Exit Music

Rebus was looking around. 'Where exactly did the performance happen?'

'Upstairs. We had an audience of over seventy.'

'I don't suppose anyone filmed it, did they?'

'Filmed it?'

'For posterity.'

'Why do you ask?'

Rebus gave a shrug by way of reply.

'There was a sound recording,' the woman admitted. 'Someone from a music studio.'

Clarke had her notebook out. 'Name?' she asked.

'Abigail Thomas.' The librarian realised her mistake. 'Oh, you mean the name of the recordist? Charlie something…' Abigail Thomas screwed shut her eyes with the effort, then opened them wide. 'Charles Riordan. He has his own studio in Leith.'

'Thank you, Ms Thomas,' Rebus said. Then: 'Can you think of anyone we should contact?'

Tou could talk to PEN.'

'There wasn't anyone here that night from the consulate?'

'I wouldn't have thought so.'

'Oh?'

'Alexander was quite vocal in his opposition to the current situation in Russia. He was on the Question Time panel a few weeks back.'

'The TV show?' Clarke asked. 'I watch that sometimes.'

'So his English was pretty good then,' Rebus surmised.

'When he wanted it to be,' the librarian said with a wry smile.

'If he didn't like the point you were making, the ability seemed suddenly to desert him.'

'He sounds quite a character,' Rebus had to admit. He saw that a small pile of Todorov's books had been given their own display on a table near the stairs. 'Are these for sale?' he asked.

'Indeed they are. Would you like to buy one?'

'Would they happen to be signed?' He watched her nod. 'In that case, make it half a dozen.' He was reaching into his jacket for his wallet as the librarian rose from her seat to fetch them. Feeling Clarke's eyes on him, he mouthed something to her.

Something very like 'eBay”.

The car had not received a ticket, but there were dirty looks from the line of motorists attempting to squeeze past. Rebus threw the jjfoag of books on to the back seat. 'Should we warn her we're comig?'

'Might be wise,' Clarke agreed, punching the keys on her phone ad holding it to her ear. 'Tell me, do you even know how to sell lething on eBay?'

I can learn,' Rebus said. Then: 'Tell her we'll meet her at his flat, st in case he's lying in a stupor there and we've got a looky-likey the mortuary.' He stuck a fist to his mouth, stifling a yawn.

'Get any sleep?' Clarke asked.

'Probably the same as you,' he told her.

Clarke's call had co

She asked for Scarlett Colwell and was put through.

'Miss Colwell?' A pause. 'Sorry, Doctor Colwell.' She rolled her eyes for Rebus's benefit.

'Ask her if she can fix my gout,' he whispered. Clarke thumped his shoulder as she began to give Dr Scarlett Colwell the bad news.

Two minutes later, they were heading for Buccleuch Place, a six storey Georgian block which faced the more modern (and far uglier) university edifices. One tower in particular had been voted the building most people in Edinburgh wanted to see condemned. The tower, perhaps sensing this hostility, had begun to self-destruct, great chunks of cladding falling from it at irregular intervals.

“You never studied here, did you?' Rebus asked, as Clarke's car rumbled across the setts.

'No,' she said, nosing into a parking space. 'Did you?'

Rebus gave a snort. 'I'm a dinosaur, Shiv – back in the Bronze Age they let you become a detective without a diploma and a mortarboard.'

'Weren't the dinosaurs extinct by the Bronze Age?'

'Not having been to college, that's just the sort of thing I wouldn't know. Reckon there's any chance of grabbing ourselves a coffee while we're here?'

“You mean in the flat?' Clarke watched him nod. Tou'd drink a dead man's coffee?'

'I've drunk a damn sight worse.'

“You know, I actually believe that.' Clarke was out of the car now, Rebus following. 'Must be her over there.'

She was standing at the top of some steps, and had already unlocked the front door. She gave a little wave, which Rebus and Clarke acknowledged – Clarke because it was the right thing to do, and Rebus because Scarlett Colwell was a looker. Her hair fell in long auburn waves, her eyes were dark, her figure curvy. She wore a hugging green miniskirt, black tights and brown calf-length boots. Her Little Red Riding Hood coat reached only as far as her waist. A gust of wind caused her to push the hair back from her eyes, and Rebus felt as if he were walking into a Cadbury's Flake advert. He saw that her mascara was a bit blurry, evidence that she'd shed a few tears since receiving the news, but she was businesslike as the introductions were made.

They followed her up four flights of tenement stairs to the top floor landing, where she produced another key, unlocking the door to Alexander Todorov's flat, Rebus arriving, having paused for breath on the landing below, just as the door swung open. There wasn't much to the apartment: a short, narrow hallway led to the living room with a kitchenette off it. There was a cramped shower room and separate toilet, and a single bedroom with views towards the Meadows. Being in the eaves of the building, the ceilings angled sharply downwards. Rebus wondered if the poet had ever sat up sharply in bed and thumped the crown of his head. The whole flat felt not so much empty as utterly desolate, as though marked by the departure of its most recent resident.

'We're really sorry about this,' Siobhan Clarke was saying as the three of them stood in the living room. Rebus was looking around him: a waste-paper bin full of crumpled poems, an empty cognac bottle lying next to the battered sofa, an Edinburgh bus map pi

A Greek dictionary sat on the arm of the sofa. There were empty lager cans on a shelf meant for knick-knacks. Invitations on the mantelpiece to parties from the previous month. They had passed a telephone on the floor in the hallway. Rebus asked if the poet had owned such a thing as a mobile. When Colwell shook her head, hair bouncing and swaying, Rebus knew he wanted to ask another question she could answer in the same way. Clarke's clearing of the throat warned him against it.

'And no computer either?' he asked anyway.

'He was welcome to use the one in my office,' Colwell said. 'But Alexander mistrusted technology.'

Tfou knew him fairly well?'

'I was his translator. When the scholarship was a

'So where was he before Edinburgh?'

' Paris for a time… Cologne before that… Stanford, Melbourne, Ottawa…' She managed a smile. 'He was very proud of the stamps in his passport.'

'Speaking of which,' Clarke interrupted, “his pockets had been emptied – any idea what he would usually carry around with him?'

'Anotebook and pen… some money, I suppose…”

'Any credit cards?'

'He had a cash card. I think he'd opened an account with First Alba

She looked about her. “You say he was mugged?'

'Some sort of attack, certainly.'

'What kind of man was he, Dr Colwell?' Rebus asked. 'If someone confronted him in the street, would he put up a struggle, fight them back?'

'Oh, I'd think so. He was physically robust. Liked good wine and a good argument.'

'Did he have a temper?'

'Not especially.'

'But you said he liked to argue.'

'In the sense that he enjoyed debate,' Colwell corrected herself.