Exit Music

'There,' Clarke said.

'It's only a couple of words,' Colwell said. 'He's answering a phone call. All he says is “hello” and “yes”.'

'Worth a try,' Clarke said with a sigh, ejecting the disc and rising to her feet. She reached for the pad of paper again. 'Can I take the poem with me meantime? Leave you to get on with something you feel is more accurate?'

'There was bad blood between Alexander and this businessman?'

'I'm not sure.'

'But it's a motive, right? And if they met again in that bar…'

Clarke held up a hand in warning. 'We've no evidence that they even saw one another in that bar, which is why I'd be grateful if you kept all of this to yourself, Dr Colwell. Otherwise you could jeopardise the inquiry.'

'I understand.' The academic nodded her agreement. Clarke tore the sheet from the pad and folded it into four.

'One little piece of advice,' Clarke said as she finished folding.

'The final line of the poem, he's quoting from Robert Burns. It's not “a package of scoundrels”… it's “a parcel of rogues”…'

39

Rebus sat by the bedside of Morris Gerald Cafferty.

He'd shown his warrant card and asked the day shift if Cafferty had had any other visitors. The nurse had shaken her head.

No, because – despite his goading of Rebus – Cafferty had no friends. His wife was dead, his son murdered years back. His trusted lieutenant of long standing had 'disappeared' after a falling-out.

There was just the one bodyguard at the house, and right now his main concern was probably where his next paycheque was coming from. Doubtless there would be accountants and lawyers – Stone would have the details – but these weren't the sort of men to pay respects. Cafferty was still in intensive care, but Rebus had heard two staff members discussing a looming bed crisis. Maybe they would move him back to an open Ward. Or, if his finances could be unlocked, a private room. As of now, he seemed content with the tubes, machines, and flickering screens. There were wires attached to his skull, measuring brain activity. Fluids were being drip-fed into one arm. Cafferty seemed to be wearing some sort of gown with a front but, Rebus guessed, no back. His arms were bare and the hairs covering them were like silver wires. Rebus stood up and leaned down over Cafferty's face, wondering if the machine might suddenly register awareness of his proximity, but there was no change in the readout. He traced the route from Cafferty's body to the machines and from there to the wall sockets. Cafferty wasn't dying; the doctor had confided that much. Another reason to move him from intensive care. How intensively did you have to tend a vegetable? Rebus looked at Cafferty's knuckles and fingernails, the thick wrists, the dry white skin on each elbow. He was a large man, yes, but not particularly muscular. There were lines around

the neck, like the circles on a freshly felled tree. The jaw was slack, the mouth open to accommodate a tube. There was a single track down the side of the face where some saliva had dried to a crust.

With eyes closed, Cafferty looked harmless enough. What little hair there was on his scalp needed a wash. The charts at the end of the bed had told Rebus nothing. They were just a way of reducing the patient's life to a series of numbers and graphs. Impossible to tell if a line angling upwards was a good sign or a bad…

'Wake up, you old bastard,' Rebus whispered into the gangster's ear. 'Playtime's over.' Not a nicker. 'No point you hiding there inside that thick skull of yours. I'm waiting for you out here.'

Nothing apart from a gurgling in the throat, and Cafferty was making that same sound every thirty seconds or so. Rebus slumped back into his chair. When he'd arrived, a nurse had asked if he was the patient's brother.

'Does it matter?' he'd asked her.

'It's just that you do look like him,' she'd said, waddling away.

He decided that it was a story worth sharing with the patient, but before he could start there was a trembling in his shirt pocket.

He took his mobile out, checking to left and right for anyone who might disapprove.

'What's up, Shiv?' he asked.

'Andropov and his driver were in the audience at the Poetry Library. Todorov made up a poem on the spot, and I think Andropov was its target.'

'Interesting.'

'Have they given you a break?'

It took a moment for Rebus to realise what she meant. 'I'm not being grilled. Nothing on the overshoe but blood – same type as Cafferty.'

'So where are you now?'

'Visiting the patient.'

'Christ, John, how's that going to look?'

'I wasn't pla

'But say he snuffs it while you're there?'

'Not a bad point, DS Clarke.'

'So walk away.'

'Where do you want to meet?'

'I have to get back to Gayfield Square.'

'I thought we were going to pick up the chauffeur?'

'We are doing no such thing.'

'Meaning you're going to run it past Derek Starr?'

Tea.'

'He doesn't know this case like we do, Siobhan.'

'John, as of now we've got precisely nothing.'

'I disagree. The co

don't tell me you can't sense it?' He'd risen from his chair again, but only to bend over Cafferty's face. One of the machines gave a loud beep, to which Clarke added a voluble sigh.

“You're still by his bed,' she stated.

'Thought I saw his eyelids flicker. So where is it we're going to meet?'

'Let me talk it through with Starr and Macrae.'

'Give it to Stone instead.'

She was silent for a moment. 'I must have misheard.'

'SCD has more clout than us. Give him the Todorov-Andropov co

'Why?'

'Because it might help Stone build his case against Cafferty.

Andropov's a businessman… businessmen like to cut deals.'

'You know that's not going to happen.'

'Then why am I wasting my breath?'

'Because you think I need Stone to be my friend. He's got it in mind that I helped you get to Cafferty. Only way I can show him otherwise is to give him this.'

'Sometimes you're too clever for your own good.' He paused. 'But you should still talk to him. If the consulate starts pleading diplomatic immunity, SCD's got a stronger hand than us.'

'Meaning?'

'Meaning cha

'Are you going all James Bond on me?'

'There's only one James Bond, Shiv,' he told her, hoping for a laugh which didn't come.

'I'll mull it over,' she conceded instead, 'if you promise to be out of that hospital in the next five minutes.'

'Already on my way,' he lied, ending the call. His mouth was dry, and he didn't reckon the patient would mind if he borrowed some of the water on the bedside cabinet. There was a clear plastic jug with a tumbler next to it. Rebus drank two glasses, then decided to take a look inside the cabinet itself.

He wasn't expecting to find Cafferty's watch, wallet and keys. But since they were there, he flipped open the wallet and found that it contained five ten-pound notes, a couple of credit cards, and some scraps of paper with phone numbers on – none of them

meaning anything to Rebus. The watch was a Rolex, naturally, and he weighed it in his hand to confirm that it was the real deal.

Then he picked up the keys. There were half a dozen of them. They chinked and clinked as he rolled them between palm and fingers.

House keys.

Chinked them and clinked them and kept staring at Cafferty.

'Any objections?' he asked quietly. And then, after a further moment: 'Didn't think so…'

His luck just kept getting better and better: no one had bothered to set the alarm, and Cafferty's bodyguard was elsewhere. Having entered by the front door, the first thing Rebus did was check the corners of the ceiling for security cameras. There weren't any, so he padded into the drawing room. The house was Victorian, the ceilings high with ornate cornicing. Cafferty had started collecting art, big splashy paintings which hurt Rebus's eyes. He wondered if any of them were by Roddy Denholm. The curtains were closed and he left them that way, turning on the lights instead. TV and hi-fi and three sofas. Nothing on the marble-topped coffee table but a couple of old newspapers and a pair of spectacles – the gangster too vain to wear them anywhere outside the privacy of his home.