As she left the room, she wondered if maybe he was just trying to spare her the sight. Nothing in the kitchen—it was spotless, apart from a liter of milk that needed putting in the fridge...and next to it, the screw cap from the Smirnoff. She crossed to the bathroom. The door of the medicine cabinet stood open. Some unopened packets of flu remedy had ended up in the sink. She put them back. There was a fresh bottle of aspirin, its seal intact. So maybe the Tylenol bottle had been opened previously, meaning he might not have taken as many as she’d thought.
Bedroom: Molly’s things were still there, but strewn across the floor, as though Eric had planned some act of retribution upon them. A snapshot of the pair of them had been removed from its frame but was otherwise undamaged, as though he’d been unable to go through with it.
She reported back to the paramedics. Eric had stopped vomiting, but the room reeked of the stuff.
“So that’s two thirds of a bottle of neat vodka,” the one called Colin said, “and maybe thirty tablets as a chaser.”
“Most of which has just come back to say hello,” his colleague added.
“So he’ll be all right?” she asked.
“Depends on the internal damage. You said two hours?”
“He called me two...nearly three hours ago.” They looked at her. “I didn’t get the message until...well, seconds before I called it in.”
“How drunk was he when he called?”
“His speech was slurred.”
“No kidding.” Colin locked eyes with his partner. “How do we get him downstairs?”
“Strapped to a stretcher.”
“Stairwell has a few tight corners.”
“So give me an alternative.”
“I’ll call for backup.” Colin rose to his feet.
“I could take his legs,” Siobhan offered. “Those corners won’t seem nearly so tight if there’s no stretcher to maneuver...”
“Fair point.” The paramedics shared another look. Siobhan’s phone started ringing. She went to turn it off, but caller ID had flashed up the letters JR. She stepped out into the hall and answered the call.
“You’re not going to believe it,” she blurted out, realizing as she did so that Rebus was telling her the exact same thing.
27
He had decided on St. Leonard’s—figured there was less chance of being spotted there. No one on the front desk had seemed to know he was under suspension; they hadn’t even asked why he wanted the use of an interview room, and had let him borrow a constable to act as witness to the recording he was about to make.
Duncan Barclay and Debbie Glenister sat next to each other throughout, nursing cans of cola and feasting on chocolate from the vending machine. Rebus had broken open a fresh pack of cassette tapes, slotting two into the machine. Barclay had asked why two.
“One for you and one for us,” Rebus had answered.
The questioning had been straightforward, the constable sitting bemused throughout, Rebus having failed to explain any of the background to him. Afterward, Rebus had asked the officer if he could arrange transport for the visitors.
“Back to Kelso?” he’d guessed, sounding daunted. But Debbie had squeezed Barclay’s arm and said maybe they could be dropped somewhere along Princes Street instead. Barclay had hesitated, but finally agreed. As they were preparing to leave, Rebus had slipped him forty pounds. “Drinks here can be that bit more expensive,” he’d explained. “And it’s a loan rather than a handout. I want one of your best fruit bowls next time you’re in town.”
So Barclay had nodded and accepted the notes.
“All these questions, Inspector,” he’d said. “Have they helped you at all?”
“More than you might think, Mr. Barclay,” Rebus had said, shaking the young man’s hand before retreating to one of the empty upstairs offices. This was where he’d been based before the move to Gayfield Square. Eight years of crimes solved and shelved...It surprised him that no mark had been left. There was no visible trace of him here, or of all those convoluted cases—the ones he remembered best. The walls were bare, most of the desks unused and lacking even chairs to sit on. Before St. Leonard’s, he’d worked at the station on Great London Road...and the High Street before that...Thirty years he’d been a cop, and thought he’d seen just about everything.
Until this.
There was a large whiteboard on one wall. He wiped it clean with some paper towels from the men’s room. The ink was hard to erase, meaning it had been there for weeks—background to Operation Sorbus. Officers would have heaved their backsides onto the desks and sat there swigging coffee while their boss filled them in on what was to come.
Now safely erased.
