Set in Darkness (7 page)

Rebus walked over towards him. ‘Good of you to tell me about the change of schedule.’

Linford blinked. ‘Is there a problem?’

Rebus stared him out. ‘No, no problem.’ There were others in the room: two hospital technicians, a police photographer, someone from Scene of Crimes, and a suited and queasy-looking man from the Advocate Depute’s office. Autopsies were always crowded, everyone either getting on with their work, or else fidgeting nervously.

‘I did a bit of boning up over the weekend,’ Gates was saying, addressing the room. ‘So I can tell you that, judging by the deterioration, our friend here probably died some time in the late nineteen seventies or early eighties.’

‘Have his clothes gone for analysis?’ Linford asked.

Gates nodded. ‘Howdenhall got them this morning.’

‘A young man’s clothes,’ Curt added.

‘Or an old one trying to look trendy,’ the photographer said.

‘Well, the hair shows no signs of grey. Doesn’t necessarily mean anything.’ Gates looked at the photographer, letting him know his theories weren’t welcome. ‘The lab will give us a better date of death.’

‘How did he die?’ This from Linford. Normally Gates would punish such impatience, but he didn’t so much as glance at the young DI.

‘Skull fracture.’ Curt pointed to the area with a pen. ‘Could be a post-mortem injury, of course. Might not be the cause of death.’ He caught Rebus’s eye. ‘A lot depends on the Scene of Crime results.’

The SOCO was scribbling into a thick notepad. ‘We’re working on it.’

Rebus knew what they’d be looking for – murder weapon to start with, and then trace evidence such as blood. Blood had a way of sticking around.

‘How did he end up in the fireplace anyway?’ he asked.

‘Not our problem,’ Gates said, smiling towards Curt.

‘I take it we’re noting this as a suspicious death?’ the Fiscal Depute asked, his bass baritone belying the lack of height and brittle frame.

‘I’d say so, wouldn’t you?’ Gates had straightened up, clattering one of his tools back on to its metal tray. It took a moment for Rebus to realise that the pathologist was holding something in his gloved hand. Something shrivelled and the size of a large peach.

‘Tough old organ, the heart,’ Gates said, examining the specimen.

‘You missed the beginning,’ Curt explained to Rebus. ‘Gash in the skin over the ribcage. Could have been rats . . .’

‘Aye,’ Gates admitted, ‘rats carrying knives.’ He showed the organ to his colleague. ‘Inch-wide incision. Maybe a kitchen knife, eh?’

‘Suspicious death,’ the Fiscal Depute muttered to himself, writing it down in his notebook.

‘I should have been told,’ Rebus hissed. He was in the hospital car park, not about to let Derek Linford drive back to the Big House.

‘I know about you, John. You’re not a team player.’

‘And that was your idea of team playing? Leaving me out?’

‘Look, maybe you’ve got a point. I just don’t think it’s anything to get het up about.’

‘But it’s our case, right?’

Linford had opened the driver’s door of his shiny new BMW. It was a 3-Series, but would do him for now. ‘In what way?’

‘The PPLC. We found him.’

‘It’s not in our brief.’

‘Come on. Who else is going to want it? Do you think the parliament really wants an unsolved murder on the premises?’

‘A murder from twenty-odd years ago: I hardly think it’ll cost them any sleep.’

‘Maybe not, but the press won’t let it go. Any whiff of scandal, they’ll be able to point back to it: Holyrood’s murky past, a parliament tainted with blood.’

Linford snorted, but then was thoughtful, finally producing a smile. ‘Are you always like this?’

‘I think Skelly is ours.’

Linford folded his arms. Rebus knew what he was thinking: the investigation would touch the parliament; it was a route to meeting the movers and shakers. ‘How do we play it?’

Rebus rested a hand on the BMW’s wing, saw Linford’s look and removed it. ‘How did he end up there? A couple of decades back, the place was a hospital. I’m guessing you couldn’t just walk in, tear down a wall and stuff a body behind it.’

‘You think the patients might have noticed?’

It was Rebus’s turn to smile. ‘It will mean a bit of digging.’

‘Your forte, I believe?’

Rebus shook his head. ‘I’ve had enough of all that.’

‘What do you mean?’

He meant ghosts, but wasn’t about to try to explain.
‘What about Grant Hood and Ellen Wylie?’ he said instead.

‘Will they want it?’

‘They won’t have any choice. Ever heard the phrase pulling rank?’

