A Question of Blood

  “That’s right. Come in, come in.”

  As Niles entered the room, Hogan made to close the door after him.

  “Not in here,” Lesser commanded. “The door is always open.”

  Two ways of taking that: openness, nothing to hide; or meaning an attack was more likely to be spotted.

  Lesser was gesturing for Niles to take her chair, while she retreated behind her desk. As Niles sat down, so did the two detectives, wedging themselves back into the sofa.

  Niles stared at them, face angled downwards, eyes hooded.

  “These men have a few questions they’d like to ask you, Robert.”

  “What sort of questions?” Niles was wearing a dazzling white T-shirt and gray jogging bottoms. Rebus was trying not to stare at the tattoos. They were old, probably dated back to his army days. When Rebus had been a soldier, he’d been the only recruit not to celebrate joining up by getting a few tattoos on his first home leave. Niles’s specimens included a thistle, a couple of writhing snakes, and a dagger with a banner wrapped around it. Rebus suspected the dagger had something to do with his time in the SAS, even though the regiment frowned upon ornamentation: tattoos were like scars—means of identification. Which meant they could be used against you if you were ever captured . . .

  Hogan decided to take the initiative. “We want to ask you about your friend Lee.”

  “Lee?”

  “Lee Herdman. He visits you sometimes?”

  “Sometimes, yes.” The words came slowly. Rebus wondered how much medication Niles was on.

  “Have you seen him lately?”

  “Few weeks back . . . I think.” Niles swung his head towards Dr. Lesser. Time probably didn’t mean much in Carbrae. She nodded encouragingly.

  “What do you talk about when he comes to see you?”

  “The old days.”

  “Anything in particular?”

  “Just . . . the old days. Life was good back then.”

  “Was that Lee’s opinion, too?” Hogan ended the question and sucked in air, realizing he’d just used the past tense about Herdman.

  “What’s all this about?” Another look towards Lesser, reminding Rebus of a trained animal seeking some instruction from its owner. “Do I have to be here?”

  “Door’s open, Robert.” Lesser waved a hand in its direction. “You know that.”

  “Lee seems to have gone, Mr. Niles,” Rebus said, leaning forwards a little. “We just want to know what happened to him.”

  “Gone?”

  Rebus shrugged. “It’s a long drive down here from Queensferry. The pair of you must be pretty close.”

  “We were soldiers together.”

  Rebus nodded. “SAS Regiment. You were the same unit?”

  “C Squadron.”

  “That was nearly me once.” Rebus tried a smile. “I was a Para . . . tried for the regiment.”

  “What happened?”

  Rebus was trying not to think back. There were horrors lurking there. “Flunked the training.”

  “How soon did you drop?”

  Easier to tell the truth than to lie. “I passed everything up until the psychological stuff.”

  A smile broke Niles’s face wide open. “They cracked you.”

  Rebus nodded. “I cracked like a fucking egg, mate.” Mate: a soldier’s word.

  “When was this?”

  “Early seventies.”

  “Bit before me, then.” Niles was thinking. “They had to change the interrogations,” he remembered. “Used to be a lot harder.”

  “I was part of that.”

  “You cracked under interrogation? What did they do to you?” Niles’s eyes narrowed. He was more alert now, having a conversation, someone else answering his questions.

  “Kept me in a cell . . . constant noise and light . . . screams from the other cells . . .”

  Rebus knew he had everyone’s attention now. Niles clapped his hands together. “The chopper?” he asked. When Rebus nodded, he clapped again, turned to Dr. Lesser. “They put a sack over your head and take you up in a chopper, then say they’ll drop you if you don’t give them what they want. When they dump you out, you’re only eight feet above the ground, only you don’t know that!” He turned back to Rebus. “It really fucks you up.” Then he thrust forwards a hand for Rebus to shake.

  “It really does,” Rebus agreed, trying to ignore the searing pain of the handshake.

  “Sounds barbaric to me,” Dr. Lesser commented, her face paler than before.

  “It breaks you, or it makes you,” Niles corrected her.

  “It broke me,” Rebus agreed. “But you, Robert . . . did it make you?”

  “For a while it did.” Niles grew a little less agitated. “It’s when you get out . . . that’s when it hits you.”

  “What?”

  “The fact that all the things you . . .” He fell silent, as still as a statue. Some new set of chemicals kicking in? But behind Niles’s back, Lesser was shaking her head, meaning there was nothing to worry about. The giant was just lost in thought. “I knew some Paras,” he said at last. “Right hard bastards, they were.”

