by Ian Rankin
The police called it Sooty.
SWEEP, like the other care agencies mentioned in the piece, was concerned that Hugh McAnally’s suicide only a week after his release from prison was evidence of a problem of readjustment and a lack of real concern ‘within the system’ — Sammy’s words to be sure. Police, prison staff, and Social Services were marked out for criticism. The governor of HM Prison Edinburgh could do no more than explain to the journalists how inmates were prepared for release back into society. A ‘spokesman for SWEEP’ insisted that ex-prisoners — SWEEP never called them ‘offenders’ — suffered the same psychological problems as released kidnap victims or hostages. Rebus could hear the words in Sammy’s mouth; he’d heard them from her before.
He’d been surprised to get a letter from his daughter a couple of months back, saying she’d got a job in Edinburgh and was ‘coming home’. He’d phoned her to check what this meant, and found it only meant she was returning to Edinburgh.
‘Don’t worry,’ she told him, ‘I don’t expect you to put me up.’
The job she’d landed was with SWEEP. She’d been working for some time with inmates and ex-prisoners in London, ever since she’d visited a friend in jail and had seen the conditions and, as she put it, ‘the loneliness’.
‘This friend,’ Rebus had unwisely said, ‘what were they in for?’
After which their conversation had become stilted to say the least.
She didn’t want to be met off the train, but he went to Waverley anyway. She didn’t see him watching as she flung her army-style kitbag and scuffed red rucksack on to the platform. He wanted to walk forwards to greet her, maybe throw his arms around her, or more likely stand there in the hope that she’d throw her arms around him. But she hadn’t wanted to be met, so he stood his ground, half hoping she’d see him anyway.
She didn’t; she just looked around the concourse with a good deal of pleasure, swung the rucksack on to her back, and picked up her kitbag. She was thin, dressed in clingy black leggings, Doc Marten shoes, a baggy grey T-shirt and black waistcoat. Her hair was long these days, ponytailed with pieces of bright cotton threaded through it. She sported several earrings in either ear, and a nose-stud. She was twenty years old, a woman, and her own woman at that, striding with confidence from the platform. He followed her up the ramp out of the station. A bright winter day was waiting for her. He didn’t suppose she’d worry about the cold.
Later, she’d come to Patience’s flat for a meal. Rebus had suggested vegetarian to Patience, just to be on the safe side.
‘I always cook vegetarian for the teens and twenties,’ she’d replied.
‘I might have guessed you would.’
After that visit, there had been others, Sammy and Patience growing closer as Patience and Rebus moved even further apart. Until one day Rebus had left, giving the students who rented his flat their marching orders and moving himself back in.
Two days later, his set of keys to Patience’s flat had been handed over to Sammy, and she’d moved her stuff into the guest bedroom. Not a permanent arrangement, as both women said; just something they wanted to do for now.
Sammy was still there.
That first evening, the evening of the stuffed red peppers, Rebus and Sammy had argued about prison and ex-prisoners, right and wrong, society versus the individual. Sammy kept using the words ‘the system’; Rebus niggled her by using the term ‘con’. Although he agreed with at least some of her points — well thought out, persuasively argued — he found himself setting up in opposition to her. It was something he did, not just with her. Glancing across the table at Patience, he’d seen a weary smile. She’d told him before: he liked to antagonise just to get a response.
‘Know why?’ she’d said. ‘Because conflict is more fun for you than consensus.’
‘No it isn’t,’ he’d told her. ‘I’m just the devil’s advocate, that’s all.’
So he’d ignored the weary smile and continued his joust with his daughter …
He closed the paper, folded it, and tossed it into a wastepaper-bin. Gill Templer came into the office. He’d been waiting there for her for close to fifteen minutes. She didn’t apologise.
‘You forgot to tell me,’ she said, ‘that your daughter works for SWEEP.’
‘It’s not an issue.’
‘You should have told me.’
He saw what she meant. ‘You mean, before you gave an interview?’
