The presence of Linford seemed only to spur Carswell on. He spun on his heels, facing his subjects again.
‘Maybe it was a mistake. We all make slip-ups, can’t be helped. But, by Christ, a lot of information seems to have been pushed to the surface!’ Another pause. ‘Maybe it was blackmail.’ And now a shrug. ‘Someone like Steven Holly, he’s lower than a mole on the evolutionary ladder. He’s pond-life. He’s the scum you sometimes see there.’ He waved a hand slowly in front of him, as if skimming water. ‘He thinks he’s made us dirty, but he hasn’t. Game’s not near over, we all know that. We’re a team. That’s how we work! Anyone who doesn’t like that can always ask to be transferred back to normal duties. It’s that simple, ladies and gentlemen. But just think of this, will you?’ He dropped his voice. ‘Think of the victim, think of her family. Think of all the upset this is going to cause them. They’re the ones we’re slogging our guts out for here, not the newspaper readers or the scribes who provide them with their daily gruel.
‘You might have some grievance against me, or someone else on the team, but why the hell would you want to put them – the family and friends, getting ready for tomorrow’s funeral – why would anyone want to do something like this to people like them?’ He let the question hang, saw faces bow in collective shame as he scanned them. Took another deep breath, his voice rising again.
‘I’m going to find whoever did this. Don’t think I won’t. Don’t think you can trust Mr Steven Holly to protect you. He doesn’t care a damn for you. If you want to stay buried, you’ll have to feed him more stories, and more, and more! He’s not going to let you rise back up to the world you knew before. You’re different now. You’re a mole. His mole. And he’ll never let you rest, never let you forget it.’
A glance in Gill Templer’s direction. She was standing by the wall, arms folded, her own eyes scanning the room.
‘I know this probably all sounds like the headmaster’s warning. Some pupil’s smashed a window or daubed graffiti on the bike sheds.’ He shook his head. ‘I’m talking to all of you like this because it’s important we’re clear on what’s at stake. Talk might not cost lives, but that doesn’t mean it should be squandered. Careful what you say, who you say it to. If the person responsible wants to come forward, that’s fine. You can do it now, or later. I’ll be here for an hour or so, and I can always be reached at my office. Think what’s at stake if you don’t. Not part of a team any more, not on the side of the angels. But in a journalist’s pocket. For as long as he wants you there.’ This final pause seemed to last an eternity, nobody coughed or cleared their throat. Carswell slid his hands into his pockets, head angled as though inspecting his shoes. ‘DCS Templer?’ he said.
And now Gill Templer stepped forward, and the room relaxed a little.
‘Don’t go getting the holiday mood just yet!’ she called out. ‘Okay, there’s been a leak to the press, and what we need now is some damage limitation. Nobody talks to anybody unless they run it past me first, understood?’ There were murmurs of assent.
Templer went on, but Rebus wasn’t listening. He hadn’t wanted to listen to Carswell either, but it had been hard to block the man out. Impressive stuff really. He’d even put some thought into the image of the garden mole, almost making it work without becoming laughable.
But mostly Rebus’s attention had been on the people around him. Gill and Bill Pryde were distant figures, whose discomfort he could almost ignore. Bill’s big chance to shine; Gill’s first major inquiry as a DCS. Hardly what either of them would have wanted …
And closer to home: Siobhan, concentrating hard on the ACC’s speech, maybe learning something from it. She was always on the lookout for a new lesson. Grant Hood, someone else with everything to lose, dejection written into his face and shoulders, the way he held his arms across chest and stomach, as though to ward off blows. Rebus knew Grant was in trouble. A leak to the press, you looked at liaison first. They were the ones with the contacts: an unwise word; the drunk and friendly banter at the end of a good meal. Even if not to blame, a good liaison officer might have been all that was needed in the way of Gill’s ‘damage limitation’. With experience, you’d know how to bend a journalist’s will to your own, even if it meant a bribe of some kind: first dibs on some later story or stories …
Rebus wondered at the extent of the damage. Quizmaster would now know what he’d probably always suspected: that it wasn’t just him and Siobhan, that she was keeping her colleagues apprised. Her face didn’t give anything away, but Rebus knew she was already wondering how to handle it, how to phrase her next communication with Quizmaster, supposing he wanted to keep playing … The Arthur’s Seat coffins connection annoyed him only because Jean had been mentioned by name in the story, cited as ‘the Museum’s resident expert’ on the case. He recalled that Holly had been persistent, leaving messages for Jean, wanting to speak to her. Could she have said something to him unwittingly? He didn’t think so.
