Set in Darkness (29 page)

They were inside the garage at the Coghill house. Another grey winter’s morning, bringing chill gusts which shook the metal up-and-over door. The ceiling light was dusty and dim, and only one small frosted window gave any natural light. Wylie held a pocket torch between her teeth as she searched. Hood had brought a plug-in lamp with him, the kind mechanics used in their work bays. But its light was too piercing, and it was awkward to manoeuvre. It sat clipped to a shelf, doing its best to throw shadows over most of the interior.

Wylie thought she’d come prepared: not just the torch, but flasks of hot soup and tea. She was wearing two pairs of wool socks under a pair of walking boots. Her chin was tucked into a scarf. The hood of her olive-green duffel coat was covering her head. Her ears were cold. Her knees were cold. The one-bar electric heater worked to a radius of about six inches.

‘We’d get done a lot quicker with the door open,’ she argued.

‘Can’t you hear the wind? Everything would be blown halfway to the Pentlands.’

Mrs Coghill had brought them out a pot of coffee and some biscuits. She seemed worried about them. Loo-breaks came as their only relief. Stepping into the
centrally heated house, there was a strong temptation to stay put. Grant had commented on the length of Ellen’s last trip to the house. She’d snapped back that she didn’t know she was being timed.

Then they’d drifted into this argument about the garage door.

‘Anything?’ he said now, for about the twentieth time.

‘You’ll be the first to know,’ she replied through gritted teeth. It was no good just ignoring his question: he’d go on asking, same as last time.

‘This stuff’s all way too recent,’ he complained, slapping a pile of paperwork down on to one of the tea chests. Unbalanced, the papers cascaded to the floor.

‘Well, that’s one way to organise a search,’ Wylie muttered. If they put the stuff outside when they’d finished with it, they’d have room to work in, and they’d know which files had been checked . . . And it would all blow away.

‘I’m no expert,’ Wylie said at last, stopping to pour out some tea from the flask, ‘but Coghill’s business affairs look pretty disorganised, if this lot’s anything to go by.’

‘He got in trouble over his VAT returns,’ Hood commented.

‘And all the casual labour he employed.’

‘Doesn’t make our job any easier.’ Hood came over, accepted a cup from her with a nod of thanks. There was a knock, and someone came in.

‘Any left in that?’ Rebus asked, nodding towards the flask.

‘Half a cup,’ Wylie said. Rebus looked at the coffee cups, lifted the cleanest one and held it out while she poured.

‘How’s it going?’ he asked.

Hood made a point of closing the door. ‘You mean apart from the wind-chill factor?’

‘Cold’s healthy,’ Rebus said. ‘Good for you.’ He’d moved to within six inches of the heater.

‘It’s slow going,’ Wylie said. ‘Coghill’s biggest problem
was he was a one-man band. Tried to run the whole business himself.’

‘Now if only he’d employed a nice personnel manager . . .’

Wylie finished the thought: ‘We might have what we’re looking for by now.’

‘Maybe he chucked stuff out,’ Rebus said. ‘How far back have you found records for?’

‘He didn’t throw
anything
out, sir: that’s the real problem here. He kept every scrap of paper.’ She waved a letter at him. It was on paper headed Coghill Builders. He took it from her. The estimate for construction of a one-car garage at an address in Joppa. The estimate was in pounds, shillings and pence. The date was July 1969.

‘We’re looking for one year out of thirty,’ Wylie said. She drained the tea, screwed the cup back on to the Thermos. ‘A needle in a bloody haystack.’

Rebus drained his cup. ‘Well, sooner I let you get back to it . . .’ He checked his watch.

‘If you’re at a loose end, sir, we can always use another pair of hands.’

Rebus looked at Wylie. She wasn’t smiling. ‘Another appointment,’ he told her. ‘Just thought I’d drop by.’

‘Much appreciated, sir,’ Hood said, catching something of his partner’s tone. They went back to work, watched Rebus leave.

Wylie heard an engine start, and flung down her sheaf of papers. ‘Do you believe that? Swans in, finishes off the tea, and swans out again. And if we’d found anything, he’d have been off back to the station with it to bag the glory.’

Hood was staring at the door. ‘Think so?’

She looked at him. ‘Don’t you?’

He shrugged. ‘Not his style,’ he said.

‘Then why did he come?’

Hood was still looking at the door. ‘Because he can’t let go.’

‘Another way of saying he doesn’t trust us.’