‘Some woman reporter, nice as ninepence until the end of the session, then: “and tell me, what is your feeling about one of your inspectors having a close relative so involved with SWEEP?” ’
Mairie Henderson, thought Rebus. Probably not interested in the answer either, just trying to discomfit the interviewee, see if anything shook loose.
‘What did you tell her?’
‘I told her no comment. Then I went straight to Chief Superintendent Watson and asked him who the hell she’d meant.’ She paused. ‘It had to be you.’
‘Is that my cue for a song?’
She slammed a hand down on her desk. ‘It’s your cue to get the hell out of my office!’
Rebus got the hell out.
Rebus’s appointment with the governor of Saughton was in the late afternoon.
The guard-house phoned ahead, then let him through. He was met at the other side of the gate and taken to the governor’s office. There was an ante-room where the secretary sat behind a computer. She was taking a phone call, but nodded for him to take a seat.
‘You see,’ she said into the receiver, ‘control shift asterisk is supposed to clear that, but it’s not doing it.’ She listened, and tucked the receiver between cheek and shoulder so she could work on her keyboard with both hands. ‘No, that’s not working either. Hang on, that’s got it. Thanks, bye.’ She put the phone down and shook her head in exasperation. ‘Sometimes they’re more trouble than they’re worth,’ she confided to Rebus. ‘The governor will be back in a couple of minutes.’
‘Thanks,’ Rebus said. ‘Typewriters are about as high-tech as I can manage.’
‘They keep sending me on courses, but after half an hour I’m completely bamboozled.’
The door Rebus had come through opened suddenly, and the governor came in. Rebus stood up, they shook hands, and the governor led him into the inner sanctum.
‘Sit down, Inspector.’
‘I appreciate you seeing me, sir.’
The governor dismissed this with a wave of his hand. ‘It’s not often a suicide on the outside brings me into the equation, but I’ve had reporters hounding me on this one. McAnally’s death seems to have stirred up a bit of debate. They must be hard up for news.’ He sat back, resting his hands on his stomach. ‘And now,’ he said, ‘I’ve got you.’
The governor was a handsome man in his late fifties. He peered at Rebus over metal-framed glasses. He was bulky rather than fat, and his silvering hair was thick and healthy. His suit looked expensive, his shirt laundered, and his unfussy blue tie had a sheen that Rebus took for silk. He saw himself as a ‘man-manager’, and was a public voice in the drive to reform Scotland’s penal system: an end to slopping-out and cell-sharing; brighter, better equipped halls; a strong emphasis on vocational training, education and counselling. Not every sight-impaired Open University student knew that their braille text was probably transcribed by Saughton’s Braille Unit.
It wasn’t all sunny though: Saughton had its drug problems, its share of HIV-positive inmates. But at least it had a full-time medical staff to cope, or to begin to try to cope.
Rebus had never met the governor before, though he’d seen him at functions, and come across him in the media. His name was Jim Flett or, more often, just ‘Big Jim’.
‘Well, you’re right, sir,’ Rebus said, ‘I am here to talk to you about Hugh McAnally.’
‘So I gather.’ Flett tapped a manila file on his desk, the record of Prisoner 1117, C-Hall, HMP Edinburgh, McAnally, Hugh. Jim Flett opened the file. ‘I’ve had a read of
this, and I’ve been to talk to some of the warders and McAnally’s fellow inmates.’ He gave Rebus a grin. ‘I think I’m prepared. By the way, something to drink?’
‘I’m fine, thanks. This won’t take long. Why was McAnally released so early?’
‘Not so early. His good behaviour was taken into account, as was his illness.’
‘You knew he was ill?’
‘Inoperable cancer. Normally, the stage of sentence he was at, we’d be readying to transfer him to the TFF hostel.’
‘What’s that?’
‘Training for Freedom. He’d have gone out unsupervised to a work placement. But Mr McAnally was a category C prisoner, and only category D’s qualify for TFF. In any event, he was due parole.’
‘What made him category C?’
Flett shrugged. ‘A bust-up with a warder.’
‘I thought you mentioned good behaviour?’
‘The bust-up was a while back. The man was dying, inspector. We knew we weren’t going to see him in here again.’
