“Shiv? It’s Ray Duff. I’m bloody well earning that day out—”
“What day out?”
“The one you owe me...” He paused. “Except that’s not the deal you made with Rebus, is it?”
Siobhan smiled. “All depends. Are you at the lab?”
“Working my ass off on your behalf.”
“The stuff from Clootie Well?”
“Might have something for you, though I’m not sure you’re going to like it. How soon can you get here?”
“Half an hour.” She turned away from the sudden blare of the air horn.
“No prizes for guessing where you are,” Duff’s voice said. “I’ve got it on the news channel here.”
“The march or the demonstration?”
“Demo, naturally. Happy, law-abiding marchers hardly make for a story, even when they number quarter of a million.”
“Quarter of a million?”
“That’s what they’re saying. See you in half an hour.”
“Bye, Ray.” She ended the call. A figure like that...more than half the population of Edinburgh. It was like three million on the streets of London. And sixty black-clad figures hogging the news cycle for the next hour or two...
Because after that, all eyes would turn to the Live 8 concert in London.
No, no, no, she thought, too cynical, Siobhan; you’re thinking like John bloody Rebus. Nobody could ignore a human chain encircling the city, a ribbon of white, all that passion and hope...
Minus one.
Had she ever planned to stick around, add her own small self to the statistics? No chance of that now. She could apologize later to her parents. For now, she was on the move, walking away from the Meadows. Her best bet: St. Leonard’s, the nearest police station. Hitch a lift in a patrol car; hijack one if need be. Her own car was sitting in the garage Rebus had recommended. Mechanic had said to call him on Monday. She remembered how one owner of a 4x4 had apparently moved her car out of town for the duration, lest rioters should target it. Just one more scare story, or so she’d thought at the time...
Santal didn’t appear to notice her leave.
“...can’t even mail a letter,” Ray Duff was saying. “They’ve locked up all the mailboxes in case someone decides to put a bomb in one.”
“Some of the shop fronts on Princes Street are boarded up,” Siobhan added. “What do you reckon it is Ann Summers is afraid of?”
“Basque separatists?” Rebus guessed. “Any chance of us getting to the point?”
Duff snorted. “He’s afraid he’ll miss the big reunion.”
“Reunion?” Siobhan looked at Rebus.
“Pink Floyd,” Rebus answered. “But if it’s anything like McCartney and U2, I’m well shut of it.”
The three were standing in one of the labs belonging to the Lothian and Borders Forensic Science Unit on Howdenhall Road. Duff, midthirties with short brown hair and a pronounced widow’s peak, was polishing his glasses on a corner of his white lab coat. The rise of television’s CSI franchise had had, to Rebus’s mind, a detrimental effect on all the Howdenhall techs. Despite their lack of resources, glamour, and pounding sound track, they all seemed to think they were actors. Moreover, some of the CID had started to agree and would ask them to replicate the TV shows’ most far-fetched forensic techniques. Duff had apparently decided that his own role would be that of eccentric genius. As a result, he had dispensed with his contact lenses and reverted to NHS-style specs with thick black frames, the better to complement the row of multicolored pens in his top pocket. Additionally, a line of alligator clips was attached to one lapel. As Rebus had pointed out on arrival, he looked like he’d walked out of a Devo video.
And now he was stringing them along.
“In your own time,” Rebus encouraged him. They were standing in front of a workbench on which various pieces of cloth had been laid out. Duff had placed numbered squares beside each one, and smaller squares—apparently color-coded—next to any stains or blemishes on each article. “Sooner we’re done, sooner you can get back to polishing the chrome on your MG.”
“That reminds me,” Siobhan said. “Thanks for offering me to Ray.”
“You should have seen first prize,” Rebus muttered. “What are we looking at, Prof?”
“Mud and bird shit mostly.” Duff rested his hands on his hips. “Brown for the former, gray for the latter.” He nodded at the colored squares.
“Leaving blue and pink...”
“Blue is for stuff that needs further analysis.”
“Tell me pink is for lipstick,” Siobhan said quietly.