Hood was shaking his head. He picked up another boxfile. ‘Seventy-one,’ he said, looking at it. ‘Year I was born.’

‘I hope you don’t mind the choice of meeting place,’ Cammo Grieve said, picking his way over lengths of scaffolding which had either just come down or were just going up.

‘No problem,’ Rebus said.

‘Only I wanted the excuse for a poke around here.’

Here being the temporary home of the Scottish Parliament in the General Assembly building at the top of The Mound. The builders were hard at work. Black metal lighting gantreys had already appeared amidst the wooden ceiling beams. Gyproc walls were being cut to shape, their skeletal wooden frames standing ready to receive them. A new floor was being laid on top of the existing one. It rose amphitheatre-style in a graduated semicircle. The desks and chairs hadn’t arrived yet. In the courtyard outside, the statue of John Knox had been boxed in – some said for safekeeping, some so that he could not show his disgust at the renovations to the Church of Scotland’s supreme court.

‘I hear Glasgow had a building ready and waiting to accommodate the parliament,’ Grieve said. He tutted, smiling. ‘As if Edinburgh would let them get away with that. All the same . . .’ He looked around. ‘Shame they couldn’t just wait for the permanent site to be ready.’

‘We can’t wait that long, apparently,’ Rebus said.

‘Only because Dewar has a bee in his bonnet. Look at the way he banjaxed Calton Hill as a site, all because he worried it was a “Nationalist symbol”. Bloody man’s an eejit.’

‘I’d have preferred Leith myself,’ Rebus said.

Grieve looked interested. ‘Why’s that then?’

‘Traffic’s bad enough in the city as it is. Besides,’ Rebus
went on, ‘it would have saved the working girls having to tramp all the way to Holyrood to ply their trade.’

Cammo Grieve’s laughter seemed to fill the hall. Around them, carpenters were sawing and hammering. Someone had plugged a radio in. Tinny pop tunes, a couple of the workmen whistling along. Someone hit his thumb with a hammer. His blasphemies echoed off the walls.

Cammo Grieve glanced towards Rebus. ‘You don’t have a very high opinion of my calling, do you, Inspector?’

‘Oh, I think politicians have their uses.’

Grieve laughed again. ‘Something tells me I better not ask what those uses might be.’

‘You’re learning, Mr Grieve.’

They walked on. Rebus, remembering snippets of information from his PPLC tours of the site, kept up a commentary for the English-based MP.

‘So this will just be the debating hall?’ Grieve said.

‘That’s right. There are six other buildings, most of them council-owned. Corporate services in one, MSPs and their staff in another. I forget the rest.’

‘Committee rooms?’

Rebus nodded. ‘Other side of George IV Bridge from the MSP offices. There’s a tunnel connecting the two.’

‘A tunnel?’

‘Saves them crossing the road. We wouldn’t want accidents.’

Grieve smiled. Rebus, despite himself, was warming to the man.

‘There’ll be a media centre, too,’ Grieve suggested. Rebus nodded. ‘On the Lawnmarket.’

‘Bloody media.’

‘Are they still camping outside your mother’s house?’

‘Yes. Every time I visit, I have to field the same questions.’ He looked at Rebus; all the humour had leaked from his features, leaving them pale and tired.

‘Have you still no idea who killed Roddy?’

‘You know what I’ll say, sir.’

‘Oh yes: inquiries are proceeding . . . all that guff.’

‘It might be guff, but it’s also true.’

Cammo Grieve plunged his hands deep into the pockets of his black Crombie-style coat. He looked old and somehow unfulfilled; shared something of Hugh Cordover’s solemn disenchantment with life. As crisply dressed as he was, his skin and shoulders were slack. The mandatory white hard hat bothered him; he kept trying to make it fit properly. Rebus had the impression of an ill-fitting life.

They had climbed the stairs to the gallery. Grieve dusted off one of the benches and sat down, arranging his coat around him. Below, in the middle of the amphitheatre, two men were studying plans and pointing in different directions with their fingers.

‘A portent?’ Grieve asked.

The plan was spread out on a workbench, weighted each end with coffee mugs.

‘What can you smell?’ Rebus asked, settling himself next to the MP.

Grieve sniffed the air. ‘Sawdust.’

‘One man’s sawdust is another’s new wood. That’s what I smell.’

‘Where I see portents, you see a fresh start?’ Grieve looked appraisingly at Rebus, who just shrugged. ‘Point taken. Sometimes it’s too easy to read meanings into things.’ Coils of electric cable sat near them. Grieve rested his feet on one, as though on a footstool. He took off the hard hat and laid it beside him, smoothing his hair back into place.

