Ian Rankin - Exit Music

Sievewright stomped back into her flat and made straight for the narrow kitchen, where she picked up the kettle and filled it. 'The other two, I thought they were going to deal with it.'

Meaning, Hawes guessed, Rebus and Clarke. 'Why does he keep coming round?' she asked.

Sievewright tugged at a straggle of hair above one ear. 'No idea.

Says he wants to check I'm all right. But when I tell him I am, he conies back again! I think he hangs around until he knows I'm in the flat on my own…' She twisted the hair into a tighter skein.

'Fuck him,' she said defiantly, hunting among the mugs on the drainer for the one least likely to poison her.

'You could make a formal complaint,' Hawes told her, 'explain he's harassing you…'

'Reckon that would stop him?'

'It might,' Hawes said, believing it about as much as the girl herself did. Sievewright had rinsed her chosen mug and now dumped a tea bag into it. She patted the kettle, willing it to boil.

'Social call, was it?' she asked at last.

Hawes rewarded her with a friendly smile. 'Not exactly. Some new information's come to light.'

'Meaning you've not arrested anybody.'

'No,' Hawes admitted.

'So what's this information?'

'A woman in a hood, seen hanging around the exit to the multistorey.'

Hawes showed her the e-fit. 'If she was still there, you'd have walked right past her.'

'I didn't see anyone… I've already told you this!'

'Easy, Nancy,' Hawes said quietly. 'Calm yourself down.

'I'm calm.'

'The tea's a good idea.'

'I think the kettle's knackered.' Sievewright was resting the

palm of her hand against it.

'No, it's fine,' Hawes reassured her. 'I can hear it.'

Sievewright was staring at the kettle's reflective surface.

'Sometimes we try to see how long we can stay touching it while it boils.'

'We?'

The and Eddie.' She gave a sad little smile. 'I always win.'

'Eddie being…?'

'My flatmate.' She looked at the detective. 'We're not a couple.'

The front door creaked and they turned to look down the passageway.

It was Colin Tibbet.

'He's gone,' Tibbet told them.

'Good riddance,' Sievewright muttered.

'Did he tell you anything?' Hawes asked her partner.

'Seemed adamant neither he nor his wife saw any woman in a hood. He asked if maybe it was a ghost of some kind.'

'I meant,' Hawes said, voice toneless, 'did he say why he was giving Nancy here such a hard time?'

Tibbet shrugged. 'Told me she'd had this great shock and he wanted to be sure she wasn't bottling it up. “Storing up trouble for later” I think his exact words were.'

Sievewright, one hand still pressed to the kettle, gave a hoot of derision.

'Very noble of him,' Hawes said. 'And the fact that his act of charity isn't at all what Nancy wants…?'

'He promised to stay away.'

'Fat chance,' Sievewright sneered.

'That kettle's nearly boiled,' Tibbet felt it necessary to warn her, having just noticed what she was doing with her hand. He was rewarded with something that was between a grimace and a smile.

'Anyone care to join me?' Nancy Sievewright offered.

The headline on page five of the Evening News was DAS KAPITALISTS. The story below it recounted a dinner at one of Edinburgh 's Michelin-rated restaurants. The party of Russians had booked the whole place. Fourteen sat down to a dinner of foie gras, scallops, lobster, veal, sirloin, cheese and dessert, washed down with several thousand pounds' worth of champagne, white Burgundy and venerable red Bordeaux, finishing with port from before the Cold War. Six grand in total. The reporter liked the fact that the champagne – Roederer Cristal – had been a favourite with the tsars of pre-revolutionary Russia. None of the diners was identified by name. Rebus couldn't help wondering if Cafferty had slimed his way on to the guest list. Another story on the page opposite stated that the murder rate was down – there had been ten in the past year, twelve the year before that.

They were seated around a large corner table in a Rose Street pub. The place was about to get noisy: Celtic were readying to kick off against Manchester United in the Champions' League and the big-screen TV was the focus of most drinkers' attentions. Rebus closed the paper and tossed it back towards Goodyear, who was seated across from him. He realised he'd missed the last bit of Phyllida Hawes's story, so got her to repeat Anderson 's words: storing up trouble for later.

'I'll give him “trouble”,' he muttered. 'And he can't say I didn't give him fair warning…'

'So far,' Colin Tibbet said, 'we've only got one sighting of the mystery woman.' Having noticed that Todd Goodyear had taken off his tie, he was now in the process of removing his own.

'Doesn't mean she wasn't there,' Clarke told him. 'Even if she

played no part, she might have seen something. There's a line in one of Todorov's poems about averting your eyes so you'll never have to testify.'

'And what's that supposed to mean?' Rebus asked her.

'She could be lying low for a reason – people don't always want to get involved.'

'Sometimes,' Hawes agreed, 'they have good reason not to get involved.'

'Do we still think Nancy Sievewright's holding something back?'

Clarke asked.

'That friend of hers was definitely spinning us a yarn,' Tibbet said.

'So maybe we need to go over her story again.'

'Anything so far from those tapes?' Hawes was asking. Clarke shook her head and gestured towards Goodyear.

'Just that the deceased liked to listen into people's conversations,'

he obliged, 'even if it meant following them around.'

'Bit of a weirdo, then?'

'One way of looking at it,' Clarke conceded.

'Christ's sake,' Rebus butted in, 'there's a bigger picture you're not looking at – Todorov's last stop before ending up dead… a drink with Big Ger Cafferty, and some of the Russians not ten yards away!' He rubbed a hand across his forehead.

'Can I just ask one thing?'

Rebus stared at Goodyear. 'And what's that, young Todd?'

'Don't take the Lord's name in vain.'

Tou taking the piss?'

But Goodyear was shaking his head. 'I'd look on it as a great favour…'

“Which church do you go to, Todd?' Tibbet asked.

'St Fothad's in Saughtonhall.'

'That where you live?'

'Where I grew up,' Goodyear corrected Tibbet.

'I used to go to the kirk,' Tibbet went on. 'Stopped when I was fourteen. My mum died from cancer, couldn't see the point after that.'

'”God is the place that always heals over,“' Goodyear recited, '”however often we tear it“.' He smiled. 'That's from a poem, though not one of Todorov's. Seems to make sense of it all – to me, at any rate.'

'Hell's teeth,' Rebus said. 'Poems and quotations and the Church of Scotland. I don't come to pubs for a sermon.'

Tou're not alone,' Goodyear told him. 'Plenty of Scots try to hide their cleverness. We don't trust clever people.'

Tibbet was nodding. 'We're supposed to be “all Jock Tamson's bairns” – meaning we're all the same.'

'And not allowed to be different.' Goodyear was nodding back at him.

'See what you're going to miss when you retire?' Clarke said, her eyes on Rebus. 'Intellectual debate.'

'I'm getting out just in time, then.' He started to rise to his feet. 'Now if you eggheads will excuse me, I've got a tutorial with Professor Nicotine…'

Rose Street was busy: a hen-night pub crawl, the women dressed in identical T-shirts marked with the words 'Four Weddings and a Piss-Up'. They blew kisses at Rebus as they passed him, but were then stopped by a crowd of young men heading in the opposite direction. A stag do by the look of it, the groom-to-be spattered with shaving foam, eggs and flour. Office workers eased past, on their way home after a couple of bevvies. There were tourist families, too, not sure what to make of the hens and stags, and men hurrying to catch the match.