Linford nodded thoughtfully, then got into his car, but Rebus’s hand stopped him pulling the door closed.

‘Just one other thing. Siobhan Clarke is a friend of mine. Anyone makes her unhappy makes
me
unhappy.’

‘Don’t tell me: I wouldn’t like you when you’re angry?’ Linford smiled again, but coldly this time. ‘I get the feeling Siobhan wouldn’t thank you for fighting her battles for her. Especially when they’re all in your head. Goodbye, John.’

Linford started the engine, then let it idle as he took a call on his mobile. After listening for a few seconds, he stared out at Rebus and slid his window down.

‘Where’s your car?’

‘Two rows back.’

‘You’d better follow me then.’ Linford terminated the call and tossed the mobile on to his passenger seat.

‘Why? What’s happened?’

Linford slid both hands around the steering wheel. ‘Another body at Queensberry House.’ He stared through the windscreen. ‘Only a bit fresher this time.’

They’d passed the summer house the previous Friday. It was a flimsy wooden affair which had belonged to the hospital and stood inside the grounds, next to Her Majesty’s cherry tree. Like the tree, the summer house was for the chop. But for now it was a handy storage area; nothing valuable, there was no lock on the door. And even a lock would have been ineffective, since most of the windows were broken.

This was where the body had been found, lying amidst old paint tins, bags of rubble and broken tools.

‘Probably not the way he’d have chosen to go,’ Linford muttered, looking around him at the chaos of the site. Uniforms were erecting a cordon around the summer house and its vicinity. Workers in hard hats were being told to disperse. A crowd of them had gathered on the roof of one of the buildings under demolition, from where they had a grandstand view of proceedings. Maybe their fellow workers would join them. Maybe the roof would cave in. Not yet midday and Rebus was conjuring up worst-case scenarios, while praying this would be as bad as it got. The site manager was being interviewed in the security hut, complaining that all the police officers needed to be issued with hard hats. Rebus and Linford had filched a couple from the hut. SOCOs were unpacking the arcana of their craft. A doctor had pronounced death; the call had gone out to the available pathologists. All the building work on Holyrood Road had reduced it to a single lane, controlled by traffic lights. Now, with police cars and vans on the scene (including a grey one from the mortuary,
Dougie behind the wheel) queues were forming and tempers fraying. The sound of horns was growing into a chorus, rising into the bruised-looking sky.

‘Snow’s on the way,’ Rebus commented. ‘It’s cold enough for it.’ Yet the previous day had started mild, and even the rain had been like an April shower. Twelve degrees.

‘The weather’s not exactly a consideration,’ Linford snapped. He wanted to get closer to the body, wanted to be inside the summer house, but the
locus
had to be secured. He knew the rules: barging in meant leaving traces.

‘Doctor says the back of the skull was cracked open.’ He nodded to himself, looked towards Rebus. ‘Coincidence?’

Hands in pockets, Rebus shrugged. He was sucking on only his second cigarette of the morning. He knew Linford was tasting something: he was tasting fast-track. Not content with his own momentum, he was seeing a case, a big case. He was seeing himself at its heart, with media attention, the public clamouring for a result. A result he thought
he
could deliver.

‘He was running in my constituency,’ Linford was saying. ‘I’ve got a flat in Dean Village.’

‘Very nice.’

Linford stifled an embarrassed laugh.

‘It’s okay,’ Rebus assured him. ‘Times like this, we all tend to talk crap. It fills the spaces.’

Linford nodded.

‘Tell me,’ Rebus went on, ‘just how many murders have you worked?’

‘Is this where you pull the old I’ve-seen-more-corpses-than-you’ve-had-hot-dinners routine?’

Rebus shrugged again. ‘Just interested.’

‘I wasn’t always at Fettes, you know.’ Linford shuffled his feet. ‘Christ, I wish they’d get on with it.’ The body was still
in situ
, the body of Roddy Grieve. They knew his identity because a gentle search of his pockets had
produced a wallet. But they knew, too, because his face was recognisable, even though the light had gone from its eyes. They knew because Roddy Grieve was
somebody
, and seemed so even in death.

He was a Grieve, part of ‘the clan’, as they’d come to be called. Once, a keen interviewer had gone so far as to name them Scotland’s first family. Which was nonsense.

Everyone knew Scotland’s first family was the Broons.

‘What are you smiling at?’

