‘Do you want to press charges?’ Rebus asked. She shook her head. ‘Fine, then let’s have a little chat.’
By the time they reached the front door, Jennifer Benn had regained her composure.
‘Where are we going?’
‘Somewhere I’m a bit more welcome. There’s a pub across the road.’
‘I don’t like pubs.’
‘My car then?’
She turned to him. ‘Can I see some ID?’
‘I thought that scene back there would have been ID enough.’ But she wasn’t budging, so he dug out his warrant card, which she inspected slowly.
‘All right,’ she said, handing it back, ‘we can talk here.’
‘Here?’ They were on the pavement. She wrapped a woollen scarf around her neck and pulled on sheepskin mitts. She was in her late-twenties and had frizzy blonde hair and outsized glasses. ‘It’s freezing here,’ Rebus complained.
‘Then best hurry up.’
He sighed. ‘You were Shug McAnally’s social worker?’
‘That’s right.’
‘I’m investigating his suicide.’
She was shaking her head. ‘I’m afraid I can’t help. He never kept an appointment, we never met.’
‘Did you report him?’
She nodded. ‘But I didn’t think anything would come of it. What punishment do you mete out to someone with terminal cancer?’
And with that she turned and walked quickly to her car. Rebus thought that she’d asked a very good question indeed.
16
Next morning, he found himself summoned to Chief Superintendent Watson’s office.
Gill Templer was already there when he arrived. She was standing with her back to the filing cabinet, arms folded. There wasn’t much room: three large cardboard boxes marked ‘PanoTech’ sat on the floor by the desk.
‘My new computer,’ the Farmer explained. ‘Sit down, John.’ The Farmer looked like a man with bad news: Rebus had been here before; same look, same tone of voice.
‘I’d rather stand, sir.’
‘Been up to anything we should know about, John?’
‘No, sir.’
‘Nothing at all?’
‘Not that I know of, sir. Why?’
Watson glanced towards Gill Templer. ‘I had a phone call yesterday evening from Allan Gunner.’ Gunner: the deputy chief constable. ‘He doesn’t often call me at home.’
‘Do I take it he had bad news?’ Rebus decided to sit down after all.
‘HM Inspectorate of Constabulary are thinking of investigating us.’
‘Us?’
‘B Division.’
‘That’s us all right.’
‘It’s no joking matter.’
Nor was it. HMIC was independent of the police service; it reported directly to the Secretary of State for Scotland. HMIC’s public remit encompassed examining police standards and indicating areas for improvement. It inspected all eight regional forces each year, but only four of these were full ‘primary’ inspections. They looked at rises in crime stats, falls in detection rates, and complaints from the public. No problem there: the recorded crime rate was steady when it wasn’t falling, and recent clear-up rates were marginally improved. But HMIC could really screw up a station’s working practices, just by being on the premises. There were long lists of questions to answer, an initial pre-inspection followed by the full inspection … and, as everyone in the room knew, HMIC could sometimes stumble upon something better left unqueried. Or, as the Farmer put it,
‘You know those buggers, John. If they want to find dirt on us, there’s dirt to be found. We don’t exactly work in an antiseptic environment.’
‘That’s because we don’t deal with people who wash behind their ears every morning. What are you getting at, sir? So what if we’ve been picked out? It’s the luck of the draw.’
‘Ah,’ Watson said, holding up a prodigious forefinger. ‘I only said they were thinking of picking us out.’
‘I don’t get it.’
The Farmer shifted — so far as he was able — in his chair. He was not a small man; it was not a large chair. ‘To be honest, neither do I, the DCC was being bloody cagey. I think the gist was, we’re doing something naughty, and if we stop doing it, another division might find itself under scrutiny instead of us.’
‘Did he actually say that?’ Gill Templer asked.
The Farmer shrugged. ‘I’m giving my interpretation, that’s all. Now, after his phone call, I did some thinking. I asked myself: who would be getting up people’s noses? Well, I know one copper who’s like cocaine in that respect.’
‘Nobody sniffs coke these days, sir.’ Watson just sat there, unblinking. ‘OK,’ Rebus said, standing again. ‘I went to see Big Jim Flett yesterday, probably a couple of hours before Gunner called you.’
‘Why?’ Gill Templer asked. She looked furious that he hadn’t told her beforehand.
‘McAnally.’
‘The suicide?’ The Farmer frowned as Rebus nodded.
‘The thing is, sir, there’s something … I don’t know, I just think there’s something there. Why go all the way to Warrender School to blow your brains out in front of a councillor, a man who says he never even knew the deceased? And how come the widow’s suddenly got money to spend? Those are two questions; I’ve got a wheen more.’
‘Well,’ the Farmer said, ‘that might explain the second phone call. Also last night, and also at my home. It was from Derek Mantoni.’
‘I don’t know him.’
‘Councillor Mantoni is chair of Lothian and Borders Joint Police Board.’
Rebus saw now: Gillespie had been complaining to his friend.
‘He was asking about you, John.’
‘Nice of him.’
‘Apparently you’ve rubbed Councillor Gillespie up the wrong way. I should remind you that the councillor is a victim here, and one who’s been through a terrible experience.’ The Farmer sounded as if he was quoting Derek Mantoni.
‘Inspector Rebus,’ Gill Templer said, ‘is there any reason to believe it wasn’t a suicide?’
‘No,’ Rebus admitted. ‘I’m sure it was suicide.’
‘Then I don’t see the problem.’
Rebus turned to her. ‘Well, I do!’ He jabbed his thumb into his chest to reinforce the point. ‘And now everyone suddenly wants it covered up!’ She turned her head away from him.
‘John,’ the Farmer warned, ‘that’s out of order. I’ve been looking at the hours you’ve been putting in. You’re due some time off … a lot of time actually. It’s a quiet time of year.’
Rebus held the Farmer’s stare. ‘You’ve got to back me up on this, sir.’
‘I’m telling you to take some time off, that’s all.’
‘Who is it you’re scared of: the DCC? Mantoni? HMIC?’
The Farmer ignored him. ‘Take a week, ten days … clear your head, Inspector.’
Rebus slammed both hands down on the desktop. A framed photo of the Farmer’s family fell off and landed on a cardboard box. Gill Templer stooped to pick it up.
‘You’ve got to back me up,’ Rebus repeated. He knew Gill was a lost cause; he had eyes only for the Farmer, but the Farmer wasn’t looking.
‘I’ve given you an order, Inspector.’
Rebus gave one of the boxes a kick on his way out of the room.
When he thought it over later, Rebus didn’t blame the Farmer. He was covering his arse; so was Gill, if it came down to it. Now Rebus was a free agent, or at least a loose one. He couldn’t get anyone into trouble but himself, and that was fine with him. He’d cleared his desk, pushing everything into drawers and, when he ran out of space, the wastepaper-bin. He’d left St Leonard’s without a word to anyone.
There were just the two problems — neither of them insignificant — and he pondered them as he sat in the back room of the Oxford Bar with a half of Caledonian Eighty and a double malt.
The first problem was, police routine gave his daily life its only shape and substance; it gave him a schedule to work to, a reason to get up in the morning. He loathed his free time, dreaded Sundays off. He lived to work, and in a very real sense he worked to live, too: the much-maligned Protestant work-ethic. Subtract work from the equation, and the day became flabby, like releasing jelly from its mould. Besides, without work, what reason had he not to drink?