Set in Darkness (18 page)

‘Had that marriage broken up before you met Mr Grieve?’ Linford asked.

Her eyes narrowed. ‘What exactly are you implying?’

‘To get back to Alasdair,’ Rebus said, hoping his tone would dissuade Linford from further queries, ‘you’ve no idea why he left?’

‘Roddy talked about him now and again, usually when a card arrived.’

‘Cards to him?’

‘No, to Alicia.’

Rebus looked around him, but someone had removed Alicia Grieve’s birthday cards. ‘Did he send one this year?’

‘He’s always late. It’ll arrive in a week or two.’ She looked towards the door. ‘Poor Alicia. She thinks I’m staying here as a sort of sanctuary.’

‘Whereas, in reality, you’re looking after her?’

She shook her head. ‘Not looking after exactly, but I
am
worried about her. She’s grown fragile. This is the only room you’ve been in. That’s because it’s practically the only room left that’s habitable. The rest, they fill with old papers and magazines – she won’t let them be thrown out. All sorts of rubbish, and when the room gets full, she moves into another. This room will go the same way, I suppose.’

‘Can’t her children do anything?’ Linford again.

‘She won’t let them. Refuses even to have a cleaner. “Everything’s in its place for a reason,” that’s what she says.’

‘Maybe she has a point,’ Rebus said. Everything in its place – the body in the fireplace; Roddy Grieve in the summer house – for a reason. There had to be an explanation; it was just that they couldn’t see it yet. ‘Does she still paint?’ he asked.

‘Not really. She tinkers. Her studio is at the bottom of the garden, that’s probably where she’s gone.’ Seona looked at her watch. ‘God, and I need to buy some food . . .’

‘You’d heard the rumours about your husband and Josephine Banks?’

The question had come from Linford. Rebus turned towards him, eyes burning, but Linford was concentrating on the widow.

‘Someone sent me a letter.’ She tugged the sleeve of her blouse down over her watch; suddenly defensive, where before she’d been opening up.

‘You trusted your husband?’

‘Completely. I know what it’s like in politics.’

‘Any idea who might have sent the letter?’

‘I threw it straight in the bin. We agreed that was the best place for it.’

‘How did Ms Banks react?’

‘She thought about hiring a detective. We talked her out of it. Anything we did would have made it all seem legitimate. We’d have been playing his game.’

‘Whose game?’

‘Whoever was spreading the rumour.’

‘You’re sure it was a he?’

‘A question of probability, Inspector Linford. Most of the people in politics are male. It’s sad but it’s true.’

‘I notice’, Rebus said, ‘there were two women standing against your husband in the selection process.’

‘Labour policy.’

‘Did you know any of the other candidates?’

‘Of course. The Labour Party’s one big happy family, Inspector.’

He smiled, as was expected. ‘I hear Archie Ure wasn’t best pleased with the result.’

‘Well, Archie’s been in politics a hell of a sight longer than Roddy. He thought it was his birthright.’

Jo Banks had used the selfsame word: birthright.

‘And the two women on the shortlist?’

‘Young and intelligent . . . they’ll get what they want eventually.’

‘So what happens now, Mrs Grieve?’

‘Now?’ She was staring at the pattern in the carpet. ‘Archie Ure was the runner-up. I suppose they’ll go with him.’ Staring hard at the carpet, as if some message were imprinted there.

Linford cleared his throat and turned towards Rebus, indicating that for him the interview was complete. Rebus tried to think of some brilliant final question, but came up empty.

‘Just give me back my husband,’ Seona Grieve said, leading them into the hall. Alicia was standing there at the foot of the stairs, a china cup in her hand. She’d folded a slice of bread into the cup and squashed it down.

‘I wanted something,’ she told her daughter-in-law. ‘But I’m not sure now why.’

As they left, Roddy Grieve’s widow was leading his mother up the stairs like a parent with a sleepy child.

Back at the car, Rebus told Linford: ‘You go on ahead.’

‘What?’

‘I want to stick around, do the Good Samaritan bit.’

‘Babysitting?’ Linford got in, started the engine. ‘Something tells me that’s not the whole story.’

‘I might have a word with the old woman while I’m at it.’

‘Just tell me you’re not playing Grab-a-Granny.’

Rebus winked. ‘We don’t all have young ladies lusting after us.’

The look on Linford’s face changed. He put the car into gear and drove off.

A grin spread over Rebus’s face. ‘Good on you, Siobhan, you went and dumped him.’

