Exit Music

  ‘Just send a fucking car, Siobhan!’ He ran the hand through his hair again, pulling at it. I’m being set up here, he told himself.

  ‘John, how can Shug let you near? Far as he’s concerned, you’re going to be a suspect. If he lets a suspect walk into a crime scene...’

  ‘Yes, fine, absolutely.’ Rebus was looking at his watch. ‘It’s about three hours since I left him. When was the body found?’

  ‘Two and a half hours ago.’

  ‘That’s not good.’ His mind was whirling. He started towards the kitchen, thinking maybe a gallon of tap water would help. ‘Did you send Calum Stone on that wild goose chase?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Shit.’

  ‘He’s here right now, along with his partner.’

  Rebus squeezed his eyes shut. ‘Don’t speak to them.’

  ‘Bit late for that. I was talking to Shug when they arrived. Stone introduced himself, and guess what his first words to me were?’

  ‘Something along the lines of, “Gosh, you sound just like the woman who sent me on a wild goose chase to a petrol station in Granton”?’

  ‘That’s about the size of it.’

  ‘All you can do is tell the truth, Shiv - I ordered you to make that call.’

  ‘And you were on suspension at the time - something I knew fine well.’

  ‘Christ, I’m sorry, Siobhan ...’ The tap was still running, the sink almost full. Maybe eight inches deep. He’d known men drown in far, far less.

  34

  When the taxi dropped him at the Leamington Lift Bridge, she was waiting, arms folded, for all the world like the bouncer outside some exclusive club.‘You can’t be here,’ she reiterated through gritted teeth.

  ‘I know,’ he said. Plenty of onlookers: people who’d been heading home from a night out; locals from the neighbouring tenements; even a couple from one of the canal boats. They stood on deck, holding mugs of steaming liquid.

  ‘Why’s your hair wet?’ Clarke asked.

  ‘Didn’t have time to dry it,’ he answered. He could see everything; no need to get closer. SOCOs shining their torches against the surface of the opposite footpath. Arc lamps being plugged into some sort of mooring point - probably how the boats hooked up to electricity during their stay. Lots of quietly busy people. There was a huddle around one particular area of walkway.

  ‘That where they found him?’ he asked. Clarke nodded. ‘Pretty much where he was when I left him.’

  ‘Couple on their way home stumbled across him. One of the medics recognised the face. West End came running and Shug thought maybe I’d want to know.’

  There were SOCOs up to their waists in the canal. They wore the same sort of protection as anglers, complete with braces holding up their oilskin trousers.

  ‘They’ll find one of my cigarette butts,’ Rebus told Clarke. ‘Unless it’s floated away or been eaten by a duck.’

  ‘That’ll be nice when they trace the DNA.’

  He turned towards her, gripping one of her arms. ‘I’m not saying I wasn’t here - I’m saying he was right as rain when I left him.’

  She couldn’t meet his eyes, and he let her go. ‘Don’t think what you’re thinking,’ he said quietly.

  ‘You don’t know what I’m thinking!’

  He turned away again and saw DI Shug Davidson giving orders to some of the uniforms from West End. Stone and Prosser were just behind him, deep in a discussion of their own.

  ‘Any second now they’ll see you,’ Clarke warned. Rebus nodded. He’d already taken a couple of steps back into the crowd of onlookers. She followed him until they were standing to the rear. This was where he’d parked his car the time he’d followed Cafferty. His head was thumping.

  ‘Got any aspirin?’ he asked.

  ‘No.’

  ‘Never mind, I know where I can find some.’

  She caught his meaning. ‘You’ve got to be joking.’ ‘Never more serious in my life.’

  She fixed her eyes on him, then glanced back towards the canal and made her mind up. ‘I’ll drive you,’ she said. ‘My car’s on Gilmore Place.’

  They didn’t say much on the way to the Western General. Cafferty had been taken there not only because it was closer than the Infirmary but also because it specialised in head injuries.

  ‘Did you see him?’ Rebus asked as they reached the hospital car park.

  Clarke shook her head. ‘When Shug called me, he thought he was the bearer of glad tidings.’

  ‘He knows there’s history between us and Cafferty,’ Rebus agreed.

  ‘But he could tell straight away something was up.’

  ‘You told him I’d gone to meet Cafferty?’

  She shook her head again. ‘I haven’t told anyone.’

  ‘Well, you better had - only way to keep your head above the shit. Stone’s going to work it out before long.’

