Saints of the Shadow Bible (Rebus) (37 page)

‘I’m collecting for the UVF,’ Rebus said, holding up his palm.

‘Jessica says this is intimidation. She says I should phone a lawyer.’

‘Want to borrow my mobile?’ Rebus held it out towards the young man. ‘I don’t care what the hell you do, Forbes. And I can appreciate you’re scared.’ He indicated the paint marks on the floor. ‘You’ve had a visitor. I think maybe they went to your home too. Expected to find you rather than your dad.’ He paused. ‘Can I come in?’

‘We don’t want you here.’

‘Maybe not, but I think you need me. How else are you going to be rid of Alice’s Uncle Rory?’

‘Christ . . .’

The utterance came from a doorway beyond.

‘Hello there, Alice,’ Rebus said, though he couldn’t see her. ‘You’ve managed to make it up with Forbes and Jessica, then? I suppose you had to – the three of you have to stick together, too much to lose otherwise.’ Then, to Forbes McCuskey: ‘I’ve just been visiting the multi-storey in Livingston. You took Jessica there for a look. I’m guessing it must have been Alice who let it slip, maybe one night after a party – a couple of drinks or a toke too many. Alice’s scary uncle and some car he’d told her about. Something in its boot? A crowbar would be needed if someone wanted to know what it was.’ Rebus paused, his eyes fixed on those of the student. ‘Am I getting warm, son?’

‘Tell him to go away!’ A different voice, louder, almost hysterical: Jessica Traynor.

‘The gang’s all here,’ Rebus said with a smile. ‘Crisis meeting sort of thing? How come Alice can’t just go have a word with Uncle Rory?’

‘It’s too late for that!’ Alice Bell cried out. Rebus tried shuffling into the hall, but McCuskey was determined to block him.

‘Come back when you’ve got a warrant,’ he said, a determined look on his face.

‘Might be too late by then, Forbes. You saw what happened to your dad.’

‘We don’t
know
what happened!’

‘We can take an educated guess, though,’ Rebus argued. ‘And you three are more educated than me, so
I’m
guessing you’ve come to a few conclusions.’ He paused again. ‘And they’re scaring the shit out of you even as I stand here. Oh, and by the way, Alice? Nice touch, putting me on the trail of Forbes’s dealer. I’m guessing that was to stop me focusing on the crash, and for a while it actually worked.’

Forbes turned away from Rebus towards Bell. ‘You
told
him?’

‘I had to!’

Rebus heard the main door downstairs open and close – a neighbour, returning home, their feet sounding like sandpaper against the stone steps.

‘You need me,’ he persisted. The young man’s resolve was crumbling, his whole world in imminent danger of collapse. ‘You need to tell me what happened.’

‘Just go,’ McCuskey said, with something like resignation.

‘Who else is going to be there for you, Forbes?’ Rebus stretched out his arms to reinforce the point.

‘Well there’s always me.’

This time the voice came from behind Rebus. He turned just as Owen Traynor reached the landing. Jessica emerged limping from the flat, brushing Rebus aside and throwing herself into her father’s embrace. He ran his hand down her hair, eyes on Rebus.

‘You can bugger off now,’ he said. ‘I need a quiet word with my daughter and her friends.’

‘You can’t get involved in this,’ Rebus warned him.

‘Involved in what?’ Traynor made show of widening his eyes.

‘This isn’t your fight.’

Traynor, draping an arm around Jessica’s shoulders, began to steer her past Rebus into the flat.

‘We’ll be fine now, thank you, Officer,’ Traynor said. ‘Shut the door, Forbes, there’s a good lad.’

McCuskey had the good grace to look apologetic as he obeyed the Englishman’s command. Rebus shook his head slowly, steadily, until Forbes McCuskey disappeared from view. The click of the Yale lock echoed around the stairwell. He cursed under his breath, then took out a handkerchief and began rubbing the paint from his hand.

Christine Esson was busy at her desk when Rebus reached Gayfield Square.

‘MisPers,’ she informed him when he took a look over her shoulder at her computer screen. ‘Lots and lots of them – so thanks for that.’

‘Don’t blame me if you’re the IT wizard around here.’

‘Judging by the autopsy photos, it’s an archaeologist we need.’

