“Lucky bugger,” he muttered.
Shapes moved behind the upstairs and downstairs windows. They’d be working two to a room, the way Siobhan had instructed. Looking for what exactly? Anything incriminating or out of place . . . anything that gave them an inkling. Rebus wished them well. What he needed, he realized, was a place like this. It felt like a haven. Somehow, he didn’t think the placement of a summerhouse in the back garden of his tenement would have the same effect. He’d thought before of selling his flat, buying a little house just outside the city — commuting distance, but a place where he could find a bit of peace. Problem was, you could have too much of a good thing. In Edinburgh, he had twenty-four-hour shops, myriad pubs within a short walk, and the constant background hum of street life. In a place like Inveresk, he feared the silence would get to him eventually, drawing him deeper into himself — not a place he really wanted to be — and defeating the whole point of the exercise.
“No place like home,” he told himself, rising out of the chair. He wasn’t going to find any answers here. His troubles were his own, and a change of scenery couldn’t alter that. He wondered about Dickie Diamond, hopefully now in the process of scurrying out of Edinburgh. He’d given his Edinburgh address as his sister’s house in Newhaven. His permanent address was a high-rise in Gateshead. They’d sent a message south, requesting a check by the local force. He’d claimed he wasn’t currently working, but neither had he registered as unemployed. No bank account . . . didn’t have his driving license with him. He hadn’t mentioned his car, and neither had Rebus. If they knew about the car, they could get an address from his license plate. Rebus knew that the Gateshead address would be fake or out-of-date. The car might well be another matter. He got on his mobile, called the comms room at St. Leonard’s and asked if the Ford’s last known sighting — looking abandoned in the New Town — could be rechecked.
But the comms room already knew. “Car was lifted this morning,” the officer said. Which meant it would be in the pound, a hefty levy payable before it could be released. Rebus doubted Diamond would bother — the Ford was probably worth less than the charges now attached to it.
“Doesn’t take long for them to clear rubbish from the New Town, does it?” Rebus said into the phone.
“It was parked outside a judge’s front door, blocking the space for his own car,” the officer explained.
“Got the Ford’s registration address?”
The officer reeled it off: same one Diamond had given them in the interview room. Rebus ended the conversation, slipped the phone back into his pocket. Dickie Diamond would be leaving town by bus or train, always supposing he lacked the wherewithal to steal someone else’s car.
Either that or he’d be staying put, necessitating another meeting between them and some strong words from Rebus. Strong words and maybe strong actions to accompany them.
Was the gun hidden inside the car? He wondered if it was worth finding out, but shook his head. Dickie Diamond wasn’t the kind to shoot anyone. The gun had been a prop . . . the prop of a weak, scared man. A fine insight in retrospect.
He’d stopped to light another cigarette and was crossing the garden to the shed. This was a much older construction than the summerhouse, its wooden sides mildewed and spattered with bird droppings. Again, there was no lock on it, so Rebus pulled it open. A coiled hose, which had been attached to a nail on the inside of the door, slid off and fell with a clatter. There were shelves of DIY bits and pieces — screws and brackets, Rawl plugs, hinges . . . An old-style push-pull mower took up most of the floor space. But there was something tucked down beside it, something smothered in bubble wrap. Rebus looked back at the cottage. He wasn’t wearing gloves, but decided to pick it up all the same. It was a painting, or at any rate a frame. Heavier than he’d been expecting, probably the weight of the glass. He lifted it onto the lawn. Heard the sound of a window opening, then Siobhan’s voice: “What the hell are you doing?”
“Come take a look,” he called back. He was unfolding the wrapping. The painting showed a man in a crisp white shirt, the sleeves rolled up. He had long dark wavy hair, and was standing by a mantelpiece, atop which sat a mirror, which itself was reflecting a woman with long, lustrous black hair, the angles of her lower jaw picked out as though from firelight. Around the two figures all was shadow. The woman wore a black mask covering her eyes and nose. She had her hands behind her. Maybe they were tied together at the back. The artist’s surname was written in capitals at bottom left: Vettriano.
“This’ll be the missing painting then,” Rebus said, as Siobhan stood over him.
She stared first at the canvas, then at the shed. “And it was just lying there?”
“Tucked down the side of the lawn mower.”
“The door wasn’t locked?”
Rebus shook his head. “Looks like he panicked. Brought the thing home, then didn’t want it in the house . . .”
“How heavy is it?” Siobhan was walking around the painting.
“It’s not light. What’s your point?”
“Neilson doesn’t own a car. No point, since he’s never learned to drive.”
“Then how did he get the painting back here?” Rebus knew the way her mind was working. He stood up, watching her nodding slowly. “Right now,” he told her, “what matters is that you’ve found the painting stolen from the victim’s house.”
“And isn’t that convenient?” she said, staring at him.
“Okay, I admit it . . . I had it hidden under my jacket . . .”
“I’m not saying you put it there.”
“But someone else did?”
“Plenty of people knew Malcolm Neilson was a suspect.”
“Maybe his prints will be all over the glass. Would that be enough to satisfy you, Siobhan? Or how about a bloodstained hammer? Could be there’s one tucked away in the shed, too . . . And by the way, I meant what I said.”
“About what?”
“It was you that found the painting. Me, I’m not even here, remember? You go telling Gill that it was John Rebus who found the crucial piece of evidence, she’s going to have both of us on the carpet. Get one of the woolly suits to give me a lift back into town . . . then let Gill know what you’ve found.”
She nodded, knowing he was right, but cursing the fact that she’d let him come here.
“Oh, and Siobhan?” Rebus was patting her on the arm. “Congratulations. Everyone’s going to start thinking you walk on water . . .”
Presented with the evidence of the stolen painting, Malcolm Neilson offered no explanation at first, then said it had been a gift from Marber, before changing his mind again and stating that he’d neither seen nor touched the painting. His fingerprints had already been taken, and the painting itself was sitting at Howdenhall police lab, being dusted for prints before undergoing other, more arcane tests.
“I’m curious, Mr. Neilson,” Bill Pryde asked. “Why that particular painting, when there were others more valuable right there under your nose?”
“I didn’t take it, I tell you!”
William Allison, Neilson’s solicitor, was rapidly jotting notes by his client’s side. “You say it was found in Malcolm Neilson’s garden shed, DCI Pryde? Can I ask whether there was a lock of any kind on the door?”
Elsewhere in the station, the success of the search at Inveresk was being trumpeted, the noise bringing the Wild Bunch out of their lair and up to the murder room.
“You got a result then?” Francis Gray asked Derek Linford, slapping him on the back.
“I didn’t,” Linford snapped back. “Too busy wading through three feet of shit in his studio the other side of town.”