Rebus searched in the drawers of the nearest desks until he found a marker. He began to write on the board, starting at the top and working down, with lines branching off to the sides. Some words he double underlined; others he encircled; a few he stuck question marks after. When he was finished, he stood back and surveyed his mind map of the Clootie Well killings. It was Siobhan who’d taught him about such maps. She seldom worked a case without them, though usually they stayed in her drawer or briefcase. She would bring them out to remind herself of something—some avenue not yet explored or connection meriting further inspection. It took a while for her to own up to their existence. Why? Because she’d thought he would laugh at her. But in a case as apparently complex as this, a mind map was the perfect tool, because when you started to look at it, the complexity vanished, leaving just a central core.
Trevor Guest.
The anomaly, his body attacked with unusual viciousness. Dr. Gilreagh had warned them to look out for feints, and she’d been right. The whole case had been almost nothing but a magician’s misdirection. Rebus slid his backside onto one of the desks. It gave only the mildest creak of complaint. His legs made little paddling motions as they hung above the floor. His palms were pressed against the surface of the desk on either side of him. He leaned forward slightly, gazing at the writing on the wall, the arrows and underlinings and question marks. He started to see ways to resolve those few questions. He started to see the whole picture, the one the killer had been trying to disguise.
And then he walked out of the office and the station, into the fresh air and across the road. Headed to the nearest shop and realized he didn’t really want anything. Bought cigarettes and a lighter and some chewing gum. Added the afternoon edition of the Evening News. Decided to call Siobhan at the hospital to ask how much longer she would be.
“I’m here,” she told him. Meaning St. Leonard’s. “Where the hell are you?”
“I must just have missed you.” The shopkeeper called out as he pulled open the door to leave. Rebus twitched his mouth in apology and reached into his pocket to pay the man. Where the hell was his...? Must’ve given Barclay his last two twenties. He pulled out some loose change instead, poured it onto the counter.
“Not enough for cigarettes,” the elderly Asian complained. Rebus shrugged and handed them back.
“Where are you?” Siobhan was asking into his ear.
“Buying chewing gum.”
And a lighter, he could have added.
But no cigarettes.
They sat down with mugs of instant coffee, silent for the first minute or so. Then Rebus thought to ask about Bain.
“Ironically,” she said, “given the amount of painkillers he’d scarfed, the first thing he complained of was a thumping headache.”
“My fault in a way,” Rebus told her, explaining first of all about his morning conversation with Bain, and then about his chat the night before with Molly.
“So we have a falling-out over Tench’s corpse,” Siobhan said, “and you head straight to a lap-dancing club?”
Rebus shrugged, deciding he had been right to leave out the visit to Cafferty’s home.
“Well,” Siobhan went on with a sigh, “while we’re playing the self-blame game...” And she filled him in on Bain and T in the Park and Denise Wylie, at
the end of which there was another lengthy silence. Rebus was on his fifth piece of chewing gum—didn’t really go with coffee, but he needed some outlet for the current that was pounding through him.
“You really think Ellen’s turned her sister in?” he eventually asked.
“What else could she do?”
He gave a shrug, then watched as Siobhan picked up a handset and made a call to Craigmillar.
“Guy you want is DS McManus,” he informed her. She looked at him as if to say, How the hell do you know that? He decided it was time to get up and find a wastebasket in which to deposit the wad of flavorless gum. When she finished the call, Siobhan joined him in front of the whiteboard.
“Pair of them are there right now. McManus is going easy on Denise. Figures she could play the mental cruelty card.” She paused. “When was it exactly that you spoke to him?”
Rebus deflected the question by pointing to the board. “See what I’ve done here, Shiv? Taken a leaf out of your book, so to speak.” He tapped the middle of the board with his knuckles. “And it all boils down to Trevor Guest.”
“Theoretically?” she added.
