Ian Rankin - Set in Darkness

‘The good news’, he said, unwrapping a chocolate bar, ‘is that the computer was a late addition to Hastings’ office.’

‘How do you work that out?’

‘The stuff on the disks, it’s all dated ’78, early ’79.’

‘My box-file goes back to ’75,’ Siobhan Clarke complained.

‘ Wish You Were Here ,’ Rebus said. ‘Pink Floyd. September, I think it was. Much underrated.’

‘Thank you, Professor,’ Wylie said.

‘You lot were still at nursery, I presume?’

‘I’d really like to print this stuff out,’ Grant Hood mused. ‘Maybe if I phoned around the computer shops...’

‘What sort of stuff are we talking about?’ Rebus asked.

‘Bids on land. You know, gap sites, all that.’

‘Where?’

‘Calton Road, Abbey Mount, Hillside...’

‘What was he planning to do with them?’

‘Doesn’t say.’

‘He wanted all of them?’

‘Looks that way.’

‘That’s a lot of property,’ Wylie commented.

‘Well, a lot of building sites anyway.’

Rebus left the room, came back with an A — Z . He circled Calton Road, Abbey Mount and Hillside Crescent. ‘Tell me he had plans for Greenside,’ he said. Hood sat back down at the computer. They waited.

‘Yep,’ he said. ‘How did you know?’

‘Take a look. He was drawing a circle around Calton Hill.’

‘Why would he do that?’ Wylie asked.

‘1979,’ Rebus stated. ‘The devolution referendum.’

‘With the parliament sited there?’ Siobhan guessed.

Rebus nodded. ‘The old Royal High School.’

Wylie was seeing it now. ‘With the parliament there, all that land would have been worth a fortune.’

‘He took a gamble on Scotland voting Yes,’ Siobhan said. ‘And he lost.’

‘I wonder,’ Rebus said. ‘Did he have the money in the first place? Even back in the seventies — which is prehistory for you lot — those areas weren’t exactly cheap.’

‘What if he didn’t have the money?’ Hood asked.

It was Ellen Wylie who answered: ‘Then someone else did.’

They knew what they were after now: financial records; clues that someone other than Hastings and Alasdair Grieve had been a partner in the business. They stayed late, Rebus reminding them that they could head home if they liked. But they were working as a team — uncomplaining, focused — and no one was about to break the spell. He got the feeling it had nothing to do with overtime. Out in the corridor, taking a breather, he found himself alone with Ellen Wylie.

‘Still feel hard-done-by?’ he asked.

She stopped, looked at him. ‘How do you mean?’

‘You thought I was using the pair of you; just wondering if that’s still how you feel.’

‘Keep wondering,’ she said, moving off.

At seven o’clock, he treated them to dinner at Howie’s Restaurant. They discussed the case, progress and theories. Siobhan asked when the devolution vote had taken place.

‘March first,’ Rebus told her.

‘And Skelly was killed early in ’79. Could it have happened straight after the election?’

Rebus shrugged.

‘They finished in the basement at Queensberry House on March eighth,’ Wylie said. ‘A week or so later, Freddy Hastings and Alasdair Grieve do a runner.’

‘As far as we know,’ Rebus added.

Hood, cutting into his gammon, just nodded. Rebus, big spender, had splashed out on a bottle of the house white, but they weren’t making inroads. Siobhan was sticking to water; Wylie had taken a glass of wine but had yet to touch it. Hood had finished his glass but refused a refill.

‘Why is it I’m seeing Bryce Callan?’ Rebus said.

There was silence around the table for a moment, then Siobhan: ‘Because you want to?’

‘What would have happened to the land?’ Rebus asked.

Hood: ‘It would have been developed.’

‘And what does Callan’s nephew do?’

Clarke: ‘He’s a developer. But back then he was a labourer.’

‘Learning the ropes.’ Rebus swallowed some wine. ‘Land around Holyrood, any idea what it’s worth now they’re building the parliament there rather than Calton Hill or Leith?’

‘More than it was,’ Wylie guessed.

Rebus was nodding. ‘And now Barry Hutton’s eyeing up Granton, the Gyle, God knows where else.’

‘Because that’s his job.’

Rebus was still nodding. ‘Bit easier if you’ve got something your competitors haven’t.’

Hood: ‘You mean strongarm tactics?’

Rebus shook his head. ‘I mean friends in the right places.’

‘AD Holdings,’ Hood said, tapping the screen. Rebus stood over him, eyes squinting at the orange letters. Hood pinched the bridge of his nose, squeezed his own eyes shut, then opened them and shook his head briskly, as if to shake off cobwebs.

‘Long night,’ Rebus agreed. It was nearly ten; they were on the verge of calling a halt. A lot of good work done, but still — as Rebus had been the first to pun — nothing concrete.

And now this.

‘AD Holdings,’ Hood repeated. ‘Seems that’s who they were in bed with.’

Wylie had the phone book open. ‘Not in here.’

‘Probably gone bust,’ Siobhan guessed. ‘If they ever existed.’

Rebus was smiling. ‘Bryce Callan’s initials?’

‘BC,’ Hood supplied. Then he got it: ‘BC, AD.’

‘A little private joke. AD was going to be BC’s future.’ Rebus had already been busy on the phone, asking a couple of retired colleagues about Bryce Callan. He’d sold up late in ’79. Some of what he’d sold had gone to the upstart Morris Gerald Cafferty. Cafferty had started on the west coast, 1960s muscle for loan sharks. Drifted down to London for a time, post-Krays and Richardson. Made his name and learned his trade.

‘There’s always an apprenticeship, John,’ Rebus had been told. ‘These guys don’t come fully formed from the womb. And if they don’t learn, we put them away... and we keep on putting them away.’

But Cafferty had learned fast and well. By the time he’d reached Edinburgh, associated with Bryce Callan’s operation, and then branching out on his own, he’d shown a propensity for not making mistakes.

Until he’d met John Rebus.

And now he was back, and Callan, his old employer, was tied to the case. Rebus tried to make a connection, but couldn’t.

Bottom line: late in ’79, Callan threw in the towel. Or, put another way, headed overseas to where Britain’s extradition laws didn’t apply. Because he’d had enough? Or had his fingers burned? Or because he was worried about something... some crime that could come straight back to him?

‘It’s Bryce Callan,’ Rebus said now, ‘it’s got to be.’

‘Which just leaves the one little problem,’ Siobhan reminded him.

Yes: proving it.

It took them the best part of the next day, Thursday, to set everything up. Trawls through company records; phone calls. Rebus spent over an hour talking to Pauline Carnett, his contact at the National Criminal Intelligence Service, then another hour talking to a retired chief superintendent who had spent eight fruitless years in the 1970s pursuing Bryce Callan. When Pauline Carnett called him back, after she’d spoken to Scotland Yard and Interpol, she had a Spanish telephone number. 950 code: Almeria.

‘I once went there on holiday,’ Grant Hood said. ‘Too many tourists; we ended up trekking into the Sierra Nevadas.’

‘We?’ Ellen Wylie said, raising an eyebrow.

‘Me and a mate,’ Hood mumbled, his neck reddening. Wylie and Siobhan shared a wink and a smile.

They would have to make the call from the Chief Super’s office: his was the only one with a speaker phone. Besides, international calls were blocked in the rest of the station. Chief Superintendent Watson would be present, but that didn’t leave much room. It was decided that the three junior officers would be kept out, but a recording made.