He smiled, and Rebus smiled with him. They smoked in silence for a moment. The atmosphere could almost have been called companionable. But then Tench had to spoil it.
“Why do you side with Cafferty? He’s a badder bugger than I could ever be.”
“I’m not disputing it.”
“Well then?”
“I don’t side with him,” Rebus stated.
“Not what it looks like.”
“Then you’re refusing to see the whole picture.”
“I’m good at what I do, Rebus. If you don’t believe me, talk to the people I represent.”
“I’m sure you’re terrific at what you do, Mr. Tench. And sitting on the regeneration committee must tip a load of cash into your district, making your constituents cheerful, healthy, and well behaved...”
“Slums have been replaced by new housing, local industry offered incentives to stay put—”
“Nursing homes given upgrades?” Rebus added.
“Absolutely.”
“And staffed by your own recommendations. Trevor Guest being a case in point.”
“Who?”
“While back you placed him in a day center. He was from Newcastle originally.”
Tench was nodding slowly. “He’d had a few problems with drink and drugs. Happens to some of us, doesn’t it, Inspector?” Tench gave Rebus a meaningful look. “I was looking to integrate him into the community.”
“Didn’t work. He headed back south to be murdered.”
“Murdered?”
“One of the three whose effects we found in Auchterarder. Another was Cyril Colliar. Funnily enough, he used to work for Big Ger Cafferty.”
“You’re at it again—trying to pin something on me!” Tench made jabbing motions with the cigarette.
“Just want to ask about the victim. How you met him, why you felt the need to help.”
“It’s what I do—I keep telling you that!”
“Cafferty thinks you’re muscling in.”
Tench rolled his eyes. “We’ve been through all this. All I want is for him to be consigned to the scrap heap.”
“And if we won’t do it, you will?”
“I’ll do my damnedest—I’ve already said as much.” He rubbed his palms across his face, as though washing. “Has the penny not dropped yet, Rebus? Always supposing you’re not in his pocket, hasn’t it occurred to you that he might be using you to get to me? Big drug problem in my ward—something I’ve vowed to control. With me out of the way, Cafferty has free rein.”
“You’re in charge of the gangs down there—”
“I’m not!”
“I’ve seen the way it works. Your little runt of a hood runs amok, gives you the chance to state your case for more cash from the authorities. You’ve turned havoc into a nice little earner.”
Tench stared at him, then gave a loud exhalation. He looked to the left and right. “Between us?” But Rebus wasn’t about to comply. “All right, maybe there’s an element of truth in what you say. Money for regeneration: that’s the bottom line. I’m happy to show you the books—you’ll see that every last cent and penny is accounted for.”
“What’s Carberry listed under on the balance sheet?”
“You don’t control someone like Keith Carberry. A bit of channeling sometimes...” Tench offered a shrug. “What happened in Princes Street had nothing to do with me.”
Rebus’s cigarette was down to its filter. He flicked it away. “And Trevor Guest?”
“...was a damaged man who came to me for help. He said he wanted to give something back.”
“For what?”
Tench shook his head slowly, stubbing his cigarette underfoot, and began to look thoughtful. “I got the feeling something had happened...put the fear of death into him.”
“What sort of thing?”
A shrug. “The drugs maybe...dark night of the soul. He’d had a bit of trouble with the police, but seemed to me there was more to it than that.”
“He went to jail eventually. Aggravated burglary, assault, attempted sexual assault. Your Good Samaritan act didn’t exactly win him over.”
“I hope it’s never been an act,” Tench said quietly, eyes focused on the street beneath him.
“You’re putting on an act right now,” Rebus told him. “I think you do it because you’re good at it. Same sort of act that got Ellen Wylie’s sister out of her panties—bit of wine and sympathy at your end, and no mention of the missus back home in front of the TV.”
Tench made a pained face, but all Rebus did was give a cold chuckle.
