A Question of Blood (2003) (11 page)

Rebus sat down opposite his cousin. “Just wondered how you were,” he said.

“Sorry I left you with Kate the other night.”

“No need to apologize. You sleeping okay?”

“Far too much.” A humorless smile. “A way of shutting it all out, I suppose.”

“How are the funeral arrangements?”

“They won’t let us have his body, not just yet.”

“It’ll be soon, Allan. It’ll all be over soon.”

Renshaw looked up at him with bloodshot eyes. “You promise, John?” He waited till Rebus nodded. “Then how come the phone keeps ringing, reporters wanting to talk to me? They don’t think it’s going to end soon.”

“Yes, they do. That’s why they’re pestering you. They’ll move on somewhere else in a day or so, just you watch. Anyone in particular you want me to chase off?”

“There’s a guy Kate’s talked to. He seems to upset her.”

“What’s his name?”

“It’s written down somewhere . . .” Renshaw looked around as if the name might be right there under his nose.

“Next to the phone maybe?” Rebus guessed. He got up and walked back into the hall. The phone was on a ledge just inside the front door. Rebus picked it up, hearing only silence. He saw that the line had been disconnected at its wall jack: Kate’s work. There was a pen next to the phone, but no paper. He looked over towards the stairs and saw a pad. Scribbled names and numbers on its top sheet.

Rebus walked back through to the kitchen, placing the notepad on the table.

“Steve Holly,” he announced.

“That’s the name,” Renshaw agreed.

Siobhan, who’d been pouring tea, paused and looked at Rebus. They both knew Steve Holly. He worked for a Glasgow tabloid and had proved his nuisance value in the past.

“I’ll have a word,” Rebus promised, reaching into his pocket for the painkillers.

Siobhan handed around the mugs and sat down. “You okay?” she asked.

“Fine,” Rebus lied.

“What happened to your hands, John?” Renshaw asked. Rebus shook his head.

“Nothing, Allan. How’s the tea?”

“It’s fine.” But Renshaw made no move to drink. Rebus stared at his cousin, thinking of the tape, of James Bell’s calm narrative.

“Derek didn’t suffer,” Rebus said quietly. “Probably didn’t know anything about it.”

Renshaw nodded.

“If you don’t believe me . . . well, one day soon you’ll be able to ask James Bell. He’ll tell you.”

Another nod. “I don’t think I know him.”

“James?”

“Derek had a lot of friends, but I don’t think he was one of them.”

“He was friends with Anthony Jarvies, though?” Siobhan asked.

“Oh, aye, Tony was round here a lot. They’d help each other with homework, listen to music . . .”

“What sort?” Rebus asked.

“Jazz mostly. Miles Davis, Coleman something . . . I forget the names. Derek said he was going to buy a tenor sax, learn to play it when he went to university.”

“Kate was saying Derek didn’t know the man who shot him. Did you know him, Allan?”

“I’d seen him in the pub. Bit of a . . . loner’s not the right word. But he wasn’t always in company. Used to disappear for days at a time. Hill walking or something. Or maybe away on that boat of his.”

“Allan . . . if this is out of order, you’ve every right to say so.”

Renshaw looked at him. “What?”

“I was wondering if I could maybe take a look at Derek’s room . . .”

Renshaw climbed the stairs in front of Rebus, Siobhan at the rear. He opened the door for them but stood aside to let them enter.

“Haven’t really had a chance to . . .” he apologized. “Not that the place is . . .”

The bedroom was small, dark with the curtains closed.

“Mind if I open them?” Rebus asked. Renshaw just shrugged, unwilling to cross the threshold. Rebus pulled the curtains apart. The window looked down onto the back garden, where the dishcloth still hung from the whirligig, the mower still stood on the lawn. There were prints on the walls: moody black-and-white shots of jazz players. Photos torn from magazines showing elegant young women in repose. Bookshelves, a hi-fi, a fourteen-inch combination TV/VCR. A desk with a laptop computer connected to a printer. Barely leaving space for the single bed. Rebus looked at the spines of some of the CDs: Ornette Coleman, Coltrane, John Zorn, Archie Shepp, Thelonious Monk. There was some classical stuff, too. Draped over a chair: a running vest and shorts, a sheathed tennis racket.

“Derek was into sports?” Rebus remarked.

“Did a lot of jogging and cross-country.”

“Who did he play tennis with?”

