Exit Music

might have been doing in Portobello High Street an hour and a half after you checked out of Gleneagles.' She slid the CCTV image towards Ja

'There must be some mistake…' Ja

'That's what you'll say in court, is it?' Rebus teased him. 'That's what your ruinously expensive defence lawyer will stand up and tell judge and jury?'

'Maybe I just didn't feel like going home,' Ja

'That's more like it!' he said. 'Car like that, you just wanted to keep on driving down the coast. Maybe you wouldn't stop till the border-'

'But here's what we actually think happened, Mr Ja

And if he leaves, all those potentially lucrative deals go with him.

All his tens of millions go with him. That's why you decided to go have a word with Charles Riordan. The chat didn't work, and he ended up unconscious-'

'I didn't even know Charles Riordan!'

'Fu

'I don't think you meant to kill him,' Clarke added, trying to add some empathy to her voice. Tou just wanted that recording destroyed. You knocked him out and looked for the tape, but it was needle-in-a-haystack stuff… thousands upon thousands of tapes and CDs in that house of his. So then you set that little fire – not the kind that would consume a building and turn anyone inside into crispy strips. It was just the tapes you wanted – too many for you to cart them away, and not enough time to go through them

all. So you stuck some paper into a bottle of cleaner, lit it, and walked away.'

'This is nonsense,' Ja

'Problem was,' Clarke went on, ignoring him, 'all that acoustic baffling proved to be a fire hazard… With Riordan dead, we were looking for a suspect in both killings – and Andropov still seemed to fit the bill. So all your hard work was in vain, Mr Ja

'I didn't do it.'

'Is that the truth?'

Ja

'Okay, then,' Clarke told him. “You've nothing to worry about.'

She closed the folder and gathered together the photos. Ja

Ja

'Just a formality, sir,' Rebus assured him. 'We need to take your fingerprints.'

Ja

Clarke supplied the answer. 'There was a print left on the bottle of solvent. It has to belong to whoever started the fire.'

'But it can't be yours, Stuart, can it?' Rebus asked. You were out enjoying a drive down our beautiful coastline in the crisp pre-dawn air…'

'Fingerprint.' The word slid out of Ja

'I like to do a bit of motoring myself,' Rebus was saying. 'Today's my retirement – means I can do a lot more of it in the future.

Maybe you'll show me the route you took… Why are you sitting down again, Stuart?'

'Is there anything we can get you, Mr Ja

Stuart Ja

'Mind repeating that?' Clarke asked politely.

You can get me a lawyer,' Ja

45

'Whenever anyone retires or resigns in the movies,' Siobhan Clarke said, 'they always seem to carry a box out of the building.'

'That's true,' Rebus agreed. He'd been through his desk and found precisely nothing of a personal nature. Turned out he didn't even have a mug of his own, just drank from whichever one was available at the time. In the end, he pocketed a couple of cheap ballpoint pens and a sachet of Lemsip a full year past its sell-by.

“You had the flu last December,' Clarke reminded him.

'Still dragged my sorry carcass into work, though.'

'And sneezed and groaned for a full week,' Phyllida Hawes added, hands on hips.

'Passing the germs to me,' Colin Tibbet stated.

'Ah, the fun we've had,' Rebus said with an affected sigh. There was no sign of DCI Macrae, though he'd left a note telling Rebus to leave his warrant card on the desk in his office. Derek Starr was absent, too. Gone six o'clock, meaning he'd be in a club or wine bar, celebrating the day's results and trying the usual chat-up lines. Rebus looked around the CID suite. 'You really didn't buy me anything, you miserable shower of bastards?'

'Have you seen the price of gold watches?' Clarke said with a smile. 'On the other hand, the back room of the Ox has been reserved for the night, and there's a hundred quid's worth of a tab – what we don't get through tonight is yours for afterwards.'

Rebus considered this. 'So that's what it comes down to after all these years – you want me drinking myself to death?'

'And we've booked the Cafe St Honore for nine o'clock – staggering distance from the Ox.'

'And staggering distance back again,' Hawes added.

'Just the four of us?' Rebus asked.

'A few more faces might drop by – Macrae's promised to look in.

Tarn Banks and Ray Duff… Professor Gates and Dr Curt… Todd and his girlfriend…'

'I hardly know them,' Rebus complained.

Clarke folded her arms. 'He needed a bit of persuading, so don't think I'm suddenly going to uninvite them!'

'My party, but your rules, eh?'

'And Shug Davidson's coming, too,' Hawes reminded Clarke.

Rebus rolled his eyes. I'm still a bloody suspect for the assault on Cafferty!'

'Shug doesn't seem to think so,' Clarke said.

'What about Calum Stone?'

'Didn't think he'd want to come.'

You know full well what I mean.'

'Are we ready for the off?' Hawes asked. They all looked at Rebus and he nodded. Really, he wanted five minutes on his own, to say a proper goodbye to the place. But he didn't suppose it mattered. Gayfield Square was just another cop-shop. This old priest Rebus had known, dead several years back, had said that cops were like the priesthood, the world their confessional. Stuart Ja