by Ian Rankin
‘Looked like they shot some of it in Craigmillar,’ Rebus said, popping open the empty DVD case. ‘Must have saved a fortune, not needing make-up for the demons.’
‘The two male leads were the same as in Bravehearts.’
‘Neither seems to have become box office gold.’
‘I googled them – they’re not actors any more.’
‘Were they ever?’ Rebus poured the last dregs of his solitary bottle of IPA into the glass. Clarke had managed two gins before switching to tonic only. The evening had been her idea – the still centre Rebus had told her to find. A couple of microwaved ready meals followed by the film. She checked her copious notes.
‘As for the female cop … procedure wasn’t exactly her strong point.’
‘I’d say the camera’s interest was in the two strong points at the tips of her breasts.’
Clarke writhed in mock distaste. ‘Fifteen minutes ten and twenty-six minutes forty,’ she intoned. ‘The two scenes where we see the handcuffs. Second one is the best.’ She used the remote to skip through the film. ‘Here we go.’ After a few seconds, she hit the pause button. ‘Nice close-up.’
The film’s heroine had apprehended a thug after a chase and had him on the ground, pulling handcuffs from her belt and clamping them around the man’s wrists.
‘They look pretty real, don’t they?’ Rebus asked. ‘The same kind we used back in the day?’
‘They’re not from a joke shop,’ Clarke replied. ‘If that’s what you’re asking.’
‘So where did they come from?’
‘Something we need to find out. We can’t prove they’re the same ones Bloom was wearing, though I’d swear they’re the exact same model. Plus, say they are the same ones, the fact that they’re in this film would explain how Ness’s prints could have got on them.’ Clarke was kneeling only a foot or so from the TV screen. She gestured towards it. ‘It would help if we knew what happened to them after this.’
‘Ness is the obvious person to ask.’
‘Tomorrow for definite. Sorry you weren’t there when we brought in Cafferty.’ She returned to the sofa and lifted her glass.
‘You’re forgiven. I take it he gave you hee-haw?’
‘He admitted knowing Conor Maloney, for what it’s worth.’
‘You could have FaceTimed me and let me listen.’
Clarke smiled. ‘Suddenly you’re an expert on FaceTime?’
‘Since a few hours back, aye. Christine’s been mentoring me.’
‘Oh?’
‘There’s nothing I don’t know about Ribbit, Pratchat and what have you.’
‘Wonders never cease,’ Clarke said with a smile. ‘So you’ve got her checking Ellis’s online history?’
‘She’s being a bit more thorough than that.’
‘I’d best say thank you next time I see her, then.’ She paused. ‘So what else is happening with Ellis Meikle?’
‘I’ve been on it all day.’
‘Not just leaving it to Christine?’
‘Perish the thought.’
‘Any conclusions?’
‘Just that you can tell Dallas Meikle you’ve earned his cooperation.’
‘They were questioned today, too – Steele and Edwards.’
‘Articulate and charming as ever?’
‘Wouldn’t it be wonderful if Ness had got the cuffs from one of them?’
‘They didn’t know Ness, though.’
‘They knew Adrian Brand.’
‘Yes, so why would they do anything for Brand’s sworn enemy?’
Clarke didn’t know the answer to that. ‘I want them hurt,’ she said instead.
‘Really? I’d never have guessed. Now can I have that second beer I made you promise not to hand over, no matter how much I begged?’
‘Over my dead body,’ Clarke said, rising to her feet. ‘I’ll make us a cup of tea instead.’
When she left the room, Rebus leaned down to give Brillo a rub.
