10 Great Rebus Novels (John Rebus) (234 page)

Davidson was good, better than a lot of coppers. It was a skill, handling other people’s grief, gauging what to say and how to say it, knowing how much they could take.

Audrey Gillespie nodded, then looked at Rebus. ‘And I know you, too, don’t I?’

‘I came to talk to your husband once.’ Rebus strived for the same tone Davidson had used.

‘Has the doctor seen you, Mrs Gillespie?’ Davidson asked.

‘He gave me pills to help me sleep. Ridiculous to think I could sleep.’

‘But you’re all right?’

‘I’m . . .’ She sought the words expected of her. ‘I’m coping, thank you.’

‘Do you feel up to answering a few more questions?’

She nodded, and Davidson relaxed a little. He brought out his notebook and consulted it.

‘Now,’ he said, ‘you said last night that your husband had gone out to visit a constituent – that was what he told you?’

‘Yes.’

‘But he didn’t say where he was meeting this constituent?’

‘No.’

‘Or the constituent’s name?’

‘No.’

‘Or what they were going to discuss?’

She shrugged, remembering. ‘We ate dinner at eight as usual – I’d done chicken casserole, Tom’s favourite. He had two helpings. After that, I thought he’d either work in his office – he
always
has work to do – or else read the paper. Instead, he said he had to go out.’

‘You’re surprised he ended up in Dalry?’

‘Very. We don’t know anyone in that part of town. Why would he lie to me?’

‘Well,’ Rebus put in, ‘he
was
hiding things from you, wasn’t he?’

‘What do you mean?’

Davidson gave Rebus a warning look, and Rebus softened his voice a little.

‘I mean, the day I came here you were busy shredding documents – sackfuls of them – in a shredder your husband hired specially.’

‘Yes, I remember. Tom said he was running out of space in the office. They were ancient history. As you can see, it’s pretty cramped with all the paperwork.’ She waved a hand around the room.

‘Mrs Gillespie,’ Rebus persisted, ‘your husband headed the Industrial Planning Committee – did the documents have anything to do with that?’

‘I’ve no idea.’

‘If they were ancient history, why bother to shred them, why not just chuck them out?’

Audrey Gillespie got up and walked to the fireplace. Davidson gave Rebus an angry look.

‘Tom said they could fall into the wrong hands.
Journalists, people like that. He said it was to do with confidentiality.’

‘Did you look at the files at all?’

‘I . . . I don’t remember.’ She was frantic now, her wet eyes everywhere but on the two policemen.

‘You weren’t curious?’

‘Look, I don’t see what any of this has to do with
anything
.’

Rebus walked over to her and took her hands in his. ‘It might have everything to do with your husband’s murder, Mrs Gillespie.’

‘Now, John,’ Davidson complained, ‘we don’t know . . .’

But Audrey Gillespie looked into Rebus’s eyes, and saw something there she could trust. She blinked away the tears. ‘He was very secretive,’ she said quietly, forcing herself to be calm. ‘I mean, about whatever it was he’d been working on. He’d been at it for months – for the best part of a year, actually. I used to curse the hours he put in. He told me it would be worth it, he said we should always focus on the long view. By that he meant he would one day be an MP, it was what he lived for.’

‘You’ve no inkling what this project of his was?’

She shook her head. ‘It was something he’d discovered while serving on the committee, and I know it was to do with accounting. I could work that much out from the kinds of things he was reading – balance sheets, profit-and-loss accounts . . . I trained as an accountant, something Tom sometimes forgot. I run a string of shops now, but I still handle the books. I could have helped him, but he always had to do everything for himself.’ She paused. ‘You know, the only reason he really needed me was my money. I’m sorry if that sounds heartless.’

‘Not at all,’ Davidson said.

‘Were these company accounts, Mrs Gillespie?’ Rebus persisted.

‘I think they must have been, the numbers involved: hundreds of millions of pounds.’

‘
Hundreds
of millions?’

So it wasn’t just Mensung, or even Charters’ empire. It was much bigger. Rebus thought of PanoTech, and then recalled that someone else had used the phrase ‘hundreds of millions’ . . . Rory McAllister, or someone like him.

‘Mrs Gillespie, could these figures have been to do with the SDA?’

‘I don’t know!’ She slumped back on to the sofa.

‘OK, John,’ Davidson said, ‘you’ve had your say.’

But Davidson might as well not have been there.