“I’m curious,” he went on. “You looked at the BeastWatch site—it’s how you snared Ellen and her sister. So you had to’ve seen your old pal Trevor’s picture there. Seems odd to me that you never said...”
“And put myself further in the frame you’ve been trying to nail together around me?” Tench shook his head slowly.
“I’ll need something in your own words about Trevor Guest—everything you’ve told me, and anything else you can add. You can drop it off at Gayfield Square...this afternoon will do. Hope that’s not going to eat into your golf time.”
Tench looked at him. “How do you know I play?”
“Way you spoke earlier—like you knew what you were talking about.” Rebus leaned toward him. “You’re easy enough to read, Councilman. Compared to some I’ve known, you’re Dick and fucking Jane.”
The line was adequate, and Rebus left Tench with it. Back at the car, a warden was hovering. Rebus pointed out the POLICE notice on his dashboard.
“At our discretion,” the warden reminded him.
Rebus blew the man a kiss and got behind the steering wheel. As he pulled away, he checked in his rearview and saw that someone was watching from outside the cathedral. Same outfit he’d been wearing that day at court: Keith Carberry. Rebus slowed the car but kept moving. Carberry’s attention shifted, and Rebus stopped the Saab, kept watching in the rearview. Expected Carberry to cross the street, go say a few words to his employer, but he stayed where he was, hands tucked into the front of his hooded jacket, some sort of narrow black carry case held beneath one arm. Content to stand in the midst of what tourists there were.
Paying them no heed.
Staring across the road.
Toward the city chambers.
The city chambers...and Gareth Tench.
23
What have you been up to?” Rebus asked.
She’d been waiting for him on Arden Street. He’d said maybe he should give her a key, if they were going to keep using his place as an office.
“Not much,” Siobhan replied, taking off her jacket. “How about you?”
They went into the kitchen and he boiled the kettle, telling her about Trevor Guest and Councilman Tench. She asked a few questions, watching him spoon coffee into two mugs.
“Gives us our Edinburgh connection,” she agreed.
“Of a kind.”
“You sound doubtful?”
He shook his head. “You said so yourself...so did Ellen. Trevor Guest could be the key. Started off looking different from the others with all those wounds—” He broke off.
“What is it?”
But he shook his head again, stirred a spoon in his mug. “Tench thinks something happened to him. Guest had been taking drugs, hitting the bottle pretty hard. Then he scurries north and ends up in Craigmillar, meets the councilman, works with old people for a few weeks.”
“Nothing in the case notes to suggest he did anything like that before or since.”
“Funny thing to do when you’re a thief and you probably need a bit of cash.”
“Unless he was planning to fleece them in some way. Did the day center mention anything about money going missing?”
Rebus shook his head, but took out his phone and called Mrs. Eadie to ask. By the time she’d answered in the negative, Siobhan was seated at the dining table in the living room, delving into the files again.
“What about his time
in Edinburgh?” she asked.
“I got Mairie to check.” She looked at him. “Didn’t want anyone else getting wind that we’re still active.”
“So what did Mairie say?”
“Her answer wasn’t definitive.”
“Time to call Ellen?”
He knew she was right and made that call, too, but warned Ellen Wylie to be careful.
“Start searching the computer and you’ll be leaving a calling card.”
“I’m a big girl, John.”
“Maybe so, but the chief constable’s keeping a beady eye.”
“It’ll be fine.”
He wished her luck and slid the phone back into his pocket. “You all right?” he asked Siobhan.
“Why?”
“Seemed to be in a dream. Have you spoken to your parents?”
“Not since they left.”
“Best thing you can do is hand those photos to the public prosecutor, make sure of a conviction.”
She nodded, but didn’t look convinced. “That’s what you’d do, right?” she asked. “If someone had lashed out at your nearest and dearest?”
“There’s not much room on the ledge, Shiv.”
She stared at him. “What ledge?”