“Tony . . . a few others. Didn’t get any of it from me, I’ll tell you that.” Renshaw looked down at himself, as if assessing his girth. Siobhan gave him the smile she felt was expected. She knew, though, that there was nothing natural about anything he said. It was coming from a small part of his brain while the rest still reeled in horror.

“He liked dressing up, too,” Rebus said, holding up a framed photo of Derek with Anthony Jarvies, both in their CCF uniforms and caps. Renshaw stared at it from the safety of the doorway.

“Derek only joined because of Tony,” he said. Rebus remembered Eric Fogg saying much the same thing.

“Did they ever go out sailing together?” Siobhan asked.

“Might have done. Kate tried waterskiing . . .” Renshaw’s voice died. His eyes widened slightly. “That bastard Herdman took her out in his boat . . . her and some friends. If I ever see him . . .”

“He’s dead, Allan,” Rebus said, reaching out to touch his cousin’s arm. Football . . . down in the park in Bowhill . . . young Allan grazing his knee on the pavement, Rebus rubbing a dock leaf over the broken skin . . .

I had a family, but I let them get away . . .
His wife estranged, daughter in England, brother God knew where.

“See when they bury him,” Renshaw was saying, “I’ve a good mind to dig him up and kill him again.”

Rebus squeezed the arm, watching the man’s eyes brim with fresh tears. “Let’s go down,” he said, guiding Renshaw back to the top of the stairs. There was just enough room for them to stand side by side in the passageway. Two grown men, hanging on.

“Allan,” Rebus said, “any chance we could borrow Derek’s laptop?”

“His laptop?” Rebus stayed silent. “What’s the point of . . . ? I don’t know, John.”

“Just for a day or two. I’ll bring it back.”

Renshaw seemed to be having difficulty making sense of the request. “I suppose . . . if you think . . .”

“Thanks, Allan.” Rebus turned his head, nodding to Siobhan, who retreated back up the staircase.

Rebus took Renshaw into the living room, seating him on the sofa. Renshaw immediately picked up a handful of photographs.

“I need to get these sorted,” he said.

“What about work? How long are you off for?”

“They said I could go back after the funeral. It’s a quiet time of year.”

“Maybe I’ll come and see you,” Rebus said. “It’s time I traded my junk heap in.”

“I’ll look after you,” Renshaw promised, looking up at Rebus. “You see if I don’t.”

Siobhan appeared in the doorway, laptop tucked beneath her arm, trailing cables.

“We better be going,” Rebus said to Renshaw. “I’ll look in again, Allan.”

“You’ll always be welcome, John.” Renshaw made the effort to stand up, reaching out a hand. Then he pulled Rebus to him in a sudden embrace, slapping his hands against Rebus’s back. Rebus returned the gesture, wondering if he looked as awkward as he felt. But Siobhan had averted her eyes, studying the tips of her shoes as if to assess their need for a polish. When they walked out to the car, Rebus realized he was sweating, his shirt sticking to him.

“Was it hot in there?”

“Not especially,” Siobhan said. “You still running a temperature?”

“Looks like it.” He mopped his brow with the back of one glove.

“Why the laptop?”

“No reason really.” Rebus met her look. “Maybe to see if there’s anything about the car crash. How Derek felt, whether anyone blamed him.”

“Apart from the parents, you mean?”

Rebus nodded. “Maybe . . . I don’t know.” He sighed.

“What?”

“Maybe I just want to go through it to get a sense of the lad.” He was thinking of Allan, perhaps even now switching the TV back on and settling down with the video remote, bringing his son back to life in color and sound and movement. But only a facsimile, contained by the tight confines of the box.

Siobhan nodded and bent down to slide the laptop onto the backseat of the car. “I can understand that,” she said.

But Rebus wasn’t so sure that she could.

“You keep up with your family?” he asked her.

“A phone call every other weekend.” He knew both her parents were alive, lived down south. Rebus’s mother had died young; he’d been in his mid-thirties when his father had joined her.

“Did you ever want a sister or brother?” he asked.

“Sometimes, I suppose.” She paused. “Something happened to you, didn’t it?”

“How do you mean?”

“I don’t know exactly.” She thought about it. “I think at some point you decided that a family was a liability, because it could make you weak.”

“As you’ve already surmised, I was never one for hugs and kisses.”

“Maybe so, but you hugged your cousin back there . . .”

He got into the passenger seat and closed his door. The painkillers were coating his brain in bubble wrap. “Just drive,” he said.

