`He began to… fantasise.’
`He thought a colleague at the university had been in the Rat Line?’
Harris was nodding. `He became obsessed with the Rat Line, began to imagine that everyone around him had been involved in it, that we were all culpable. Paranoia, Inspector. It affected his work and eventually we had to let him go. This was years back. He hasn't worked for us since.’
`So why the interest? What does it matter if any of this comes out?’
Harris sighed. `You're right, of course. The problem is not the Rat Line per se, or the notion of Vatican involvement or any of the other conspiracy theories.’
`Then what is…?’
Rebus broke off, realised the truth. `The problem is the personnel,' he stated. `The other people brought in by the Rat Line.’
He nodded to himself. `Who are we talking about? Who might be implicated?’
`Senior figures,' Harris admitted. He'd stopped playing with the glass. His hands were flat on the table. He was telling Rebus: this is serious.
`Past or present?’
`Past… plus people whose children have gone on to achieve positions of power.’
`MPs? Government ministers? Judges?’
Harris was shaking his head. `I can't tell you, Inspector. I haven't been trusted with that knowledge myself.’
`But you could hazard a guess.’
`I don't deal in guesswork.’
He looked at Rebus. There was steel behind the eyes. `I deal in known quantities. It's a good maxim – one you should try.’
`But whoever killed Lintz did so because of his past.’
`Are you sure?’
`It doesn't make sense otherwise.’
`DI Abernethy tells me there's a link with some criminal elements in Edinburgh, perhaps a question of prostitution. It all sounds sordid enough to be believable.’
`And if it's believable, that's good enough for you?’
Harris stood up. `Thank you for listening.’
He blew his nose again, looked to Abernethy. `Time to go, I believe. DI Hogan is waiting for us.’
`Harris,' Rebus said, `you said yourself, Lintz had gone loopy, become a liability. Who's to say you didn't have him killed?’
Harris shrugged. `If we'd arranged it, his demise would not have been quite so obvious.’
`Car crash, suicide, falling from a window…?’
'Goodbye, Inspector.’
As Harris walked to the door, Abernethy stood up and locked eyes with Rebus. He didn't say anything, but the message was there.
This is deeper water than either of us wants to be in. So do yourself a favour, swim for shore.
Rebus nodded, reached out a hand. The two men shook.
34
Two in the morning.
Frost on the car windscreens. They couldn't clear them: had to blend in with the other cars on the street. Back-up four units – parked in a builder's yard just round the corner. Bulbs had been removed from street-lights, leaving the area in almost total darkness. Maclean's was like a Christmas tree: security lights, every window blazing, same as every other night.
No heating in the unmarked cars: heat would melt the frost; exhaust fumes a dead giveaway.
`This all seems very familiar,' Siobhan Clarke said. The surveillance on Flint Street seemed a lifetime ago to Rebus. Clarke was in the driving seat, Rebus in the back. Two to each car. That way, they had space to duck should anyone come snooping. Not that they expected anyone to do that: the whole heist was half-baked. Telford desperate and with his mind on other things. Sakiji Shoda was still in town – a quiet word with the hotel manager had revealed a Monday morning check-out. Rebus was betting Tarawicz and his men had already gone.
`You look pretty snug,' Rebus said, referring to her padded skijacket. She brought a hand out of her pocket, showed him what it was holding. It looked like a slim lighter. Rebus lifted it from her palm. It was warm.
`What the hell is it?’
Clarke smiled. `I got it from one of those catalogues. It's a handwarmer.’
`How does it work?’
`Fuel rods. Each one lasts up to twelve hours.’
`So you've got one warm hand?’
She brought her other hand out, showed him an identical rod. `I bought two,' she said.
`You might have said.’
Rebus closed his fingers around the handwarmer, stuck it deep into his pocket.
`That's not fair.’
`Call it a privilege of rank.’
`Lights,' she warned. They dived for cover, surfaced again when the car had sped past: false alarm.
Rebus checked his watch. Jack Morton had been told to expect the truck some time between one-thirty and twofifteen. Rebus and Clarke had been in the car since just after midnight. The snipers on the roof, poor bastards, had been in position since one o'clock. Rebus hoped they had a good supply of fuel rods. He still felt jittery from the afternoon's events. He didn't like that he owed Abernethy such a huge favour; indeed, maybe owed him his life. He knew he could cancel it out by agreeing – along with Hogan – to soft-pedal on the Lintz inquiry. He didn't like the idea, but all the same… And the day's silver lining: Candice had made the break from Tarawicz.
Clarke's police radio was silent. They had maintained silence since before midnight. Claverhouse's words: `The first person to speak will be me, understood? Anyone uses a radio before me, they're in farmyard shit. And I won't utter a sound until the truck's entered the compound. Is that clear?’
Nods all around. `They could be listening in, so this is important. We've got to do this right.’
Averting his eyes from Rebus as he said it. `I'd wish us all luck, but the less luck's involved the better I'll like it. A few hours from now, if we stick to the plan, we should have broken up Tommy Telford's gang.’
He paused. `Just let that sink in. We'll be heroes.’
He swallowed, realising the immensity of the prize.
Rebus couldn't get so excited. The whole enterprise had shown him a simple truth: no vacuum. Where you had society, you had criminals. No belly without an underbelly.
Rebus knew his own criteria came cheaply: his flat, books, music and clapped-out car. And he realised that he had reduced his life to a mere shell in recognition that he had completely failed at the important things: love, relationships, family life. He'd been accused of being in thrall to his career, but that had never been the case. His work sustained him only because it was an easy option. He dealt every day with strangers, with people who didn't mean anything to him in the wider scheme. He could enter their lives, and leave again just as easily. He got to live other people's lives, or at least portions of them, experiencing things at one remove, which wasn't nearly as challenging as the real thing.
Sammy had brought home to him these essential truths: that he was not only a failed father but a failed human being; that police work kept him sane, yet was a substitute for the life he could have had, the kind of life everyone else seemed to lead. And if he became obsessed with his case-work, well, that was no different from being obsessed with train numbers or cigarette cards or rock albums. Obsession came easy – especially to men – because it was a cheap way of achieving control, albeit control over something practically worthless. What did it matter if you could reel off the track listing to every '60s Stones album? It didn't matter a damn. What did it matter if Tommy Telford got put away? Tarawicz would take his place, and if he didn't, there was always Big Ger Cafferty. And if not Cafferty, then someone else. The disease was endemic, no cure in sight.
`What are you thinking about?’
Clarke asked, switching her rod from left hand to right.
`My next cigarette.’
Patience's words: happiest when in denial…
They heard the truck before they saw it: changing gears noisily. Slid down into their seats, then up again as it made to pull into Maclean's. A wheeze of air-brakes as it jolted to a stop at the gates. A guard came out to talk to the driver. He carried a clip-board.
`Jack really suits a uniform,' Rebus said.