Authors: Ian Rankin
C
larke decided it wasn’t worth visiting the librarian, so called her from Todorov’s flat while Hawes and Tibbet started the search. Clarke had barely punched in the number for the Poetry Library when Hawes arrived back from the bedroom, waving the dead man’s passport.
“Under a corner of the mattress,” Hawes said. “First place I looked.”
Clarke just nodded and moved into the hallway for a bit more privacy.
“Miss Thomas?” she said into her phone. “It’s Detective Sergeant Clarke here, sorry to trouble you again so soon . . .”
Three minutes later she was back in the living room with just a couple of names: yes, Abigail Thomas had accompanied Todorov to the pub after his recital, but she’d stayed for only the one, and knew that the poet wouldn’t be satisfied until he’d sampled another four or five watering holes.
“I reckoned he was in safe hands with Mr. Riordan,” she’d told Clarke.
“The sound engineer?”
“Yes.”
“No one else was there? None of the other poets?”
“Just the three of us, and, as I say, I didn’t stay long . . .”
Colin Tibbet meantime had finished rummaging through desk drawers and kitchen cupboards and was tilting the sofa to see if anything other than dust might be hidden there. Clarke lifted a book from the floor. It was another copy of
Astapovo Blues
. She’d managed a couple of minutes’ research on Count Tolstoy, so knew that he’d died in a railway siding, shunning the wife who had refused to join his pared-to-the-bone lifestyle. This helped her make more sense of the collection’s final poem, “Codex Coda,” with its refrain of “a cold, cleansed death.” Todorov, she saw, had not quite finished with any of the poems in the book—there were penciled amendments throughout. She reached into his waste bin and uncrumpled one of the discarded sheets.
City noise invisible
Havoc-crying air
Congested as a
The rest of the sheet consisted of doodled punctuation marks. There was a folder on his desk, but nothing inside it. A book of
Killer Sudokus
, all of them finished. Pens and pencils and an unused calligraphy set, complete with instructions. She walked over to the wall and stood in front of the Edinburgh bus map, traced a line from King’s Stables Road to Buccleuch Place. There were a dozen routes he could have chosen. Maybe he was on a pub crawl, or a little bit lost. No reason to assume he’d been heading home. He could have left his flat and crossed George Square, made for Candlemaker Row and wandered down its steep brae into the Grassmarket. Plenty of pubs there, and King’s Stables Road only a right-hand fork away. . . . Her phone rang. Caller ID: Rebus.
“Phyl found his passport,” she told him.
“And I just found his neck chain, lying on the floor of the multistory.”
“So he was killed there and dumped in the lane?”
“Trail of blood says so.”
“Or he staggered that far and then keeled over.”
“Another possibility,” Rebus seemed to concede. “Thing is, though, what was he doing in the car park in the first place? Are you at his flat?”
“I was just about to leave.”
“Before you do, add car keys or a driving license to the search list. And ask Scarlett Colwell if Todorov had access to a vehicle. I’m pretty sure she’ll say no, but all the same . . .”
“No sign of any abandoned cars in the multistory?”
“Good point, Shiv, I’ll have someone check. Talk to you later.” The phone went dead, and she managed a little smile, hadn’t heard Rebus so fired up in several months. Not for the first time, she wondered what the hell he would do with himself when the work was done.
Answer: bug her, most likely—phone calls daily, wanting to know everything about her caseload.
Clarke got through to Dr. Colwell on the mobile, Colwell having forgotten to turn her own off.
“Sorry,” Clarke apologized, “are you in the middle of your tutorial?”
“I had to send them away.”
“I can understand. Maybe you should shut up shop for the day. You’ve had quite a shock.”
“And do what exactly? My boyfriend’s in London, I’ve got the whole flat to myself.”
“There must be a friend you could call.” Clarke looked up as Hawes walked back into the room, but this time all Hawes did was offer a shrug: no notebook, keys, or cash card. Tibbet had done no better and was sitting on the chair, frowning over one of the poems in
Astapovo Blues
. “Anyway,” Clarke rattled on, “reason I’m phoning is to ask if Alexander owned a car.”
“He didn’t.”
“Could he drive?”
“I’ve no idea. I certainly wouldn’t have ventured into any vehicle with him behind the wheel.”
Clarke was nodding towards the route map—stood to reason Todorov would take buses. “Thanks anyway,” she said.
