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Doug Brimson, friend of Lee Herdman. Brimson with his planes. Where the hell had he got the money for them? Millions, Ray Duff had said. It had struck a nerve at the time, but Rebus had become distracted by James Bell. Millions… the kind of money you could make from a few legitimate businesses, and dozens of illegal ones…
Rebus remembered what Brimson had said on the way back from Jura, with the Forth and Rosyth beneath: I often think about the damage… even with something as small as a Cessna… dockyard… ferry… road and rail bridges… airport… Rebus’s hand fell. He squinted into the light.
“Jesus Christ,” he muttered.
“John? You still there?”
By the time she had the words out, he wasn’t.
Ran back into the bar, dragged Hogan out. “We need to get to the airfield!”
“What for?”
“No time!”
Hogan unlocking the car, Rebus getting behind the wheel. “I’m driving!” Hogan not about to argue. Rebus sending the car screaming out of the car park, but then screeching to a halt, staring from the driver’s-side window.
“Jesus, no…” Stumbling from the car, standing in the middle of the road, looking up. The plane had gone into a dive but was coming out of it.
“What’s going on?” Hogan yelled from the passenger seat.
Rebus got back behind the wheel, set off again. Following the plane’s progress as it passed over the rail bridge, made a steep arc as it neared the Fife coastline and started back towards the bridges again.
“That plane’s in trouble,” Hogan stated.
Rebus stopped the car again to watch. “It’s Brimson,” he hissed. “He’s got Siobhan with him.”
“Looks like it’s going to hit the bridge!” Both men were out of the car. They weren’t alone. Other drivers had stopped to watch. Pedestrians were pointing and muttering. The drone of the engine had grown louder, more discordant.
“Jesus,” Hogan gasped, as the plane flew underneath the rail bridge, mere feet from the surface of the water. It climbed steeply, almost vertically, leveled off, and then dived again. This time it went below the central span of the road bridge.
“Is he showing off, or trying to scare the wits out of her?” Hogan said.
Rebus shook his head. He was thinking of Lee Herdman, the way he would try to scare his teenage water-skiers… testing them.
“Brimson’s the one who planted those drugs. He’s bringing them into the country on his plane, Bobby, and I get the feeling Siobhan knows that.”
“So what the hell is he doing now?”
“Scaring her maybe. I hope to hell that’s all it is…” He thought of Lee Herdman, lifting a gun to his temple, and the ex-SAS man who jumped to his death from an airplane…
“Will they have parachutes?” Hogan was asking. “Could she get out?”
Rebus didn’t answer. His jaw was locked tight.
The plane was looping the loop now, but still far too close to the bridge. One wing clipped a suspension cable, sending the plane into a spiraling dive.
Rebus took an involuntary step forwards, yelled out the word “no!” stretching it for the length of time it took the machine to hit the water.
“Hell’s fucking bells,” Hogan cried. Rebus was staring at the spot… the plane already reduced to wreckage, wisps of smoke rising from it as the pieces began to disappear beneath the surface.
“We’ve got to get down there!” Rebus shouted.
“How?”
“I don’t know… get a boat! Port Edgar… they’ve got boats!” They got back into the car and did a squealing U-turn, drove to the boatyard, where a siren was sounding, regular sailors already heading for the scene. Rebus parked, and they ran down to the jetty, past Herdman’s boathouse, Rebus aware of movement at the corner of his eye, a flash of color. Dismissing it in the urgency to reach the water’s edge. Rebus and Hogan showed their ID to a man who was untying his speedboat.
“We need a lift.”
The man was in his late fifties, bald-headed with a silver beard. He looked them up and down. “You need life jackets,” he protested.
“No, we don’t. Now just get us out there.” Rebus paused. “Please.”
The man took another look at him, and nodded agreement. Rebus and Hogan clambered aboard, holding on as the owner raced out of the harbor. Other small boats had already congregated around the slick of oil, and the lifeboat from South Queensferry was approaching. Rebus sca
“Maybe it wasn’t them,” Hogan said. “Maybe she didn’t go.”
Rebus nodded in the hope that his friend might shut up. What debris there was, was already spreading out, the tide and the swell from the various craft dispersing it. “We need divers, Bobby. Frogmen… whatever it takes.”
“It’ll be taken care of, John. Somebody else’s job, not ours.” Rebus realized that Hogan’s hand was squeezing his arm. “Christ, and I made that stupid crack about the coast guard…”
“Not your fault, Bobby.”
Hogan was thoughtful. “Nothing we can do here, eh?”
Rebus was forced to admit defeat: there was nothing they could do. They asked the skipper to take them back, which he did.
“Terrible accident,” he yelled above the noise of the outboard engine.
“Yes, terrible,” Hogan agreed. Rebus just stared at the choppy surface of the water. “We still going to the airfield?” Hogan asked as they climbed back onto dry land. Rebus nodded, started striding towards the Passat. But then he paused outside Herdman’s boathouse, and turned his head to look at the much smaller shed next door, the one with the car parked in front. The car was an old 7-series BMW, tarnished black. He didn’t recognize it. Where had the flash of color come from? He looked at the shed. Its door was closed. Had it been open when they’d arrived? Had the flash of color flitted across the doorway? Rebus walked up to the door, gave it a push. It bounced back: someone behind it, holding it closed. Rebus stood back and gave the door an almighty kick, then shouldered it. It flew open, sending the man behind it sprawling.
Red short-sleeved shirt with palm trees on it.
Face turning to meet Rebus’s.
“Holy shit,” Bobby Hogan was muttering, studying the blanket on the ground, the array of weapons laid out on it. Two lockers stood gaping, emptied of their secrets. Pistols, revolvers, submachine guns…
“Thinking of starting a war, Peacock?” Rebus said. And when Peacock Johnson scrambled forwards, making towards the nearest gun, Rebus took a single step, swung back a foot, and kicked him straight in the middle of his face, throwing him back onto the floor again.
Johnson lay unconscious, spread-eagled. Hogan was shaking his head.
“How the hell did we miss this lot?” he was asking himself.
“Maybe because it was right under our noses, Bobby, same as everything else in this damned case.”
“But what does it mean?”
“I suggest you ask our friend here,” Rebus said, “just as soon as he wakes up.” He turned to walk away.
“Where are you going?”
“The airfield. You stay here with him, call it in.”
“John… what’s the point?”
Rebus stopped. He knew what Hogan meant: what’s the point of going to the airfield? But then he started walking again, couldn’t think of anything else to do. He punched Siobhan’s number into his mobile, but a recording told him the number wasn’t available and he should try again later. He punched it in again, same response. Dropped the tiny silver box onto the ground and stamped on it, hard as he could, with the heel of his shoe.
It was dusk by the time Rebus arrived at the locked gates.
He got out of the car and tried the entry phone, but no one was answering. He could see Siobhan’s car through the fence, parked next to the office. The office door was standing open, as though someone had been in a hurry.
Or maybe struggling… not bothering to close it after them.
Rebus pushed at the gate, put his shoulder to it. The chain rattled but wasn’t going to yield. He stood back and kicked it. Kicked it again and again. Shouldered it, smashed his fists against it. Pressed his head to it, eyes squeezed shut.