She went behind the desk and sat down. ‘So, what can you tell me about these two imbeciles who shut the Forth Bridge?’
‘Hoaxers, maybe with debts or a habit to finance. Desperadoes. No sign that they ever knew the girl. Howdenhall checked the car; there are none of her prints inside.’
‘So why were you so interested in the toxicology results?’
‘Was I?’
‘Someone came looking for you in the canteen to tell you they’d arrived.’
Rebus smiled again. ‘I just wonder if maybe they were working for someone else.’
‘Do you have a name?’
‘Paul Duggan. He loaned the desperadoes his car. Plus they were sub-letting his council house.’
‘That’s illegal.’
‘Yes, it is. We might want to ask him a few follow-up questions.’
She thought this over, then nodded. ‘What else are you working on?’
He shrugged. ‘Not a lot, it’s always quiet this time of year.’
‘Let’s hope it stays that way. I know your reputation, John. It was bad enough when I knew you, but the story goes that it’s even worse these days. I don’t want trouble.’
Rebus looked out of the window. It had started snowing. ‘Weather like this,’ he said, ‘there’s never much trouble in Edinburgh, trust me.’
7
Hugh McAnally was universally known as Wee Shug. He didn’t know why people called Hugh always ended up nicknamed Shug. There were a lot of things he didn’t know, and never would know. He wished he’d spent his time in jail bettering himself. He supposed he’d bettered himself in some ways: he could use machine tools, and knew how a sofa was put together. But he knew he wasn’t educated, not like his cell-mate. His cell-mate had been really clever, a man of substance. Not like Shug at all; chalk and cheese, if you came down to it. But he’d taught Shug a lot. And he’d been a friend. Surrounded by people, a jail could still be a lonely place without a friend.
Then again, what difference would it have made if he’d been brainier? None at all really, not a jot.
But he was going to make a difference to his life this evening.
It was another grievous night, a wind that was like walking through razor-blades.
Councillor Tom Gillespie wasn’t expecting many souls to make the trek to his surgery. He’d get a few complaints from the regulars about frozen and burst pipes, maybe a question about the cold weather allowance, and that would be about it. The constituents in his Warrender ward tended to be self-reliant — or easily cowed, depending on your point of view. Depending on your politics. He smiled across the room towards the extravagance he called a secretary, then studied the art on the classroom walls.
He always held his surgery in this school, third Thursday of every month during term-time. Between consultations he would catch up on correspondence, dictating letters into a hand-held recorder. The Central Members’ Services Division at the City Chambers typed the letters up. For general political matters, matters relating to his party, there was a separate admin assistant.
Which was why, as Gillespie’s wife had pointed out on numerous occasions, a private secretary was such an extravagance. But as the councillor had argued (and he was very good at argument), if he was going to get ahead of the crowd he needed to be busier than the other councillors, and above all he needed to seem to be busier. Short term extravagance, long term gain. You always had to be thinking in the long term.
He used the same rationale when he resigned his job. As he explained to his wife Audrey, half the district councillors had other jobs beside the council, but this meant they could not concentrate all their energies on council or political business. He needed to seem so busy that he had no time for a day job. Council committee meetings took place during the day, and now he was free to attend them.
He had other arguments in his favour, too. By working on council business during the day, his evenings and weekends were relatively free. And besides (and here he would smile and squeeze Audrey’s hand), it wasn’t as if they needed the money. Which was just as well, since his district councillor’s basic allowance was?4,700.
Finally, he would tell her, this was the most important time in local government for twenty years. In seven weeks’ time there would be new elections and the change would begin, turning the City of Edinburgh into a single-tier authority to be called the City of Edinburgh Council. How could he afford not to be at the centre of these changes?
Audrey, though, had won one condition: his secretary should be an older woman, plain and bomely. Helena Profitt fitted that bill.
Thinking of it, he never really won an argument with Audrey, not outright. She just snarled and spat and started slamming doors. He didn’t mind. He needed her money. Her money bought him time. If only it could save him the purgatory of these Thursday nights in the near-deserted school.
His secretary brought her knitting with her, and he could measure how quiet things had been by how much she got done in the hour. He watched her needles work, then went back to the letter he was writing. It wasn’t an easy letter to write; he’d been trying for over a week now. It wasn’t the sort of thing he could trust to dictation, and so far all he’d managed were his address at the top and the date beneath.
The school was quiet, the corridors well lit, the radiators burning away. The caretaker was busy somewhere, as were four cleaners. When the cleaners and the councillor had gone home, the caretaker would lock up for the night. One of the cleaners was a lot younger than the others, and had a tidy body on her. He wondered if she lived in his ward. He looked at the clock on the wall again. Twenty minutes to go.
He heard something slam, and looked over to the classroom door. A short man was standing there, looking deathly cold in a thin bomber-style jacket and shabby trousers. He had his hands deep in his jacket pockets and didn’t look inclined to remove them.
‘You the councillor?’ the man asked.
Councillor Gillespie stood up and smiled. Then the man turned to Helena Profitt. ‘So who are you?’
‘My ward secretary,’ Tom Gillespie explained. Helena Profitt and the man seemed to be studying one another. ‘Can I help you?’
‘Aye, you can,’ the man said. Then he unzipped his jacket and drew out a sawn-off shotgun.
‘You,’ he said to Miss Profitt, ‘get the fuck out.’ He pointed the weapon at the councillor. ‘You stay.’
Helena Profitt ran screaming from the classroom and nearly knocked over the cleaners. A pail of dirty water clattered to the wooden floor.
‘I’ve just polished thon!’
‘A gun, he’s got a gun!’
The cleaners stared at her. A sound like a tyre exploding came from the classroom. Miss Profitt, who had fallen to her knees, was joined by the other women.
‘What in Christ was that?’
‘She said a gun.’
And now there was a figure in the doorway. It was the councillor, almost in control of his legs. He looked for all the world like one of the paintings on the classroom wall, only it wasn’t paint that spattered his face and his hair.
Rebus stood in the classroom and looked at the paintings. Some of them were pretty good. The colours weren’t always right, but the shapes were identifiable. Blue house, yellow sun, brown horse in a green field, and a red sky speckled with grey …
Oh.
The room had been cordoned off by the simple act of placing two chairs in the doorway. The body was still there, spreadeagled on the floor in front of the teacher’s desk. Dr Curt was examining it.
‘This seems to be your week for messy ones,’ he told Rebus.
It was messy all right. There wasn’t much left of the head except for the lower jaw and chin. Stick a shotgun in your gub and heave-ho with both barrels and you couldn’t expect to win Mr Glamorous Suicide. You wouldn’t even make the last sixteen.