Mortal Causes

'Cleaning the facade,' someone said. Rebus nodded. The front door of the flat faced a whitewashed wall, and in the wall were set two doors. Rebus knew what these were, they were storage areas, burrowed out beneath the surface of the pavement. Patience had almost identical doors, but never used the space for anything; the cellars were too damp. One of the doors stood open. The floor was mostly moss, some of which was being scraped into an evidence bag by a SOCO.

Kilpatrick, watching this, was listening to Blackwood, who ran his left hand across his pate, tucking an imaginary hair, behind his ear. Kilpatrick saw Rebus.

'Hello, John.’

'Sir.’

'Where's Smylie?’

Ormiston was coming down the steps. Rebus nodded towards him. 'The Quiet Man there dropped him at HQ. So what's the big mystery?’

Blackwood answered. 'Flat's been on the market a few months, but not selling. Owner decided to tart it up a bit, see if that would do the trick. Builders turned up yesterday: Today one of them decided to take a look at the cellars. He found a body.’

`Been there long?’

Blackwood shook his head. 'They're doing the postmortem this evening.’

'Any tattoos?’

'No tattoos,' said Kilpatrick. 'Thing is, John, it was Calumn.’

The Chief Inspector looked genuinely troubled, almost ready for tears. His face had lost its colour, and had lengthened as though the muscles had lost all motivation. He massaged his forehead with a hand.

`Calumn?’

Rebus shook away his hangover. 'Calumn Smylie?’

He remembered the big man, in the back of the HGV with his brother. Tried imagine him dead, but couldn't. Especially not here, in a cellar…

Kilpatrick blew his nose loudly, then wiped it. `I suppose I'd better get back and tell Ken.’

'No need, sir.’

Ken Smylie was standing at street level, gripping the gloss-black railings. He looked like he might uproot the lot.

Instead he arched back his head and gave a high-pitched howl, the sound swirling up into the sky as a smattering of rain began to fall.

Smylie had to be ordered to go home, they couldn't shift him otherwise. Everyone else in the office moved like automatons. DCI Kilpatrick had some decisions to make, chief among them whether or not to tie together the two murder inquiries.

`He was stabbed,' he told Rebus. `No signs of a struggle, certainly no torture, nothing like that.’

There was relief in his voice, a relief Rebus could understand. 'Stabbed and dumped. Whoever did it probably saw the For Sale sign outside the flat, didn't reckon on the body being found for a while.’

He had produced a bottle of Laphroaig from the bottom drawer of his desk, and poured himself a glass.

`Medicinal,' he explained. But Rebus declined the offer of glass. He'd taken three paracetamol washed down with Irn-Bru. He noticed that the level in the Laphroaig bottle was low. Kilpatrick must have a prescription.

`You think he was rumbled?’

`What else?’ said Kilpatrick, dribbling more malt into his glass.

'I'd have expected another punishment killing, something with a bit of ritual about it.’

`Ritual?’

Kilpatrick considered this. `He wasn't killed there, you know. The pathologist said there wasn't enough blood Maybe they held their "ritual" wherever they killed him. Christ, and I let him go out on a limb He took out a handkerchief and blew his nose, then took a deep breath. 'Well, I've got a murder inquiry to start up, the high hiedyins are going to be asking questions.’

'Yes, sir.’ Rebus stood up, but stopped at the door. 'Two murders, two cellars, two lots of builders.’

Kilpatrick nodded, but said nothing. Rebus opened the door.

'Sir, who knew about Calumn?’

'How do you mean?’

'Who knew he was undercover? Just this office, or anyone else?’

Kilpatrick furrowed his brow. 'Such as?’

'Special Branch, say.’

'Just this office,' Kilpatrick said quietly. Rebus turned to leave. 'John, what did you find out in Belfast?’

'That Sword and Shield exists. That the RUC know it's operating here on the mainland. That they told Special Branch in London.’

He paused. 'That DI Abernethy probably knows all about it.’

Having said which, Rebus left the room. Kilpatrick stared at the door for a full minute.

'Christ almighty,' he said. His telephone was ringing. He was slow to answer it.

'Is it true?’ Brian Holmes asked.

Siobhan Clarke was waiting for an answer too.

'It's true,' said Rebus. They were in the Murder Room at St Leonard's. 'He was working on something that might well be co

'So what now, sir?’

'We need to talk to Millie and Murdock again.’

'We've talked to them.’

'That's why I said "again". Don't you listen? And after that, let's fix up a little chat with some of the Jaffas.’

'Jaffas?’

Rebus tutted at Siobhan Clarke. 'How long have you lived here? Jaffas are Orangemen.’

'The Orange Lodge?’ said Holmes. 'What can they tell us?’

'The date of the Battle of the Boyne for a start.’

'1690, Inspector.’

'Yes, sir.’

'The date, of course, means more than a mere a

He paused. 'Do you know anything of numerology, Inspector?’

'No, sir.’

'What about the lassie?’

Siobhan Clarke bristled visibly. 'It's sort of a crank science, isn't it?’ she offered. Rebus gave her a cooling look. Humour him, the look ordered: 'Not crank, no. It's ancient, with the ring of truth. Can I get you something to drink?’

'No, thanks, Mr Gowrie.’

They were seated in Arch Gowrie's 'front room', a parlour kept for visitors and special occasions. The real living room, with comfortable sofa, TV and video, drinks cabinet, was elsewhere on this sprawling ground floor. The house was at least three storeys high, and probably boasted an attic conversion too. It was sited in The Grange, a leafy backwater of the city's southern side. The Grange got few visitors; few strangers, and never much traffic, since it was not a wellknown route between any two other areas of the city. A lot of the huge detached houses, one-time merchants' houses with walled grounds and high wooden or metal gates, had been bought by the Church of Scotland or other religious denominations. There was a retirement home to one side of Gowrie's own residence, and what Rebus thought was a convent on the other side.

Archibald Gowrie liked to be called 'Arch'. Everyone knew him as Arch. He was the public face of the Orange Lodge, an eloquent enough apologist (not that he thought there was anything to apologise for), but by no means that organisation's most senior figure. However, he was high enough, and he was easy to find – unlike Millie and Murdock, who weren't home.

Gowrie had agreed readily to a meeting, saying he'd be free between seven and quarter to eight.

'Plenty of time, sir,' Rebus had said.

He studied Arch Gowrie now. The man was big and fiftyish and probably attractive to women in that way older men could be. (Though Rebus noticed Siobhan Clarke didn't seem too enthralled.) Though his hair – thi

From what Rebus knew, Gowrie, had made his money initially as director of a company which had nippily shifted its expertise from ships and pipelines to building exploration platforms and oil rigs for the North Sea. That was back in the early ' 70s. The company had been sold at vast profit, and Gowrie had disappeared for several years before reappearing in the guise of property developer and investment guru. He was still a property developer, his name on several projects around the city as well as further afield. But he had diversified into wildly different areas: film production, hi-fi design, edible algae, forestry, two country house hotels, a woollen mill, and the Eyrie restaurant in the New Town. Probably Arch was best known for his part ownership of the Eyrie, the city's best restaurant, certainly its most exclusive, by far its most expensive. You wouldn't find nutritious Hebridean Blue Algae, on its menu, not even written in French, Rebus knew of only one large loss Gowrie had taken, as money man behind a film set predominantly in Scotland. Even boasting Rab Ki