She put the key in the ignition. “Where?”

Rebus remembered something. “Get your mobile out and call the Portakabin.” She pushed the numbers and relinquished the phone to his outstretched hand. When it was answered, Rebus asked to speak to Grant Hood.

“Grant, it’s John Rebus. Listen, I need a number for Steve Holly.”

“Any particular reason?”

“He’s been hassling one of the families. I thought I’d have a quiet word.”

Hood cleared his throat. Rebus remembered the same sound from the tape, and wondered if it was becoming a regular thing with Hood. When the number came, Rebus repeated it so Siobhan could note it down.

“Hold on a minute, John. Boss wants a word.” Meaning Bobby Hogan.

“Bobby?” Rebus said. “News on that bank account?”

“What?”

“The bank account . . . any big deposits? Jog your memory at all?”

“Never mind that.” There was urgency in Hogan’s voice.

“What is it?” Rebus prompted.

“Seems Lord Jarvies put away one of Herdman’s old pals.”

“Oh, aye? When was this?”

“Just last year. Guy by the name of Robert Niles—ring any bells?”

Rebus furrowed his brow. “Robert Niles?” he repeated. Siobhan nodded, made a slashing motion across her neck.

“The guy who cut his wife’s throat?”

“That’s the one,” Hogan said. “Found fit to plead. Guilty verdict, and life from Lord Jarvies. I got a call, seems Herdman’s been a regular visitor to Niles ever since.”

“What was it . . . nine, ten months back?”

“They put him in Barlinnie, but he flipped, went for another prisoner, then started cutting at himself.”

“So where’s he now?”

“Carbrae Special Hospital.”

Rebus was thoughtful. “You think Herdman was after the judge’s son?”

“It’s a possibility. Revenge and all that . . .”

Yes, revenge. That word now hung over both the dead boys . . .

“I’m going to see him,” Hogan was saying.

“Niles? Is he fit to see anyone?”

“Seems like. Want to tag along?”

“Bobby, I’m flattered. Why me?”

“Because Niles is ex-SAS, John. Served alongside Herdman. If anyone knows the inside of Lee Herdman’s head, it’s him.”

“A killer locked up in a psycho ward? My, aren’t we lucky.”

“The offer’s there, John.”

“When?”

“I was thinking first thing tomorrow. It’s a couple of hours by car.”

“Count me in.”

“Good man. Who knows, you might get stuff out of Niles . . . empathy and all that.”

“You think so?”

“Way I see it, one look at your hands, and he’ll take you for a fellow sufferer.”

Hogan was chuckling as Rebus handed the phone to Siobhan. She ended the call.

“I got most of that,” she said. Her phone chirruped immediately. It was Gill Templer.

“How come Rebus never answers his phone?” Templer bellowed.

“I think he has it switched off,” Siobhan said, eyes on Rebus. “He can’t push the buttons.”

“Funny, I’ve always taken him for an expert at pushing buttons.” Siobhan smiled:
Especially yours,
she thought.

“Do you want him?” she asked.

“I want the pair of you back here,” Templer said. “Pronto, with no excuses.”

“What’s happened?”

“You’ve got trouble, that’s what. The worst kind . . .” Templer let her words hang in the air. Siobhan saw what she must mean.

“The papers?”

“Bingo. Someone’s on to the story, only they’ve added some bells and whistles that I’d like John to explain to me.”

“What sort of bells and whistles?”

“He was spotted leaving the pub with Martin Fairstone, walking home with him, in fact. Spotted leaving, too, a good while later, and just before the house went up in flames. The paper in question is getting ready to lead with it.”

“We’re on our way.”

“I’ll be waiting.” The phone went dead. Siobhan started the car.

“We’ve to go back to St. Leonard’s,” she informed Rebus, going on to explain why.

“Which paper is it?” was all Rebus said at the end of a lengthy silence.

“I didn’t ask.”

“Call her again.”

Siobhan looked at him but made the call.

“Give me the phone,” Rebus ordered. “Don’t want you going off the road.”

He took the phone and held it to his ear, asked to be put through to the chief super’s office.

“It’s John,” he said when Templer answered. “Who’s got the story?”

“Reporter by the name of Steve Holly. And the sod’s like a terrier at a lamppost convention.”