  ‘Wait till they find out I’ve done a runner . . .’ She pulled into a parking bay and turned off the ignition, then slid around to face him. ‘Okay,’ she said, ‘tell me.’

  He met her eyes. ‘I didn’t touch him.’

  ‘So what did you talk about?’

  ‘Andropov and Bakewell ... Sievewright and Sol Goodyear ...’ He shrugged, deciding to omit the abattoir bull. ‘Funny thing is, I almost offered him a lift home.’

  ‘I wish you had.’ She sounded slightly more mollified.

  ‘Does that mean you believe me?’

  ‘I’ve got to, haven’t I? All we’ve been through ... if I can’t believe you, what the hell else is there?’

  ‘Thanks,’ he said quietly, squeezing her hand.

  ‘You still owe me the story of your run-in with the SCDEA.’ She removed her hand from beneath his.

  ‘They’ve had Cafferty under surveillance. Heard I’d been watching him and warned me off.’ He shrugged again. ‘That’s about the size of it.’

  ‘And being bull-headed, you did exactly the opposite?’

  Rebus had a sudden image: the bull with its legs buckling, a bullet between its eyes . . . He shook himself free of it. ‘Let’s go see what the damage is,’ he said.

  Inside the hospital, the first question they were asked was: ‘Are you family?’‘He’s my brother,’ Rebus stated. This seemed to oil the wheels, and they were shown to a waiting area, deserted this time of night. Rebus picked up a magazine. It was page after page of celebrity gossip, but as it was also six months out of date, chances were the celebrities had already been returned to obscurity. He offered it to Clarke, but she shook her head.

  ‘Your brother?’ she said.

  Rebus just shrugged. His real brother had died a year and a half back. Over the past couple of decades, Rebus had paid him a lot less attention than Cafferty ... probably spent less time with him, too.

  You can’t choose your family, he thought to himself, but you can choose your enemies.

  ‘What if he dies?’ Clarke asked, folding her arms. She had her legs stretched out, crossed at the ankles, and was slumped low in the chair.

  ‘I’m not that lucky,’ Rebus told her. She glowered at him.

  ‘So who do you reckon is behind it?’

  ‘Can we make that a multiple-choice question?’ he asked.

  ‘How many names have you got?’

  ‘Depends if he’s gone upsetting his Russian friends.’

  ‘Andropov?’

  ‘For starters. SCD reckoned they were close to having Cafferty in the bag. Might be a lot of people out there who couldn’t let that happen.’ He broke off as an unfeasibly young doctor in the traditional white coat pushed through the swinging doors at the end of the corridor and, notes in one hand, pen between his teeth, marched up to them. He removed the pen and popped it into his top pocket.

  ‘You’re the patient’s brother?’ he asked. Rebus nodded. ‘Well, Mr Cafferty, I don’t have to tell you that Morris seems blessed with an unusually resistant skull.’

  ‘We call him Ger,’ Rebus said. ‘Sometimes Big Ger.’
/>
  The young doctor nodded, consulting his notes.

  ‘But is he okay?’ Clarke asked.

  ‘Far from it. We’ll do another scan in the morning. He’s still unconscious, but there’s enough brain activity to be going on with.’ He paused, as if deciding how much more they needed to know. ‘When the skull is hit with tremendous force, the brain shuts down automatically so as to protect itself, or at least limit and assess the damage. The problem we sometimes have is getting it to restart.’

  ‘Like rebooting a computer?’ Clarke offered. The doctor seemed to agree.

  ‘And it’s too early yet to say whether there’s any damage to your uncle,’ he told her. ‘No blood clots that we could see, but we’ll know more tomorrow.’

  ‘He’s not my uncle,’ she said sternly. Rebus patted her arm.

  ‘She’s upset,’ he explained to the doctor. And then, as Clarke pulled her arm away: ‘So he was hit hard with something?’

  ‘Two or three times probably,’ the doctor agreed.

  ‘Attacked from behind?’ The doctor was growing less comfortable with each new question.

  ‘The blows were to the back of the skull, yes.’

  Rebus was looking at Siobhan Clarke. Alexander Todorov, too, had been hit hard from behind, hard enough to kill. ‘Can we see him, Doc?’ Rebus asked.

  ‘As I say, he’s not awake at present.’

  ‘But all the same ...’ The doctor was looking worried now. ‘Is there a problem with that?’ Rebus persisted.

