A Question of Blood

“Homey, wouldn’t you say?” Siobhan commented.

“In real estate agent parlance, yes.” Rebus picked up a couple of CDs: Linkin Park and Sepultura. “The man liked his metal,” he said, tossing them down again.

“Liked the SAS, too,” Siobhan added, holding up some books for Rebus to see. They were histories of the regiment, books about conflicts in which it had taken part, stories of survival by ex-members. She nodded to a nearby desk, and Rebus saw what she was pointing out: a scrapbook of news cuttings. These were all about soldiering, too. Whole articles discussing an apparent trend: American military heroes who were murdering their wives. Cuttings about suicides and disappearances. There was even one headed SPACE RUNS OUT IN SAS CEMETERY, which Rebus paid most attention to. He knew men who’d been buried in the plots set aside in St. Martin’s churchyard, not far from the regiment’s original HQ. Now a new cemetery site was being proposed near the current HQ at Credenhill. In the same piece, the deaths of two SAS soldiers were mentioned. They’d died on a “training exercise in Oman,” which could mean anything from a cock-up to assassination during covert operations.

Siobhan was peering into a supermarket shopping bag. Rebus heard the chink of empty bottles.

“He was a good host,” she said.

“Wine or spirits?”

“Tequila and red wine.”

“Judging from the empty bottle in the bedroom, Herdman was a whiskey man.”

“Like I say, a good host.” Siobhan took a sheet of paper from her pocket and unfolded it. “According to this, forensics took away the remains of a number of spliffs, plus some traces of what looked like cocaine. Took his computer, too. They also removed a number of photographs from the inside of the wardrobe.”

“What sort of photos?”

“Guns. Bit of a fetish, if you ask me. I mean… putting them on the wardrobe door.”

“Which makes of gun?”

“Doesn’t say.”

“What type of gun did he use again?”

She checked this. “Brocock. It’s an air gun. The ME 38 Magnum, to be precise.”

“So it’s like a revolver?”

Siobhan nodded. “You can buy one across the counter for just over a hundred quid. Powered by gas cylinder.”

“But Herdman’s had been tweaked?”

“Steel sleeving inside the chamber. Means you can use live ammo,.22. Alternative is to drill the gun out to take.38 calibers.”

“He used.22?” She nodded again. “So someone did the work for him?”

“He might’ve done it himself. Daresay he’d have had the know-how.”

“Do we know how he came by the gun in the first place?”

“As an ex-soldier, I’m guessing he had contacts.”

“Could be.” Rebus was thinking back to the 1960s and ’70s, arms and explosives walking off army bases the length and breadth of the land, mostly at the behest of both sides of the Northern Ireland Troubles… Plenty of soldiers had a “souvenir” tucked away somewhere; some knew places where guns could be bought and sold, no questions asked…

“And by the way,” Siobhan was saying, “it’s guns, plural.”

“He was carrying more than one?”

She shook her head. “But one was found during a search of his boathouse.” She referred to her notes again. “Mac- 10.”

“That’s a serious gun.”

“You know it?”

“Ingram Mac-10… it’s American. Thousand-round-a-minute job. Not something you’d be able to walk into a shop and buy.”

“Lab seems to think it had been deactivated at one time, meaning that’s exactly what you could do.”

“He tweaked it, too?”

“Or bought it tweaked.”

“Thank Christ he didn’t take that one to the school. It would have been carnage.”

The room went quiet as they considered this. They went back to their search.

“This is interesting,” she said, waving one of the books at him. “Story of a soldier who cracked up, tried to kill his girlfriend.” She studied the jacket. “Jumped from a plane and killed himself… True-life, by the look of it.” Something fell from between two pages. A snapshot. Siobhan picked it up, turned it around for Rebus to see. “Tell me it’s not her again.”

But it was. It was Teri Cotter, taken fairly recently. She was outdoors, other bodies edging into the picture. A street scene, maybe in Edinburgh. She looked to be seated on a sidewalk, wearing much the same clothes as when she’d helped Rebus smoke his cigarette. She was sticking her studded tongue out towards the photographer.

“She looks cheery,” Siobhan commented.

Rebus was studying the photo. He turned it over, but the back was blank. “She said she knew the boys who died. Never thought to ask if she knew their killer.”

“And Kate Renshaw’s theory that Herdman might co

Rebus shrugged. “Might be worth looking at Herdman’s bank account for signs of blood money.” He heard a door close downstairs. “Sounds like one of the neighbors is home. Shall we?”

Siobhan nodded and they left the flat, making sure it was locked behind them. On the landing below, Rebus put an ear first to one door and then to the other, finally nodding at the second. Siobhan banged on it with her fist. By the time the door opened, she had her ID out.

Two surnames on the door: the teacher and his girlfriend. It was the girlfriend who answered. She was short and blond, and would have been pretty were it not for a sideways jutting of her jaw, which gave her what Siobhan guessed was a semipermanent scowl.

“I’m DS Clarke, this is DI Rebus,” Siobhan said. “Mind if we ask you a couple of questions?”

The young woman looked from one to the other. “We already told the other lot everything we know.”

“We appreciate that, miss,” Rebus said. He saw her eyes drop to stare at his gloves. “But you do live here, right?”

“Aye.”

“We understand that you got on fine with Mr. Herdman, even though he could be a bit noisy sometimes.”

“Just when he had a party, like. It was never a problem-we raise the roof ourselves now and then.”

“You share his taste for heavy metal?”

She wrinkled her nose. “More of a Robbie woman myself.”

“She means Robbie Williams,” Siobhan informed Rebus.

“I’d have worked it out eventually,” Rebus sniffed.

“Good news was, he only ever played that stuff when he was partying.”

“Did you ever get an invite?”

She shook her head.

“Show Miss…” Rebus was talking to Siobhan but broke off and smiled at the neighbor. “Sorry, I don’t know your name.”

“Hazel Sinclair.”

He added a nod to his smile. “DS Clarke, can you show Miss Sinclair…”

But Siobhan already had the photograph out. She handed it to Hazel Sinclair.

“It’s Miss Teri,” the young woman stated.

“You’ve seen her around, then?”

“Of course. Looks like she’s just stepped out of The Addams Family. I often see her down the High Street.”

“But have you seen her here?”

“Here?” Sinclair thought about it, the effort further distorting her jawline. Then she shook her head. “I always thought he was gay anyway.”

“He had kids,” Siobhan said, taking back the photo.

“Doesn’t mean much, does it? Lot of gays are married. And he was in the army, probably a ton of gays in there.”

Siobhan tried to suppress a smile. Rebus shifted his feet.

“Besides,” Hazel Sinclair was saying, “it was always guys you saw coming up and down the stairs.” She paused for effect. “Young guys.”

“Any of them look as good as Robbie?”

Sinclair shook her head dramatically. “I’d eat breakfast off his backside any day of the week.”

“We’ll try to keep that out of our report,” Rebus said, dignity intact as both women cracked up with laughter.

In the car on the way to Port Edgar marina, Rebus looked at some photos of Lee Herdman. Mostly they were copied from newspapers. Herdman seemed tall and wiry, with a mop of curly graying hair. Wrinkles around his eyes, a face lined with the years. Ta