No, he had the culprit in his sights. Ellen Wylie looked like she’d been wrung out. There were tangles in her hair where she hadn’t been concentrating with the brush. Her eyes had a resigned look. She kept staring at the floor during Carswell’s speech, and hadn’t shifted when he’d finished. She was still looking at the floor now, trying to find the will to do anything else. Rebus knew she’d spoken on the phone with Holly yesterday morning. It had been to do with the German student, but afterwards she’d seemed lifeless. Rebus had thought it was because she was working another dead end. Now he knew different. When she’d walked away from the Caledonian Hotel, she’d been heading either for Holly’s office or for some wine bar or café nearby.
He’d got to her.
Maybe Shug Davidson would realise as much; maybe her colleagues at West End would remember how different she’d been after that phone call. But Rebus knew they wouldn’t shop her. It was something you didn’t do. Not to a colleague, a pal.
Wylie had been unravelling for days. He’d taken her into the coffin case thinking maybe he could help. But then maybe she was right – maybe he’d been treating her as just another ‘cripple’, someone else who might be bent to his will, do some of the hard graft on something which would always be his case.
Maybe he’d had ulterior motives.
Wylie had probably seen it as a way of getting back at all of them: Gill Templer, cause of her public humiliation; Siobhan, for whom Templer still had such high hopes; Grant Hood, the new golden boy, coping where Wylie had not … And Rebus, too, the manipulator, the user, grinding her down.
He saw her left with two alternatives: let it all out, or burst with frustration and anger. If he’d accepted her offer of a drink that night … maybe she’d have opened up and he’d have listened. Maybe that was all she’d needed. But he hadn’t been there. He’d sneaked off to a pub by himself.
Nice one, John. Very smoothly played. For some reason an image came to mind: some old blues stalwart, turning up for ‘Ellen Wylie’s Blues’. Maybe John Lee Hooker or B. B. King … He caught himself and snapped out of it. He’d almost retreated into music, almost got to a lyric that would tide him over.
But now Carswell was reading from a list of names, and Rebus caught his own as Carswell snapped it out. DC Hood … DC Clarke … DS Wylie … The coffins; the German student – they’d worked those cases, and now the ACC wanted to see them. Faces turned, curious. Carswell was announcing that he’d see them in the ‘boss’s office’, meaning the station commander’s, commandeered for the occasion.
Rebus tried to catch Bill Pryde’s eye as they trooped out, but with Carswell already having exited, Bill was searching his pockets for more gum, his eyes trying to locate his clipboard. Rebus was the tail of this lethargic snake, Hood in front of him, then Wylie and Siobhan. Templer and Carswell at the head. Derek Linford was standing outside the station commander’s office, opened the door for them and then stood back. He tried to stare Rebus down, but Rebus wasn’t having that. They were still at it when Gill Templer clos
ed the door, breaking the spell.
Carswell was sliding his chair in towards the desk. ‘You’ve already heard my spiel,’ he told them, ‘so I won’t bore you again. If the leak came from anywhere, it came from one of you. That little shit Holly knew way too much.’ As his mouth snapped shut his eyes looked up at them for the first time.
‘Sir,’ Grant Hood said, taking a half-step forward and folding his hands behind his back, ‘as liaison officer it should have been my job to damp the story down. I’d just like to publicly apologise for—’
‘Yes, yes, son, I got all that from you last night. What I want now is a simple confession.’
‘With respect, sir,’ Siobhan Clarke said, ‘we’re not criminals here. We’ve had to ask questions, put out feelers. Steve Holly could just have been putting two and two together …’
Carswell just stared at her, then said: ‘DCS Templer?’
