Ian Rankin: Let It Bleed

‘I accept,’ Mathieson was saying, ‘that a man died. Derwood’s gone crazy, that’s what it comes down to.’

‘There’s one other consideration,’ said Sir Iain, who’d had time to recover. ‘As Mr Haldayne will acknowledge, two more US companies have seen the benefits of locating their European operations in Lothian. If my name, or Mr Haldayne’s, were to be bandied about …’ Hunter gave a modest shrug.

‘Well,’ Rebus said, ‘this is turning into a harder sell than a Costa del Sol time-share.’ He turned to Simpson. ‘What about you, Joe?’

Simpson nearly slid from his chair. ‘What about me?’

‘Do you have any properties to bargain with in this little game of moral “Monopoly”, or have you just picked up the Go-To-Jail card?’

‘I can’t go to jail! All I did was provide an accommodation address. It’s not illegal!’

‘Then why are you here?’ Rebus looked to Mathieson, whose lips twitched.

‘An offering,’ he said.

‘Hear that, Joe?’

Simpson had heard. He rose trembling to his feet.

‘You could always testify against them,’ Rebus told him.

‘With what?’ Haldayne said.

‘Mr Haldayne has a point, Inspector.’ Mathieson was sitting down again, in his big chief executive chair at the end of the table. Tables without corners were supposed to make everyone equal, but Mathieson’s chair was a leather throne. He looked and sounded completely unruffled by events thus far, while Rebus felt as if his head would explode.

Hundreds of jobs, spin-offs; happy, smiling faces. People like Salty Dougary, pride restored, given another chance. Did Rebus have the gall to think he could pronounce sentence on the future of people like that? People who wouldn’t care who got away with what, so long as they had a pay-cheque at the end of the month?

Gillespie had died, but Rebus knew these men hadn’t killed him, not directly. At the same time he hated them, hated their confidence and their indifference, hated their certainty that what they did was ‘for the good’. They knew the way the world worked; they knew who — or, rather, what — was in charge. It wasn’t the police or the politicians, it wasn’t anyone stupid enough to place themselves in the front line. It was secret, quiet men who got on with their work the world over, bribing where necessary, breaking the rules, but quietly, in the name of ‘progress’, in the name of the ‘system’.

Shug McAnally was dead, but no one was grieving: Tresa was spending his money, and having a good time with Maisie Finch. Audrey Gillespie, too, might start enjoying life for the first time in years, maybe with her lover. A man had died — cruelly and in terror — but he was all there was on Rebus’s side of the balance sheet. And on the other was everything else.

‘Well, Inspector?’ Mathieson could see something in Rebus’s eyes — a red light that had changed to amber. He rose from the throne. ‘Let’s have a drink.’

Rebus hadn’t noticed that the far wall was a series of recessed cupboards, their doors flush and handleless. Mathieson pushed the edge of one door and it opened automatically.

‘I hope malt whisky’s all right for everyone,’ Mathieson said, as lightly as if they’d just finished a few rubbers of bridge.

‘You don’t have a drop of gin?’ Joe Simpson squawked.

‘You’re right, Joe, I don’t.’

‘Then I’ll take whisky.’

‘Yes, Joe, you will.’

‘Inspector,’ Haldayne said in reasoned tones, ‘we’re in your hands. It’s your decision now.’

‘Let the man have a drink first,’ Mathieson chided.

Sir lain was staring levelly at Rebus, his mouth a moral pout. There was a line from a song stuck in Rebus’s head, just when he least needed it: you can’t always get what you want, but if you try some time, you’ll find you get what you need’.

I need a drink, he thought. And Robbie Mathieson — caring, smiling — brought him one.

‘You’re all right anyway,’ Rebus told Haldayne. ‘You’ll have diplomatic immunity, the Get-Out-Of-Jail-Free Card.’

Haldayne snorted his porcine laugh. ‘I’m also the only one here who lost five grand to Derwood Charters over Albavise.’

‘And you should have stayed out of it,’ Sir Iain snarled.

‘Hey,’ Haldayne said, light glinting from his glasses, ‘it worked in the past, didn’t it?’

‘You know, Inspector,’ Mathieson said, rising above all this, ‘any other policeman, any other public official, I might have been tempted to try offering a financial incentive.’

They all shut up to listen. Rebus sipped from his crystal tumbler.

‘But with you,’ Mathieson went on, ‘I think that might have the opposite effect from the one intended.’

‘And how much cash would I be worth to you, Mr Mathieson?’

‘To me, nothing. But if it were a question of saving PanoTech … Well, it wouldn’t be a matter of actual cash, of course. Cash is messy, and you wouldn’t want any problems with the Inland Revenue.’

‘Perish the thought.’

‘But a new house with its own grounds, a trust fund for a daughter, shares in a company which is going to do extraordinarily well in the next few years … And then there are less tangible rewards — but no less valuable for that: friends in the right places, help when needed, a word in the right ear come promotion time …’ Mathieson’s voice died away as he handed out the final drink — a very mean whisky for Joe Simpson — and took one for himself. He stood behind his throne, a plane droning in the night sky behind him.

‘A little bit of bribery, eh?’ Rebus commented.

Sir Iain Hunter sat forward. He looked like he was losing patience fast. He tapped his stick on the floor as he spoke. ‘Is it wrong,’ he said, ‘to bribe rich foreign companies to come to a depressed region? I’d say, Inspector, that morally speaking, anyone who did that would be in the right.’

‘Blackmail’s blackmail,’ Rebus said.

‘I disagree.’

‘And tell me, is nobody lining their own pockets?’

Sir lain savoured his whisky. ‘There must needs be incentives,’ he said drily.

Rebus laughed. He felt a little looser after the drink. ‘Exactly. And all this love of country and duty to the workers stuff is just so much shite. Tell me, why did you bring the DCC and me together that day?’

Sir lain twisted in his chair. ‘I saw how dangerous Charters had become. I wanted him stopped, but my position would not allow me to … I felt it best to point you in the right direction rather than leading you there.’

Rebus laughed again. ‘You old fraud. We were there to put the wind up Mathieson, to stop him even thinking about talking.’ He turned to Mathieson. ‘You were sweating like a pig in the killing pen.’ Then back to Sir lain. ‘You used us the same way Charters used McAnally. And you’ve blackmailed Haldayne into helping bring firms here. What is it, is corruption part of the job description?’

Hunter said nothing. He was too angry to speak.

‘Answer me this. Charters had a client called Quinlon, a building contractor who’d made money illicitly through a deal with someone in the SDA. Charters shopped Quinlon to the authorities so they’d think more seriously about closing down the SDA. Now, you all knew Charters back then, didn’t you? You all knew that if the SDA disappeared, all accounts would be closed and the various frauds would remain undiscovered. So did you know about Quinlon?’ He looked at Sir Iain. ‘Did Charters maybe come to you with the story, and leave you to see that the right people heard about it?’

‘This is sheer paranoia,’ Sir Iain said. ‘I refuse to discuss it.’