Set in Darkness (17 page)

‘It’s been used for storage, as you can see.’

She turned to the desk sergeant, who’d unlocked the door for her and turned on the light. ‘I’d never have guessed.’

‘So where do we put all this stuff?’ Grant Hood asked.

‘Maybe you can work around it?’ the desk sergeant offered.

‘We’re working a
murder
inquiry,’ Wylie hissed at him. Then she looked around the room again, before turning to her partner. ‘And this is how they treat us, Grant.’

‘Well, it’s all yours,’ the desk sergeant said, removing the key from the lock and handing it to Hood. ‘Have fun.’

Hood watched him retreat, then held the key up in front of Wylie. ‘It’s all ours, he says.’

‘Can we complain to the management?’ Wylie kicked at one of the chairs, whose arm promptly fell off.

‘I know the brochure said sea view,’ her partner said,
‘but with any luck, we won’t be spending much time here.’

‘Those bastards upstairs have got a coffee-maker,’ Wylie said. Then she burst out laughing. ‘What am I saying? We haven’t even got any phones!’

‘Maybe so,’ Hood informed her, ‘but if I’m not mistaken, we’ve just cornered the global market in electric typewriters.’

Siobhan Clarke had insisted on somewhere ‘a bit fancy’ for their drink, and when she told him about her day, Derek Linford thought he understood. Her last couple of working hours had been spent questioning dossers.

‘Not easy,’ he said. ‘You were all right, though?’ She looked at him. ‘I mean, they didn’t bite?’

‘No, they were just . . .’ She tipped her neck back, inspecting the spectacular ceiling of The Dome Bar and Grill as if expecting the rest of the sentence to be painted there. ‘I mean, they weren’t even smelly for the most part. But it was the past.’ Now she nodded to herself.

‘How do you mean?’ He was using his swizzle-stick to chase a sliver of lime around his glass.

‘I mean the stories, all the tragedies and tiny mishaps and wrong turns that had brought them there. Nobody’s
born
homeless, not that I know of.’

‘I know what you mean. They needn’t be homeless, the majority of them. The support system’s out there.’ She was looking at him, but he didn’t notice. ‘I never give them money, it’s a sort of principle with me. Some of them probably make more a week than we do. You can make two hundred a day, just begging on Princes Street.’ He shook his head slowly, saw the look on her face. ‘What?’

She studied her own drink, a large gin and tonic to his lime juice and soda. ‘Nothing.’

‘What did I say?’

‘Maybe it’s just . . .’

‘Been a rough day?’

She glowered. ‘I was going to say, maybe it’s just your attitude.’

They sat in silence for a while after that. Not that anyone in The Dome minded. It was the cocktail hour: George Street suits; black two-pieces with matching tights. Everyone focused on their own little group: office blather. Clarke took a long swallow. There was never enough gin; you could order a double and still not feel the kick. At home, she poured half and half, gin to tonic. Lots of ice, and a wedge of lemon rather than something that looked like it had been pared with a razor blade.

‘Your accent changes,’ Linford said at last. ‘Modulates to suit the occasion. It’s a clever trick.’

‘How do you mean?’

‘Well, you’ve got an English accent, right? But in some company, at the station for example, you manage to bring in some Scots.’

It was true: she knew she did it. She’d been a bit of a mimic even at school and college, knowing she did it so she’d fit in with whoever she was talking to, whichever peer group. Used to be, she could hear herself switching, but not now. The question she’d asked herself was: why the need to change, just to fit in? Was she that desperate, that lonely as a girl?

Was she?

‘Where were you born?’

‘Liverpool,’ she said. ‘My parents were lecturers. The week after I was born, they moved to Edinburgh.’

‘Mid-seventies?’

‘Late sixties, and flattery will get you nowhere.’ But she managed a smile. ‘We only stayed a couple of years, then it was Nottingham. I got most of my schooling there, finished off in London.’

‘Is that where your parents live now?’

‘Yes.’

‘Lecturers, eh? What do they make of you?’

It was a perceptive question, but she didn’t know him
well enough to answer it. Just as she’d always let people assume that her New Town flat was a rental. When she’d eventually sold it and got her own mortgage on a place half the size, she’d put the money back into her parents’ bank account. She’d never explained to them why she’d done it. They’d only asked the once.

‘I came back here to go to college,’ she told Linford. ‘Fell in love with the city.’

