Interview transcripts, reports from the door-to-door inquiries, medical and pathology, forensics and Scene of Crime . . . There was a lot of background on the victim, as was to be expected: how could they hope to solve the crime until they had a motive? The area’s prostitutes had been reluctant to come forward. No one had claimed Eric Lomax as a client. It didn’t help that there had been a series of murders of Glasgow prostitutes and that the police had been accused of not caring. Nor did it help that Lomax — known to his associates as Rico — had operated on the fringes of the city’s criminal community.
In short, Rico Lomax was a lowlife. And even on this morning’s evidence, Rebus could see that some of the officers on the original inquiry had felt that all his demise did was erase another name from the game. One or two of the Resurrection Men had mooted similar feelings.
“Why give us a scumbag to work on?” Stu Sutherland had asked. “Give us a case we want to see solved.”
Which remark had earned him a roasting from DCI Tennant. They had to want to see all their cases solved. Rebus had watched Tennant throughout, wondering why the Lomax case had been chosen. Could it be random chance, or something altogether more threatening?
There was a box of newspapers from the time. A lot of interest had been shown in them, not least because they brought back memories. Rebus sat himself down now and leafed through a couple. The official opening of the Skye Road Bridge . . . Raith Rovers in the UEFA Cup . . . a bantamweight boxer killed in the ring in Glasgow . . .
“Old news,” a voice intoned. Rebus looked up. Francis Gray was standing in the open doorway, feet apart, hands in pockets.
“Thought you were down the pub,” Rebus said.
Gray sniffed as he came in, rubbed a hand across his nose. “We just ended up discussing all this.” He tapped one of the empty box-files. “The lads are on their way over, but looks like you beat us all to it.”
“It was all right when it was just tests and lectures,” Rebus said, leaning back in his chair so he could stretch his spine.
Gray nodded. “But now there’s something for us to take seriously, eh?” He pulled out the chair next to Rebus’s, sat down and concentrated on the open newspaper. “But you seem to be taking it more seriously than most.”
“I just got here first, that’s all.”
“That’s what I mean.” Gray still wasn’t looking at him. He wet a thumb and turned back a page. “You’ve got a bit of a rep, haven’t you, John? Sometimes you get too involved.”
“Oh aye? And you’re here for always toeing the line?”
Gray allowed himself a smile. Rebus could smell beer and nicotine from his clothes. “We’ve all crossed the line sometime, haven’t we? It happens to good cops as well as bad. Maybe you could even say it’s what makes the good cops good.”
Rebus studied the side of Gray’s head. Gray was at Tulliallan because he’d disobeyed one order too many from a senior officer. Then again, as Gray had said: “My boss was, is, and will forever be a complete and utter arsehole.” A pause. “With respect.” That final phrase had cracked the table up. The problem with most of the Resurrection Men was, they didn’t respect those above them in the pecking order, didn’t trust them to do a good job, make the right decision. Gray’s “Wild Bunch” would be returned to duty only when they’d learned to accept and respond to the hierarchy.
“See,” Gray was saying now, “give me a boss like DCI Tennant any day of the week. Guy like that’s going to call a spade a shovel. You know where you stand with him. He’s old school.”
Rebus was nodding. “At least he’s going to give you a bollocking to your face.”
“And not go shafting you from behind.” Now Gray found himself at the newspaper’s front page. He held it up for Rebus to see: ROSYTH BID BRINGS HOPE OF 5,000 JOBS . . . “Yet we’re still here,” Gray said quietly. “We haven’t quit and they haven’t made us. Why do you think that is?”
“We’d cause too much trouble?” Rebus guessed.
Gray shook his head. “It’s because deep down they understand something. They know that they need us more than we need them.” Now he turned to match Rebus’s gaze, seemed to be waiting for Rebus to say something in reply. But there were voices in the corridor, and then faces in the doorway. Four of them, toting a couple of shopping bags from which were produced cans of beer and lager and a bottle of cheap whiskey. Gray rose to his feet, quickly took over.
“DC Ward, you’re in charge of finding us some mugs or glasses. DC Sutherland, might as well shut the blinds, eh? DI Rebus here has already got the ball rolling. Who knows, maybe we’ll wrap this up tonight and put Archie Tennant’s gas at a peep . . .”
They knew they wouldn’t, but that didn’t stop them trying, starting with a brainstorming session that went all the better for the loosening effects of the alcohol. Some of the theories were wild, and got wilder, but there were nuggets among the dross. Tam Barclay made a list. As Rebus had suspected would happen, the separate clusters of paperwork on the table soon collided, restoring chaos to the whole. He didn’t say anything.
“Rico Lomax wasn’t expecting anything,” Jazz McCullough stated at one point.
“How do you reckon?”
“Wary men tend to change their routine, but here’s Rico, cool as you like, at his usual spot in his usual bar on the same night as always.”
There were nods of agreement. Their thinking had been: some gangland falling-out, an organized hit.
“We all spoke to our snitches at the time,” Francis Gray added. “A lot of pieces of silver crossed a good many undeserving palms. Result: zip.”
“Doesn’t mean there wasn’t a contract on him,” Allan Ward said.
“Still with us, Allan?” Gray said, sounding surprised. “Is it not time you were tucked up in bed with your teddy?”
“Tell me, Francis, do you buy your one-liners wholesale? Only they’re well past their sell-by.”
There was laughter at this, and a few fingers pointed at Gray, as if to say: The lad got you, Francis! He definitely got you!
Rebus watched Gray’s mouth twist itself into a smile so thin it could have graced a catwalk.
“I can see this is going to be a long night,” Jazz McCullough said, bringing them back to earth.
After a can of beer, Rebus excused himself to visit the toilet. It was at the end of the corridor and down a flight of stairs. As he left the room, he could hear Stu Sutherland repeating one of the earlier theories:
“Rico was freelance, right? As in not affiliated to any gang in particular. And one of the things he was good at, if the rumors are true, was getting the various soldiers off the battlefield when things got too hot . . .”
Rebus knew what Sutherland was talking about. If someone did a hit, or got into any other trouble which necessitated them getting out of town for a while, it was Rico’s job to find a safe haven. He had contacts everywhere: council flats, holiday homes, caravan sites. From Caithness to the border, the Western Isles to East Lothian. Caravans on the east coast were a specialty: Rico had cousins who ran half a dozen separate sites. Sutherland wanted to know who’d been hiding out at the time Rico had been hit. Could one of the safe houses have been breached, a visit with a baseball bat Rico’s punishment? Or had someone been trying to find out a location from him?
It wasn’t a bad notion. What troubled Rebus was how, six years on, they’d go about finding out. By the stairwell, he saw a shadowy figure heading down. Cleaner, he thought. But the cleaners had been round earlier. He started to descend, but then thought better of it. Walked the length of the opposite corridor: there was another set of stairs down at its end. Now he was on the ground floor. He walked on tiptoe back towards the central stairwell, keeping in against the wall. Pushed open the glass doors and surprised the figure who was skulking there.
“Evening, sir.”
DCI Archibald Tennant spun round. “Oh, it’s you.”