  ‘Look, I’ve been told who Mr Cafferty is ... I know he has a certain reputation in Edinburgh.’

  ‘And?’ Rebus asked.

  The doctor moistened his dry lips. ‘Well, you’re his brother . . . asking all these questions. Please tell me you’re not going to go after whoever did this.’ He decided some levity might help. ‘Wards are crowded enough as it is,’ he said with a weak smile.

  ‘We’d just like to see him, that’s all,’ Rebus assured him, patting the youngster’s arm to reinforce the point.

  ‘Then I’ll see what I can do. You can wait here if you like.’

  Rebus answered by sitting down again. They watched the doctor depart through the swing doors. But as the doors came to rest, a face appeared at one of their porthole-shaped windows.

  ‘Oh, Christ,’ Rebus said, alerting Clarke to the new arrivals - DI Calum Stone and DS Andy Prosser. ‘This is where you tell them the whole story, Shiv. And if you don’t, I will.’ She nodded her understanding.

  ‘Well, well,’ Stone said, sauntering forward, hands in pockets. ‘What brings you here, DI Rebus?’

  ‘Same as you, I reckon,’ Rebus replied, standing up again.

  ‘So here we all are,’ Stone continued, rocking back on his heels. ‘You to check if the victim still has a pulse, and us to start figuring out if we’ve just watched several thousand man-hours get flushed down the pan.’

  ‘Shame you pulled the surveillance,’ Rebus commented.

  Stone’s face grew red with rage. ‘Because you wanted a meet!’ He pointed towards Clarke. ‘Got your girlfriend here to send us down to Granton.’

  ‘I’m not denying it,’ Rebus said quietly. ‘I ordered DS Clarke to make that call.’

  ‘And why would you do that?’ Stone’s eyes were drilling into Rebus’s.

  ‘Cafferty wanted to see me. Didn’t say why, but I wasn’t keen on having you lot in the vicinity.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Because I’d have been on the lookout for you, wondering where you were hiding - Cafferty might have noticed; he’s got pretty good antennae.’

  ‘Not good enough to stop him getting whacked,’ Prosser added.

  Rebus couldn’t disagree. ‘I’m going to tell you what I told DS Clarke here,’ he continued. ‘If I was going to thump Cafferty, why would I tell anyone about the meeting? Either someone’s setting me up, or we’re talking about a coincidence.’

  ‘A coincidence?’

  Rebus shrugged. ‘Someone planned to hit him anyway, just happened to coincide ...’

  Stone had turned to his partner. ‘You buying any of this, Andy?’ Prosser shook his head slowly, and Stone turned back to Rebus. ‘Andy doesn’t buy it, and neither do I. You wanted Cafferty for yourself, didn’t like the thought of us nabbing him. Your gold watch is on the horizon, so you’re pretty desperate. You go there to talk to him, and something happens . . . you lose it. Next thing he’s sparked out and you’re in trouble.’

  ‘Except it didn’t happen like that.’

  ‘So what did happen?’

  ‘We talked and I left him, went home and stayed there.’

  ‘What was so urgent that he needed to see you?’

  ‘Not a lot really.’

  Prosser gave a little snort of disbelief, while Stone had a chuckle to himself. ‘You know, Rebus, that canal’s not really a canal at all - not where you’re concerned.’

  ‘So what is it?’

  ‘Shit creek,’ Stone said triumphantly. Rebus turned his head towards Clarke.

  ‘And they say vaudeville is dead.’

  ‘It’s not dead,’ she replied, as he’d known she would. ‘Just smells funny.’

  Stone stabbed a finger in her direction. ‘Don’t go thinking you’re not in the swill, too, DS Clarke!’

  ‘I’ve already told you,’ Rebus interrupted, ‘I take full responsibility—’

  ‘Listen to yourself,’ Stone hissed. ‘Bailing out your girlfriend here is the last thing you should be focusing on right now.’

  ‘I’m not his girlfriend.’ The blood had risen up Clarke’s neck.

  ‘Then you’re his patsy, which is almost as bad.’

  ‘Stone,’ Rebus growled, ‘I swear to God I’m going to ...’ Instead of finishing the sentence, he started balling both hands into fists.

  ‘The only thing you’re going to do, Rebus, is make a statement and pray there’s a lawyer out there desperate enough to want to represent you.’