“The one I always seem to be perched on. You know you don’t want to be standing too close.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“It means hand over the photos, leave the rest to judge and jury.”
Her eyes were still boring into his. “You’re probably right.”
“No alternative,” he added. “None you’d ever want to consider.”
“That’s true.”
“Or you could always ask me to kick the crap out of Mr. Baseball Cap.”
“Aren’t you a bit long in the tooth for that?” she asked with the hint of a smile.
“Probably,” he acknowledged. “Might not stop me trying, though.”
“Well, there’s no need. I only wanted the truth—” She considered for a moment. “I mean, when I thought it was one of us...”
“Way this week’s gone, it might well have been,” he said quietly, pulling out a chair and seating himself across from her.
“But I couldn’t have stood it, John. That’s what I’m getting at.”
He made a show of turning some of the paperwork toward him. “You’d have thrown it in?”
“It was an option.”
“But now it’s all right again?” He was hoping for some reassurance. She gave a slow nod, picking up some paperwork of her own. “Why hasn’t he struck again?”
It took Rebus’s brain a moment to shift gears. He’d been on the verge of telling her about seeing Keith Carberry outside the city chambers. “I’ve no idea,” he eventually conceded.
“I mean, they speed up, right? Once they get a taste for it?”
“That’s the theory.”
“And they don’t just stop?”
“Maybe some do. Whatever it is inside them...maybe it gets buried somehow.” He shrugged. “I don’t pretend to be an expert.”
“Me neither. That’s why we’re meeting someone who claims she is.”
“What?”
Siobhan was checking her watch. “In an hour from now. Which just gives us time to decide what questions we need to ask.”
The University of Edinburgh department of psychology was based in George Square. Two sides of the original Georgian development had been flattened and replaced with a series of concrete boxes, but the psychology department was based in an older building sandwiched between two such blocks. Dr. Roisin Gilreagh had a room on the top floor, with views over the gardens.
“Nice and quiet this time of year,” Siobhan commented. “The students being gone, I mean.”
“Except that in August the gardens play host to various fringe shows,” Dr. Gilreagh countered.
“Offering a whole new human laboratory,” Rebus added. The room was small and awash with sunlight. Dr. Gilreagh was in her midthirties, with thick curly blond hair falling past her shoulders, and pinched cheeks that Rebus took to be clues as to her Irish ancestry, despite the resolutely local accent. When she smiled at Rebus’s comment, her sharp nose and chin seemed to become even more jagged.
“I was telling DI Rebus on the way here,” Siobhan interrupted, “that you’re considered a bit of an expert in the field.”
“I wouldn’t go that far,” Dr. Gilreagh felt obliged to argue. “But there are interesting times ahead in the field of offender profiling. The Crichton Street parking light is being turned into our new Center for Informatics, part of which will be dedicated to behavior analysis. Add in neuroscience and psychiatry and you begin to see that there are potentials...” She beamed at both her visitors.
“But you work for none of those particular departments?” Rebus couldn’t help pointing out.
“True, true,” she was happy to acknowledge. She kept twitching in her seat, as though stillness were a crime. Motes of dust danced across the sunbeams in front of her face.
“Could we maybe draw the blind?” he suggested, squinting a little for effect. She leaped to her feet and apologized as she pulled the blind down. It was pale yellow and made from something like tent canvas, doing little to relieve the room’s glare. Rebus gave Siobhan a look, as if to suggest that Dr. Gilreagh was kept locked in the attic for a reason.
“Tell DI Rebus about your research,” Siobhan said encouragingly.
“Well.” Dr. Gilreagh clapped her hands together, straightened her back, gave a little wriggle, and took a deep breath. “Behavioral patterning in offenders is nothing new, but I’ve been concentrating on victims. It’s by delving into the behavior of the victim that we begin to see why offenders act the way they do, whether on impulse or through a more deterministic approach...”
“Almost goes without saying,” Rebus offered with a smile.
