Exit Music

  ‘With ideas as radical as these, Col, you should be running a brains trust.’

  ‘You’re in a mood,’ he stated.

  ‘Am I?’ she replied icily.

  ‘Sorry,’ he said.

  Another thing that was starting to annoy her: rather than argue his corner, he’d concede on just about any and every point.

  Until eight weeks back, Hawes had had a lover - a live-in lover at that. Colin had managed a few single-nighters and one girl who’d actually stuck with him for the best part of a month. Somehow, three weeks ago, they’d fallen into bed together after a night on the piss. Neither had really recovered from it since waking up, faces an inch apart, horror dawning.

  It was an accident.

  Best put behind us.

  And never mentioned.

  Forget it ever happened . . .

  But how could they? It had happened, and despite herself she’d quite like for it to happen again. She had transferred her annoyance with herself on to Colin, in the hope he might do something about it, but he was like some sort of sponge, just soaking it all up.

  ‘Wouldn’t surprise me,’ he said now, ‘if Shiv takes us all for a drink tonight. Keep the team together - it’s what good managers do.’

  ‘What you mean is, better that than having John Rebus to herself.’

  ‘You may have a point.’

  ‘On the other hand,’ Hawes added, ‘could be she’ll want young Todd all to herself . . .’

  He turned towards her. ‘You don’t really think so?’

  ‘Women work in mysterious ways, Colin.’

  ‘So I’ve noticed. Why do you think she brought him on to the team?’

  ‘Maybe she just fell for his charms.’

  ‘Seriously, though.’

  ‘The DCI’s put her in charge. Means she can recruit who she likes, and young Todd wasn’t backwards at coming forwards.’

  ‘She was easy to persuade?’ Tibbet’s forehead was creased in thought.

  ‘Doesn’t mean you can persuade her to put your name forward for promotion.’

  ‘That’s not what I was thinking,’ Tibbet assured her. He looked through the windscreen. ‘It’s next right, isn’t it?’

  Hawes refused to signal, and only crossed the traffic when there was a bus bearing down on them.

  ‘I wish you wouldn’t do that,’ Tibbet said.

  ‘I know,’ Phyllida replied with a thin-lipped smile. ‘But when you’re driving a car you’ve just nicked from a forecourt . . .’

  They were headed - Shiv’s orders - to Nancy Sievewright’s flat. Had to ask her about the woman in the cowl. Very word Shiv had used - ‘cowl’ - Hawes checking afterwards that she hadn’t meant ‘hood’.

  ‘Hood or cowl, Phyl, what’s the difference exactly?’ Shiv having grown prickly these past couple of weeks.

  ‘Just here on the left,’ Colin Tibbet was saying. ‘There’s a space further down.’

  ‘Which I couldn’t possibly have spotted without you, DC Tibbet.’ To which he gave no reaction whatsoever.

  The door to the communal stairwell had been wedged open, so they decided not to bother with the intercom. Once you crossed the threshold you were in a cold, shadowy place. The white wall-tiles had been damaged and now sported graffiti tags. Voices echoed from somewhere above. A woman, by far the louder of the two. The deeper male bass was softer, entreating.

  ‘Just get the fuck away from me! Why can’t you take a telling?’

  ‘I think you know why.’

  ‘I don’t fucking well care!’

  The couple seemed unaware of the two new arrivals who were climbing towards them.

  The man: ‘Look, if you’ll only talk to me for a moment.’

  Interrupted by Colin Tibbet: ‘Is there a problem here?’ His ID open, letting them know who - and more importantly what - he was.

  ‘Christ, what now?’ the man uttered in exasperation.

  ‘Pretty much what I was asking myself thirty seconds ago, sir,’ Hawes told him. ‘It’s Mr Anderson, isn’t it? My partner and I took the statements from you and your wife.’

  ‘Oh, yes.’ Anderson had the good grace to look embarrassed. Hawes saw that one of the doors on the next landing up was wide open. That would be Nancy Sievewright’s flat. Hawes met the eyes of the underfed, underdressed girl.

  ‘We interviewed you, too, Nancy,’ she said.

  Sievewright nodded her agreement. ‘Two birds with one stone,’ Colin Tibbet stated.

  ‘I didn’t realise,’ Hawes said, ‘you two knew one another. ’

  ‘We don’t!’ Nancy Sievewright exploded. ‘He just keeps coming here!’

  ‘Grossly unfair,’ Anderson snarled. Hawes shared a look with Tibbet. They knew what they had to do.

  ‘Let’s get you inside,’ Hawes told Sievewright.