  “I was Rifle Company, Second Para.”

  “Saw time in Ulster, then?”

  Rebus nodded. “And elsewhere.”

  Niles tapped the side of his nose. Rebus imagined those fingers gripping a knife, drawing the blade across a smooth white throat . . . “Mum’s the word,” Niles said.

  But the word Rebus had been thinking of was wife. “Last time you saw Lee,” he asked quietly, “did he seem okay? Maybe he was worried about something?”

  Niles shook his head. “Lee always puts on a brave face. I never get to see him when he’s down.”

  “But you know there are times when he is down?”

  “We’re trained not to show it. We’re men!”

  “Yes, we are,” Rebus confirmed.

  “Army doesn’t have any place for crybabies. Crybabies can’t shoot a stranger dead, or lob a grenade at him. You’ve got to be able to . . . what you’re trained for is . . .” But the words wouldn’t come. Niles twisted his hands together, as though trying to choke them into existence. He looked from Rebus to Hogan and back again.

  “Sometimes . . . sometimes they don’t know how to switch us off . . .”

  Hogan sat forwards. “Does that apply to Lee, do you think?”

  Niles stared at him. “He’s done something, hasn’t he?”

  Hogan swallowed back a response, looked to Dr. Lesser for guidance. But it was too late. Niles was rising slowly from his chair.

  “I’m going to go now,” he said, moving towards the door. Hogan opened his mouth to say something, but Rebus touched his arm, stilling him, knowing he was probably about to toss a grenade into the room: Your pal’s dead, and he took some schoolkids with him . . . Dr. Lesser got up and walked to the doorway, reassuring herself that Niles wasn’t hiding just out of sight. Satisfied, she took the chair he’d just vacated.

  “He seems pretty bright,” Rebus commented.

  “Bright?”

  “In control. Is that the medication?”

  “Medication plays its part.” She crossed one trousered leg over the other. Rebus noticed that she wore no jewelry at all, nothing on her wrists or around her neck, and no earrings that he could see.

  “When he’s . . . ‘cured’ . . . does he go back to jail?”

  “People think coming to a place like this is a soft option. I can assure you it isn’t.”

  “That’s not what I was getting at. I just wondered —”

  “From what I remember,” Hogan interrupted, “Niles never explained why he slit his wife’s throat. Has he been any more forthcoming with you, Doctor?”

  She looked at him, unblinking. “That has no relevance to your visit.”

  Hogan shrugged. “You’re right, I’m just curious.”

  Lesser turned her attention to Rebus. “Maybe it’s a kind of brainwashing.”

  “How so?” Hogan asked.
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  Rebus answered him. “Dr. Lesser agrees with Niles. She thinks the army trains men to kill, then does nothing to switch them off before they’re returned to civvy street.”

  “Plenty of anecdotal evidence to suggest just that,” Lesser said. She leaned her hands on her thighs, the gesture telling them the session was over. Rebus got up, same time as she did, Hogan more reluctant to follow her lead.

  “We came a long way, Doctor,” he said.

  “I don’t think you’ll get any more from Robert, not today.”

  “I doubt we can afford the time to come back.”

  “That’s your decision, of course.”

  Finally, Hogan rose from the sofa. “How often do you see Niles?”

  “I see him every day.”

  “I mean, one-on-one.”

  “What is it you’re asking?”

  “Maybe next time, you could ask him about his friend Lee.”

  “Maybe,” she conceded.

  “And if he says anything . . .”

  “Then that would be between him and me.”

  Hogan nodded. “Patient confidentiality,” he agreed. “But there are families out there who’ve just lost their sons. Maybe you could try thinking of the victims for a change.” Hogan’s tone had hardened. Rebus started steering him towards the door.

  “I apologize for my colleague,” he told Lesser. “A case like this, it takes its toll.”

  Her face softened slightly. “Yes, of course . . . If you’ll wait a second, I’ll call Billy.”

  “I think we can find our own way out,” Rebus said. But as they entered the corridor, he saw Billy approaching. “Thanks for your help, Doctor.” Then, to Hogan: “Bobby, say thank you to the nice doctor.”

  “Cheers, Doc,” Hogan grudgingly managed. Freeing himself from Rebus’s grip, he started down the corridor, Rebus making to follow.

