Set in Darkness

  ‘Come on, Nic,’ he said. ‘Let’s head into town, do Lothian Road or the Bridges.’

  ‘Maybe you’re right,’ Nic said at last. He was stopped at lights. A motorbike drew up alongside, revving. Not a big engine, but those things had no weight either. Kid on it, maybe seventeen. His eyes on them, face masked by the crash helmet. Nic’s foot went hard on clutch and accelerator, but when the lights changed the bike left them squashed like a hedgehog.

  ‘See that?’ Nic asked quietly. ‘That’s Cat waving me and my crap car bye-bye.’

  Back in town they stopped for a breather, burger and chips, ate from the box, standing roadside, leaning against the car. Jerry’s jacket was cheap nylon. He had it zipped but was still shivering. Nic had his jacket open, didn’t look to be feeling the cold at all. There were kids in the restaurant, girls in their teens sat at a window table. Nic smiled at them, tried to catch their eyes. They sipped milk shakes, ignored him.

  ‘They think they’re in control, Jer,’ Nic said. ‘That’s what’s so funny about the whole thing. Here we are, standing out here in the cold, but it’s us that have the power. Their world’s forgotten that, but it would take us ten seconds to haul them into our world.’ He turned to his friend. ‘Wouldn’t it?’

  ‘If you say so.’

  ‘No, you’ve got to say it. That way, it becomes true.’ Nic dropped his burger box on to the pavement. Jerry hadn’t finished his, but Nic was getting back into the car, and he knew Jerry didn’t like smells in the Cosworth. There was a bin near by. He dropped his meal into it. One minute it’s food, the next it’s rubbish. The car was already moving as he pulled himself inside.

  ‘We’re not going to do one tonight, are we?’ The food seemed to have calmed Nic.

  ‘Don’t think so, no.’

  Jerry relaxed as they cruised Princes Street – wasn’t the same since the council had made it one-way for cars. Headed up Lothian Road. Then down into the Grassmarket and up Victoria Street. Big buildings at the top. Jerry had no idea what any of them were. George IV Bridge: he recognised the old Sheriff Court, which was now the High Court, Deacon Brodie’s pub opposite. They took a right at the lights, tyres rippling over the setts as they cruised the High Street. Bitter outside, not many people walking. But Nic was pressing a button, lowering the passenger-side window. Jerry saw her: three-quarter-length coat; black stockings; short dark hair. Good height, trim figure. Nic slowed the car beside her.

  ‘Cold night to be out,’ he called. She ignored him. ‘You can catch a taxi outside the Holiday Inn if you’re lucky. It’s just down there.’

  ‘I know where it is,’ she snapped.

  ‘You English? On holiday?’

  ‘I live here.’

  ‘Just trying to be friendly. We’re always accused of being rude to English people.’

  ‘Just piss off, will you?’

  Nic pushed the car forwards, then stopped, so he could turn round and see her face properly. She had a scarf around her neck, chin and mouth tucked into it. As she walked past, for all the world as if they didn’t exist, Nic caught Jerry’s eye and started nodding.

  ‘Lesbian, Jerry,’ he confirmed loudly, closing the window and moving off again.

  Siobhan didn’t know quite why she was walking. But, entering Waverley Station by the back way, seeing it as a shortcut of sorts, she knew why she was shaking.

  Lesbian.

  Sod them all. The whole lot of them. She’d turned down Derek Linford’s offer of a lift. Said she felt like a walk; unsure straight away why she’d said it. They’d parted amicably enough. No handshake or peck on the cheek, that wasn’t the Edinburgh way, not on a first dinner-date. Just smiles and a promise to do it again some time: a promise she was pretty sure she’d be breaking. It was strange, taking the lift down from the restaurant through the museum. Workmen were still busy, even at that hour. Cables and ladders, the sound of an electric drill.

  ‘I thought this place was open for business,’ Linford had said.

  ‘It is,’ she’d told him. ‘It’s just not ready yet, that’s all.’

  She’d walked up George IV Bridge, decided to head down the High Street. But that car, those men . . . she’d wanted off that street. A long flight of dark steps, shadows all around, shouts and music from still-open pubs. Then Waverley. She would cut through, back up on to Princes Street, then down Broughton Street, the city’s so-called gay village.