“Term time being over, and thus having room for some smaller personal projects, I was intrigued by the little shrine—I suppose the description is fitting—in Auchterarder. The newspaper reports were sometimes sketchy, but I decided to take a look anyway...and then, as if it were meant to be, Detective Sergeant Clarke asked for a meeting.” She took another deep breath. “I mean, my findings aren’t really ready to...no, what I mean is, I’ve only scratched the surface as yet.”
“We can get the case notes to you,” Siobhan assured her, “if that would help. But in the meantime, we’d be grateful for any thoughts you might have.”
Dr. Gilreagh clapped her hands together again, stirring the cloud of dust particles in front of her.
“Well,” she said, “interested as I am in victimology”—Rebus tried to catch Siobhan’s eye, but she wouldn’t let him—“I have to admit that the site stirred my curiosity. It’s a statement, isn’t it? I’m guessing you’ve considered the possibility that the killer lives locally, or has some long-standing knowledge of the immediate area?” She waited till Siobhan had nodded. “And you will also have speculated that the murderer knows of the Clootie Well because its existence is recorded in various guidebooks and also extensively on the World Wide Web...?”
Siobhan sneaked a glance at Rebus. “Actually, we hadn’t really followed that particular path,” she admitted.
“It’s mentioned on various sites,” Dr. Gilreagh assured her. “New Age and pagan directories...myths and legends...world mysteries. Allied to which, anyone with a knowledge of the sister site on the Black Isle might have come across the one in Perthshire.”
“I’m not sure this gets us anywhere we haven’t already been,” Rebus said. Siobhan looked at him again.
“People who accessed the BeastWatch site,” she stated. “What if they also accessed sites referring to the Clootie Well?”
“And how would we find out?”
“The inspector raises a fair question,” Dr. Gilreagh admitted, “though of course you may have computer experts of your own...But in the interim, one has to concede that the location must have some signif
icance for the perpetrator.” She waited until Rebus had nodded. “In which case, might it also have significance for the victims?”
“In what way?” Rebus asked, eyes narrowing.
“Countryside...deep woods...but close to human dwellings. Is this the sort of terrain the victims inhabited?”
Rebus snorted. “Hardly likely—Cyril Colliar was an Edinburgh bouncer fresh out of jail. Can’t see him with a knapsack and bar of Kendall mint cake.”
“But Edward Isley traveled up and down the M6,” Siobhan countered, “and that’s the Lake District, isn’t it? Plus, Trevor Guest spent time in the Borders....”
“As well as Newcastle and Edinburgh.” Rebus turned to the psychologist. “All three served time...that’s your link right there.”
“Doesn’t mean there aren’t others,” Siobhan warned.
“Or that you’re not being led astray,” Dr. Gilreagh said with a kindly smile.
“Led astray?” Siobhan echoed.
“Either by patterns that don’t exist, or patterns the killer is placing in full view.”
“To toy with us?” Siobhan guessed.
“It’s a possibility. There is such a huge sense of playfulness—” She broke off, her face falling into a frown. “You’ll have to forgive me if that sounds frivolous, but it’s the only word I can think of. This is a killer determined to be seen, as shown by the display he left at Clootie Well. And yet, as soon as his work is discovered, he withdraws, perhaps behind a smoke screen.”
Rebus leaned forward, elbows on knees. “You’re saying all three victims are a smoke screen?”
She gave a little wriggle of her shoulders, which he interpreted as a shrug.
“A smoke screen for what?” he persevered.
She wriggled again. Rebus threw an exasperated look toward Siobhan.
“The display,” Gilreagh said at last, “is slightly wrong. A piece cut from a jacket...a sports shirt...a pair of cord trousers...inconsistent, you see. A serial killer’s trophies would normally be more similar—only shirts, or only patches. It’s an untidy collection and ultimately not quite right.”
“This is all very interesting, Dr. Gilreagh,” Siobhan said quietly. “But does it get us any further?”