“Evidence comes later.” He started to trace the time line of the killings with a finger. “Say Trevor Guest did kill Ben Webster’s mother. In fact, we don’t need to say that at all. It’s enough that Guest’s killer believed he did. The killer sticks Guest’s name into a search engine and comes up with BeastWatch. That’s what gives the killer the idea. Make it look like there’s a serial killer at large. The police are fooled as a result, looking in all the wrong places for the motive. Killer knows about the G8, so decides to leave a few clues right there under our noses, knowing they’ll be found. Killer was never a BeastWatch subscriber, so knows they’ve got nothing to fear. We’ll be run ragged tracking down all the people who were, and warning all the other sex attackers...and with the G8 and everything, chances are the investigation will end up tying itself in knots too tight ever to be unraveled. Remember what Gilreagh said—the ‘display’ was slightly wrong. She was right, because it was only ever Guest the killer wanted...only ever Guest.” He prodded the name again. “The man who’d torn the Webster family apart. Rurality and anomalies, Siobhan...and being led up the garden path...”
“But how could the killer have known that?” Siobhan felt obliged to ask.
“By having access to the original inquiry, maybe going through it all with a fine-tooth comb. Going to the Borders and asking around, listening in on the local gossip.”
She was standing next to him, staring at the board. “You’re saying Cyril Colliar and Eddie Isley died as a diversion?”
“Worked, too. If we’d been running a full-scale inquiry, we might have missed the Kelso connection.” Rebus gave a short, harsh laugh. “I seem to remember I gave a snort when Gilreagh started talking about the countryside and deep woods near human dwellings.” Is this the sort of terrain the victims inhabited? “Dead on, Doc,” he said in an undertone.
Siobhan ran her finger along Ben Webster’s name. “So why did he kill himself?”
“How do you mean?”
“Well, do you think it was the guilt finally catching up with him? He’s killed three men when only one was necessary. He’s under a lot of pressure because of the G8. We’ve just identified the patch from Cyril Colliar’s jacket. He starts to panic that we will catch him—is that how you see it?”
“I’m not even sure he knew about the patch,” Rebus said quietly. “And how would he have gone about procuring some heroin for those lethal injections?”
“Why are you asking me?” Siobhan gave a short laugh.
“Because you’re the one who’s accusing an innocent man. No access to hard drugs...no easy access to police files...” Rebus traced the line from Ben Webster to his sister. “Stacey, on the other hand—”
“Stacey?”
“Is an undercover cop. Probably means she knows a few dealers. She’s spent the past few months infiltrating anarchist groups—told me herself, they tend to base themselves outside London these days—Leeds and Manchester and Bradford. Guest died in Newcastle, Isley in Carlisle—both a manageable drive from the Midlands. As a cop, she’d be able to access any information she liked.”
“Stacey’s the killer?”
“Using your wonderful system”—Rebus slapped his hand against the board again—“it’s the obvious conclusion.”
Siobhan was shaking her head slowly. “But she was...I mean, we talked to her.”
“She’s good,” Rebus conceded. “She’s very good. And now she’s back in London.”
“We’ve no proof...not a shred of evidence.”
“True, up to a point. But when you listen to Duncan Barclay’s tape, you’ll hear him say she was in Kelso last year, asking around. She even spoke to him. He mentioned Trevor Guest to her. Trevor, with his housebreaker’s credentials. Trevor who was in the area, same time Mrs. Webster was killed.” Rebus gave a shrug, to let her know he had no trouble accepting any of this. “All three were attacked from behind, Siobhan, whacked hard so they couldn’t retaliate—just the way a woman would do it.” He paused. there’s her name. Gilreagh said there could be something significant about trees.”
“Stacey’s not the name of a tree...”
He shook his head. “But Santal is. It means ‘sandalwood.’ I always thought sandalwood was just a perfume. Turns out it’s a tree.” He shook his head in wonder at Stacey Webster’s intricate construction. “And she left Guest’s cash card,” he concluded, “because she wanted to be sure we’d have his name...leading us by the nose. A bloody smoke screen, just like Gilreagh said.”
Siobhan was studying the board again, probing the schematic for flaws. “So what happened to Ben?” she asked at last.
“I can tell you what I think...”
“Go on then.” She folded her arms.
