‘Tea?’ she was asking.
‘Lovely,’ Rebus said.
‘Would you like to wait in the morning room?’
‘The kitchen will be fine. I’m sorry, I didn’t catch your name...’
‘I’m Mrs Belkin. Jean Belkin.’
‘My name’s Fox,’ Rebus told her.
He’d been expecting the kitchen to be below stairs and he was not disappointed. They left the entrance hall behind and entered a narrow unadorned corridor, then down a flight of winding stone stairs to another corridor. The large kitchen had last been modernised in the 1960s, he guessed, and the Aga looked even older. He warmed his hands next to it while Belkin filled the electric kettle. She guessed what he was thinking.
‘Hob takes forever,’ she said, flipping the switch.
‘You’re here on your own, Mrs Belkin?’
‘If I had been, I’d not have let you over the threshold, not without seeing some ID.’
Rebus made show of patting his jacket pocket. ‘In the car,’ he apologised.
‘No matter, my husband Colin’s not far away. He’s gardener, handyman and whatever else the place needs.’ She was fetching mugs and teapot, milk and sugar. ‘A biscuit?’
‘Not for me.’
‘You’ve really come all the way from Edinburgh?’
‘Yes.’
‘And have you heard about our murder? It’s getting so nowhere is safe.’
‘Young man along by Naver?’ Rebus nodded. ‘A bad business.’
‘This world of ours is coming apart at the seams.’ She shook her head in bewilderment.
‘Hard to disagree.’
He watched her as she took her time deciding how to frame her next question.
‘Is it because of Lady Isabella, Inspector?’
‘What makes you say that?’
‘She knew the Saudi gentleman — brought him here on a couple of occasions.’
‘Is that so?’
‘But she doesn’t come home very often, prefers the bright lights and what have you.’
‘This is more to do with Lady Isabella’s father. We’ve information that he might have been conducting some business with the deceased.’
‘What sort of business?’ She poured water from the kettle into the teapot. Her hand was steady as she concentrated on the task.
‘Does Lord Strathy have an office — a PA or secretary?’
‘In London, yes. Most of his business dealings are focused there.’
‘Is that where he is just now?’
A sudden flush came into Belkin’s cheeks. ‘We’re not quite sure where he is, that’s the truth of it.’
There was a sound behind them. The door to the outside world rattled open and a heavy-set, unshaven man stood there, eyes wary as they landed on Rebus.
‘Colin, this is Mr Fox, a detective from Edinburgh,’ Belkin began to explain.
‘Oh aye?’ He didn’t sound entirely convinced. ‘Bit long in the tooth, aren’t you?’
‘I’m younger than I look.’
‘Bloody well have to be.’ The gardener went to the sink, rinsing his hands and drying them on a towel his wife handed him. ‘What’s this all about?’
‘The young Saudi,’ his wife informed him, as she filled another mug, ‘the one who came here...’
‘What of him?’
Rebus took a step forward. ‘We’re looking into any business dealings he might have had, and your employer’s name came up.’
Colin Belkin took a slurp of tea. ‘And how the hell would we know anything about that?’
‘It was Lord Strathy I came to see — your wife’s just been telling me he seems to have disappeared.’
‘Christ’s sake, just because a man takes a bit of time to himself,’ the gardener growled.
‘Is that what he’s done?’
‘Stands to reason.’ Belkin thumped the mug down onto the large wooden table. Then, to his wife: ‘Remember that business two years back? The reporter who said he wasn’t a reporter?’
‘What business?’ Rebus asked.
But the gardener had stretched a hand out towards him, palm up. ‘Let me see some ID.’
‘He told me he left it in the car,’ Jean Belkin said.
‘Then we’ll go to the car and check it out. Against the law to tell people you’re the police when you’re not.’
‘I can give you a number to call,’ Rebus countered. ‘You can ask for DI Malcolm Fox.’
Belkin dug a phone from his back pocket. ‘Let’s do that then.’
Rebus turned his attention to Jean Belkin. ‘What business?’ he asked her again, but she wasn’t about to answer.
‘Door’s there,’ her husband said with a gesture, ‘unless you want to give me that number...’
Rebus debated for a moment. ‘You’ll be hearing from us again,’ he said.
Colin Belkin was turning the door handle, still with his phone in his other hand. With a final glare at husband and wife, Rebus made his exit, rounding the property and climbing a sloping path back to where his Saab stood waiting.
At the end of the driveway, he left the gates gaping — it wasn’t much by way of payback, but what else did he have? — and pulled into a passing place. He switched on his phone, but found he had no signal. Had the gardener been bluffing then? It was entirely possible. He heard running footsteps, but too late to do anything about them. The driver’s-side door was hauled open and Colin Belkin grabbed a fistful of his lapel, teeth bared.
‘You’re no bloody copper, so who the hell are you?’
Rebus was trying to undo his seat belt with one hand while he wrestled Belkin’s vice-like grip with the other. The man was shaking him like a rag doll.
‘You keep your nose out of honest people’s business!’ Belkin barked. ‘Or you get this.’ He brandished a clenched fist an inch from Rebus’s face.
‘Which jail were you in?’ Rebus asked. The man’s eyes widened, his grip faltering slightly. ‘I can smell an ex-con at fifty yards. Does your employer know?’
Belkin drew his fist back as if readying to throw a punch, but then froze at the sound of his wife’s voice. She was standing in the gateway, pleading for him to stop. Belkin brought his face so close to Rebus’s that Rebus could feel his oniony breath.
‘Come bothering us again, you’ll be getting a doing.’ He released his grip on the lapel and reared back, turning and walking in the direction of his waiting wife.
Rebus’s heart was pounding and he felt light-headed. He pressed a hand against the outline of the inhaler in his pocket but didn’t think it would help. Instead he sat for a moment, watching in the rear-view mirror as Belkin closed the gates with an almighty clang, his wife steering him back towards the castle. When they disappeared from view, he pushed down on the accelerator, feeling a slight tremble in the arch of his right foot. The perfect time for the CD to decide he merited John Martyn’s ‘I’d Rather Be the Devil’.
Back on the A836, he checked his phone again and found he had one bar of signal, so he pulled over and called Siobhan Clarke.
‘How’s it going?’ she asked.
‘Lord Strathy’s not been seen by his staff for a while.’
‘Must be in London then.’
‘That’s not the impression I get. I’d say they’ve been trying to rouse him without success.’
‘What do you make of it?’
‘That’s your job rather than mine.’
‘I’ll check with his London office. Maybe ask his daughter, too.’
‘One other thing — the staff mentioned some press interest a couple of years back. Any idea what that’s about?’
‘Hang on.’ He could hear her sifting paperwork, and a muttering from Malcolm Fox as she asked him about it.