‘Nothing.’ Rebus nipped his cigarette and returned it to the packet. He couldn’t know for sure whether stubbing it out would have contaminated the crime scene. But he knew the importance of Scene of Crime work. And he felt the sudden pang of desire for a drink, the drink he’d arranged with Bobby Hogan just before Friday’s discovery. A long bar-room session of reminiscence and tall tales, with no bodies buried in walls or dumped in summer houses. A drink in some parallel universe where people had stopped being cruel to each other.

And speaking of mental torture, here came Chief Superintendent Farmer Watson. He had Rebus in his sights, and his eyes had narrowed, as though taking aim.

‘Don’t blame me, sir,’ Rebus said, getting his retaliation in first.

‘Christ, John, can’t you stay out of trouble for one minute?’ It was only half a joke. Watson’s retirement was a couple of months away. He’d already warned Rebus that he wanted a quiet canter downhill. Rebus held up his hands in surrender and introduced his boss to Derek Linford.

‘Ah, Derek.’ The Chief Super held out a hand. ‘Heard of you, of course.’ The two men shook; kept shaking as they sized one another up.

‘Sir,’ Rebus interrupted, ‘DI Linford and I . . . we feel this should be our case. We’re looking at parliamentary
security, and this is a prospective MSP who’s been killed.’

Watson seemed to ignore him. ‘Do we know how he died?’

‘Not yet, sir,’ Linford was quick to answer. Rebus was impressed at the way he had changed. He was all fawning inferior now, eager to please the Big Chief. It was calculated, of course, but Rebus doubted Watson would notice, or even want to notice.

‘Doctor mentioned head trauma,’ Linford added. ‘Curiously, we’re getting a similar result from the body in the fireplace. Skull fracture and stab wound.’

Watson nodded slowly. ‘No stab wounds here, though.’

‘No, sir,’ Rebus said. ‘But all the same.’

Watson looked at him. ‘You think I’d let you
near
a case like this?’

Rebus shrugged.

‘I can show you the fireplace,’ Linford told Watson. Rebus wondered if he was trying to defuse the situation. Linford could get the case only through the PPLC, which meant not without Rebus.

‘Maybe later, Derek,’ the Farmer was saying. ‘Nobody’s going to bother much about a mouldy old skeleton when we’ve got Roddy Grieve on our hands.’

‘It wasn’t that mouldy, sir,’ Rebus felt bound to say. ‘And it’ll still need investigating.’

‘Naturally,’ Watson snapped. ‘But there are priorities, John. Even you’ve got to see that.’ Watson held a hand out, palm upwards. ‘Hell, is it starting to snow?’

‘Might persuade some of the audience to head indoors,’ Rebus said.

The Farmer grunted in agreement. ‘Well, if it’s going to start snowing, Derek, you might as well show me this fireplace of yours.’

Derek Linford looked as though he’d melt with pleasure, and started leading the Farmer indoors, leaving Rebus out in the cold, where he allowed himself a cigarette and a little smile. Let Linford work on the Farmer . . . that way
they might get both cases, a workload to keep Rebus busy through the winter’s darkest weeks, and the perfect excuse to ignore Christmas for another year.

Identification was a formality, albeit a necessary one. The public entered the mortuary by a door in High School Wynd, and were immediately faced by a door marked Viewing Room. There were chairs for them to sit in. If they chose to wander, they’d come across a desk with a department store mannequin seated behind it. The mannequin was dressed in a white lab coat and had a moustache pencilled below its nose – a rare, if bizarre, example of humour, given the surroundings.

It would be some time before Gates and Curt could get round to doing an autopsy, but, as Dougie reassured Rebus, there was ‘plenty of room in the fridge’. There wasn’t nearly so much space in the reception area outside the Viewing Room. Roddy Grieve’s widow was there. So were his mother and sister. His brother Cammo was flying up from London. An unwritten rule stated that the media kept clear of the mortuary, no matter how juicy the story. But a few of the most rapacious vultures had gathered on the pavement across the road. Rebus, stepping outside for a cigarette, approached them. Two journalists, one photographer. They were young and lean and had little or no respect for old rules. They knew him, shuffled their feet but made no attempt to move.

‘I’m going to ask nicely,’ Rebus said, shaking a cigarette from its pack. He lit it, then offered the pack around. The three shook their heads. One was fiddling with his mobile phone, checking messages on its tiny screen.

‘Anything for us, DI Rebus?’ the other reporter asked.

Rebus stared at him, seeing immediately that it was no good appealing to reason.

‘Off the record, if you like,’ the reporter persisted.