‘You see, Mrs Gillespie,’ Rebus said, sitting down beside her, ‘the thing is, someone tried to scare your husband, and it worked. They paid a man called McAnally to put the fear of God into him. I don’t know if they knew how far McAnally would go. McAnally confronted your husband, and I think gave him a message, a warning of some kind. Then McAnally killed himself, just to force the warning home. He was dying anyway, and he’d been paid handsomely. Your husband got scared, rightly so, and rented that shredder so he could destroy everything he’d been working on, all the evidence.’

‘Evidence of what?’ she asked.

‘Of something very big. Now, McAnally slipped up, he died
too
spectacularly, and that got me curious. I don’t think I’ve discovered even half what your husband knew, but that’s not the point. The point is, these people suspect either that your husband was helping me – maybe he’d given me his notes – or that he would talk to me eventually. Either way, they decided he was beyond scaring. They had to go a bit further.’

‘What you’re saying is that, if you’d left well alone, Tom might still be alive.’

Rebus bowed his head. ‘I accept what you’re saying, but
I
didn’t kill your husband.’ He paused. ‘I’d like to find out who did.’

‘What can I do to help?’

Rebus glanced towards Davidson. ‘You can start by telling us anything you think might help. And you could go through your husband’s papers; there might be some clue there.’

She thought for a moment. ‘Will I be in danger, too?’

Rebus laid a hand on hers. ‘Not at all, Mrs Gillespie. Look, is there no one Tom might have confided in?’

She started to shake her head. ‘No, wait . . . there
is
someone.’ Then she got up and left the room. Davidson was staring grimly at Rebus.

‘See,’ Rebus told him, ‘you’re great with the hearts and flowers, but weakness is there to be exploited.’

Davidson didn’t say a word.

Audrey Gillespie carried a desk diary into the room. ‘This is last year’s,’ she said, sitting down next to Rebus. ‘Tom began all this cloak-and-dagger stuff back in May, but it only really took off in October and November.’ She flipped to the pages for those months. Each day had its fill of meetings and engagements.

‘See?’ Mrs Gillespie said, pointing to a page. ‘These meetings here. Two this week –’ she flipped a couple of pages – ‘two the next –’ two more pages – ‘then three more.’

The meetings were just a series of times, plus the same two letters – CK. ‘Cameron Kennedy,’ Rebus said.

‘Yes.’

‘Who?’ Davidson asked. He’d come over to the sofa to look at the diary.

‘The Lord Provost,’ Mrs Gillespie explained. ‘They kept meeting for lunch. I remember because Tom had to have his suits dry cleaned; he had to look his smartest for the Lord Provost.’

‘He didn’t tell you why they were meeting so often?’ Rebus had taken the diary from her and was flipping through it. There were no meetings with ‘CK’ until October, after which they took place once a week at least.

‘Tom hinted there might be a good job in it come reorganisation. He’s in the same political party as the Lord Provost.’

‘This is interesting,’ Rebus said, sitting back, the better to peruse the diary.

Davidson had some questions to ask – the usual ones – so Rebus excused himself. He found Helena Profitt seated at the kitchen table, tugging at a lace handkerchief.

‘Terrible thing,’ she said.

‘Yes,’ said Rebus, sitting down opposite her. He thought of Charters’ ‘subtlety’, and the way Davidson had confronted the widow, and still he couldn’t find an easy way to ask what he wanted to ask. ‘Miss Profitt, this may not be the time . . .’ She looked at him. ‘But I was wondering if you knew . . . that is, if you had any suspicion that Mrs Gillespie and her husband . . .?’

‘You mean,’ she said softly, ‘what was their marriage like?’

‘Yes.’

Her face turned stony. ‘That’s despicable.’

‘This is a
murder
inquiry, Miss Profitt. I’m sorry if I’ve disturbed your sensibilities, but questions must be asked. The sooner I ask them, the sooner we may catch the killer.’

She thought that over. ‘You’re right. I suppose. But it’s still despicable.’

‘Was Mrs Gillespie having an affair?’

Helena Profitt didn’t say anything. She rose from the table and buttoned her coat.

‘All right,’ Rebus said, ‘what about the Lord Provost? Did Councillor Gillespie tell you why they kept meeting?’

‘Tom told me he had to brief him.’

‘What about?’

‘He didn’t say. Something to do with the Industry Committee, I expect. Is that all, Inspector?’