  ‘Calum,’ Prosser offered as warning to his colleague, ‘the bastard’s going to have a pop at you...’ Prosser edged forward, eager to get his retaliation in first. All four of them froze for a moment as they watched the doors swinging closed. A nurse was standing there, looking bemused. Rebus willed her not to say anything, but she said it anyway.

  ‘Mr Cafferty?’ Aiming the words at Rebus and no one else. ‘If you’re quite finished here, we can let you see your brother now . . .’

  Day Eight

  Friday 24 November 2006

  35

  When Rebus woke up next morning, it was to an insistent buzzing from the entryphone. He rolled over in bed and checked his watch - not yet seven. Still dark outside, and a few more minutes until the timer would kick the central heating into action. The room was cold, the hall floor sucking heat from his feet as he padded down it and picked up the phone next to the door.‘This better be good,’ he croaked.

  ‘Depends on your point of view.’ Rebus recognised the voice but couldn’t place it. ‘Come on, John,’ the man drawled. ‘It’s Shug Davidson.’

  ‘Up with the lark, Shug.’

  ‘I’ve not been to bed yet.’

  ‘Bit early for a social call.’

  ‘Isn’t it? Now how about letting me in?’

  Rebus’s finger hesitated above the entry button. He sensed that if he pressed it, his whole world would start to change - and probably not for the better. Problem was, what was the alternative?

  He pressed the button.

  DI Shug Davidson was one of the good guys. The force believed that human existence could be divided into two straightforward camps - good guys and bad. Davidson had made few enemies and many friends. He was conscientious and pragmatic, humane and sympathetic. But he had a serious look on his face this morning, only some of which could be attributed to lack of sleep. He also had a uniformed constable with him. Rebus had left the door ajar while he retreated to the bedroom to put some clothes on, yelling that Davidson could make tea if he liked. But D
avidson and the uniform seemed content to stand in the hallway, so that Rebus had to squeeze past them to get to the bathroom. He brushed his teeth with more care than usual, staring at himself in the mirror above the sink. He was still staring at the reflection as he wiped his mouth dry. Back in the hall, he said the word ‘shoes’ and made for the living room, finding them next to his chair.

  ‘Do I take it,’ Rebus asked as he wrestled with the laces, ‘West End has need of my finely honed detective skills?’

  ‘Stone’s told us all about your rendezvous with Cafferty,’ Davidson stated. ‘And Siobhan mentioned the cigarette butt. Not the only thing we found floating in the canal, though . . .’

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘We found a polythene overshoe, John. Looks like there might be some blood on it.’

  ‘The sort of overshoes the SOCOs wear?’

  ‘The SOCOs wear them, yes, but so do we.’

  Rebus nodded slowly. ‘I keep some in the boot of the Saab.’

  ‘Mine are in the VW’s glovebox.’

  ‘Just the place for them, when you think of it.’ Finally, Rebus seemed happy with the knots. He stood up and made eye contact with Davidson. ‘Am I a suspect, then, Shug?’

  ‘Bit of questioning should put everyone’s minds at rest.’

  ‘Glad to help, DI Davidson.’

  There was a bit more work to be done: finding keys and phone, picking out a coat to wear over his suit jacket. But then they were ready. Rebus locked the front door after him and followed Davidson downstairs, the constable bringing up the rear.

  ‘Heard about the poor sod in London?’ Davidson asked.

  ‘Litvinenko?’

  ‘Recently deceased. They’ve ruled out thallium, whatever that is ...’

  Turned out the two detectives were expected to sit in the back of the Passat while the uniform did the driving. Marchmont to Torphichen Place was a ten-minute ride. Melville Drive was quiet, the morning rush hour not yet begun. There were joggers busy on the Meadows, the car’s headlights picking out the reflective strips on their shoes. They waited at the Tollcross junction for the light to change to green, drove round the one-way into Fountainbridge and were soon passing the wine bar at the canal basin. This was where Rebus had waited for Cafferty and Andropov to come out, the night he’d followed them to Granton. Rebus was trying to remember if there was any CCTV on the canal itself. He didn’t think so. But maybe there’d be cameras outside the wine bar. Just because he hadn’t noticed any didn’t mean they weren’t there. Unlikely they’d have spotted him loitering in the vicinity, but you never knew. The Leamington Lift Bridge wasn’t much used at night, but it was used. Drunks congregated with their bottles, youths walked to and fro, looking for action. Might someone have seen something? A figure running away? The tenement on Leamington Road where he’d parked his car that first night ... if a neighbour had been peering from their window at the right moment . . .