Set in Darkness (44 page)

‘What about Hastings’ partner?’

‘Did a runner at the same time, didn’t he?’

‘He doesn’t seem to have got any of the money.’

‘You’d have to talk to him about that.’

Milligan interrupted again. ‘Bryce, any chance you’ve got paperwork proving any of this? It would help validate any claim.’

‘I might have,’ Callan conceded.

‘Forgeries won’t count,’ Rebus warned. Callan tutted. Now Rebus sat forward in his chair. ‘But thanks for clearing that up. It brings me to a connected series of questions, if you don’t mind?’

‘Go ahead,’ Callan said breezily.

Milligan: ‘I think perhaps we should—’

But Rebus was off and running. ‘I don’t think I said how Mr Hastings died: he committed suicide.’

‘Not before time,’ Callan snapped.

‘He did so shortly after the prospective MSP Roddy Grieve was murdered. That’s Alasdair’s brother, Mr Callan.’

‘So?’

‘And also shortly after the discovery of a corpse in one of the old fireplaces at Queensberry House. You’ll remember that, Mr Callan?’

‘What do you mean?’

‘I just mean, maybe your nephew Barry told you about Queensberry House.’ Rebus picked up a sheet of paper, checked the facts. ‘He was working there early in 1979, around the time of the devolution vote. That’s when you found out that all the land you’d been buying up wasn’t going to be a gold mine after all. It’s also probably when you learned that Hastings had been skimming. Either that or he’d just kept all the loot on one of the deals and pretended to you it had gone through. You’d only find out later that it hadn’t, and by then he’d have done a runner.’

‘What’s that got to do with Barry?’

‘He was working for Dean Coghill.’ Rebus picked up another sheet. Milligan was trying to interrupt, but no way Rebus was letting him. Ellen Wylie was bouncing on her toes, willing him on. ‘I think you were putting pressure on Coghill. You got him to take on Barry. Barry was working for you at the time. I think you put Barry in there to screw things up for Coghill. It was like an apprenticeship.’

Callan – Rebus could imagine his face suffused with blood: ‘Here, Milligan, you going to let him talk to me like this?’

Milligan; not Big C; not pal or chum. Oh yes, Callan was fizzing.

Rebus talked right across the pair of them. ‘See, the body went into the fireplace same time your boy Barry was there, same time you were finding out that Hastings and Grieve had ripped you off. So my question to you, Mr Callan, is: whose body is it? And why did you have him killed?’

Silence, and then the explosion: Callan screaming; Milligan threatening.

‘You lousy conniving—’

‘Must strongly object to the—’

‘Come on the phone with a load of shit about four hundred grand—’

‘Unwarranted attack on someone with no criminal
record in this or any other country, a man whose reputation—’

‘I swear to God, if I was there you’d need to slap me in chains to stop me smacking you one!’

‘I’m waiting,’ Rebus said, ‘any time you want to hop on a plane.’

‘Just you watch me.’

Milligan: ‘Now, Bryce, don’t let this appalling situation goad you into . . . Isn’t there a senior officer present?’ Milligan checked his notes. ‘Chief Superintendent Watson, isn’t it? Chief Superintendent, I must protest in the strongest terms about these underhand tactics, entrapping my client with tales of an unclaimed fortune . . .’

‘The story’s true,’ Watson said into the speaker phone. ‘The money’s here. But it seems to be part of a wider mystery, and one which Mr Callan could help clear up by flying back here for a proper interview.’

‘Any recording made today is, of course, inadmissible in a court of law,’ Milligan said.

‘Really? Well,’ the Farmer said, ‘I leave questions like that to the Fiscal’s office. Meantime, am I right in thinking that your client has yet to deny anything?’

Callan: ‘Deny? What do I need to deny? You can’t touch me, you bastards!’

Rebus imagined him on his feet, face turned a colour no hours of tanning would ever match, gripping the receiver in his fist, strangling the tormentor it had become.

‘You admit it then?’ Watson asked, his voice all naïve sincerity. He winked towards the doorway as he spoke. If Rebus didn’t know better, he’d say the man was beginning to enjoy himself.

‘Piss off!’ Callan growled.

‘I think you can take that as a denial,’ Milligan said tonelessly.

‘I think you’re probably right,’ Watson agreed.

‘Away to hell, the lot of you!’ Callan yelled. There was a click on the line.

‘I think Mr Callan has left us,’ Rebus said. ‘Are you still there, Mr Milligan?’

‘I’m here, and I really do feel the need to protest in the strongest—’

Rebus cut the connection. ‘I think we just lost him,’ he told the room. There were whoops from the doorway. Rebus got up. Watson reclaimed his chair.

