‘Thirty Serb victims buried in a mass grave. We helped identify the victims and prove they were shot at close range.’
‘Sort of puts things into perspective, doesn’t it?’ Rebus said afterwards, eyes on Wylie. Hood was off finding a phone. He needed to talk to the Procurator Fiscal’s office again, tell them what was happening.
‘You’ll have to tell Prof. Gates what’s happening,’ Rebus went on.
‘Yes, sir. Will that be a problem?’
Rebus shook his head. ‘I’ll have a word. He won’t like the fact that Glasgow have got something he hasn’t... but he’ll live with it.’ He winked at her. ‘After all, we’ve got everything else.’
13
The Murder Room at St Leonard’s was fully operational — computers, civilian support, extra phone lines — with an additional Portakabin parked on the pavement outside Queensberry House. Chief Superintendent Watson was kept busy in a series of meetings with Fettes brass and politicians. He’d lost the head at one of the junior officers, shouting the odds before marching off to his office and slamming the door. Nobody’d seen him like that before. DS Frazer’s comment: ‘Get Rebus back here, we need to offer a sacrifice.’ Joe Dickie had nudged him: ‘Any news on overtime?’ He had a blank expenses form ready on his desk.
Gill Templer had been put in charge of press briefings. Her background was in liaison work. So far she’d managed to tamp down a couple of the wilder conspiracy theories. ACC Carswell had come to inspect the troops, given the tour by Derek Linford. Space at the station was cramped, and Linford didn’t even have his own office. Twelve CID officers were attached to the case, along with a further dozen uniforms. The uniforms were there to search the area around the locus and help with door-to-door. Secretarial support came extra, and Linford was still waiting to hear what budget the case would merit. He wasn’t stinting, not yet: he reckoned this was a flier, meaning it would justify any amount of staffing and overtime.
All the same, he liked to keep an eye on the money side. It didn’t help that he was playing away from home. He ignored the looks and comments, but they got to him all the same. Fettes bastard... thinks he can tell us how to run our station. It was all about territory. Not that Rebus seemed to mind. Rebus had given him the run of the place, had admitted that Linford was the better administrator. His exact words: ‘Derek, to be honest, no one’s ever accused me of being able to mind the store.’
Linford made a circuit of the room now: wall charts; staff rotas; crime scene photographs; telephone numbers. Three officers sat silently at their computers, tapping the latest gen into the database. An investigation like this was all about information, its gathering and cross-referencing. Detection lay in making connections, and it could be a painstaking business. He wondered if anyone else in the room felt the same electricity he did. Back to the rota: DS Roy Frazer was in charge of the Holyrood operation, managing the house-to-house inquiries, interviewing the demolition teams and builders. Another DS, George Silvers, was plotting the deceased’s final movements. Roddy Grieve had lived in Cramond, had told his wife he was going out for a drink. Nothing unusual in that, and he’d acted naturally. Had taken his mobile with him. Not that there’d been any reason to check up on him. At midnight she’d turned in for the night. Next morning when he wasn’t there, she’d begun to worry, but had decided to leave it an hour or two; might be some rational explanation... Sleeping it off somewhere.
‘Did that often happen?’ Silvers had asked.
‘Once or twice.’
‘And where did he end up sleeping?’
Answer: at his mother’s; or on a friend’s sofa.
Silvers didn’t look like he put much effort into anything. You couldn’t imagine him in a hurry. But he gave himself time to form questions and strategies.
Time, too, for the interviewee to start twitching.
Grieve’s press officer was a young man called Hamish Hall, and Linford had interviewed him. Playing it back in his head afterwards, Linford reckoned he’d come off second best in the encounter. Hall, in his sharp suit and with a sharp, bright face, had snapped out his answers, as if dismissing the questions. Linford had snapped another question back at him, taking him on rather than playing to his own strengths.
‘How did you get on with Mr Grieve?’
‘Fine.’
‘Never any problems?’
‘Never.’
‘And Ms Banks?’
‘Do you mean how did I get along with her, or how did she get along with Roddy?’ Light glinting from the circular chrome frames of his spectacles.
‘Both, I suppose.’
‘Fine.’
‘Yes?’
‘That’s my answer to both questions: we got along fine.’
‘Right.’
And on it went, like machine-gun fire. Hall’s background: party man, single-minded, economics degree. Economy his strong point when speaking, too.
‘Press agent... Is that like a spin doctor?’
A bending of the mouth. ‘That’s a cheap shot, Inspector Linford.’
‘Who else was in Mr Grieve’s retinue? I’m assuming there’d be local volunteers...?’
‘Not yet. Electioneering proper doesn’t start until April. That’s when we’d have needed canvassers.’
‘You had people in mind?’
‘Not my bailiwick. Ask Jo.’
‘Jo?’
‘Josephine Banks, his election agent. That’s what we called her: Jo.’ A glance at his watch, loud exhalation.
‘So what will you do now, Mr Hall?’
‘You mean when I leave here?’
‘I mean now your employer’s dead.’
‘Find another one.’ A genuine smile this time. ‘There’ll be no shortage of takers.’
Linford could see Hall five or ten years down the line, standing just behind some dignitary, maybe even the Prime Minister, murmuring something which the PM would utter aloud mere seconds later. Always in shot; always close to the power.
When the two men stood up, Linford shook Hall’s hand warmly, offered him a grin and a cup of tea or coffee.
‘Really appreciate... sorry to have... wish you all the best...’
Because you never knew. Five, ten years on, you just never could tell...
‘Tell me this is a joke.’
Ellen Wylie was examining the dimly lit interior of one of the downstairs interview rooms. It was half-filled with broken equipment: chairs with missing castors; golf-ball typewriters.
‘It’s been used for storage, as you can see.’
She turned to the desk sergeant, who’d unlocked the door for her and turned on the light. ‘I’d never have guessed.’
‘So where do we put all this stuff?’ Grant Hood asked.
‘Maybe you can work around it?’ the desk sergeant offered.
‘We’re working a murder inquiry,’ Wylie hissed at him. Then she looked around the room again, before turning to her partner. ‘And this is how they treat us, Grant.’
‘Well, it’s all yours,’ the desk sergeant said, removing the key from the lock and handing it to Hood. ‘Have fun.’
Hood watched him retreat, then held the key up in front of Wylie. ‘It’s all ours, he says.’
‘Can we complain to the management?’ Wylie kicked at one of the chairs, whose arm promptly fell off.
‘I know the brochure said sea view,’ her partner said, ‘but with any luck, we won’t be spending much time here.’
‘Those bastards upstairs have got a coffee-maker,’ Wylie said. Then she burst out laughing. ‘What am I saying? We haven’t even got any phones!’