“Blood, actually.” Duff spoke with a flourish.
“Oh, good,” Rebus responded, eyes fixing on Siobhan. “How many?”
“Two so far. Numbered one and two. One is a pair of brown cord trousers. Blood can be a bugger to make out against a brown background—resembles rust. Two belongs to a sports shirt, pale yellow, as you can see.”
“Not really,” Rebus said, leaning over for a closer look. The shirt was caked with dirt. “What’s that on the left breast? Badge of some kind?”
“What it actually says is Keogh’s Garage. The blood spatter is on the back.”
“Spatter?”
Duff nodded. “Consistent with a blow to the head. Something like a hammer, you make contact, break the skin, and when you draw the hammer away, the blood flies off in all directions.”
“Keogh’s Garage?” Siobhan’s question was directed at Rebus, who merely shrugged. Duff, however, cleared his throat.
“Nothing in the Perthshire phone book. Or Edinburgh, come to that.”
“Fast work, Ray,” Siobhan said approvingly.
“Another brownie point there, Ray,” Rebus added with a wink. “How about contestant number one?”
Duff nodded. “Not spatter this time—dollops on the right leg, around the level of the knee. Whack someone on the head, you’ll get some drips like that.”
“You’re saying we’ve got three victims, one attacker?”
Duff shrugged. “No way to prove it, of course. But ask yourself: what are the chances of three victims having three different attackers, all ending up in the same obscure location?”
“You’ve got a point, Ray,” Rebus conceded.
“And we’ve got a serial killer,” Siobhan said into the silence. “Different blood types, I take it?” She watched Duff nod. “Any idea which order they might have died in?”
“CC Rider is the freshest. I’d guess the sports shirt is the oldest.”
“And no other clues from the cords?”
Duff shook his head slowly, then dug into his lab-coat pocket and produced a clear plastic envelope. “Unless you count this, of course.”
“What is that?” Siobhan asked.
“Cash-machine card,” Duff told her, relishing the moment. “Name of Trevor Guest. So never let me hear you say I don’t earn my little rewards...”
Back in the fresh air, Rebus lit a cigarette. Siobhan paced the length of a parking bay, arms folded.
“One killer,” she stated.
“Yep.”
“Two named victims, the other a mechanic...”
“Or a car salesman,” Rebus mused. “Or just someone who had access to a shirt advertising a garage.”
“Thanks for refusing to narrow the search.”
He shrugged. “If we’d found a scarf with a soccer team’s logo on it, would we be homing in on the team?”
“All right, point taken.” She stopped in her tracks. “Do you need to get back to the autopsy?”
He shook his head. “One of us is going to have to break the news to Macrae.”
She nodded. “I’ll do it.”
“Not a hell of a lot more to be done today.”
“Back to Live 8 then?”
He gave another shrug. “And the Meadows for yourself?” he guessed.
She nodded, her mind elsewhere. “Can you think of a worse week for this to happen?”
“Why they
pay us the big bucks,” Rebus told her, drawing the nicotine deep.
A fat parcel was waiting for Rebus at the door of his apartment. Siobhan was heading back down to the Meadows. Rebus had told her to drop by later for a drink. He realized his living room was stuffy so forced open the window. He could hear sounds from the march: echoey, amplified voices; drums and whistles. Live 8 was on TV, but not a band he recognized. He kept the sound down, opened the parcel. There was a note inside from Mairie—You don’t deserve it—followed by pages and pages of printout. News stories about Pennen Industries, dating right back to its separation from the MoD. Snippets from the business pages, detailing rising profits. Profiles praising Richard Pennen, accompanied by photos of him. Every inch the successful businessman: well-groomed, pin-striped, coiffed. Salt-and-pepper hair, even though he was still in his midforties. Steel-rimmed glasses and a square-set jaw below perfect-looking teeth.