6

I
knew it would look bad,” Rebus explained to Templer. “That’s why I didn’t say anything.” They were in Templer’s office at St. Leonard’s. She was seated, Rebus standing. She held a sharpened pencil in one hand, manipulating it, studying its tip, maybe weighing it as a weapon. “You lied to me.”

“I just left out a few details, Gill . . .”

“A few details?”

“None of them relevant.”

“You went back to his house!”

“We had a drink together.”

“Just you and a known criminal who’d been threatening your closest colleague? Who’d made an allegation of assault against you?”

“I had a word with him. We didn’t argue or anything.” Rebus began to fold his arms, but this served to increase the blood pressure in his hands, so he unfolded them again. “Ask the neighbors, see if they heard raised voices. I’ll tell you right now, they didn’t. We were drinking whiskey in the living room.”

“Not the kitchen?”

Rebus shook his head. “I wasn’t in the kitchen all night.”

“What time did you leave?”

“No idea. Gone midnight, easy.”

“Not long before the fire, then?”

“Long enough.”

She stared at him.

“The man had had a skinful, Gill. We’ve all seen it: they get the munchies, turn on the chip pan, and fall asleep. It’s either that or the lit cigarette down the side of the sofa.”

Templer tested the pencil’s sharpness against her finger.

“How much trouble am I in?” Rebus asked, the silence getting to him.

“Depends on Steve Holly. He makes a song and dance, we have to be seen to be doing something about it.”

“Like putting me on suspension?”

“It had crossed my mind.”

“I don’t suppose I could blame you.”

“That’s awfully magnanimous, John. Why did you go to his house?”

“He asked me. I think he liked playing games. That’s all Siobhan was to him. Then I came along. He sat there feeding me drinks, spouting on about his adventures . . . I think it gave him a buzz.”

“And what did you think
you
were going to get out of it?”

“I don’t know exactly . . . I thought it might distract him from Siobhan.”

“She asked you for help?”

“No.”

“No, I’ll bet she didn’t. Siobhan can fight her own battles.”

Rebus nodded.

“So it’s a coincidence?”

“Fairstone was a disaster waiting to happen. It’s a blessing he didn’t take anyone else with him.”

“A blessing?”

“I won’t be losing too much sleep, Gill.”

“No, I suppose that would be too much to ask.”

Rebus straightened his back, held on to the silence, embracing it. Templer flinched. She’d drawn a bead of blood from her finger with the pencil tip.

“Final warning, John,” she said, dropping her hand, unwilling to deal with the injury—that sudden fallibility—in front of him.

“Yes, Gill.”

“Final means final with me.”

“I understand. Want me to fetch a Band-Aid?” His hand reached for the doorknob.

“I want you to leave.”

“If you’re sure there’s nothing —”

“Out!”

Rebus closed the door after him, feeling the muscles in his legs starting to work again. Siobhan was standing not ten feet away, one questioning eyebrow raised. Rebus gave her an awkward thumbs-up, and she shook her head slowly:
I don’t know how you get away with it.

He wasn’t sure he knew either.

“Let me buy you a drink,” he said. “Cafeteria coffee all right?”

“That’s pushing the boat out.”

“I’m on a final warning. It’s hardly the winning goal at Hampden.”

“More of a throw-in at Easter Road?”

She managed a smile from him. He felt an aching in his jaw, the feeling of sustained tension that a simple smile could displace.

Downstairs, however, it was chaos. People milled around, the interview rooms all seemed to be full. Rebus recognized faces from Leith CID, meaning Hogan’s team. He grabbed an elbow.

“What’s going on?”

The face glowered at him, then softened as he was recognized. The detective constable’s name was Pettifer. He’d been only half a year in CID; already he was toughening up nicely.

“Leith’s jam-packed,” Pettifer explained. “Thought we’d use St. Leonard’s for the overflow.”

Rebus looked around. Pinched faces, ill-fitting clothes, bad haircuts . . . the cream of Edinburgh’s lower depths. Informers, junkies, touts, scammers, housebreakers, muscle, alkies. The station was filling with their mingled scents, their slurred, expletive-strewn protestations. They’d fight anyone, anytime. Where were their lawyers? Nothing to drink? Needing a pish. What was the game? What about human rights? No dignity in this fascist state . . .

Detectives and uniforms tried for a semblance of order, taking names, details, pointing to a room or a bench where a statement could be taken, everything denied, a muttered complaint made. The younger men had a swagger, not yet ground down by the constant attentions of the law. They smoked, despite the warning signs. Rebus bummed a cigarette from one of them. He wore a checked baseball cap, its rim pointing skywards. Rebus reckoned one gust of Edinburgh wind would have the thing sailing from its owner’s head like a Frisbee.

