by Ian Rankin
‘Is that Mr Grieve’s secretary?’ he asked into the mouthpiece. He went on to ask her about the hate mail. From her voice, he had an impression of youth – mid-twenties to early thirties. From what she said, he pictured her as faithful to her boss. But her story didn’t sound rehearsed; no reason to think that it was.
Just a hunch.
Next, he spoke to Seona Grieve. He caught her on her mobile. She sounded flustered, and he said as much.
‘Not much time to put a campaign together,’ she said. ‘And my school’s not too happy about it. They thought I was taking a bit of time off for bereavement, and now I’m telling them I might not be back ever.’
‘If you get elected.’
‘Well, yes, there is just that one tiny hurdle.’
She’d mentioned the word bereavement, but she didn’t sound recently bereaved. No time to mourn. Maybe it was a good thing, take her mind off the murder. Linford had wondered if Seona Grieve had a motive: kill her husband, step into his shoes, fast-track to parliament. Rebus couldn’t see it.
But then right now he couldn’t see very much.
‘So if this isn’t just a social call, Inspector . . . ?’
‘Sorry, yes. I was just wondering if your husband ever received any crank letters.’
There was silence for a moment. ‘No, not that I’m aware of.’
‘Did he tell you that his brother had been receiving them?’
‘Really? No, Roddy never mentioned it. Did Cammo tell him?’
‘Apparently.’
‘Well, it’s news to me. Don’t you think I might have mentioned it to you before now?’
‘You might.’
She was irritated now, sensing that something was being insinuated, but not sure what. ‘If there’s nothing else, Inspector . . . ?’
‘No, just you carry on, Mrs Grieve. Sorry to have bothered you.’ He wasn’t, of course, and didn’t sound it.
She caught the hint. ‘Look, I do appreciate what you’re doing, all the trouble you’re taking.’ Suddenly it was a politician’s voice, high on effects and low on sincerity. ‘And of course you should phone me whenever there’s something – anything – that you think I can help with.’
‘That’s very kind of you, Mrs Grieve.’
She made an effort to ignore the irony in his voice. ‘Now, if you’ve no more questions at this point . . . ?’
Rebus didn’t say anything; just put the phone down.
In the office next door, he found Siobhan. She had her receiver tucked between chin and shoulder while she wrote something down.
‘Thank you,’ she said. ‘I really do appreciate it. I’ll see you then.’ She glanced up at Rebus. ‘And I’ll have a colleague with me, if that’s all right.’ She listened. ‘All right, Mr Sithing. Goodbye.’
The receiver fell from her shoulder, clattered home. Rebus looked at the apparatus.
‘That’s a good trick,’ he said.
‘It’s taken a while to perfect. Tell me it’s lunchtime.’
‘And I’m buying.’ She got her jacket from the back of the chair and slid her arms into it. ‘Sithing?’ he asked.
‘Later this afternoon, if that suits you.’ He nodded. ‘He’s out at the chapel. I said we’d meet him there.’
‘How much grovelling did he make you do?’
She smiled, remembering how she’d practically dragged Sithing out of St Leonard’s. ‘Plenty,’ she said. ‘But I’ve got one hell of a carrot.’
‘The four hundred thou?’
She nodded. ‘So where are you taking me?’
‘Well, there’s this delightful little place up in Fife . . .’
She smiled. ‘Or the canteen does filled rolls.’
‘It’s a tough choice, but then life’s full of them.’
‘Fife’s too far a drive anyway. Maybe next time.’
‘Next time it is,’ Rebus said.
They sat at the table in Mrs Coghill’s kitchen. Starter was the flask of soup, but for the main course Mrs Coghill had prepared macaroni cheese. They’d been about to demur politely until she’d lifted it from the oven, bubbling and with a crisp golden crust of breadcrumbs.
‘Well, maybe just a smidge.’
Having served them, she left them to it, saying she’d already eaten. ‘I don’t have much of an appetite these days, but a young pair like you . . .’ She’d nodded towards the dish. ‘I’ll expect that to be empty next time I see it.’
Grant Hood leaned his chair back on two legs and stretched his arms. He’d managed two helpings. There was plenty still left.
