“The bombings?”
She shook her head. “Your case,” she clarified. They were in the living room by now. She walked across to where the paperwork lay; saw the wall and moved toward it, scanning the pictures pinned there. “I’ve spent half the day reading about all these monsters...reading what their victims’ families think of them, and then having to alert those same bastards that there might be someone out for revenge.”
“It was still the right thing to do, Ellen. Time like this, we need to feel we’re doing something.”
“Say they were bombers instead of rapists...”
“What’s the point in that?” he asked, waiting until she’d given an answering shrug. Then: “Anything to drink?”
“Maybe some tea.” She half turned toward him. “This is okay, isn’t it? Me barging in like this?”
“Glad of the company,” he lied, heading for the kitchen.
When he came back with the two mugs, she was seated at the dining table, poring over the first pile of paperwork. “How’s Denise?” he asked.
“She’s fine.”
“Tell me, Ellen—” He paused until he was sure she was giving him her attention. “Did you know Tench is married?”
“Separated,” she corrected him.
Rebus pursed his lips. “Not by much,” he added. “They live in the same house.”
She didn’t blink. “Why are all men bastards, John? Present company excepted, naturally.”
“Makes me wonder about him,” Rebus went on. “Why is he so interested in Denise?”
“She’s not that bad a catch.”
Rebus conceded the point with a twitch of the mouth. “All the same, I suspect the councilman is attracted to victims. Some men are, aren’t they?”
“What are you getting at?”
“I’m not sure, really...just trying to work out what makes him tick.”
“Why?”
Rebus snorted. “Another bloody good question.”
“You think he’s a suspect?”
“How many do we have?”
She offered a shrug. “Eric Bain has managed to pull some names and details from the subscription list. My guess is, they’ll turn out to be the families of victims, or professionals working in the field.”
“Which camp does Tench fall into?”
“Neither. Does that make him a suspect?”
Rebus was standing next to her, staring down at the case notes. “We need a profile of the killer. All we know so far is that he doesn’t confront the victims.”
“Yet he left Trevor Guest in a hell of a state—cuts, scratches, bruises. Also left us Guest’s cash card, meaning we had his name straightaway.”
“You’re calling that an anomaly?”
She nodded. “But then you could just as easily say Cyril Colliar is the anomaly, being the only Scot.”
Rebus stared at a photograph of Trevor Guest’s face. “Guest spent time up here,” he said. “Hackman told me as much.”
“Do we know where?”
Rebus shook his head slowly. “Must be in the files somewhere.”
“Any chance that the third victim had some Scottish connection?”
“I suppose it’s possible.”
“Maybe that’s the key. Instead of concentrating on BeastWatch, we should be thinking more about the three victims.”
“You sound ready to get started.”
She looked at him. “I’m too wired to sleep. How about you? I could always take some stuff away with me...?”
Rebus shook his head again. “You’re fine where you are.” He picked up a handful of reports and headed over to his chair, switching on a floor lamp behind him before settling down. “Won’t Denise worry where you are?”
“I’ll text her, say I’m working late.”
“Best not to mention where...don’t want any gossip.”
She smiled. “No,” she agreed, “we certainly wouldn’t want that. Speaking of which, should we let Siobhan know?”
“Know what?”
“She’s in charge of the case, isn’t she?”
“I keep forgetting,” Rebus replied casually, going back to his reading.
It was almost midnight when he woke up. Ellen was tiptoeing back from the kitchen with a fresh mug of tea.
“Sorry,” she apologized.
“I dozed off,” he said.
“Well over an hour ago.” She was blowing across the surface of the liquid.
“Did I miss anything?”
“Nothing to report. Why don’t you go to bed?”
“Leaving you plugging away on your own?” He stretched his arms out, feeling his spine crackle. “I’ll be fine.”
“You look exhausted.”
“So everyone keeps telling me.” He’d risen to his feet and was walking toward the table. “How far have you got?”
“Can’t find any connection between Edward Isley and Scotland—no family, no jobs, and no vacations. I began to wonder if we were going at it from the wrong end.”
“How do you mean?”
“Maybe it was Colliar who had connections with the north of England.”
“Good point.”
“But that doesn’t seem to be panning out either.”
“Maybe you need to take a break.”
She hoisted the mug. “What does this look like?”
“I meant something more substantial.”
She was rolling her shoulders. “Haven’t got a Jacuzzi or a masseur on the premises by any chance?” She saw the look on his face. “I’m joking,” she reassured him. “Something tells me you’re not an expert at back rubs. Besides—” But she broke off, lifting the mug to her face.
“Besides what?” he asked.
She lowered the mug again. “Well, you and Siobhan...”
“...are colleagues,” he stated. “Colleagues and friends. Nothing more than that, despite the rumor mill.”
“Stories have gone around,” she admitted.
“And that’s what they are—stories. Meaning fiction.”
“Wouldn’t be the first time though, would it? I mean, you and DCS Templer.”
“Gill Templer was years back, Ellen.”
“I’m not saying she wasn’t.” She stared into space. “This job we do...how many do you know manage to keep a relationship together?”