  Which was where she lived. It was where a lot of people lived.

  Lesbian.

  Sod them all.

  She thought back on the evening, trying to calm herself. Derek had been nervous, but then who was she to talk? The sex crimes secondment, it had put her off men. The register of offenders . . . all those hungry faces . . . the details of their crimes. And then her time with Sandra Carnegie, swapping stories and feelings. One officer who’d worked sex crimes for the best part of four years had warned her: ‘It’s a passion-basher, puts you right off.’ Three tramps had attacked a student, another student had been assaulted on one of the South Side’s richest streets. A car cruising past, an attempted chat-up and stinging punchline; small beer by comparison. All the same, she’d remember that name – Jerry – and the shiny black Sierra.

  From the pedestrian bridge, she could look down on to the railway tracks and the concourse. Above her was the station’s leaky glass roof. When something plummeted, just on the edge of her vision, she thought she was imagining it. She looked across and saw snow falling. No, not snow: big flakes of glass. There was a hole in the roof, and below on one of the platforms someone was yelling. A couple of taxi drivers had opened their doors, were making for the scene.

  Another leaper: that’s what it was. An area of darkness on the platform: it was like staring into a black hole. But really it was a long coat, the coat the leaper had been wearing. Siobhan made for the steps down to the concourse. Passengers were waiting for the sleeper to London. A woman was crying. One of the taxi drivers had taken off his jacket and laid it over the top half of the body. Siobhan moved forward. The other taxi driver put a hand out to stop her.

  ‘I wouldn’t, love,’ he said. For a moment she misheard him: I wouldn’t love. I wouldn’t love because love makes you weak. I wouldn’t love because your job will kill it dead.

  ‘I’m a police officer,’ she told him, reaching for her warrant card.

  So many people had jumped from North Bridge, the Samaritans had bolted a sign to the parapet. North Bridge connected Old Town Edinburgh to the New Town and passed over the deep gully which housed Waverley Station. By the time Siobhan got there, no one was around. Distant shapes and voices: drinkers heading home. Taxis and cars. If anyone had seen the fall, they hadn’t bothered stopping. Siobhan leaned over the parapet, looked down on Waverley’s roof. Almost directly below was the hole. Through it, she could glimpse movement on the platform. She’d called for assistance, told them to alert the mortuary. She was off duty; let one of the uniforms – Rebus called them woolly suits – deal with it. From the dead man’s clothes, she was assuming he was a tramp. Only you didn’t call them tramps these days, did you? Problem was, she couldn’t think of the right word. Already in her head she was writing her report. Looking around at the empty street, she realised she could just walk away. Leave it to others. Her foot touched something. A plastic carrier bag. She nudged it and felt resistance. Stooping, she picked it up. It was one of the oversized bags you carried skirts or dresses home in. A Jenners bag, no less. The upmarket department store was a couple of minutes’ walk away. She doubted the leaper had ever shopped there. But she guessed his whole life was contained in the bag, so she took it with her back down to Waverley.

  She’d dealt with suicides before. People who turned on the gas and sat down next to the fire. Cars left running in locked garages. Pill bottles by the bed, blue lips flecked with white. A CID officer had jumped from Salisbury Crags not so long ago. Plenty of places like that in Edinburgh; no shortage of suicide spots.

  ‘You could go
home, you know,’ a uniform told her. She nodded. The woman officer smiled. ‘So what’s keeping you?’

  A good question. It was as if she knew, knew there was so little to go home to.

  ‘You’re one of DI Rebus’s, aren’t you?’ the uniform asked.

  Siobhan glared at her. ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’

  The woman shrugged. ‘Sorry I spoke.’ Then she turned and walked away. They’d cordoned off the section of platform where the body lay. A doctor had confirmed death, and one of the mortuary vans was getting ready to remove the remains. Station staff were in search of a hose, wanted to get a jet-spray on to the platform. Blood and brains would be washed on to the tracks.

  The sleeper passengers had departed, the station readying to close for the night. No taxis now. Siobhan wandered over to the left-luggage lockers. There was a desk there, and a male uniform was emptying the Jenners bag on to it, picking out each item gingerly, as if dealing with contamination.

