Authors: Ian Rankin
T
he Forensics team had come for the Ford Escort, their mechanic taking only a few minutes to extract the stuck CD. It played perfectly on the machine at Gayfield Square. There was nothing written on it but the single word “Riordan”—same as on the copy Riordan himself had made for Siobhan Clarke. More good news: looked like the toolbox in the boot would be helpful. Walsh had rinsed the blood from the claw hammer, but there were spots elsewhere. The rest of the car—in and out—would be dusted, tested, and checked by Ray Duff and his lab boys back at their Howdenhall HQ. It was, as even Derek Starr admitted, “a result.” Starr hadn’t been expecting much of anything from the day except overtime. Instead of which, he was bouncing on his toes, and had called the Chief Constable at home before anyone else had a chance—much to the annoyance of DCI Macrae (Starr’s very next call).
Gary Walsh was in IR1 and Louisa Walsh in IR2, telling their separate stories. The husband’s resistance crumbled only by degrees, as he was presented with one piece of evidence after another: the hammer, the blood, the moving of the camera afterwards to make it seem as though he could not have witnessed the attack. A search warrant was being issued. The detectives asked Walsh if they might conceivably find the items stolen from Alexander Todorov hidden somewhere in or around his home or place of work, but he’d shaken his head.
I didn’t mean to murder him, just wanted him out of my car. . . . Sleeping like a baby after shagging my wife . . . stinking of booze and sweat and her perfume. . . . Smacked him around a bit, and he staggered off into the night. . . . I got in the car and started driving, then noticed he’d done something to the CD player, it wasn’t working anymore. . . . The final fucking straw. . . . Saw him at the bottom of that alley and I just lost it . . . I lost it, that’s all, and it’s all her fault. . . . Thought if I took a few things away with me, it’d look like a mugging. . . . They’re at the foot of Castle Rock, I chucked them over the wall . . .
“So,” Siobhan Clarke said, “after everything we’ve gone through, it boils down to a domestic?” She sounded dazed and devastated, unwilling to believe. Rebus shrugged in sympathy. He was back inside Gayfield Square, DI Derek Starr himself having granted permission, saying he’d “deal with any and all repercussions.”
“Big of you,” Rebus had muttered.
“He has a fling,” Clarke continued, for herself more than Rebus, “admits it to the wife, who acts out her revenge. Husband sees red, and the poor drunken sap she’s cajoled into having sex with her ends up on a slab?” She started shaking her head slowly.
“A cold, cleansed death,” Rebus commented.
“That’s a line of Todorov’s,” Clarke told him. “And there was nothing ‘cleansed’ about it.”
Rebus gave a slow shrug. “Andropov told me,
‘Cherchez la femme’
—he was trying to muddy the water, but turns out he was right.”
“The drink with Cafferty . . . Riordan recording the recital . . . Andropov, Stahov, Macfarlane, and Bakewell . . . ?” She counted the names off on her fingers.
“Nothing to do with it,” Rebus admitted. “In the end, it came down to a jammed CD and a man brought to the boil.” They were standing in the corridor outside the interview rooms, keeping their voices low, aware of the presence behind the nearest doors of Walsh and his wife. Clarke was having a desolate little laugh to herself as one of the uniforms appeared around the corner. Rebus recognized Todd Goodyear.
“Back in the old woolly suit?” Rebus asked him.
Goodyear brushed his hands down the front of his uniform. “I’m pulling a weekend shift at West End—but when I heard, I had to make a detour. Is it true?”
“Seems to be.” Clarke sighed.
“The car park attendant?” He watched her nod. “So all those hours I spent on the Riordan tapes . . . ?”
“Were part of the process,” Rebus assured him, slapping a hand on the young man’s shoulder. Goodyear stared at him.
“You’re back from suspension,” he realized.
“Not much escapes you, lad.”
Goodyear held out a hand for Rebus to shake. “I’m glad they’re looking elsewhere for whoever attacked Cafferty.”
“Not sure I’m totally off the hook, but thanks anyway.”
“Need to get the boot of your car fixed.”
Rebus chuckled. “You’re right about that, Todd. Soon as I get a minute . . .”
Goodyear had turned towards Clarke. Another handshake, and a thank-you for her help.
“You did okay, kid,” she told him, affecting an American accent. The blood was creeping up his neck as he bowed his head a final time and headed back the way he’d come.
“God knows how much work he put into those Parliament tapes,” Clarke said under her breath. “All of it redundant.”
