‘Not if no charges were brought.’
She leaned forward, pecked him on the cheek. When she stepped back, Rebus saw a face at a window. Not Cordover: Peter Grief.
‘Peter’s song,’ Rebus said. ‘The one about his father. I didn’t catch the title.’
‘“The Final Reproof”,’ Lorna Grieve told him. ‘As in condemning.’
In his car, Rebus got on his mobile and asked Derek Linford how things had gone at The Exchange.
‘Roddy Grieve was whiter than white,’ Linford said. ‘No bad deals, no cock-ups, no unhappy punters. Also, none of his colleagues were out drinking with him on Sunday night.’
‘Which tells us what exactly?’
‘I’m not sure.’
‘A dead end then?’
‘Not quite: I did get a hot tip for an investment. How about you?’
Rebus glanced at the album on the passenger seat. ‘I’m not sure what I got, Derek. Talk to you later.’ He made another call, this time to a vinyl dealer in the city.
‘Paul? It’s John Rebus. Obscura’s Continuous Repercussions, signed by High Chord and Lorna Grieve.’ He listened for a moment. ‘It’s not mint, but it’s not bad.’ Listened again. ‘Get back to me if you can go any higher, eh? Cheers.’
He slowed the car so he could search in the glove compartment, found a Hendrix tape and slotted it home. ‘Love or Confusion’. Sometimes, you couldn’t be sure what the difference was.
Howdenhall was home to the city’s forensic science lab. Rebus wasn’t sure why Grant Hood and Ellen Wylie wanted to meet him there. Their message had been vague, hinting at some surprise. Rebus hated surprises. That kiss from Lorna Grieve... it hadn’t been a surprise exactly, but all the same. And if he hadn’t angled his head at the last moment, bottling out of some mouth-to-mouth... Jesus, and with Peter Grief watching from the window. Grief: Rebus had meant to ask about the name change. Grieve to Grief; verb to noun. But then he’d been brought up by his mother, so maybe his surname had been Collins. In which case, the change of name was still resonant, the young man laying claim to the missing half of his identity, his missed past.
Howdenhalclass="underline" full of brainboxes, some of them looking barely out of their teens. People who knew about DNA and computer data. These days at St Leonard’s, you didn’t roll ink over a suspect’s fingers, you merely placed their palm to a computer pad. The prints flashed up on the screen, and Criminal Records came back to you immediately if there was a match. The process still amazed him, even after all these months.
Hood and Wylie were waiting for him in one of the meeting rooms. Howdenhall was still fairly new, and had a clean no-nonsense smell and feel to it. The large oval desk, made up of three movable sections, hadn’t had time to get scuffed or scored. The chairs were still comfortably padded. The two junior officers made to get up, but he waved them back down and seated himself across the table from them.
‘No ashtray,’ he remarked.
‘There’s no smoking, sir,’ Wylie explained.
‘I know that well enough. I just keep thinking I’ll wake up and it’ll all have been a bad dream.’ He looked around. ‘No coffee or tea either, eh?’
Hood sprang to his feet. ‘I can get you...’
Rebus shook his head. Still, it was good to see Hood so keen. Two empty polystyrene beakers on the table: he wondered who’d fetched them. Even money on Hood; Wylie at three to one.
‘Latest news?’ he asked.
‘Very little blood in the fireplace,’ Wylie said. ‘Chances are, Skelly was killed elsewhere.’
‘Which means less chance of the SOCOs coming up with anything useful.’ Rebus was thoughtful for a moment. ‘So why the secrecy?’ he asked.
‘No secrecy, sir. It’s just that when we found out Professor Sendak was going to be here this afternoon for a meeting...’
‘Seemed too good to miss, sir,’ Hood concluded.
‘And who’s Professor Sendak when he’s at home?’
‘Glasgow University, sir. Head of Forensic Pathology.’
Rebus raised an eyebrow. ‘Glasgow? Listen, if Gates and Curt find out, it’s your heads, not mine, okay?’
‘We cleared it with the Procurator Fiscal’s office.’
‘So what can this Sendak do that our own boffins can’t?’
There was a knock at the door.
‘Maybe we’ll let the professor explain,’ Hood said, not quite disguising the relief in his voice.
Professor Ross Sendak was approaching sixty, but still boasted a head of thick black hair. The shortest person in the room, he carried himself with weight and confidence, demanding respect. Introductions complete, he settled himself on a chair and spread his hands out on the table.
‘You think I can help you,’ he stated, ‘and perhaps you’re right. I’ll need the skull brought to Glasgow. Can that be arranged?’
Wylie and Hood shared a look. Rebus cleared his throat.
‘I’m afraid the Time Team here haven’t had time to brief me, Professor.’
Sendak nodded, took a deep breath. ‘Laser technology, Inspector.’ He reached into his briefcase, slid out a laptop computer and switched it on. ‘Forensic facial reconstruction. Your forensic colleagues here have already ascertained that the decedent’s hair was brown. That’s a start. What we would do in Glasgow is place the skull on a revolving plinth. We then aim a laser at the skull, feeding the information into a computer, building up details. From these, the facial contours are formed. Other information — the decedent’s general physique; his age at date of death — help with the final image.’ He turned the computer around so it was facing Rebus. ‘And what you get is something like this.’
Rebus had to get up. From where he was sitting, the screen seemed blank. Hood and Wylie did likewise, until all three of them were jockeying for position, the better to make out the face which flickered at them. By moving a few inches to right or left, the image faded, disappeared, but when in focus it was clearly the face of a young man. There was something of the mannequin about it, a deadness to the eyes, the one visible ear not quite right and the hair clearly an afterthought.
‘This poor devil rotted on a hillside in the Highlands. He was past normal means of ID by the time he was found. Animals and the elements had taken their toll.’
‘But you think this is what he looked like in life?’
‘I’d say it’s close. Eyes and hairstyle are speculative, but the overall structure of the face is true.’
‘Amazing,’ Hood said.
‘Using the inset screen,’ Sendak went on, ‘we can reconfigure the face — change hairstyle, add a moustache or beard, even change eye colour. The variations can be printed out and used for a public appeal.’ Sendak pointed to the small grey square in the top right corner of the screen. It contained what looked like a children’s version of an identikit: the rough outline of a head, plus hats, facial hairstyles, glasses.
Rebus looked to Hood and Wylie. They were looking at him now, seeking his okay.
‘So how much is this going to cost?’ he asked, turning back to the screen.
‘It’s not an expensive process,’ Sendak said. ‘I appreciate that funds are being soaked up by the Grieve case.’
Rebus glanced towards Wylie. ‘Someone’s been whispering.’
‘It’s not like we’re spending money on anything else,’ Wylie argued. Rebus saw anger in her eyes. She was beginning to feel sidelined. Any other time of year, Skelly would have been big news, but not with Roddy Grieve as competition.
In the end, Rebus gave the nod.
Afterwards, there was just time for a coffee. Sendak explained that his Human Identification Centre had helped with war crimes cases in Rwanda and the former Yugoslavia. In fact, he was flying out to The Hague at the end of the week to testify in a war crimes trial.