Richard Pennen had been an MoD employee, something of a whiz with microchips and software programs. He stressed that his company didn’t sell arms as such, just the components to make them as efficient as possible. “Which has to be better than the alternative, for all concerned,” he was quoted as saying. Rebus flicked quickly though interviews and background features. Nothing to link Pennen to Ben Webster, except that both dealt with aspects of trade. No reason why the company wouldn’t treat MPs to five-star hotel rooms. Rebus turned to the next set of stapled sheets and gave a silent thank-you to Mairie. She’d added a list of stuff about Ben Webster himself. Not that there was much about his career as an MP. But five years back the media had shown sudden interest in the family, following the shocking attack on Webster’s mother. She and her husband had been vacationing in the Borders, renting a cottage in the countryside outside Kelso. He’d gone into town one afternoon for supplies and had returned to find the cottage ransacked and his wife dead, strangled with a cord from the window blinds. She had been beaten but not sexually assaulted. Money was missing from her bag, as was her cell phone. Nothing else had been taken.
Just some loose cash and a phone.
And a woman’s life.
The inquiry had dragged on for weeks. Rebus looked at photos of the isolated cottage, the victim, her grieving husband, the two children—Ben and Stacey. He lifted from his pocket the card Stacey had given him, rubbed its edges with his fingers as he continued to read. Ben the MP for Dundee North; Stacey the cop from the Met, whom colleagues described as “diligent and well liked.” The cottage was placed on the edge of woodland, amid rolling hills, no other habitation visible. Husband and wife had liked to take long walks and were regularly seen in Kelso’s bars and eateries. The region had been their destination of choice for many holidays. Councillors for the area were quick to point out that the Borders “remains largely crime-free and a haven of peace.” Didn’t want the tourists scared off...
The killer was never caught. The story drifted to the inside pages, then deeper into the paper, reappearing sporadically as a paragraph or two when Ben Webster was being profiled. There was one in-depth interview with him, dating back to when he’d been made PPS. He hadn’t wanted to talk about the tragedy.
Tragedies—plural, actually. The father hadn’t lasted long after his wife’s murder. His death came from natural causes. “The will to live just left him” was how one neighbor in Broughty Ferry had put it. “And now he’s at peace with the love of his life.”
Rebus looked again at the photograph of Stacey, taken on the day of her mother’s funeral. She’d gone on TV, apparently, appealing for information. Stronger than her brother, who’d decided not to join her at the press conference. Rebus really hoped she would stay strong...
Suicide seemed the obvious conclusion, grief finally catching up with the orphaned son. Except that Ben Webster had screamed as he fell. And the guards had been alerted to an intruder. Besides, why that particular night? That location? The world’s media hitting town...
A very public gesture.
And Steelforth...well, Steelforth wanted it all swept away. Nothing must deflect attention from the G8. Nothing must be allowed to perturb the various delegations. Rebus had to admit, the reason he was holding on to the case was simply to piss off the Special Branch man. He got up from the table and went into the kitchen, made himself another mug of coffee, and brought it back through to the living room. He changed channels on the TV but couldn’t find any feeds from the march. The Hyde Park crowd looked to be enjoying themselves, though there was some sort of enclosure directly in front of the stage, sparsely filled. Security maybe; either that or media. Geldof wasn’t asking for money this time around; what Live 8 wanted was to focus hearts and minds. Rebus wondered how many concert-goers would afterward heed the call and trek the four hundred miles north to Scotland. He lit a cigarette to go with his coffee, sat down in an armchair, and stared at the screen. He thought again of the Clootie Well, of the ritual played out there. If Ray Duff was right, they had at least three victims, and a killer who had made a shrine of sorts. Did that mean someone local? How well known was the Clootie Well outside Auchterarder? Did it appear in travel books, tourist brochures? Had it been chosen for its proximity to the G8 summit, the killer guessing that all those extra police patrols were bound to mean his grim little offering was found? In which case, was his spree now finished?
Three victims...no way they were going to keep that away from the media. CC Rider...Keogh’s Garage...a cash card...The killer was making it easy for them; he wanted them to know he was out there. World’s press gathered in Scotland as never before, giving him an international stage. And Macrae would relish the opportunity. He’d be out there in front of them, chest puffed up as he answered their questions, Derek Starr right beside him.