He went back up the path, rang the doorbell. Explained to Seona Grieve that he could spare twenty minutes or so if she wanted to pop out. She hesitated.

‘It’s just milk and bread, Inspector. We can probably manage till—’

‘Well, I’m here now, and my driver’s gone.’ He waved back towards the empty roadway. ‘Besides, the way Mrs Grieve is getting through that bread . . .’

He made himself comfy in the sitting room. She told him he was welcome to make tea or coffee, as long as he didn’t take milk. ‘But fair warning,’ she added, ‘the kitchen’s a bomb-site.’

‘I’ll be fine,’ he said, picking up a Sunday supplement from six months before. He heard the door close – she hadn’t bothered telling her mother-in-law, hadn’t seen the point. There was a newsagent’s a quarter of a mile away. She wouldn’t be long. Rebus waited a couple of minutes, then climbed the stairs. Alicia Grieve was standing in her bedroom doorway. She was still dressed, but wore a dressing-gown over her clothes.

‘Oh,’ she said. ‘I thought I heard someone leaving.’

‘Nothing wrong with your ears, Mrs Grieve. Seona’s just nipped out to the shop.’

‘Then why are you still here?’ She peered at him. ‘You
are
the policeman?’

‘That’s right.’

She shuffled past him, one hand reaching out to steady herself against the wall. ‘I’m looking for something,’ she told him. ‘It’s not in my bedroom.’

He could see into her room through the open door. It was chaotic. Clothes were piled on chairs and the floor, more spilling from the wardrobe and chest of drawers. Books and magazines, paintings stacked against the walls. There was a large patch of damp on the ceiling by the window.

She’d pushed open another door. The patterned carpet inside was faded to an almost uniform grey, where it wasn’t threadbare. Rebus followed her in. Was it a living room? An office? Impossible to tell. Cardboard boxes filled with memories and rubbish. Old letters, some not yet
opened. Photograph albums spilling loose pictures across the floor. More magazines and newspapers, more paintings. Children’s toys and games from ages past. A collection of mirrors on one wall. A wigwam propped up against the far corner, its yellow canvas patched and crumbling. A child’s doll, sporting tunic and kilt, lay headless under a chair. Rebus picked it up, found the head resting in an open biscuit tin along with loose dominoes, playing cards, empty cotton reels. He fixed the head back on. The doll’s blue eyes looked neither pleased nor displeased.

‘What is it you’re looking for?’

She looked round. ‘What are you doing with Lorna’s doll?’

‘Its head had come off. I just—’

‘No, no, no.’ She grabbed the doll from him. ‘Its head didn’t
come
off, the little madam yanked it off.’ Which was what Alicia Grieve did now. ‘It was her way of telling us she’d broken with childhood.’

Rebus smiled. ‘How old was she?’ Expecting to hear nine or ten.

‘Twenty-five, twenty-six, something like that.’ Her mind was half on her visitor, half on the search.

‘What did you think when she took up modelling?’

‘I’ve always supported my children.’ It had the sound of a prepared line, a titbit she offered to journalists and the curious.

‘How about Cammo and Roddy? Were you political, Mrs Grieve?’

‘In my younger days I was. Labour, mostly. Allan was a Liberal, we had many a debate . . .’

‘Yet one of your sons is a Tory.’

‘Oh, Cammo could always be difficult.’

‘And Roddy?’

‘Roddy needs to step out from his brother’s shadow. You haven’t seen the way he runs after Cammo. Always
watching, studying him. But Cammo has his own chums. Boys that age can be cruel, can’t they?’

She was drifting away from him, the years dancing in her eyes.

‘They’re grown men now, Alicia.’

‘They’ll always be boys to me.’ She started taking things out of a box, studying each item – binoculars, marmalade jar, football pennant – as though it might reveal itself to her.

‘Are you close to Roddy?’

‘Roddy’s a dear.’

‘He talks to you? Comes to you with problems?’

‘He’s . . .’ She broke off, looked confused. ‘He’s dead, isn’t he?’ Rebus nodded. ‘I told him, warned him often enough. Climbing over railings at his age.’ She shook her head. ‘Bound to be accidents.’

‘He’d done it before? Climbed the railings?’

‘Oh yes. It was a shortcut to school, you see.’

Rebus slid his hands into his pockets. She was travelling elsewhere now. ‘I did dally with the Nationalists in the fifties. They were a strange lot, maybe they still are. Kilts and Gaelic and a chip on the shoulder. We attended some good parties, though, lots of dancing. Sword and Shield . . .’