  “DI Rebus?” Lesser called. Rebus turned to her. “You might want to talk to someone yourself. Counseling, I mean.”

  “It’s thirty years since I left the army, Dr. Lesser.”

  She nodded. “A long time to be carrying any baggage.” She folded her arms. “Think about it, will you?”

  Rebus nodded, backing away. He offered her a parting wave, then turned and started walking, feeling her eyes still on him. Hogan was ahead of Billy, and seemed in no need of company. Rebus fell into step with the orderly.

  “That was helpful,” he commented, speaking to Billy but knowing Hogan could hear.

  “I’m glad.”

  “Well worth the trip.”

  Billy just nodded, satisfied that someone else’s day was turning out as bright as his own.

  “Billy,” Rebus said, laying a hand on the young man’s shoulder, “do we look at the visitors’ book here, or over at the gatehouse?” Billy looked baffled. “Didn’t you hear Dr. Lesser say?” Rebus plowed on. “We just need the dates for Lee Herdman’s visits.”

  “The book’s kept at the gatehouse.”

  “Then that’s where we’ll give it the once-over.” Rebus fixed the orderly with a winning smile. “Any chance of a coffee while we’re at it?”

  There was a kettle in the gatehouse, and the guard made two mugs of instant. Billy headed back into the hospital.

  “Think he’ll go straight to Lesser?” Hogan said in an undertone.

  “Let’s be as quick as we can.”

  Not easy when the guard was so interested in them, asking about life in CID. Probably stir-crazy, cooped up in his box all day, a bank of CCTV monitors, a few cars to process every hour . . . Hogan offered him tidbits, most of which Rebus suspected he was making up. The visitors’ book was an old-fashioned ledger, broken up into columns for date, time, visitor’s name and address, and person visited. This last was subdivided, so that both patient’s and doctor’s name could be recorded. Rebus started with visitors’ names and ran his finger quickly down three pages until he found Lee Herdman. Almost exactly a month back, so Niles’s estimate hadn’t been far off. A month further back, another visit. Rebus jotted the details into his notebook, holding the pen lightly. At least they’d be taking something back to Edinburgh.

  He paused to take a sip from the chipped, flower-patterned mug. It tasted like one of those cheap supermarket mixtures, more chicory than coffee. His father used to buy the same stuff, saving a few pence. One time, the teenage Rebus had brought home a more expensive substitute, which his father had shunned.

  “Good coffee,” he said now to the guard, who looked pleased with the compliment.

  “We about done here?” Hogan asked, tiring of telling stories.

  Rebus nodded but then let his eyes glance down the columns one final time. Not visitors this time, but patients visited . . .

  “Company’s on its way,” Hogan warned. Rebus looked up. Hogan was pointing at one of the TV screens. Dr. Lesser, accompanied by Billy, striding out of the hospital building and down the path.

  Rebus went back to the ledger, and saw R. Niles again. R. Niles/ Dr. Lesser. Another visitor, not Lee Herdman.

  We didn’t ask her! Rebus could have kicked himself.

  “We’re out of here, John,” Bobby Hogan was saying, putting down his mug. But Rebus wasn’t moving. Hogan stared at him, and Rebus just winked. Then the door flew open and Lesser was standing there.

  “Who gave you permission,” she spat, “to go trawling through a confidential record?”

  “We forgot to ask about other visitors,” Rebus told her calmly. Then his finger tapped the ledger. “Who’s Douglas Brimson?”

  “That’s none of your business.”

  “How do you know?” Rebus was jotting the name into his notebook as he spoke.

  “What are you doing?”

  Rebus closed the notebook, slipping it into his pocket. Then he nodded to Hogan.

  “Thanks again, Doc,” Hogan said, preparing to leave. She ignored him, glaring at Rebus.

  “I’ll be reporting this,” she warned him.

  He shrugged. “I’ll be suspended by the end of the day anyway. Thanks again for all your help.” He squeezed past her, following Hogan to the car park.

  “I feel better,” Hogan said. “It might have been cheap, but we ended up scoring a point.”

  “A cheap point is always worth scoring,” Rebus agreed.

  Hogan stopped at the Passat, fumbling in his pocket for the keys. “Douglas Brimson?” he asked.

  “Another of Niles’s visitors,” Rebus explained. “With an address at Turnhouse.”

  “Turnhouse?” Hogan frowned. “You mean the airport?”

