A Question of Blood (2003) (6 page)

“What’s your name, Mr. Barman?”

“Rod McAllister.” He held out a hand, which she shook. It was damp from washing glasses.

“Pleased to meet you, Rod.” She withdrew her hand and reached into her pocket, bringing out one of her business cards. “If you think of anything that might help us . . .”

He took the card. “Right,” he said. “Right you are, Seb . . .”

“It’s pronounced ‘Shi-vawn.’”

“Christ, is that how it’s spelled?”

“But you can call me Detective Sergeant Clarke.”

He nodded and tucked the card into the breast pocket of his shirt. Looked at her with renewed interest. “How long will you be in town?”

“As long as it takes. Why?”

He shrugged. “Lunchtimes we do a mean haggis, neeps and tatties.”

“I’ll bear that in mind.” She picked up the glasses. “Cheers, Rod.”

“Cheers.”

Back at the table, she stood Rebus’s pint glass next to the open notebook. “Here you go. Sorry it took a while, turns out the barman knew Herdman, could be he’s got . . .” By now she was sitting down. Rebus wasn’t paying any attention, wasn’t listening. He was staring at the sheet of paper in front of him.

“What is it?” she asked. Glancing at the sheet, she saw it was one she’d already read. Family details of one of the victims. “John?” she prompted. His eyes rose slowly to meet hers.

“I think I know them,” he said quietly.

“Who?” She took the sheet from him. “The parents, you mean?”

He nodded.

“How do you know them?”

Rebus held his hands up to his face. “They’re family.” He saw that she didn’t understand. “
My
family, Siobhan. They’re
my
family . . .”

3

I
t was a semi-detached house at the end of a cul-de-sac on a modern development. From this part of South Queensferry there was no view of the bridges, and no inkling of the ancient streets only a quarter of a mile away. Cars sat in their driveways—middle-management models: Rovers and BMWs and Audis. No fences separating the homes, just lawn leading to path leading to more lawn. Siobhan had parked curbside. She stood a couple of feet behind Rebus as he managed to ring the doorbell. A dazed-looking girl answered. Her hair needed washing and brushing, and her eyes were bloodshot.

“Your mum or dad in?”

“They’re not talking,” she said, making to close the door again.

“We’re not reporters.” Rebus fumbled with his ID. “I’m Detective Inspector Rebus.”

She looked at the ID, then stared at him.

“Rebus?” she said.

He nodded. “You know the name?”

“I think so . . .” Suddenly there was a man behind her. He held out a hand to Rebus.

“John. It’s been a while.”

Rebus nodded at Allan Renshaw. “Probably thirty years, Allan.”

The two men were studying each other, trying to fit faces to their memories. “You took me to the football once,” Renshaw said.

“Raith Rovers, wasn’t it? Can’t remember who they were playing.”

“Well, you better come in.”

“You understand, Allan, I’m here in an official capacity.”

“I heard you were in the police. Funny how things turn out.” As Rebus followed his cousin down the hall, Siobhan introduced herself to the young woman, who in turn said she was Kate, “Derek’s sister.”

Siobhan remembered the name from the case information. “You’re at university, Kate?”

“St. Andrews. I’m studying English.”

Siobhan couldn’t think of anything else to say, nothing that wouldn’t sound trite or forced. So she just made her way down the long, narrow hallway, past a table strewn with unopened mail, and into the living room.

There were photographs everywhere. Not just framed and decorating the walls or arranged along the shelving units, but spilling from shoeboxes on the floor and coffee table.

“Maybe you can help,” Allan Renshaw was telling Rebus. “I’m having trouble putting names to some of the faces.” He held up a batch of black-and-white photos. There were albums, too, open on the sofa and showing the growth of two children: Kate and Derek. Starting with what looked like christening pictures and progressing through summer holidays, Christmas mornings, days out and special treats. Siobhan knew that Kate was nineteen, two years older than her brother. She knew, too, that the father worked as a car salesman on Seafield Road in Edinburgh. Twice—in the pub and again on the drive here—Rebus had explained his connection to the family. His mother had had a sister, and that sister had married a man called Renshaw. Allan Renshaw was their son.

“You never kept in touch?” she had asked.

“That’s not the way our family worked,” he’d replied.

“I’m sorry about Derek,” Rebus was saying now. He hadn’t managed to find anywhere to sit, so he was standing by the fireplace. Allan Renshaw had perched on the arm of the sofa. He nodded, but then saw that his daughter was about to clear a space so that their visitors could sit.

“We’re not finished sorting them yet!” he snapped.

“I just thought . . .” Kate’s eyes were filling.

“What about some tea?” Siobhan said quickly. “Maybe we could all sit in the kitchen.”

