A Question of Blood (2003) (17 page)

“What’s this about you waiting to be suspended?”

“I had to say something.”

“But why pick that?”

“Jesus, Bobby, I thought the analyst had left the building.”

“If there’s anything I should know, John . . .”

“There isn’t.”

“I brought you in on this, I can dump you just as quickly. Remember that.”

“You’re a real motivator, Bobby.” Rebus pulled the passenger-side door closed. It was going to be a long drive . . .

9

M
AKE MY DAY (C.O.D.Y.).
Siobhan stared at the note again. Same handwriting as yesterday, she was sure of that. Second-class mail, but it had taken only a day to reach her. The address was perfect, down to the St. Leonard’s postcode. No name this time, but she didn’t need a name, did she? That was the point the writer was making.

Make my day: a reference to Clint Eastwood’s Dirty Harry? Who did she know called Harry? Nobody. She wasn’t sure whether she was meant to get the C.O.D.Y. reference, but straight off she knew what it meant: Come On Die Young. She knew it because it was the title of a Mogwai album, one she’d bought a while back. A piece of American gang graffiti, something like that. Who did she know, apart from her, who liked Mogwai? She’d loaned Rebus a couple of CDs, months ago. Nobody in the station really knew her taste in music. Grant Hood had been to her flat a few times . . . so had Eric Bain . . . Maybe she hadn’t been meant to get the meaning, not without working at it. She guessed most fans of the band were younger than her, teens and early twenties. Probably mostly male, too. Mogwai played instrumentals, mixing ambient guitar with ear-wrenching noise. She couldn’t remember if Rebus had ever given her back the CDs . . . Had one of them been
Come On Die Young
?

Without realizing it, she’d walked from her desk to the window, peering out on to St. Leonard’s Lane. The CID room was dead, all the Port Edgar interviews concluded. Transcripts would be typed up, collated. It would be someone’s job to feed it all into the computer system, see if technology could find connections missed by the merely mortal . . .

The letter writer wanted her to make his day.
His
day? She studied the writing again. Maybe an expert could tell if it was a masculine or feminine hand. She suspected the writer had disguised his or her real handwriting. Hence the scrawl. She went back to her desk and called Ray Duff.

“Ray, it’s Siobhan—got anything for me?”

“Morning to you, too, DS Clarke. Didn’t I say I’d get back to you when—
if
—I found something?”

“Meaning you haven’t?”

“Meaning I’m up to my neck. Meaning I haven’t yet got round to doing very much about your letter, for which I can only offer an apology and the excuse that I’m flesh and blood.”

“Sorry, Ray.” She gave a sigh, pinched the bridge of her nose.

“You’ve had another one?” he guessed.

“Yes.”

“One yesterday, one today?”

“That’s right.”

“Want to send me it?”

“I think I’ll hang on to this one, Ray.”

“As soon as I’ve got news, I’ll call you.”

“I know you will. Sorry I’ve bothered you.”

“Speak to someone, Siobhan.”

“I already have. Bye, Ray.”

She cut the call, tried Rebus’s mobile, but he wasn’t answering. She didn’t bother with a message. Folded the note, put it back in its envelope, slipped the envelope into her pocket. On her desk sat a dead teenager’s laptop, her task for the day. There were over a hundred files in there. Some would be computer applications, but most were documents created by Derek Renshaw. She’d already looked at a few: correspondence, school essays. Nothing about the car crash in which his friend had died. Looked like he’d been trying to set up some sort of jazz fanzine. There were pages of layout, photos scanned in, some of them lifted from the ’Net. Plenty of enthusiasm, but no real talent for writing.
Miles was an innovator, no question, but later on he acted more as a scout, finding the best new talent around and embracing it, hoping something would rub off on himself . . .
Siobhan just hoped Miles had wiped himself clean afterwards. She sat in front of the laptop and stared at it, trying to concentrate. The word
CODY
was bouncing around her head. Maybe it was a clue . . . leading to someone with that surname. She didn’t think she knew anyone named Cody. For a moment she had a jarring thought: Fairstone was still alive, and the charred corpse belonged to someone called Cody. She shook the notion aside, took a deep breath, got back to work.

And hit an immediate brick wall. She couldn’t log on to Derek Renshaw’s e-mail account without his password. She picked up the phone and called South Queensferry, thankful that Kate answered rather than her father.

“Kate, it’s Siobhan Clarke.”

“Yes.”

