A Question of Blood

“Care to show some ID?” Rebus asked.

“DI Hogan knows we’re here,” Whiteread replied casually. She was examining the surface of the workbench now. Rebus followed her slowly.

“I asked you for ID,” he said.

“I’m well aware of that,” Whiteread said, her attention shifting to what looked like a small office at the rear of the building. She made off towards it, Rebus at her heels.

“You’re marching,” he warned her. “Dead giveaway.” She said nothing. The office had once sported a large padlock, but it, too, had been broken open, and the door fixed shut afterwards with more police-issue tape. “Plus your partner used the word ‘kit,’” Rebus went on. Whiteread peeled the tape away and looked inside. Desk, chair, a single filing cabinet. No space for anything else, other than what looked like a two-way radio on a shelf. No computers or copiers or fax machines. The desk drawers had been opened, contents examined. Whiteread lifted out a sheaf and started flipping through.

“You’re army,” Rebus stated into the silence. “You might be in mufti, but you’re still army. No women in the SAS as far as I know, so what does that make you?”

She snapped her head towards him. “It makes me someone who can help.”

“Help what?”

“With this sort of thing.” She went back to her work. “To stop it from happening again.”

Rebus stared at her. Siobhan and Simms were standing just outside the door. “Siobhan, call Bobby Hogan for me. I want to know what he knows about these two.”

“He knows we’re here,” Whiteread said, not looking up. “He even told me we might be bumping into you. How else would I know your name?”

Siobhan had the mobile in her hand. “Make the call,” Rebus told her.

Whiteread stuffed the paperwork back into its drawer and pushed it shut. “You never quite made it into the regiment, did you, DI Rebus?” She turned slowly towards him. “Way I hear it, the training broke you.”

“How come you’re not in uniform?” Rebus asked.

“It scares some people,” Whiteread said.

“Is that it? Couldn’t be that you don’t want to add to all the bad publicity?” Rebus was smiling coldly. “Doesn’t look good when one of your own throws a maddie, does it? Last thing you want is to remind everybody that he was one of yours.”

“What’s done is done. If we can stop it from happening again, so much the better.” She paused, standing right in front of him. Half a foot shorter, but every bit his equal. “Why should you have a problem with that?” Now she returned his smile. If his had been cold, hers came straight from the deep freeze. “You fell down, didn’t make the grade. No need to let that get to you, Detective Inspector.”

Rebus heard “Detective” as “Defective.” Either her accent, or she’d been trying for the pun. Siobhan had been co

“We should take a look in the boat,” Whiteread said to her partner, squeezing past Rebus.

“There’s a ladder,” Simms said. Rebus tried to place the accent: Lancashire or Yorkshire maybe. Whiteread he wasn’t so sure about. Home Counties, whatever that meant. A kind of generic English as taught in the posher schools. Rebus realized, too, that Simms didn’t appear comfortable in either his suit or this role. Maybe it was a class thing again, or maybe he was new to both.

“First name’s John, by the way,” Rebus told him. “What’s yours?”

Simms looked to Whiteread. “Well, tell the man!” she snapped.

“Gav… Gavin.”

“Gav to your friends, Gavin when on business?” Rebus guessed. Siobhan was handing him the phone. He took it.

“Bobby, what the hell are you doing letting two numpties from Her Majesty’s armed forces crawl all over our case?” He paused to listen, then spoke again. “I used the word advisedly, Bobby, as they’re about to start crawling over Herdman’s boat.” Another pause. “That’s hardly the point, though…” And then: “Okay, okay. We’re on our way.” He pushed the phone back into Siobhan’s hand. Simms was steadying the ladder while Whiteread climbed.

“We’re just away,” Rebus called to her. “And if we don’t see each other again… well, I’ll be crying inside, believe me. The smile will just be for show.”

He waited for the woman to say something, but she was aboard now and seemed to have lost interest in him. Simms was climbing the ladder, giving a backwards glance at the two detectives.

“I’ve half a mind,” Rebus said to Siobhan, “to grab the ladder and run for it.”

“I don’t think that would stop her, do you?”

“Probably right,” he admitted. Then, raising his voice: “One last thing, Whiteread-young Gav was looking up your skirt!”

As Rebus turned to leave, he shrugged at Siobhan, as if to acknowledge that the shot had been cheap.

Cheap, but worthwhile.

“I mean it, Bobby, what the hell’s the matter with you?” Rebus was walking down one of the school’s long corridors towards what looked very much like a floor-to-ceiling safe, the old kind with a wheel and some tumblers. It stood open, as did an interior steel gate. Hogan was staring inside.

“God almighty, man, those bastards have no place here.”

“John,” Hogan said quietly, “I don’t think you’ve met the principal…” He gestured into the vault, where a middle-aged man was standing, surrounded by enough guns to start a revolution. “Dr. Fogg,” Hogan said, by way of introduction.

Fogg stepped over the threshold. He was a short, stocky man with the look of a onetime boxer: one ear seemed puffy, and his nose covered half his face. A nick of scar tissue cut through one of his bushy eyebrows. “Eric Fogg,” he said, shaking Rebus’s hand.

“Sorry about my language back there, sir. I’m DI John Rebus.”

“Working in a school, you hear worse,” Fogg stated, making it sound like something he’d said a hundred times before.

Siobhan had caught up and was about to introduce herself when she saw the contents of the vault.

“Jesus Christ!” she exclaimed.

“My thoughts exactly,” Rebus agreed.

“As I was explaining to DI Hogan,” Fogg began, “most independent schools have something like this on the premises.”

“CCF, is that right, Dr. Fogg?” Hogan added.

Fogg nodded. “The Combined Cadet Force-army, navy and air force cadets. They parade each Friday afternoon.” He paused. “I think a big incentive is that they can eschew school uniforms that day.”

“For something slightly more paramilitary?” Rebus guessed.

“Automatic, semi-automatic and other weapons,” Hogan recited.

“Probably deters the odd housebreaker.”

“Actually,” Fogg said, “I was just telling DI Hogan that if the school’s alarm system is activated, the responding police units are instructed to make for the armory first. It dates back to when the IRA and suchlike were looking for guns.”

“You’re not saying the ammo’s kept here, too?” Siobhan asked.

Fogg shook his head. “There’s no live ammo on the premises.”

“But the guns are real enough? They’re not deactivated?”

“Oh, they’re real enough.” He looked at the contents of the vault with something approaching distaste.

“You’re not a fan?” Rebus guessed.

“I think the practice is… slightly in danger of outliving its useful application.”

“There speaks a diplomat,” Rebus said, forcing a smile from the principal.

“Herdman didn’t get his gun from here?” Siobhan was asking.

Hogan shook his head. “That’s another thing I’m hoping the army investigators might help us with.” He looked at Rebus. “Always supposing you can’t.”

“Give us a break, Bobby. We’ve hardly been here five minutes.”

“Do you do any teaching, sir?” Siobhan asked Fogg, hoping to defuse any argument her two senior officers might be thinking of starting.

Fogg shook his head. “I used to: RME-religious and moral education.”

“Instilling a sense of morality in teenagers? That must’ve been tough.”