‘It’s not much, I’m afraid,’ Kirkwall was saying, reaching into a drawer. He unrolled the plan so it faced them, weighting its corners with pieces of polished stone. ‘I collect one from each job I do,’ he explained. ‘Get it cleaned and varnished.’ Then: ‘This is Queensberry House. The blue shaded areas were our project, plus the red lines.’
‘It looks like exterior work.’
‘It was. Downpipes, cracks in the masonry, and one summer house to be built from scratch. It’s like that sometimes with public works, they like to spread the contract around.’
‘You obviously weren’t greasing enough palms at the council,’ Hood muttered.
Kirkwall glared at him.
‘So another firm was doing the internal work?’ Wylie was studying the plan.
‘Firm or firms. I’ve no record. Like I say, you’d have to ask Dad.’
‘Then that’s what we’ll do, Mr Kirkwall,’ Ellen Wylie said.
But first they hit Valvona’s, where Wylie did her shopping before asking if Hood fancied a bite to eat. He made show of checking his watch.
‘Come on,’ she said. ‘There’s an empty table, and I’ve been here often enough to know that must be a sign.’
So they ate salad and pizza and shared a bottle of mineral water. Around them, couples were doing the same thing. Hood smiled.
‘We don’t stick out,’ he commented.
She looked at his stomach. ‘Well, I don’t.’
He sucked in some gut and decided to leave the last slice of pizza. ‘You know what I mean,’ he said.
Yes, she knew. Being a cop, being around people who knew cops, you always felt they could spot you, and you came to think everyone had the knack.
‘Bit of a shock to find you’re not a social leper?’
Hood looked at his plate. ‘More of a shock to find I can actually leave food.’
Afterwards, they headed out to the house Jack Kirkwall had built for his retirement. It sat in countryside on the edge of South Queensferry, with both bridges visible in the distance. The house was angular with tall windows. When Wylie stated that it was like a scaled-down cathedral, Hood knew what she meant.
Jack Kirkwall welcomed them by insisting that he be remembered to John Rebus.
‘You know Inspector Rebus?’ Wylie asked.
‘He did me a good turn once.’ Kirkwall chuckled.
‘You might be able to return the favour, sir,’ Hood said. ‘Depending on how good your memory is.’
‘Nothing wrong with the napper,’ Kirkwall grumbled.
Wylie shot her partner a warning look. ‘What DC Hood meant, Mr Kirkwall, is that we’re in the dark and you’re our one ray of light.’
Kirkwall perked up, settled into an easy chair and motioned for them to be seated.
The sofa was cream leather and smelt brand new. The lounge was large and bright with inch-thick white shag pile and a whole wall of French windows. To Wylie’s eye, there seemed very little of Kirkwall’s past on display: no photos or old-looking ornaments or furniture. It was as though, in later life, he had decided to reinvent himself. There was something anonymous about it all. Then Wylie realised: it was a show house. Prospective clients could be shown around, Kirkwall Construction workmanship evident everywhere.
And no place for individual personality.
She wondered if that explained the sad depths to Jack Kirkwall’s face. No way was this his idea of retirement: in the choice of fabrics and furnishings she saw the son, Peter.
‘Your firm’, she said, ‘did some work at Queensberry House in 1979.’
‘The hospital?’ She nodded. ‘Started work in ’78, finished it in ’79. What a hellish time that was.’ He peered at them. ‘Likely you’re too young to remember. That winter there was a rubbish strike, teachers’ strike, even the mortuary was on strike.’ He snorted at the memory, looked to Hood. Tapping his head, he said: ‘See, son? Nothing wrong with the napper. Remember it like it was yesterday. We started in December, finished in March. The eighth, to be precise.’
Wylie smiled. ‘That’s incredible.’
Kirkwall accepted her praise. He was a big man, broad-shouldered, chisel-jawed. He’d probably never been handsome, but she could imagine him having power and presence.
‘Know why I remember?’ He shook his head. ‘You’ll be too young.’
‘The referendum?’ Hood guessed.
Kirkwall looked deflated. Wylie gave another warning look: they needed him on their side.
‘It was March first, wasn’t it?’ Hood continued.
‘Aye, it was. And we won the vote but lost the war.’
‘A temporary setback,’ Wylie felt bound to add.
He glared at her. ‘If you can call twenty years temporary. We had dreams...’ Wylie thought he was turning wistful, but he surprised her. ‘Just think what it would have meant: inward investment, new homes and businesses.’
‘A building boom?’
Kirkwall was shaking his head at the thought of so much opportunity wasted.
‘The boom’s happening now, according to your son,’ Wylie said.
‘Aye.’
She doubted she’d ever heard so much bitterness in a single syllable. Had Jack Kirkwall gone willingly, or had he been pushed?
‘We’re interested in the hospital’s interior,’ Hood said. ‘Which firms had the contracts?’
‘Roofing was Caspian,’ Kirkwall said tonelessly, still lost in thought. ‘Scaffolding was Macgregor. Coghill’s did a lot of the inside work: replastering, a few new partition walls.’
‘Was this in the basement?’
Kirkwall nodded. ‘A new laundry room and a boiler.’
‘Do you remember any of the original walls being exposed?’ Wylie handed over the photo of the fireplaces. ‘Like this?’ Kirkwall looked, shook his head. ‘But the work in the basement was done by a firm called Coghill’s?’
Kirkwall nodded again. ‘Gone now. Firm went bust.’
‘Is Mr Coghill still around?’
Kirkwall shrugged. ‘Shouldn’t have gone bust really. Good firm. Dean knew his stuff.’
‘The building trade’s a tough game,’ Wylie agreed.
‘It’s not that.’ He looked at her.
‘What then?’
‘I might be speaking out of turn.’ He considered this. ‘But at my age, who cares?’ Took a deep, noisy breath. ‘It’s just that, way I heard it, Dean fell foul of Mr Big.’
Wylie and Hood responded as one voice. ‘Mr Big?’
The Oxford Bar was busy when Rebus arrived. He’d already had one drink at The Maltings, leaving before the evening influx of students, and two drinks at Swany’s on Causewayside. In Swany’s he’d bumped into an old colleague, recently retired.
‘You look too young,’ Rebus had chided him.
‘Same age as you, John,’ had been the reply.
But Rebus didn’t have thirty years in; had joined the force in his mid-twenties. Two or three more years, he could be a gentleman of leisure. Rebus got a round in, then sneaked out into the cold blast of winter. Headlamps piercing the darkness; recent rainfall threatening ice. A fifteen-minute walk home. Across the street, a taxi filling up at the petrol station.
Retirement. The word bouncing around in his skull. Jesus, but what would he do with himself? One man’s retirement was another’s redundancy. He thought of the Farmer, then waved down the taxi, asked to be taken to the Oxford Bar.
No sign of Doc and Salty, Rebus’s usual drinking partners, but plenty of faces he knew. The place was buzzing, bodies crammed in the front room. Football on the TV: a game from down south. A regular called Muir was standing close by the door. He nodded a greeting.