Ellen Wylie lifted the serving spoon, gesturing with it towards him.
‘God, no,’ he said. ‘It’s all yours.’
‘I couldn’t,’ she said. ‘In fact, I’m not sure I can stand up, so it better be you that makes the coffee.’
‘Hint taken.’ He poured water into the kettle. Outside the window, the sky had darkened. The kitchen lights were on. Leaves and crisp packets were flying past. ‘Hellish day,’ he commented.
Wylie wasn’t listening. She’d opened the black box-file, the one she’d found just before lunch. Business transactions from 6 April 1978 to 5 April 1979. Dean Coghill’s tax year. She took out half the documents, slid them across the table. The rest she kept for herself. Hood cleared the plates into the sink, placing the casserole back in the oven. Then he sat down and, waiting for the kettle to boil, picked up the first sheet of paper.
Half an hour later, they got their break. A list of personnel signed up to work at Queensberry House. Eight names. Wylie jotted them into her notebook.
‘All we need to do now is track them down and talk to each of them.’
‘You make it sound so easy.’
Wylie slid the list towards him. ‘Some of them are bound to be still in the building trade.’
Hood read the names. The first seven were typed, the eighth added in pencil. ‘Does that say Hutton?’ he asked.
‘The last one?’ Wylie checked her notebook. ‘Hutton or Hatton, first name’s either Benny or Barry.’
‘So we talk to every building firm in Edinburgh? Try out these names on them?’
‘It’s either that or the phone book.’
The kettle clicked off. Hood went to see if Mrs Coghill wanted a cup. He came back with a copy of Yellow Pages, opened it at the section headed ‘Builders’.
‘Read the names off to me,’ he said. ‘We might strike lucky.’
The third name they tried, Hood said, ‘Bingo,’ his finger stabbing at a display ad. The name on the sheet was John Hicks, and he’d just found J. Hicks. ‘“Extensions, Renovations, Conversions”,’ he recited. ‘Got to be worth a call.’
So Wylie got on her mobile, and they celebrated with coffee.
John Hicks’ business premises were in Bruntsfield, and the man himself was working on a job in Glengyle Terrace, just off The Links. It was a garden flat, and he was busy converting the large back bedroom into two smaller units.
‘Ups the rental income,’ he explained. ‘Some people don’t seem to mind living in a rabbit hutch.’
‘Or haven’t got the money for anything else.’
‘True enough, love.’ Hicks was in his late fifties, small and wiry with a tanned dome of a head and thick black eyebrows. His eyes twinkled with humour. ‘Way things are in Edinburgh,’ he said, ‘there won’t be a decent building left that hasn’t been subdivided.’
‘Good for business,’ Hood said.
‘Oh, I’m not complaining.’ He winked at them. ‘You said on the phone it was to do with Dean Coghill?’
Somewhere in the flat, a door banged.
‘Students,’ Hicks explained. ‘It pisses them off I’m here at eight, and hammering till four or five.’ He picked up his hammer and thumped it a couple of times against a length of two-by-four. Wylie held out the list towards him. He peered at it, took it from her and whistled.
‘Now this takes me back,’ he said.
‘We need to know about the ot
hers.’
He looked up. ‘Why?’
‘Did you read about the body found in Queensberry House?’ Hicks nodded. ‘It was put there late ’78, early ’79.’
Hicks nodded again. ‘While we were working there. You think one of us . . . ?’
‘We’re just following a line of inquiry, sir. Do you remember the fireplace being open?’
‘Oh, yes. We were supposed to be putting in a damp-proof course. Pulled the wall open and there it was.’
‘When was it closed up again?’
Hicks shrugged. ‘I don’t remember. Before we finished the job, but I don’t actually recall it happening.’
‘Who closed it up?’
‘No idea.’
‘Can you tell us anything about the other men on this list?’
He looked at it again. ‘Well, Bert and Terry, the three of us worked together on a lot of jobs. Eddie and Tam were part-timers, cash in hand. Let’s see . . . Harry Connors, he was a bit older, worked with Dean for donkey’s. Died a couple of years later. Dod McCarthy moved to Australia.’
‘Nobody walked off the job?’ Wylie asked.
