Exit Music (2007) (16 page)

“Social call, was it?” she asked at last.

Hawes rewarded her with a friendly smile. “Not exactly. Some new information’s come to light.”

“Meaning you’ve not arrested anybody.”

“No,” Hawes admitted.

“So what’s this information?”

“A woman in a hood, seen hanging around the exit to the multistory.” Hawes showed her the e-fit. “If she was still there, you’d have walked right past her.”

“I didn’t see anyone . . . I’ve already
told
you this!”

“Easy, Nancy,” Hawes said quietly. “Calm yourself down.”

“I’m calm.”

“The tea’s a good idea.”

“I think the kettle’s knackered.” Sievewright was resting the palm of her hand against it.

“No, it’s fine,” Hawes reassured her. “I can hear it.”

Sievewright was staring at the kettle’s reflective surface. “Sometimes we try to see how long we can stay touching it while it boils.”

“We?”

“Me and Eddie.” She gave a sad little smile. “I always win.”

“Eddie being . . . ?”

“My flatmate.” She looked at the detective. “We’re not a couple.”

The front door creaked, and they turned to look down the passageway. It was Colin Tibbet.

“He’s gone,” Tibbet told them.

“Good riddance,” Sievewright muttered.

“Did he tell you anything?” Hawes asked her partner.

“Seemed adamant neither he nor his wife saw any woman in a hood. He asked if maybe it was a ghost of some kind.”

“I meant,” Hawes said, voice toneless, “did he say why he was giving Nancy here such a hard time?”

Tibbet shrugged. “Told me she’d had this great shock, and he wanted to be sure she wasn’t bottling it up. ‘Storing up trouble for later,’ I think his exact words were.”

Sievewright, one hand still pressed to the kettle, gave a hoot of derision.

“Very noble of him,” Hawes said. “And the fact that his act of charity isn’t at all what Nancy wants . . . ?”

“He promised to stay away.”

“Fat chance,” Sievewright sneered.

“That kettle’s nearly boiled,” Tibbet felt it necessary to warn her, having just noticed what she was doing with her hand. He was rewarded with something that was between a grimace and a smile.

“Anyone care to join me?” Nancy Sievewright offered.

20

T
he headline on page five of the
Evening News
was “Das Kapitalists.” The story below it recounted a dinner at one of Edinburgh’s Michelin-rated restaurants. The party of Russians had booked the whole place. Fourteen sat down to a dinner of foie gras, scallops, lobster, veal, sirloin, cheese, and dessert, washed down with several thousand pounds’ worth of champagne, white Burgundy, and venerable red Bordeaux, finishing with port from before the Cold War. Six grand in total. The reporter liked the fact that the champagne—Roederer Cristal—had been a favorite with the tsars of prerevolutionary Russia. None of the diners was identified by name. Rebus couldn’t help wondering if Cafferty had slimed his way onto the guest list. Another story on the page opposite stated that the murder rate was down—there had been ten in the past year, twelve the year before that.

They were seated around a large corner table in a Rose Street pub. The place was about to get noisy: Celtic were readying to kick off against Manchester United in the Champions’ League and the big-screen TV was the focus of most drinkers’ attentions. Rebus closed the paper and tossed it back towards Goodyear, who was seated across from him. He realized he’d missed the last bit of Phyllida Hawes’s story, so got her to repeat Anderson’s words:
storing up trouble for later.

“I’ll give him ‘trouble,’” he muttered. “And he can’t say I didn’t give him fair warning . . .”

“So far,” Colin Tibbet said, “we’ve only got one sighting of the mystery woman.” Having noticed that Todd Goodyear had taken off his tie, he was now in the process of removing his own.

“Doesn’t mean she wasn’t there,” Clarke told him. “Even if she played no part, she might have seen something. There’s a line in one of Todorov’s poems about averting your eyes so you’ll never have to testify.”

“And what’s that supposed to mean?” Rebus asked her.

“She could be lying low for a reason—people don’t always want to get involved.”

“Sometimes,” Hawes agreed, “they have good reason
not
to get involved.”

“Do we still think Nancy Sievewright’s holding something back?” Clarke asked.

“That friend of hers was definitely spinning us a yarn,” Tibbet said.

“So maybe we need to go over her story again.”

“Anything so far from those tapes?” Hawes was asking. Clarke shook her head and gestured towards Goodyear.

“Just that the deceased liked to listen in to people’s conversations,” he obliged, “even if it meant following them around.”

“Bit of a weirdo, then?”

“One way of looking at it,” Clarke conceded.

“Christ’s sake,” Rebus butted in, “there’s a bigger picture you’re not looking at—Todorov’s last stop before ending up dead . . . a drink with Big Ger Cafferty, and some of the Russians not ten yards away!” He rubbed a hand across his forehead.

“Can I just ask one thing?”

Rebus stared at Goodyear. “And what’s that, young Todd?”

“Don’t take the Lord’s name in vain.”

“You taking the piss?”

But Goodyear was shaking his head. “I’d look on it as a great favor . . .”

