Ian Rankin - Exit Music

Rebus closed the safe and spun the dial, then switched off the light and padded back upstairs, the box of discs in his hand. The home cinema boasted shuttered windows and a row of leather recliners, behind which was a further row comprising two doubleseater sofas. He crouched down in front of the battery of machines and slotted the DVD home, then switched on the screen and retreated to one of the chairs. It took him three different remotes to get everything – screen, DVD player and loudspeakers – working.

Seated on the edge of the black leather chair, he began to watch what appeared to be surveillance footage…

A room. A living room. Untidy, and with bodies sprawled. Two of the bodies disentangled themselves and headed elsewhere, holding hands. There was a sudden cut to a bedroom, the same two figures appearing, peeling off their clothes as they started to kiss.

Teenagers. Rebus recognised neither of them; didn't recognise the setting either – somewhere a lot tattier than Cafferty's own house.

Okay, so the gangster got his jollies from amateur porn…

Rebus skipped ahead but the action stayed with the couple and their coupling. They were filmed from above and from the side.

Another skip and the girl was in a bathroom, seated on the pan and then stripping off again to take a shower. She was skinny, almost emaciated, and had bruises on her arms. He skipped again but there was nothing else on the disc.

Next one – with a blue dot rather than a green. Different yet similar location; different yet all-too-familiar action.

'Showing your pervy side, Cafferty,' Rebus muttered, ejecting the disc. He tried another green dot – back to the characters from the first disc. Pattern emerging, John… Red dot: another flat, some communal dope-smoking, a girl having a bath, a guy pleasuring himself in his bedroom.

Rebus wasn't looking for any surprises from the yellow dot.

Immediately, he was launched into the same set-ups as previously, but with one important difference – he knew both the flat and the actors.

Nancy Sievewright; Eddie Gentry. The flat on Blair Street. The flat which belonged to MGC Lettings.

'Well, well,' Rebus said to himself. There was footage of a party in the living room. Dancing and booze and what looked to Rebus like a few lines of coke to go with the dope. A blow-job in the bathroom, a punch-up in the hall. Next disc: Sol Goodyear had come to pay his respects, rewarded with a romp in Nancy's bedroom and some shared moments in the cramped shower cubicle. After he'd gone, she settled down with the hash he'd left and rolled herself a healthy joint. Living room, bathroom, her bedroom, the hallway.

'Everything but the kitchen.' Rebus paused. 'The kitchen,' he repeated to himself, 'and Eddie Gentry's bedroom…'

By the time he'd reached the final disc in the box he'd grown bored. It was like watching one of those TV reality shows, but with no adverts to break the monotony. This last disc was different, though: no little colour-coded sticker. And it had sound. Rebus found himself watching the same room he was sitting in. The chairs and sofas had been filled by men. Cigar-smoking men. Men slurping wine from crystal glasses. Voluble, slurred, happy men, who were being shown a DVD.

Wonderful meal that,' one of them told the host. There were grunts of agreement, smoke billowing. The camera was pointing at the men, meaning it had to be… Rebus got to his feet and approached the plasma screen. There was a small hole drilled into the wall just above one corner of the TV. You'd never see it, or else you might take it for a bit of botched DIY. Rebus peered into it, but couldn't see anything. He exited the room and entered the one next door – en suite bathroom. Cabinet attached to a mirrored wall. Inside the cabinet: nothing… no camera, no wires. He put his eye to the peephole and was looking into the screening room. Back in the home cinema, the men's comments left Rebus in no doubt that they were watching some of the same footage he'd just viewed.

'Wish my wife was that dirty.'

'Maybe if you plied her with Class A rather than Chardonnay…'

'Worth a shot, I suppose.'

'And they don't know you're watching them, Morris?'

Cafferty's voice, from the back of the room: 'Not a clue,' he growled happily.

'Didn't Chuck Berry get in trouble for something like this?'

'Getting a few ideas for the good lady, Roger?'

'Married twenty-odd years, Stuart.'

Til take that as a no…'

Rebus found himself on his knees in front of the screen. Roger and Stuart, with their wine and cigars, stuffed to the gills by Cafferty and now enjoying this very different form of corporate hospitality.

Roger Anderson.

Stuart Janney.

First Albannach's brightest and best…

'Michael will be gutted he missed this,' Janney added with a laugh. Meaning, no doubt, Sir Michael Addison. But Rebus reckoned Janney was dead wrong. He ejected the disc and went back to the one with the party on it. Bathroom blow-job, the donor bearing an uncanny resemblance to Gill Morgan, aspiring actress and Sir Michael's pampered stepdaughter. Same head had been bent over one of the coke trails in the living room. Rebus went back to the footage of the home cinema, tried to work out which DVD the group was watching. Kept his eyes glued to the two bankers, wondering if either of them would exhibit signs of clocking their boss's stepkid. Grounds for a revenge attack on Cafferty? Maybe so. But what were they doing there in the first place? Rebus could think of several reasons. From the bank statements, Rebus now knew that Cafferty kept his various onshore accounts with FAB. Added to which, he was going to introduce a new and wealthy client to the bank – Sergei Andropov. And maybe the pair of them would be looking to do a deal with FAB, a vast commercial loan to help them buy up hundreds of acres of Edinburgh.

Andropov was relocating, ducking out of Russia altogether to escape prosecution. Maybe he thought the Scottish Parliament could be persuaded not to extradite him. Maybe he was buying his way into a forthcoming independent Scotland. Small country; easy to become a very big fish…

Cafferty oiling the wheels.

Hosting a memorable party… and secretly taping it. For his own satisfaction? Or to be used against the men themselves?

Rebus couldn't see it having much effect on the likes of Janney

and Anderson. But now another man was rising to his feet from one of the sofas. Looked to Rebus as if only Cafferty and this man had been occupying the back row.

'Bathroom?' he enquired.

'Across the hall,' his host obliged. Yes, Cafferty wouldn't want him using the en suite through the wall; couldn't risk the camera being found.

'Won't ask why you need it, Jim,' Stuart Janney commented to a few rugby-club guffaws.

'Nothing sordid, Stuart,' the man called Jim responded, making his exit.

Jim Bakewell, Minister for Economic Development. Meaning Bakewell had lied at the Parliament, telling Siobhan he'd not met Cafferty until that night at the hotel.

'Try making a complaint to the Chief Constable now, Jimbo,'

Rebus muttered, stabbing a finger in Bakewell's direction.

There wasn't an awful lot more to the DVD. After half an hour, the spectators had wrung as much interest as possible from the show. There were three further members of the party who were new to Rebus. They looked like business types, ruddy-faced and big-bellied. Builders? Contractors? Maybe even councillors…

Rebus knew he could probably find out, but that would mean taking the recording. Which was fine, so long as no one noticed it was missing. If anyone found out Rebus had been here, Cafferty's defence team would have a field day.

'Oh aye, John? What defence team is that then?'

Yes, because where was the crime? Bugging flats you were renting?