‘Maybe put out a call for tombs that have been raided lately.’ Rebus patted her shoulder before settling himself at his own desk. He had checked the damage to his stomach, studying it with the help of the mirror in the toilets. The bruise was already forming, but he doubted any real harm had been done, other than to his pride. From what he’d seen of the cars in the multi-storey, none had been attacked by a crowbar. Just the one then – the one since removed from the scene. Drugs, he was thinking. They were the obvious answer. Could Forbes McCuskey have lifted them? Spotted on CCTV, the guard waking up and bellowing a warning over one of the loudspeakers. McCuskey and Jessica Traynor getting the hell out of there. But the barrier would have stopped them. And the machine only accepted credit cards. Meaning Rory Bell would have their faces and the licence plate from the CCTV, plus the card details. Easy enough to trace them. Especially if Forbes McCuskey’s card was registered to his parents’ home address . . .

But now Owen Traynor had entered the picture, and that was a complication. If he did a deal with Bell, the case would cease to exist – along with the evidence. Rebus had to do something. He looked towards Page’s office, but the man was nowhere to be seen.

‘Where’s Mr Happy?’ he asked.

‘Persuading the upper echelons to give him a press conference. He wants the world to get a good look at Tutankhamun.’

‘Any idea how long he’ll be?’

‘I think he went home for a change of shirt – always likes to look his best for the brass.’

Rebus pondered his options. He could take what he had to DCI Ralph at Torphichen. The Pat McCuskey inquiry had drawn nothing but blanks – there was always the chance they’d welcome Rebus with open arms.

On the other hand, what did he have in the way of hard facts? Probably not enough for a search warrant for the car park. Nick Ralph’s first step would be to interview the three students again, and they would almost certainly stick to their original stories. The paint on the door could be explained as a prank. They had placed their trust in Jessica’s father rather than CID.

Rebus couldn’t really blame them.

He needed more before he could go to Torphichen, so he sifted through the paperwork he had on Rory Bell, put it back in order, then fired up his computer and got ready to start a Google search of his own.

It took him an hour to spot what Esson had missed. Missed, or had failed to see as being of importance. Alice Bell’s father had died two years back when his car was hit by a van. The van driver’s name was Jack Redpath. He had been charged with dangerous driving . . . but the case had never reached court. Or rather it had, but he hadn’t. He’d done a runner.

Such was the assumption of the local paper that had covered the case. Just the one mention. Rebus picked up the phone and managed to get through to someone in Central Region, who eventually connected him to an officer who remembered the incident.

‘Guy was divorced, living in a hovel and about to lose his job – maybe even do some time inside. He stuffed what few possessions his wife hadn’t taken into his car and offskied.’

‘You tried tracking him down?’

‘We did what we could.’

‘But he never turned up?’ Rebus scratched the underside of his jaw. ‘Have you got a record of the car he drove? Make and registration?’

‘Bloody hell.’ The officer gave a snort. ‘It’s Indiana Jones you need.’

‘Maybe so, but
you’re
what I’ve got. It was only two years ago – how hard can it be? Plus a photo or description of Redpath – and whether he was a smoker or not.’ He looked across to where Esson was still busy at her computer, her head resting on one hand, elbow against the surface of her desk. Rebus gave the officer his phone number and e-mail, ended the call, then filled the kettle and switched it on.

‘Just hot water, right?’ he asked. ‘No tea bag or coffee granules?’

‘Right,’ she agreed.

‘Having much luck?’

‘A lot of people seem to go walkabout.’

‘Any short cuts?’

‘There are organisations – they have websites, Facebook and Twitter accounts . . .’ She turned to look at him. ‘You’ve got something?’

‘Maybe.’

‘Keeping it to yourself?’

‘For a little while longer.’

He poured her drink and handed the mug to her, before making tea for himself. But instead of drinking it, he went back to the toilets and stared at himself in the mirror. It made sense, didn’t it? Something kept hidden in a long-stay car park, where no one would ever come looking. A word or clue dropped to Alice Bell, who couldn’t resist telling her friends. They prise open the boot – are spotted – flee the scene. The car has to be moved, maybe got rid of.

Not along with its contents, but separate from them.

Two years since Jack Redpath ran.

Or didn’t run.

Was taken.

His room emptied to make it look like he had scarpered.

Calluses on the hands, the result of manual labour. Redpath, a plasterer by trade.

Rebus splashed water on his face, rubbing it dry with a clump of paper towels.

The forensic anthropologist would know – two years in the boot of a car, what a body would look like after. One thing Rebus was sure of: to get a corpse in a car boot, it needed to be placed almost in a foetal position.

Easily misinterpreted as having been seated . . .

His phone rang. He didn’t recognise the number.

‘Yes?’ he answered.

It was the officer from Central.