There was just enough room for the four of them around the table, Siobhan squeezing past to deal with the kettle and the mugs. Kate had offered to help, but Siobhan had cajoled her into sitting down. The view from the window above the sink was of a handkerchief-sized garden, hemmed in by a picket fence. A single dishcloth was pegged to a whirligig dryer, and two strips of lawn had been cut, the mower stationary now as the grass grew around it.

There was a sudden noise as the cat flap rattled and a large black and white cat appeared, leapt onto Kate’s lap, and glared at the newcomers.

“This is Boethius,” Kate said.

“Ancient queen of Britain?” Rebus guessed.

“That was Boudicca,” Siobhan corrected him.

“Boethius,” Kate explained, “was a Roman philosopher.” She stroked the cat’s head. Its markings, Rebus couldn’t help thinking, made it look like it was wearing a Batman mask.

“A hero of yours, was he?” Siobhan guessed.

“He was tortured for his beliefs,” Kate went on. “Afterwards, he wrote a treatise, trying to explain why good men suffer —” She broke off, glancing towards her father. But he appeared not to have heard.

“While evil men prosper?” Siobhan guessed. Kate nodded.

“Interesting,” Rebus commented.

Siobhan handed out the tea and sat down. Rebus ignored the mug in front of him, perhaps unwilling to draw attention to his bandages. Allan Renshaw had tight hold of the handle of his own mug but seemed in no hurry to try lifting it.

“I had a phone call from Alice,” Renshaw was saying. “You remember Alice?” Rebus shook his head. “Wasn’t she a cousin on . . . Christ, whose side was it?”

“Doesn’t matter, Dad,” Kate said softly.

“It matters, Kate,” he argued. “Time like this, family’s all there is.”

“Didn’t you have a sister, Allan?” Rebus asked.

“Aunt Elspeth,” Kate answered. “She’s in New Zealand.”

“Has anyone told her?”

Kate nodded.

“What about your mother?”

“She was here earlier,” Renshaw interrupted, gaze fixed on the table.

“She walked out on us a year ago,” Kate explained. “She lives with —” She broke off. “She lives back in Fife.”

Rebus nodded, knowing what she’d been about to say:
she lives with a man . . .

“What was the name of that park you took me to, John?” Renshaw asked. “I’d only have been seven or eight. Mum and Dad had taken me to Bowhill, and you said you’d go for a walk with me. Remember?”

Rebus remembered. He’d been home on leave from the army, itching for some action. Early twenties, SAS training still ahead of him. The house had felt too small, his father too set in a routine. So Rebus had taken young Allan down to the shops. They’d bought a bottle of juice and a cheap football, then had headed to the park for a kickabout. He looked at Renshaw now. He would be forty. His hair was graying, with a pronounced bald spot at the crown. His face was slack, unshaven. He’d been all skin and bones as a kid but was now heavily built, most of it around the waist. Rebus struggled for some vestige of the kid who’d played football with him, the kid he’d taken to Kirkcaldy to watch Raith play some forgotten opponent. The man in front of him was aging fast: wife gone, son now murdered. Aging fast and struggling to cope.

“Is anyone looking in?” Rebus asked Kate. He meant friends, neighbors. She nodded, and he turned back to Renshaw.

“Allan, I know this has been a shock for you. Do you feel up to answering a few questions?”

“What’s it like being a policeman, John? You have to do this sort of thing every day?”

“Not every day, no.”

“I couldn’t do it. Bad enough selling cars, watching the buyer driving off in this perfect machine, big smile on their face, and then you watch them coming back for service or repairs or whatever, and you see the car losing that shine it once had . . . They’re not smiling anymore.”

Rebus glanced at Kate, who just shrugged. He guessed she’d been hearing a lot of her father’s ramblings.

“The man who shot Derek,” Rebus said quietly, “we’re trying to work out why he did it.”

“He was a madman.”

“But why the school? Why that particular day? You see what I’m saying.”

“You’re saying you won’t let it lie. All we want is to be left alone.”

“We need to know, Allan.”

“Why?” Renshaw’s voice was rising. “What’s it going to change? You going to bring Derek back? I don’t think so. The bastard who did it’s dead . . . I don’t see that anything else matters.”

“Drink your tea, Dad,” Kate said, a hand reaching for her father’s arm. He took it in his own hand, held it up to plant a kiss.

“It’s just us now, Kate. Nobody else matters.”

“I thought you just told me family mattered. The inspector’s our family, isn’t he?”

Renshaw looked at Rebus again, eyes filling with tears. Then he got up and walked from the room. They sat for a moment, hearing him climbing the stairs.

“We’ll just leave him,” Kate said, sounding sure of her role and comfortable with it. She straightened in her seat and pressed her hands together. “I don’t think Derek knew the man. I mean, South Queensferry’s a village, there’s always the chance he knew his face, maybe even who he was. But nothing other than that.”

Rebus nodded but stayed quiet, hoping she would feel the need to fill the silence. It was a game Siobhan knew how to play, too.