“Which church do you go to, Todd?” Tibbet asked.

“St. Fothad’s in Saughtonhall.”

“That where you live?”

“Where I grew up,” Goodyear corrected Tibbet.

“I used to go to the kirk,” Tibbet went on. “Stopped when I was fourteen. My mum died from cancer, couldn’t see the point after that.”

“‘God is the place that always heals over,’” Goodyear recited, “‘however often we tear it.’” He smiled. “That’s from a poem, though not one of Todorov’s. Seems to make sense of it all—to me, at any rate.”

“Hell’s teeth,” Rebus said. “Poems and quotations and the Church of Scotland. I don’t come to pubs for a sermon.”

“You’re not alone,” Goodyear told him. “Plenty of Scots try to hide their cleverness. We don’t
trust
clever people.”

Tibbet was nodding. “We’re supposed to be ‘all Jock Tamson’s bairns’—meaning we’re all the same.”

“And not allowed to be different.” Goodyear was nodding back at him.

“See what you’re going to miss when you retire?” Clarke said, her eyes on Rebus. “Intellectual debate.”

“I’m getting out just in time, then.” He started to rise to his feet. “Now if you eggheads will excuse me, I’ve got a tutorial with Professor Nicotine . . .”

Rose Street was busy: a hen-night pub crawl, the women dressed in identical T-shirts marked with the words Four Weddings and a Piss-Up. They blew kisses at Rebus as they passed him, but were then stopped by a crowd of young men heading in the opposite direction. A stag do by the look of it, the groom-to-be spattered with shaving foam, eggs, and flour. Office workers eased past, on their way home after a couple of bevvies. There were tourist families, too, not sure what to make of the hens and stags, and men hurrying to catch the match.

The door opened behind Rebus, and Todd Goodyear stepped out. “Wouldn’t have taken you for a smoker,” Rebus told him.

“I’m headed home.” Goodyear was shrugging himself back into his suit jacket. “I left cash on the table for the next round.”

“Prior engagement, is it?”

“Girlfriend.”

“What’s her name?”

Goodyear hesitated, but couldn’t seem to think of a valid excuse not to tell Rebus. “Sonia,” he said. “She’s one of the SOCOs.”

“Was she there last Wednesday?”

Goodyear nodded. “Short blond hair, midtwenties . . .”

“Can’t place her,” Rebus admitted. Goodyear looked tempted to take this as an insult, but changed his mind.

“You used to be a churchgoer, didn’t you?” he asked instead.

“Who told you that?”

“Just something I heard.”

“Best not to believe rumors.”

“Even so, I get the feeling I’m right.”

“Maybe you are,” Rebus conceded, blowing smoke into the air. “Years back, I tried a few different churches. Didn’t find any answers.”

Goodyear nodded slowly. “What Colin said sums up a lot of people’s experience, doesn’t it? A loved one dies, and we blame God. Is that what happened with you?”

“Nothing happened with me,” Rebus stated stonily, watching the hen party move off in search of its next watering hole. The stags were watching, too, one or two debating whether to follow.

“Sorry,” Goodyear was apologizing, “just nosy . . .”

“Well, don’t be.”

“Are you going to miss the job?”

Rebus rolled his eyes. “Here he goes again,” he complained to the sky above. “All I want is a peaceful smoke, and now it’s
Question Time.
”

Goodyear smiled a further apology. “I better get going while I still can.”

“Before you do . . .”

“Yes?”

Rebus studied the tip of his cigarette. “Cafferty in the interview room . . . was that the first time you’d met him?” Goodyear nodded. “He knew your brother, and your granddad, too, if it comes to that.” Rebus looked up and down the street. “Your granddad’s pub was the next block, wasn’t it? Forget what it was called . . .”

“Breezer’s.”

Rebus nodded slowly. “When he went to court, I was the one in the witness box.”

“I didn’t know that.”

“Three of us made the bust, but I was the one who gave evidence.”

“Have you ever been in that position with Cafferty?”

“He got put away both times.” Rebus spat onto the pavement. “Shiv tells me your brother was in a fight. Is he all right?”

“I think so.” Goodyear was looking uncomfortable. “Look, I’d better get going.”

“You do that. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

“Night, then.”

“Night,” Rebus said, watching him leave. Didn’t seem a bad kid. Decent enough cop. Maybe Shiv could do something with him. . . . Rebus remembered Harry Goodyear pretty well. Guy’s pub had been notorious—speed, coke, and a bit of pot, all being shifted from the place, Harry himself a small-timer, in and out of trouble. Rebus had wondered at the time, how did he get a pub license? Reckoned money had changed hands, someone on the council pitching for him. Friends could always be bought. Time was, Cafferty himself had owned a number of councillors. That way, he stayed one step ahead; cheap at whatever the price. He’d tried buying Rebus, too, but that was never going to run—Rebus had learned his lesson by then.

“Not my fault Grandpa Goodyear died in the clink . . .”