“No’ done nothing, like,” the youth said, twitching one shoulder. “Just helping out, so they says. Dinne want nothing to do with shooters, chief, that’s the gospel. Pass it along, eh?” He winked a snake’s cold eye. “One good turn and all that.” Meaning the rumpled cigarette. Rebus nodded, moved off again.

“Bobby’s looking for whoever might have supplied the guns,” Rebus told Siobhan. “Rounding up the usual desperadoes.”

“Thought I recognized some faces.”

“Aye, and not from judging any bonny baby contests.” Rebus studied the men—they were all men. Easy to see them as mere debris; work hard enough and you might find a smear of sympathy somewhere in your soul. These were men on whom the Fates had decided not to shine, men who’d been brought up to respect greed and fear, men whose whole lives had been tainted from the word go.

Rebus believed this. He saw families where the children ran wild and would grow up indifferent to anything but the rules of survival in what they saw as a jungle. Neglect was almost in their genes. Cruelty made people cruel. With some of these young men, Rebus had known their fathers and grandfathers, too, criminality in their blood, aging the one and only disincentive to their recidivism. These were basic facts. But there was a problem. By the time Rebus and his like had reason to confront these men, the damage was already done, and in many cases appeared irreversible. So there could be little room for sympathy. Instead, it came down to attrition.

And then there were men like Peacock Johnson. Peacock wasn’t his real name, of course. It was because of the shirts he wore, shirts that could curdle any hangover an onlooker might be harboring. Johnson was lowlife masquerading as high. He made money, and spent it, too. The shirts were often custom-made by a tailor in one of the narrow lanes of the New Town. Johnson sometimes affected a homburg and had grown a thin, black mustache, probably thinking he looked like Kid Creole. His dental work was good—which by itself would have marked him out from his fellow denizens—and he used his smile prodigally. He was a piece of work.

Rebus knew he was in his late thirties but could pass for either ten years older or a decade younger, depending on his mood and outfit. He went everywhere with a runt of a guy named Evil Bob. Bob sported what was almost a uniform: baseball cap, tracksuit top, baggy black jeans and oversized sneakers. Gold rings on his fingers, ID bracelets on both wrists, chains around his neck. He had an oval, spotty face with a mouth that hung open almost permanently, giving him a look of constant bewilderment. Some people said that Evil Bob was Peacock’s brother. If so, Rebus guessed some cruel genetic experiment had taken place. The tall, nearly elegant Johnson and his brutish sidekick.

As for the “evil” in Evil Bob, as far as anyone knew, it was just a name.

As Rebus watched, the two men were being separated. Bob was to follow a CID officer upstairs to where a space was newly available. Johnson was about to accompany DC Pettifer into Interview Room 1. Rebus glanced towards Siobhan, then pushed his way through the scrum.

“Mind if I sit in on this one?” he asked Pettifer. The young man looked flustered. Rebus tried for a reassuring smile.

“Mr. Rebus . . .” Johnson was holding out his hand. “What a pleasant surprise.”

Rebus ignored him. He didn’t want a pro like Johnson to know just how new Pettifer was to the game. At the same time, he had to persuade the detective constable that no dirty trick was being played, that Rebus wasn’t going to be there as invigilator. All he had was his smile, so he tried it again.

“Fine,” Pettifer said at last. The three men entered the interview room, Rebus holding his index finger up in Siobhan’s direction, hoping she’d know he wanted her to wait for him.

IR1 was small and stuffy and held the body odors of what seemed like its last half a dozen guests. There were windows high up on one wall, but they wouldn’t open. On the small table sat a dual-tape deck. There was a panic button at shoulder height behind it. A video camera was trained on the room from a bracket above the door.

But there’d be no recording today. These interviews were informal, goodwill a priority. Pettifer carried nothing into the room but a couple of sheets of blank paper and a cheap pen. He would have studied the file on Johnson but wasn’t about to brandish it.

“Take a seat, please,” Pettifer said. Johnson brushed the chair’s surface with a bright red handkerchief before lowering himself onto it with showy deliberation.

Pettifer sat down opposite, then realized there was no chair for Rebus. He made to stand up again, but Rebus shook his head.

