Set in Darkness (16 page)

‘Maybe.’

‘I feel like kissing you. That’s probably not allowed, right?’

‘Right,’ Rebus agreed.

‘Maybe I’ll do it anyway.’ Cordover had disappeared into the house. ‘Or would that be classed as assault?’

‘Not if no charges were brought.’

She leaned forward, pecked him on the cheek. When she stepped back, Rebus saw a face at a window. Not Cordover: Peter Grief.

‘Peter’s song,’ Rebus said. ‘The one about his father. I didn’t catch the title.’

‘“The Final Reproof”,’ Lorna Grieve told him. ‘As in condemning.’

In his car, Rebus got on his mobile and asked Derek Linford how things had gone at The Exchange.

‘Roddy Grieve was whiter than white,’ Linford said. ‘No bad deals, no cock-ups, no unhappy punters. Also, none of his colleagues were out drinking with him on Sunday night.’

‘Which tells us what exactly?’

‘I’m not sure.’

‘A dead end then?’

‘Not quite: I did get a hot tip for an investment. How about you?’

Rebus glanced at the album on the passenger seat. ‘I’m not sure what I got, Derek. Talk to you later.’ He made another call, this time to a vinyl dealer in the city.

‘Paul? It’s John Rebus. Obscura’s
Continuous Repercussions
, signed by High Chord and Lorna Grieve.’ He listened for a moment. ‘It’s not mint, but it’s not bad.’ Listened again. ‘Get back to me if you can go any higher, eh? Cheers.’

He slowed the car so he could search in the glove compartment, found a Hendrix tape and slotted it home. ‘Love or Confusion’. Sometimes, you couldn’t be sure what the difference was.

Howdenhall was home to the city’s forensic science lab. Rebus wasn’t sure why Grant Hood and Ellen Wylie wanted to meet him there. Their message had been vague, hinting at some surprise. Rebus hated surprises. That kiss from Lorna Grieve . . . it hadn’t been a surprise exactly, but all the same. And if he hadn’t angled his head at the last moment, bottling out of some mouth-to-mouth . . . Jesus, and with Peter Grief watching from the window. Grief: Rebus had meant to ask about the name change. Grieve to Grief; verb to noun. But then he’d been brought up by his mother, so maybe his surname had been Collins. In which case, the change of name was still resonant, the young man laying claim to the missing half of his identity, his missed past.

Howdenhall: full of brainboxes, some of them looking barely out of their teens. People who knew about DNA and computer data. These days at St Leonard’s, you didn’t roll ink over a suspect’s fingers, you merely placed their palm to a computer pad. The prints flashed up on the screen, and Criminal Records came back to you immediately if there was a match. The process still amazed him, even after all these months.

Hood and Wylie were waiting for him in one of the meeting rooms. Howdenhall was still fairly new, and had a clean no-nonsense smell and feel to it. The large oval desk, made up of three movable sections, hadn’t had time to get scuffed or scored. The chairs were still comfortably padded. The two junior officers made to get up, but he waved them back down and seated himself across the table from them.

‘No ashtray,’ he remarked.

‘There’s no smoking, sir,’ Wylie explained.

‘I know that well enough. I just keep thinking I’ll wake up and it’ll all have been a bad dream.’ He looked around. ‘No coffee or tea either, eh?’

Hood sprang to his feet. ‘I can get you . . .’

Rebus shook his head. Still, it was good to see Hood so keen. Two empty polystyrene beakers on the table: he wondered who’d fetched them. Even money on Hood; Wylie at three to one.

‘Latest news?’ he asked.

‘Very little blood in the fireplace,’ Wylie said. ‘Chances are, Skelly was killed elsewhere.’

‘Which means less chance of the SOCOs coming up with anything useful.’ Rebus was thoughtful for a moment. ‘So why the secrecy?’ he asked.

‘No secrecy, sir. It’s just that when we found out Professor Sendak was going to be here this afternoon for a meeting . . .’

‘Seemed too good to miss, sir,’ Hood concluded.

‘And who’s Professor Sendak when he’s at home?’

‘Glasgow University, sir. Head of Forensic Pathology.’

Rebus raised an eyebrow. ‘Glasgow? Listen, if Gates and Curt find out, it’s your heads, not mine, okay?’

‘We cleared it with the Procurator Fiscal’s office.’

‘So what can this Sendak do that our own boffins can’t?’

There was a knock at the door.