He stubbed out the cigarette and turned towards the door, but then paused. What was waiting for him inside? Another drink, plus a table of youngsters—Shiv, Phyl, and Col would be discussing the case, bouncing ideas around. And what exactly could Rebus add to the mix? He took out another cigarette and lit it, then started walking.

He took a left onto Frederick Street and a right into Princes Street. The castle was being illuminated from below, its shape picked out against the night sky. The fun fair was under construction in Princes Street Gardens, along with the market stalls and booths parked at the foot of the Mound. It would be a magnet for shoppers in the run-up to Christmas. He thought he could hear music: maybe the open-air ice rink was being tested out. Groups of kids were weaving their way past the shop fronts, paying him not the slightest heed. When did I become the invisible man? Rebus asked himself. Catching his reflection in a window he saw heft and bulk. Yet these kids teemed past as if he had no place in their version of the world.

Is this how ghosts feel? he wondered.

He crossed at the traffic lights and pushed open the door to the bar of the Caledonian Hotel. The place was busy. Jazz was playing on the hi-fi, and Freddie was busy with a cocktail shaker. A waitress was waiting to take her tray of drinks over to a table filled with laughter. Everyone looked prosperous and confident. Some of them held mobile phones to their ears, even as they spoke to the person next to them. Rebus felt a moment’s irritation that someone had taken his stool. In fact, all the stools were taken. He bided his time until the barman had finished pouring. The waitress moved off, balancing the tray on her hand, and Freddie saw Rebus. The frown he gave told Rebus that the situation had changed. The bar was no longer empty, and Freddie would be unwilling to talk.

“Usual, please,” Rebus said anyway. And then: “You weren’t exaggerating about the double shift . . .”

This time, when the whisky arrived, the bill came with it. Rebus smiled to let Freddie know this was fine with him. He trickled a few drops of water into the glass and swirled it in his hand, sniffing the contents as he scanned the room.

“They’ve gone, in case you’re wondering,” Freddie told him.

“Who?”

“The Russians. Checked out this afternoon, apparently. Winging their way back to Moscow.”

Rebus tried not to look too deflated by this news. “What I was wondering,” he said, “is whether you’ve got that name for me.”

The barman nodded slowly. “I was going to phone you tomorrow.” The waitress had arrived with another order, and he went to fill it. Two large helpings of red wine and a glass of the house champagne. Rebus started listening in on the conversation next to him. Two businessmen with Irish accents, eyes glued to the football on the soundless TV. Some property deal had failed to come off, and they were drowning their sorrows.

“And God grant them a lingering death” seemed to be the toast of choice. One of the things Rebus liked best about bars was the chance to eavesdrop on other people’s lives. Did that make him a voyeur, not so very different from Charles Riordan?

“Any chance we get to screw them over . . .” one of the Irishmen was saying. Freddie had returned the champagne bottle to the ice bucket and was coming back to Rebus’s end of the bar.

“He’s Minister for Economic Development,” the barman explained. “Ministers are listed first on the Parliament’s Web site. Might’ve taken a while otherwise . . .”

“What’s he called?”

“James Bakewell.”

Rebus wondered why he knew the name.

“Saw him on the TV a few weeks back,” Freddie was saying.

“On
Question Time
?” Rebus guessed. The barman was nodding. Yes, because Rebus had seen Bakewell there, too, arguing the toss with Megan Macfarlane while Alexander Todorov sat between them. Jim, everyone seemed to call him . . . “And he was in here with Sergei Andropov, same night as the poet?” Freddie kept nodding.

And the same night, too, as Morris Gerald Cafferty. Rebus rested his hands against the bar, letting them take his weight. His head was swirling. Freddie had moved to take another order. Rebus thought back to the tape of
Question Time
. Jim Bakewell had been New Labour with some of the rough edges left untreated. Either he wouldn’t let the image consultants near him, or that
was
his image. Late forties with a mop of dark brown hair and wire-framed spectacles. Square-jawed and blue-eyed and self-deprecating. He’d got a lot of respect north of the border for the way he’d resigned a safe seat at Westminster to stand for the Scottish Parliament. This made him a rare beast indeed. Seemed to Rebus that a lot of the political talent was still drawn to London. Freddie hadn’t mentioned any minders, which Rebus also found interesting. If Bakewell had been meeting the Russians in an official capacity, surely there’d have been assistants and advisers on hand. The Minister for Economic Development . . . late-night drinks with a foreign businessman . . . Big Ger Cafferty crashing the party. . . . Too many questions were hammering away at the inside of Rebus’s skull. It was as if his brain had developed a pulse. Finishing the drink, he left some money on the bar and decided it was time to head home. His phone alerted him to a text message. Siobhan was wondering where he’d got to.

“Took you long enough,” he muttered to himself. As he passed the Irishmen, one of them was leaning in towards the other.

“If he dies on Christmas morning,” he was confiding in a booming voice, “that’ll be tinsel enough for me . . .”

Two ways to leave the hotel: the bar’s own door, or through reception. Rebus wasn’t sure why he chose the latter. As he crossed the lobby, two men had just emerged through the revolving door. The one in front he recognized: the man who’d been driving Andropov.