Ian Rankin - Set in Darkness

Hugh Cordover and Lorna Grieve walked Rebus out to his car.

‘Yes,’ Cordover said, ‘that’s probably their best song.’ He carried a cordless phone with him.

‘You know it’s about his father?’

‘I know they argued, and Peter got a song out of it.’ Cordover shrugged. ‘Does that mean it’s about his father? I think you’re being a bit too literal, Inspector.’

‘Maybe.’

Lorna Grieve was showing no ill-effects from the drink she’d consumed. She examined Rebus’s Saab as though it was a museum piece. ‘Do they still make these?’

‘The new models don’t come with gas lamps,’ Rebus told her. She smiled at him.

‘A sense of humour, how refreshing.’

‘Just one more thing...’ Rebus leaned into the car, came out with the Obscura album.

‘My God,’ Cordover said. ‘You don’t see many of these around.’

‘Wonder why,’ his wife muttered, staring at her photo on the cover.

‘I was going to ask if you’d sign it?’ Rebus said, bringing out a pen.

Cordover took the pen from him. ‘With pleasure. But hang on, do you want me or High Chord?’

Rebus smiled. ‘It’s got to be High Chord, hasn’t it?’

Cordover scrawled the name across the cover and made to hand the album back.

‘And the model...?’ Rebus asked. She looked at him and he thought she was going to refuse. But then she took the pen and added her name, studying the cover afterwards.

‘The hieroglyphs,’ Rebus asked, ‘any idea what they mean?’

Cordover laughed. ‘Not a clue. Some guy I knew, he was into that stuff.’ Rebus was noticing that some of the hieroglyphs were actually pentangles, like the pendant Peter Grief had worn.

Lorna laughed. ‘Come on, Hugh. You were into that stuff.’ She looked at Rebus. ‘He still is. Not quite Jimmy Page’s league, but it’s why we moved to Roslin, to be near the chapel. Bloody New Age mumbo-jumbo, growing a ponytail and everything.’

‘I think the Inspector has heard enough character assassination for one day,’ Cordover said, his face growing ugly. Then the phone rang, and he turned away to answer it, sounding suddenly excited. His voice took on a transatlantic twang, forgetting all about Lorna, all about Rebus. Leaving the two of them together. She folded her arms.

‘He’s pathetic, isn’t he? What do I see in him?’

‘Not for me to say.’

She studied him. ‘So was I right? Do you drink?’

‘Only socially.’

‘You mean as opposed to antisocially?’ She laughed. ‘I can be social when I want to. It’s just that I seldom want to be when Hugh’s around.’ She glanced back to where her husband was making for the house. He was talking numbers — money or record pressings, Rebus couldn’t tell.

‘So where do you drink?’ she asked.

‘A few places.’

‘Name them.’

‘The Oxford Bar. Swany’s. The Malting.’

She wrinkled her nose. ‘Why is it I’m seeing bare floorboards and cigarette smoke, swearing and bluster and not many women?’

He couldn’t help smiling. ‘You know them then?’

‘I feel I do. Maybe we’ll bump into one another.’

‘Maybe.’

‘I feel like kissing you. That’s probably not allowed, right?’

‘Right,’ Rebus agreed.

‘Maybe I’ll do it anyway.’ Cordover had disappeared into the house. ‘Or would that be classed as assault?’

‘Not if no charges were brought.’

She leaned forward, pecked him on the cheek. When she stepped back, Rebus saw a face at a window. Not Cordover: Peter Grief.

‘Peter’s song,’ Rebus said. ‘The one about his father. I didn’t catch the title.’

‘“The Final Reproof”,’ Lorna Grieve told him. ‘As in condemning.’

In his car, Rebus got on his mobile and asked Derek Linford how things had gone at The Exchange.

‘Roddy Grieve was whiter than white,’ Linford said. ‘No bad deals, no cock-ups, no unhappy punters. Also, none of his colleagues were out drinking with him on Sunday night.’

‘Which tells us what exactly?’

‘I’m not sure.’

‘A dead end then?’

‘Not quite: I did get a hot tip for an investment. How about you?’

Rebus glanced at the album on the passenger seat. ‘I’m not sure what I got, Derek. Talk to you later.’ He made another call, this time to a vinyl dealer in the city.

‘Paul? It’s John Rebus. Obscura’s Continuous Repercussions , signed by High Chord and Lorna Grieve.’ He listened for a moment. ‘It’s not mint, but it’s not bad.’ Listened again. ‘Get back to me if you can go any higher, eh? Cheers.’

He slowed the car so he could search in the glove compartment, found a Hendrix tape and slotted it home. ‘Love or Confusion’. Sometimes, you couldn’t be sure what the difference was.

Howdenhall was home to the city’s forensic science lab. Rebus wasn’t sure why Grant Hood and Ellen Wylie wanted to meet him there. Their message had been vague, hinting at some surprise. Rebus hated surprises. That kiss from Lorna Grieve... it hadn’t been a surprise exactly, but all the same. And if he hadn’t angled his head at the last moment, bottling out of some mouth-to-mouth... Jesus, and with Peter Grief watching from the window. Grief: Rebus had meant to ask about the name change. Grieve to Grief; verb to noun. But then he’d been brought up by his mother, so maybe his surname had been Collins. In which case, the change of name was still resonant, the young man laying claim to the missing half of his identity, his missed past.

Howdenhall: full of brainboxes, some of them looking barely out of their teens. People who knew about DNA and computer data. These days at St Leonard’s, you didn’t roll ink over a suspect’s fingers, you merely placed their palm to a computer pad. The prints flashed up on the screen, and Criminal Records came back to you immediately if there was a match. The process still amazed him, even after all these months.

Hood and Wylie were waiting for him in one of the meeting rooms. Howdenhall was still fairly new, and had a clean no-nonsense smell and feel to it. The large oval desk, made up of three movable sections, hadn’t had time to get scuffed or scored. The chairs were still comfortably padded. The two junior officers made to get up, but he waved them back down and seated himself across the table from them.

‘No ashtray,’ he remarked.

‘There’s no smoking, sir,’ Wylie explained.

‘I know that well enough. I just keep thinking I’ll wake up and it’ll all have been a bad dream.’ He looked around. ‘No coffee or tea either, eh?’

Hood sprang to his feet. ‘I can get you...’

Rebus shook his head. Still, it was good to see Hood so keen. Two empty polystyrene beakers on the table: he wondered who’d fetched them. Even money on Hood; Wylie at three to one.

‘Latest news?’ he asked.

‘Very little blood in the fireplace,’ Wylie said. ‘Chances are, Skelly was killed elsewhere.’

‘Which means less chance of the SOCOs coming up with anything useful.’ Rebus was thoughtful for a moment. ‘So why the secrecy?’ he asked.

‘No secrecy, sir. It’s just that when we found out Professor Sendak was going to be here this afternoon for a meeting...’

‘Seemed too good to miss, sir,’ Hood concluded.

‘And who’s Professor Sendak when he’s at home?’

‘Glasgow University, sir. Head of Forensic Pathology.’

Rebus raised an eyebrow. ‘Glasgow? Listen, if Gates and Curt find out, it’s your heads, not mine, okay?’

‘We cleared it with the Procurator Fiscal’s office.’

‘So what can this Sendak do that our own boffins can’t?’

There was a knock at the door.

‘Maybe we’ll let the professor explain,’ Hood said, not quite disguising the relief in his voice.