The Falls (49 page)

He was trying to make a joke of it, so she didn’t push him.

‘Let’s head back,’ she said. ‘Bloody freezing out here anyway.’

She slid her arm through his as they walked.

By the time Assistant Chief Constable Colin Carswell arrived at Gayfield Square police station on that underlit Tuesday morning, he was out for blood.

John Balfour had bawled him out; Balfour’s lawyer had done his damage more subtly, the voice never wavering in its professional and well-educated tones. Still, Carswell felt bruised, and he wanted some measure of revenge. The Chief Constable was remaining aloof –
his
position, his unassailability, had to be maintained at all costs. This was Carswell’s mess, one he’d spent all the previous evening busy surveying. He might as well have been exploring a landscape of shrapnel and broken glass, armed only with a dustpan and some tweezers.

The best minds in the Procurator Fiscal’s office had pored over the problem and had concluded, in an annoyingly bland and objective way (letting Carswell know that it was no skin off
their
noses) that there was little chance of blocking the story. After all, they couldn’t prove that either the dolls or the German student had anything to do with the Balfour case – most senior officers seemed to agree that a connection was unlikely at best – and so would find it difficult to persuade a judge that Holly’s information could, once published, be detrimental to the inquiry.

What Balfour and his lawyer wanted to know was why the police hadn’t seen fit to share with them the story of the dolls, or the information about the German student and the Internet game.

What the Chief Constable wanted to know was what Carswell intended doing about it.

And what Carswell himself wanted was blood.

His official car, driven by his acolyte DI Derek Linford, drew up in front of a station already crowded with officers. Everyone who had worked or was currently working on the Balfour case – uniforms, CID, even the forensic team from Howdenhall – had been ‘requested’ to attend the morning meeting. Consequently, the briefing room was packed and stifling. Outside, the morning was still recovering from overnight sleet, the pavement damp and chilling to the feet as Carswell’s leather-shod soles stamped across it.

‘Here he comes,’ someone said, watching as Linford, having opened Carswell’s door for him, now closed it and, showing a slight limp, walked back round to the driver’s side. There was a sound of folding paper as the fresh tabloids – each copy the same title, each open at the same gathering of pages – were closed and put out of sight. DCS Templer, dressed as though for a funeral, dark lines under her eyes, came into the room first. She whispered something into the ear of DI Bill Pryde, who nodded and tore the corner from a notepad, spitting into it the wad of chewing gum he’d been gnawing for the past half-hour. When Carswell himself walked in, there was a ripple of movement as officers subconsciously corrected their posture or checked their attire for obvious blemishes.

‘Is anyone missing?’ Carswell called out. No ‘good morning’, no ‘thank you all for coming’, the usual protocols forgotten. Templer had a few names for him – minor ailments and complaints. Carswell nodded, didn’t seem interested in what he was being told, and didn’t wait for her to finish the roll-call.

‘We’ve got ourselves a mole,’ he bawled, loud enough to be heard down the corridor. He nodded slowly, eyes trying to take in every face in front of him. When he saw that there were people at the back, out of staring range, he walked up the aisle between the desks. Officers had to shift so he could get through, but left enough room so that there was no possibility he might brush against them.

‘A mole’s always an ugly little thing. It lacks vision. Sometimes it has big greedy paws. It doesn’t like to be exposed.’ There were flecks of saliva either side of his mouth. ‘I find a mole in my garden, I put down poison. Now, some of you will say that moles can’t help it. They don’t know they’re in someone’s garden, a place of order and calm. They don’t know they’re making everything
ugly
. But they are, whether they know it or not. And that’s why they have to be eradicated.’ He paused, the silence lingering as he walked back down the aisle. Derek Linford had entered the room as if by stealth and was standing by the door, eyes searching out John Rebus, the two of them recent enemies …

The presence of Linford seemed only to spur Carswell on. He spun on his heels, facing his subjects again.