‘Midnight-blue Ford Escort, eight years old. Used to run something sportier but the divorce settlement took care of that.’ The man reeled off the licence plate. Rebus told him to hang on, then went back into the CID suite and grabbed a pen and sheet of paper.

‘Repeat that, will you?’ he said, jotting the details down.

‘Plus I’ve e-mailed you a mug shot,’ the man went on.

‘Wasn’t so hard, was it?’ Rebus said. ‘But was he a smoker?’

‘Ten a day. Do I get to go back to actual real work now?’

‘With my blessing.’

Rebus put his phone next to the computer and opened his e-mail folder. Clicked on the attachment, then called across to Christine Esson. She studied the face, front and side views. Physical details were listed beneath.

‘Height, five-ten,’ Esson intoned. ‘Weight, a hundred and seventy pounds. Grey eyes, fair hair . . .’ She retreated to her desk and returned with the autopsy photos. ‘So who is he?’ she said.

‘Would you say they’re the same person?’

‘It’s possible.’

‘No more than that?’

She shrugged.

‘I think it’s him. He was stored in a car boot, and then dumped in the docks.’

‘Stored for two years, you mean?’ She watched Rebus nod. ‘So where’s the car?’

‘Right here,’ Rebus said, holding up the sheet of paper. ‘Eight-year-old blue Ford Escort.’ He thought back to the cars in the multi-storey. No, it matched neither of them. It had probably been driven to Leith Docks with its cargo still on board. Then got rid of. Rebus picked up his phone and called the Road Policing Unit.

‘Any abandoned cars in the past couple of days? Tax disc almost certainly a year or more out of date.’ He described Jack Redpath’s Escort and then waited.

‘You think it’s out there collecting parking tickets?’ Esson asked.

‘Best-case scenario.’

‘And worst?’

Rebus just shrugged. He was listening to news that the information could take some time – the city’s traffic wardens would need to be questioned.

‘Soon as you can, eh?’ Rebus gave his details and put the phone down. ‘Now we wait,’ he told Esson.

‘Maybe you do, but I’m heading out to the shop. It’s lunchtime, if you hadn’t noticed – want me to fetch you something?’

‘Maybe a sandwich or a sausage roll.’ He dug into his pocket for change.

‘My treat,’ Esson told him. ‘A sandwich is probably healthier.’

‘Make it the sausage roll, then.’

She rolled her eyes and shrugged her arms into her jacket. Rebus remembered Deborah Quant doing the same, and his own instinct to help. When he’d suggested meeting for a drink sometime, she hadn’t turned him down flat. Then again, he didn’t have a number for her, excepting the one for the mortuary.

He headed out to the car park for a smoke, then remembered the phone upstairs could ring at any moment. So after three or four draws he nipped the end of the cigarette and returned it to the packet. He could hear the phone ringing on his desk from the top of the stairs, but it stopped as he entered the office. Cursing under his breath, he sat down and waited. Esson returned and handed him a paper bag. The lack of grease stains meant she’d ignored his request. The baguette contained ham salad.

‘It’s like being at one of those health spas,’ he muttered. But he demolished it anyway.

When the phone rang again, he snatched at it.

‘Thought you were in a hurry,’ the RPU officer complained.

‘I am.’

‘So why didn’t you answer earlier?’

‘Call of nature. Now what have you got?’ Rebus listened for a moment. ‘Taken away to be scrapped?’ he repeated for Esson’s benefit. ‘Yesterday?’ He reached for his pen again. ‘Do we know which scrapyard?’ He began taking down the details but then broke off. ‘Yes, I know it,’ he said. ‘Thanks.’

He finished the call and made another, but no one was answering. Cursing, he stuffed his phone into his pocket and got up from the desk.

‘What do I tell the boss when he gets back?’ Esson asked.

‘That his sartorial elegance has shamed me into doing a bit of shopping.’

She smiled and gave him a little wave as he made for the door. Then she left her own desk and crossed to Rebus’s, taking her prawn sandwich with her. She studied the photo of Jack Redpath on Rebus’s computer screen.

‘Maybe,’ she said to herself. ‘Just maybe . . .’ She fixed her eyes on the doorway. She hadn’t known John Rebus long, but she knew he was good at this, like a bloodhound given a scent and then left to do what it was best at. Form-filling and protocols and budget meetings were not Rebus’s thing – never had been and never would be. His knowledge of the internet was rudimentary and his people skills were woeful. But she would lie for him to James Page, and take the rap if caught. Because he was a breed of cop that wasn’t supposed to exist any more, a rare and endangered species.