Rebus nodded, and Helena Profitt walked out of the kitchen. He heard the front door open and close. I handled that beautifully, he thought.

He got back to the living room just as Davidson was closing his notebook and thanking Audrey Gillespie for her time.

‘Not at all,’ the widow replied, polite to the last.

Rebus and Davidson sat in the car outside, talking things over. They were pulling away when Rebus saw another car cruising the street, seeking a parking space. It was a sporty Toyota the colour of ashes.

‘Stop for a second,’ Rebus said. He adjusted the rearview mirror so he could watch the Toyota manoeuvre into a space. Its door opened and Rory McAllister got out, looking anxious. He locked the car, tidied his hair, and side-stepped puddles on his way to Audrey Gillespie’s front door.

Rebus took Davidson to Arden Street and up the two flights to his flat.

‘Got something for you,’ he said, pointing to the binbags in the hall.

Davidson stared in amazement. ‘The shredded documents?’ Rebus nodded. ‘I won’t ask how you came by them.’

‘Mrs Gillespie isn’t going to kick up a fuss, especially if they help us find the killer.’

‘I’m thinking what a defence lawyer could do with them.’

‘I can think up a story between now and then.’

‘So what am I supposed to do with them?’

‘You’re heading a murder investigation, Davidson. The identities of whoever planned Gillespie’s murder are in
there. So take them back to Torphichen Place and get a team working on reassembling the pages.’

‘I can’t see my boss going for it; we’re short-handed as it is. Can’t you take them to St Leonard’s?’

Rebus shook his head. ‘Know why? I don’t know who I can trust, and the last thing I want is for these bags to be conveniently mislaid. So: you tell no one what all this paper is, and you tell no one where you got it. When you’ve put together the jigsaw, I’ll bet you’ll have names
and
motives. Come on, I’ll help you load your car.’

‘Generous to a fault,’ said Davidson, picking up one of the bags.

They drove to the mortuary to talk with Professor Gates, but he was eating lunch in the university Staff Club, so they climbed up from the Cowgate to Chambers Street.

Rebus had been in the Staff Club before, and knew that if you looked like you belonged, you could breeze in. But the porter came out to stop them, so maybe they didn’t look the academic type. Rebus showed his ID, and that made everything all right again.

Gates was dining alone, a newspaper folded on the table beside his plate. A half-bottle of wine and a bottle of water stood in front of him.

‘What brings you here?’ he said as they sat down. ‘You’re not eating?’

‘No, thanks,’ Davidson said.

‘A drink maybe,’ Rebus prompted.

‘I can recommend the water,’ Gates said, protecting his wine.

They decided on beer, which the waitress would bring from the bar.

‘What can I do for you?’ the pathologist asked, dissecting a last floury potato.

‘Just wondered if you’d anything for us.’

‘On last night’s stabbing? Give me a chance, will you? Have you located the murder weapon?’

‘No,’ Davidson admitted. ‘We didn’t find any footprints either. The ground in the cemetery was frozen.’

‘Well, it was a long-bladed knife, serrated by the look of the skin around the wound. And that’s about as much as I can say for now. The victim had tried to protect himself, there were defence nicks on the hands. Plus he’d been eating something greasy. There was grease on his fingers.’

Rebus looked at Davidson. ‘Did you find any wrappings near the body?’

‘Nothing fresh. What’s your point?’

‘Gillespie ate a big meal at eight – chicken casserole, two helpings. Do you think he ate it with his fingers?’

‘Probably not.’

‘So how come less than three hours later he decides to visit a chip shop?’ Rebus turned to the pathologist. ‘When you look at stomach contents, I’m willing to bet you won’t find anything but chicken casserole.’

‘I did think,’ the pathologist said, ‘that it was odd. I mean, most people would wipe their fingers afterwards. But this grease or lard, it was quite solid.’

Which told Rebus everything he needed to know.

It was still lunchtime when Rebus walked into the chip shop on Easter Road, and two men in jackets and ties queued behind a teenager in a thin parka with the stuffing bursting from its seams: Rebus waited at the back of the queue, and smiled and waved towards the server, who didn’t return the greeting.

Finally it was Rebus’s turn. ‘Hello, Gerry.’ Gerry Dip wiped the work surface where some sauce had spilt. ‘Remember me?’

‘What do you want?’

Rebus leaned over the counter. ‘I want to know where you were last night between the hours of nine p.m. and eleven, and it better be the alibi to end them all.’