“Guards at the castle thought there was an intruder. My guess is, it was Stacey. She knew her brother was there and was bursting to tell him. We’d found the patch—she’d probably heard about that from Steelforth. Thought it was time to share news of her exploits with her brother. As far as she was concerned, Guest’s death meant closure. And, by Christ, she’d made sure he paid for his crimes—mutilating his body. She relishes the challenge of sneaking past the guards. Maybe she’s sent him a message, so he comes out to meet her. She tells him everything—”
“And he offs himself?”
Rebus scratched the back of his head. “I think she’s the only one who can tell us. In fact, if we play it right, Ben’s going to be crucial in getting a confession. Think how hellish she must be feeling—that’s her whole family gone now, and the one thing she thought would bring her and Ben closer together has actually destroyed him. And it’s all her fault.”
“She did a pretty good job of hiding it.”
“Behind all those masks she wears,” Rebus agreed. “All these warring sides to her personality...”
“Steady,” Siobhan warned. “You’re starting to sound like Gilreagh.”
He burst out laughing, but stopped just as abruptly and scratched at his head again, eventually running the hand through his hair. “Do you think it holds up?”
Siobhan puffed out her cheeks and exhaled loudly. “I need to give it a bit more thought,” she conceded. “I mean...scrawled on a board like this, I can see it makes a kind of sense. I just don’t see how we’ll prove any of it.”
“We start with what happened to Ben...”
“Fine, but if she denies it, we’re left with nothing. You’ve just said so yourself, John, she wears all these masks. Nothing to stop her slipping one on when we start asking about her brother.”
“One way to find out,” Rebus said. He was holding Stacey Webster’s business card, the one with her cell number.
“Think for a minute,” Siobhan counseled. “Soon as you call her, you’re giving her advance warning.”
“Then we go to London.”
“And hope Steelforth let
s us talk to her?”
Rebus considered for a moment. “Yes,” he said quietly, “Steelforth...Funny how quickly he knocked her back to London, isn’t it? Almost as if he knew we were getting close.”
“You think he knew?”
“There was surveillance video at the castle. He told me there was nothing to see, but now I’m wondering.”
“There’s no way he’s going to let us go public,” Siobhan argued. “One of his officers turns out to be a killer and might even have done away with her own brother. Not exactly the PR he’s looking for.”
“Which is why he might be willing to do a deal.”
“And what exactly have we got to offer?”
“Control,” Rebus stated. “We step back and let him do it his way. If he turns us down, we go to Mairie Henderson.”
Siobhan spent the best part of a minute considering the options. Then she saw Rebus’s eyes widen.
“And we don’t even have to go to London,” he told her.
“Why not?”
“Because Steelforth’s not in London.”
“Then where is he?”
“Under our bloody noses,” Rebus explained, starting to wipe the board clean.
By which he meant: an hour’s rapid drive to the west.
They spent the whole trip going through Rebus’s theory. Trevor Guest hightailing it out of Newcastle—maybe owing money on some deal. Quick route to the handily anonymous border country. Scratches around, but can’t find a fix and hasn’t any money. His one area of expertise: burglary. But Mrs. Webster is home, and he ends up killing her. Panics and flees to Edinburgh, where he assuages his guilt by working with the elderly, with people like the woman he murdered. Not sexually assaulted—he liked them a lot younger.
Meanwhile—Stacey Webster is destroyed by her mother’s murder, heartbroken when the death destroys her father too. Using her detective’s skills to track down the likely culprit, only he’s already behind bars. But due out soon. Giving her time to plan her revenge. She’s found Guest on BeastWatch, alongside others like him. She picks her targets geographically—easy reach of her Midlands base. Her counter culture existence gives her access to heroin. Does she get Guest to confess before she murders him? It doesn’t really matter: by then she’s already killed Eddie Isley. Adds one more, to reinforce the notion that a serial killer is at large, then stops. Sated and at peace. Far as she’s concerned, she’s been cleaning scum off the streets. SO12’s G8 planning has led her to the Clootie Well, and she knows it’s the perfect spot. Someone will happen upon it. And they’ll spot the clues. To be certain, she ensures they have one name straightaway...the only name that matters.