“I’ve got Derek’s computer here.”

“Dad told me.”

“But I forgot to ask for his password.”

“What do you need that for?”

“To look at any new e-mails.”

“Why?” Sounding exasperated, wanting it all to be finished.

“Because that’s what we do, Kate.” Silence on the line. “Kate?”

“What?”

“Just checking you hadn’t hung up on me.”

“Oh . . . right.” And then the line went dead. Kate Renshaw had hung up on her. Siobhan gave a silent curse, decided she’d try again later or get Rebus to do it. He was family after all. Besides, she had the folder with all Derek’s old e-mails—no code needed to access that. She scrolled back, found that there were four years’ worth of e-mails in the folder. She hoped Derek had been neat and tidy, hoped he’d erased all the junk. She was five minutes into the task and bored of rugby scores and match reports when her phone rang. It was Kate.

“I’m really sorry,” the voice said.

“Don’t be. It’s all right.”

“No, it’s not. You’re just trying to do your job.”

“Doesn’t mean
you
have to like it. If I’m being honest,
I
don’t always like it either.”

“His password was Miles.”

Of course. It would have taken Siobhan only a few minutes of lateral thinking.

“Thanks, Kate.”

“He liked to go online. Dad complained for a while about the phone bills.”

“You were close, weren’t you, you and Derek?”

“I suppose so.”

“Not every brother would share his password.”

A snort, something almost like a laugh. “I guessed it. Only took me three goes. He was trying to guess mine, and I was trying to guess his.”

“Did he get yours?”

“Bugged me for days about it, kept coming up with new ideas.”

Siobhan’s left elbow rested on the desktop. She bunched her fist and rested her head against it. Maybe this was going to turn into a long call, a conversation Kate needed to have.

Memories of Derek.

“Did you share his taste in music?”

“God, no. His stuff was all shoe-gazing. Sat in his room for hours, and if you went in, he was cross-legged on the bed, head in the clouds. I tried dragging him to a few clubs in town, but he said they just depressed him.” Another snort. “Different strokes, I suppose. He got beaten up once, you know.”

“Where?”

“In town. I think that’s when he started sticking close to home. Some kids he bumped into didn’t like his ‘posh’ accent. There’s a lot of that, you know.
We’re
all snobs, because our parents are rich shits who pay for our education;
they’re
all schemies who’ll end up on the dole . . . that’s where it starts.”

“Where what starts?”

“The aggression. I remember my last year at Port Edgar, we got a letter ‘advising’ us not to wear our uniform in town, unless we were on a supervised trip.” She gave a long sigh. “My parents pinched and scraped so we could go private. It might even be what broke them up.”

“I’m sure that’s not true.”

“A lot of their fights had to do with money.”

“Even so . . .”

There was silence on the line for a moment. “I’ve been going on the ’Net, looking up stuff.”

“What sort of stuff?”

“All sorts . . . trying to work out what made him do it.”

“Lee Herdman, you mean?”

“There’s this book, it’s by an American. He’s a psychiatrist, or something. Know what it’s called?”

“What?”

“
Bad Men Do What Good Men Dream.
Do you think there’s any truth in that?”

“Maybe I’d have to read the book.”

“I think he’s saying we’ve all got it in us, the potential to . . . well, you know . . .”

“I don’t know about that.” Siobhan was still thinking of Derek Renshaw. The beating was another thing he hadn’t mentioned so far in his computer files. So many secrets . . .

“Kate, is it all right if I ask . . . ?”

“What?”

“Derek wasn’t depressed, or anything, was he? I mean, he liked sports and stuff.”

“Yes, but when he came home . . .”

“He’d rather sit in his room?” Siobhan guessed.

“With his jazz and his surfing.”

“Any sites in particular? Any favorites?”

“He used a couple of chat rooms, bulletin boards.”

“Let me guess: sports and jazz?”

“Bull’s-eye.” There was a pause. “You know what I said about Stuart Cotter’s family?”

Stuart Cotter: the crash victim. “I remember,” Siobhan said.

“Did you think I was crazy?” Kate trying for a lightness of tone.

“It’ll be looked into, don’t worry.”

“I didn’t really mean it, you know. I don’t really think Stuart’s family would . . . would do something like that.”

“Fair enough, Kate.” Another silence on the line, longer this time. “Have you hung up on me again?”

“No.”

“Anything else you want to talk about?”

“I should let you get back to work.”

“You can always call again, Kate. Anytime you want to chat.”