“Part of life’s rich tapestry, Shiv.”
“You really should get that car of yours fixed.”
He made show of checking his watch. “Hardly matters, does it? Few hours from now I’ll be binning the crime kit along with everything else.”
“Well, before you do that . . .”
He looked at her. “Yes?”
“You’ve shown me yours, so I’m presuming you’ll want to see mine.”
He folded his arms, rocking on the balls of his feet. “Explain,” he said.
“Last night, we said we wanted everything wrapped up by end of play today.”
“Indeed we did.”
“So let’s go to the CID suite and see what that clever DCI Macrae has done.”
Rebus, intrigued, was happy to follow. The empty room looked as if a bomb had hit it. The Todorov-Riordan team had left its mark.
“Not even anyone to crack a beer with,” Rebus complained.
“Bit early,” Clarke chided him. “Besides, I thought you didn’t want a party.”
“But to celebrate our success with the Todorov case . . .”
“Call that ‘success’?”
“It’s a result.”
“And what do they add up to, all these results?”
He wagged a finger at her. “I’m leaving just in time—a few more weeks, and you’d be jaundiced beyond saving.”
“Be nice to think we made a difference, though, wouldn’t it?” she answered with another sigh.
“I thought that was what you were about to prove to me.”
She gave a smile—eventually—and sat down at her computer. “I did it by the book—asked DCI Macrae to see if his pal would put in a word for us at Gleneagles. They promised they’d e-mail me the details first thing this morning.”
“Details of what exactly?”
“Guests who left the hotel late at night or early morning, just before Riordan was killed. Ones who checked out, and ones who came back.” She was making rapid clicks with her mouse. Rebus moved around the desk to stand behind her, so he could see what she was seeing.
“Who’s your money on, Andropov or his driver?”
“Got to be one or the other.” But then she opened the e-mail and her mouth fell open.
“Well, well” was all Rebus said.
It took them the rest of the morning and most of the afternoon to put everything together. They had the information from Gleneagles and had pushed their luck still further by asking for the guest’s license plate. Armed with this, Graeme MacLeod at Central Monitoring—pulled from a golf game at Rebus’s request—had gone back to the CCTV tapes from Joppa and Portobello, seeking a particular vehicle now, which made the task a whole lot easier. Meantime, Gary Walsh had been charged, his wife released. Rebus had studied both parties’ statements while Clarke showed more interest in some rugby match on the radio—Scotland being tanked by Australia at Murrayfield.
It was 5:00 p.m. by the time they entered IR1, thanking the uniformed officer and telling him he could go. Rebus had stepped outside half an hour earlier for a cigarette, surprised to find it already dark—the day had sped past unnoticed. Just one more thing he’d miss about the job. . . . But there was still time for a bit of fun. As the door to IR1 started to close, Rebus whispered in Clarke’s ear, asking for two minutes alone with the suspect, adding that he wasn’t about to do anything daft. She hesitated, but then relented. Rebus made sure the door was closed, then walked over to the table and pulled out the metal-legged chair, making sure its feet scraped the floor with maximum discord.
“I’ve been trying to work out,” he began, “what your connection with Sergei Andropov is, and I’ve decided it comes down to this—you want his money. Doesn’t matter to you or your bank how he made it . . .”
“We’re not in the business of dealing with crooks, Inspector,” Stuart Janney stated. He was wearing a blue cashmere poloneck and pea green twilled trousers with brown leather slip-on shoes, yet this weekend attire was too studied and self-conscious to be truly casual.
“Feather in your cap, though,” Rebus said, “bringing in a multi-millionaire and all his chattels. Business has never been better at FAB, eh, Mr. Janney? Profits in the billions, but it’s still a cutthroat world—dog eat dog, and all that. You always have to make sure your name’s up there in lights . . .”
“I’m not exactly sure where all this is headed,” Janney admitted, folding his arms impatiently.
“Sir Michael Addison probably thinks you’re one of his golden boys. But not for much longer, Stuart—want to know why?”
Janney leaned back in his chair, seemingly unconcerned and not about to take the bait.
“I’ve seen the film,” Rebus told him in a voice just above a whisper.
“What film?” Janney’s eyes met Rebus’s and stayed fixed on them.
“The film of
you
watching another film. Cafferty bugged his own screening room, if you can believe that. And there you are, getting your jollies watching amateur-hour porn.” Rebus had lifted the DVD from his pocket.
