‘Lots of work,’ Miss Templewhite corrected. ‘The whole basement was gutted. New heating system, floor repairs, pipework... It was quite a guddle, I can tell you. Everything had to be moved upstairs, and then we didn’t know where to put it. Went on for weeks.’
‘And the wooden sections were removed?’ Rebus asked.
‘Well, I was just telling...’
‘DS Wylie,’ Wylie reminded her.
‘I was just telling DS Wylie, if they’d found these fireplaces, surely they’d have said something?’
‘You didn’t know about them?’
‘Not until DS Wylie told me.’
‘But the building work’, Grant Hood said, ‘coincides fairly well with the skeleton’s age.’
‘You don’t suppose one of the workers could have got himself bricked up?’ Miss Templewhite asked.
‘I think he’d have been noticed,’ Rebus told her. All the same, he knew they’d be asking the builders that very question. ‘Who were the contractors?’
Miss Templewhite threw up her hands. ‘Contractors, subcontractors... I could never really keep up with them.’
Wylie looked at Rebus. ‘Miss Templewhite thinks there’ll be records somewhere.’
‘Oh yes, most definitely.’ She looked around her at her surroundings. ‘And now Roddy Grieve’s dead, too. It was never a lucky place this. Never was, never will be.’ She nodded at all three of them, her confident words accompanied by a solemn, knowing face, as if she took no comfort from the truth.
Back at the snack van, he paid for the teas.
‘Guilty conscience?’ Wylie said, accepting hers. A patrol car had arrived to take Miss Templewhite home. Grant Hood was seeing her safely into the back of it, waving her off.
‘Why should I feel guilty?’ Rebus asked.
‘Story is, it was you that put our names down for this.’
‘Who told you that?’
She shrugged. ‘Word gets around.’
‘Then you should be thanking me,’ Rebus said. ‘High-profile case like this could make your career.’
‘Not as high profile as Roddy Grieve.’ She was staring at him.
‘Spit it out,’ he said. But she shook her head. He handed the spare styrofoam beaker to Grant Hood. ‘Seemed like a nice old sort.’
‘Grant likes the more mature woman,’ Wylie said.
‘Get lost, Ellen.’
‘Him and his pals go to Grab-a-Granny night at the Marina.’
Rebus looked at Hood, who was blushing. ‘That right, Grant?’
Hood just looked at Wylie, concentrated on his tea.
Seemed to Rebus they were getting on okay, felt comfortable enough to talk about their private lives, then to joke about it. ‘So,’ he said, ‘getting back to business...’ He moved away from the van, where workers were queuing for lunchtime treats of crisps and chocolate bars, their eyes roving towards Ellen Wylie. Wylie and Hood were both wearing hard hats, but didn’t look right in them. The line of workers knew they were just visiting. ‘What have we got so far?’
‘Skelly’s gone to some specialist lab down south,’ Wylie said. ‘They reckon they can give us a more accurate date of death. But meantime the thinking is ’79 to ’81.’
‘And we know building work was going on down there in 1979,’ Hood added. ‘Which I’d say is our best bet.’
‘Based on what?’ Rebus asked.
‘Based on the fact that if you’re going to hide a body down there, you need the means and the opportunity. Most of the time, the basement was off-limits. And who’d dump a body there unless they knew about the fireplace? They knew it was going to be blocked up again, probably thought it would stay that way for a few more hundred years.’
Wylie was nodding agreement. ‘Has to be tied in to the refit work.’
‘So we need to know which companies were involved, and who was working for them at the time.’ The two junior officers shared a look. ‘I know, it’s a big job. Firms could have gone to the wall. Maybe they’re not as good at keeping old paperwork as Miss Templewhite. But they’re all we’ve got.’
‘Personnel records will be a nightmare,’ Wylie said. ‘A lot of the building trade, they take people on for a job, lay them off again afterwards. Builders move on, don’t always stay in the business.’
Rebus was nodding. ‘You’re going to have to depend on goodwill a lot of the time.’
‘Meaning what, sir?’ Hood asked.
‘Meaning you have to be nice and polite. That’s why I chose you. Someone like Bobby Hogan or Joe Dickie, they’d go barging in demanding answers. Play it like that, suddenly the person you’re talking to could become forgetful. Like the song says, nice and easy does it.’ He was looking at Wylie.
Through the gate behind her, he glimpsed the site manager emerging from the gatehouse, slipping his hard hat back on. Linford came out, hard hat in hand, and looked around, seeking Rebus. Saw him and came out of the gate.
‘Missing tools?’ Rebus asked.
‘A few bits and pieces.’ Linford nodded across the road. ‘Any news from the search parties?’ Two groups of uniforms were checking the area for the murder weapon.
‘I don’t know,’ Rebus said. ‘I haven’t seen them.’
Linford looked at him. ‘But you’ve got time to stop for tea?’
‘Just keeping my junior officers happy.’
Linford was still staring. ‘You think this is a waste of time, don’t you?’
‘Yes.’
‘Mind if I ask why?’ He folded his arms.
‘Because it’s all arse-backwards,’ Rebus said. ‘Does it really matter how he got into the site or what he was killed with? We should be looking at the who and why. You’re like one of those office managers who worries about paperclips when the case-files are ten feet high on everybody’s desk.’
Linford glanced at his watch. ‘Bit early in the day for character assassination.’ Trying to make a joke of it, aware that others were listening.
‘You can interview the site manager as much as you like,’ Rebus went on, ‘but even if you narrow it down to a missing claw hammer, how much further on will you be? Let’s face it, whoever killed Roddy Grieve knew what they were doing. If they’d been caught nicking slates, they might have thumped him, but more likely they’d just have run off. They certainly wouldn’t have kept hitting him after he was down. He knew his killer, and it wasn’t by chance that he was here. It’s to do with what he was or who he was. That’s what we should be concentrating on.’ He paused, aware that the line of workers was watching the performance.
‘Here endeth the lesson,’ Ellen Wylie said, smiling into her cup.
10
Roddy Grieve’s election agent was called Josephine Banks. Sitting in one of the interview rooms at St Leonard’s, she explained that she’d known Grieve for about five years.
‘We were pretty active in New Labour, right from the start. I did some canvassing for John Smith, too.’ Her eyes lost their focus for a moment. ‘He’s still missed.’
Rebus sat across from her, fingers busy exploring a cheap pen. ‘When did you last see Mr Grieve?’
‘The day he died. We met in the afternoon. Only five months till the election, there was a lot of work to get through.’
She was five and a half feet tall and carried most of her weight at the stomach and hips. Her face was small and round with the beginnings of a double chin. She’d pulled back her thick black hair and tied it at the nape of her neck. She wore half-moon glasses with Dalmatian-spotted frames.
‘You never thought of standing?’ Rebus asked.
‘What? As an MSP?’ She smiled at the suggestion. ‘Maybe next time.’
‘You’ve ambitions that way?’
‘Of course.’