Ian Rankin - A Question of Blood

Without realizing it, she’d walked from her desk to the window, peering out on to St. Leonard’s Lane. The CID room was dead, all the Port Edgar interviews concluded. Transcripts would be typed up, collated. It would be someone’s job to feed it all into the computer system, see if technology could find connections missed by the merely mortal…

The letter writer wanted her to make his day. His day? She studied the writing again. Maybe an expert could tell if it was a masculine or feminine hand. She suspected the writer had disguised his or her real handwriting. Hence the scrawl. She went back to her desk and called Ray Duff.

“Ray, it’s Siobhan-got anything for me?”

“Morning to you, too, DS Clarke. Didn’t I say I’d get back to you when- if -I found something?”

“Meaning you haven’t?”

“Meaning I’m up to my neck. Meaning I haven’t yet got round to doing very much about your letter, for which I can only offer an apology and the excuse that I’m flesh and blood.”

“Sorry, Ray.” She gave a sigh, pinched the bridge of her nose.

“You’ve had another one?” he guessed.

“Yes.”

“One yesterday, one today?”

“That’s right.”

“Want to send me it?”

“I think I’ll hang on to this one, Ray.”

“As soon as I’ve got news, I’ll call you.”

“I know you will. Sorry I’ve bothered you.”

“Speak to someone, Siobhan.”

“I already have. Bye, Ray.”

She cut the call, tried Rebus’s mobile, but he wasn’t answering. She didn’t bother with a message. Folded the note, put it back in its envelope, slipped the envelope into her pocket. On her desk sat a dead teenager’s laptop, her task for the day. There were over a hundred files in there. Some would be computer applications, but most were documents created by Derek Renshaw. She’d already looked at a few: correspondence, school essays. Nothing about the car crash in which his friend had died. Looked like he’d been trying to set up some sort of jazz fanzine. There were pages of layout, photos scanned in, some of them lifted from the ’Net. Plenty of enthusiasm, but no real talent for writing. Miles was an innovator, no question, but later on he acted more as a scout, finding the best new talent around and embracing it, hoping something would rub off on himself… Siobhan just hoped Miles had wiped himself clean afterwards. She sat in front of the laptop and stared at it, trying to concentrate. The word CODY was bouncing around her head. Maybe it was a clue… leading to someone with that surname. She didn’t think she knew anyone named Cody. For a moment she had a jarring thought: Fairstone was still alive, and the charred corpse belonged to someone called Cody. She shook the notion aside, took a deep breath, got back to work.

And hit an immediate brick wall. She couldn’t log on to Derek Renshaw’s e-mail account without his password. She picked up the phone and called South Queensferry, thankful that Kate answered rather than her father.

“Kate, it’s Siobhan Clarke.”

“Yes.”

“I’ve got Derek’s computer here.”

“Dad told me.”

“But I forgot to ask for his password.”

“What do you need that for?”

“To look at any new e-mails.”

“Why?” Sounding exasperated, wanting it all to be finished.

“Because that’s what we do, Kate.” Silence on the line. “Kate?”

“What?”

“Just checking you hadn’t hung up on me.”

“Oh… right.” And then the line went dead. Kate Renshaw had hung up on her. Siobhan gave a silent curse, decided she’d try again later or get Rebus to do it. He was family after all. Besides, she had the folder with all Derek’s old e-mails-no code needed to access that. She scrolled back, found that there were four years’ worth of e-mails in the folder. She hoped Derek had been neat and tidy, hoped he’d erased all the junk. She was five minutes into the task and bored of rugby scores and match reports when her phone rang. It was Kate.

“I’m really sorry,” the voice said.

“Don’t be. It’s all right.”

“No, it’s not. You’re just trying to do your job.”

“Doesn’t mean you have to like it. If I’m being honest, I don’t always like it either.”

“His password was Miles.”

Of course. It would have taken Siobhan only a few minutes of lateral thinking.

“Thanks, Kate.”

“He liked to go online. Dad complained for a while about the phone bills.”

“You were close, weren’t you, you and Derek?”

“I suppose so.”

“Not every brother would share his password.”

A snort, something almost like a laugh. “I guessed it. Only took me three goes. He was trying to guess mine, and I was trying to guess his.”

“Did he get yours?”

“Bugged me for days about it, kept coming up with new ideas.”

Siobhan’s left elbow rested on the desktop. She bunched her fist and rested her head against it. Maybe this was going to turn into a long call, a conversation Kate needed to have.

Memories of Derek.

“Did you share his taste in music?”

“God, no. His stuff was all shoe-gazing. Sat in his room for hours, and if you went in, he was cross-legged on the bed, head in the clouds. I tried dragging him to a few clubs in town, but he said they just depressed him.” Another snort. “Different strokes, I suppose. He got beaten up once, you know.”

“Where?”

“In town. I think that’s when he started sticking close to home. Some kids he bumped into didn’t like his ‘posh’ accent. There’s a lot of that, you know. We’re all snobs, because our parents are rich shits who pay for our education; they’re all schemies who’ll end up on the dole… that’s where it starts.”

“Where what starts?”

“The aggression. I remember my last year at Port Edgar, we got a letter ‘advising’ us not to wear our uniform in town, unless we were on a supervised trip.” She gave a long sigh. “My parents pinched and scraped so we could go private. It might even be what broke them up.”

“I’m sure that’s not true.”

“A lot of their fights had to do with money.”

“Even so…”

There was silence on the line for a moment. “I’ve been going on the ’Net, looking up stuff.”

“What sort of stuff?”

“All sorts… trying to work out what made him do it.”

“Lee Herdman, you mean?”

“There’s this book, it’s by an American. He’s a psychiatrist, or something. Know what it’s called?”

“What?”

“ Bad Men Do What Good Men Dream. Do you think there’s any truth in that?”

“Maybe I’d have to read the book.”

“I think he’s saying we’ve all got it in us, the potential to… well, you know…”

“I don’t know about that.” Siobhan was still thinking of Derek Renshaw. The beating was another thing he hadn’t mentioned so far in his computer files. So many secrets…

“Kate, is it all right if I ask…?”

“What?”

“Derek wasn’t depressed, or anything, was he? I mean, he liked sports and stuff.”

“Yes, but when he came home…”

“He’d rather sit in his room?” Siobhan guessed.

“With his jazz and his surfing.”

“Any sites in particular? Any favorites?”

“He used a couple of chat rooms, bulletin boards.”

“Let me guess: sports and jazz?”

“Bull’s-eye.” There was a pause. “You know what I said about Stuart Cotter’s family?”

Stuart Cotter: the crash victim. “I remember,” Siobhan said.

“Did you think I was crazy?” Kate trying for a lightness of tone.

“It’ll be looked into, don’t worry.”