“An indiscretion,” Janney conceded.
“For most people, maybe, but not for you.” Rebus gave the coldest of smiles, making sure the glint from the silver disc played across Janney’s face, causing him to blink. “See, what you did, Stuart, goes
way
beyond ‘indiscretion.’ ” Rebus pushed his elbows against the table, leaning farther across it. “That party? The scene in the bathroom? Know who the gobbler was, the drugged-up gobbler? Her name’s Gill Morgan—ring any bells? You watched your chief’s beloved stepdaughter snorting coke and doling out blow jobs. How’s that going to play, next time you bump into Sir Mike at a corporate beanfeast?”
The blood was draining so rapidly from Janney’s face, he might have had a tap attached to either foot. Rebus got up, tucking the disc back into his jacket, and walked to the door, opening it for Siobhan Clarke. She gave him a stare but saw she wasn’t going to be enlightened. Instead, she replaced Rebus in the chair, placing a folder and some photographs on the table in front of her. Rebus watched as she took a moment to compose herself. She gave another look in his direction and offered a smile. He nodded his reply.
Your turn now,
he was telling her.
“On the night of Monday, November the twentieth,” Clarke began, “you were staying at Gleneagles Hotel in Perthshire. But you decided to leave early . . . why was that, Mr. Janney?”
“I wanted to get back to Edinburgh.”
“And that’s why you packed your things at three a.m. and asked for your bill to be made up?”
“There was a pile of work waiting for me in the office.”
“But not so much,” Rebus reminded him, “that you didn’t have time to drop off Mr. Stahov’s list of Russians to us.”
“That’s right,” Janney said, still trying to take in some news Rebus had given him. Clarke could see that the banker had been shaken by whatever Rebus had said. Good, she thought, knocks him off balance . . .
“I think,” she said, “you brought us that list precisely because you wanted to know what was happening about Charles Riordan.”
“What?”
“Ever heard of the dog returning to its vomit?”
“It’s Shakespeare, isn’t it?”
“The Bible, actually,” Rebus corrected him. “Book of Proverbs.”
“Not quite the scene of the crime,” Clarke continued, “but a chance for you to ask a few questions, see how things were going . . .”
“I’m still not sure what you’re getting at.”
Clarke gave a four-beat pause, then checked the contents of the folder. “You live in Barnton, Mr. Janney?”
“That’s right.”
“Handy for the Forth Road Bridge.”
“I suppose so.”
“And that’s the way you came back from Gleneagles, is it?”
“I think so.”
“Alternative would be Stirling and the M9,” Clarke informed him.
“Or,” Rebus added, “at a pinch you could do the Kincardine Bridge . . .”
“But whatever route you might happen to take,” Clarke continued, “would bring you into town from the west or the north and leave you close to home.” She paused again. “Which is why we’re scratching our heads to comprehend what your silver Porsche Carrera might have been doing in Portobello High Street an hour and a half after you checked out of Gleneagles.” She slid the CCTV image towards Janney. “You’ll see that it’s time-stamped and dated. Yours is pretty much the only car on the road, Mr. Janney. Care to tell us what you were up to?”
“There must be some mistake . . .” Janney was staring off to one side, concentrating on the floor rather than the evidence in front of his eyes.
“That’s what you’ll say in court, is it?” Rebus teased him. “That’s what your ruinously expensive defense lawyer will stand up and tell judge and jury?”
“Maybe I just didn’t feel like going home,” Janney offered, causing Rebus to clap his hands together.
“That’s more like it!” he said. “Car like that, you just wanted to keep on driving down the coast. Maybe you wouldn’t stop till the border —”
“But here’s what we actually think happened, Mr. Janney,” Clarke interrupted. “Sergei Andropov was fretting about a recording . . .” At the mention of “recording,” Janney’s eyes darted to Rebus, and Rebus offered a slow, exaggerated wink back. “Maybe he mentioned it to you,” Clarke continued, “or it could have been his driver. The problem was, he’d made a remark about wanting Alexander Todorov dead—and now Todorov
was
dead. If the tape came to light, Mr. Andropov would be in the frame—might have to leave the country or end up being deported. Scotland’s supposed to be his refuge, his safe haven. Only thing waiting for him in Moscow is a show trial. And if he leaves, all those potentially lucrative deals go with him. All his tens of millions go with him. That’s why you decided to go have a word with Charles Riordan. The chat didn’t work, and he ended up unconscious —”