“Did you talk to Abi Thomas?” Colwell asked abruptly.
“She went to the pub with him.”
“I’ll bet she did.”
“But only stayed for one.”
“Oh yes?”
“You sound as if you don’t believe her, Dr. Colwell.”
“Abi Thomas got hot flushes just reading Alexander’s poems . . . imagine how she felt squeezed in next to him at a corner table in some seedy bar.”
“Well, thanks for your help —” But Clarke was talking into a dead phone. She stared at it, then became aware of two pairs of eyes on her: Hawes and Tibbet.
“I don’t think we’re going to find anything else here, Siobhan,” Hawes piped up, while her partner clucked his agreement. He was an inch shorter than her and several inches less smart, but knew enough to let her argue their case.
“Back to base?” Clarke suggested, to enthusiastic nods. “Okay,” she agreed, “but take one more recon first—and this time we’re after car keys or anything else that might suggest the deceased would have need of a car-parking space.” Having said which, she relieved Tibbet of his book and swapped places with him, settling back to see if there was anything she’d missed in “Codex Coda.”
The SOCOs tried pushing the BMW aside, with no success at all. They then debated jacking it up, or maneuvering a hoist in so they could lift it. The rest of the parking level had become a buzz of activity, as a line of cops in white overalls shuffled along in formation on their knees, checking that the ground held no further clues. Todd Goodyear was among them and greeted Rebus with a nod. Photos and video were being taken, and another team was outside, tracing the route from car park to lane. The SOCOs were trying not to look too shamefaced, knowing they should have spotted the blood trail on the night itself. They gave Ray Duff dirty looks whenever his back was turned.
Such was the scene that greeted the BMW’s owner when she returned, briefcase and shopping bags in hand. Todd Goodyear was told to get to his feet and take a brief statement from her.
“Bloody brief,” Tam Banks stressed, keen for his team to start work on the evidence beneath her car.
Rebus was standing alongside the car park’s security guard. The man had just returned from a check of the other levels. His name was Joe Wills and the uniform he was wearing had probably been tailored with someone else in mind. He’d already explained that it would be hard to tell an abandoned car from any of the others.
“You’re open twenty-four hours?” Rebus had asked.
Wills had shaken his head. “Close at eleven.”
“And you don’t look to see if any cars are left?”
Wills had offered a shrug that went beyond the casual. Not much job satisfaction, Rebus had guessed.
Now Wills was explaining that he still couldn’t say whether any of the current bays had been occupied overnight.
“We do a number plate check once a fortnight,” he said.
“So a stolen car, to give an example, could sit here fourteen days before you’d have an inkling?”
“That’s the policy.” The man looked to Rebus like a drinker: gray stubble, hair in need of a wash, eyes red-rimmed. There was probably a bottle of something hidden away in his control room, to be added to the daily round of teas and coffees.
“What sort of shifts do you work?”
“Seven till three or three till eleven. I seem to prefer the mornings. Five days on, two off; there’s other guys usually do the weekends.”
Rebus checked his watch: twenty minutes till the changeover.
“Your colleague will be starting soon—is that the same one who’d have been here last night?”
Wills nodded. “Name’s Gary.”
“You haven’t spoken to him since yesterday?”
Wills shrugged. “Here’s what I know about Gary: lives in Shandon, supports Hearts, and has a looker of a missus.”
“That’s a start,” Rebus muttered. Then: “Let’s go look at your CCTV.”
“What for?” The man’s eyes were glassy as he met Rebus’s glare.
“To see if the tapes caught anything.” From the look on Wills’s face, Rebus knew what was coming next, a single word forming echo and question both.
“Tapes . . . ?”
They walked back up the exit slope anyway. Wills’s lair was a small booth with greasy windows and a radio playing. Five flickering black-and-white screens, plus a sixth that was blank.
“Top story,” Wills explained. “It’s playing up.”
Rebus studied the remaining five. The pictures were blurry; he couldn’t pick out any individual license plates. The figures from the floor below were indistinct, too. “What the hell use is this?” he couldn’t help asking.
“Bosses seem to think it gives the clients a sense of security.”
“Bloody false at best, as the poor sod in the mortuary can testify.” Rebus turned away from the screens.
“One of the cameras used to point pretty much at that spot,” Wills said. “But they get moved around . . .”