‘Steve Holly,’ Templer began, ‘doesn’t work that way if he can possibly help it. He’s not the brightest bulb in the chandelier, but he’s as sneaky as they come, and ruthless with it.’ The way she spoke was telling Clarke something, was saying to her that this had all been gone over already. ‘Some of the other journos, yes, I think they could take what’s out there in the public domain and make something of it, but not Holly.’
‘But he did work the case of the German student,’ Clarke persisted.
‘And shouldn’t have known about the gaming connection,’ Templer said, almost by rote: another argument that the senior officers had tried out between themselves.
‘It was a long night,’ Carswell told them, ‘trust me. We’ve been over it time and again. And it still seems to come down to the four of you.’
‘There’s been outside assistance,’ Grant Hood argued. ‘A museum curator, a retired pathologist …’
Rebus laid a hand on Hood’s arm, silencing him. ‘It was me,’ he said. Heads turned towards him. ‘I think it might have been me.’
He concentrated on not looking in Ellen Wylie’s direction, but was aware of her eyes burning into him.
‘Early on, I was out at Falls talking to a woman called Bev Dodds. She’d found the coffin by the waterfall. Steve Holly had already been sniffing around, and she’d given him the story …’
‘And?’
‘And I let it slip that there’d been more coffins … let slip to her, I mean.’ He was remembering the slip – a slip Jean had in fact made. ‘If she yapped to Holly, he’d have been on a flyer. I had Jean Burchill with me – she’s the curator. That might have given him the Arthur’s Seat connection …’
Carswell was staring at him coldly. ‘And the Internet game?’
Rebus shook his head. ‘That one I can’t explain, but it’s not exactly a well-kept secret. We’ve been shoving the clues at all the victim’s friends, asking if she’d asked them for help … any one of them could have told Holly.’
Carswell was still staring. ‘You’re taking the fall for this?’
‘I’m saying it could be my fault. Just that one slip …’ He turned to the others. ‘I can’t begin to tell you how sorry I am. I let all of us down.’ His gaze skirted Wylie’s face, concentrating on her hair.
‘Sir,’ Siobhan Clarke said, ‘what DI Rebus has just admitted could go for any one of us. I’m sure I may have said a little more than I should on occasion …’
Carswell wafted his hand in front of him, quieting her.
‘DI Rebus,’ he said, ‘I’m suspending you from active duty, pending further inquiries.’
‘You can’t do that!’ Ellen Wylie blurted out.
‘Shut up, Wylie!’ Gill Templer hissed.
‘DI Rebus knows the consequences,’ Carswell was saying.
Rebus nodded. ‘Someone needs to be punished.’ He paused. ‘For the sake of the team.’
‘That’s right,’ Carswell said, nodding. ‘Otherwise mistrust begins its corrosive influence. I don’t think any of us wants that, do we?’
‘No, sir.’ Grant Hood’s voice proved a lone one.
‘Go home, DI Rebus,’ Carswell said. ‘Write your version down, leaving nothing out. We’ll talk again later.’
‘Yes, sir,’ Rebus said, turning and opening the door. Linford was directly outside, and smiling with one side of his face. Rebus didn’t doubt he’d been listening. It struck him suddenly that Carswell and Linford might well conspire to make the case against him look as black as possible.
He’d just given them the perfect excuse for getting rid of him for good.
His flat was ready to be put on the market, and he called the selling solicitor and told her so.
‘Thursday evenings and Sunday afternoons for viewing?’ she asked.
‘I suppose so.’ He was sitting in his chair, staring out of the window. ‘Is there any way I can … not be here?’
‘You want someone to show the flat for you?’
‘Yes.’
‘We have people who’ll do that for a small fee.’
‘Good.’ He didn’t want to be around when strangers were opening doors, touching things … He didn’t think he’d make the best salesman for the place.
‘We already have a photograph,’ the solicitor was saying. ‘So the ad could go in the ESPC guide as early as Thursday next.’
‘Not the day after tomorrow?’
