Leighton didn’t look impressed now, he looked startled, perhaps even disbelieving.
‘Three out of four,’ Rebus said. ‘Not a bad score, eh?’ Leighton didn’t answer, so Rebus smiled reassuringly. ‘Don’t you worry, sir. I’ll take care of this. You won’t be bothered any more.’
‘Well… thank you, Inspector.’
Rebus got to his feet. ‘All part of the service, Mr Leighton. Who knows, maybe you’ll be able to help me one of these days…’
Rebus sat at his desk, reading the file. Then, when he was satisfied, he tapped into the computer and checked some details regarding a man who was doing a decent stretch in Peterhead jail. When he’d finished, there was a broad grin on his face, an event unusual enough in itself to send DC Siobhan Clarke sauntering over in Rebus’s direction, trying not to get too close (fear of being hooked), but close enough to register interest. Before she knew it, Rebus was reeling her in anyway.
‘Get your coat,’ he said.
She angled her head back towards her desk. ‘But I’m in the middle of-’
‘You’re in the middle of my catchment, Siobhan. Now fetch your coat.’
Never be nosy, and always keep your head down: somehow Siobhan Clarke hadn’t yet learned those two golden rules of the easy life. Not that anything was easy when John Rebus was in the office. Which was precisely why she liked working near him.
‘Where are we going?’ she said.
Rebus told her on the way. He also handed the file to her so she could read it through.
‘Not guilty,’ she said at last.
‘And I’m Robbie Coltrane,’ said Rebus. They were both talking about a case from a few months before. A veteran hard man had been charged with the attempted armed hold-up of a security van. There had been evidence as to his guilt – just about enough evidence – and his alibi had been shaky. He’d told police of having spent the day in question in a bar near his mother’s home in Muirhouse, probably the city’s most notorious housing scheme. Plenty of witnesses came forward to agree that he had been there all day. These witnesses boasted names like Tam the Bam, Big Shug, the Screwdriver, and Wild Eck. The look of them in the witness-box, police reasoned, would be enough to convince the jury of the defendant’s guilt. But there had been one other witness…
‘Miss June Redwood,’ quoted DC Clarke, rereading the casenotes.
‘Yes,’ said Rebus, ‘Miss June Redwood.’
An innocent, dressed in a solemn two-piece as she gave her evidence at the trial. She was a social worker, caring for the most desperate in Edinburgh’s most desperate area. Needing to make a phone call, and sensing she’d have no luck with Muirhouse’s few public kiosks, she had walked into the Castle Arms, probably the first female the regulars had seen in the saloon bar since the landlord’s wife had walked out on him fifteen years before. She’d asked to use the phone, and a man had wandered over to her from a table and, with a wink, had asked if she’d like a drink. She’d refused. She could see he’d had a few – more than a few. His table had the look of a lengthy session about it – empty pint glasses placed one inside another to form a leaning tower, ashtray brimming with butts and empty packets, the newspaper’s racing page heavily marked in biro.
Miss Redwood had given a quietly detailed account, at odds with the loud, confident lies of the other defence witnesses. And she was sure that she’d walked into the bar at 3 p.m., five minutes before the attack on the security van took place. The prosecution counsel had tried his best, gaining from the social worker the acknowledgement that she knew the accused’s mother through her work, though the old woman was not actually her client. The prosecutor had stared out at the fifteen jury members, attempting without success to plant doubt in their minds. June Redwood was a rock-solid witness. Solid enough to turn a golden prosecution case into a verdict of ‘not guilty’. The accused had walked free. Close, as the fairground saying went, but definitely no goldfish.
Rebus had been in court for the verdict, and had left with a shrug and a low growl. A security guard lay in hospital suffering from shotgun wounds. Now the case would have to be looked at again, if not by Rebus then by some other poor bugger who would go through the same old steps, knowing damned fine who the main suspect was, and knowing that he was walking the streets and drinking in pubs, and chuckling at his luck.
Except that it wasn’t luck: it was planning, as Rebus now knew.
DC Clarke finished her second reading of the file. ‘I suppose you checked on Redwood at the time?’
‘Of course we did. Not married, no boyfriends. No proof – not even the faintest rumour – that she knew Keith.’
Clarke looked at the photo. ‘And this is her?’
‘It’s her, and it’s him – Keith Leyton.’
‘And it was sent to…?’
‘It was addressed to a Mr K. Leighton. They didn’t get the spelling right. I checked in the phone book. Keith Leyton’s ex-directory. Either that or he doesn’t have a phone. But our little tax collector is in there under K. Leighton.’
‘And they sent the letters to him by mistake?’
‘They must know Keith Leyton hangs out in Muirhouse. His mum lives in Muirhouse Crescent.’
‘Where does Kenneth Leighton live?’
Rebus grinned at the windscreen. ‘Muir wood Crescent – only it’s not in Muirhouse, it’s in Currie.’
Siobhan Clarke smiled too. ‘I don’t believe it,’ she said.
Rebus shrugged. ‘It happens. They looked in the phone book, thought the address looked right, and started sending the letters.’
‘So they’ve been trying to blackmail a criminal…’
‘And instead they’ve found a taxman.’ Now Rebus laughed outright. ‘They must be mad, naïve, or built like a hydro-electric station. If they’d really tried this bampot caper on with Leyton, he’d have dug a fresh grave or two in Greyfriars for them. I’ll give them one thing, though.’
‘What’s that?’
‘They know about Keith’s wife.’
‘His wife?’
Rebus nodded. ‘She lives near the mum. Big woman. Jealous. That’s why Keith would keep any girlfriend secret – that’s why he’d want to keep her a secret. The blackmailers must have thought that gave them a chance that he’d cough up.’
Rebus stopped the car. He had parked outside a block of flats in Oxgangs. The block was one of three, each one shaped like a capital H lying on its face. Caerketton Court: Rebus had once had a fling with a school-dinner lady who lived on the second floor…
‘I checked with June Redwood’s office,’ he said. ‘She’s off sick.’ He craned his neck out of the window. ‘Tenth floor apparently, let’s hope the lift’s working.’ He turned to Siobhan. ‘Otherwise we’ll have to resort to the telephone.’
The lift was working, though barely. Rebus and Siobhan ignored the wrapped paper parcel in one corner. Neither liked to think what it might contain. Still, Rebus was impressed that he could hold his breath for as long as the lift took to crackle its way up ten flights. The tenth floor seemed all draughts and high-pitched winds. The building had a perceptible sway, not quite like being at sea. Rebus pushed the bell of June Redwood’s flat and waited. He pushed again. Siobhan was standing with her arms folded around her, shuffling her feet.
‘I’d hate to see you on a football terrace in January,’ said Rebus.
There was a sound from inside the door, then the door itself was opened by a woman with unwashed hair, a tissue to her nose, and wrapped in a thick dressing-gown.
‘Hello there, Miss Redwood,’ said Rebus brightly. ‘Remember me?’ Then he held up the photograph. ‘Doubtless you remember him too. Can we come in?’