  ‘And if you’ll come downstairs with me, sir,’ Tibbet said to Anderson. ‘There’s a question we were hoping to ask you . . .’

  Sievewright stomped back into her flat and made straight for the narrow kitchen, where she picked up the kettle and filled it. ‘The other two, I thought they were going to deal with it.’

  Meaning, Hawes guessed, Rebus and Clarke. ‘Why does he keep coming round?’ she asked.

  Sievewright tugged at a straggle of hair above one ear. ‘No idea. Says he wants to check I’m all right. But when I tell him I am, he comes back again! I think he hangs around until he knows I’m in the flat on my own . . .’ She twisted the hair into a tighter skein. ‘Fuck him,’ she said defiantly, hunting among the mugs on the drainer for the one least likely to poison her.

  ‘You could make a formal complaint,’ Hawes told her, ‘explain he’s harassing you . . .’

  ‘Reckon that would stop him?’

  ‘It might,’ Hawes said, believing it about as much as the girl herself did. Sievewright had rinsed her chosen mug and now dumped a tea bag into it. She patted the kettle, willing it to boil.

  ‘Social call, was it?’ she asked at last.

  Hawes rewarded her with a friendly smile. ‘Not exactly. Some new information’s come to light.’

  ‘Meaning you’ve not arrested anybody.’

  ‘No,’ Hawes admitted.

  ‘So what’s this information?’

  ‘A woman in a hood, seen hanging around the exit to the multistorey.’ Hawes showed her the e-fit. ‘If she was still there, you’d have walked right past her.’

  ‘I didn’t see anyone ... I’ve already told you this!’

  ‘Easy, Nancy,’ Hawes said quietly. ‘Calm yourself down.’

  ‘I’m calm.’

  ‘The tea’s a good idea.’

  ‘I think the kettle’s knackered.’ Sievewright was resting the palm of her hand against it.

  ‘No, it’s fine,’ Hawes reassured her. ‘I can hear it.’

  Sievewright was staring at the kettle’s reflective surface. ‘Sometimes we try to see how long we can stay touching it while it boils.’

  ‘We?’

  ‘Me and Eddie.’ She gave a sad little smile. ‘I always win.’

  ‘Eddie being . . .?’

  ‘My flatmate.’ She looked at the detective. ‘We’re not a couple.’

  The front door creaked and they turned to look down the passageway. It was Colin Tibbet.

  ‘He’s gone,’ Tibbet told them.

  ‘Good riddance,’ Sievewright muttered.

  ‘Did he tell you anything?’ Hawes asked her partner.

  ‘Seemed adamant neither he nor his wife saw any woman in a hood. He asked if maybe it was a ghost of some kind.’

  ‘I meant,’ Hawes said, voice toneless, ‘did he say why he was giving Nancy here such a hard time?’

  Tibbet shrugged. ‘Told me she’d had this great shock and he wanted to be sure she wasn’t bottling it up. “Storing up trouble for later” I think his exact words were.’

  Sievewright, one hand still pressed to the kettle, gave a hoot of derision.

  ‘Very noble of him,’ Hawes said.
‘And the fact that his act of charity isn’t at all what Nancy wants . . .?’

  ‘He promised to stay away.’

  ‘Fat chance,’ Sievewright sneered.

  ‘That kettle’s nearly boiled,’ Tibbet felt it necessary to warn her, having just noticed what she was doing with her hand. He was rewarded with something that was between a grimace and a smile.

  ‘Anyone care to join me?’ Nancy Sievewright offered.

  20

  The headline on page five of the Evening News was DAS KAPITALISTS. The story below it recounted a dinner at one of Edinburgh’s Michelin-rated restaurants. The party of Russians had booked the whole place. Fourteen sat down to a dinner of foie gras, scallops, lobster, veal, sirloin, cheese and dessert, washed down with several thousand pounds’ worth of champagne, white Burgundy and venerable red Bordeaux, finishing with port from before the Cold War. Six grand in total. The reporter liked the fact that the champagne - Roederer Cristal - had been a favourite with the tsars of pre-revolutionary Russia. None of the diners was identified by name. Rebus couldn’t help wondering if Cafferty had slimed his way on to the guest list. Another story on the page opposite stated that the murder rate was down - there had been ten in the past year, twelve the year before that.They were seated around a large corner table in a Rose Street pub. The place was about to get noisy: Celtic were readying to kick off against Manchester United in the Champions’ League and the big-screen TV was the focus of most drinkers’ attentions. Rebus closed the paper and tossed it back towards Goodyear, who was seated across from him. He realised he’d missed the last bit of Phyllida Hawes’s story, so got her to repeat Anderson’s words: storing up trouble for later.

