‘Word is, he’s back in Big Ger’s employ. Well, not “employ” exactly, but selling with Cafferty’s blessing.’
‘Any proof of that?’
Davidson shook his head. ‘After we spoke on the phone, I made a few calls, and that’s what I started to hear. Tell you something else, though...’
‘What?’
‘Birdies are saying Derek Starr’s been brought back from Fettes to head your inquiry.’ At the next desk, Bruce started to make a little clucking sound. ‘Bit of a kick in the teeth, isn’t it?’ Davidson added.
‘Stands to reason Derek would take over - he’s a rank above me.’
‘Didn’t seem to bother the bosses when it was you and a certain DI called Rebus...’
‘I really am going to send Reynolds back here,’ Clarke warned him.
‘You’ll have to ask Derek Starr’s permission.’
She stared him out and he burst into a laugh. ‘Have your fun while you can,’ she told him, heading for the door.
Back in her car, she wondered what else she could do to keep away from Gayfield Square. Answer: not much. Rebus had mentioned CCTV. Maybe she could make a detour by way of the City Chambers and put in that request. Or she could call Megan Macfarlane and arrange another meeting, this time to talk about Charles Riordan and his taping of her committee. Then there was Jim Bakewell - Rebus wanted her to ask about the drink he’d had with Sergei Andropov and Big Ger Cafferty.
Cafferty ...
He seemed to loom over the city, and yet very few of Edinburgh’s citizens would even know of his existence. Rebus had spent half his career trying to bring the gangster down. With Rebus retired, the problem would become hers, not because she wanted it but because she doubted Rebus would let it go. He’d want her to finish what he couldn’t. She thought again of the nights they’d been staying late at the office, Rebus running his most galling unsolveds past her. What was she supposed to do with them, these legacies? They felt to her like unwanted baggage. She had a pair of ugly pewter candlesticks at home, gifted to her in an aunt’s will. Couldn’t bring herself to throw them out, so they lay tucked away at the back of a drawer - also, she felt, the best place for Rebus’s old case-notes.
Her phone rang, 556 prefix: someone was calling from Gayfield Square. She thought she could guess who.
‘Hello?’
Sure enough, it was Derek Starr. ‘You’ve snuck out on me,’ he said, trying to inject some surface levity into the accusation.
‘Had to go talk to West End.’
‘What about?’
‘Sol Goodyear.’
There was a momentary silence. ‘Remind me,’ he said.
‘Lives close to where Todorov was found. It was a friend of his who discovered the body.’
‘And?’
‘Just wanted to confirm a few details.’
He would know damned well she was holding something back, just as she knew there was nothing he could do about it.
‘So when can we expect to see you back in the body of the kirk, DS Clarke?’
‘I’ve got one more stop to make at the City Chambers.’
‘CCTV?’ he guessed.
‘That’s right. I should only be half an hour or so.’
‘Heard anything from Rebus?’
‘Not a dicky-bird.’
‘DCI Macrae tells me he’s been suspended.’
‘That’s about the size of it.’
‘Not much of a swansong, is it?’
‘Was there anything else, Derek?’
‘You’re my number two, Siobhan. That’s how it stays unless I think you’re playing away.’
‘Meaning what exactly?’
‘Don’t want you picking up any more bad habits from Rebus.’
Unable to take any more, she ended the call. ‘Pompous git,’ she muttered, turning the ignition.
‘So what did you get up to last night, then?’ Hawes asked. She was in the passenger seat, Colin Tibbet driving.‘Couple of drinks with some mates.’ He glanced in her direction. ‘You jealous, Phyl?’
‘Jealous of you and your beery pals? Sure am, Col.’
‘Thought so,’ he said with a grin. They were heading for the south-east corner of the city, towards the bypass and the green belt. It hadn’t surprised too many of the locals when FAB had been granted permission to construct their new HQ on what had previously been designated as protected land. A badger’s sett had been relocated and a nine-hole golf course purchased for the exclusive use of employees. The huge glass building was just under a mile from the new Royal Infirmary, which Hawes guessed was handy for any bank employees suffering paper cuts from counting all those notes. On the other hand, it wouldn’t surprise her if the FAB compound turned out to have its own BUPA sickbay.