“I’ll just stand here, if that’s okay,” he said. He was leaning against the wall opposite, legs crossed at the ankles, hands resting in his jacket pockets. He’d found a spot where he was in Pettifer’s line of vision but where Johnson would have to turn to see him.

“You’re sort of like a guest star, Mr. Rebus?” Johnson obliged with a grin.

“VIP treatment for you, Peacock.”

“The Peacock always travels first-class, Mr. Rebus.” Johnson sounded satisfied, resting against the back of the chair, arms folded. His hair was jet-black, slicked back from the brow, curling where it met the nape of his neck. He’d been known to keep a cocktail stick in his mouth, working it like a lollipop. Not today, though. Today he was chewing a piece of gum.

“Mr. Johnson,” Pettifer began, “I assume you know why you’re here?”

“You’re asking all us cats about the shooter. I told the other cop, told anyone who’d listen, the Peacock doesn’t do that sort of thing. Shooting kids, man, that’s pure evil.” He shook his head slowly. “I’d help you if I could, but you’ve got me here under false pretexts.”

“You’ve been in a spot of trouble before over firearms, Mr. Johnson. We just wondered if you might be the sort of man who’d have his ear to the ground. Could be you’ve heard something. Maybe a rumor, someone new in the marketplace . . .”

Pettifer sounded confident. It could be 90 percent front; inside he could be shivering like the last leaf on autumn’s tree, but he sounded okay, and that was what mattered. Rebus liked what he saw.

“The Peacock isn’t what you’d call a snitch, Your Honor. But in this case, it’s a definite. If I hear something, I come straight to you. No worries on that bulletin board. And for the record, I deal in replica weapons—collectors’ market, respectable gentlemen of industry and suchlike. When the powers above make such trade illegal, you can be sure the Peacock will cease operations.”

“You’ve never sold illegal firearms to anyone?”

“Never.”

“And don’t happen to know of anyone who might?”

“As I said in a previous answer, the Peacock is not a snitch.”

“What about reactivating these collectors’ guns of yours: know anyone who’d be able to do that?”

“Not a scooby, m’lud.”

Pettifer nodded and looked down at the sheets of paper, which were just as blankly white as they’d been when he’d placed them on the table. During the lull, Johnson turned his head to check on Rebus.

“What’s it like back in cattle class, Mr. Rebus?”

“I like it. The people tend to be that bit cleaner in their habits.”

“Now, now . . .” Another grin, this time accompanied by a wagging finger. “I won’t have uppity public servants soiling my VIP suite.”

“You’re going to love it in Barlinnie, Peacock,” Rebus said. “Put it another way: the guys in there are going to love you to absolute bits. Dressing up always tends to go down well in the Bar-L.”

“Mr. Rebus . . .” Johnson lowered his head and produced a sigh. “Vendettas are ugly things. Ask the Italians.”

Pettifer shifted in his chair, its legs scraping the floor. “Maybe if we could get back to the question of where you think Lee Herdman could have scored those guns . . . ?”

“They’re mostly made in China these days, aren’t they?” Johnson said.

“I mean,” Pettifer went on, an edge creeping into his voice, “how would someone go about getting hold of them?”

Johnson gave an exaggerated shrug. “By the grip and the trigger?” He laughed at his own joke, laughed alone into the room’s silence. Then he shifted in his seat, tried for a solemn face. “Most gun sellers are Glasgow-based. They’re the cats you should be talking to.”

“Our colleagues in the west are doing just that,” Pettifer said. “But meantime, you can’t think of anyone in particular we should be asking?”

Johnson shrugged. “Search me.”

“You should do that, DC Pettifer,” Rebus said, making for the door. “You should definitely take him up on that . . .”

Outside, the situation was no calmer and there was no sign of Siobhan. Rebus guessed she’d retreated to the cafeteria, but instead of looking for her, he headed upstairs, glancing in on a couple of rooms before finding Evil Bob, who was being interviewed by a shirt-sleeved DS named George Silvers. Around St. Leonard’s, Silvers was known as “Hi-Ho.” He was a time-server, awaiting the oncoming pension with all the anticipation of a hitchhiker at a truck stop. He didn’t so much as nod when Rebus entered the room. There were a dozen questions on his list, and he wanted them asked and answered so that the specimen in front of him could be deposited back on the street. Bob watched as Rebus pulled a chair between the two men and sat down, his right knee only inches from Bob’s left. Bob squirmed.