Ian Rankin - Exit Music

He gave a shrug and she turned back to Goodyear. 'Still reckon the meek will inherit the earth, Todd?'

'Psalm 37, Verse 11,' Goodyear intoned. But now Clarke's own phone was ringing. She picked it up and held it to her ear. John Rebus wanted a progress report.

'Just getting a bit of scripture from PC Goodyear,' she told him.

'The meek inheriting the earth and all of that.'

Rebus had only called because he was bored. But within a minute of Clarke answering his call, a black VW Golf was roaring to a kerbside stop outside the car park. The woman who emerged had to be Cath Mills, so Rebus cut the call short.

'Miss Mills?' he said, taking a step towards her. With late afternoon darkness had come biting gusts of wind, scudding in from the North Sea. He didn't know what he'd been expecting 'the Reaper' to be wearing – a full-length cape maybe. But in fact her coat was more like a parka with fur-trimmed hood. She was in her late thirties, tall, with red hair in a pageboy cut and black-rimmed spectacles. Her face was pale and rounded, lips reddened with lipstick. She looked nothing like the picture in his pocket.

'Inspector Rebus?' she assumed, giving a short-lived shake of the hand. She wore black leather driving gloves which she plunged into her pockets afterwards. 'I hate this time of year,' she muttered, checking the sky. 'Dark when you get up, dark when you go home.'

'You keep regular hours?' Rebus asked.

'Job like this, there's always something needs dealing with.' She glowered at the OUT OF ORDER sign next to the nearest exit barrier.

'So were you out and about on Wednesday night?'

She was still looking at the barrier. 'Home by nine, I seem to think. Problem at our facility in Canning Street – shift hadn't turned up. I got the attendant to pull a double, so that was that.'

Slowly, she turned her attention to Rebus. “You're asking about the night the man was killed.'

'That's right. Pity your CCTVs worse than useless… might've given us something to work with.'

'We didn't install it with slaughter in mind.'

Rebus ignored this. 'So you didn't happen to pass here around ten o'clock on the night it happened?'

'Who says I did?'

'No one, but we've a woman matching your description…' Okay, so he was stretching it, but he wanted to see how she would react.

All she did was raise an eyebrow and fold her arms.

'And how,' she asked, 'did you happen to get my description in the first place?' She glanced towards the car park. 'Boys been telling tales out of school? I'll have to see to it they're disciplined.'

'Actually, all they said was that you sometimes wear a hood. A pedestrian happened to spot a woman hanging around, and she was wearing a hood, too…'

'A woman with her hood up? At ten o'clock on a winter's night?

And this is your idea of narrowing the field?'

All of a sudden, Rebus wanted the day to be over. He wanted to be seated on a bar stool with a drink before him and everything else left far behind. 'If you weren't here,' he sighed, 'just say so.'

She thought this over for a moment. 'I'm not sure,' she said at last, drawing the words out.

'What do you mean?'

'Might liven things up, being a suspect in a police case…'

'Thanks, but we get quite enough time-wasters as it is. The worst offenders,' he added, 'we might even prosecute.'

Her face opened into a smile. 'Sorry,' she apologised. 'Been a long, gruelling day; I probably picked the wrong person to tease.'

Her attention was back on the barrier. 'I suppose I should talk to Gary, make sure he's reported that.' She peeled back a glove to look at her wristwatch. 'Just about see me through to the end of play…' She brought her eyes back to Rebus's. 'After which I dare say I can be located in Montpelier 's.'

'Wine bar in Bruntsfield?' It had taken Rebus only a couple of seconds to place it.

Her smile widened. 'Thought you looked the kind who'd know,'

she said.

In the end, he stayed for three drinks – blame the “Third Glass Free' promotion. Not that he was drinking glasses of anything: three small bottles of imported lager, keeping his wits about him. Cath Mills was a pro, her own three drinks adding up to a whole bottle of Rioja. She'd parked her car around the corner,

since she lived in some flats nearby and could leave it there overnight.

'So don't think you can have me for drunk-driving,' she'd said with a wag of the finger.

'I'm walking, too,' he'd answered, explaining that his own flat was in Marchmont.

When he'd entered the bar, assailed by loudspeaker music and office chatter, she'd been waiting in a booth at the back.

'Hoping I wouldn't find you?' he'd speculated.

'Don't want to seem too easy, do I?'

The conversation had mostly been about his job, plus the usual Edinburgh rants: the traffic, the roadworks, the council, the cold.

She'd warned him that there wasn't much of a story to her own life.

'Married at eighteen, divorced by twenty; tried again at thirty four and it lasted all of six months. Should have known better by then, shouldn't I?'

“You can't always have been a parking supervisor, though?'

Indeed not: office job after office job, then her own little consulting business which had plummeted to earth after two and a half years, not helped by Husband Two hoofing it with the savings.

'I was a PA after that but couldn't hack it… bit of time on the dole and trying to retrain, then this came along.'

'My line of work,' Rebus had said, 'I hear people's stories all the time – they always hold back the interesting stuff.'

'Then take me in for questioning,' she'd replied, stretching her arms wide.

Eventually, he'd got her to say a little about Gary Walsh and Joe Wills. She, too, suspected Wills of drinking on the job, but had yet to catch him.

'Being a detective, you could find out for me.'

'It's a private eye you need. Or set up a few more CCTV cameras without him knowing about it.'

She'd laughed at that, before telling the waitress she was ready for her free drink.

After an hour, they were checking their watches and giving little smiles across the table to one another. 'What about you?' she'd asked. 'Found anyone who'll put up with you?'

'Not for a while. I was married, one daughter – in her thirties now.'

'No office romances? High-pressure job, working in a team… I know how it is.'

'Hasn't happened to me,' he'd confirmed.

'Bully for you.' She sniffed and gave a twitch of the mouth. 'I've given up on one-night stands… more or less.' The twitch becoming another smile.

'This has been nice,' he'd said, aware of how awkward it sounded.

“You won't get into trouble for consorting with a suspect?'

'Who's going to tell?'

'Nobody needs to.' And she'd pointed towards the bar's own CCTV camera, trained on them from a corner of the ceiling. They'd both laughed at that, and as she shrugged back into her parka he'd asked again: 'Were you there that night? Be honest now…' And she'd shaken her head, as much of an answer as he was going to get.

Outside, he'd handed her a business card with the number of his mobile on it. No peck on the cheek or squeeze of the hand: they were two scarred veterans, each respectful of the other. On his way home, Rebus had stopped for fish and chips, eating them out of the little cardboard box. They didn't come wrapped in newspaper any more, something to do with public health. Didn't taste the same either, and the portions of haddock had been whittled away. Blame overfishing in the North Sea. Haddock would soon be a delicacy; either that or extinct. He'd finished by the time he arrived at his tenement, pulling himself up the two flights of stairs. There was no mail waiting, not even a utility bill. He switched on the lights in the living room and selected some music, then called Siobhan.