Ian Rankin - Standing in another's man grave

‘DCI Page, perhaps?’

Christ, the Complaints really did know everything. .

‘Something to hide, DI Clarke?’ Fox was asking.

‘I just like my privacy.’

‘Yes, me too. And that time we happened to bump into one another — I was trusting that you’d have understood our little chat was meant to be kept private.’

‘Then you should have said.’

‘Still, I can appreciate that John Rebus is an old and dear friend. You probably feel no qualms about sharing information with him.’ Though two doors, seventeen stone steps and a passageway separated them, it felt as if his mouth was only an inch or so from her face. She could hear each of his individual breaths.

‘John Rebus is proving invaluable to the McKie inquiry,’ she stated.

‘You mean he’s not gone out on one of his famous limbs yet — not as far as you’re aware.’

‘Why can’t you just leave him alone?’

‘Why can’t you see that he’s the same liability he’s always been? Don’t tell me life wasn’t simpler before he managed to inveigle his way on to the McKie case. .’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Why do you think he’s there? What titbits might he be passing back to his good friend Cafferty? Working cold cases is one thing, but now he has access to an entire floor of CID offices in Gayfield Square.’

‘You don’t know what you’re talking about.’

‘I know a cop gone bad when I see one. Rebus has spent so many years crossing the line, he’s managed to rub it out altogether. As far as he’s concerned, his way’s the right way, no matter how wrong the rest of us might know it to be.’

‘You don’t know him,’ Clarke persisted.

‘Then help me get to know him — talk me through some of the cases the pair of you worked.’

‘So you can twist it all around? I’m not that stupid.’

‘I know you’re not — far from it — and this is your chance to prove it to the people at the top, the people I talk to each and every day.’

‘I grass up my friend and you put in a word come promotion time?’

‘John Rebus should be extinct, Clarke. Somehow the Ice Age came and went and left him still swimming around while the rest of us evolved.’

‘I’d rather bludgeon Darwin with a claw hammer than evolve into you .’

She heard him give a sigh. ‘We’re not so different,’ he said quietly, sounding weary. ‘We’re both conscientious and hard-working. I can even see you joining the Complaints — maybe not this year or next, but sometime.’

‘I don’t think so.’

‘My instinct’s usually right.’

‘And yet you couldn’t be more wrong about John Rebus.’

‘That remains to be seen. Meantime, take care around him — I mean that. And feel free to call me any time you think he’s floundering — floundering or diving to the bottom. .’

She released the intercom button and walked back into her living room, crossing to the window and peering down on to the street, craning her neck left and right.

‘Where the hell did he go?’ she said to herself, failing to see Malcolm Fox anywhere. Then she looked at the message on her phone: I’m 5 minutes away and hope we can discuss your friend some more — Fox .

They had her home address and her mobile number.

And they knew about Page.

She sat back down in front of the TV, but her head was swimming.

‘Gym,’ she said, rising again and looking around for her holdall.

Rebus was most of the way home when he got a text message. It was from Nina Hazlitt:

Missoni Hotel. Too late for a drink?

He stayed on Melville Drive and took a left at the junction with Buccleuch Street. Then he thought of something and pulled over. Checked his phone again and opened the list of recent callers, adding Hammell’s mobile to his contacts page. Five minutes later he was parking on George IV Bridge. A member of the hotel staff asked him if he was checking in. The man was young and toned and wearing a kilt with a zigzag pattern. Rebus shook his head.

‘Just visiting,’ he said.

There was a bar off the main reception. Rebus couldn’t see Nina Hazlitt, so he texted to let her know he had arrived. The people in the bar seemed to have a thirst for cocktails. Rebus decided one more whisky wouldn’t do any harm, except to his chances of passing a breathalyser test. Two minutes later, Hazlitt joined him, pecking him on the cheek as if it was the most natural thing in the world.

‘Have you eaten?’ she asked. ‘The restaurant’s supposed to be good — or there’s a fish place next door.’

‘I’m fine,’ Rebus assured her. ‘How about you?’

‘I ate on the train.’

One of the bar staff asked her what she was drinking. She studied Rebus. ‘Not really your kind of place?’ she guessed.

‘Not really,’ he agreed.

‘Maybe we should go somewhere else.’

‘There’s the Bow Bar, right around the corner.’

She waited for him to finish the whisky, and placed her arm in his as they exited the hotel.

‘How’s your brother?’ Rebus asked.

She looked flustered, as if trying to remember how Rebus knew about him.

‘He answered the phone that night,’ Rebus explained.

‘Ah,’ she said. Then: ‘He’s all right.’

‘Does he have a name?’

‘Alfie.’

‘Is he just visiting, or. .?’

‘Are you always this inquisitive?’ she asked with a laugh. Then, stretching out an arm to point at the Bow Bar: ‘Is this the place?’

Rebus opened the door for her. She took one look at the interior and declared it ‘charming’. There was a table by the window, recently vacated. Rebus took the empties to the bar and ordered IPA for himself and a vodka tonic for her. The place was just noisy enough — no chance of anyone eavesdropping on their conversation. Back at the table, they chinked glasses.

‘So, how are things?’ she asked.

‘Things are interesting. I’ve got a foot in the door with the Annette McKie inquiry.’

‘They accept there’s a connection?’

‘They accept the possibility.’

‘Well, that’s progress.’ She seemed immediately more energised, pulling her shoulders back, eyes gleaming.

‘There’s no proof yet. And to be honest, the McKie case is throwing up other possibilities. The photos are the real link.’

‘Photos?’

He realised she didn’t yet know. ‘Annette McKie’s phone was used to send a photograph of a landscape at dusk. Same thing happened with Zoe Beddows.’

She took a moment to digest the information. ‘That can’t be coincidence. What about Brigid Young?’

‘The technology wasn’t around back then.’

‘Sally had her phone with her in Aviemore.’

‘Yes, I remember you saying.’

‘I don’t think it could take pictures though. .’ She thought for a moment. ‘Some of the people she knew at school keep a page for her on Friends Reunited.’

‘That’s kind of them.’

‘It has photos of her — school trips, parties, concerts. .’

‘Any way to know who visits it?’

‘I don’t think so.’

‘Might be worth finding out.’

She stared at him, eyes narrowing. ‘Why?’ But before he could answer, she had worked it out. ‘You think someone took her? One person stalking all these girls and then sending out photos? And he might have gone online posing as a friend. .?’ Her voice was rising, and Rebus gestured for her to bring it down a little. She took a couple of sips of her drink, trying to compose herself.

‘I’ll ask,’ she said, voice trembling. ‘I’ll ask Sally’s friends.’

Rebus thanked her and decided to try for a change of tack, asking what brought her back to Edinburgh.