‘I’m going to find whoever did this. Don’t think I won’t. Don’t think you can trust Mr Steven Holly to protect you. He doesn’t care a damn for you. If you want to stay buried, you’ll have to feed him more stories, and more, and more! He’s not going to let you rise back up to the world you knew before. You’re different now. You’re a mole. His mole. And he’ll never let you rest, never let you forget it.’
A glance in Gill Templer’s direction. She was standing by the wall, arms folded, her own eyes scanning the room.
‘I know this probably all sounds like the headmaster’s warning. Some pupil’s smashed a window or daubed graffiti on the bike sheds.’ He shook his head. ‘I’m talking to all of you like this because it’s important we’re clear on what’s at stake. Talk might not cost lives, but that doesn’t mean it should be squandered. Careful what you say, who you say it to. If the person responsible wants to come forward, that’s fine. You can do it now, or later. I’ll be here for an hour or so, and I can always be reached at my office. Think what’s at stake if you don’t. Not part of a team any more, not on the side of the angels. But in a journalist’s pocket. For as long as he wants you there.’ This final pause seemed to last an eternity, nobody coughed or cleared their throat. Carswell slid his hands into his pockets, head angled as though inspecting his shoes. ‘DCS Templer?’ he said.
And now Gill Templer stepped forward, and the room relaxed a little.
‘Don’t go getting the holiday mood just yet!’ she called out. ‘Okay, there’s been a leak to the press, and what we need now is some damage limitation. Nobody talks to anybody unless they run it past me first, understood?’ There were murmurs of assent.
Templer went on, but Rebus wasn’t listening. He hadn’t wanted to listen to Carswell either, but it had been hard to block the man out. Impressive stuff really. He’d even put some thought into the image of the garden mole, almost making it work without becoming laughable.
But mostly Rebus’s attention had been on the people around him. Gill and Bill Pryde were distant figures, whose discomfort he could almost ignore. Bill’s big chance to shine; Gill’s first major inquiry as a DCS. Hardly what either of them would have wanted...
And closer to home: Siobhan, concentrating hard on the ACC’s speech, maybe learning something from it. She was always on the lookout for a new lesson. Grant Hood, someone else with everything to lose, dejection written into his face and shoulders, the way he held his arms across chest and stomach, as though to ward off blows. Rebus knew Grant was in trouble. A leak to the press, you looked at liaison first. They were the ones with the contacts: an unwise word; the drunk and friendly banter at the end of a good meal. Even if not to blame, a good liaison officer might have been all that was needed in the way of Gill’s ‘damage limitation’. With experience, you’d know how to bend a journalist’s will to your own, even if it meant a bribe of some kind: first dibs on some later story or stories...
Rebus wondered at the extent of the damage. Quizmaster would now know what he’d probably always suspected: that it wasn’t just him and Siobhan, that she was keeping her colleagues apprised. Her face didn’t give anything away, but Rebus knew she was already wondering how to handle it, how to phrase her next communication with Quizmaster, supposing he wanted to keep playing... The Arthur’s Seat coffins connection annoyed him only because Jean had been mentioned by name in the story, cited as ‘the Museum’s resident expert’ on the case. He recalled that Holly had been persistent, leaving messages for Jean, wanting to speak to her. Could she have said something to him unwittingly? He didn’t think so.
No, he had the culprit in his sights. Ellen Wylie looked like she’d been wrung out. There were tangles in her hair where she hadn’t been concentrating with the brush. Her eyes had a resigned look. She kept staring at the floor during Carswell’s speech, and hadn’t shifted when he’d finished. She was still looking at the floor now, trying to find the will to do anything else. Rebus knew she’d spoken on the phone with Holly yesterday morning. It had been to do with the German student, but afterwards she’d seemed lifeless. Rebus had thought it was because she was working another dead end. Now he knew different. When she’d walked away from the Caledonian Hotel, she’d been heading either for Holly’s office or for some wine bar or café nearby.
He’d got to her.
Maybe Shug Davidson would realise as much; maybe her colleagues at West End would remember how different she’d been after that phone call. But Rebus knew they wouldn’t shop her. It was something you didn’t do. Not to a colleague, a pal.
Wylie had been unravelling for days. He’d taken her into the coffin case thinking maybe he could help. But then maybe she was right — maybe he’d been treating her as just another ‘cripple’, someone else who might be bent to his will, do some of the hard graft on something which would always be his case.
Maybe he’d had ulterior motives.
Wylie had probably seen it as a way of getting back at all of them: Gill Templer, cause of her public humiliation; Siobhan, for whom Templer still had such high hopes; Grant Hood, the new golden boy, coping where Wylie had not... And Rebus, too, the manipulator, the user, grinding her down.
He saw her left with two alternatives: let it all out, or burst with frustration and anger. If he’d accepted her offer of a drink that night... maybe she’d have opened up and he’d have listened. Maybe that was all she’d needed. But he hadn’t been there. He’d sneaked off to a pub by himself.
Nice one, John. Very smoothly played. For some reason an image came to mind: some old blues stalwart, turning up for ‘Ellen Wylie’s Blues’. Maybe John Lee Hooker or B. B. King... He caught himself and snapped out of it. He’d almost retreated into music, almost got to a lyric that would tide him over.
But now Carswell was reading from a list of names, and Rebus caught his own as Carswell snapped it out. DC Hood... DC Clarke... DS Wylie... The coffins; the German student — they’d worked those cases, and now the ACC wanted to see them. Faces turned, curious. Carswell was announcing that he’d see them in the ‘boss’s office’, meaning the station commander’s, commandeered for the occasion.
Rebus tried to catch Bill Pryde’s eye as they trooped out, but with Carswell already having exited, Bill was searching his pockets for more gum, his eyes trying to locate his clipboard. Rebus was the tail of this lethargic snake, Hood in front of him, then Wylie and Siobhan. Templer and Carswell at the head. Derek Linford was standing outside the station commander’s office, opened the door for them and then stood back. He tried to stare Rebus down, but Rebus wasn’t having that. They were still at it when Gill Templer closed the door, breaking the spell.
Carswell was sliding his chair in towards the desk. ‘You’ve already heard my spiel,’ he told them, ‘so I won’t bore you again. If the leak came from anywhere, it came from one of you. That little shit Holly knew way too much.’ As his mouth snapped shut his eyes looked up at them for the first time.
‘Sir,’ Grant Hood said, taking a half-step forward and folding his hands behind his back, ‘as liaison officer it should have been my job to damp the story down. I’d just like to publicly apologise for—’
‘Yes, yes, son, I got all that from you last night. What I want now is a simple confession.’
‘With respect, sir,’ Siobhan Clarke said, ‘we’re not criminals here. We’ve had to ask questions, put out feelers. Steve Holly could just have been putting two and two together...’
Carswell just stared at her, then said: ‘DCS Templer?’
‘Steve Holly,’ Templer began, ‘doesn’t work that way if he can possibly help it. He’s not the brightest bulb in the chandelier, but he’s as sneaky as they come, and ruthless with it.’ The way she spoke was telling Clarke something, was saying to her that this had all been gone over already. ‘Some of the other journos, yes, I think they could take what’s out there in the public domain and make something of it, but not Holly.’