‘Maybe we’ll let the professor explain,’ Hood said, not quite disguising the relief in his voice.

Professor Ross Sendak was approaching sixty, but still boasted a head of thick black hair. The shortest person in the room, he carried himself with weight and confidence, demanding respect. Introductions complete, he settled himself on a chair and spread his hands out on the table.

‘You think I can help you,’ he stated, ‘and perhaps you’re right. I’ll need the skull brought to Glasgow. Can that be arranged?’

Wylie and Hood shared a look. Rebus cleared his throat.

‘I’m afraid the Time Team here haven’t had time to brief me, Professor.’

Sendak nodded, took a deep breath. ‘Laser technology, Inspector.’ He reached into his briefcase, slid out a laptop computer and switched it on. ‘Forensic facial reconstruction. Your forensic colleagues here have already ascertained that the decedent’s hair was brown. That’s a start. What we would do in Glasgow is place the skull on a revolving plinth. We then aim a laser at the skull, feeding the information into a computer, building up details. From these, the facial contours are formed. Other information – the decedent’s general physique; his age at date of death – help with the final image.’ He turned the computer around so it was facing Rebus. ‘And what you get is something like this.’

Rebus had to get up. From where he was sitting, the screen seemed blank. Hood and Wylie did likewise, until all three of them were jockeying for position, the better to make out the face which flickered at them. By moving a few inches to right or left, the image faded, disappeared, but when in focus it was clearly the face of a young man. There was something of the mannequin about it, a deadness to the eyes, the one visible ear not quite right and the hair clearly an afterthought.

‘This poor devil rotted on a hillside in the Highlands. He
was past normal means of ID by the time he was found. Animals and the elements had taken their toll.’

‘But you think this is what he looked like in life?’

‘I’d say it’s close. Eyes and hairstyle are speculative, but the overall structure of the face is true.’

‘Amazing,’ Hood said.

‘Using the inset screen,’ Sendak went on, ‘we can reconfigure the face – change hairstyle, add a moustache or beard, even change eye colour. The variations can be printed out and used for a public appeal.’ Sendak pointed to the small grey square in the top right corner of the screen. It contained what looked like a children’s version of an identikit: the rough outline of a head, plus hats, facial hairstyles, glasses.

Rebus looked to Hood and Wylie. They were looking at him now, seeking his okay.

‘So how much is this going to cost?’ he asked, turning back to the screen.

‘It’s not an expensive process,’ Sendak said. ‘I appreciate that funds are being soaked up by the Grieve case.’

Rebus glanced towards Wylie. ‘Someone’s been whispering.’

‘It’s not like we’re spending money on anything else,’ Wylie argued. Rebus saw anger in her eyes. She was beginning to feel sidelined. Any other time of year, Skelly would have been big news, but not with Roddy Grieve as competition.

In the end, Rebus gave the nod.

Afterwards, there was just time for a coffee. Sendak explained that his Human Identification Centre had helped with war crimes cases in Rwanda and the former Yugoslavia. In fact, he was flying out to The Hague at the end of the week to testify in a war crimes trial.

‘Thirty Serb victims buried in a mass grave. We helped identify the victims and prove they were shot at close range.’

‘Sort of puts things into perspective, doesn’t it?’ Rebus
said afterwards, eyes on Wylie. Hood was off finding a phone. He needed to talk to the Procurator Fiscal’s office again, tell them what was happening.

‘You’ll have to tell Prof. Gates what’s happening,’ Rebus went on.

‘Yes, sir. Will that be a problem?’

Rebus shook his head. ‘I’ll have a word. He won’t like the fact that Glasgow have got something he hasn’t . . . but he’ll live with it.’ He winked at her. ‘After all, we’ve got everything else.’

The Murder Room at St Leonard’s was fully operational – computers, civilian support, extra phone lines – with an additional Portakabin parked on the pavement outside Queensberry House. Chief Superintendent Watson was kept busy in a series of meetings with Fettes brass and politicians. He’d lost the head at one of the junior officers, shouting the odds before marching off to his office and slamming the door. Nobody’d seen him like that before. DS Frazer’s comment: ‘Get Rebus back here, we need to offer a sacrifice.’ Joe Dickie had nudged him: ‘Any news on overtime?’ He had a blank expenses form ready on his desk.