‘Let’s not get too carried away,’ he said as Rebus switched off the tape-recorder. ‘Pieces are beginning to fit, but we still don’t know who did the killing, or even who was killed. Without those two pieces, all the fun we’ve just had with Bryce Callan counts for nothing.’

‘All the same, sir . . .’ Grant Hood was grinning.

Watson nodded. ‘All the same, DI Rebus showed us the way to that man’s black heart.’ He looked at Rebus, who was shaking his head.

‘I didn’t get enough.’ He hit the rewind button. ‘I’m not sure I got anything.’

‘We know what we’re dealing with, and that’s half the battle,’ Wylie said.

‘We should bring in Hutton,’ Siobhan Clarke added. ‘It seems to revolve around him, and at least
he’s
here.’

‘All he has to do is deny it,’ Watson reminded her. ‘He’s not a man without influence. Drag him in here, it would reflect badly on us.’

‘Can’t have that,’ Clarke grumbled.

Rebus looked to his boss. ‘Sir, it’s my shout. Any chance you can join us?’

The Farmer glanced at his watch. ‘Just the one then,’ he said. ‘And a packet of mints for the car home – my wife can smell alcohol on my breath at twenty paces.’

Rebus brought the drinks to the table, Hood helping. Wylie just wanted cola from the gun. Hood himself was on a pint of Eighty. For Rebus: a half and a ‘hauf’. A single malt for the Farmer, and red wine for Siobhan Clarke. They toasted each other.

‘To teamwork,’ Wylie said.

The Farmer cleared his throat. ‘Speaking of which, shouldn’t Derek be here?’

Rebus filled the silence. ‘DI Linford is following up a line of inquiry of his own: a description of Grieve’s possible murderer.’

The Chief Super met his eyes. ‘Teamwork should mean just that.’

‘You don’t have to tell me, sir,’ Rebus said. ‘I’m usually the one out in the cold.’

‘Because that’s where you’ve wanted to be,’ the Chief Super reminded him. ‘Not because we wouldn’t let you in.’

‘Point taken, sir,’ Rebus said quietly.

Clarke put down her glass. ‘It’s my fault really, sir, blowing up the way I did. I think John just thought there’d be less tension if DI Linford was kept at a distance.’

‘I know that, Siobhan,’ Watson said. ‘But I also want Derek appraised of what’s been going on.’

‘I’ll talk to him, sir,’ Rebus said.

‘Good.’ They sat in silence for a minute. ‘Sorry if I put a damper on things,’ the Farmer said at last. Then he drained his glass and said he’d better be off. ‘Just get my round in first.’ They assured him he didn’t need to, that it wasn’t expected, but he got the round in anyway. When he’d gone, they could feel themselves relax. Maybe it was the alcohol.

Maybe.

Hood brought draughts over from the bar, and commenced a game against Clarke. Rebus said he never played.

‘I’m a bad loser, that’s my problem.’

‘What I hate is a bad winner,’ Clarke said, ‘the kind that rubs your nose in it.’

‘Don’t worry,’ Hood said, ‘I’ll be gentle with you.’

The lad was definitely coming out of himself, Rebus thought. Then he watched as Siobhan Clarke took her
opponent apart, getting a crown while her own top row was still covered.

‘This is brutal,’ Wylie said, comforting Hood by ruffling his hair. When a second game was set up, Wylie and Hood swapped places. Hood sat across from Rebus now, and drained his first pint, replacing it with the one the Chief Super had bought.

‘Cheers,’ he said, taking a sip. Rebus raised his glass to him. ‘I can’t drink whisky,’ Hood confided. ‘Gives me blazing hangovers.’

‘Me, too, sometimes.’

‘Then why do you drink it?’

‘The pleasure before the pain: it’s a Calvinist thing.’ Hood looked at him blankly. ‘Never mind,’ Rebus told him.

‘He had it all wrong, you know,’ Siobhan Clarke said, as Wylie concentrated on her next move.

‘Who did?’

‘Callan. Using a front company so the plans stood a better chance of going through. There was an easier route.’

Wylie glanced over towards the men. ‘Wonder if she’s going to tell us?’

‘I think she wants us to guess first,’ Rebus said.

Wylie jumped one of Clarke’s draughts; Clarke retaliated. ‘Simple really,’ she said. ‘Why not just pay off the planners?’

‘Bribe the council?’ Hood smiled at the thought.

‘Bloody hell,’ Rebus said, staring into his drink. ‘Maybe that’s it . . .’

A comment he refused to explain, even when they threatened to make him play draughts.

