Authors: Ian Rankin
‘Because then you’d all be getting away with it.’
Mathieson looked frustrated. ‘Inspector, understand one thing: I don’t care about Sir Iain, I don’t care about anyone here tonight – including myself, if it comes down to it.’ His voice was rising the way it must have at other boardroom meetings, propelling him towards victory. ‘What I care about – more deeply than you would ever understand or believe – is PanoTech.’ Now the voice fell away. ‘LABarum will be a major expansion, Inspector. A new factory, new R and D unit, meaning more suppliers, contractors, a huge injection of hard cash and confidence into the local economy. But more than that, LABarum will be Europe’s Microsoft – Scotland will be producing its own software to install in the computers it manufactures.’
‘No wonder everyone wants you kept sweet.’
‘And you’re going to put all that in jeopardy over something that happened eight years ago and hurt no one at the time; no one but the taxpayer, who wouldn’t have known anyway how his or her money was being spent. A
few million was a drop in the ocean, hardly even a ripple. Do you have any idea the scale of fraud being perpetrated in mainland Europe? A non-existent training scheme for airline pilots in Naples netted
seventeen
million pounds. Farm products and animals are shipped to and fro across borders, netting a subsidy every time. The EC has paid a
billion
pounds to have vineyards destroyed, yet there are more vines every year. The Greeks lop a branch off a vine and stick it in the ground so they’ll be paid for
two
. I repeat, a few million hurt no one.’
‘It hurt Aidan Dalgety.’
‘Aidan hurt himself. You didn’t know him then. He was becoming so erratic, he could have dragged the company down with him.’
‘It’s hurt other people since.’ Rebus thought of Kirstie, finding out her father was no icon. He thought of her plan, a plan they all thought they could get away with because her father wasn’t going to get his daughter back – they’d been bartering for the LABarum document, and for Kirstie’s knowledge of the whole affair … And Willie and Dixie had died.
‘I accept,’ Mathieson was saying, ‘that a man died. Derwood’s gone crazy, that’s what it comes down to.’
‘There’s one other consideration,’ said Sir Iain, who’d had time to recover. ‘As Mr Haldayne will acknowledge, two more US companies have seen the benefits of locating their European operations in Lothian. If my name, or Mr Haldayne’s, were to be bandied about …’ Hunter gave a modest shrug.
‘Well,’ Rebus said, ‘this is turning into a harder sell than a Costa del Sol time-share.’ He turned to Simpson. ‘What about you, Joe?’
Simpson nearly slid from his chair. ‘What about me?’
‘Do you have any properties to bargain with in this little
game of moral “Monopoly”, or have you just picked up the Go-To-Jail card?’
‘I can’t go to jail! All I did was provide an accommodation address. It’s not illegal!’
‘Then why are you here?’ Rebus looked to Mathieson, whose lips twitched.
‘An offering,’ he said.
‘Hear that, Joe?’
Simpson had heard. He rose trembling to his feet.
‘You could always testify against them,’ Rebus told him.
‘With what?’ Haldayne said.
‘Mr Haldayne has a point, Inspector.’ Mathieson was sitting down again, in his big chief executive chair at the end of the table. Tables without corners were supposed to make everyone equal, but Mathieson’s chair was a leather throne. He looked and sounded completely unruffled by events thus far, while Rebus felt as if his head would explode.
Hundreds of jobs, spin-offs; happy, smiling faces. People like Salty Dougary, pride restored, given another chance. Did Rebus have the gall to think he could pronounce sentence on the future of people like that? People who wouldn’t care who got away with what, so long as
they
had a pay-cheque at the end of the month?
Gillespie had died, but Rebus knew these men hadn’t killed him, not directly. At the same time he hated them, hated their confidence and their indifference, hated their certainty that what they did was ‘for the good’.
They
knew the way the world worked;
they
knew who – or, rather,
what –
was in charge. It wasn’t the police or the politicians, it wasn’t anyone stupid enough to place themselves in the front line. It was secret, quiet men who got on with their work the world over, bribing where necessary, breaking the rules, but quietly, in the name of ‘progress’, in the name of the ‘system’.
Shug McAnally was dead, but no one was grieving: Tresa was spending his money, and having a good time with Maisie Finch. Audrey Gillespie, too, might start enjoying life for the first time in years, maybe with her lover. A man had died – cruelly and in terror – but he was all there was on Rebus’s side of the balance sheet. And on the other was everything else.
