From: DS Hetherington, Tayside
Hetherington . . . a detective sergeant, just like her. Siobhan’s request hadn’t been addressed to any particular officer. She’d just got the fax number for Tayside Police HQ and sent it there. The cover sheet was on letterhead, the telephone number just discernible. Then she noticed something typed below Hetherington’s name: x242. Had to be an extension number. Siobhan picked up her phone and punched the digits.
“Police HQ, DC Watkins,” the male voice said.
“It’s DS Clarke here, St. Leonard’s in Edinburgh. Any chance I could have a word with DS Hetherington?”
“She’s not in the office right now.” She . . . A smile cracked open Siobhan’s face. “Can I take a message?”
“Is she likely to be back?”
“Hang on a sec . . .” There was the sound of the receiver being laid down on a desktop. DS Hetherington was a woman. It gave them something in common, might make it easier for the pair of them to talk . . . The receiver was picked up again. “Her stuff’s still here.” Meaning she’d be back to pick it up.
“Could I leave you a couple of numbers to pass on to her? I’d really like to talk to her before the weekend.”
“Shouldn’t be a problem. We have to prize her out of the office usually.”
Better and better, thought Siobhan, giving Watkins her St. Leonard’s and mobile numbers. Afterwards, she stared at the telephone, willing it to ring. The room around her was emptying: early doors, as Rebus would have called it. She hoped he was all right. She didn’t know why she hadn’t called him . . . Actually, she had a vague memory of doing just that. Probably as soon as she’d got back to her car. But he hadn’t been answering. She tried him again now. He picked up.
“I’m fine,” he told her without preamble. “I’ll talk to you later.” End of conversation.
She visualized Hetherington returning to her desk . . . maybe not noticing the message. Watkins hadn’t sounded the type who had to be prized from anything but a barstool. What if he’d already made his escape before her return? What if she saw the message but was too tired to do anything about it? Maybe she’d had a long week . . . To Siobhan, it had lasted an eternity. She wasn’t going to do anything this weekend but lie in bed and read, doze, then read some more. Maybe drag the duvet as far as the sofa and watch a black-and-white film. There were CDs she hadn’t got round to playing: Hobotalk, Goldfrapp . . . She’d decided to give the football a miss. It was an away game at Motherwell.
The phone remained silent. Siobhan counted to ten, giving it a chance, then gathered her stuff and headed for the door.
She got in her car and put some driving music on: the latest REM. It was fifty-three minutes long, which meant it would see her most of the way to Dundee.
She hadn’t allowed for the Friday-afternoon exodus from the city, ending with a long queue to pay the toll at the Forth Road Bridge. After that, she put her foot down. Her mobile was attached to its charger. Still no word from Hetherington. She picked it up every few minutes, just in case some new text message had escaped her attention. The farther north she traveled, the better she felt. It wouldn’t matter if there was nobody at the office when she arrived. It was good to be out of Edinburgh. It reminded her that there was another world out there. She didn’t know Dundee professionally but had visited the city plenty of times as a football fan. The two Dundee teams had stadiums practically next door to one another. There were a few pubs in the center where Siobhan had enjoyed a drink before kickoff, her Hibs scarf hidden deep down in her shoulder bag. There was a sign off the motorway to the Tay Bridge, but she’d made that mistake once before. It led to a long, winding trail through the villages of Fife. She stuck to the M90, bypassing Perth and heading into Dundee from the west. This approach turned into a seemingly endless series of roundabouts. She was steering the car around one of these when her phone sounded.
“I got your message,” the female voice said.
“Thanks for calling back. As it happens, I’m on the outskirts of town.”
“Christ, it must be serious.”
“Maybe I just fancied a Friday night in Dundee.”
“In which case, delete ‘serious’ and add ‘desperate.’ ”
Siobhan knew she was going to like DS Hetherington. “My name’s Siobhan, by the way,” she said.
“Mine’s Liz.”
“Are you just about ready to shut up shop, Liz? Only, I know the pubs in this city better than I do your HQ.”
Hetherington laughed. “I suppose I could be persuaded.”
“Great.” Siobhan named a pub, and Hetherington said she knew it.
“Ten minutes?”
“Ten minutes,” Hetherington agreed.
“How will we know one another?”
“I don’t think that’ll be a problem, Siobhan. Single women in that place tend to be an endangered species.”
She was right.
Siobhan only knew the place from Saturday afternoons, drinking in safety, a pack of Hibs fans around her. But as people clocked off, the weekend stretching ahead of them, the pub took on a very different character. There were office parties, loud laughter. The only people drinking alone were sour-faced men at the bar. Couples were meeting up after work, bringing their day’s gossip with them. Supermarket shopping bags held the evening meal. There was thumping dance music, and a TV sports channel playing silently. The interior was spacious, but Siobhan was having trouble finding somewhere to stand, somewhere she’d be conspicuous to anyone coming in. There were two doors into the place, which didn’t help. Every time she thought she’d found a spot, drinkers would gather nearby, camouflaging her. And Hetherington was late. Siobhan’s glass was empty. She went to the bar for a refill.
“Lime and soda?” the barman remembered. She nodded, quietly impressed. She turned to watch the door and saw that it had opened. A woman was standing there. Something Liz Hetherington had forgotten to mention: she had to be six feet tall or thereabouts. Unlike a lot of tall women, she made no attempt to make herself seem shorter, holding her back straight and wearing shoes with heels. Siobhan waved, and Hetherington joined her.
“Liz?” Siobhan said. Hetherington nodded. “What’re you having?”
“Just a dry ginger . . .” She paused. “No, the hell with it. It’s Friday, right?”
“Right.”
“So make it a Bloody Mary.”
There were no tables left, but they found a ledge by the far wall and placed their drinks there. Siobhan realized that she didn’t want to stand next to Hetherington for too long: she might get a crick in her neck. She fetched two stools from the bar and they sat down.
“Cheers,” she said.
“Cheers.”
Liz Hetherington was in her mid-thirties. Thick shoulder-length black hair, which she kept trimmed without spending a fortune on new styles. Her slender frame thickened considerably at the hips, but her height helped her carry it. No rings on her left hand.
“How long have you been a DS?” Siobhan asked.
Hetherington puffed out her cheeks. “Three years . . . Three and a half actually. You?”
“Nearer three weeks.”
“Congratulations. How’s Lothian and Borders?”
“Much the same as up here, I’d expect. I’ve got a female DCS.”
Hetherington raised an eyebrow. “Good for you.”
“She’s okay,” Siobhan said thoughtfully. “I mean, she’s not the kind to give favors . . .”
“They never are,” Hetherington stated. “Too much to prove.”
Siobhan nodded agreement. Hetherington was savoring a mouthful of her drink.
“Ages since I had one of these,” she explained, swirling the ice in her glass. “So what brings you to the city of the three Js?”
Siobhan smiled. The three Js: jute, jam and journalism, of which, as far as she knew, only the third still provided much in the way of local jobs. “I wanted to thank you for sending me that stuff I asked for.”
“A phone call would have sufficed.”