Exit Music

Monday morning, his alarm clock would be redundant. He could spend all day over breakfast, stick his suit back in the wardrobe, to be pulled out again only for funerals. He knew all the scare stories – people who left work one week and were in a wooden box by the

next, loss of work equalling loss of purpose in the great scheme of things. He'd wondered often if the only thing for it was to clear out of the city altogether. His flat would buy him a fair-sized house elsewhere – the Fife coastline, or west to one of the distillery-strewn islands, or south into reiver country. But he couldn't see himself ever leaving Edinburgh. It was the oxygen in his bloodstream, but still with mysteries to be explored. He'd lived there for as long as he'd been a cop, the two – job and city – becoming intertwined.

Each new crime had added to his understanding, without that understanding ever coming near to completion. Bloodstained past mingling with bloodstained present; Covenanters and commerce; a city of banking and brothels, virtue and vitriol…

Underworld meeting overworld…

'Pe

“You'd be wasting your money,' he told her.

'Somehow I very much doubt that. Are you ready?' Hoisting her bag on to her shoulder.

'As I'll ever be.'

He decided this much was true.

There were just the four of them at the Oxford Bar to start with.

The back room had indeed been set aside for their use – with the help of strips of crime-scene tape.

'Nice touch,' Rebus admitted, hoisting his first pint of the evening.

After the best part of an hour, they headed to the restaurant. A bag of gifts was waiting there. From Siobhan, an iPod. Rebus protested that he would never master the technology.

'I've already loaded it,' she told him. 'The Stones, Who, Wishbone Ash… you name it.'

'John Martyn? Jackie Leven?'

'Even a bit of Hawkwind.'

'My exit music,' Rebus commented with a look close to contentment.

From Hawes and Tibbet, a bottle of 25-year-old malt, and a book of historical walks through Edinburgh. Rebus kissed the bottle and patted the book, then insisted on wearing headphones for the first part of the meal.

'Listening to Jack Bruce beats you lot any day,' he explained.

Just the two bottles of wine with di

Sonia were the last to arrive. It was almost eleven and Rebus was on his fourth pint. Colin Tibbet was outside, taking gulps of fresh air while Phyllida Hawes rubbed his back encouragingly.

'Looks in a bad way,' Goodyear commented.

'Seven double brandies will do that to a man.'

There was no music, but then it wasn't needed. The various conversations were unforced and full of laughter. Anecdotes were recounted, with the two pathologists telling the best of them. Macrae shook Rebus's hand warmly and told him he had to get home.

'Remember to drop by and see us,' were his parting words.

Derek Starr was standing in a corner, discussing work with a bored-looking Shug Davidson. The fact he'd come at all meant his wine bar chat-ups had failed yet again. Each time Davidson glanced over, Rebus offered him a winced commiseration. When a tray appeared with the next round of drinks, Rebus found himself next to Sonia.

'Todd tells me you work scene-of-crimes,' he said.

'That's right.'

'Sorry I don't recognise the face.'

'I've usually got a hood over my head,' she said with a shy smile.

She was short, maybe five feet, with cropped blonde hair and green eyes. The dress she was wearing looked Japanese, and suited her slight, thin-boned figure.

'How long have you and Todd been an item?'

'A year and a bit.'

Rebus looked over to where Goodyear was handing out drinks.

'Must be doing something right,' he commented.

'He's quite brilliant, you know. CID's got to be the next step.'

'Might be a vacancy,' Rebus conceded. 'So how do you like sceneof-crimes?'

'It's all right.'

'I heard you were at Raeburn Wynd, the night Todorov was killed.'

She nodded. 'And at the canal, too. I was on call-out.'

'Mucked up your plans with Todd,' Rebus sympathised.

'How do you mean?' Her eyes had narrowed.

'Nothing,' Rebus said, wondering if maybe he'd started slurring his words.

'It was me who found the overshoe,' she added. Then her eyes widened and she put her free hand to her mouth.

'Don't worry about it,' Rebus assured her. 'I'm no longer in the frame, apparently.'

She relaxed and gave a little laugh. 'But it says a lot about Todd's skills, don't you think?'

'Absolutely,' Rebus agreed.

'Anything floating in that part of the canal, chances are it would end up getting stuck under the bridge – that's what he said.'

'And he was right,' Rebus admitted.

'Which is why CID would be mad not to take him.'

'Our sanity's often been questioned,' Rebus warned her.

'But you got a result on Todorov,' she stated.

'Yes, we did,' Rebus agreed with a tired smile. Goodyear was chatting to Siobhan Clarke now. Whatever he said made her laugh.

Rebus decided it was time for a cigarette break and reached out to take Sonia's hand, planting a kiss on the back of it.

'The perfect gentleman,' she was saying as he moved towards the door.

'If only you knew, kid…'

Hawes and Tibbet were at the far end of the street, Tibbet with his back to the wall, Hawes in front of him, stroking the hair back from his forehead. A couple of other smokers were watching the show.

'A while since that happened to me,' one said.

“Which?' his neighbour asked. 'Feeling like spewing or having a woman run her fingers through your hair?'

Rebus joined in the laughter and then busied himself with the cigarette. At the other end of the street, the lights were on in the First Minister's residence. A Labour enclave since devolution, it was now under threat from the Nationalists. In fact, Rebus couldn't think of a time when Scotland hadn't returned a Labour majority.

He had voted only three times in his life, each time for a different party. By the time of the devolution referendum, he'd lost all interest.

He'd met plenty of politicians since – Megan Macfarlane and Jim Bakewell were merely the latest examples – but reckoned half the regulars in the Ox would make better legislators. The likes of Bakewell and Macfarlane were a constant, and though Stuart Ja

Edinburgh had been built on the invisible industries of banking and insurance. Who cared if a few bribes oiled the wheels? What did it matter if some men got together to watch secretly filmed videos?

Andropov had said something about poets seeing themselves as unacknowledged legislators, but surely that title belonged to the men in the pinstripe suits?

'Reckon she's trying to kiss it better?' one of the smokers asked.

Hawes and Tibbet were now in an embrace of sorts, faces pressed together. Good luck to them, Rebus thought to himself. Police work had wedged itself into his own marriage, cracking it wide open, but that didn't have to be the case – he knew plenty of cops who were still married, some of them even wedded to other cops. They seemed to make it work.

'She's doing a good job of it,' the other smoker was answering his neighbour. The door was pulled open behind them and Siobhan Clarke appeared.