‘And chose a career where you’d always see its mucky underwear?’

She chose to ignore this question, too.

‘So that makes you a settler . . . one of the New Scots. I think that’s what the Nationalists call them. You
will
be voting Scot Nat, I trust?’

‘Oh, are you SNP?’

‘No.’ He laughed. ‘I just wondered if you were.’

‘It’s a pretty underhand way of finding out.’

He shrugged, finished his drink. ‘Another?’

She was still studying him, feeling suddenly enervated. All the other drinkers, the nine-to-fives, were winding down, a few drinks before home. Why did people do that? They could get a drink at home, couldn’t they? Feet up in front of the telly. Instead of which, they stuck close to their office building and had a drink with their work-mates. Was it so hard to let go? Or was home something less than a refuge? You needed a drink before facing it, courage to confront the evening’s redundancy? Was that what she was doing here?

‘I think I’ll head off,’ she said suddenly. Her jacket was on the back of her chair. A while back, someone had been stabbed outside this place. She’d worked the case. Just another act of violence, another life wasted.

‘Got plans?’ He looked expectant, nervous, childlike in his ignorance and egotism. What could she tell him? Belle and Sebastian on the hi-fi; another gin and tonic; the last third of an Isla Dewar novel. Tough competition for any man.

‘What are you smiling at?’

‘Nothing,’ she said.

‘Must be something.’

‘Women have to have some secrets, Derek.’ She had her jacket on now, was wrapping her scarf around her neck.

‘I thought a bite to eat,’ he blurted out. ‘You know, make an evening of it.’

She looked at him. ‘I don’t think so.’ Hoping her tone would alert him to the missing final word:
ever
.

And she walked.

He’d offered to see her home, but she’d declined. Offered to call her a cab, but she lived a stone’s throw away. It wasn’t even seven thirty, and he was all at once alone. The noise around him was suddenly deafening, skull-crushing. Voices, laughter, chiming glasses. She hadn’t asked about his day. Hadn’t said much at all, really, except when prompted. His drink looked fake yellow, the colour of children’s sweets. Sticky-tasting and souring his stomach, corroding his teeth. He walked to the bar, ordered a whisky. Didn’t put any water in it. Looking around, he saw that another couple had already taken his table. Well, that was fine. He didn’t stand out so much here at the bar. Could belong to one of the office parties either side of him. But he didn’t, and he knew he didn’t. He was an outsider in this place, same as in St Leonard’s. When you worked as hard as he did, that was what happened: you got the promotions, but lost the intimacy. People steered a course past you, either out of fear or jealousy. The ACC had pulled him aside at the end of the St Leonard’s tour.

‘You’re doing good work, Derek. Keep at it. Few years down the road, who knows? Maybe you’ll look back at this one as the inquiry that made your name.’ And the ACC had winked and patted his arm.

‘Yes, sir. Thank you, sir.’

But then had come the postscript, the ACC readying to
leave but half-turning towards him. ‘Family men, Derek, that’s what the public should see when they look at us. People they can respect, because we’re no different from them.’

Family men
. He meant wife and kids. Linford had gone straight to his phone and called Siobhan’s mobile . . .

Balls to it. He left, nodded to the doorman even though he didn’t know him. Out into the horizontal wind, the night seizing him and taking a bite. His lungs complained when he breathed in. Left turn: he’d be home in ten minutes. Left turn, he’d be going home.

He turned right, heading for Queen Street, the top of Leith Walk. The Barony Bar on Broughton Street, he liked it there. Good beer, an old-fashioned place. You wouldn’t stand out in a place like that, drinking alone.

And afterwards, it only took him a couple of minutes to find Siobhan Clarke’s building. Addresses: no problem in CID. First time they’d met, he’d gone to the office next day, checked up on her. Her flat was on a quiet street, a terrace of four-storey Victorian tenements. Second floor: that was where she lived. 2FL: second floor, left side. He went to the terrace opposite. The main door was unlocked. Climbed the stairs, until he reached the half-landing between second and third floors. There was a window, looking out on to the street and the flats opposite. Lights burning in her windows, curtains open. Yes, there she was: briefest of glimpses as she walked across the room. Carrying something, reading it: a CD cover? Hard to tell. He wrapped his jacket around him. Temperature wasn’t much above freezing. The skylight above had a hole in it; cold gusts assailing him.

But still he watched.

‘When will his body be released?’

