Ian Rankin - Exit Music

Rebus watched as she took a moment to compose herself. She gave

another look in his direction and offered a smile. He nodded his reply. Your turn now, he was telling her.

'On the night of Monday November the twentieth,' Clarke began, 'you were staying at Gleneagles Hotel in Perthshire. But you decided to leave early… why was that, Mr Janney?'

'I wanted to get back to Edinburgh.'

'And that's why you packed your things at three a.m. and asked for your bill to be made up?'

'There was a pile of work waiting for me in the office.'

'But not so much,' Rebus reminded him, 'that you didn't have time to drop off Mr Stahov's list of Russians to us.'

'That's right,' Janney said, still trying to take in some news Rebus had given him. Clarke could see that the banker had been shaken by whatever Rebus had said. Good, she thought, knocks him off balance…

'I think,' she said, 'you brought us that list precisely because you wanted to know what was happening about Charles Riordan.'

'What?'

'Ever heard of the dog returning to its vomit?'

'It's Shakespeare, isn't it?'

'The Bible, actually,' Rebus corrected him. 'Book of Proverbs.'

'Not quite the scene of the crime,' Clarke continued, 'but a chance for you to ask a few questions, see how things were going…'

'I'm still not sure what you're getting at.'

Clarke gave a four-beat pause, then checked the contents of the folder. 'You live in Barnton, Mr Janney?'

'That's right.'

'Handy for the Forth Road Bridge.'

'I suppose so.'

'And that's the way you came back from Gleneagles, is it?'

'I think so.'

'Alternative would be Stirling and the M9,' Clarke informed him.

'Or,' Rebus added, 'at a pinch you could do the Kincardine Bridge…'

'But whatever route you might happen to take,' Clarke continued, “would bring you into town from the west or the north and leave you close to home.' She paused again. 'Which is why we're scratching our heads to comprehend what your silver Porsche Carrera

might have been doing in Portobello High Street an hour and a half after you checked out of Gleneagles.' She slid the CCTV image towards Janney. “You'll see that it's time-stamped and dated. Yours is pretty much the only car on the road, Mr Janney. Care to tell us what you were up to?'

'There must be some mistake…' Janney was staring off to one side, concentrating on the floor rather than the evidence in front of his eyes.

'That's what you'll say in court, is it?' Rebus teased him. 'That's what your ruinously expensive defence lawyer will stand up and tell judge and jury?'

'Maybe I just didn't feel like going home,' Janney offered, causing Rebus to clap his hands together.

'That's more like it!' he said. 'Car like that, you just wanted to keep on driving down the coast. Maybe you wouldn't stop till the border-'

'But here's what we actually think happened, Mr Janney,' Clarke interrupted. 'Sergei Andropov was fretting about a recording…” At the mention of'recording1, Janney's eyes darted to Rebus and Rebus offered a slow, exaggerated wink back. 'Maybe he mentioned it to you,' Clarke continued, 'or it could have been his driver. The problem was, he'd made a remark about wanting Alexander Todorov dead – and now Todorov was dead. If the tape came to light, Mr Andropov would be in the frame – might have to leave the country or end up being deported. Scotland's supposed to be his refuge, his safe haven. Only thing waiting for him in Moscow is a show trial.

And if he leaves, all those potentially lucrative deals go with him.

All his tens of millions go with him. That's why you decided to go have a word with Charles Riordan. The chat didn't work, and he ended up unconscious-'

'I didn't even know Charles Riordan!'

'Funny,' Rebus said, mock-casually, 'your bank's the main sponsor of an art installation he was doing at the Parliament. I reckon if we ask around, we'll find that you'd met him at some point…'

'I don't think you meant to kill him,' Clarke added, trying to add some empathy to her voice. Tou just wanted that recording destroyed. You knocked him out and looked for the tape, but it was needle-in-a-haystack stuff… thousands upon thousands of tapes and CDs in that house of his. So then you set that little fire – not the kind that would consume a building and turn anyone inside into crispy strips. It was just the tapes you wanted – too many for you to cart them away, and not enough time to go through them

all. So you stuck some paper into a bottle of cleaner, lit it, and walked away.'

'This is nonsense,' Janney said in a voice cracking with emotion.

'Problem was,' Clarke went on, ignoring him, 'all that acoustic baffling proved to be a fire hazard… With Riordan dead, we were looking for a suspect in both killings – and Andropov still seemed to fit the bill. So all your hard work was in vain, Mr Janney. Charles Riordan died – and died for nothing.'

'I didn't do it.'

'Is that the truth?'

Janney nodded, eyes everywhere but on either detective.

'Okay, then,' Clarke told him. “You've nothing to worry about.'

She closed the folder and gathered together the photos. Janney could hardly believe it. Clarke was getting to her feet. 'That pretty much takes care of it,' she confirmed. 'We'll just head along to processing and then you'll be on your way.'

Janney was standing, but with his hands pressing against the tabletop, helping him stay upright. 'Processing?' he queried.

'Just a formality, sir,' Rebus assured him. 'We need to take your fingerprints.'

Janney had made no attempt to move. 'Whatever for?'

Clarke supplied the answer. 'There was a print left on the bottle of solvent. It has to belong to whoever started the fire.'

'But it can't be yours, Stuart, can it?' Rebus asked. You were out enjoying a drive down our beautiful coastline in the crisp pre-dawn air…'

'Fingerprint.' The word slid out of Janney's mouth like a small, scuttling creature.

'I like to do a bit of motoring myself,' Rebus was saying. 'Today's my retirement – means I can do a lot more of it in the future.

Maybe you'll show me the route you took… Why are you sitting down again, Stuart?'

'Is there anything we can get you, Mr Janney?' Clarke asked solicitously.

Stuart Janney looked at her and then at Rebus before deciding that the ceiling merited his full attention. When he spoke, his throat was so stretched neither detective could quite make out the words.

'Mind repeating that?' Clarke asked politely.

You can get me a lawyer,' Janney duly obliged.

'Whenever anyone retires or resigns in the movies,' Siobhan Clarke said, 'they always seem to carry a box out of the building.'

'That's true,' Rebus agreed. He'd been through his desk and found precisely nothing of a personal nature. Turned out he didn't even have a mug of his own, just drank from whichever one was available at the time. In the end, he pocketed a couple of cheap ballpoint pens and a sachet of Lemsip a full year past its sell-by.

“You had the flu last December,' Clarke reminded him.

'Still dragged my sorry carcass into work, though.'

'And sneezed and groaned for a full week,' Phyllida Hawes added, hands on hips.

'Passing the germs to me,' Colin Tibbet stated.

'Ah, the fun we've had,' Rebus said with an affected sigh. There was no sign of DCI Macrae, though he'd left a note telling Rebus to leave his warrant card on the desk in his office. Derek Starr was absent, too. Gone six o'clock, meaning he'd be in a club or wine bar, celebrating the day's results and trying the usual chat-up lines. Rebus looked around the CID suite. 'You really didn't buy me anything, you miserable shower of bastards?'

'Have you seen the price of gold watches?' Clarke said with a smile. 'On the other hand, the back room of the Ox has been reserved for the night, and there's a hundred quid's worth of a tab – what we don't get through tonight is yours for afterwards.'