‘Did he seem suicidal?’
‘Not as far as I’m aware. I’m just glad he did away with himself on the outside: it makes him your problem rather than mine.’
‘What about aggro? Was he subject to threats or violence?’
‘How do you mean?’
‘He was a convicted rapist, his victim legally a child at the time of the offence. I hear the stories, same as everyone else: if you’re a sex offender and you’re not put in a separate wing, you get beaten up, people pish in your tea, you’re an outcast. Can’t exactly be good for the spirit.’
‘Spirit?’ Flett gave a wry smile. ‘Let’s just say I’m not aware of any incidents of that nature. If any occurred, they’d be dealt with.’
‘I don’t suppose the victims lodge complaints that often.’
‘You think you know so much about us, Inspector, maybe you should be sitting this side of the desk?’
‘No, thanks.’
‘Look, there’s nothing in his time here that made anyone think he was about to stick a shotgun in his gub.’
Rebus thought for a moment. ‘Did you know him?’
‘No, I didn’t. He’d only been here eleven months.’
‘Where was he before?’
‘Glenochil.’
‘Any problems while he was there?’
‘Not according to the files. Look, Inspector, I know what you’re thinking, what you’re trying to put together. But he didn’t commit harry-carry because of anything that happened to him in here. His cellmate was as shocked as anyone when he heard what happened. McAnally had served two previous sentences; it’s not as if incarceration was new or strange to him.’
Rebus thought again of Willie and Dixie, of what would have happened to them in prison.
‘Surely,’ Flett was saying, ‘it’s much more realistic to say that the illness wore him down and led him to kill himself.’
‘With respect, sir, his previouses weren’t for rape of a minor.’
Flett stared at Rebus, then glanced at his watch, letting him know the score.
‘Just a couple of final questions, sir. How much money did he leave prison with?’
Flett had to check that in the file. ‘There was eight pounds sixty among his effects when he came in.’
‘And other than that?’
‘Other than that, he was entitled to the same benefits as any other ex-prisoner. It seems an odd question to ask.’
‘His flat shows signs of a recent overhaul; I’m wondering where the money came from.’
‘Best ask his wife. Anything else?’
‘Who was his contact on the outside?’
‘You mean his supervising officer?’ Flett looked this up too. ‘Jennifer Benn at Social Services.’ Rebus entered the name in his notebook. ‘Well, if that’s all, inspector …?’ The governor was on his feet. He walked around the desk and smiled towards Rebus, and Rebus suddenly knew the man was hiding something. He’d been edgy during the conversation, as though expecting some awkward question to arise. It hadn’t, and his relief was evident in that smile, in his complete change of attitude.
Rebus tried to think what the question could be. Out in the secretary’s office, while Big Jim was shaking his hand a final time, he was still thinking about it. I’ve let him off the hook, he thought. He reran the meeting in his head as he walked back to his car.
‘Buggered if I know,’ he announced to himself. But as he sat in the idling car, he knew he was going to have to find out.
That evening, he visited one of only two drop-in centres available to ex-cons in Edinburgh. It reminded him most of Fraser Leitch’s establishment, except that here there was a colour TV rather than black and white.
Nobody could help him. Hugh McAnally hadn’t been near the place, not as far as anyone knew. He wasn’t about to press the point or outstay his lukewarm welcome, but he took a quick look round before he left.
In a corner of the main room, a woman with a huge canvas bag slung over her shoulder was crouching down in conversation with a man who sat slumped in a chair. The man stared past her, not interested. Eventually the woman gave up, wrote something on a pad, closed it, and returned it to the canvas bag. The man leaned forward then and whispered something into her ear. She listened, her cheeks reddened, and she got to her feet, turning to walk away.
Rebus was right behind her. She brought herself up short to avoid a collision.
‘You wouldn’t be Jennifer Benn, would you?’
‘That’s me.’
‘My lucky night.’ Rebus looked past her, to where the seated man was rubbing his forehead, trying not to let Rebus see his face. ‘Hiya, Pete.’