“Thanks, Siobhan. You’re a pal.”

“Bye, Kate.” Siobhan ended the call, stared at the screen again. She pressed a palm to her jacket pocket, felt the shape of the envelope.

C.O.D.Y.

Suddenly it didn’t seem so important.

She got back to work, plugged the laptop into a phone jack and used Derek’s password to access a slew of new e-mails, most of which turned out to be junk or regular sports updates. There were a few from names she recognized from the folder. Friends Derek had probably never met, except when online, friends around the globe who shared his passions. Friends who didn’t know he was dead.

She straightened her back, feeling vertebrae crackle. Her neck was stiff, and her watch told her it was going to be a late lunch. She didn’t feel hungry but knew she should eat. What she really felt like was a double espresso, maybe with a side order of chocolate. That double combo sugar-caffeine rush that made the world go round.

“I won’t give in,” she said to herself. Instead, she’d go to the Engine Shed, where they served organic meals and fruit teas. She fished a paperback and her mobile phone out of her shoulder bag, then locked the bag in the bottom drawer of her desk—you could never be too careful in a police station. The paperback was a critique of rock music by a female poet. She’d been trying to finish it for ages. George “Hi-Ho” Silvers came into the office as she was leaving.

“Just off to lunch, George,” Siobhan told him.

He looked around the empty office. “Mind if I join you?”

“Sorry, George, I’m meeting someone,” she lied blithely. “Besides, one of us has to hold down the fort.”

She walked downstairs and out of the station’s main entrance, turning left onto St. Leonard’s Lane. Her eyes were on the tiny screen of her phone, checking for messages. A hand landed heavily on her shoulder. A deep voice growled: “Hey.” Siobhan spun around, dropping both phone and paperback. She grabbed at a wrist, twisted it hard, pulling down so that her attacker dropped to his knees.

“Jesus fuck!” the man gasped. She couldn’t see much more than the top of his head. Short dark hair, gelled to stand up in little spikes. Charcoal suit. He was heavily built, not tall . . .

Not Martin Fairstone.

“Who are you?” Siobhan hissed. She was holding his wrist high up his back, pressing forwards on it. She heard car doors open and close, glanced up, saw a man and woman hurrying towards her.

“I just wanted a word,” her assailant gasped. “I’m a reporter. Holly . . . Steve Holly.”

Siobhan let go of his wrist. Holly cradled his hurt arm as he got to his feet.

“What’s going on here?” the woman asked. Siobhan recognized her: Whiteread, the army investigator. Simms was with her, a thin smile on his face, nodding approval of Siobhan’s reflexes.

“Nothing,” Siobhan told them.

“Didn’t look like nothing.” Whiteread was staring at Steve Holly.

“He’s a reporter,” Siobhan explained.

“If we’d known that,” Simms said, “we’d’ve waited a bit longer before stepping in.”

“Cheers,” Holly muttered, rubbing his elbow. He looked from Simms to Whiteread. “I’ve seen you before . . . outside Lee Herdman’s flat, if I’m not mistaken. I thought I knew all the CID faces.” He straightened up, held out a hand to Simms, mistaking him for the superior. “Steve Holly.”

Simms glanced at Whiteread, alerting Holly immediately to his error. He swiveled slightly so the hand was facing the woman, and repeated his name. Whiteread ignored him.

“Do you always treat the fourth estate this way, DS Clarke?”

“Sometimes I go for a headlock instead.”

“That’s a good idea, changing your attack,” Whiteread agreed.

“Means the enemy can’t predict your move,” Simms added.

“Why do I get the feeling you three are taking the piss?” Holly asked.

Siobhan had bent down to retrieve her phone and book. She checked the phone for damage. “What is it you want?”

“A quick couple of questions.”

“Concerning what exactly?”

Holly was staring at the army pair. “Sure you want an audience, DS Clarke?”

“I’ve got nothing to say to you anyway,” Siobhan told him.

“How do you know until you’ve heard me out?”

“Because you’re going to ask me about Martin Fairstone.”

“Am I?” Holly raised an eyebrow. “Well, maybe that
was
the plan . . . but I’m also wondering why you’re so jumpy, and why you don’t want to talk about Fairstone.”

I’m jumpy
because
of Fairstone,
Siobhan felt like shouting. But she sniffed dismissively instead. The Engine Shed was no longer an option; nothing to stop Holly following her there, taking the chair next to her . . . “I’m going back in,” she said.