Ian Rankin - Exit Music

quietly. Cath Mills… admitting to Rebus that night in the bar that she'd almost given up on one-night stands.

Walsh's wife gave a look of horror and slumped on to the sofa again, face in hands, smearing the perfect make-up. Started muttering the words 'Oh God' over and over. Then, eventually: 'He kept telling me it had just been that one time… just the once, and a mistake at that. A huge mistake.'

'But you thought you knew better,' Rebus added. Yes, Gary Walsh would be tempted again, would stray again. He was young and chiselled and rock-star handsome, whereas his wife was getting older by the day, make-up doing only so much to cover the working of time… 'A pretty desperate measure,' Rebus stated quietly.

'Wearing that hood so he'd get the message. Hanging around the street, offering yourself to strangers…'

Smudgy tears were coursing down both cheeks, her shoulders heaving.

Alexander Todorov: wrong place, wrong time. A voluptuous woman offering no-strings sex, leading him into the car park where they'd be in full view of the camera. Gary Walsh's car their destination – not that Todorov was to know that. Screwing a man she'd only just met, so that her watching husband would know the price of further infidelity.

'Did you do it against the car?' he asked. 'On the bonnet maybe?'

He was still peering out at the Escort, thinking: fingerprints, blood, maybe even semen.

'Inside.' Her voice wasn't much more than a whisper.

'Inside?'

'I had a set of keys.'

'Is that where…?' He didn't need to finish the sentence. She was nodding, meaning Walsh and the Reaper had enjoyed their tryst in the same place.

'Not my idea,' she said, and Rebus had to strain to make out the words.

'The man you'd picked up,' he realised. 'He wanted to do it inside the car?'

She nodded again.

'Bit more comfortable, I suppose,' he offered. But then a thought hit him. The missing CD… Todorov's final performance, as recorded by Charles Riordan… Car to the garage… get the player fixed… 'What's wrong with the CD player, Mrs Walsh?' Rebus asked, keeping his voice level. 'It's his CD, isn't it? He wanted to hear it while you were…?'

She stared at him through a mess of mascara and eyeliner. 'It's stuck in the machine. But I didn't know, I didn't know…'

'Didn't know he was dead?'

She shook her head wildly from side to side, and Rebus believed her. All she'd needed was a man, any man, and when it was over she'd pushed it from her mind. Hadn't asked his name or nationality, probably hadn't looked at his face. Maybe she'd taken a couple of strong drinks for courage.

And her husband hadn't wanted to talk about it afterwards…

hadn't told her anything.

Rebus stood by the window, deep in thought. So many domestics down the years, partners abusing partners, lies and deceit, fury and festering resentment. There's a fury here… Sudden or protracted violence, mind games, power struggles. Love turning sour or stale as the years passed…

And now here came sleepy-faced Gary Walsh, descending the staircase, calling out to his wife. Tou still here?' Through the hall and into the living room, barefoot in faded denims and with his torso naked, rubbing one hand up and down his hairless chest as he wiped at his eyes with the other. Blinking as he realised there was a stranger in the room… looking to his wife for an explanation… her face creased in pain, tears dripping from her chin… then back to Rebus, placing him now, eyes turning towards the door in contemplation of flight.

With no shoes on, Gary?' Rebus chided him.

'I could outrun you in diving boots, you fat bastard,' Walsh sneered.

'And there's that sudden rage we've been looking forward to,'

Rebus said with just a hint of a smile. 'Care to tell your wife what happened to Alexander Todorov when you got hold of him?'

'He fell asleep in the car,' Mrs Walsh was saying, playing the scene back in her mind, eyes stinging and red but fixed on her young husband. 'I realised he was drunk, couldn't rouse him… so I left him.' Gary had leant his head against the door frame, arms behind him, hands pressed to the jamb.

'I don't know what she's talking about,' he eventually drawled.

'Really I don't.'

Rebus had his mobile in his hand, punching in the necessary number. He kept his eyes on Walsh, Walsh staring back at him, still thinking about doing a runner. Rebus pressed the phone to his ear.

'Siobhan?' he said. 'Bit of news to brighten your morning.' He'd

started giving the address when Gary Walsh spun round, hand snaking ahead of him, readying to unlock the front door. It was a few inches open, freedom shining in, when Rebus's weight smashed into him from behind, expelling all the air from Walsh's chest and the power from his legs. The door slammed shut again and he slid on to his knees, coughing and spluttering and with blood dripping from his crumpled nose. His wife appeared not to have noticed, wrapped up in her own drama as she sat, head in hands, on the sofa's edge. Rebus picked his mobile up from the carpet, aware of the adrenalin pounding through him, his heart racing. One perk of the job he really was going to miss…

'Sorry about that,' he told Clarke. 'Just ran into someone…'

The forensics team had come for the Ford Escort, their mechanic taking only a few minutes to extract the stuck CD. It played perfectly on the machine at Gayfield Square. There was nothing written on it but the single word Riordan – same as on the copy Riordan himself had made for Siobhan Clarke. More good news: looked like the toolbox in the boot would be helpful. Walsh had rinsed the blood from the claw hammer but there were spots elsewhere. The rest of the car – in and out – would be dusted, tested, and checked by Ray Duff and his lab boys back at their Howdenhall HQ. It was, as even Derek Starr admitted, 'a result'. Starr hadn't been expecting much of anything from the day except overtime. Instead of which, he was bouncing on his toes, and had called the Chief Constable at home before anyone else had a chance – much to the annoyance of DCI Macrae (Starr's very next call).

Gary Walsh was in IR1 and Louisa Walsh in IR2, telling their separate stories. The husband's resistance crumbled only by degrees, as he was presented with one piece of evidence after another: the hammer, the blood, the moving of the camera afterwards to make it seem as though he could not have witnessed the attack. A search warrant was being issued. The detectives asked Walsh if they might conceivably find the items stolen from Alexander Todorov hidden somewhere in or around his home or place of work, but he'd shaken his head.

didn't mean to murder him, just wanted him out of my car…

Sleeping like a baby after shagging my wife… stinking of booze and sweat and her perfume… Smacked him around a bit and he staggered off into the night… I got in the car and started driving, then noticed he'd done something to the CD player, it wasn't working any

more… The final fucking straw… Saw him at the bottom of that alley and I just lost it… I lost it, that's all, and it's all her fault…

Thought if I took a few things away with me, it'd look like a mugging… They're at the foot of Castle Rock, I chucked them over the wall…

'So,' Siobhan Clarke said, 'after everything we've gone through, it boils down to a domestic?' She sounded dazed and devastated, unwilling to believe. Rebus shrugged in sympathy. He was back inside Gayfield Square, DI Derek Starr himself having granted permission, saying he'd 'deal with any and all repercussions'.

'Big of you,' Rebus had muttered.

'He has a fling,' Clarke continued, for herself more than Rebus, 'admits it to the wife, who acts out her revenge. Husband sees red and the poor drunken sap she's cajoled into having sex with her ends up on a slab?' She started shaking her head slowly.