‘Well, Inspector?’ Mathieson could see something in Rebus’s eyes – a red light that had changed to amber. He rose from the throne. ‘Let’s have a drink.’
Rebus hadn’t noticed that the far wall was a series of recessed cupboards, their doors flush and handleless. Mathieson pushed the edge of one door and it opened automatically.
‘I hope malt whisky’s all right for everyone,’ Mathieson said, as lightly as if they’d just finished a few rubbers of bridge.
‘You don’t have a drop of gin?’ Joe Simpson squawked.
‘You’re right, Joe, I don’t.’
‘Then I’ll take whisky.’
‘Yes, Joe, you will.’
‘Inspector,’ Haldayne said in reasoned tones, ‘we’re in your hands. It’s your decision now.’
‘Let the man have a drink first,’ Mathieson chided.
Sir Iain was staring levelly at Rebus, his mouth a moral pout. There was a line from a song stuck in Rebus’s head, just when he least needed it: ‘
you can’t always get what you want, but if you try some time, you’ll find you get what you need
’.
I need a drink, he thought. And Robbie Mathieson – caring, smiling – brought him one.
‘You’re all right anyway,’ Rebus told Haldayne. ‘You’ll have diplomatic immunity, the Get-Out-Of-Jail-Free Card.’
Haldayne snorted his porcine laugh. ‘I’m also the only
one here who lost five grand to Derwood Charters over Albavise.’
‘And you should have stayed out of it,’ Sir Iain snarled.
‘Hey,’ Haldayne said, light glinting from his glasses, ‘it worked in the past, didn’t it?’
‘You know, Inspector,’ Mathieson said, rising above all this, ‘any other policeman, any other public official, I might have been tempted to try offering a financial incentive.’
They all shut up to listen. Rebus sipped from his crystal tumbler.
‘But with you,’ Mathieson went on, ‘I think that might have the opposite effect from the one intended.’
‘And how much cash would I be worth to you, Mr Mathieson?’
‘To me, nothing. But if it were a question of saving PanoTech … Well, it wouldn’t be a matter of actual cash, of course. Cash is messy, and you wouldn’t want any problems with the Inland Revenue.’
‘Perish the thought.’
‘But a new house with its own grounds, a trust fund for a daughter, shares in a company which is going to do extraordinarily well in the next few years … And then there are less tangible rewards – but no less valuable for that: friends in the right places, help when needed, a word in the right ear come promotion time …’ Mathieson’s voice died away as he handed out the final drink – a very mean whisky for Joe Simpson – and took one for himself. He stood behind his throne, a plane droning in the night sky behind him.
‘A little bit of bribery, eh?’ Rebus commented.
Sir Iain Hunter sat forward. He looked like he was losing patience fast. He tapped his stick on the floor as he spoke. ‘Is it wrong,’ he said, ‘to bribe rich foreign companies to come to a depressed region? I’d say, Inspector, that morally speaking, anyone who did that would be in the right.’
‘Blackmail’s blackmail,’ Rebus said.
‘I disagree.’
‘And tell me, is nobody lining their own pockets?’
Sir Iain savoured his whisky. ‘There must needs be incentives,’ he said drily.
Rebus laughed. He felt a little looser after the drink. ‘Exactly. And all this love of country and duty to the workers stuff is just so much shite. Tell me, why did you bring the DCC and me together that day?’
Sir Iain twisted in his chair. ‘I saw how dangerous Charters had become. I wanted him stopped, but my position would not allow me to … I felt it best to point you in the right direction rather than leading you there.’
Rebus laughed again. ‘You old fraud. We were there to put the wind up Mathieson, to stop him even
thinking
about talking.’ He turned to Mathieson. ‘You were sweating like a pig in the killing pen.’ Then back to Sir Iain. ‘You used us the same way Charters used McAnally.
And
you’ve blackmailed Haldayne into helping bring firms here. What is it, is corruption part of the job description?’
Hunter said nothing. He was too angry to speak.
‘Answer me this. Charters had a client called Quinlon, a building contractor who’d made money illicitly through a deal with someone in the SDA. Charters shopped Quinlon to the authorities so they’d think more seriously about closing down the SDA. Now, you all knew Charters back then, didn’t you? You all knew that if the SDA disappeared, all accounts would be closed and the various frauds would remain undiscovered. So did you know about Quinlon?’ He looked at Sir Iain. ‘Did Charters maybe come to you with the story, and leave
you
to see that the right people heard about it?’