  ‘I’ll give him “trouble”,’ he muttered. ‘And he can’t say I didn’t give him fair warning . . .’

  ‘So far,’ Colin Tibbet said, ‘we’ve only got one sighting of the mystery woman.’ Having noticed that Todd Goodyear had taken off his tie, he was now in the process of removing his own.

  ‘Doesn’t mean she wasn’t there,’ Clarke told him. ‘Even if she played no part, she might have seen something. There’s a line in one of Todorov’s poems about averting your eyes so you’ll never have to testify.’

  ‘And what’s that supposed to mean?’ Rebus asked her.

  ‘She could be lying low for a reason - people don’t always want to get involved.’

  ‘Sometimes,’ Hawes agreed, ‘they have good reason not to get involved.’

  ‘Do we still think Nancy Sievewright’s holding something back?’ Clarke asked.

  ‘That friend of hers was definitely spinning us a yarn,’ Tibbet said.

  ‘So maybe we need to go over her story again.’

  ‘Anything so far from those tapes?’ Hawes was asking. Clarke shook her head and gestured towards Goodyear.

  ‘Just that the deceased liked to listen into people’s conversations,’ he obliged, ‘even if it meant following them around.’

  ‘Bit of a weirdo, then?’

  ‘One way of looking at it,’ Clarke conceded.

  ‘Christ’s sake,’ Rebus butted in, ‘there’s a bigger picture you’re not looking at - Todorov’s last stop before ending up dead . . . a drink with Big Ger Cafferty, and some of the Russians not ten yards away!’ He rubbed a hand across his forehead.

  ‘Can I just ask one thing?’

  Rebus stared at Goodyear. ‘And what’s that, young Todd?’

  ‘Don’t take the Lord’s name in vain.’

  ‘You taking the piss?’

  But Goodyear was shaking his head. ‘I’d look on it as a great favour . . .’

  ‘Which church do you go to, Todd?’ Tibbet asked.

  ‘St Fothad’s in Saughtonhall.’

  ‘That where you live?’

  ‘Where I grew up,’ Goodyear corrected Tibbet.

  ‘I used to go to the kirk,’ Tibbet went on. ‘Stopped when I was fourteen. My mum died from cancer, couldn’t see the point after that.’

  ‘“God is the place that always heals over,”’ Goodyear recited, ‘“however often we tear it”.’ He smiled. ‘That’s from a poem, though not one of Todorov’s. Seems to make sense of it all - to me, at any rate.’

  ‘Hell’s teeth,’ Rebus said. ‘Poems and quotations and the Church of Scotland. I don’t come to pubs for a sermon.’

  ‘You’re not alone,’ Goodyear told him. ‘Plenty of Scots try to hide their cleverness. We don’t trust clever people.’

  Tibbet was nodding. ‘We’re supposed to be “all Jock Tamson’s bairns” - meaning we’re all the same.’

  ‘And not allowed to be different.’ Goodyear was nodding back at him.

  ‘See what you’re going to miss when you retire?’ Clarke said, her eyes on Rebus. ‘Intellectual debate.’

  ‘I’m getting out just in time, then.’ He started to rise to his feet. ‘Now if you eggheads will excuse me, I’ve got a tutorial with Professor Nicotine ...’

  Rose Street was busy: a hen-night pub crawl, the women dressed in identical T-shirts marked with the words ‘Four Weddings and a Piss-Up’. They blew kisses at Rebus as they passed him, but were then stopped by a crowd of young men heading in the opposite direction. A stag do by the look of it, the groom-to-be spattered with shaving foam, eggs and flour. Office workers eased past, on their way home after a couple of bevvies. There were tourist families, too, not sure what to make of the hens and stags, and men hurrying to catch the match.

  The door opened behind Rebus and Todd Goodyear stepped out. ‘Wouldn’t have taken you for a smoker,’ Rebus told him.

  ‘I’m headed home.’ Goodyear was shrugging himself back into his suit jacket. ‘I left cash on the table for the next round.’

  ‘Prior engagement, is it?’

  ‘Girlfriend.’

  ‘What’s her name?’

  Goodyear hesitated, but couldn’t seem to think of a valid excuse not to tell Rebus. ‘Sonia,’ he said. ‘She’s one of the SOCOs.’

  ‘Was she there last Wednesday?’

  Goodyear nodded. ‘Short blonde hair, mid-twenties . . .’