  Rebus nodded.

  “Is there anything else out there?”

  “Apart from the airport, you mean?” Rebus shrugged. “Might be worth finding out,” he said as the car’s central lock clunked open.

  “What’s this about you waiting to be suspended?”

  “I had to say something.”

  “But why pick that?”

  “Jesus, Bobby, I thought the analyst had left the building.”

  “If there’s anything I should know, John . . .”

  “There isn’t.”

  “I brought you in on this, I can dump you just as quickly. Remember that.”

  “You’re a real motivator, Bobby.” Rebus pulled the passenger-side door closed. It was going to be a long drive . . .

  9

  MAKE MY DAY (C.O.D.Y.). Siobhan stared at the note again. Same handwriting as yesterday, she was sure of that. Second-class mail, but it had taken only a day to reach her. The address was perfect, down to the St. Leonard’s postcode. No name this time, but she didn’t need a name, did she? That was the point the writer was making.

  Make my day: a reference to Clint Eastwood’s Dirty Harry? Who did she know called Harry? Nobody. She wasn’t sure whether she was meant to get the C.O.D.Y. reference, but straight off she knew what it meant: Come On Die Young. She knew it because it was the title of a Mogwai album, one she’d bought a while back. A piece of American gang graffiti, somethin
g like that. Who did she know, apart from her, who liked Mogwai? She’d loaned Rebus a couple of CDs, months ago. Nobody in the station really knew her taste in music. Grant Hood had been to her flat a few times . . . so had Eric Bain . . . Maybe she hadn’t been meant to get the meaning, not without working at it. She guessed most fans of the band were younger than her, teens and early twenties. Probably mostly male, too. Mogwai played instrumentals, mixing ambient guitar with ear-wrenching noise. She couldn’t remember if Rebus had ever given her back the CDs . . . Had one of them been Come On Die Young?

  Without realizing it, she’d walked from her desk to the window, peering out on to St. Leonard’s Lane. The CID room was dead, all the Port Edgar interviews concluded. Transcripts would be typed up, collated. It would be someone’s job to feed it all into the computer system, see if technology could find connections missed by the merely mortal . . .

  The letter writer wanted her to make his day. His day? She studied the writing again. Maybe an expert could tell if it was a masculine or feminine hand. She suspected the writer had disguised his or her real handwriting. Hence the scrawl. She went back to her desk and called Ray Duff.

  “Ray, it’s Siobhan—got anything for me?”

  “Morning to you, too, DS Clarke. Didn’t I say I’d get back to you when—if—I found something?”

  “Meaning you haven’t?”

  “Meaning I’m up to my neck. Meaning I haven’t yet got round to doing very much about your letter, for which I can only offer an apology and the excuse that I’m flesh and blood.”

  “Sorry, Ray.” She gave a sigh, pinched the bridge of her nose.

  “You’ve had another one?” he guessed.

  “Yes.”

  “One yesterday, one today?”

  “That’s right.”

  “Want to send me it?”

  “I think I’ll hang on to this one, Ray.”

  “As soon as I’ve got news, I’ll call you.”

  “I know you will. Sorry I’ve bothered you.”

  “Speak to someone, Siobhan.”

  “I already have. Bye, Ray.”

  She cut the call, tried Rebus’s mobile, but he wasn’t answering. She didn’t bother with a message. Folded the note, put it back in its envelope, slipped the envelope into her pocket. On her desk sat a dead teenager’s laptop, her task for the day. There were over a hundred files in there. Some would be computer applications, but most were documents created by Derek Renshaw. She’d already looked at a few: correspondence, school essays. Nothing about the car crash in which his friend had died. Looked like he’d been trying to set up some sort of jazz fanzine. There were pages of layout, photos scanned in, some of them lifted from the ’Net. Plenty of enthusiasm, but no real talent for writing. Miles was an innovator, no question, but later on he acted more as a scout, finding the best new talent around and embracing it, hoping something would rub off on himself . . . Siobhan just hoped Miles had wiped himself clean afterwards. She sat in front of the laptop and stared at it, trying to concentrate. The word CODY was bouncing around her head. Maybe it was a clue . . . leading to someone with that surname. She didn’t think she knew anyone named Cody. For a moment she had a jarring thought: Fairstone was still alive, and the charred corpse belonged to someone called Cody. She shook the notion aside, took a deep breath, got back to work.