‘I’ll never crack,’ he said, making light of it. But inside, his mind was buzzing with new possibilities and permutations, some of them including Cafferty’s face. He sat there wondering what the hell he could do about them . . .

Rebus and Derek Linford, the canteen at Fettes police HQ, Friday morning. Rebus nodded towards familiar faces: Claverhouse and Ormiston, Scottish Crime Squad, tucking into bacon rolls. Linford glanced in their direction.

‘You know them?’

‘I’m not in the habit of nodding at strangers.’

Linford looked at the slice of toast cooling on his plate. ‘How’s Siobhan?’

‘All the better for not seeing you.’

‘She got my note?’

Rebus drained his cup. ‘She hasn’t said anything.’

‘Is that a good sign?’

Rebus shrugged. ‘Look, you’re not suddenly going to be pals again. She could have reported you as a stalker, for Christ’s sake. How would that have gone down in Room 279?’ Rebus pointed upstairs with his thumb.

Linford’s shoulders slumped. Rebus got up, fetched a fresh cup of coffee. ‘Anyway,’ he said, ‘there’s some news.’ He went on to explain about the links between Freddy Hastings and Bryce Callan. The tension came back into Linford’s shoulders. He was forgetting about Siobhan Clarke.

‘So how does Roddy Grieve enter the equation?’ he asked.

‘That’s what we don’t know,’ Rebus admitted. ‘Revenge for the way his brother ripped off Callan?’

‘And Callan waits twenty years?’

‘I know, I can’t see it either.’

Linford stared at him. ‘But there’s something, isn’t there? Something you’re not telling me?’

Rebus shook his head. ‘But do yourself a favour: look into Barry Hutton. If it
was
Callan, he had to have someone here.’

‘And Barry fits the bill?’

‘He’s his nephew.’

‘Any evidence he’s not just the Rotarian businessman?’

Rebus gestured towards Claverhouse and Ormiston. ‘Ask Crime Squad, maybe they’ll know.’

‘From what little I know of Hutton, he doesn’t fit the witness description of the man on Holyrood Road.’

‘He has employees, doesn’t he?’

‘Chief Superintendent Watson’s already warned that Hutton has “friends”: how do I go snooping without raising hackles?’

Rebus looked at him. ‘You don’t.’

‘I don’t go snooping?’ Linford seemed confused.

Rebus shook his head. ‘You don’t
not
raise hackles. Look, Linford, we’re cops. Sometimes you have to step out from behind the desk and get in people’s faces.’ Linford didn’t look convinced. ‘You think I’m setting you up for something?’

‘Are you?’

‘Would I admit it if I was?’

‘I suppose not. I’m just wondering if this is some sort of . . . test.’

Rebus stood up, coffee untouched. ‘You’re getting a suspicious mind. That’s good, goes with the territory.’

‘And what territory is that?’

But Rebus just winked, walked away with hands in pockets. Linford sat there, drumming his fingers on the table, then pushed his toast away and got up, too, walked over to where the two Crime Squad detectives were sitting.

‘Mind if I join you?’

Claverhouse gestured to the spare chair. ‘Any friend of John Rebus’s . . .’

‘. . . is probably after some bloody big favour,’ Ormiston said, completing his colleague’s thought.

Linford sat in his BMW in the only spare bay at the front of Hutton Tower. Lunchtime: workers were streaming out of the building, returning later with sandwich bags, cans of soft drink. Some stood on the steps, smoking the cigarettes they couldn’t smoke indoors. It hadn’t been easy to find the place: he’d driven through a building site, the road surface not yet finished. A wooden board –
CAR PARK FOR REGISTERED PERSONNEL ONLY
. But one free space, which he accepted gladly.

He’d got out of the BMW, checking the wheels were intact after the rutted and pitted roadway. Sprays of grey mud radiating from his wheel arches. Car wash at day’s end. Back in the driving seat, watching the parade of sandwiches, baps and fresh fruit, he regretted not eating that breakfast toast. Claverhouse and Ormiston had whisked him upstairs, but their search on Hutton had drawn a blank other than some parking fines and the fact that his mother’s brother was one Bryce Edwin Callan.

Rebus had said, in effect, that there was no subtle way to go about this, that he would have to announce himself and his intentions. He had no good reason to walk into the building and demand a line-up of every member of staff. Even if Hutton had nothing to hide, Linford couldn’t see him agreeing. He’d want to know why, and when told would refuse the request outright and be on the phone to his lawyer, the newspapers, civil rights . . . And now that Linford thought about it, wasn’t this looking more and more like a wild-goose chase dreamed up by Rebus – or maybe even Siobhan – to punish him? If he walked into trouble,
they’d
be the ones to profit from it.