  ‘Anything?’ Siobhan asked.

  ‘Just what you see.’

  There had been no form of ID on the deceased, nothing in his pockets but a handkerchief and some coins. Siobhan studied the items on the table. A polythene bread bag seemed to contain a rudimentary wash-kit. There were a few articles of clothing, an old copy of Reader’s Digest. A small transistor radio, its back held on with sticking tape. The day’s evening paper, folded and crumpled . . .

  You’re one of DI Rebus’s. Meaning what? Meaning she’d grown to be like him: a loner, a drifter? Were there just the two types of cop: John Rebus or Derek Linford? And did she have to choose?

  A sandwich wrapped in greaseproof paper; a child’s lemonade bottle, half-filled with water. More clothing was appearing from the bag, which was all but empty now. The uniform tipped the remnants out. They looked like things the deceased had collected on his travels: a few pebbles, a cheap ring, shoelaces and buttons. A small, thin cardboard box which, from the faded picture on it, had once contained the radio. Siobhan picked it up and shook it, pulled it open and shook out a little book which at first she took for a passport.

  ‘It’s a passbook,’ the uniform said. ‘Building society.’

  ‘So it’ll have a name on it,’ Siobhan said.

  The uniform opened the book. ‘Mr C. Mackie. There’s an address in the Grassmarket.’

  ‘And how was Mr Mackie’s investment portfolio doing?’

  The uniform turned a couple of pages, angling the passbook as if he was having trouble focusing.

  ‘Not bad,’ he said at last. ‘Just over four hundred grand in credit.’

  ‘Four hundred thousand? Looks like the drinks are on him then.’

  But the uniform turned the passbook towards her. She reached out and took it. He hadn’t been joking. The tramp being scraped and hosed off platform 11 was worth four hundred thousand pounds.

  9

  Tuesday, Rebus was back at St Leonard’s. Chief Superintendent Watson wanted a meeting with him. When he arrived, Derek Linford was already seated, a mug of oily-looking coffee untouched in one hand.

  ‘Help yourself,’ Watson said.

  Rebus raised the beaker he was holding. ‘Already got some, sir.’ Whenever he remembered, he tried to bring half a cup of coffee with him. There was a sign you saw above some bars – ‘Do not ask for credit as a refusal can often offend’. The beaker was Rebus’s way of not giving offence to his senior officer.

  When they were all seated, the Chief Super got straight to the point.

  ‘Everyone’s interested in this case: reporters, public, government . . .’

  ‘In that order, sir?’ Rebus asked.

  Watson ignored him. ‘. . . which means I’m going to be keeping closer tabs on you than usual.’ He turned to Linford. ‘John here can be like a bull in a china shop. I’m looking to you to be on matador duty.’

  Linford smiled. ‘As long as the bull’s okay about it.’ He looked to Rebus, who stayed quiet.

  ‘Reporters are foaming at the mouth. The parliament, the elections . . . dry as dust. Now at last they’ve got a story.’ Watson held up thumb and forefinger. ‘Two stories actually. Couldn’t be any connection, could there?’

  ‘Between Grieve and the skeleton?’ Linford seemed to consider it, glanced towards Rebus who was busy checking the crease in his left trouser leg. ‘Shouldn’t think so, sir. Not unless Grieve was killed by a ghost.’

  Watson wagged a finger. ‘That’s just the sort of thing the journalists are after. Joking’s fine in here, but not outside, understood?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’ Linford looked suitably abashed.

  ‘So what have we got?’

  ‘We’ve conducted preliminary interviews with the family,’ Rebus answered. ‘Further interviews to follow. Next step is to talk to the deceased’s political agent, then maybe to the local Labour Party.’

  ‘No known enemies?’

  ‘Widow didn’t seem to think so, sir,’ Linford said quickly, leaning forward in his chair. He didn’t want Rebus hogging the stage. ‘Still, there are things wives don’t always know.’

  The Chief Super nodded. To Rebus, his face looked even more florid than usual. Run-up to the golden cheerio and he gets landed with this.

  ‘Friends? Business acquaintances?’

  Linford nodded back, catching Watson’s rhythm. ‘We’ll speak to them all.’

  ‘Did the autopsy throw up anything?’

