Calton Hill or Leith?’

  ‘More than it was,’ Wylie guessed.

  Rebus was nodding. ‘And now Barry Hutton’s eyeing up Granton, the Gyle, God knows where else.’

  ‘Because that’s his job.’

  Rebus was still nodding. ‘Bit easier if you’ve got something your competitors haven’t.’

  Hood: ‘You mean strongarm tactics?’

  Rebus shook his head. ‘I mean friends in the right places.’

  *

  ‘AD Holdings,’ Hood said, tapping the screen. Rebus stood over him, eyes squinting at the orange letters. Hood pinched the bridge of his nose, squeezed his own eyes shut, then opened them and shook his head briskly, as if to shake off cobwebs.

  ‘Long night,’ Rebus agreed. It was nearly ten; they were on the verge of calling a halt. A lot of good work done, but still – as Rebus had been the first to pun – nothing concrete.

  And now this.

  ‘AD Holdings,’ Hood repeated. ‘Seems that’s who they were in bed with.’

  Wylie had the phone book open. ‘Not in here.’

  ‘Probably gone bust,’ Siobhan guessed. ‘If they ever existed.’

  Rebus was smiling. ‘Bryce Callan’s initials?’

  ‘BC,’ Hood supplied. Then he got it: ‘BC, AD.’

  ‘A little private joke. AD was going to be BC’s future.’ Rebus had already been busy on the phone, asking a couple of retired colleagues about Bryce Callan. He’d sold up late in ’79. Some of what he’d sold had gone to the upstart Morris Gerald Cafferty. Cafferty had started on the west coast, 1960s muscle for loan sharks. Drifted down to London for a time, post-Krays and Richardson. Made his name and learned his trade.

  ‘There’s always an apprenticeship, John,’ Rebus had been told. ‘These guys don’t come fully formed from the womb. And if they don’t learn, we put them away . . . and we keep on putting them away.’

  But Cafferty had learned fast and well. By the time he’d reached Edinburgh, associated with Bryce Callan’s operation, and then branching out on his own, he’d shown a propensity for not making mistakes.

  Until he’d met John Rebus.

  And now he was back, and Callan, his old employer, was tied to the case. Rebus tried to make a connection, but couldn’t.

  Bottom line: late in ’79, Callan threw in the towel. Or, put another way, headed overseas to where Britain’s extradition laws didn’t apply. Because he’d had enough? Or had his fingers burned? Or because he was worried about something . . . some crime that could come straight back to him?

  ‘It’s Bryce Callan,’ Rebus said now, ‘it’s got to be.’

  ‘Which just leaves the one little problem,’ Siobhan reminded him.

  Yes: proving it.

  31

  It took them the best part of the next day, Thursday, to set everything up. Trawls through company records; phone calls. Rebus spent over an hour talking to Pauline Carnett, his contact at the National Criminal Intelligence Service, then another hour talking to a retired chief superintendent who had spent eight fruitless years in the 1970s pursuing Bryce Callan. When Pauline Carnett called him back, after she’d spoken to Scotland Yard and Interpol, she had a Spanish telephone number. 950 code: Almeria.

  ‘I once went there on holiday,’ Grant Hood said. ‘Too many tourists; we ended up trekking into the Sierra Nevadas.’

  ‘We?’ Ellen Wylie said, raising an eyebrow.

  ‘Me and a mate,’ Hood mumbled, his neck reddening. Wylie and Siobhan shared a wink and a smile.

  They would have to make the call from the Chief Super’s office: his was the only one with a speaker phone. Besides, international calls were blocked in the rest of the station. Chief Superintendent Watson would be present, but that didn’t leave much room. It was decided that the three junior officers would be kept out, but a recording made.

  If the interviewee agreed.

  Rebus sent Siobhan Clarke and Ellen Wylie in to negotiate with the Farmer. His first two questions to them: ‘Where’s DI Linford? What’s his take on this?’

  Rebus had briefed them; they’d talked their way around Linford, pressed their case again until the Farmer, worn down, nodded his agreement.

  With everything set up, Rebus sat in the Chief Super’s chair and hit the buttons. The Chief Super himself was seated across the desk, in the chair Rebus usually occupied.

  ‘Try not to get used to it,’ had been the Farmer’s commen
t.

  The phone was picked up at the other end; Rebus hit the record button. A woman’s voice: Spanish.

  ‘Could I speak to Mr Bryce Callan, please?’

  More Spanish. Rebus repeated the name. Eventually the woman went away. ‘Housekeeper?’ Rebus guessed. The Farmer just shrugged. Now someone else was picking up the receiver.

  ‘Yes? Who’s this?’ Annoyed. Maybe a siesta interrupted.

  ‘Is that Bryce Callan?’

  ‘I asked first.’ The voice deep, guttural: no trace that he was losing his Scottish inflections.

  ‘I’m Detective Inspector John Rebus, Lothian and Borders Police. I’d like to speak to Mr Bryce Callan.’

  ‘Fucking good manners you lot have got these days.’

  ‘That’ll be the customer relations training.’

  Callan let out a wheezy laugh, rolling it into a cough. Catarrh: smoker. Rebus made to light a cigarette of his own. The Farmer was frowning, but Rebus ignored him. Two smokers having a chat: instant rapport.

  ‘So what can you do me for?’ Callan asked.

  Rebus kept his tone light. ‘Is it okay if I record this, Mr Callan? Just so I’ve got a record.’

  ‘You might have one, son, but my sheet’s clean. No criminal convictions.’

  ‘I’m aware of that, Mr Callan.’

  ‘So what’s this about?’

  ‘It’s about a company called AD Holdings.’ Rebus glanced at the sheets of paper spread out on the desk. They’d done their work: could prove the company was part of Callan’s little empire.

  There was a pause on the line.

  ‘Mr Callan? You still there?’ The Farmer was off his chair, drawing the waste bin over so Rebus could flick his ash into it. Then he went to open a window.

  ‘I’m here,’ Callan said. ‘Call me back in an hour.’

  ‘I’d really appreciate it if we could . . .’ Rebus realised he was talking to the dialling tone. He cut the call.

  ‘Bugger,’ he said. ‘Now he’s got time to fix a story.’

  ‘He doesn’t have to talk to us at all,’ Farmer Watson reminded him.

  Rebus nodded.

  ‘And now he’s gone, you can put that bloody thing out,’ the Farmer added. Rebus stubbed his cigarette against the side of the bin.