He shook his head. ‘No, we were all present and accounted for at job’s end, if that’s what you’re getting at.’ Wylie and Hood shared a look: another theory blown out the water.
Hicks was still studying the list.
‘There’s one name you haven’t mentioned yet,’ Hood reminded him.
‘Benny Hatton,’ Wylie added.
‘Barry Hutton,’ Hicks corrected her. ‘Well, Barry was just with us for a couple of jobs. Bit of a favour to his uncle, or something.’
‘But there’s something about him?’
‘No, not really. It’s just, you know . . .’
‘What, sir?’
‘Well, Barry’s made it big, hasn’t he? Out of all of us, he’s the one who’s got to the top.’
Wylie and Hood looked blank.
‘You don’t know him?’ Hicks seemed surprised. ‘Hutton Developments.’
Wylie’s eyes widened. ‘That’s this Barry Hutton?’ She looked to Hood. ‘He’s a land developer,’ she explained.
‘One of the biggest,’ Hicks added. ‘You can never tell with people, eh? When I knew Barry, well, he was nothing really.’
‘Mr Hicks,’ Hood said, ‘you were saying something about his uncle?’
‘Well, Barry didn’t have much experience in the building game. Seemed to me his uncle must have put a word in with Dean, give the boy a bit of a start.’
‘His uncle being . . . ?’
Hicks looked at them again; he couldn’t believe they didn’t know this either.
‘Bryce Callan,’ he explained, whacking his hammer against the two-by-four again. ‘Barry belongs to Bryce’s sister. Friends in high places, eh? No wonder the kid’s got where he has.’
22
Rebus took the call on his mobile as Siobhan drove them out to Roslin. When he’d finished, he half-turned in his seat.
‘That was Grant Hood. The body in the fireplace; one of the labourers working there at the time was Bryce Callan’s nephew. His name’s—’
‘Barry Hutton,’ she interrupted.
‘You’ve heard of him?’
‘He’s in his thirties, single and a millionaire; of course I’ve heard of him. I was out with a singles group one night.’ She glanced at him. ‘Working, I might add. But a couple of the women were talking about eligible bachelors. There was some magazine piece on him. Good-looking, by all accounts.’ She looked at Rebus again. ‘But he’s legit, isn’t he? I mean, he runs his own business, nothing to do with his uncle.’
‘No.’ But Rebus was thoughtful all the same. What was it Cafferty had said about Bryce Callan? Let his family look after him, something like that.
As they drove into Roslin and approached Rosslyn Chapel, Siobhan asked why they had different spellings.
‘Just another of the chapel’s unfathomable mysteries,’ Rebus told her. ‘Probably with some conspiracy at the bottom of it all.’
‘I wanted you to see it,’ Gerald Sithing said as he met them in the car park. He was wearing a knee-length blue plastic mac over a tweed jacket and baggy brown cords. The mac made swishing sounds as he moved. He shook Rebus’s hand, but kept his distance from Siobhan.
The chapel’s exterior didn’t look promising, covered as it was by a corrugated structure.
‘That’s only until the walls dry out,’ Sithing explained. ‘Then the repairs can be done.’
He led them inside. Prepared as she was, Siobhan Clarke still gave an audible gasp. The interior was as ornate as any cathedral’s, its scale serving to heighten the effect of the stonework. The vaulted ceiling boasted carvings of different kinds of flowers. There were intricate pillars and stained-glass windows. The place was chilled, its doors standing open. Green discoloration on the ceiling showed there was a problem with damp.
Rebus stood in the centre aisle and tapped his foot on the stone floor. ‘This is where the spaceship is, eh? Under here.’
Sithing wagged a finger, too excited by his surroundings to be annoyed. ‘The Ark of the Covenant, the body of Christ . . . yes, I know all the stories. But there are Templar artefacts everywhere you look. Shields and inscriptions . . . some of the carvings. The tomb of William St Clair; he died in Spain in the fourteenth century. He was transporting Robert the Bruce’s heart to the Holy Land.’
‘Wouldn’t it have been easier posting it? Might have got there by now.’
