But Rebus was damned if he could find it.
Lintz's correspondence was all business, either to lawyers or else to do with local charities and committees. He'd been resigning from his committees. Rebus wondered if pressure had been applied. Edinburgh could be cruel and cold that way.
`Well?’
Hogan said, sticking his head round the door.
`I'm just wondering…’
`What?’
`Whether to add on a conservatory and knock through from the kitchen.’
`We'd lose some garden space,' Hogan said. He came in, rested against the desk. `Anything?’
`A missing phone bill, and a sudden change from being itemised.’
`Worth a call,' Hogan admitted. `I found a chequebook in his bedroom. Stubs show payments of £60 a month to E. Forgan.’
`Where in the bedroom?’
`Marking his place in a book.’
Hogan reached into the desk's top drawer, lifted out the address book.
Rebus got up. `Pretty rich street this. Wonder how many of them do their own dusting.’
Hogan shut the book. `No listing for an E. Forgan. Think the neighbours will know?’
`Edinburgh neighbours know everything. It's just that they most often keep it to themselves.’
Hogan was nodding. `And remember to get me copies of your files. Are you busy otherwise?’
`Bobby, if time was money, I'd be in hock to every lender in town.’
16
Joseph Lintz's neighbours: an artist and her husband on one side; a retired advocate and his wife on the other. The artist used a Ccleaning lady called Ella Forgan. Mrs Forgan lived in East Claremont Street. The artist gave them a telephone number.
Conclusions drawn from the two interviews: shock and horror that Lintz was dead; praise for the quiet, considerate neighbour. A Christmas card every year, and an invitation to drinks one Sunday afternoon each July. Hard to tell when he'd been at home and when he'd been out. He went off on holiday without telling anyone except Mrs Forgan. Visitors to his home had been few – or few had been noticed, which wasn't quite the same thing.
'Men? Women?’
Rebus had asked. `Or a mixture?’
`A mixture, I'd say,' the artist had replied, measuring her words. `Really, we knew very little about him, to say we've been neighbours these past twenty-odd years…’
Ah, and that was Edinburgh for you, too, at least in this price bracket. Wealth was a very private thing in the city. It wasn't brash and colourful. It stayed behind its thick stone walls and was at peace.
Rebus and Hogan held a doorstep conference.
`I'll call the cleaning lady, see if I can meet her, preferably here.’
Hogan looked back at Lintz's front door.
`I'd love to know where he got the money to buy this place,' Rebus said.
`That could take some excavating.’
Rebus nodded. `Solicitor would be the place to start. What about the address book? Worth tracking down some of these elusive friends?’
`I suppose so.’
Hogan looked dispirited at the prospect.
`I'll follow up on the phone bills,' Rebus said. `If that'll help.’
Mae Crumley reached Rebus on his mobile.
`I thought you'd forgotten me,' he told Sammy's boss.
`Just being methodical, Inspector. I'm sure you'd want no less.’
Rebus stopped at traffic lights. `I've been in to see Sammy. Is there any news?’
`Nothing much. So you've talked to her clients?’
`Yes, and they all seemed genuinely upset and surprised. Sorry to disappoint you.’
`What makes you think I'm disappointed?’
'Sammy has a good rapport with all her clients. None of them would have wanted her hurt.’
`What about the ones who didn't want to be her clients?’
Crumley hesitated. `There was one man… When he was told Sammy had a police inspector for a father, he'd have nothing to do with her.’
`What's his name?’
`It couldn't have been him though.’
`Why not?’
`Because he killed himself. His name was Gavin Tay. He used to drive an ice-cream van…’
Rebus thanked her for her call, and put down the phone. If someone had tried to kill Sammy on purpose, the question was: why? Rebus had been investigating Lintz; Ned Farlowe had been following him. Rebus had twice confronted Telford; Ned was writing a book about organised crime. Then there was Candice… Could she have told Sammy something, something which might have threatened Telford, or even Mr Pink Eyes? Rebus just didn't know. He knew the most likely culprit – the most vicious – was Tommy Telford. He remembered their first meeting, and the young gangster's words to him: That's the beauty of games. You can always start again after an accident. Not so easy in real life. At the time it had sounded like bravado, a performance for the troops. But now it sounded like a plain threat.
And now there was Mr Taystee, connecting Sammy to Telford.
Mr Taystee had worked Telford's clubs; Mr Taystee had rejected Sammy. Rebus knew he'd have to talk to the widow.
There was just the one problem. Mr Pink Eyes had intimated that if Telford wasn't left alone, Candice would suffer. He kept seeing images of Candice: torn from home and homeland; used and abused; abusing herself in the hope of respite; clinging to a stranger's legs… He recalled Levy's words: Can time mash array responsibility? Justice was a fine and noble thing, but revenge… revenge was an emotion, and so much stronger than an abstract like justice. He wondered if Sammy would want revenge. Probably not. She'd want him to help Candice, which meant yielding to Telford. Rebus didn't think he could do that.
And now there was Lintz's murder, unconnected but resonant.
`I've never felt comfortable with the past, Inspector,' Lintz had said once. Funny, Rebus felt the same way about the present.
Joanne Tay lived in Colinton: a newish three-bedroomed semi with the Merc still parked in the drive.
`It's too big for me,' she explained to Rebus. `I'll have to sell it.’
He wasn't sure if she meant the house or the car. Having declined her offer of tea, he sat in the busy living-room, ornaments on every flat surface. Joanne Tay was still in mourning: black skirt and blouse, dark grooves beneath her eyes. He'd interviewed her back at the start of the inquiry.
`I still don't know why he did it,' she said now, reluctant to see her husband's death as anything other than suicide.
But the pathology and forensic tests had cast this into doubt.
`Have you ever heard,' Rebus asked, `of a man called Tommy Telford?’
`He runs a nightclub, doesn't he? Gavin took me there once.’
`So Gavin knew him?’
`Seemed to.’
Yes: because no way was Mr Taystee setting up his hot-dog pitch outside Telford's premises without Telford's okay. And Telford's okay almost certainly meant payment of some kind. A percentage maybe… or a favour.
`The week before Gavin died,' Rebus went on, `you said he'd been busy?’
`Working all hours.’
`Days as well as nights?’
She nodded. `The weather was lousy that week.’
`I know. I told him: you'll never get them buying ice-cream, a day like this. Pelting down outside. But still he went out.’
Rebus shifted in his chair. `Did he ever mention SWEEP, Mrs Tay?’
`He had some woman would visit him… red hair.’
'Mae Crumley?’
She nodded, eyes staring at the coal-effect fire. She asked him again if he wanted some tea. Rebus shook his head and made to leave. Did pretty welclass="underline" knocked over just the two ornaments on his way to the door.