  ‘Blow to the base of the skull. It caused immediate haemorrhaging. Seems he died pretty much where he fell. Two more blows after that, producing fractures.’

  ‘These two blows were post-mortem?’

  Linford looked to Rebus for confirmation. ‘Pathologist seems to think so,’ Rebus obliged. ‘They were to the top of the skull. Grieve was pretty tall –’

  ‘Six-one,’ Linford interrupted.

  ‘– so to render a blow like that, the attacker had to be hellish tall or standing on something.’

  ‘Or Grieve was already prone when the blows arrived,’ Watson said, mopping his forehead with a handkerchief. ‘Yes, makes sense, I suppose. How the devil did he get in there?’

  ‘Either he climbed the fence,’ Linford guessed, ‘or else someone had keys. The gates are kept padlocked at night: too much stuff in there worth nicking.’

  ‘There’s a security guard,’ Rebus continued. ‘He says he was there all night, kept a regular patrol, but didn’t see anything.’

  ‘What do you think?’

  ‘I think he was kipping in the office. Nice and warm in there. Radio and kettle, all mod cons. Either that or he’d bunked off home.’

  ‘He says he checked the summer house?’ Watson asked.

  ‘He says he thinks he did.’ Linford quoted from memory: ‘“I always shine my torch inside, just in case. No reason I wouldn’t have that night.”’

  The Chief Super leaned forward, rested his elbows on the desk. ‘What do you think?’ He had eyes only for Linford.

  ‘I think we need to concentrate on the motive, sir. Was this a chance encounter? Prospective MSP wants to take a midnight look at his future workplace, happens across someone who decides to bludgeon him to death?’ Linford shook his head persuasively, his eyes dodging Rebus, who was glaring, having said almost exactly the same thing to him about an hour before.

  ‘I’m not sure,’ Watson said. ‘Say someone was in there stealing tools. Grieve interrupts them, so they whack him.’

  ‘And after he’s laid out,’ Rebus interrupted, ‘they hit him twice more for luck?’

  Watson grunted, acknowledging the point. ‘And the murder weapon?’

  ‘Not recovered yet, sir,’ Linford said. ‘Lot of building sites around there, places you could conceal something. We’ve got officers out looking.’

  ‘The contractors are carrying out an inventory,’ Rebus added. ‘Just in case anything’s missing. If your theory about it being a theft is right, maybe the inventory will throw up something.’

  ‘One more thing, sir. Recent scuff
marks on the shoes and traces of dirt and dust on the inside legs of Grieve’s trousers.’

  Watson smiled. ‘God bless forensics. What does it mean?’

  ‘Means he probably did climb the fence or the gate.’

  ‘All the same, rule nothing out and everything in. Talk to all the keyholders. All of them, understood?’

  ‘Very good, sir,’ Linford said.

  Rebus just nodded, though no one was paying attention.

  ‘And our friend Skelly?’ the Chief Super asked.

  ‘Two other members of the PPLC are on it, sir,’ Rebus said.

  Watson grunted again, then looked at Linford. ‘Something wrong with your coffee, Derek?’

  Linford’s gaze went to the surface of the drink. ‘No, sir, not at all. Just don’t like it too hot.’

  ‘And how is it now?’

  Linford put the mug to his lips, drained it in two swallows. ‘It’s very good, sir. Thank you.’

  Rebus suddenly had no doubts: Linford would go far in the force.

  When the meeting was over, Rebus told Linford he’d catch him up, and knocked again on Watson’s door.

  ‘I thought we’d finished?’ The Farmer was busy with paperwork.

  ‘I’m being sidelined,’ Rebus said, ‘and I don’t like it.’

  ‘Then do something about it.’

  ‘Such as?’

  The Farmer looked up. ‘Derek’s in charge. Accept the fact.’ He paused. ‘Either that or ask for a transfer.’

  ‘Wouldn’t want to miss your retirement do, sir.’

  The Farmer put down his pen. ‘This is probably the last case I’ll handle, and I can’t think of one with a higher profile.’

  ‘You saying you don’t trust me with it, sir?’

  ‘You always think you know better, John. That’s the problem.’

  ‘All Linford knows are his desk at Fettes and which arses to lick.’