‘Maybe it was a mistake. We all make slip-ups, can’t be helped. But, by Christ, a lot of information seems to have been pushed to the surface!’ Another pause. ‘Maybe it was blackmail.’ And now a shrug. ‘Someone like Steven Holly, he’s lower than a mole on the evolutionary ladder. He’s pond-life. He’s the scum you sometimes see there.’ He waved a hand slowly in front of him, as if skimming water. ‘He thinks he’s made us dirty, but he hasn’t. Game’s not near over, we all know that. We’re a
team
. That’s how we
work!
Anyone who doesn’t like that can always ask to be transferred back to normal duties. It’s that simple, ladies and gentlemen. But just think of this, will you?’ He dropped his voice. ‘Think of the victim, think of her family. Think of all the upset this is going to cause them.
They’re
the ones we’re slogging our guts out for here, not the newspaper readers or the scribes who provide them with their daily gruel.

‘You might have some grievance against me, or someone else on the team, but why the hell would you want to put
them
– the family and friends, getting ready for tomorrow’s funeral – why would
anyone
want to do something like this to people like them?’ He let the question hang, saw faces bow in collective shame as he scanned them. Took another deep breath, his voice rising again.

‘I’m going to find whoever did this. Don’t think I won’t. Don’t think you can trust Mr Steven Holly to protect you. He doesn’t care a damn for you. If you want to stay buried, you’ll have to feed him more stories, and more, and more! He’s not going to let you rise back up to the world you knew before. You’re different now. You’re a mole.
His
mole. And he’ll never let you rest, never let you forget it.’

A glance in Gill Templer’s direction. She was standing by the wall, arms folded, her own eyes scanning the room.

‘I know this probably all sounds like the headmaster’s warning. Some pupil’s smashed a window or daubed graffiti on the bike sheds.’ He shook his head. ‘I’m talking to all of you like this because it’s important we’re clear on what’s at stake. Talk might not cost lives, but that doesn’t mean it should be squandered. Careful what you say, who you say it to. If the person responsible wants to come forward, that’s fine. You can do it now, or later. I’ll be here for an hour or so, and I can always be reached at my office. Think what’s at stake if you don’t. Not part of a team any more, not on the side of the angels. But in a journalist’s pocket. For as long as he wants you there.’ This final pause seemed to last an eternity, nobody coughed or cleared their throat. Carswell slid his hands into his pockets, head angled as though inspecting his shoes. ‘DCS Templer?’ he said.

And now Gill Templer stepped forward, and the room relaxed a little.

‘Don’t go getting the holiday mood just yet!’ she called out. ‘Okay, there’s been a leak to the press, and what we need now is some damage limitation. Nobody talks to anybody unless they run it past me first, understood?’ There were murmurs of assent.

Templer went on, but Rebus wasn’t listening. He hadn’t wanted to listen to Carswell either, but it had been hard to block the man out. Impressive stuff really. He’d even put some thought into the image of the garden mole, almost making it work without becoming laughable.

But mostly Rebus’s attention had been on the people around him. Gill and Bill Pryde were distant figures, whose discomfort he could almost ignore. Bill’s big chance to shine; Gill’s first major inquiry as a DCS. Hardly what either of them would have wanted …

And closer to home: Siobhan, concentrating hard on the ACC’s speech, maybe learning something from it. She was always on the lookout for a new lesson. Grant Hood, someone else with everything to lose, dejection written into his face and shoulders, the way he held his arms across chest and stomach, as though to ward off blows. Rebus knew Grant was in trouble. A leak to the press, you looked at liaison first. They were the ones with the contacts: an unwise word; the drunk and friendly banter at the end of a good meal. Even if not to blame, a good liaison officer might have been all that was needed in the way of Gill’s ‘damage limitation’. With experience, you’d know how to bend a journalist’s will to your own, even if it meant a bribe of some kind: first dibs on some later story or stories …

Rebus wondered at the extent of the damage. Quizmaster would now know what he’d probably always suspected: that it wasn’t just him and Siobhan, that she was keeping her colleagues apprised. Her face didn’t give anything away, but Rebus knew she was already wondering how to handle it, how to phrase her next communication with Quizmaster, supposing he wanted to keep playing … The Arthur’s Seat coffins connection annoyed him only because Jean had been mentioned by name in the story, cited as ‘the Museum’s resident expert’ on the case. He recalled that Holly had been persistent, leaving messages for Jean, wanting to speak to her. Could she have said something to him unwittingly? He didn’t think so.

