‘Are you going to arrest him?’
‘Case isn’t solid enough yet.’
‘So he’s muscle for Fraser Mackenzie?’
‘Certainly seems that way.’
‘Recruited by the daughter?’
‘It would make sense.’ Dickinson put his phone away again, and Fox retreated to his armchair. ‘One other thing I picked up at Gartcosh about the furlough fraud,’ Dickinson continued. ‘James Pelham used Francis Haggard’s name on his list of bogus employees. Makes it a lot less likely it was somebody else’s mistake. His wife’s name was there too.’
‘Haggard’s wife?’
‘Pelham’s. He left Haggard’s wife out of it — maybe he liked her better than her husband, or his own ex-wife, come to that. He probably enjoyed typing their names in.’
‘Could Haggard have found out?’
Dickinson offered a shrug. ‘I’m not sure it’s any sort of motive for murder, but it’s given HMRC fresh hope of nailing Pelham. If I were him, I’d be unravelling as fast as most of his businesses.’ He glanced at his wristwatch. ‘I’d best be off — any chance I can use your loo first? It’s the one thing my office lacks, and it’s a long drive back west.’
Fox showed him the way and waited in the hallway by the front door. He wondered if it was too late to call Clarke and share the news of the man called Crosbie. He decided it probably was. He had someone he was due to see tomorrow, and he planned to take Clarke with him. He could tell her then. He took out his phone and checked there were no texts. The person he’d arranged to visit had got cold feet several times in the past. So far so good, though.
He heard the cistern flush, the taps run, and then the toilet door click open. Not everyone would have bothered locking it in the first place, but then Geoff Dickinson was the cautious type. It came with the territory.
He was rubbing his hands together as he emerged. ‘Time to saddle up,’ he said. ‘I swear there are nights I’d be as well parking up and sleeping behind the wheel.’ He studied Fox again. ‘Might be one of the pitfalls of that promotion that’s in your future.’
‘No pitfall,’ Fox said, pulling back his shoulders.
‘At ease, soldier,’ Dickinson said with a smile.
Morris Gerald Cafferty had his phone held out in front of him as he sat by his telescope. He was dressed in his pyjamas and watching — by no means for the first time — the snippet of video Andrew had forwarded to him. It showed Clarke and Fox and some cops from Tynecastle police station. They were outside Gaby Mackenzie’s club. It was impossible to make out most of what was being said. The voices of others in the queue closer to the phone were too loud. Cafferty, not too long after they’d met, had told Andrew always to follow the money, and Andrew had taken the advice to heart. In fact, he’d gone further — he just liked following people full stop. Once or twice, peering through the telescope towards the Meadows, the young man had spotted someone he fancied the look of, for whatever reason. He’d then dashed out and started trailing them. Later, he would report back, now knowing where they lived, or where they met friends, or where they shopped. And that, seemingly, was enough for him, his itch scratched until the next time.
He had followed Fraser Mackenzie to the murder scene the morning after it had happened, had seen him meet John Rebus, and had reported back. He’d also gleaned information about Beth and Gaby Mackenzie, and about some of the city’s cops, especially the ones at Tynecastle and Leith. Cafferty wasn’t sure how he did it. He himself had never managed the feat of remaining inconspicuous. It wasn’t just to do with physical heft — Cafferty was nothing if he was not feared, so he had learned to look like someone who merited that fear. Whenever he walked into any situation, he made sure he looked pissed off from the get-go. That way, people were more minded to appease him.
He found himself rubbing one arm of the wheelchair, resenting how it had become such a part of his life. But then what was the point of living in the past when the present was so interesting? He wondered where Andrew was right now. Somewhere out there, stalking streets Cafferty had once controlled, learning them the way an actor learned lines for a role.
When the recording stopped, he started it again from the beginning. And there were Fox and Clarke, looking like a capable enough team. He wondered what they had learned in the nightclub. They would have seen Gaby, but had they spotted anything else? He noticed one of the Tynecastle cops rub at his nose after Clarke had said something to him. Ah yes, of course.
Just for a moment, Cafferty grew wistful. What if he had put his energies into Siobhan Clarke rather than John Rebus? How might things have turned out if he had?
But Rebus remained the prize, dangling just short of him. Maybe not for much longer, though. Maybe the ending he wanted was coming...
‘Why am I not surprised?’ Siobhan Clarke muttered to herself when her phone awoke her. It was three in the morning, according to the screen. She recognised the caller’s name and wrinkled her brow.
‘Ronnie?’ she said, answering. ‘Where are you?’
‘It’s my first night back,’ DC Ronnie Ogilvie said.
‘And you thought that news worth sharing with me? Got the COVID all-clear, I take it?’
‘Despite which, I’m at the Royal Infirmary. A house got firebombed. Owner’s being given the once-over. She wanted you to know.’
‘Who is it?’ Clarke asked, pivoting her legs out from beneath the duvet.
‘Laura Smith.’
‘Tell me she’s all right.’
‘Just a bit of smoke inhalation.’
‘I’ll be there in thirty minutes. And Ronnie?’
‘Yes, boss?’
‘Welcome back.’
The way Laura Smith told it, she’d been lucky, in that she’d still been awake and downstairs rather than upstairs in bed when the petrol bomb came crashing through her living room window. She kept a fire blanket in her kitchen, and had done what she could with it and some pans of cold water while waiting for the fire brigade to arrive.
‘They told me that if I’d run outside, I wouldn’t have breathed in so much smoke. But then if I’d done that, I might have lost the whole ground floor.’
‘Instead of a carpet and some damage to the ceiling,’ Ronnie Ogilvie added. He looked perfectly healthy to Clarke. They were seated either side of Laura Smith’s bed. There were still specks of soot on her face and in her hair, and she had been coughing some gunk into a paper towel on Clarke’s arrival.
‘You know what I’m going to ask,’ Clarke said.
Smith nodded. ‘I’ve plenty enemies, Siobhan, including one who’s already shown his hand.’
Clarke turned to Ogilvie. ‘James Pelham was hanging around outside Laura’s home yesterday evening.’
‘Whatever for?’ Ogilvie asked.
‘It was Laura who exposed the affair he was having.’
‘I thought that was the Courant?’ He saw the look both women were giving him. ‘Ah,’ he said as the truth dawned.
‘Then there are the cops from Tynecastle,’ Clarke continued, ‘photographed by the Courant and flagged up as an example.’
‘Alan Fleck and Rob Driscoll,’ Smith said, nodding.
‘Should I be making a note of this?’ Ogilvie asked.
‘You seem to be in charge, Ronnie,’ Clarke told him. Then, to Smith, ‘Where will you go? There’s a spare bed at mine if you need it.’
‘I was thinking of a hotel.’
‘I come cheaper.’
‘Just for a night or two then, thanks.’
An exhausted-looking doctor, probably not yet out of medical school, arrived on the ward and approached the bed, telling the patient she was free to leave.