Gill Templer had been put in charge of press briefings. Her background was in liaison work. So far she’d managed to tamp down a couple of the wilder conspiracy theories. ACC Carswell had come to inspect the troops, given the tour by Derek Linford. Space at the station was cramped, and Linford didn’t even have his own office. Twelve CID officers were attached to the case, along with a further dozen uniforms. The uniforms were there to search the area around the
locus
and help with door-to-door. Secretarial support came extra, and Linford was still waiting to hear what budget the case would merit. He wasn’t stinting, not yet: he reckoned this was a flier, meaning it would justify any amount of staffing and overtime.

All the same, he liked to keep an eye on the money side. It didn’t help that he was playing away from home. He ignored the looks and comments, but they got to him all
the same.
Fettes bastard . . . thinks he can tell us how to run our station
. It was all about territory. Not that Rebus seemed to mind. Rebus had given him the run of the place, had admitted that Linford was the better administrator. His exact words: ‘Derek, to be honest, no one’s ever accused me of being able to mind the store.’

Linford made a circuit of the room now: wall charts; staff rotas; crime scene photographs; telephone numbers. Three officers sat silently at their computers, tapping the latest gen into the database. An investigation like this was all about information, its gathering and cross-referencing. Detection lay in making connections, and it could be a painstaking business. He wondered if anyone else in the room felt the same electricity he did. Back to the rota: DS Roy Frazer was in charge of the Holyrood operation, managing the house-to-house inquiries, interviewing the demolition teams and builders. Another DS, George Silvers, was plotting the deceased’s final movements. Roddy Grieve had lived in Cramond, had told his wife he was going out for a drink. Nothing unusual in that, and he’d acted naturally. Had taken his mobile with him. Not that there’d been any reason to check up on him. At midnight she’d turned in for the night. Next morning when he wasn’t there, she’d begun to worry, but had decided to leave it an hour or two; might be some rational explanation . . . Sleeping it off somewhere.

‘Did that often happen?’ Silvers had asked.

‘Once or twice.’

‘And where did he end up sleeping?’

Answer: at his mother’s; or on a friend’s sofa.

Silvers didn’t look like he put much effort into anything. You couldn’t imagine him in a hurry. But he gave himself time to form questions and strategies.

Time, too, for the interviewee to start twitching.

Grieve’s press officer was a young man called Hamish Hall, and Linford had interviewed him. Playing it back in his head afterwards, Linford reckoned he’d come off
second best in the encounter. Hall, in his sharp suit and with a sharp, bright face, had snapped out his answers, as if dismissing the questions. Linford had snapped another question back at him, taking him on rather than playing to his own strengths.

‘How did you get on with Mr Grieve?’

‘Fine.’

‘Never any problems?’

‘Never.’

‘And Ms Banks?’

‘Do you mean how did I get along with her, or how did she get along with Roddy?’ Light glinting from the circular chrome frames of his spectacles.

‘Both, I suppose.’

‘Fine.’

‘Yes?’

‘That’s my answer to both questions: we got along fine.’

‘Right.’

And on it went, like machine-gun fire. Hall’s background: party man, single-minded, economics degree. Economy his strong point when speaking, too.

‘Press agent . . . Is that like a spin doctor?’

A bending of the mouth. ‘That’s a cheap shot, Inspector Linford.’

‘Who else was in Mr Grieve’s retinue? I’m assuming there’d be local volunteers . . . ?’

‘Not yet. Electioneering proper doesn’t start until April. That’s when we’d have needed canvassers.’

‘You had people in mind?’

‘Not my bailiwick. Ask Jo.’

‘Jo?’

‘Josephine Banks, his election agent. That’s what we called her: Jo.’ A glance at his watch, loud exhalation.

‘So what will you do now, Mr Hall?’

‘You mean when I leave here?’

‘I mean now your employer’s dead.’

‘Find another one.’ A genuine smile this time. ‘There’ll be no shortage of takers.’

Linford could see Hall five or ten years down the line, standing just behind some dignitary, maybe even the Prime Minister, murmuring something which the PM would utter aloud mere seconds later. Always in shot; always close to the power.

When the two men stood up, Linford shook Hall’s hand warmly, offered him a grin and a cup of tea or coffee.

‘Really appreciate . . . sorry to have . . . wish you all the best . . .’

Because you never knew. Five, ten years on, you just never could tell . . .

‘Tell me this is a joke.’

Ellen Wylie was examining the dimly lit interior of one of the downstairs interview rooms. It was half-filled with broken equipment: chairs with missing castors; golf-ball typewriters.