‘We can start any time you’re ready,’ Rebus said.

‘Start what?’

‘There’s something you want to tell me.’

‘Is there? What makes you so sure?’

‘If you brought me here as a tour guide, I’ll be less than chuffed.’

‘Well, yes, there was something, only now I’m not so sure it’s relevant.’ Grieve stared up at the glass windows
in the roof. ‘I was getting these letters. I mean, MPs get all sorts of cranks writing to them, so I wasn’t too bothered. But I did mention them to Roddy. I suppose I was warning him what he was getting into. As an MSP, he’d probably have to put up with the selfsame thing.’

‘He hadn’t been getting any then?’

‘Well, he didn’t
say
he had. But there was something . . . When I told him, I got the feeling he already knew about them.’

‘What did these letters say?’

‘The ones to me? Just that I’d die for being a Tory bastard. There’d be razor blades enclosed, presumably in case I ever felt suicidal.’

‘Anonymous, of course?’

‘Of course. Various postmarks. Whoever he is, he travels.’

‘What did the police say?’

‘I didn’t tell them.’

‘So who knows about them, apart from your brother?’

‘My secretary. She opens all my mail.’

‘You still have them?’

‘No, they were binned the same day. Thing is, I contacted my office, and none have been received since Roddy’s death.’

‘Respect for the bereaved?’

Cammo Grieve looked sceptical. ‘I’d’ve thought the bastard would want to gloat.’

‘I know what you’re thinking,’ Rebus said. ‘You’re wondering if the letter writer has something against the whole family, maybe got at Roddy because he or she couldn’t get at you.’

‘It has to be he surely?’

‘Not necessarily.’ Rebus was thoughtful. ‘If any more letters arrive, let me know. And hang on to them this time.’

‘Understood.’ He got to his feet. ‘I’m off down to London
again this afternoon. If you need me, you have the office number.’

‘Yes, thanks.’ Rebus showed no sign of moving.

‘Well, goodbye then, Inspector. And good luck.’

‘Goodbye, Mr Grieve. Mind how you go.’

Cammo Grieve stopped for a moment, but then carried on down the stairs. Rebus sat, staring into space, letting the sounds of hammer and saw wash over him.

Back at St Leonard’s, he made a couple of phone calls. As he sat at his desk with the receiver at his ear, he sorted through the various messages left for him. Linford communicated only by notes now, and the latest said he was out interviewing people who’d been walking along Holyrood Road on the night of the murder. Hi-Ho Silvers, in his dogged way, had now identified four pubs where Roddy Grieve had been drinking – all alone – on the night he was killed. Two were in the West End, one was in Lawnmarket, and the last was the Holyrood Tavern. There was now a list of Tavern regulars, and these were the men and women Linford was canvassing. Almost certainly a waste of time, but then what was Rebus doing that was so crucial, so wonderful? Following-up hunches.

‘Is that Mr Grieve’s secretary?’ he asked into the mouthpiece. He went on to ask her about the hate mail. From her voice, he had an impression of youth – mid-twenties to early thirties. From what she said, he pictured her as faithful to her boss. But her story didn’t sound rehearsed; no reason to think that it was.

Just a hunch.

Next, he spoke to Seona Grieve. He caught her on her mobile. She sounded flustered, and he said as much.

‘Not much time to put a campaign together,’ she said. ‘And my school’s not too happy about it. They thought I was taking a bit of time off for bereavement, and now I’m telling them I might not be back ever.’

‘If you get elected.’

‘Well, yes, there is just that one tiny hurdle.’

She’d mentioned the word bereavement, but she didn’t sound recently bereaved. No time to mourn. Maybe it was a good thing, take her mind off the murder. Linford had wondered if Seona Grieve had a motive: kill her husband, step into his shoes, fast-track to parliament. Rebus couldn’t see it.

But then right now he couldn’t see very much.

‘So if this isn’t just a social call, Inspector . . . ?’

‘Sorry, yes. I was just wondering if your husband ever received any crank letters.’

There was silence for a moment. ‘No, not that I’m aware of.’

‘Did he tell you that his brother had been receiving them?’

‘Really? No, Roddy never mentioned it. Did Cammo tell him?’

‘Apparently.’

‘Well, it’s news to me. Don’t you think I might have mentioned it to you before now?’

‘You might.’