‘I stayed in, since you ask,’ she said now, watching Col slow to a halt as the lights ahead turned red. He did that thing they taught you in driving schools - not braking hard but changing back down through the gears. Up till now, everyone she’d met had started ignoring the manoeuvre as soon as they passed their test, but not Colin. She bet he ironed his underpants, too.
It was really starting to rile her that despite each deep-seated fault she located, she still fancied him. Maybe it was a case of any port in a storm. She hated the idea that she couldn’t live her life perfectly adequately without a bloke in tow, but it was beginning to look that way.
‘Anything good on the box?’ he asked her.
‘A documentary about how men are becoming women.’ He looked at her, trying to work out whether she was lying. ‘It’s true,’ she insisted. ‘All that oestrogen in the tap water. You lot gulp it down and then start growing breasts.’
He concentrated for a moment. ‘How does oestrogen get into the tap water?’
‘Do I have to spell it out?’ She mimed the action of flushing a toilet. ‘Then there’s all the additives in meat. It’s changing your chemical balance.’
‘I don’t want my chemical balance changed.’
She had to laugh at that. ‘Might explain something, though,’ she teased him.
‘What?’
‘Why you’ve started fancying Derek Starr.’ He scowled, and she laughed again. ‘Way you were watching him give that speech . . . Might’ve been Russell Crowe in Gladiator or Mel Gibson in Braveheart.’
‘I saw Braveheart in the cinema,’ Tibbet told her. ‘The audience were on their feet, cheering and punching the air. Never seen anything like it.’
‘That’s because Scots don’t often get to feel good about themselves.’
‘You think we need independence?’
‘Maybe,’ she conceded. ‘Just so long as people like First Albannach don’t go scuttling south.’
‘What was their profit last year?’
‘Eight billion, something like that.’
‘You mean eight million?’
‘Eight billion,’ she repeated.
‘That can’t be right.’
‘You calling me a liar?’ She was wondering how he’d managed to turn the conversation around without her noticing.
‘Makes you wonder, doesn’t it?’ he asked now.
‘Wonder what?’
‘Where the real power is.’ He took his eyes off the road long enough to glance at her. ‘Want to do something later?’
‘With you, you mean?’
He offered a shrug. ‘Christmas fair opens tonight. We could go take a look.’
‘We could.’
‘And a bite of supper after.’
‘I’ll think about it.’
They were signalling to turn in at the gates of First Albannach Bank’s HQ. Ahead of them lay a glass and steel structure four storeys high and as long as a street. A guard emerged from the gatehouse to take their names and the car’s registration.
‘Parking bay six-oh-eight,’ he told them. And though there were plenty of spaces closer to their destination, Hawes watched her colleague head obediently towards 608.
‘Don’t worry,’ she told
him as he pulled on the handbrake, ‘I can walk from here.’
And walk they did, passing serried ranks of sports cars, family saloons and 4x4s. The grounds were still being landscaped, and just behind one corner of the main complex could be glimpsed gorse bushes and one of the golf course’s fairways. When the doors slid open, they were in a triple-height atrium. There was an arcade of shops behind the reception desk: pharmacy, supermarket, café, newsagent. A noticeboard provided information about the crèche, gym and swimming pool. Escalators led to the next level up, with glass-fronted lifts serving the floors above that. The receptionist beamed a smile at them.
‘Welcome to FAB,’ she said. ‘If you’ll just sign in and show me some photo ID...’
They did so, and she announced that Mr Janney was in a meeting but his secretary was expecting them.
‘Third floor. She’ll meet you at the lift.’ They were handed laminated passes and another smile. A security guard processed them through a metal-detector, after which they scooped up keys, phones and loose change.
‘Expecting trouble?’ Hawes asked the man.
‘Code green,’ he intoned solemnly.
‘A relief to us all.’
