A Question of Blood

“We panicked her,” Siobhan admitted. “Pretty much as soon as we mentioned her brother’s death.”

“Could be they were just close,” Rebus argued. “You’re not really going for the assassin theory?”

“All the same,” she said. “There’s something…” The door opened again, and Teri Cotter strode towards the table, leaning on it with both hands, her face close to her inquisitors.

“James Bell,” she hissed. “There’s a name for you, if you want one.”

“He went to Herdman’s parties?” Rebus asked.

Teri Cotter just nodded, then turned away again. The regulars, watching her make her exit, shook their heads and went back to their drinks.

“That interview we listened to,” Rebus said, “what was it James Bell said about Herdman?”

“Something about going water-skiing.”

“Yes, but the way he said it: ‘we’d met socially,’ something like that.”

Siobhan nodded. “Maybe we should have picked up on it.”

“We need to talk to him.”

Siobhan kept nodding, but she was looking at the table. She peered beneath it.

“Lost something?” Rebus asked.

“No, but you have.”

Rebus looked, too, and it dawned on him. Teri Cotter had taken her photograph with her.

“Think that was why she came back?” Siobhan guessed.

Rebus shrugged. “I suppose it counts as her property… a memento of the man she’s lost.”

“You think they were lovers?”

“Stranger things have happened.”

“In which case…”

But Rebus shook his head. “Using her womanly wiles to persuade him to turn assassin? Do me a favor, Siobhan.”

“Stranger things have happened,” she echoed.

“Speaking of which, any chance of you buying me a drink?” He held up his empty glass.

“None whatsoever,” she said, getting up to leave. Glumly, he followed her out of the bar. She was standing by her car, seemingly transfixed by something. Rebus couldn’t see anything worthy of note. The Goths were milling around as before, minus Miss Teri. No sign of the Lost Boys either. A few tourists stopping for photographs.

“What is it?” he asked.

She nodded towards a car parked opposite. “Looks like Doug Brimson’s Land Rover.”

“You sure?”

“I saw it when I was out at Turnhouse.” She looked up and down Cockburn Street. Brimson wasn’t anywhere to be seen.

“It’s in worse shape than my Saab,” Rebus commented.

“Yes, but you don’t have a Jag garaged at home.”

“A Jag and a clapped-out Land Rover?”

“I reckon it’s an image thing… boys and their toys.” She looked up and down the street again. “Wonder where he is.”

“Maybe he’s stalking you,” Rebus suggested. He saw the look on her face and shrugged an apology. She turned her attention to the car again, certain in her mind that it was his. Coincidence, she told herself, that’s all it is.

Coincidence.

But all the same, she jotted down the number.

11

That evening, she settled down on her sofa, trying to get interested in anything on TV. Two gaudily dressed hosts were telling their victim that her clothes were all wrong for her. On another cha

All of which served her right for not bothering to stop off at the video shop. Her own collection of films was small-“select,” as she preferred to call it. She’d watched each one half a dozen times at least, could recite dialogue, knew exactly what was coming in every scene. Maybe she would put some music on, turn the TV to mute and invent her own script for the boring-looking film. Or even for the cane toads. She’d already skimmed a magazine, picked up a book and put it down again, eaten the crisps and chocolate she’d bought at the garage when she’d stopped for petrol. There was a half-finished chow mein on the kitchen table, which she might get around to microwaving. Worst of all, she’d run out of wine, nothing in the flat but empty bottles awaiting the recycling run. She had gin in the cupboard, but nothing to mix it with except Diet Coke, and she wasn’t that desperate.

Not yet, anyway.

There were friends she could phone, but she knew she wouldn’t make great company. There was a message on her answering machine from her friend Caroline, asking if she fancied a drink. Blond and petite, Caroline always attracted attention when the two of them went out together. Siobhan had decided not to return the call just yet. She was too tired, with the case buzzing around her head, refusing to leave her alone. She’d made herself coffee, taking a mouthful before realizing she hadn’t boiled the kettle. Then she’d spent a couple of minutes searching the kitchen for sugar before remembering she didn’t take sugar. Hadn’t taken it in coffee since she’d been a teenager.

“Senile dementia,” she’d muttered aloud. “And talking to yourself: another symptom.”

Chocolate and crisps weren’t on her panic-free diet. Salt, fat and sugar. Her heart wasn’t exactly racing, but she knew she had to calm down somehow, had to relax and start winding down as bedtime approached. She’d stared out of her window for a while, checking on the neighbors across the street, pressing her nose to the glass as she looked down two stories to the passing traffic. It was quiet outside, quiet and dark, the pavement picked out by orange streetlamps. There were no bogeymen; nothing to be scared of.

She remembered that a long time ago, back in the days when she’d still taken sugar in her coffee, she’d been afraid of the dark for a while. About the age of thirteen or fourteen: too old to confide in her parents. She would spend her pocket money on batteries for the flashlight she kept on all night, keeping it beneath the covers with her, holding her breath in an attempt to pick out the breathing of anyone else in the room. The few times her parents caught her, they just thought she was staying up late to read. She could never be sure which was the right thing to do: leave the door open, so you could make a run for it, or close it to keep out intruders? She checked beneath her bed two or three times each day, though there was little enough room under there: it was where she stored her albums. The thing was, she never had nightmares. When she did eventually drop off to sleep, that sleep was deep and cleansing. She never suffered panic attacks. And eventually she forgot why she’d ever been afraid in the first place. The flashlight went back in its drawer. The money she’d been wasting on batteries she now started spending on makeup.

She could never be sure which came first: did she discover boys, or did they discover her?

“Ancient history, girl,” she told herself now. There were no bogeymen out there, but precious few knights either, tarnished or otherwise. She walked over to her dining table, looked at her notes on the case. They were laid out in no order whatsoever-everything she’d been given that first day. Reports, autopsy and forensics, photos of crime scene and victims. She studied the two faces, Derek Renshaw and Anthony Jarvies. Both were handsome, in a bland sort of way. There was a haughty intelligence to Jarvies’s heavy-lidded stare. Renshaw looked a lot less sure of himself. Maybe it was a class thing, Jarvies’s breeding showing through. She reckoned Allan Renshaw would have been proud of the fact that his son boasted a judge’s son as a friend. It was why you sent your kids to private school, wasn’t it? You wanted them to meet the right sort of people, people who might prove useful in the future. She knew fellow officers, not all of them on CID salaries, who scrimped to send their offspring to the kind of schools they themselves had never been offered the chance of. The class thing again. She wondered about Lee Herdman. He’d been in the army, the SAS… ordered about by officers who’d been to the right schools, who spoke the right way. Could it be as simple as that? Could his attack have been motivated by nothing more than bitter envy of an elite?