The fall killed him: little chance of a straight murder conviction. ‘Toxicology?’
‘Still testing. Professor Gates said when they cut into the stomach, there was a strong whiff of dark rum.’
‘There was a bottle in the bag.’
Maclay nodded. ‘The decedent’s tipple. Gates said no initial signs of drug use, but we’ll have to wait for the tests. I went through the phone book for Mitchisons.’
Rebus smiled. ‘So did I.’
‘I know, one of the numbers I called, you’d already been on to them. No joy?’
Rebus shook his head. ‘I got a number for T-Bird Oil in Aberdeen. Their personnel manager’s going to call me back.’
A Trading Standards officer was coming towards them, arms laden with T-shirts and programmes. His face was red from exertion, his thin tie hanging loose at the neck. Behind him, an officer from ‘F Troop’ — Livingston Division — was escorting another prisoner.
‘Nearly done, Mr Baxter?’
The Trading Standards officer dumped the T-shirts, lifted one and wiped his face with it.
‘That should about do it,’ he said. ‘I’ll round up my soldiers.’
Rebus turned to Maclay. ‘I’m starving. Let’s see what they’ve laid on for the superstars.’
There were fans trying to breach security, teenagers mostly, split half and half, boys and girls. A few had managed to inveigle their way in. They wandered around behind the barriers looking for faces they would recognise from the posters on their bedroom walls. Then when they did spot one, they’d be too awed or shy to talk.
‘Any kids?’ Rebus asked Maclay. They were in hospitality, nursing bottles of Beck’s taken from a coolbox Rebus hadn’t noticed first time round.
Maclay shook his head. ‘Divorced before it became an issue, if you’ll pardon the pun. You?’
‘One daughter.’
‘Grown up?’
‘Sometimes I think she’s older than me.’
‘Kids grow up faster than in our day.’ Rebus smiled at that, Maclay a good ten years his junior.
A girl, squealing resistance, was being hauled back to the perimeter by two burly security men.
‘Jimmy Cousins,’ Maclay said, pointing out one of the security bears. ‘Do you know him?’
‘He was stationed at Leith for a while.’
‘Retired last year, only forty-seven. Thirty years in. Now he’s got his pension and a job. Makes you think.’
‘Makes me think he misses the force.’
Maclay smiled. ‘It can turn into a habit.’
‘That why you divorced?’
‘I dare say it played a part.’
Rebus thought of Brian Holmes, feared for him. Stress getting to the younger man, affecting work and personal life both. Rebus had been there.
‘You know Ted Michie?’
Rebus nodded: the man he’d replaced at Fort Apache.
‘Doctors think it’s terminal. He won’t let them cut, says knives are against his religion.’
‘I hear he was handy with a truncheon in his day.’
One of the support bands entered the marquee to scattered applause. Five males, mid-twenties, stripped to the waist with towels around their shoulders, high on something — maybe just from performing. Hugs and kisses from a group of girls at a table, whoops and roars.
‘We fucking killed them out there!’
Rebus and Maclay drank their drinks in silence, tried not to look like promoters, succeeded.
When they walked back outside, it was dark enough for the light-show to be worth watching. There were fireworks, too, reminding Rebus that it was the tourist season. Not long till the nightly Tattoo, fireworks you could hear from Marchmont, even with the windows closed. A camera crew, stalked by photographers, was itself stalking the main support band who were ready to go on. Maclay watched the procession.
‘You’re probably surprised they’re not after you,’ he said, mischief in his voice.
‘Fuck off,’ Rebus replied, making for the side of the stage. The passes were colour-coded. His was yellow, and it got him as far as the stage-wings, where he watched the entertainment. The sound system was a travesty, but there were monitors nearby and he concentrated on those. The crowd seemed to be having fun, bobbing up and down, a sea of disembodied heads. He thought of the Isle of Wight, of other festivals he’d missed, headliners who weren’t around any more.
He thought of Lawson Geddes, his one-time mentor, boss, protector, his memory rippling back through two decades.
John Rebus, mid-twenties, a detective constable, looking to put army years behind him, ghosts and nightmares. A wife and infant daughter trying to be his life. And Rebus maybe seeking out a surrogate father, finding one in Lawson Geddes, Detective Inspector, City of Edinburgh Police. Geddes was forty-five, ex-army, served in the Borneo conflict, told stories of jungle war versus The Beatles, no one back in Britain very interested in a last spasm of colonial muscle. The two men found they shared common values, common night sweats and dreams of failure. Rebus was new to CID, Geddes knew everything there was to know. It was easy to recall the first year of growing friendship, easy now to forgive the few hiccups: Geddes making a pass at Rebus’s young wife, almost succeeding; Rebus passing out at a Geddes party, waking in the dark and pissing into a dresser-drawer, thinking he’d found the toilet; a couple of fist-fights after last orders, the fists not connecting, turning into wrestling matches instead.
Easy to forgive so much. But then they landed a murder inquiry, Leonard Spaven Geddes’ chief suspect. Geddes and Lenny Spaven had been playing cat-and-mouse for a couple of years — aggravated assault, pimping, the hijacking of a couple of cigarette lorries. Even whispers of a murder or two, gangster stuff, trimming the competition. Spaven had been in the Scots Guards same time as Geddes, maybe the bad blood started there, neither man ever said.
Christmas 1976, a gruesome find on farmland near Swanston: a woman’s body, decapitated. The head turned up almost a week later, New Year’s Day, in another field near Currie. The weather was sub-zero. From the rate of decay, the pathologist was able to say that the head had been kept indoors for some time after being severed from the body, while the body itself had been dumped fresh. Glasgow police semi-interested, the file on Bible John still open six years on. Identification from clothing initially, a member of the public coming forward to say the description sounded like a neighbour who hadn’t been seen for a couple of weeks. The milkman had kept on delivering until he decided no one was home, that she had gone away for Christmas without telling him.
Police forced the front door. Unopened Christmas cards on the hall carpet; a pot of soup on the stove, speckled with mould; a radio playing quietly. Relatives were found, identified the body — Elizabeth Rhind, Elsie to her friends. Thirty-five years old, divorced from a sailor in the merchant navy. She’d worked for a brewery, shorthand and typing. She’d been well liked, the outgoing type. The ex-husband, suspect one, had a steel-toecapped alibi: his ship was in Gib at the time. Lists of the victim’s friends, especially boyfriends, and a name came up: Lenny. No surname, someone Elsie had gone out with for a few weeks. Drinking companions provided a description, and Lawson Geddes recognised it: Lenny Spaven. Geddes formed his theory quickly: Lenny had zeroed in on Elsie when he learned she worked at the brewery. He was probably looking for inside gen, maybe thinking of a truck hijack or a simple break-in. Elsie refused to help, he got angry, and he killed her.
It sounded good to Geddes, but he found it hard to convince anyone else. There was no evidence either. They couldn’t determine a time of death, leaving a twenty-four-hour margin of error, so Spaven didn’t need to provide an alibi. A search of his home and those of his friends showed no bloodstains, nothing. There were other strands they should have been following, but Geddes couldn’t stop thinking about Spaven. It nearly drove John Rebus demented. They argued loudly, more than once, stopped going for drinks together. The brass had a word with Geddes, told him he was becoming obsessed to the detriment of the inquiry. He was told to take a holiday. They even had a collection for him in the Murder Room.