‘Nearly time to go home,’ he explained as the dog raised his head. ‘And Siobhan’s going to have to vacuum this carpet by the look of it.’ He raked his fingers across the floor, scooping up as much dog hair as he could, while thinking back to Charles Meikle’s flat with its neat and tidy kitchen. The residue of oil on the mechanic’s knuckles would have left marks on the worktop. Everyone left traces. The handcuffs were still on the TV screen. Police issue. CID or uniform, you’d know where to find some. Maybe, like Rebus, you kept a set at home as a memento. He’d checked a few nights back and they were still there in the drawer, a pair of the old chain-link design, along with the rudimentary key that accompanied them. There was other stuff in the drawer, too: a retractable steel baton and his old warrant card. He didn’t doubt that the likes of Alex Shankley, Doug Newsome and even Bill Rawlston would have a drawer almost identical. And if one of those drawers was lacking an item, what did that prove?
‘You okay with redbush?’ Clarke was asking from the doorway.
‘Not even tea’s straightforward these days,’ Rebus pretended to complain. He followed her back into the kitchen. She had her back to him when she spoke.
‘Thanks for coming over, John. I appreciate it.’
‘After the day you’ve had? Least I could do.’
She half turned her head towards him, managing a thin smile. ‘Do you think Graham will kick me off the team?’
‘Question is, why hasn’t he already?’
‘To which the answer is …?’ She handed him a mug.
‘Maybe he believes you. Maybe he even likes you.’ Rebus offered a shrug. ‘But if word gets to Mollison, it might be a different story. How are the rest of MIT handling it?’
‘I’m not sure yet.’ She leaned back against the worktop.
‘Steele won’t admit anything,’ Rebus commented.
‘I know.’
‘But Dougal Kelly’s got nothing to lose by telling MIT it wasn’t you.’
‘You think I should ask him?’
‘Your call.’
‘It’d mean owing him a favour.’
‘Sod that. He wants a favour afterwards, he can go whistle.’
‘Maybe I won’t say that when I talk to him.’
‘Best kept on a need-to-know basis,’ Rebus agreed, taking a slurp of tea.
‘How’s the redbush?’
‘It almost tastes like tea.’ Rebus was eyeing the bottle of IPA visible on the worktop behind Clarke.
‘Down, boy.’
Rebus turned his head towards the doorway, where Brillo was standing and watching.
‘I wasn’t talking to the dog,’ Clarke said.
After Rebus and Brillo had gone, Clarke stood in her living room, ready to do the tidying. But instead she took a deep breath and called Dougal Kelly.
‘Hi there,’ he answered.
‘My boss thinks I might be the source of the leak,’ she said without preamble. ‘My workmates are giving me looks behind my back and it’s all your doing.’
‘They know we had lunch?’
‘In point of fact, we didn’t have lunch, but I was spotted in the café with you, which amounts to the same thing. I need you to tell DCI Sutherland that you got the gen from elsewhere.’
‘Are you really in trouble?’
‘Will you talk to him?’
‘I can probably do that.’ He paused. ‘I’ve been mulling over what you said about Brand’s safe being broken into by Stuart and this guy Huston. I’ve persuaded Catherine we shouldn’t go public with it just yet. But it raises a possibility, doesn’t it? Stuart goes to Jackie Ness afterwards. Maybe he’s holding back the contents of the safe; maybe he reckons whatever he found is worth a lot more than Ness has been paying him. They argue, and Ness ends up clobbering him.’
‘We’ve found nothing at Poretou
n House to suggest that.’
‘Could have been outside, maybe as Stuart was getting back in his car.’
‘I suppose,’ Clarke admitted, rubbing at her eyes. She felt like she could sleep the clock around.
‘You’re exhausted,’ Kelly said into the silence. ‘Go grab some shut-eye. I’ll talk to your boss first thing.’
‘Will you tell him you got it from Steele and Edwards?’
‘Probably not.’ Kelly paused again, as if he’d been about to say something. Clarke felt cogs shifting in her head.
‘Steele wanted us to meet, didn’t he? He put the idea in your head – said I’d be prime candidate if you needed someone inside the investigation?’
‘What if he did?’
‘It means he’s coming for me,’ Clarke stated, pinching the bridge of her nose. ‘And thanks to you, he’s in with a shout.’