“He didn’t pick them out, did he?” Kate went on, going back to stroking Boethius. “I mean, it was just the wrong place at the wrong time.”

“We don’t know yet,” Rebus responded. “It was the first room he went into, but he’d passed other doors to get to it.”

She looked at him. “Dad told me the other boy was a judge’s son.”

“You didn’t know him?”

She shook her head. “Not well.”

“Weren’t you a pupil at Port Edgar?”

“Yes, but Derek’s two years younger than me.”

“I think what Kate means,” Siobhan clarified, “is that all the boys in his year were two years younger than her, so she wouldn’t be disposed to have any interest in them.”

“Too true,” Kate agreed.

“What about Lee Herdman? Did you know him?”

She met Rebus’s stare, then nodded slowly. “I went out with him once.” She paused. “I mean, I went out on his boat. A bunch of us did. We thought waterskiing would be glamorous, but it was too much like hard work, and he scared the shit out of me.”

“In what way?”

“If you were on the skis, he tried to freak you out, pointing the boat towards one of the bridge supports or Inch Garvie Island. You know it?”

“The one that looks like a fortress?” Siobhan guessed.

“I suppose they must have had guns there during the war, cannons or something to stop anyone coming up the Forth.”

“So Herdman tried scaring you?” Rebus asked, steering the conversation back on course.

“I think it was some sort of trial, to see if your nerve held. We all thought he was a maniac.” She stopped abruptly, hearing her own words. Some of the color left her already pale face. “I mean, I never thought he’d . . .”

“Nobody did, Kate,” Siobhan reassured her.

It took the young woman a few seconds to regain her composure. “They’re saying he was in the army, maybe even a spy.” Rebus didn’t know where she was headed, but nodded anyway. She looked down at the cat, who now lay with eyes closed, purring loudly. “This is going to sound crazy . . .”

Rebus leaned forwards. “What is it, Kate?”

“Well, it’s just . . . the first thing that went through my mind when I heard . . .”

“What?”

She looked from Rebus to Siobhan and then back again. “No, it’s just too stupid.”

“Then I’m your man,” Rebus said, giving her a smile. She almost smiled back, then took a deep breath.

“Derek was in a car smash a year back. He was okay, but the other kid, the one who was driving . . .”

“He died?” Siobhan guessed. Kate nodded.

“Neither of them had a license, and they’d both been drinking. Derek felt really guilty about it. Not that there was a court case or anything . . .”

“So what’s it got to do with the shooting?” Rebus asked.

She shrugged. “Nothing at all. It’s just that when I heard . . . when Dad phoned me . . . I suddenly remembered something Derek told me a few months after the crash. He said the dead boy’s family hated him. And that’s why I thought what I did. Soon as I remembered that, the word that jumped into my head was . . .
revenge.
” She rose from her chair, holding on to Boethius, placing the cat on the vacant seat. “I think I should check on Dad. I’ll be back in a minute.”

Siobhan got up, too. “Kate,” she said, “how are you coping?”

“I’m fine. Don’t worry about me.”

“I’m sorry about your mother.”

“Don’t be. Her and Dad used to fight all the time. At least we don’t have that anymore . . .” And with another forced smile, Kate left the kitchen. Rebus looked at Siobhan, a slight raising of the eyebrows the only indication that he’d heard anything of interest in the past ten minutes. He followed Siobhan into the living room. It was dark outside now, and he switched on one of the lamps.

“Think I should close the curtains?” Siobhan asked.

“Reckon anyone would open them again come morning?”

“Maybe not.”

“Then leave them open.” Rebus switched on another lamp. “This place needs all the light it can get.” He sifted through some of the photos. Blurred faces, backdrops he recognized. Siobhan was studying the family portraits lining the room.

“The mother’s been erased from history,” she commented.

“Something else,” Rebus said casually. She looked at him.

“What?”

He waved an arm towards the shelf units. “It may be my imagination, but seems like there are more photos of Derek than there are of Kate.”

Siobhan saw what he meant. “What do we make of that?”

“I don’t know.”

“Maybe some of the photos of Kate had her mother in them, too.”

“Then again, they sometimes say the youngest child becomes the parents’ favorite.”

“You’re speaking from experience?”

“I’ve got a younger brother, if that’s what you mean.”

Siobhan thought about this. “Do you think you should tell him?”

“Who?”

“Your brother.”

“Tell him he was always the apple of our dad’s eye?”

“No, tell him what’s happened here.”

“That would entail locating his whereabouts.”

“You don’t even know where your own brother is?”

Rebus shrugged. “That’s the way it is, Siobhan.”

They heard footsteps on the stairs. Kate came back into the room.

“He’s asleep,” she said. “He’s been sleeping a lot.”

“I’m sure it’s the best thing,” Siobhan said, almost wincing as the cliché trickled out.