‘I’m not sure.’

‘It’s awful, to have someone die and not be able to bury them.’

Rebus nodded. He was in the sitting room of the house in Ravelston. Derek Linford was seated beside him on the sofa. Alicia Grieve looked small and frail in the armchair opposite. Her daughter-in-law, who’d just been speaking, was perched on the arm. Seona Grieve was dressed in black, but Alicia wore a flowery dress, the splashes of colour contrasting with her ash-grey face. To Rebus, her skin seemed like an elephant’s, the way the folds fell from her face and neck.

‘You have to understand, Mrs Grieve,’ Linford said, his voice pouring like treacle, ‘in a case like this, there’s a need to keep the body. The pathologist may be called on to—’

Alicia Grieve was rising to her feet. ‘I can’t listen any more!’ she trilled. ‘Not here, not now. You’re going to have to go.’

Seona helped her up. ‘It’s all right, Alicia. I’ll talk to them. Would you like to go upstairs?’

‘The garden . . . I’m going into the garden.’

‘Mind you don’t slip.’

‘I’m not helpless, Seona!’

‘Of course not. I’m just saying . . .’

But the old woman was making for the door. She didn’t say anything, didn’t look back. Closed the door after her. They could hear her feet shuffling away.

Seona slipped into the chair her mother-in-law had vacated. ‘Sorry about that.’

‘No need to apologise,’ Linford said.

‘But we
will
need to talk to her,’ Rebus cautioned.

‘Is that absolutely necessary?’

‘I’m afraid so.’ He couldn’t tell her: because your husband might have confided in his mother; because maybe she knows things we don’t.

‘How about you, Mrs Grieve?’ Linford asked. ‘How are you managing?’

‘Like an alcoholic,’ Seona Grieve said with a sigh.

‘Well, a drink often helps—’

‘She means’, Rebus interrupted, ‘she’s taking things one day at a time.’

Linford nodded, as though he’d known this all along.

‘Incidentally,’ Rebus added, ‘does anyone in the family have a drink problem?’

Seona Grieve looked at him. ‘You mean Lorna?’

He stayed silent.

‘Roddy didn’t drink much,’ she went on. ‘The odd glass of red wine, maybe a whisky before dinner. Cammo . . . well, Cammo seems unaffected by drink, unless you know him well. It’s not that he slurs or starts singing.’

‘What then?’

‘His behaviour changes, just ever so slightly.’ She looked down at her lap. ‘Let’s say his morals become hazy.’

‘Has he ever . . . ?’

She looked at Rebus. ‘He tried once or twice.’

Linford, no subtlety on display, glanced meaningfully towards Rebus. Seona Grieve caught the look and snorted.

‘Clutching at straws, Inspector Linford?’

He flinched. ‘How do you mean?’

‘Crime of passion, Cammo killing Roddy so he can get to me.’ She shook her head.

‘Are we being too simplistic, Mrs Grieve?’

She considered Rebus’s question. Took her time over it. So he lobbed in another.

‘You say he didn’t drink much, your husband, and yet he went out drinking with friends?’

‘Yes.’

‘Sometimes stayed out overnight?’

‘What are you trying to say?’

‘It’s just that we can’t find anyone who was out drinking with him the night he died.’

Linford checked his notebook. ‘So far, we’ve found one bar in the West End, they think he was there early on in the evening, drinking by himself.’

Seona Grieve didn’t have anything to say to that. Rebus sat forward. ‘Did Alasdair drink?’

‘Alasdair?’ Caught unawares. ‘What’s he got to do with this?’

‘Any idea where he might be?’

‘Why?’

‘I’m wondering if he knows about your husband. Surely he’d want to be here for the funeral.’

‘He hasn’t phoned . . .’ She turned thoughtful again. ‘Alicia misses him.’

‘Does he ever get in touch?’

‘A card now and then: Alicia’s birthday, never misses that.’

‘But no address?’

‘No.’

‘Postmarks?’

She shrugged. ‘All over, mostly abroad.’

There was something in the way she said it that made Rebus state: ‘There’s something else.’

‘I just . . . I think he gets people to post them for him, when they’re on the move.’

‘Why would he do that?’

‘In case we’re trying to find him.’

Rebus sat forward a little further, cutting down the
distance between himself and the widow. ‘What happened? Why did he leave?’

She shrugged again. ‘It was before my time. Roddy was still married to Billie.’