‘I’m afraid not …’
When he’d finished the call, he walked into the hall. New light switches, new sockets. The place was a lot brighter, the fresh coats of paint helping. Not much clutter – he’d made three trips to the dump-site on Old Dalkeith Road: a coat-rack he’d inherited from somewhere; boxes of old magazines and newspapers; a two-bar electric fire with frayed cable; the chest of drawers from Samantha’s old room, still decorated with stickers of eighties pop stars … The carpets were back down. A drinking acquaintance from Swany’s Bar had lent a hand, asking if he wanted them nailed at the edges. Rebus hadn’t seen the point.
‘New owners will turf them out anyway.’
‘You should’ve had these floors sanded, John. They’d’ve come up a treat …’
Rebus had whittled his possessions down until they wouldn’t fill a one-bedroom flat, never mind the three he currently possessed. But still he had nowhere to go. He knew what the market was like in Edinburgh. If Arden Street went on the market next Thursday, it could go to a closing date the week after. Two weeks from now, he could find himself homeless.
And, come to that, jobless.
He’d been expecting phone calls, and eventually one came. It was Gill Templer.
Her opening words: ‘You stupid bastard.’
‘Hi there, Gill.’
‘You could have kept your mouth shut.’
‘I suppose I could.’
‘Always the willing martyr, eh, John?’ She sounded angry, tired and under pressure. He could see reasons for all three.
‘I just told the truth,’ he said.
‘That would be a first … not that I believe it for a minute.’
‘No?’
‘Come on, John. Ellen Wylie practically had “guilty” stamped on her forehead.’
‘You think I was shielding her?’
‘I don’t exactly take you for Sir Galahad. You’ll have had your reasons. Maybe it was simply to piss off Carswell; you know he hates your guts.’
Rebus didn’t like to concede that she might be right. ‘How’s everything else?’ he asked.
Her anger was played out. ‘Liaison’s snowed under. I’m giving a helping hand.’
Rebus bet she was busy: all the other papers and media, trying to play catch-up with Steve Holly.
‘What about you?’ she asked.
‘What about me?’
‘What are you going to do?’
‘I haven’t really thought about it.’
‘Well …’
‘I’d better let you get back, Gill. Thanks for calling.’
‘Bye, John.’
As he put the phone down, it started ringing agai
n. Grant Hood this time.
‘I just wanted to thank you for getting us off the hook like that.’
‘You weren’t on the hook, Grant.’
‘I was, believe me.’
‘I hear you’re busy.’
‘How … ?’ Grant paused. ‘Oh, DCS Templer’s been on to you.’
‘Is she helping out or taking over?’
‘Hard to say at the minute.’
‘She’s not in the room with you, is she?’
‘No, she’s in her own office. When we came out of that meeting with the ACC … she was the one who looked most relieved.’
‘Maybe because she has the most to lose, Grant. You probably can’t see that right now, but it’s true.’
‘I’m sure you’re right.’ But he didn’t sound convinced that his own survival wasn’t more important in the scheme of things.
‘Off you go, Grant, and thanks for finding the time to call.’
‘See you around some time.’
‘You never know your luck …’
Rebus put the phone down and waited, staring at it. But no more calls came. He went to the kitchen to make a mug of tea, and discovered he was out of tea-bags and milk. Without bothering with a jacket, he headed downstairs and out to the local deli, where he added some ham, rolls and mustard to the shopping. Back at the main door to the tenement, someone was trying one of the buzzers.
‘Come on, I know you’re there …’
‘Hello, Siobhan.’
She turned towards him. ‘Christ, you gave me a …’ She put a hand to her throat. Rebus stretched an arm past her and unlocked the door.
‘Because I sneaked up on you, or because you thought I was sitting upstairs with my wrists slashed?’ He held the door open for her.
‘What? No, that’s not what I was thinking.’ But the colour was rising to her cheeks.
‘Well, just to stop you worrying, if I’m ever going to top myself, it’ll be with a lot of drink and some pills. And by “a lot” I mean two or three days’ worth, so you’ll have plenty of warning.’