The man looked up and seemed to place Rebus. ‘Evening, Mr Rebus.’
‘How long have you been out?’
‘Three weeks two days.’
‘And you fancy another trip back already? Give the lady back her purse.’
The social worker stared in surprise as Pete slipped the bulging black leather purse out of his denim jacket. She snatched it back and checked the contents.
‘Do you want to press charges?’ Rebus asked. She shook her head. ‘Fine, then let’s have a little chat.’
By the time they reached the front door, Jennifer Benn had regained her composure.
‘Where are we going?’
‘Somewhere I’m a bit more welcome. There’s a pub across the road.’
‘I don’t like pubs.’
‘My car then?’
She turned to him. ‘Can I see some ID?’
‘I thought that scene back there would have been ID enough.’ But she wasn’t budging, so he dug out his warrant card, which she inspected slowly.
‘All right,’ she said, handing it back, ‘we can talk here.’
‘Here?’ They were on the pavement. She wrapped a woollen scarf around her neck and pulled on sheepskin mitts. She was in her late-twenties and had frizzy blonde hair and outsized glasses. ‘It’s freezing here,’ Rebus complained.
‘Then best hurry up.’
He sighed. ‘You were Shug McAnally’s social worker?’
‘That’s right.’
‘I’m investigating his suicide.’
She was shaking her head. ‘I’m afraid I can’t help. He never kept an appointment, we never met.’
‘Did you report him?’
She nodded. ‘But I didn’t think anything would come of it. What punishment do you mete out to someone with terminal cancer?’
And with that she turned and walked quickly to her car. Rebus thought that she’d asked a very good question indeed.
16
Next morning, he found himself summoned to Chief Superintendent Watson’s office.
Gill Templer was already there when he arrived. She was standing with her back to the filing cabinet, arms folded. There wasn’t much room: three large cardboard boxes marked ‘PanoTech’ sat on the floor by the desk.
‘My new computer,’ the Farmer explained. ‘Sit down,
John.’ The Farmer looked like a man with bad news: Rebus had been here before; same look, same tone of voice.
‘I’d rather stand, sir.’
‘Been up to anything we should know about, John?’
‘No, sir.’
‘Nothing at all?’
‘Not that I know of, sir. Why?’
Watson glanced towards Gill Templer. ‘I had a phone call yesterday evening from Allan Gunner.’ Gunner: the deputy chief constable. ‘He doesn’t often call me at home.’
‘Do I take it he had bad news?’ Rebus decided to sit down after all.
‘HM Inspectorate of Constabulary are thinking of investigating us.’
‘Us?’
‘B Division.’
‘That’s us all right.’
‘It’s no joking matter.’
Nor was it. HMIC was independent of the police service; it reported directly to the Secretary of State for Scotland. HMIC’s public remit encompassed examining police standards and indicating areas for improvement. It inspected all eight regional forces each year, but only four of these were full ‘primary’ inspections. They looked at rises in crime stats, falls in detection rates, and complaints from the public. No problem there: the recorded crime rate was steady when it wasn’t falling, and recent clear-up rates were marginally improved. But HMIC could really screw up a station’s working practices, just by being on the premises. There were long lists of questions to answer, an initial pre-inspection followed by the full inspection … and, as everyone in the room knew, HMIC could sometimes stumble upon something better left unqueried. Or, as the Farmer put it,
‘You know those buggers, John. If they want to find dirt on us, there’s dirt to be found. We don’t exactly work in an antiseptic environment.’
‘That’s because we don’t deal with people who wash behind their ears every morning. What are you getting at, sir? So what if we’ve been picked out? It’s the luck of the draw.’
‘Ah,’ Watson said, holding up a prodigious forefinger. ‘I only said they were thinking of picking us out.’
‘I don’t get it.’
The Farmer shifted — so far as he was able — in his chair. He was not a small man; it was not a large chair. ‘To be honest, neither do I, the DCC was being bloody cagey. I think the gist was, we’re doing something naughty, and if we stop doing it, another division might find itself under scrutiny instead of us.’