After almost an hour had passed, Stu Sutherland closed another file and slapped it down onto the pile in front of him, then got up to stretch his legs and back. He was over by the window when he turned to face the room.
“We’re wasting our time,” he said. “The one thing we need is the one thing we’ll never get.”
“And what’s that, Sherlock?” Allan Ward asked.
“The names of whoever it was Rico was hiding in his various caravans and safe houses at the time he got whacked.”
“Why would they have anything to do with it?” McCullough asked quietly.
“Stands to reason. Rico helped gangsters disappear — if someone wanted to find one of them, he’d have to go through Rico.”
“And before they got round to asking the whereabouts, they decided to smash his brains in?” McCullough was smiling.
“Maybe they underestimated how hard they’d hit him . . .” Sutherland stretched out his arms, looking for someone to back him up.
“Or maybe he’d already told them,” Tam Barclay added.
“Just came out with it, did he?” Francis Gray growled.
“Threatened with a baseball bat, maybe that’s just what he did,” Rebus said, trying to direct Gray’s flak away from Barclay. “I haven’t seen anything in here” — he jabbed a report — “saying Rico wouldn’t give in to threats and intimidation. Could be he gave up the name, thinking it would save his neck.”
“What name?” Gray asked. “Anyone turn up dead about the same time?” He looked around the table but received only a few shrugs for his trouble. “We don’t even know he was protecting anyone back then.”
“The very point I was trying to make,” Stu Sutherland said quietly.
“If Rico’s job was helping people disappear,” Tam Barclay said, “and someone got to them, chances are they just stayed disappeared permanently. Meaning we’ve hit a brick wall.”
“You put your feet up if you want to,” Gray said, stabbing a finger in Barclay’s direction. “It’s not like we’re hanging on your every brilliant deduction.”
“At least I don’t hide information from the group.”
“Difference is, in the big bad city we actually do stuff like this all day. What keeps you busy in Falkirk, Barclay — having a quick chug with the lavvy door locked? Or maybe you like to live dangerously, keep it open while you’re on the job?”
“You’re full of it, aren’t you?”
“That’s right, champ, I am. While you, on the other hand, are practically drained.”
There was a moment’s silence, then Allan Ward started laughing, joined by Stu Sutherland. Tam Barclay’s face darkened, and Rebus knew what was going to happen. Barclay leapt from his chair, sending it flying back. He had one knee up on the table and was readying to launch himself across it, straight at Francis Gray. Rebus reached out an arm to stop him, giving Stu Sutherland time to lunge forward and hold him in a bear hug. Gray just sat back, smirking, pen tapping against the tabletop. Allan Ward was slapping his hand against his thigh, as if he had a front-row seat at Barnum and Bailey. It took them a while to notice that the door was open, and Andrea Thomson was standing there. She folded her arms slowly as something like order was restored to the room. Rebus was reminded of a classroom settling at the approach of authority.
Difference was, these were men in their thirties, forties and fifties; men with mortgages and families; men with careers.
Rebus didn’t doubt that there had been enough to analyze in that momentary scene to keep Thomson busy for the next few months.
And she was looking at him.
“Phone call for DI Rebus,” she said.
“I won’t ask,” she said, “what was going on back there.”
They were walking along the corridor towards her office. “That’s probably wise,” he told her.
“I don’t know how the call ended up coming through to my phone. I thought it was easier just to come and fetch you . . .”
“Thanks.” Rebus was watching the way her body moved, shifting from side to side as she walked. It reminded him of a very awkward person trying to do the twist. Maybe she’d been born with some slight spinal deformity, maybe a car crash in her teens . . .
“What is it?”
He pulled his eyes back, but too late. “You walk funny,” he stated.
She looked at him. “I hadn’t noticed. Thanks for pointing it out.” She opened her door. The phone was off the hook, lying on the desk. Rebus picked it up.
“Hello?”
In his ear, he heard the hum of the open line. He caught her eye and shrugged. “Must have got fed up,” he said.
She took the receiver from him, listened for herself, then dropped it back into its cradle.
“Who did they say they were?” Rebus asked.
“They didn’t.”
“Was it an external call?”
She shrugged.
“So what exactly did they say?”
“Just that they wanted to talk to DI Rebus. I said you were along the corridor, and they asked if . . . no . . .” She shook her head, concentrating. “I offered to get you.”
“And they didn’t give a name?” Rebus had settled into the chair behind the desk — her chair.
“I’m not an answering machine!”
Rebus smiled. “I’m just teasing. Whoever it was, they’ll call back.” At which point the phone rang again. Rebus held his hand out, palm facing her. “Just like that,” he said. He reached for the receiver, but she got to it first, her look telling him that this was still her office.
“Andrea Thomson,” she said into the phone. “Career Analysis.” Then she listened for a moment, before conceding that the call was for him.
Rebus took the receiver. “DI Rebus,” he said.
“I had a careers adviser at school,” the voice said. “He dashed all my dreams.”
Rebus had placed the voice. “Don’t tell me,” he said. “You weren’t tough enough to make it as a ballet dancer?”
“I could dance all over you, my friend.”
“Promises, promises. What the hell are you doing spoiling my holiday, Claverhouse?” Andrea Thomson raised an eyebrow at the word “holiday.” Rebus responded with a wink. Deprived of her chair, she’d slid one buttock up onto the desk.
“I heard you’d offered your chief super a cuppa.”
“And you called for a quick gloat?”
“Not a bit of it. Much though it pains me to say it, we just might require your services.”
Rebus stood up slowly, taking the phone with him. “Is this a windup?”
“I wish it was.”
Seeing her chance, Andrea Thomson had reclaimed her empty chair. Rebus walked around her, still holding the phone in one hand, receiver in the other.
“I’m stuck out here,” he said. “I don’t see how I can . . .”
“Might help if we tell you what we want.”
“We?”
“Me and Ormiston. I’m calling from the car.”
“And where’s the car exactly?”
“Visitors’ car park. So get your raggedy arse down here pronto.”
Claverhouse and Ormiston had worked in the past for the Scottish Crime Squad, Number 2 Branch, based at the Big House — otherwise known as Lothian and Borders Police HQ. The SCS dealt with big cases: drug dealing, conspiracies and cover-ups, crimes at the highest level. Rebus knew both men of old. Only now the SCS had been swallowed up by the Drug Enforcement Agency, taking Claverhouse and Ormiston with it. They were in the car park all right, and easily identified: Ormiston in the driver’s seat of an old black taxicab, Claverhouse playing passenger in the back. Rebus got in beside him.
“What the hell’s this?”
“Great for undercover work,” Claverhouse said, patting the doorframe. “Nobody bats an eye at a black cab.”
“They do when it’s in the middle of the bloody countryside.”
Claverhouse conceded as much with a slight angling of his head. “But then we’re not on surveillance, are we?”
Rebus had to agree that he had a point. He lit himself a cigarette, ignoring the NO SMOKING signs and Ormiston’s willful winding down of the front windows. Claverhouse had recently been promoted to detective inspector, and Ormiston detective sergeant. They made for an odd pairing — Claverhouse tall and thin, almost skeletal, his figure accentuated by jackets which he usually kept buttoned; Ormiston shorter and stockier, oily black hair ending almost in ringlets, giving him the appearance of a Roman emperor. Claverhouse did most of the talking, reducing Ormiston to a role of brooding menace.