“There are a few. Shug Davidson’s been married twenty years.”
She conceded the point. “But you, me, Siobhan...dozens more I could name.”
“Comes with the territory, Ellen.”
“All these other lives we get to know...” She wafted a hand over the case files. “And we’re useless at finding one for ourselves.” She looked at him. “There’s really nothing between you and Siobhan?”
He shook his head. “So don’t go thinking you can somehow drive a wedge between us.”
She tried to look outraged by the suggestion but struggled for words.
“You’re flirting,” he told her. “Only reason I can think of for that is so you can wind Siobhan up.”
“Jesus Christ...” She slammed the mug down on the table, splashing the paperwork spread out there. “Of all the arrogant, misguided, thickheaded—” She was rising from her chair.
“Look, if I’m wrong I apologize. It’s the middle of the night—maybe we both need some shut-eye.”
“A thank-you would be nice,” she demanded.
“For what?”
“For slogging while you were snoring! For helping you out when it could cost me a tongue-lashing! For everything!”
Rebus stood, seemingly dazed, for another moment before opening his mouth and uttering the two words she wanted to hear.
“Thank you.”
“And fuck you, too, John,” she retorted, picking up her coat and bag. He stood back to give her room as she walked out, listened to the door slam behind her. Took a handkerchief from his pocket and dabbed the tea-stained paperwork.
“No real damage,” he said to himself. “No real dama
ge...”
“Thanks for this,” Morris Gerald Cafferty said, holding open the passenger-side door. Siobhan paused for a moment, then decided to get in.
“We’re just talking,” she warned him.
“Absolutely.” He closed her door gently and walked around to the driver’s side. “It’s been a hell of a day, hasn’t it?” he said. “There was a bomb scare on Princes Street.”
“We don’t move from here,” she decreed, ignoring him.
He closed his own door and half turned toward her. “We could have talked upstairs.”
She shook her head. “No way you’re crossing that threshold.”
Cafferty accepted the slur on his character. He peered out at her tenement. “Thought you’d be living somewhere better by now.”
“Suits me fine,” she snapped back. “Though I wouldn’t mind knowing how you found me.”
He gave a warm smile. “I have friends,” he told her. “One phone call, job done.”
“Yet you can’t manage the same trick with Gareth Tench? One call to a professional and he’s never heard of again...”
“I don’t want him dead.” He sought the right phrase. “Just brought low.”
“As in humiliated? Cowed? Scared?”
“I think it’s time people saw him for what he is.” He leaned over a little closer. “You know what he is now. But in focusing on Keith Carberry, you’ll be missing a clear shot at the goal.” He gave another smile. “I speak as one soccer fan to another, even if we’re on opposite sides in our choices.”
“We’re on opposite sides in everything, Cafferty—never think otherwise.”
He bowed his head slightly. “You even sound like him, you know.”
“Who?”
“Rebus, of course. You both share the same hostile attitude—think you know better than anyone, think you are better than anyone.”
“Wow, a counseling session.”
“See? There you go again. It’s almost as if Rebus is working the strings.” He chuckled. “Time you became your own woman, Siobhan. And it has to happen before Rebus gets the gold watch...meaning soon.” He paused. “No time like the present.”
“Advice from you is the last thing I need.”
“I’m not offering advice—I’m offering to help. Between us we can bring Tench down.”
“You made John the same offer, didn’t you? That night at the church hall? I’m betting he said no.”
“He wanted to say yes.”
“But he didn’t.”
“Rebus and me have been enemies too long, Siobhan. We’ve almost forgotten what started it. But you and me, we’ve not got that history.”
“You’re a gangster, Mr. Cafferty. Any help from you, I become like you.”
“No,” he said, shaking his head, “what you do is, you put away the people responsible for that attack on your mother. If all you’ve got to work from is that photo, you’re not going to get further than Keith Carberry.”
“And you’re offering so much more?” she guessed. “Like one of those shysters on the shopping channels?”
“Now that’s cruel,” he chided her.
“Cruel but fair,” she corrected him. She was staring out through the windshield. A taxi was dropping a drunk-looking couple at their door. As it moved away, they hugged and kissed, almost losing their balance on the pavement. “What about a scandal?” she suggested. “Something that would put the councilman on the front of the tabloids?”
“Anything in mind?”
“Tench plays away from home,” she told him. “Wife sitting in front of the TV while he visits his girlfriends.”
“How do you know this?”
“There’s a colleague of mine, Ellen Wylie...her sister’s—” But if news broke, it wouldn’t just be Tench on the front pages...it would be Denise, too. “No,” she said, shaking her head. “Forget that.” Stupid, stupid, stupid...
“Why?”
“Because we’d be hurting a woman whose skin’s more fragile than most.”
“Then consider it forgotten.”
She turned to face him. “So tell me, what would you do if you were me? How would you get to Gareth Tench?”
“Through young Keith, of course,” he said, as if it were the most obvious thing in the starlit world.
Mairie was relishing the chase.