Thursday
42
‘This is beginning to look a lot like harassment,’ Kelvin Brodie said as he sat down with his client in the interview room. Sutherland and Clarke sat opposite, Clarke fiddling with the recording equipment. She reckoned her presence in the room was a message from the DCI to the rest of the team. Kelly had been as good as his word, according to Sutherland.
‘So you believe me?’ she had demanded to know, but all she’d got in return was a thin smile, no way of really reading it.
Jackie Ness looked pale and drawn, eyes bloodshot. His solicitor meantime wore an even more expensive-looking suit than previously and had a nervous energy about him, a parasite successfully locked on to its host. Ness had become big news, lifting Brodie’s profile. The eventual outcome probably didn’t matter – no such thing as bad publicity, as they said.
Not that the media interest seemed to be having that effect on Ness.
All four identified themselves for the record, and Clarke nodded to her boss that the gear was behaving itself. She then passed a set of photographs across the table. They’d been shot on her phone from the DVD and printed on to A4 paper. A bit grainier than she’d like, but fit for purpose.
‘Do you recognise these, Mr Ness?’
It took a moment for the producer to rouse himself. ‘They’re handcuffs,’ he eventually said.
‘As used in your film Cops v Demons. I watched a copy last night.’
‘If you say so.’
‘The sound recordist on that film was Colin Speke, yes?’
‘If you say so,’ Ness repeated.
‘Well, it’s his name on the closing credits. You asked Mr Speke if he knew anyone who could lend you handcuffs for a couple of scenes. He fetched some from Rogues nightclub, courtesy of Ralph Hanratty. You weren’t happy with them, though – does that ring any bells?’
‘Maybe.’
‘But these handcuffs …’ Clarke gestured towards the photos, which the solicitor was busying himself studying. ‘These look like the real deal; very similar – maybe even identical – to the ones found attached to Stuart Bloom’s ankles.’ She paused to let that sink in. ‘So what we’re wondering is, what happened to them after you’d finished the shoot?’
Ness gave her the bleary look of someone who’d spent a night in a cell and not managed home since. ‘Know how many plates I have to spin to get a film in the can? How am I supposed to remember a detail like that?’
‘Even if it was to lead us to whoever killed Mr Bloom?’
‘I’d help you if I could.’ The producer shrugged. His shoulders were slouched, but Clarke wasn’t completely convinced. She had to keep remembering that this was a man who’d spent his life around actors.
‘Who sourced them then? You’d been asking around the crew and actors; someone must have come up with the goods?’
‘Joe Madden maybe? No, not Joe …’ He arched his neck, staring towards the ceiling for inspiration. ‘You’re right about Colin – he brought along these flimsy bloody things, looked like they should have had pink fur wrapped around them. Sex shop crap …’
‘Take your time,’ Clarke said, as Kelvin Brodie checked his watch.
‘I think we can take it that my client doesn’t remember. Shall we move on?’
‘Well then, there’s the little matter of the break-in.’ Clarke’s eyes drilled into Ness’s.
‘Break-in where?’ Brodie asked.
‘At Adrian Brand’s private office. Just a couple of nights before Stuart Bloom vanished.’
Sutherland had removed a typed sheet from a manila folder, studying it as though to refresh his memory without bothering to show it to either Brodie or his client.
‘You had asked Morris Gerald Cafferty for help in finding a safe-breaker,’ Clarke told Ness. ‘I’m curious: was it your idea or Bloom’s? Opening the safe, I mean? I don’t suppose it matters. What’s pertinent is that you put a man called Larry Huston in touch with Bloom, and the pair of them broke in and emptied the safe.’
‘That’s an extraordinary claim to make, DI Clarke.’ Brodie was holding his hand out, but Sutherland wasn’t about to relinquish the report. ‘I’d be grateful to see your evidence.’
‘We have a full statement from Mr Huston.’
‘And a list of the items taken? Did this Huston fellow actually meet with my client, or only with Bloom? Is he perhaps a fantasist persuaded by you to concoct this frankly far-fetched tale?’
