“It’s all going to hell,” he said, almost too calmly. He’d leaned back in the chair, hands smoothing his hair, eyes staring ceilingwards. “I told that stupid bastard never to come here.”

“You mean Peacock?”

He nodded slowly.

“Why plant the drugs?” Siobhan asked.

“Why not?” He gave another burst of laughter. “Lee was dead. Way I saw it, it would focus attention on him.”

“Taking the heat off you?” She decided to sit down. “Thing was, there was no heat on you.”

“Charlotte thought there was. You lot were sniffing into every nook and cranny, talking to Teri, talking to me…”

“Charlotte Cotter’s involved?”

Brimson looked at her as though she were stupid. “It’s a cash business… all needs to be laundered.”

“Through the tanning salons?” Siobhan nodded, letting him know she understood. Brimson and Teri’s mother: business partners.

“Lee wasn’t squeaky clean, you know,” Brimson was saying. “He was the one who introduced me to Peacock Johnson in the first place.”

“Lee knew Peacock Johnson? Is that where the guns came from?”

“That’s one thing I was going to give you, only I couldn’t see how…”

“What thing?”

“Johnson had these decommissioned guns, needed someone to put the firing pins back, that sort of thing.”

“And Lee Herdman did it?” She thought of the well-stocked workshop at the boatyard. Yes, a simple enough job, with the tools and the know-how. Herdman had had both.

Brimson was quiet for a moment. “We could still go for that flight; shame to miss the slot.”

“I’ve not brought my passport.” She reached out a hand towards his phone. “I need to make a call now, Doug.”

“I’d cleared our path, you know… cleared it with the flight tower. I was going to show you so much…” She’d risen to her feet, lifted the receiver.

“Maybe another time, eh?”

The two of them knowing there would be no other time. Brimson’s palms were flat against the desktop. Siobhan was holding the receiver to her ear, halfway through punching in the numbers. “I’m sorry, Doug,” she said.

“Me too, Siobhan. Believe me, I’m as sorry as hell.”

He pushed up from the desk, lunged across it, sending all the paperwork flying as he came. She dropped the phone and took a step back, colliding with the chair behind her, tripping over it and hitting the floor, hands outstretched to cushion the blow.

Doug Brimson’s whole weight landing on her, pinning her down, punching all the breath from her chest.

“Got to fly, Siobhan,” he snarled, gripping her by the wrists. “Got to fly…”

26

Happy, Bobby?” Rebus asked. “Deliriously so,” Bobby Hogan replied. They were entering the bar on South Queensferry’s waterfront. The meeting at the school could hardly have been better timed. They’d managed to interrupt a meeting between Claverhouse and Assistant Chief Constable Colin Carswell, Hogan taking a deep breath before stating that everything Claverhouse was saying was nonsense before going on to explain why.

At the end of the meeting, Claverhouse had walked out without any comment, leaving his colleague Ormiston to shake Hogan’s hand, telling him he deserved the credit.

“Which doesn’t mean you’ll get it, Bobby,” Rebus had said. But he’d patted Ormiston’s arm, to let him know the gesture was appreciated. He’d even asked him to join them for a drink, but Ormiston had shaken his head.

“I think you’ve just assigned me to solace duty,” he’d said.

So it was just Rebus and Hogan in the bar. As they waited their turn, Hogan seemed to deflate just a little. Usually at the end of a case, the whole team gathered in the murder room while cases of beer were dragged in and opened. Maybe a bottle of fizz from the brass. Whiskey for the more traditionally minded. This didn’t seem the same, just the two of them, the original team already dispersed…

“What’ll it be?” Hogan asked, trying to sound breezy.

“Maybe a Laphroaig, Bobby.”

“The measures don’t look generous.” Hogan had run an expert eye over the gantry.

“Better make it a double.”

“And decide right now who’s the designated driver.”

Hogan’s mouth twitched. “I thought you said Siobhan was joining us.”

“That’s cruel, Bobby.” Rebus paused. “Cruel but fair.”

The barman was ready for them. Hogan ordered Rebus’s whiskey and a pint of lager for himself. “And two cigars,” he added, turning towards Rebus, seeming to study him. He rested his arm on the edge of the bar. “Result like this, John, makes me think I want to go out while I’m winning.”

“Christ, Bobby, you’re in your prime.”

Hogan snorted. “Five years ago I’d have agreed with you.” He took a wad of notes from his pocket and extracted a ten. “But this just about does it for me.”

“So what’s changed?”

Hogan shrugged. “A kid who can go and shoot two classmates, no real motive, I mean, none that makes any sense to me… It’s a different world from the one I used to know, John.”

“Just means we’re needed more than ever.”

Hogan snorted again. “You really think so? You see yourself as being wanted, do you?”

“I didn’t say ‘wanted’; I said needed.”

“And who needs us? People like Carswell, because we make him look good? Or Claverhouse, so he’s not screwing up any more than he already is?”

“They’ll do for a start,” Rebus said, smiling. His glass was placed in front of him, and he dribbled some water into it, just enough to take the edge off. Two thin cigars had arrived, and Hogan was unwrapping his.

“We still don’t really know, do we?”

“Know what?”

“Why Herdman did it… topped himself.”

“Did you think we ever would? I had the feeling you brought me in because all the young folk around you were scaring you. You needed another dinosaur in the vicinity.”

“You’re not a dinosaur, John.” Hogan lifted his glass, chinked it against Rebus’s. “Here’s to the two of us.”

“Not forgetting Jack Bell, without whose presence James might have realized he could keep quiet and end up getting away with it.”

“Right enough,” Hogan said with a broad grin. “Families, eh, John?” He started shaking his head.

“Families,” Rebus agreed, lifting the glass to his mouth.

When his phone sounded, Hogan told him to leave it. But Rebus checked the display, wondering if it might be Siobhan. It wasn’t. Rebus motioned to Hogan that he was stepping back outside, where it was quieter. There was a beer garden to the front, just an area of pavement with some tables. Too chill a breeze for anyone to be using them. Rebus lifted the phone to his ear.

“Gill?” he said.

“You wanted to be kept in touch.”

“Young Bob’s still singing, then?”

“I almost wish he’d stop,” Gill Templer said with a sigh. “We’ve had his childhood, bullied at school, the time he wet himself… He keeps bouncing backwards and forwards, I never know if something happened last week or last decade. He says he wants to borrow The Wind in the Willows…”

Rebus smiled. “It’s at my flat. I’ll fetch it for him.” Rebus heard the drone of a light aircraft in the distance. Peered up, shading his eyes with his free hand. The plane was over the Forth Road Bridge, too far away to tell if it was the same one they’d traveled to Jura in. Same sort of size, crawling almost lazily across the sky.

“What do you know about tanning parlors?” Gill Templer was asking.

“Why?”

“They keep cropping up. Some connection with Johnson and the drugs…”

Rebus kept watching the plane. It dipped suddenly, engine changing tone. Then it leveled off, wings tilting from side to side. If it was Siobhan up there, she was learning the hard way.

“Teri Cotter’s mother owns a few,” Rebus said into the phone. “That’s about as much as I know.”

“Could they be a front?”

“I wouldn’t have thought so. I mean, where would she be getting…?” Rebus broke off. Brimson’s car, parked in Cockburn Street where Teri’s mum had one of her shops. Teri admitting to him that her mother was having an affair with Brimson…