No, he had the culprit in his sights. Ellen Wylie looked like she’d been wrung out. There were tangles in her hair where she hadn’t been concentrating with the brush. Her eyes had a resigned look. She kept staring at the floor during Carswell’s speech, and hadn’t shifted when he’d finished. She was still looking at the floor now, trying to find the will to do anything else. Rebus knew she’d spoken on the phone with Holly yesterday morning. It had been to do with the German student, but afterwards she’d seemed lifeless. Rebus had thought it was because she was working another dead end. Now he knew different. When she’d walked away from the Caledonian Hotel, she’d been heading either for Holly’s office or for some wine bar or café nearby.

He’d got to her.

Maybe Shug Davidson would realise as much; maybe her colleagues at West End would remember how different she’d been after that phone call. But Rebus knew they wouldn’t shop her. It was something you didn’t do. Not to a colleague, a pal.

Wylie had been unravelling for days. He’d taken her into the coffin case thinking maybe he could help. But then maybe she was right – maybe he’d been treating her as just another ‘cripple’, someone else who might be bent to his will, do some of the hard graft on something which would always be
his
case.

Maybe he’d had ulterior motives.

Wylie had probably seen it as a way of getting back at all of them: Gill Templer, cause of her public humiliation; Siobhan, for whom Templer still had such high hopes; Grant Hood, the new golden boy, coping where Wylie had not … And Rebus, too, the manipulator, the user, grinding her down.

He saw her left with two alternatives: let it all out, or burst with frustration and anger. If he’d accepted her offer of a drink that night … maybe she’d have opened up and he’d have listened. Maybe that was all she’d needed. But he hadn’t been there. He’d sneaked off to a pub by himself.

Nice one, John. Very smoothly played. For some reason an image came to mind: some old blues stalwart, turning up for ‘Ellen Wylie’s Blues’. Maybe John Lee Hooker or B. B. King … He caught himself and snapped out of it. He’d almost retreated into music, almost got to a lyric that would tide him over.

But now Carswell was reading from a list of names, and Rebus caught his own as Carswell snapped it out. DC Hood … DC Clarke … DS Wylie … The coffins; the German student – they’d worked those cases, and now the ACC wanted to see them. Faces turned, curious. Carswell was announcing that he’d see them in the ‘boss’s office’, meaning the station commander’s, commandeered for the occasion.

Rebus tried to catch Bill Pryde’s eye as they trooped out, but with Carswell already having exited, Bill was searching his pockets for more gum, his eyes trying to locate his clipboard. Rebus was the tail of this lethargic snake, Hood in front of him, then Wylie and Siobhan. Templer and Carswell at the head. Derek Linford was standing outside the station commander’s office, opened the door for them and then stood back. He tried to stare Rebus down, but Rebus wasn’t having that. They were still at it when Gill Templer closed the door, breaking the spell.

Carswell was sliding his chair in towards the desk. ‘You’ve already heard my spiel,’ he told them, ‘so I won’t bore you again. If the leak came from anywhere, it came from one of you. That little shit Holly knew way too much.’ As his mouth snapped shut his eyes looked up at them for the first time.

‘Sir,’ Grant Hood said, taking a half-step forward and folding his hands behind his back, ‘as liaison officer it should have been my job to damp the story down. I’d just like to publicly apologise for—’

‘Yes, yes, son, I got all that from you last night. What I want now is a simple confession.’

‘With respect, sir,’ Siobhan Clarke said, ‘we’re not criminals here. We’ve had to ask questions, put out feelers. Steve Holly could just have been putting two and two together …’

Carswell just stared at her, then said: ‘DCS Templer?’

‘Steve Holly,’ Templer began, ‘doesn’t work that way if he can possibly help it. He’s not the brightest bulb in the chandelier, but he’s as sneaky as they come, and ruthless with it.’ The way she spoke was telling Clarke something, was saying to her that this had all been gone over already. ‘Some of the other journos, yes, I think they could take what’s out there in the public domain and make something of it, but not Holly.’

‘But he did work the case of the German student,’ Clarke persisted.

‘And shouldn’t have known about the gaming connection,’ Templer said, almost by rote: another argument that the senior officers had tried out between themselves.

‘It was a long night,’ Carswell told them, ‘trust me. We’ve been over it time and again. And it still seems to come down to the four of you.’