‘He’s a credible witness, Mr Brodie.’
Brodie turned towards Jackie Ness.
‘Never happened,’ Ness responded.
Clarke made show of raising an eyebrow. ‘Cafferty says it did. Larry Huston says it did.’
‘I’ve never heard of anyone called Huston and I only ever met Cafferty a couple of times, and only then because Billy Locke had got him to invest in one of my films.’
‘Zombies v Bravehearts?’
‘Yes.’
‘He even watched you filming some of it in Poretoun Woods.’
‘Did he?’
‘He says he did.’
Ness offered another shrug. ‘Know how many hangers-on there are on a film set? Everybody from the executive producer’s nephew to some extra’s boyfriend or girlfriend.’ A light seemed to switch on behind his eyes. ‘That’s where the cuffs came from! I remember now. One of the extras had a mate who always seemed to be kicking around the place. Everybody liked him because he …’ He broke off, eyes on his lawyer, then leaned in and whispered something.
‘Unwise to hold anything back that could be germane to this inquiry,’ Clarke said in warning. Brodie mulled over what his client had just told him, then nodded. Ness turned his attention back to Clarke.
‘He always had a bit of powder on him – powder and pills. I never touch the stuff, and I don’t condone its use.’
Clarke thought back to her conversation with Hanratty, and the glittering onscreen eyes of Stuart Bloom and Derek Shankley. ‘We already know there were drugs on set, Mr Ness. You’re saying this individual was a dealer?’
‘I never saw money change hands.’
‘Presumably he wasn’t giving them away for free, though?’
Sutherland cleared his throat. ‘Do you happen to remember his name, Mr Ness?’
Ness puffed out his cheeks and expelled air noisily.
‘Maybe you kept a list of everyone who visited the set?’
‘I’m not Paramount Pictures. Security consisted of a question or two to anyone hanging around I didn’t recognise.’
‘But this man attended regularly, and you knew he was distributing drugs.’ Clarke leaned forward a little. ‘I find it hard to believe his name has slipped your memory. Did he ever play a role in one of your productions?’
‘Might’ve been an extra, I suppose. I’ve an idea his mate was one of the zombies on Bravehearts, so he might’ve been too.’
‘And his mate was …?’
Another shrug
. ‘One of the locals.’
‘Maybe a name for him, then?’
A slow shake of the head. ‘I really am trying to help you here.’
‘Did you ask him where he found the handcuffs?’
‘I think I was just delighted they had a bit of heft to them. Sounded right, too – Colin said as much when we did this shot.’ He tapped a finger against one of the photos, showing the cuffs around the actor’s wrists.
‘And after you’d finished with them …?’
‘Inspector,’ Brodie said, fussing with his watch’s leather wristband, ‘are you going to present any evidence that the handcuffs photographed here are actually the ones used in the crime?’
‘We’re gathering information, Mr Brodie.’
‘Admirable, I’m sure. But if they are the same, you must see that their appearance in one of my client’s films would explain precisely why his partial fingerprint ended up on them.’
‘I’m well aware of that.’ Clarke’s eyes were on Ness. ‘If we could prove they’re the same, it might save you from going to trial, Mr Ness.’
Ness snapped his fingers as if suddenly remembering. ‘His first name was Gram.’
‘Gram?’
‘You know, like a gram of cocaine.’
‘And Gram was the dealer rather than his friend the extra?’
Ness nodded.
‘But you don’t know the friend’s name?’
‘Mr Ness is doing his level best here, Inspector,’ Brodie interjected.
Clarke ignored him. ‘This friend was an extra, Mr Ness? In Bravehearts? Cops v Demons? And Gram might have been onscreen too?’
‘I can’t be sure.’
‘It so happens I have both films here with me. Would you be willing to watch them and see if you can spot either man?’
Ness considered for a moment, then nodded slowly. ‘Probably safer here than outside – if it’s not the media stalking me, it’s Stuart’s bloody mother.’