“And you don’t keep any recordings?”
“Machine packed in a month back.” Wills nodded towards a dusty space below the monitors. “Not that we bothered much. All the bosses were interested in was when anyone tried conning their way out without paying. System’s pretty foolproof, didn’t happen often.” Wills thought of something. “There’s a set of stairs between the top story and the pavement. We had a punter attacked there last year.”
“Oh?”
“I said at the time they should get CCTV into the stairwell, but nothing ever happened.”
“At least you tried.”
“Don’t know why I bother . . . job’s on the way out anyway. They’re replacing us with just the one guy on a motorbike, scooting between half a dozen car parks.”
Rebus was looking around the cramped space. Kettle and mugs, a few tattered paperbacks and magazines, plus the radio—these were all on the work surface opposite the monitors. He guessed that for most of the time, the guards would be facing away from the screens. Why the hell not? Minimum wage, bosses only a distant threat, no job security. One or two buzzes on the intercom per day, people who’d lost their tickets or didn’t have change. There was a rack of CDs, bands whose names Rebus vaguely recognized: Kaiser Chiefs, Razorlight, Killers, Strokes, White Stripes . . .
“No CD player,” he commented.
“They’re Gary’s,” Wills explained. “He brings one of those little machines with him.”
“With headphones?” Rebus guessed, watching as Wills nodded. “Just wonderful,” he muttered. “You were working here last year, Mr. Wills?”
“Been here three years next month.”
“And your colleague?”
“Eight, maybe nine months. I tried his shift but couldn’t hack it. I like my afternoons and evenings free.”
“The better to do some drinking?” Rebus cajoled. Wills’s face hardened, encouraging Rebus to press on. “Ever been in trouble, Mr. Wills?”
“How do you mean?”
“Police trouble.”
Wills made show of scratching dandruff from his scalp. “Long time ago,” he eventually said. “The bosses know about it.”
“Fighting, was it?”
“Thieving,” Wills corrected him. “But that was twenty years back.”
“What about your car? You said you’d had a prang?”
But Wills was peering through the window. “Here’s Gary now.” A pale-colored car had drawn to a halt outside the cabin, its driver locking it after him.
The door burst open. “Hell’s going on downstairs, Joe?” The guard called Gary wasn’t yet quite in uniform. Rebus guessed the jacket was in his carrier bag, along with a sandwich box. He was a few years younger than Wills, a lot leaner, and half a foot taller. He dumped two newspapers onto the worktop but couldn’t get any farther into the room—with Rebus there, space was at a premium. The man was shrugging out of his coat: crisp white shirt beneath, but no tie—probably a clip-on tucked into a pocket somewhere.
“I’m Detective Inspector Rebus,” Rebus told him. “Last night, a man was severely beaten.”
“On Level Zero,” Wills added.
“Is he dead?” the new arrival asked, wide-eyed. Wills made a cut-throat gesture with accompanying sound effect. “Bloody hell. Does the Reaper know?”
Wills shook his head and saw that Rebus needed an explanation. “It’s what we call one of the bosses,” he said. “She’s the only one we ever see. Wears a long black coat with a pointy hood.”
Hence the name. Rebus nodded his understanding. “I’ll need to take a statement,” he told the new arrival. Wills seemed suddenly keen to leave, gathering up his bits and pieces and stuffing them into his own supermarket carrier.
“Happened on your watch, Gary,” he said with a tut. “The Reaper won’t be happy.”
“Now there’s a turn-up for the books.” Gary had moved out of the cabin, giving Wills room to make his exit. Rebus came out, too, needing the oxygen.
“We’ll talk again,” he warned the departing figure. Wills waved without looking back. Rebus turned his attention to Gary. Lanky, he’d have called him, and round-shouldered as if awkwardly aware of his height. A long face with a square jaw and well-defined cheekbones, plus a mop of dark hair. Rebus almost said it out loud:
you should be on a stage in a band, not stuck in a dead-end job.
But maybe Gary didn’t see it that way. Good-looking, though, which explained the “looker of a missus.” Then again, Rebus couldn’t tell just how high or low Joe Wills’s standards might be . . .
Twenty minutes got him nothing except a retread: full name, Gary Walsh; maisonette in Shandon; nine months on the job; tried taxi driving before that but didn’t like the night shift; had seen and heard nothing unusual the previous evening.