The lift took them to the third floor, where a young woman in a black trousersuit was waiting. The A4-sized manila envelope was held out in front of her. As Hawes took it, the woman nodded once, then turned and marched back down a seemingly endless corridor. Tibbet hadn’t even had a chance to exit the lift, and as Hawes stepped back into it the doors slid shut and they were on their way back down again. No more than three minutes after entering the building, they were out in the cold and wondering what had just happened.
‘That’s not a building,’ Hawes stated. ‘It’s a machine.’
Tibbet signalled his agreement by whistling through his teeth, then scanned the car park.
‘Which bay are we in again?’
‘The one at the end of the universe,’ Hawes told him, starting to cross the tarmac.
Back in the passenger seat, she pulled open the envelope and brought out a dozen sheets: photocopied bank statements. There was a yellow Post-it stuck to the front. The handwritten message speculated that Todorov had funds elsewhere, as indicated by the client when he opened his account. There was a single transfer involving a bank in Moscow. The note was signed ‘Stuart Janney’.
‘He was comfortable enough,’ Hawes announced. ‘Six grand in the current account and eighteen in savings.’ She checked the transaction dates: no significant deposits or withdrawals in the days leading up to his death, and no transactions at all thereafter. ‘Whoever took his cash card, they don’t seem to be using it.’
‘They could have cleaned him out,’ Tibbet acknowledged. ‘Twenty-four K ... so much for the starving artist.’
‘Garrets mustn’t be as fashionable these days,’ Hawes agreed. She was punching a number into her phone. Clarke picked up and Hawes relayed the highlights to her. ‘Took out a hundred the day he was killed.’
‘Where from?’
‘Machine at Waverley Station.’ Hawes frowned suddenly. ‘Why did he leave Edinburgh from one station but come back to the other?’
‘He was meeting Charles Riordan. I think Riordan frequented some curry house nearby.’
‘Can’t really check with him, though, can we?’
‘Not really,’ Clarke admitted. Hawes could hear voices in the background; all the same, it sounded a lot calmer than Gayfield Square.
‘Where are you, Shiv?’ she asked.
‘City Chambers, asking about CCTV.’
‘How long till you’re back at base?’
‘An hour maybe.’
‘You sound inconsolable. Any word from our favourite DI?’
‘Assuming you mean Rebus rather than Starr, the answer’s no.’
‘Tell her,’ Tibbet said, ‘about the bank.’
‘Colin says to tell you we enjoyed our visit to First Albannach.’
‘Plush, was it?’
‘I’ve stayed at worse resorts; they had everything in there but flumes.’
‘Did you see Stuart Janney?’
‘He was in a meeting. To tell the truth, it was a real production-line number. In and out and thank you very much.’
‘They’ve got shareholders to protect. When your profits are hitting ten billion, you don’t want any bad publicity.’
Hawes turned to Colin Tibbet. ‘Siobhan,’ she told him, ‘says the profit last year was ten billion.’
‘Give or take,’ Clarke added.
‘Give or take,’ Hawes repeated for Tibbet’s benefit.
‘Makes you wonder,’ Tibbet repeated quietly, with a slow shake of the head.
Hawes stared at him. Kissable lips, she was thinking. Younger than her and less experienced. There was material there she could work with, maybe starting tonight.
‘Talk to you later,’ she told Clarke, ending the call.
31
Dr Scarlett Colwell was waiting for Rebus at her office in George Square. She was on one of the upper floors, meaning the view would have been great if not for the build-up of condensation between the layers of double-glazing.‘Depressing, isn’t it?’ she apologised. ‘Constructed forty years ago and fit for nothing but demolition.’
Rebus turned his attention instead to the shelves of Russian textbooks. Plaster busts of Marx and Lenin were being used as bookends. On the wall opposite, posters and cards had been pinned up, including a photograph of President Yeltsin dancing. Colwell’s desk was next to the window, but facing into the room. Two tables had been pushed together, leaving just enough room for eight chairs to be arranged around them. There was a kettle on the floor, and she crouched down next to it, spooning coffee granules into two mugs.
