Ian Rankin - Set in Darkness

‘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.