John Rebus, too, was thinking of Edinburgh. When he moved from his flat, where would he make his next home? Was there any district he liked better than any other? Portobello itself was fine, pretty relaxed. But he could always move south or west, into the country. Some of his colleagues travelled in from as far as Falkirk and Linlithgow. He wasn’t sure he was ready for that kind of commute. Portobello would be okay though. The only problem was, when they walked along the promenade, he kept looking towards the beach, as if expecting to see a little wooden coffin there, like the one they’d found in Nairn. It wouldn’t matter where he went, his head would go with him, colouring his surroundings. The Falls coffin was working away at him now. He only had the carpenter’s word for it that it had been made by someone else, someone who hadn’t made the other four. But if the killer was being really clever, wouldn’t he have anticipated just that, changing his work habits and tools, trying to dupe them into...
Oh Christ, here he went again... the same old dance, reeling around his skull. He sat down on the sea wall, and Jean asked if something was wrong.
‘Bit of a headache,’ he said.
‘Isn’t that supposed to be the woman’s prerogative?’ She was smiling, but he could see she wasn’t happy.
‘I should be heading back,’ he told her. ‘Not great company tonight.’
‘Do you want to talk about it?’ He raised his eyes so they met hers, and she snorted with laughter. ‘Sorry, stupid question. You’re a Scottish male, of course you don’t want to talk about it.’
‘It’s not that, Jean. It’s just...’ He shrugged. ‘Maybe therapy wouldn’t be such a bad idea.’
He was trying to make a joke of it, so she didn’t push him.
‘Let’s head back,’ she said. ‘Bloody freezing out here anyway.’
She slid her arm through his as they walked.
12
By the time Assistant Chief Constable Colin Carswell arrived at Gayfield Square police station on that underlit Tuesday morning, he was out for blood.
John Balfour had bawled him out; Balfour’s lawyer had done his damage more subtly, the voice never wavering in its professional and well-educated tones. Still, Carswell felt bruised, and he wanted some measure of revenge. The Chief Constable was remaining aloof — his position, his unassailability, had to be maintained at all costs. This was Carswell’s mess, one he’d spent all the previous evening busy surveying. He might as well have been exploring a landscape of shrapnel and broken glass, armed only with a dustpan and some tweezers.
The best minds in the Procurator Fiscal’s office had pored over the problem and had concluded, in an annoyingly bland and objective way (letting Carswell know that it was no skin off their noses) that there was little chance of blocking the story. After all, they couldn’t prove that either the dolls or the German student had anything to do with the Balfour case — most senior officers seemed to agree that a connection was unlikely at best — and so would find it difficult to persuade a judge that Holly’s information could, once published, be detrimental to the inquiry.
What Balfour and his lawyer wanted to know was why the police hadn’t seen fit to share with them the story of the dolls, or the information about the German student and the Internet game.
What the Chief Constable wanted to know was what Carswell intended doing about it.
And what Carswell himself wanted was blood.
His official car, driven by his acolyte DI Derek Linford, drew up in front of a station already crowded with officers. Everyone who had worked or was currently working on the Balfour case — uniforms, CID, even the forensic team from Howdenhall — had been ‘requested’ to attend the morning meeting. Consequently, the briefing room was packed and stifling. Outside, the morning was still recovering from overnight sleet, the pavement damp and chilling to the feet as Carswell’s leather-shod soles stamped across it.
‘Here he comes,’ someone said, watching as Linford, having opened Carswell’s door for him, now closed it and, showing a slight limp, walked back round to the driver’s side. There was a sound of folding paper as the fresh tabloids — each copy the same title, each open at the same gathering of pages — were closed and put out of sight. DCS Templer, dressed as though for a funeral, dark lines under her eyes, came into the room first. She whispered something into the ear of DI Bill Pryde, who nodded and tore the corner from a notepad, spitting into it the wad of chewing gum he’d been gnawing for the past half-hour. When Carswell himself walked in, there was a ripple of movement as officers subconsciously corrected their posture or checked their attire for obvious blemishes.
‘Is anyone missing?’ Carswell called out. No ‘good morning’, no ‘thank you all for coming’, the usual protocols forgotten. Templer had a few names for him — minor ailments and complaints. Carswell nodded, didn’t seem interested in what he was being told, and didn’t wait for her to finish the roll-call.
‘We’ve got ourselves a mole,’ he bawled, loud enough to be heard down the corridor. He nodded slowly, eyes trying to take in every face in front of him. When he saw that there were people at the back, out of staring range, he walked up the aisle between the desks. Officers had to shift so he could get through, but left enough room so that there was no possibility he might brush against them.
‘A mole’s always an ugly little thing. It lacks vision. Sometimes it has big greedy paws. It doesn’t like to be exposed.’ There were flecks of saliva either side of his mouth. ‘I find a mole in my garden, I put down poison. Now, some of you will say that moles can’t help it. They don’t know they’re in someone’s garden, a place of order and calm. They don’t know they’re making everything ugly. But they are, whether they know it or not. And that’s why they have to be eradicated.’ He paused, the silence lingering as he walked back down the aisle. Derek Linford had entered the room as if by stealth and was standing by the door, eyes searching out John Rebus, the two of them recent enemies...
The presence of Linford seemed only to spur Carswell on. He spun on his heels, facing his subjects again.
‘Maybe it was a mistake. We all make slip-ups, can’t be helped. But, by Christ, a lot of information seems to have been pushed to the surface!’ Another pause. ‘Maybe it was blackmail.’ And now a shrug. ‘Someone like Steven Holly, he’s lower than a mole on the evolutionary ladder. He’s pond-life. He’s the scum you sometimes see there.’ He waved a hand slowly in front of him, as if skimming water. ‘He thinks he’s made us dirty, but he hasn’t. Game’s not near over, we all know that. We’re a team. That’s how we work! Anyone who doesn’t like that can always ask to be transferred back to normal duties. It’s that simple, ladies and gentlemen. But just think of this, will you?’ He dropped his voice. ‘Think of the victim, think of her family. Think of all the upset this is going to cause them. They’re the ones we’re slogging our guts out for here, not the newspaper readers or the scribes who provide them with their daily gruel.
‘You might have some grievance against me, or someone else on the team, but why the hell would you want to put them — the family and friends, getting ready for tomorrow’s funeral — why would anyone want to do something like this to people like them?’ He let the question hang, saw faces bow in collective shame as he scanned them. Took another deep breath, his voice rising again.