‘And then you’ll have contentment?’ She waited till he’d nodded. ‘And what right do you have to that, Inspector Rebus? What gives you the right to sleep easy?’
‘I never find sleep very easy, Mrs Margolies.’ It seemed to him then — and maybe it was a trick of the light — that he was seeing her at the end of a long dark tunnel, so that while she stood out clearly, everything between and around them was a blur of indistinct shading. And things were moving and gathering on the periphery: the ghosts. They were all here, providing a ready-made audience. Jack Morton, Jim Stevens, Darren Rough... even Jim Margolies. They felt so alive to him he could scarcely believe Katherine Margolies couldn’t make them out.
‘The night Jim died,’ Rebus went on, ‘you’d been out to dinner with friends in Royal Park Terrace. I wondered about that... Royal Park Terrace to The Grange.’
‘What about it?’ Looking bored now more than anything. Rebus thought it was bravado.
‘Easiest route is to cut through Holyrood Park. Is that the way you drove home?’
‘I suppose so.’
‘In your white Mercedes?’
‘Yes.’
‘And Jim stopped the car, got out...’
‘No.’
‘Someone saw the car.’
‘No.’
‘Because something had been making his life hell, something he’d maybe just discovered about his father...’
‘No.’
Rebus took a step towards her. ‘It was bucketing down that night. He wouldn’t have gone out walking. That’s your version, Mrs Margolies: in the middle of the night he got up, got dressed, and went out walking. He walked all the way to Salisbury Crags in the rain, just so he could throw himself off.’ Rebus was shaking his head. ‘My version makes more sense.’
‘Maybe to you.’
‘I’m not about to go shouting from the chimney-pots, Mrs Margolies. I just need to know that that’s how it happened. He’d been talking to one of the Shiellion victims. He found out his father was involved in the Shiellion abuse and he was afraid it would come out, afraid the shame would rebound on to him.’
She exploded. ‘Christ, you couldn’t be more wrong! It had nothing to do with that. What’s any of this got to do with Shiellion?’
Rebus collected himself. ‘You tell me.’
‘Don’t you see?’ She was crying now. ‘It was Hannah...’
Rebus frowned. ‘Hannah?’
‘Hannah was his sister’s name. Our Hannah was named after her. Jim did it to get back at his father.’
‘Because Dr Margolies had...’ Rebus couldn’t bring himself to say the word. ‘With Hannah?’
She rubbed the back of her hand across her face, smudging mascara. ‘He interfered with his own daughter. God knows whether it was just once. It might have been going on for years. When she killed herself...’
‘She did so knowing who’d be first to find her?’
She nodded. ‘Jim knew what had happened... knew why she’d done it. But of course nobody ever talks about it.’ She looked at him. ‘You just don’t, do you? Not in polite society. Instead he tried shutting it out, accepting that there was no remedy.’
‘I’m not sure I understand.’ But he understood something, knew now why Jim had beaten up Darren Rough. Displaced anger: he hadn’t been hitting Rough; he’d been hitting his father.
She slid down the door until she was crouching, arms hugging her knees. Rebus lowered himself on to the bottom step of the staircase, tried to make sense of it: Joseph Margolies had abused his own daughter... what would have made him turn to a boy like Darren Rough? Ince’s insistence, perhaps; or simple lust and curiosity, the thought of more forbidden fruit...
Katherine Margolies’ voice was calm again. ‘I think Jim joined the police as another way of telling his father something, telling him he’d never forget, never forgive.’
‘But if he knew all along about his father, why did he kill himself?’
‘I’ve told you! Because of Hannah.’
‘His sister?’
She gave a wild, humourless laugh. ‘Of course not.’ Paused for breath. ‘Our daughter, Inspector. I mean Hannah, our daughter. Jim had... he’d been worried for some time.’ She took a deep breath. ‘I’d noticed he wasn’t sleeping. I’d wake in the night and he’d be lying there in the darkness, eyes open, staring at the ceiling. One night he told me. He felt I ought to know.’
‘What was he worried about?’
‘That he was turning into his father. That there was some genetic component, something he had no control over.’
‘You mean Hannah?’
She nodded. ‘He said he tried not to have the thoughts, but they came anyway. He looked at her and no longer saw his daughter.’ Her eyes were on the pattern in the floor. ‘He saw something else, something to be desired...’
Finally Rebus saw it. Saw all Jim Margolies’ fears, saw the past which had haunted him and the expectation of recurrence. Saw why the man had turned to young-looking prostitutes. Saw the dread of history. Not in polite society. If families like the Margolies and the Petries represented polite society, Rebus wanted nothing to do with it.
‘He’d been quiet all evening,’ Katherine Margolies went on. ‘Once or twice I caught him looking at Hannah, and I could see how scared he was.’ She rubbed the palm of either hand over her eyes, looked up to the ceiling, demanding something more from it than the comfort of cornice and chandelier. The noise that escaped from her throat was like something from a caged animal.
‘On the way home, he stopped the car and ran. I went after him, and he was just standing there. At first, I didn’t realise he was at the very edge of the Crags. He must have heard me. Next thing, he’d vanished. It was like a stunt, something a stage magician would do. Then I realised what it was. He’d jumped. I felt... well, I don’t know what I felt. Numb, betrayed, shocked.’ She shook her head, unsure even now what her feelings were towards the man who had killed himself rather than give in to his most feral craving. ‘I walked back to the car. Hannah was asking where her daddy was. I said he’d gone for a walk. I drove us home. I didn’t go down to help him. I didn’t do anything. Christ knows why.’ Now she ran her hands through her hair.
Rebus got up, pushed open a door. It led into a formal dining room. Decanters on a polished sideboard. He sniffed one, poured a large glass of whisky. Took it through to the hall and handed it to Katherine Margolies. Went back to fetch another for himself. He saw the sequence now: Jane Barbour telling Jim that Rough was coming back to town; Jim dusting off the case, becoming intrigued by the third man. Knowing his father had been working in children’s homes. Wanting to know, quizzing Darren Rough, his world collapsing in on him...
‘You know,’ his widow was saying, ‘Jim wasn’t scared of dying. He said there was a coachman.’
‘Coachman?’
‘He took you to wherever it was you went when you died.’ She looked up at him. ‘Do you know that story?’
Rebus nodded. ‘An old Edinburgh ghost story, that’s all it is.’
‘You don’t believe in ghosts then?’
‘I wouldn’t say that necessarily.’ He raised his glass. ‘Here’s to Jim,’ he said. When he looked around, there wasn’t a ghost to be seen.
51
A week later, Rebus received a phone call from Brian Mee.
‘What’s up, Brian?’ Rebus already guessing from the tone of voice.
‘Ah, shite, John, she’s left me.’
‘I’m sorry to hear that, Brian.’
‘Are you?’ There was a hint of disbelief in the laugh that followed.
‘I really am, I’m sorry.’
‘She told you, though?’