‘I’m a big boy, Siobhan.’
‘Even so...’ She began to walk purposefully towards the Audi, leaning in towards it so she was face to face with Steele.
‘DI Clarke,’ he said with a sneer. ‘What brings you here?’
‘There’s one thing you need to know,’ she told him, her voice quiet but firm. ‘When you come for me — if you try coming for me — don’t think I won’t be yelling from the rooftops who it really was who spoke to Dougal Kelly.’
‘Would that be just before you jump?’
‘Think I’d give you the satisfaction?’
‘Your phone’s ringing,’ he said, gesturing towards her jacket pocket. Clarke dug the phone out and held it to her face. Her dentist. She waited for the call to ring out.
‘Nothing urgent?’
‘Just a wrong number.’
He tried for a solicitous look. ‘Often get those, do you? Annoying, I’d guess.’
Clarke tried not to let her sense of satisfaction show. He’d fallen for it. As far as he was concerned, she was still being harassed by Dallas Meikle.
‘You’d better go see your pal Mollison,’ she told Steele. ‘Press your case again.’ She leaned further into the window. ‘I’m ready for anything you bring, you smug, bent-as-a-paper-clip cock.’
She walked back to where Graham Sutherland was waiting. Behind her, she could hear Steele chuckling.
‘Must have been a good joke,’ Sutherland commented as she unlocked the car.
‘An absolute killer,’ Clarke agreed.
45
Rebus was parked outside the gates of Billie’s school. He’d arrived early, which was just as well. Soon after, parents had started turning up, meaning the street was now lined with cars waiting to give lifts home. He was thinking about families and the lies they told each other. From the outside, it was hard to know what was happening behind their walls and curtained windows. Even once you’d crossed the threshold, there’d be secrets unshared. In an age of the internet and mobile phones, kids and their parents lived ever more separate lives, sharing confidences but also hiding bits of their true selves behind masks. It had been hard enough in the past to read people, but these days you had to push your way through so much that was fake and misleading. Modern policing fell into that trap, heading straight for technology — computers and CCTV — to replace old skills and the occasional inspired guess or piece of intuition.
A CD was playing quietly on the Saab’s antiquated sound system, not Arvo Pärt this time but Brian Eno, another gift from Deborah Quant to help his ‘mindfulness’. When she’d explained the concept to him, he’d argued that it was something he’d always done, that it used to be known simply as ‘thinking’. He realised he needed to call her, fix another supper date — maybe even a sleepover. But meantime his phone was buzzing.
‘Hiya, Siobhan,’ he said, answering. ‘Any more flak to report?’
‘Did you know that Stuart Bloom’s flat was broken into a week after he disappeared?’
‘No.’
‘Another balls-up by the investigation. How about a drug dealer called Gram?’
‘As in Gram Parsons?’
‘What?’
‘He was a musician, died young.’
‘So it might have been a nickname?’
‘Maybe this Gram guy was a fan of the original. He was a dealer?’
‘To most of the people working on Jackie Ness’s films.’
‘I’d remember if that name had come up.’
‘He’s the one who supplied the handcuffs.’
Rebus thought for a moment. ‘Cafferty’s gang were in charge of the east coast back then. I doubt he’d have countenanced competition, no matter how minor-league.’
‘I’ve been discussing that with Malcolm. It got me thinking. A deadly overdose practically on the doorstep of Rogues. We go in hard on the club, cracking down but finding nothing, because the club’s been tipped off by you.’
‘I’ll deny that, of course,’ Rebus broke in.
‘But did you do it to save Stuart and Derek’s bacon, or were you goading Cafferty? I mean, anybody those raids flushed out would likely have been selling on Cafferty’s behalf.’
‘You’re over-thinking things, Shiv — remember the still centre?’
‘You got a journalist put in hospital, John.’
Rebus gave his bottom lip a bit of a gnaw. ‘Collateral damage,’ he eventually said. ‘Malcolm’s good at digging, isn’t he?’
‘Yes, he is. Should I ask Cafferty about this Gram guy?’
Rebus thought for a moment. ‘There’s no other way of identifying him?’
‘I suppose we could re-interview everyone who ever played a role behind or in front of the cameras in one of Ness’s flicks.’
‘I’m hearing a lack of enthusiasm.’
‘I’m beginning to think this could have been wrapped up back in the day.’
‘If we hadn’t been such a bunch of lazy, useless, conniving bastards, you mean?’
‘Something like that.’
‘You’re forgetting — we didn’t have a body.’
‘What you did have were two powerful businessmen, neither of whom you landed a glove on.’
‘We lacked that little thing called evidence, Siobhan.’
He heard her give a long sigh. ‘That was by no means the only thing you lacked, John,’ she said, ending the call.
Rebus couldn’t find it in him to feel slighted. She was right, after all. He had lied about not passing information to Alex Shankley. He’d lied, too, to cover Skelton and Rawlston’s arses. He’d turned a blind eye to the manifest shortcomings of Newsome and the likes of Steele and Edwards. Instead, he’d made more frequent visits to various pubs, using alcohol to blur everything and make it all right. Less than a year till his retirement, he’d begun to fear that the job was just that — a job rather than a vocation. He couldn’t solve every crime, and even if he did, crime would keep happening, so what was the point? Cafferty and the other bosses — the Starks in Glasgow, the Bartollis in Aberdeen — would go on and on. There would always be drugs and stabbings and domestics, and the odd person whose wiring wasn’t right. People would always be rapacious and lustful, envious and angry. He had forgotten about the journalist, the one he’d zeroed in on because the kid was hungry and easy to manipulate, one of those reporters who got a buzz from hanging out with cops. After the beating, the kid had slunk off home to his parents. Rebus hoped he had flourished. Then again, so what if he hadn’t? Rebus couldn’t even put a name to him.
He chewed some gum and watched through the windscreen as the school began to disgorge its cargo at the end of another day. A trickle at first — the keenest to escape — and then a mass of gossiping, shrieking teenagers. Boys nudged and shoved each other, showing off for the girls, who tried their best to look bored or unimpressed. They were busy on their phones, or talking among themselves. So many of them, Rebus worried he might not see Billie.
But then she was there, to one side of a line of four. All girls, all her age. She carried the same backpack they all did. Short, tight skirts, black tights on spindly legs. She was animated, turning with a half-smile towards a lad who had flicked her curls. Her friends huddled as if to mark his effort out of ten. He didn’t say anything, just returned to two of his own friends. There was so much energy emanating from the various groupings, Rebus could feel it as a physical force, pushing against him. He knew he was looking at the future, but also that the futures these various young people imagined for themselves might not work out the way they hoped. There’d be tears and traumas along the way, mistakes made, promises broken. Some would marry their sweethearts and live to regret it. Others would break apart. A few would trouble the police in later years. There’d be early deaths from disease and maybe even a suicide or two. Right now, none of that would seem feasible to them. They were alive in and of the moment — and that was all that mattered.