‘The Templars’, Sithing said patiently, ‘were the military wing of the Prieuré de Sion, whose purpose was to find the treasure from the Temple of Solomon.’
‘Hence the name?’ Siobhan guessed. ‘There’s a village called Temple near here, isn’t there?’
‘With a ruined Templar church,’ Sithing added quickly. ‘Some say that Rosslyn Chapel is a replica of the Temple of Solomon. The Templars came to Scotland to escape persecution in the fourteenth century.’
‘When was it built?’ Siobhan couldn’t take her eyes off the treasures around her.
‘Fourteen forty-six, that’s when the foundations were laid. It took forty years to complete.’
‘Sounds like some builders I know,’ Rebus said.
‘Can’t you feel it?’ Sithing was staring at Rebus. ‘Right at the core of your cynical heart, can’t you feel something?’
‘It’s just indigestion, thanks for asking.’ Rebus rubbed his chest. Sithing turned to Siobhan. ‘But you can feel it, I know you can.’
‘It’s an amazing place, I’ll grant you that.’
‘You could spend a lifetime studying it, and still you wouldn’t have learned half its secrets.’
‘Who’s this ugly mug?’ Siobhan pointed to a gargoyle’s head.
‘That’s the Green Man.’
She turned to him. ‘Isn’t he a pagan symbol?’
‘That’s the whole point!’ Sithing yelped excitedly. He bounded over to her. ‘The chapel is almost pantheistic. Not just Christianity, but all belief systems.’
Siobhan nodded.
Rebus shook his head. ‘Earth to DC Clarke. Earth to DC Clarke.’
She made a face at him.
‘And those carvings on the roof,’ Sithing was saying, ‘plants from the New World.’ He paused for effect. ‘Carved a century before Columbus landed in America!’
‘Fascinating as this all is, sir,’ Rebus said tiredly, ‘it isn’t why we’re here.’
Siobhan pulled her gaze away from the Green Man. ‘That’s right, Mr Sithing. I told your story to Inspector Rebus, and he felt we should talk.’
‘About Chris Mackie?’
‘Yes.’
‘So you accept I knew him?’ He waited till Siobhan nodded. ‘And you accept he’d have wanted the Knights to have some sort of financial consideration from his estate?’
‘That’s not really for us to decide, Mr Sithing,’ Rebus said. ‘It’ll be a case for the lawyers.’ He paused. ‘But we can always put in a friend
ly word.’ He ignored Siobhan’s look, nodded slowly so that Gerald Sithing wouldn’t mistake the implication.
‘I see,’ Sithing said. He sat down on one of the chairs laid out for the congregation. ‘What is it you want to know?’ he asked quietly. Rebus sat on a chair across the aisle.
‘Did Mr Mackie seem at all interested in the Grieve family?’
For a moment, Sithing didn’t seem to have understood the question, then he asked, ‘How did you know?’ And Rebus knew they’d struck gold.
‘Is Hugh Cordover a member of your group?’
‘Yes,’ Sithing said, his eyes widening, as though in the presence of a magus.
‘Did Chris Mackie ever come here?’
Sithing shook his head. ‘I asked him many times, but he always said no.’
‘Didn’t that seem strange? I mean, you say he was interested in Rosslyn.’
‘I assumed he disliked travelling.’
‘So you met him in The Meadows, and talked about . . . ?’
‘Lots of things.’
‘Among them, the Grieve family?’
Siobhan, aware that she was being excluded, sat herself in the row in front of Sithing, half-facing him.
‘Who brought up the Grieves first?’ she asked.
Sithing said he wasn’t sure.
‘My guess is’, Rebus said, ‘you were telling him about the Knights, and you mentioned Hugh Cordover.’
‘Maybe,’ Sithing admitted. Then he looked up. ‘Actually, that’s just how it happened!’ His gaze went to Rebus again: magus status confirmed.
Siobhan, even though it was her case, decided to keep quiet. Rebus quite clearly had Gerald Sithing in a kind of trance.
‘You mentioned Cordover,’ Rebus stated, ‘and Mackie wanted to know more?’
‘He’d been a fan of the band, said he knew their music. I think he even hummed me one of their songs, not that I was familiar with it. He asked a few questions, I answered where I could.’