`Bobby,' he said. `If you're driving, better slow down right now…’
Hogan's notion: five in cash was just Telford's style. Blackmail? But where was the connection? Something else…? Hogan's play: he'd talk to Telford.
Rebus's notion: five was a bit steep for a hit-man. All the same, he wondered about Lintz… paying five thou' to Telford to set up the `accident'. Motive: give Rebus a fright, scare him off? It put Lintz back in the frame, potentially.
Rebus had fixed up another meeting, one he didn't want anyone knowing about. Haymarket Station was nice and anonymous. The bench on platform one. Ned Farlowe was already waiting. He looked tired: worry over Sammy. They talked about her for a couple of minutes. Then Rebus got down to business.
`You know Lintz has been murdered?’
`I didn't think this was a social call.’
`We're looking at a blackmail angle.’
Farlowe looked interested. `And he didn't pay up?’
Oh, he paid up all right, Rebus thought. He paid up, and someone still took him out of the game.
`Look, Ned, this is all off the record. By rights I should take you in for questioning.’
`Because I followed him for a few days?’
`Yes.’
`And that makes me a suspect?’
`It makes you a possible witness.’
Farlowe thought about it. `One evening. Lintz left his house, walked down the road, made a call from a phone-box, then went straight back home.’
Not wanting to use his home phone… afraid it was bugged? Afraid of the number being traced? Telephone bugging: a favourite ploy of Special Branch.
`And something else,' Farlowe was saying. `He met this woman on his doorstep. Like she was waiting for him. They had a few words. I think she was crying when she left.’
`What did she look like?’
`Tall, short dark hair, well-dressed. She had a briefcase with her.’
`Wearing?’
Farlowe shrugged. `Skirt and jacket… matching. Black and white check. You know… elegant.’
He was describing Kirstin Mede. Her phone message to Rebus: I can't do this any more…
`There's something I want to ask you,' Farlowe was saying. `That girl Candice.’
`What about her?’
`You asked me if anything unusual had happened just before Sammy got hit.’
`Yes?’
`Well, she happened, didn't she?’
Farlowe's eyes narrowed. `Does she have anything to do with it?’
Rebus looked at Farlowe, who started nodding.
`Thanks for the confirmation. Who was she?’
`One of Telford's girls.’
Farlowe leaped to his feet, paced the platform. Rebus waited for him to sit down again. When he did, there could be no doubting the fury in his eyes.
`You hid one of Telford's girls with your own daughter?’
`I didn't have much choice. Telford knows where I live. I…’
`You were using us!' He paused. `Telford did this, didn't he?’
`I don't know,' Rebus said. Farlowe leaped to his feet again. `Look, Ned, I don't want you -‘
'Quite frankly, Inspector, I don't think you're in any position to give advice.’
He started walking, and though Rebus called after him, he never once looked back.
As Rebus walked into the Crime Squad office, a paper plane glided past and crashed into the wall. Ormiston had his feet up on the desk. Country and western music was playing softly in the background, its source a tape player on the window ledge behind Claverhouse's desk. Siobhan Clarke had pulled a chair over beside him. They were poring over some report.
`Not exactly the "A-Team" in here, is it?’
Rebus retrieved the plane, straightened its crumpled nose, and sent it back to Ormiston, who asked what he was doing there.
`Liaising,' Rebus told him. `My boss wants a progress report.’
Ormiston glanced towards Claverhouse, who was tipping himself back in his chair, hands behind his head.
`Want to take a guess at the headway we've made?’
Rebus sat down opposite Claverhouse, nodded a greeting to Siobhan.
`How's Sammy?’ she asked.
`Just the same,' Rebus answered. Claverhouse looked abashed, and Rebus suddenly realised that he could use Sammy as a lever, play on people's sympathy. Why not? Hadn't he used her in the past? Wasn't Ned Farlowe on the nail there? `We've pulled the surveillance,' Claverhouse said.
'Why?’
Ormiston snorted, but it was Claverhouse who answered.
`High maintenance, low returns.’
`Orders from above?’
`It isn't as if we were close to getting a result.’
`So we just let him get on with getting on?’
Claverhouse shrugged. Rebus wondered if news would get back to Newcastle. Jake Tarawicz would be happy. He'd think Rebus was fulfilling his part of the bargain. Candice would be safe. Maybe.
`Any news on that nightclub killing?’
`Nothing to link it to your chum Cafferty.’
`He's not my chum.’
`Whatever you say. Stick the kettle on, Ormie.’
Ormiston glanced towards Clarke, then rose grudgingly from his chair. Rebus had thought the tension in the office was all to do with Telford. Not a bit of it. Claverhouse and Clarke close together, involved. Ormiston off on his own, a kid making paper planes, seeking attention. An old Status Quo song: `Paper Plane'. But the status quo here had been disturbed: Clarke had usurped Ormiston. The office junior was absolved from making the tea.
Rebus could see why Ormiston was pissed off.
`I hear Herr Lintz was a bit of a swinger,' Claverhouse said.
`Now there's a joke I haven't heard before.’
Rebus's pager sounded. The display gave him a number to call.
He used Claverhouse's phone. It sounded like he was connected to a pay-phone. Street sounds, heavy traffic close by.
`Mr Rebus?’
Placed the voice at once: the Weasel.
`What is it?’
`A couple of questions. The tape player from the car, any idea of the make?’
`Sony.’
`The front bit detachable?’
`That's right.’
`So all they got was the front bit?’
`Yes.’
Claverhouse and Clarke, back at their report, pretending they weren't listening.
`What about the tapes? You said some tapes got stolen?’
`Opera – The Marriage of Figaro and Verdi's Macbeth.’
Rebus squeezed his eyes shut, thinking. `And another tape with film music on it, famous themes. Plus Roy Orbison's Greatest Hits.’
This last the wife's. Rebus knew what the Weasel was thinking: whoever took the stuff, they'd try flogging it round the pubs or at a car boot sale. Car boot sales were clearing houses for knock-off. But getting whoever had lifted the stuff from the unlocked car wasn't going to nail the driver… Unless the kid – the one who'd lifted the stuff, whose prints were on the car – had seen something: been hanging around on the street, watched the car screeching to a stop, a man getting out and hoofing it…
An eye witness, someone who could describe the driver.
`The only prints we got were small, maybe a kid's.’
`That's interesting.’
`Anything else I can do,' Rebus said, `just let me know.’
The Weasel hung up.
`Sony's a good make,' Claverhouse said, fishing.
`Some stuff lifted from a car,' Rebus told him. `It might have turned up.’
Ormiston had made the tea. Rebus went to fetch himself a chair, saw someone walk past the open doorway. He dropped the chair and ran into the corridor, grabbed at an arm.
Abernethy spun quickly, saw who it was and relaxed.
`Nice one, son,' he said. `You almost had knuckles for teeth.’
He was working on a piece of chewing gum.
`What are you doing here?’
`Visiting.’
Abernethy looked back at the open door, walked towards it. `What about you?’
`Working.’
Abernethy read the sign on the door. `Crime Squad,' he said, sounding amused, taking in the office and the people in it. Hands in pockets, he sauntered in, Rebus following.
'Abernethy, Special Branch,' the Londoner said by way of introduction. `That music's a good idea: play it at interrogations, sap the suspect's will to live.’