‘Milk?’ she asked.
‘Thanks,’ Rebus said, glancing towards her shock of hair. Her skirt was stretched tight, delineating the line of a hip.
‘Sugar?’
‘Just milk.’
The kettle finished boiling and she poured, handing him his cup before getting back to her feet. They stood very close to one another until she apologised again for the lack of space and retreated behind her desk, Rebus content to rest his backside against the table.
‘Thanks for seeing me.’
She blew on her coffee. ‘Not at all. I was devastated to hear about Mr Riordan.’
‘You met him at the Poetry Library?’ Rebus guessed.
She nodded, then had to push the hair away from her face. ‘And at Word Power.’
It was Rebus’s turn to nod. ‘That’s the bookshop where Mr Todorov did a reading?’
Colwell pointed towards the wall. This time when Rebus looked, he picked out the photograph of Alexander Todorov in full poetic flow, one arm dramatically raised, mouth agape.
‘Doesn’t look like a bookshop,’ Rebus declared.
‘They moved it to a bigger venue - café on Nicolson Street. Even so, it was packed.’
‘He’s in his element, isn’t he?’ Rebus was studying the picture more closely. ‘Did you take this, Dr Colwell?’
‘I’m not very good,’ she started to apologise.
‘I’m the last one to judge.’ He turned and gave her a smile. ‘So Charles Riordan taped this session, too?’
‘That’s right.’ She paused. ‘In fact, it’s a happy coincidence that you called me, Inspector...’
‘Oh?’
‘Because I was on the verge of phoning you, to ask a favour.’
‘What is it I can do for you, Dr Colwell?’
‘There’s a magazine called the London Review of Books. They saw the obituary I wrote in the Scotsman and they want to publish one of Alexander’s poems.’
‘With you so far.’ Rebus lifted the cup to his lips.
‘It’s a new poem in Russian, one he recited at the Poetry Library.’ She gave a little laugh. ‘In fact, I think he’d only just finished it that day. Point being, I don’t have a copy of it. I’m not sure anyone does.’
‘Ha
ve you had a look through his waste-paper bin?’
‘Would it sound heartless if I said yes?’
‘Not at all. But you didn’t find it?’
‘No ... which is why I spoke to a nice man at Mr Riordan’s studio.’
‘That’ll be Terry Grimm.’
She nodded again, pushed her hair back again. ‘He said there was a recording.’
Rebus thought of the hour he’d spent in Siobhan’s car, the pair of them listening to a dead man. ‘You want to borrow it?’ he guessed, remembering that Todorov had indeed recited some of the poems in Russian.
‘Just long enough to write a translation. It would be my memorial to him, I suppose.’
‘I can’t see a problem with that.’
She beamed, and he got the feeling that if the desk hadn’t been there, she might even have reached over and hugged him. Instead, she asked if she would have to listen to the CD at the station or would it be possible to take it away with her. The station...one place Rebus couldn’t be seen.
‘I can bring it to you,’ he said, and her smile widened before melting away.
‘Deadline’s next week,’ she suddenly realised.
‘No problem,’ Rebus assured her. ‘And I’m sorry we haven’t tracked down Mr Todorov’s killer yet.’
Her face fell further. ‘I’m sure you’re doing your utmost. ’
‘Thanks for the vote of confidence.’ He paused. ‘You’ve still not asked me why I’m here.’
‘I was thinking you’d get round to telling me.’
‘I’ve been researching Mr Todorov’s life, looking for enemies.’
‘Alexander made an enemy of the state, Inspector.’
‘That much I believe. But one story I’ve been hearing is that he was dismissed from a lectureship for getting too friendly with his students. Thing is, I think the person who told me that was trying to sell me a pup.’
But she was shaking her head. ‘Actually, it’s true - Alexander told me about it himself. The charges were trumped up, of course - they just wanted him out, by fair means or foul.’ She sounded aggrieved on the poet’s behalf.
‘Do you mind if I ask... did he ever try anything with you, Dr Colwell?’
‘I have a partner, Inspector.’