  ‘Can’t place her,’ Rebus admitted. Goodyear looked tempted to take this as an insult, but changed his mind.

  ‘You used to be a churchgoer, didn’t you?’ he asked instead.

  ‘Who told you that?’

  ‘Just something I heard.’

  ‘Best not to believe rumours.’

  ‘Even so, I get the feeling I’m right.’

  ‘Maybe you are,’ Rebus conceded, blowing smoke into the air. ‘Years back, I tried a few different churches. Didn’t find any answers.’

  Goodyear nodded slowly. ‘What Colin said sums up a lot of people’s experience, doesn’t it? A loved one dies and we blame God. Is that what happened with you?’

  ‘Nothing happened with me,’ Rebus stated stonily, watching the hen party move off in search of its next watering-hole. The stags were watching, too, one or two debating whether to follow.

  ‘Sorry,’ Goodyear was apologising, ‘just nosy . . .’

  ‘Well, don’t be.’

  ‘Are you going to miss the job?’

  Rebus rolled his eyes. ‘Here he goes again,’ he complained to the sky above. ‘All I want is a peaceful smoke and now it’s Question Time.’

  Goodyear smiled a further apology. ‘I better get going while I still can.’

  ‘Before you do ...’

  ‘Yes?’

  Rebus studied the tip of his cigarette. ‘Cafferty in the interview room . . . was that the first time you’d met him?’ Goodyear nodded. ‘He knew your brother, and your grandad, too, if it comes to that.’ Rebus looked up and down the street. ‘Your grandad’s pub was the next block, wasn’t it? Forget what it was called . . .’

  ‘Breezer’s.’

  Rebus nodded slowly. ‘When he went to court, I was the one in the witness box.’

  ‘I didn’t know that.’

  ‘Three of us made the bust, but I was the one who gave evidence.’


  ‘Have you ever been in that position with Cafferty?’

  ‘He got put away both times.’ Rebus spat on to the pavement. ‘Shiv tells me your brother was in a fight. Is he all right?’

  ‘I think so.’ Goodyear was looking uncomfortable. ‘Look, I’d better get going.’

  ‘You do that. I’ll see you tomorrow.’

  ‘Night, then.’

  ‘Night,’ Rebus said, watching him leave. Didn’t seem a bad kid. Decent enough cop. Maybe Shiv could do something with him ... Rebus remembered Harry Goodyear pretty well. Guy’s pub had been notorious - speed, coke and a bit of blow, all being shifted from the place, Harry himself a small-timer, in and out of trouble. Rebus had wondered at the time, how did he get a pub licence? Reckoned money had changed hands, someone on the council pitching for him. Friends could always be bought. Time was, Cafferty himself had owned a number of councillors. That way, he stayed one step ahead; cheap at whatever the price. He’d tried buying Rebus, too, but that was never going to run - Rebus had learned his lesson by then.

  ‘Not my fault Grandpa Goodyear died in the clink . . .’

  He stubbed out the cigarette and turned towards the door, but then paused. What was waiting for him inside? Another drink, plus a table of youngsters - Shiv, Phyl and Col would be discussing the case, bouncing ideas around. And what exactly could Rebus add to the mix? He took out another cigarette and lit it, then started walking.

  He took a left on to Frederick Street and a right into Princes Street. The castle was being illuminated from below, its shape picked out against the night sky. The funfair was under construction in Princes Street Gardens, along with the market stalls and booths parked at the foot of The Mound. It would be a magnet for shoppers in the run-up to Christmas. He thought he could hear music: maybe the open-air ice rink was being tested out. Groups of kids were weaving their way past the shopfronts, paying him not the slightest heed. When did I become the invisible man? Rebus asked himself. Catching his reflection in a window he saw heft and bulk. Yet these kids teemed past as if he had no place in their version of the world.

  Is this how ghosts feel? he wondered.

  He crossed at the traffic lights and pushed open the door to the bar of the Caledonian Hotel. The place was busy. Jazz was playing on the hi-fi and Freddie was busy with a cocktail shaker. A waitress was waiting to take her tray of drinks over to a table filled with laughter. Everyone looked prosperous and confident. Some of them held mobile phones to their ears, even as they spoke to the person next to them. Rebus felt a moment’s irritation that someone had taken his stool. In fact, all the stools were taken. He bided his time until the barman had finished pouring. The waitress moved off, balancing the tray on her hand, and Freddie saw Rebus. The frown he gave told Rebus that the situation had changed. The bar was no longer empty, and Freddie would be unwilling to talk.