Rebus frowned. ‘I’ve heard of that. An offshoot of the Nationalists?’

‘It didn’t last long. Very little did in those days. An idea would blossom, then you’d have a few drinks and that would be the end of that.’

‘Did you know Matthew Vanderhyde?’

‘Oh, yes. Everyone knew Matthew. Is he still with us?’

‘I see him occasionally. Maybe not as often as I should.’

‘Matthew and Allan would argue politics with Chris Grieve . . .’ She broke off. ‘You know he’s not related?’ Rebus nodded, remembering the framed poem in the downstairs hall. ‘Allan would be doing Chris’s portrait, only the man wouldn’t sit still. Always moving, flinging
out his arms to make a point.’ She flung out her own arms in imitation. The marmalade jar was in one hand, a roll of Christmas parcel-tape in the other. ‘Edwin Muir was a great foil for him. Then there was dear Naomi Mitchison. Do you know her work?’ Rebus was silent, as if speech might break the spell.

‘And the painters – Gillies, McTaggart, Maxwell.’ She smiled. ‘Sparks always flew. We were lucky with the Festival, it brought visitors to the galleries. The Edinburgh School, we called ourselves. It was a different country then, you know. Trapped between one world war and the threat of another. Hard to bring up children with the A-bomb hanging over your head. It affected my work, I think.’

‘Were your children interested in art?’

‘Lorna dabbled, maybe she still does. But not the boys. Cammo always had his cronies around him, almost like a Praetorian Guard. Roddy liked the company of grown-ups, always so deferential and willing to listen.’

‘And Alasdair?’

She angled her head. ‘Alasdair was a painter’s nightmare, an angelic tearaway. I never captured that. You always knew he was up to something, but you didn’t mind because it was Alasdair. Do you see?’

‘I think so.’ Rebus knew a few young villains like that: charming and cheeky, but always on the make and take. ‘He keeps in touch, doesn’t he?’

‘Oh, yes.’

‘Why did he leave home?’

‘He wasn’t strictly
at
home. He had a flat of his own near the foot of the Canongate. When he’d gone, we found out it was a furnished rental, practically none of it was his. He took a suitcase of clothes, some books, and that was it.’

‘He didn’t say why he was leaving?’

‘No, just phoned out of the blue. Told me he’d be in touch.’

Rebus heard the front door open and close, the words ‘I’m back’ drifting up the stairs.

‘I’d better be going,’ he said.

Alicia Grieve looked as though she’d already dismissed him. ‘I wish I knew where it was,’ she said to herself, replacing the marmalade jar in its box. ‘Dear me, if only I knew . . .’

Seona Grieve was halfway up the stairs when he met her.

‘Is everything all right?’

‘Everything’s fine,’ he assured her. ‘Mrs Grieve’s just lost something, that’s all.’

Seona stared up towards the landing. ‘Inspector, she’s lost practically
everything
. It’s just that she doesn’t know it yet . . .’

It was an office much like any other.

Grant Hood and Ellen Wylie shared a look. They’d been expecting a builder’s yard – glaur and breeze-blocks, an Alsatian tethered and barking. Wylie even had wellies in the car, just in case. But this was the third floor of a 1960s office block halfway down Leith Walk. Wylie had asked Hood, would it be all right to nip into Valvona and Crolla’s after? He’d told her yes, no problem, but wasn’t it expensive?

‘Quality costs.’ That’s what she’d said, like an advertising slogan.

They were doing the rounds of Edinburgh’s building contractors, starting with the largest and longest established. Phone calls first, and if there was anyone in the firm who could help, then it was time for a visit.

Wylie: ‘Maybe John’s right when he calls us the Time Team. Never saw myself as an archaeologist.’

‘Twenty years, it’s hardly prehistory.’

Hood had found that their conversation flowed. No awkward pauses or slips of the tongue. They’d had one disagreement, over whether they were on a dead-end case.

Wylie: ‘We should be working the Grieve inquiry. That’s where all the attention is.’

Hood: ‘But if we get a result here, it’s something special, isn’t it? And it’s all ours.’

Wylie: ‘Any leads we get, I’ll bet we end up relegated. We’re DCs, Grant. That’s too low in the league to get any medals that might be going.’

‘You like football?’

‘I might.’

‘Who do you support?’

‘You first.’

Hood: ‘I’ve always been Rangers. You?’

Grinning: ‘Celtic.’

Sharing a laugh. Then Wylie again: ‘What is it they say about opposites attracting?’