This wasn’t features; wasn’t some puff piece for a pal of the editor, or interview-as-marketing-tool for an overhyped film or book. It was an investigation. It was why she’d gone into journalism in the first place.
Even the dead ends were thrilling, and so far she’d taken plenty of wrong turns. But now she’d been put in touch with a journalist down in London—another freelancer. The two of them had danced around each other during their first telephone conversation. Her London connection was attached to a TV project, a documentary about Iraq. My Baghdad Laundrette, it was going to be called. At first, he wouldn’t tell her why. But then she’d mentioned her Kenyan contact, and the man in London had melted a little.
And she’d allowed herself a smile: if there was any dancing to be done, she’d be the one doing the leading.
Baghdad Laundrette because of all the money washing around Iraq in general, and its capital in particular. Billions—maybe tens of billions of U.S.-backed dollars—had gone into reconstruction. And much of it could not be accounted for. Suitcases of cash used for the bribing of local officials. Palms greased to ensure that elections would go ahead no matter what. American companies moving into the emerging market “with extreme prejudice,” according to her new friend. Money sloshing around, the various sides in the conflict needing to feel safe in these uncertain times...
Needing to be armed.
Shiites and Sunnis and Kurds. Yes, water and electricity were necessities, but so were efficient guns and rocket launchers. For defense only, of course, because reconstruction could only come when people felt protected.
“I thought arms were being taken out of the equation,” Mairie had commented.
“Only to be put back in again as soon as nobody’s looking.”
“And you’re linking Pennen to all of this?” Mairie had eventually asked, scribbling notes to herself furiously, the phone clenched between cheek and shoulder.
“Just the tiniest portion. He’s a footnote, a little P.S. at the end of the missive. And it’s not even him per se really, is it? It’s the company he runs.”
“And the company he keeps,” she couldn’t help adding. “In Kenya, he’s been making sure his bread’s buttered on both sides.”
“Funding the government and the opposition? Yes, I’d heard about that. As far as I know, it’s no big deal.”
But the diplomat Kamweze had given her a little more. Cars for government ministers; road-building in districts run by opposition leaders; new houses for the most important tribal leaders. All of it described as “aid,” while arms powered by Pennen technology added to the national debt.
“In Iraq,” the London journalist went on, “Pennen Industries seems to fund rather a gray area of reconstruction—namely, private defense contractors. Armed and subsidized by Pennen. It may be the first war in history run largely by the private sector.”
“So what do these defense contractors do?”
“Act as bodyguards for people coming into the country to do business. Plus man the barricades, protect the Green Zone, ensure local dignitaries can turn their car key in the ignition without having to fear a Godfather moment...”
“I get the picture. They’re mercenaries, right?”
“Not at all—perfectly legit.”
“But sponsored by Pennen cash?”
“To a degree.”
Eventually she’d ended the call with promises on both sides to stay in touch, her London friend stressing that as long as she steered clear of the Iraq story, they might be able to help each other. Mairie had typed up her notes while they were fresh, then had bounced through to the living room where Allan was slumped in front of Die Hard
3—watching all his old favorites again now that he had his home cinema to play with. She’d given him a hug and poured them each a glass of wine.
“What’s the occasion?” he’d asked, pecking her on the cheek.
“Allan,” she said, “you’ve been to Iraq...tell me about it.”
Later that night, she’d slipped out of bed. Her phone was beeping, telling her she had a text. It was from the Westminster correspondent of the Herald newspaper. They’d sat next to each other at an awards dinner two years back, knocking back the Mouton Cadet and laughing at the short lists in every single category. Mairie had kept in touch with him, actually quite fancied him though he was married—happily married, as far as she knew. She sat on the carpeted stairs, dressed in just a T-shirt, chin on her knees, reading his text.
U SHD HV SAID U HAD INTEREST IN PENNEN. CALL ME 4 MORE!
She’d done more than call him. She’d driven to Glasgow in the middle of the night and made him meet her at a twenty-four-hour café. The place was full of studenty drunks, bleary rather than loud. Her friend was called Cameron Bruce—it was a joke with them, “the name that works just as well from both directions.” He arrived wearing a sweatshirt and jogging pants, his hair tousled.
“Morning,” he said, glancing meaningfully at his watch.
“You’ve only got yourself to blame,” she chided him. “You can’t go teasing a girl at close to midnight.”
“It has been known,” he replied. The twinkle in his eye told her she’d need to check the current status of that happy marriage. She thanked God she hadn’t arranged to meet him at a hotel.
“Spit it out then,” she said.
“Coffee’s not that bad actually,” he replied, lifting his mug.
“I didn’t drive halfway across Scotland for bad jokes, Cammy.”
“Then why did you?”
So she sat back and told him about her interest in Richard Pennen. She left bits out, of course—Cammy was the competition, after all, despite being a friend. He was wise enough to know there were gaps in her story—every time she paused or appeared to change her mind about something, he gave a little smile of recognition. At one point she had to break off while the staff dealt with an unruly new client. It was all done professionally and at speed, and the man found himself back on the pavement. Gave the door a few kicks and the window a few thumps, but then slouched away.