Siobhan had said she would call Macrae from the march, let him know the lab’s findings. Ray Duff meantime would be doing more tests, trying for DNA fingerprints from the blood, seeing if any hairs or fibers could be isolated and identified. Rebus thought about Cyril Colliar again. Hardly a typical victim. Serial killers tended to prey on the weak and the marginalized. A case of wrong place, wrong time? Killed in Edinburgh, but the scrap from his jacket ends up in the woods in Auchterarder, just as Operation Sorbus is getting started. Sorbus: a kind of tree...the CC Rider’s patch left in a wooded glade...If there was any hint of a connection with the G8, Rebus knew the spooks would wrench the case out of Siobhan’s hands and out of his. Steelforth wouldn’t have it any other way. The killer taunting them.
Leaving calling cards.
There was a knock at his door. Had to be Siobhan. He stubbed out the cigarette, stood up, and took a look around the room. It wasn’t too bad: no empty beer cans or pizza boxes. Whiskey bottle by the chair; he picked it up, put it on the mantelpiece. Switched the TV to a news channel and headed for the door. Swung it open and recognized the face, felt his stomach clench.
“That’s your conscience salved then, is it?” he asked, feigning indifference.
“Pure as the driven fuckin’ snow, Rebus. But can you say the same?”
Not Siobhan. Morris Gerald Cafferty. Dressed in a white T-shirt bearing the slogan MAKE POVERTY HISTORY. Hands in trouser pockets. Slid them out slowly and held them up to show Rebus they were empty. A head the size of a bowling ball, shiny and all but hairless. Small, deep-set eyes. Glistening lips. No neck. Rebus made to shut the door on him, but Cafferty pressed a hand to it.
“That any way to treat an old pal?”
“Go to hell.”
“You look like you’ve beat me to it—did that shirt come off a scarecrow?”
“And who dresses you—the girls from What Not to Wear?”
Cafferty snorted. “I did meet them on breakfast TV, actually. See, isn’t this better? We’re having a nice wee chat.”
Rebus had stopped trying to close the door. “Hell are you doing here, Cafferty?”
Cafferty was examining his palms, brushing imaginary grime from them. “How long have you been living here, Rebus? Got to be thirty year
s.”
“So?”
“Ever hear of moving up in the world?”
“Christ, now it’s Location, Location, Location...”
“You’ve never tried to improve your situation, that’s what I can’t understand.”
“Maybe I should write a book about it.”
Cafferty grinned. “I’m thinking of a follow-up, charting a few more of our little disagreements.”
“Is that why you’re here? Memory needs refreshing, does it?”
Cafferty’s face darkened. “I’m here about my boy Cyril.”
“What about him?”
“I hear there’s been some progress. I want to know how much.”
“Who told you?”
“It’s true then?”
“Think I’d tell you even if it was?”
Cafferty gave a snarl, hands shooting forward, propelling Rebus backward into the hall, where he collided with the wall. Cafferty grabbed at him again, teeth bared, but Rebus was ready, managed to get a handful of the T-shirt. The two men wrestled, twisting and turning, moving farther down the hall until they were in the doorway to the living room. Neither had said a word, eyes and limbs doing their talking. But Cafferty glanced into the room and seemed to freeze. Rebus was able to free himself from his grasp.
“Jesus Christ.” Cafferty was staring at the two boxes on the sofa—part of the Colliar case notes, brought home from Gayfield the previous night. Lying on the top was one of the autopsy photos, and, just visible beneath, an older photograph of Cafferty himself. “What’s all this stuff doing here?” Cafferty asked, breathing heavily.
“None of your damned business.”
“You’re still trying to pin this on me.”
“Not as much as I was,” Rebus admitted. He walked over to the mantelpiece and grabbed the whiskey. Lifted his glass from the floor and poured. “It’ll be public knowledge soon enough,” he said, pausing to drink. “We think Colliar’s not the only victim.”
Cafferty’s eyes narrowed as he tried to take this in. “Who else?”
Rebus shook his head slowly. “Now get the hell out.”
“I can help,” Cafferty said. “I know people.”