23
He drove to the Ox, where Doc and Salty stood in their allotted places. Room was made for Rebus, and Doc ordered him a pint.
‘Oh what blessed company,’ Rebus said, lifting the glass. He turned to Salty Dougary. ‘I was out at Gyle Park West the other day.’
‘In your professional capacity?’
‘Sort of. What can you tell me about the place?’
‘It’s an industrial estate. I work there. What else is there to know?’
‘The businesses there, would they have dealings with Scottish Enterprise?’
Salty nodded. ‘LEEL,’ he said. ‘Our boss at Deltona is mad keen on “worker participation”, which means once a week we have to sit in the canteen for twenty minutes listening to him rattle on about client satisfaction, inward investment, productivity and the like. He’s always on about LEEL.’
‘So Deltona has had money from LEEL?’
‘John, everyone on that estate has had help of some kind: relocation incentives, start-up incentives, retraining incentives, you name it.’ He raised his glass. ‘God bless Scottish Enterprise.’
‘Why the interest?’ Dr Klasser asked. This was not their usual level of conversation.
‘It could be peripheral to a case I’m working on.’ Except that there was no case and he wasn’t supposed to be working.
‘Well, keep your paws off Deltona,’ Salty Dougary warned.
Rebus smiled. ‘Ever heard of Mensung?’ he asked.
‘Don’t they measure your intelligence?’
There was a snort from down the bar. ‘They’d only need a six-inch ruler to measure yours, Salty.’
Salty laughed, so the speaker would know he wasn’t amused. Rebus was still looking at him. ‘To be honest,’ Salty told him, ‘it does ring a bell, way at the back of the old brainpan. I think it was a company.’
‘On the estate?’
Dougary shrugged. The barman was taking a phone call. His eyes met Rebus’s.
‘For you, John.’ He brought the telephone over. Rebus had another question for Salty.
‘What about LABarum, ever heard of that?’
‘What is this, “Mastermind”?’
Rebus took the receiver from the barman. ‘Hello?’
‘Is that you, John?’
Rebus recognised the voice — but it couldn’t be, not calling him by his first name.
‘Is that you, Flower?’
‘Yes.’
DI Alister Flower — the Little Weed — calling Rebus ‘John’. Something was wrong.
‘What’s up?’
‘Just wondered if you could drop into the station for a chat.’
‘A chat? Will you have the tea and biscuits ready?’
Flower laughed like he hadn’t heard a better one all day. Rebus was more than curious.
‘When?’ he asked.
‘Whenever you like.’
Rebus said he’d be there in half an hour.
The station was mid-evening quiet. To keep busy, most of the CID contingent had gone off to the scene of a car smash. The smash had taken place outside one of the neighbourhood’s better Indian restaurants. So there was no one around the main office; no one but Alister Flower.
‘John, how’s the holiday?’
‘I’m having a bit of trouble getting a tan.’
Rebus studied Alister Flower. There were a hundred reasons to dislike or even thoroughly loathe the man. The fact that he was a complete prick came pretty close to the top. Flower’s eyes were always in movement, seeking out an angle or the main chance. The eyes were puffy, like the skin around them was constantly swollen. It could be genetic or to do with boozing, and it turned his eyes into slits. Rebus didn’t like the fact that he couldn’t always see those eyes.
Flower had friends around the station: spies, junior officers, who were a bit like him and would even like to be him. It scared Rebus. But there were no allies with him tonight. He sat on a desk, his feet on a chair. It wasn’t his desk, wasn’t his chair. Walking past his own desk, Rebus saw the new computer console. It didn’t interest him at all.
‘I was promised tea and biscuits,’ he said.
‘We can nip down the canteen after.’
‘After what?’
‘After I’ve shown you something. Come on.’
And he led Rebus down to the cells. There was a man in there, long-haired, unshaven, not happy.
‘So who is he?’
‘His name’s Terry Shotts,’ Flower explained. ‘He’s from Newcastle. We found him leaving a house in Prestonfield Avenue … with half the contents under his arm.’
‘So?’ Rebus closed the viewing-flap in the cell door.
‘So we went to his digs. There was some other stuff there, including some that we could trace immediately from the register. His scam is, he thieves here and sells in Newcastle, and what he thieves there he lays off here.’
‘It’s a tremendous feat of detection, Flower. I want to thank you for sharing it with me.’
Rebus started back upstairs, Flower following. He handed Rebus a folded sheet of paper.
‘This is a list of the stuff the Geordies found in his flat. They traced some of it to a couple of break-ins, but the lists didn’t match. Looks like he’d already sold some of the stuff on. Including a shotgun.’ Rebus began to see the point. ‘Shotts has been up here three weeks. I think he sold it to Shug McAnally.’
‘Have you asked Mr Shotts?’
‘He’s as good as admitted it.’
Rebus stopped. ‘Maybe I should talk to him.’
Flower blocked his path. ‘I don’t think that would do any good.’ Rebus wasn’t in the mood for a fight, so kept on walking. ‘I thought you’d be pleased. I mean, it ties up the loose ends, doesn’t it?’
‘It might tie up one of them, but it just unravels a couple more. Want to know what they are? Number one, why are you interested? Number two, why would you want me to be “pleased”?’
They were back in the CID room.
‘Well,’ Flower said, making for his desk, ‘I just thought you’d want to know.’
‘That’s just so much keech, Flower. What are you up to?’
Flower reached into a drawer and showed Rebus a bottle of whisky. Rebus shook his head, but Flower poured himself a measure into a broken-handled mug.
‘What are you so damned paranoid about, Rebus?’
‘You, for a start.’ Flower took a gulp of whisky, then lit a cigarette.
‘It’s a fair point,’ he conceded, through a wreath of smoke. ‘OK, I’ll tell you straight. Someone asked me to talk to you. You know I wouldn’t do it otherwise.’
‘That’s more like it.’ Rebus sat on the edge of a desk. ‘So who’s the someone?’
‘Just someone important.’
‘The Farmer?’
Flower smiled and exhaled noisily. Someone higher than the Farmer then, a lot higher.
‘And just what,’ Rebus asked, ‘does this anonymous patron want me to know?’
Flower examined the tip of his cigarette. ‘That you’re on your way out, the way you’re going.’
‘Out?’
‘Of the force.’ Flower paused. ‘At the very least.’
‘Why?’
‘You don’t need to know that.’
Which meant, thought Rebus, that it was because of something he might do rather than something already done.
‘So what should I do?’ he asked.
‘Stop being so bloody nosy.’
‘About what?’
‘McAnally, for Christ’s sake.’
‘What does — ’
‘Look, I’m just the message-boy, OK?’
‘If the cap fits …’
Flower’s eyes narrowed still further. ‘Look,’ he said at last, ‘you know if it was up to me, I’d leave you to squat on the pan and send your career down the lavvy like the night before’s kebab. All I’m doing is a favour for someone who wants you to have a final warning. Hear me? A final warning.’ He stood up and flicked his butt into a waste-bin.
‘Pretty convenient,’ Rebus said, ‘the source of the shotgun suddenly turning up … Who is it, Flower? The DCC? Big Jim Flett? What have they got to hide?’ Rebus was standing inches from Flower. ‘What’s it got to do with you?’ He jabbed Flower’s chest with his finger.