Ian Rankin - Saints of the Shadow Bible

‘You’re imagining things.’

‘Whether I am or not, you’re going to have to deal with Fox — and he might look like the sort of big soft bear you’d win at the fair, but he’s got claws he’s spent his whole life sharpening.’

‘And why would we even have to speak to him?’

‘Because Elinor Macari will have made sure he has all the powers necessary. Right now, he’s requisitioning files and evidence from thirty years back. He’ll be well prepped when he comes calling.’

‘You said it yourself, John — thirty years. . Maybe none of us can remember that far back.’

‘I doubt that’s going to be much of a defence, Eamonn. Not if there’s anything in those files for him to find.’ Rebus paused. ‘So let me ask you right now: is there?’

‘You were there, John. You know how we worked.’

‘I know some of it.’ Rebus watched as Siobhan Clarke emerged from Young Street. She saw him and waved. ‘Any time you want to fill in the blanks for me, I’d gladly listen — might mean I can help.’

‘John. .’

‘Think it over,’ Rebus snapped, ending the call. Then, to Clarke: ‘Hello, you.’

‘I was going to walk to Gayfield Square. You headed that way?’

‘Why not?’ The two crossed the road, mindful of traffic, and started along Hill Street.

‘So what did you think?’ she asked at last.

‘You know me, Siobhan. I never give much thought to anything.’

‘Yet you seemed to have nailed Fox — this job’s just deferring the evil hour when he’s consigned to CID.’ She paused. ‘You don’t mind me acting as go-between?’ She watched him shrug. ‘Actually,’ she corrected herself, ‘I think the word Fox used was “referee”.’

‘We were just a bunch of guys, Siobhan, typical of CID back then.’

‘Except that you had a name for your gang.’

‘I never had as much time for it as the others. When we went out on a job, we had this tape in the car — The Skids singing “The Saints Are Coming”. It was mandatory to play it.’

‘And if you forgot?’

‘Someone would get annoyed — Gilmour usually.’

‘He’s a developer these days, isn’t he?’

‘Hotels mostly. Went into business with a big-name footballer.’

‘He’s worth millions?’

‘So the story goes.’

‘I’ve seen him on No campaign posters. . You still know him?’

Rebus stopped walking and turned to face her. ‘I saw him last night.’

‘Oh?’

‘At Dod Blantyre’s house.’

‘The meeting your friend Porkbelly was telling you about?’

Rebus nodded, eyes boring into hers. ‘You can take that to Fox if you like. Bound to get his antennae twitching — a panicky reunion of the Saints.’

‘Is that what it was?’

Rebus scratched at his jaw. ‘I’m not sure,’ he confided. ‘The pretext was we wanted to catch up with Blantyre.’

‘Because he’s had a stroke?’

‘But he knew about Macari. And they wanted me to see what I could find out.’

Clarke nodded her understanding. ‘Which is why you agreed to meet Fox? And that phone call you just made. .’

‘Was me reporting back to Paterson,’ Rebus confirmed. He had started to walk again, Clarke eventually catching up.

‘You’re trying to play both sides?’ she guessed. ‘Meaning you really don’t know what happened with Billy Saunders.’

‘I’m not sure it’s as straightforward as Fox thinks.’

‘So tell him that.’

‘And drop the others in it?’ Rebus shook his head. ‘Not until I’m certain.’

‘You’re going to do some digging of your own? You know how that will look to Fox, don’t you?’

‘I don’t give a damn how it looks to your friend Fox.’

Clarke grabbed his arm. ‘You know whose friend I really am.’

Rebus had stopped walking again. He looked down at his forearm, her hand clamped around it. ‘Of course I do,’ he said, almost gently. ‘You’re Malcolm Fox’s friend.’

She looked furious for the two or three seconds before he burst into a grin.

‘ You’re an absolute prick sometimes,’ she said, releasing her grip so she could curl her hand into a fist with which to punch him on the shoulder. Rebus winced and rubbed at the spot.

‘You been training with weights?’ he asked.

‘More than you have,’ she snapped back.

‘Same gym as your lawyer friend? Any more cheap dinners planned?’

‘You’re really not funny.’

‘Then why are you smiling?’ Rebus asked as they set off again.

‘Fox is taking charge of the files on the case,’ Clarke eventually commented.

‘Yes, he is,’ Rebus agreed.

‘So if you want to go digging. .’

‘All it’ll cost is my dignity,’ Rebus told her.

‘But back in the bar. .’

‘If I’d kowtowed straight away, he’d have suspected something.’ He glanced in her direction. ‘Some people might mistake that look for grudging admiration.’

‘They might,’ Clarke acknowledged. But she kept on looking.

The comms centre had gone through their logs for the night of the crash and found nothing from the western side of the city, other than the motorist who had called to report the crash itself. Rebus asked for those details anyway and jotted them down. He remembered the driver had been on her way home from her supermarket job in Livingston. He phoned her mobile and caught her at work. She asked how Jessica Traynor was doing.

‘Recovering,’ Rebus told her. ‘Meantime, I’ve a couple of follow-up questions, if that’s okay. When you stopped your car, you didn’t see any other signs of life?’

‘No.’

‘Nothing to indicate that she might not have been on her own at the time of the smash?’

‘Was there someone else there?’

‘We’re just trying to establish a picture, Mrs Muir.’

‘She was in the driver’s seat.’

‘And her door was open?’

‘I think so.’

‘What about the boot?’

‘I’ve really no idea. I suppose the impact could have. .’

‘You don’t remember whether it was open or closed?’

‘No.’ She paused, then apologised and asked if it was important.

‘Not really,’ Rebus assured her. ‘And you didn’t see any other vehicle? No lights further down the road?’ ‘No.’

‘I know it’s a lot to ask, but did you pass any cars travelling in the other direction in the minutes before you reached the scene?’

‘I was thinking about my supper. And I had the radio on, singing along most likely.’

‘So you don’t remember?’

‘I don’t.’

Rebus thanked her and hung up. He reckoned she would have remembered if some boy racer had come roaring out of nowhere. He got up from his desk and walked across to Christine Esson’s. ‘What have you got for me?’ he asked.

She pointed towards the printer. ‘You being old school, I decided you’d want it on paper.’

‘Are we out of papyrus then?’ He scooped up the thirty or so printed sheets.

‘There was more,’ she told him. ‘But it was all mergers and acquisitions — and a lot of duplication.’

‘This’ll do to start,’ Rebus said, returning to his desk and angling his chair so he could stretch his legs out. Then he began to read the internet’s version of Owen Traynor’s life and times. Age fifty-two, married for seventeen years to Josephine Gray, acrimonious (and costly) divorce. Traynor had been declared bankrupt in his mid twenties but come good again within ten years. He was Croydon-born, and had told one interviewer that he’d attended the ‘university of hard knocks’. More than one profile spoke of his rapid change of mood whenever a subject he didn’t like was raised. An interviewer even confided that Traynor had threatened to hang him by the feet from the window — while making it sound like a joke. Not so much of a joke when that irate investor had started kicking up a fuss — attacked on his doorstep, ending up in intensive care. Charges never pressed. There had been other instances of flare-ups, Traynor’s temper getting the better of him. Barred from at least one racecourse and one five-star hotel in London.