Exit Music

There was a door to the right of the fireplace and Rebus opened it.

Cafferty's booze cupboard, big enough to contain a double fridge and assorted wine racks, with bottles of spirits lining a shelf.

Resisting temptation, he closed the door again and headed back into the hall. More doors off: a huge kitchen; a conservatory with a pool table; laundry room; bathroom; office; yet another, less formal, living room. He wondered if the gangster really enjoyed rattling around in a place this size.

'Course you do,' he said, answering his own question. The stairs were wide and carpeted. Next floor up: two bedrooms with bathrooms attached; a home cinema, forty-two-inch plasma screen flush with the wall; and what seemed to be a storeroom, filled with boxes and tea chests, most of them empty. There was a woman's hat on the top of one box, photo albums and shoes beneath. This, Rebus guessed, was all that remained of the late Mrs Cafferty.

There was a dartboard on one wall, with puncture marks around its circumference, evidence that someone needed to improve their throwing. Rebus guessed that the dartboard would have fallen into disuse once the room changed identity.

The last door off the landing led to a narrow, winding stairwell.

More rooms at the top of the house: one containing a full-size snooker table covered with a dustsheet, the other a well-stocked library. Rebus recognised the shelves – he'd bought the same ones from Ikea. The books were mostly dusty paperbacks, thrillers for the gentleman and romances for the lady. There were also some children's books which had probably belonged to Cafferty's son.

The house felt little used, the floorboards creaking underfoot. He reckoned the gangster seldom took the trouble to climb this final set of stairs.

Heading back down, Rebus returned to Cafferty's office. It was a good-sized room with a window looking on to the back garden.

Again, the curtains were closed, but Rebus risked easing them open so he could take a look at the coach-house. Two cars parked in front of it – the Bentley and an Audi – and no sign of the bodyguard. Rebus closed the curtains again and switched on the light. There was an old bureau in the centre of the room, covered with paperwork – domestic bills, by the look of it. Rebus sat in the leather chair and started opening drawers. The first thing he came across was a gun, a pistol of some kind with what looked like Russian lettering along the barrel.

'Little present from your pal?' Rebus guessed. There was, however, no ammo in the clip, and no sign of any bullets in the drawer.

It was a long time since Rebus had held a firearm. He tested it for weight and balance, then used his handkerchief to place it back where he'd found it. Financial statements in the next drawer down. Cafferty had sixteen grand in his current account and a further quarter of a million earning him interest on the money market. His portfolio of shares added another hundred thousand to the pot. Rebus saw no sign of any mortgage payments, meaning Cafferty probably owned the house outright. This part of town, it had to be worth a million and a half. Nor would this be the end of the gangster's wealth; Stone had hinted at various shell companies and offshore holdings. Cafferty owned bars, clubs, the lettings agency, and a snooker hall. He was rumoured to hold a stake in a cab company. Rebus suddenly noticed something in the corner: a venerable safe with a tumbler lock. It was the colour of verdigris and came from Kentucky. Walking over to it, he was unsurprised to find it locked. The only combination he could think of to try was Cafferty's birthday. Eighteen ten forty-six. Rebus pulled the handle and the heavy door swung open.

He allowed himself a smile. Couldn't think why he had memorised that number, but it hadn't been wasted.

Inside the safe: two boxes of nine-mil ammo, four thick wads of notes, twenties and fifties, some business ledgers, computer disks, a jewellery box containing the late wife's necklaces and earrings.

Rebus lifted out Cafferty's passport and flicked through it: no visits to Russia. Birth certificate for the man himself, birth and death for the wife and son. The wedding certificate showed that Cafferty had married in 1973 at the registry office in Edinburgh. He replaced each item and studied the disks – no labels, no writing. There wasn't even a computer in the office… point of fact, he hadn't seen one anywhere in the house. On the bottom shelf of the safe sat a small cardboard box. Rebus lifted it out and opened it. It contained two dozen shiny silver discs. CDs, he thought at first. But holding one up to the light, he saw that it was marked DVD-R, 4.7G. Rebus was no technophile, but he reckoned whatever this was, it would play on the system upstairs. There was no writing on any of the discs, but coloured dots had been added to each one – some green, some blue, some red, some yellow.

Rebus closed the safe and spun the dial, then switched off the light and padded back upstairs, the box of discs in his hand. The home cinema boasted shuttered windows and a row of leather recliners, behind which was a further row comprising two doubleseater sofas. He crouched down in front of the battery of machines and slotted the DVD home, then switched on the screen and retreated to one of the chairs. It took him three different remotes to get everything – screen, DVD player and loudspeakers – working.

Seated on the edge of the black leather chair, he began to watch what appeared to be surveillance footage…

A room. A living room. Untidy, and with bodies sprawled. Two of the bodies disentangled themselves and headed elsewhere, holding hands. There was a sudden cut to a bedroom, the same two figures appearing, peeling off their clothes as they started to kiss.

Teenagers. Rebus recognised neither of them; didn't recognise the setting either – somewhere a lot tattier than Cafferty's own house.

Okay, so the gangster got his jollies from amateur porn…

Rebus skipped ahead but the action stayed with the couple and their coupling. They were filmed from above and from the side.

Another skip and the girl was in a bathroom, seated on the pan and then stripping off again to take a shower. She was ski

Next one – with a blue dot rather than a green. Different yet similar location; different yet all-too-familiar action.

'Showing your pervy side, Cafferty,' Rebus muttered, ejecting the disc. He tried another green dot – back to the characters from the first disc. Pattern emerging, John… Red dot: another flat, some communal dope-smoking, a girl having a bath, a guy pleasuring himself in his bedroom.

Rebus wasn't looking for any surprises from the yellow dot.

Immediately, he was launched into the same set-ups as previously, but with one important difference – he knew both the flat and the actors.

Nancy Sievewright; Eddie Gentry. The flat on Blair Street. The flat which belonged to MGC Lettings.

'Well, well,' Rebus said to himself. There was footage of a party in the living room. Dancing and booze and what looked to Rebus like a few lines of coke to go with the dope. A blow-job in the bathroom, a punch-up in the hall. Next disc: Sol Goodyear had come to pay his respects, rewarded with a romp in Nancy's bedroom and some shared moments in the cramped shower cubicle. After he'd gone, she settled down with the hash he'd left and rolled herself a healthy joint. Living room, bathroom, her bedroom, the hallway.

'Everything but the kitchen.' Rebus paused. 'The kitchen,' he repeated to himself, 'and Eddie Gentry's bedroom…'

By the time he'd reached the final disc in the box he'd grown bored. It was like watching one of those TV reality shows, but with no adverts to break the monotony. This last disc was different, though: no little colour-coded sticker. And it had sound. Rebus found himself watching the same room he was sitting in. The chairs and sofas had been filled by men. Cigar-smoking men. Men slurping wine from crystal glasses. Voluble, slurred, happy men, who were being shown a DVD.