‘This is sheer paranoia,’ Sir Iain said. ‘I refuse to discuss it.’
‘OK, let’s try this – Charters made a couple of million
through his paper companies. Enough to make a stint in jail worth while. That’s why he pled guilty. And when he gets out, the money’s waiting for him. You all know that, and you’re not going to do a thing about it. You know he’s a murderer, too, but you’ve kept quiet about that as well.’
‘Inspector,’ Haldayne said, ‘we’re not leeches.’
‘I know that – leeches are medicinal. You know something?’ He was talking to all of them now. ‘Tom Gillespie said something to me. He told me I was making a mistake. At the time, I took it as a threat, but it wasn’t – it was the literal truth. I thought because he had something to hide it must be something illicit. I was wrong about him all down the line; all he was was scared. He was terrified. Those last days of his life, all he felt was fear.’ And dear God, Rebus knew what that felt like.
‘Nobody’s mourning him!’ Sir Iain snapped.
Rebus turned to him. ‘Now how do you know that?’
‘What?’
‘He’s got a widow: you don’t think she’s in mourning?’
Sir Iain studied the handle of his cane. ‘I forgot,’ he said.
‘No, you didn’t,’ Rebus said quietly.
‘So, what’s it to be, Inspector?’ Mathieson himself was beginning to look impatient. He knew he had won the argument, but might still lose the fight. He had his glass half raised, ready for a toast if Rebus gave the right answer, the answer everybody wanted. ‘Just remember, if you want it, there’s a place for you.’
Rebus was still staring at Sir Iain Hunter. He finished his whisky in one go and put the glass down. With his hands on the table, he pushed himself upright out of the chair.
‘Here’s my answer, Mr Mathieson,’ he said.
He walked out without saying another word.
Because he hadn’t decided.
His pride wouldn’t let him kowtow to people like Hunter and Mathieson – they were men, not gods. And he hated people putting one over on him, which was exactly what would be happening if he gave in. But … but … He kept seeing those hundreds of faceless workers, driving to work in their new cars, or signing on in a sweltering dole office. One man’s life against thousands … It wasn’t fair, it shouldn’t be down to him to decide.
Well, what was stopping him taking it elsewhere? He drove into town along Corstorphine Road, past the office suite used by Mensung, and decided to drop into Torphichen Place. Davidson probably wouldn’t be there at this hour, but he could find out what was happening with Gillespie’s files.
The duty desk officer let him through the door. Rebus walked along the silent hall and up the stairs. The only person in the CID room was Rab Burns.
‘Hiya, John, what brings you here? The urbane conversation? The ersatz coffee?’
‘Bags of rubbish, to be precise.’
‘Eh?’
So Rebus explained, and Burns shook his head. ‘I don’t know anything about them.’
‘Maybe they were locked away at close of play.’
‘They’d be in the cupboard. Hold on, I’ll fetch the key.’
But there was nothing in the cupboard. ‘You don’t suppose they could have been thrown out by mistake?’
A shiver went across Rebus’s shoulders. ‘Mind if I use your phone?’ He punched in Davidson’s number and waited until the detective answered. ‘It’s me, where are the files?’
‘John, I was going to call you.’
‘Where are the files?’
‘Orders, John.’
‘What?’
‘They were requisitioned. I was going to tell you in the morning.’
‘Who was it?’
Davidson was a long time answering. ‘The DCC’s office.’
Rebus slammed down the receiver. Allan bloody Gunner! ‘Any idea of the DCC’s home number, Rab?’
‘Oh aye, we’re close friends like.’
Rebus’s look shut him up. They found the number on the Emergency roster. Rebus rang and waited and waited. A woman picked up the receiver. There was laughter in the background. A party, maybe a dinner party.
‘Mr Gunner, please.’
‘Who shall I say?’
‘Walt Disney.’
‘Pardon?’
Rebus was shaking with anger. ‘Just get him.’
A full minute later, Gunner lifted the receiver. ‘Who is this?’
‘It’s Rebus. What the fuck are you playing at?’
‘How dare you speak to me like that!’ The words were hissed, Gunner not wanting his guests in the other room to hear.
‘All right then. With respect, sir, what the fuck are you playing at?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘The Gillespie files, where are they?’
‘In the incinerator.’