Set In Darkness by Ian Rankin

Author:Ian Rankin [Rankin, Ian]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: Fiction, General, Mystery & Detective, Mystery fiction, Police Procedural, Police, Hard-Boiled, Edinburgh, Scotland, Edinburgh (Scotland), Police - Scotland - Edinburgh, Rebus; Inspector (Fictitious Character), Legislators
ISBN: 9780312629830
Publisher: Minotaur Books
Published: 2000-01-02T00:00:00+00:00

'It's slow going,' Wylie said. 'Coghill's biggest problem was he was a one-man band. Tried to run the whole business himself.'

'Now if only he'd employed a nice personnel manager Wylie finished the thought: 'We might have what we're looking for by now.'

'Maybe he chucked stuff out/ Rebus said. 'How far back have you found records for?'

'He didn't throw anything out, sir: that's the real problem here. He kept every scrap of paper.' She waved a letter at him. It was on paper headed Coghill Builders. He took it from her. The estimate for construction of a one-car garage at an address in Joppa. The estimate was in pounds, shillings and pence. The date was July 1969.

'We're looking for one year out of thirty,' Wylie said. She drained the tea, screwed the cup back on to the Thermos. 'A needle in a bloody haystack.'

Rebus drained his cup. 'Well, sooner I let you get back to it...' He checked his watch.

'If you're at a loose end, sir, we can always use another pair of hands.'

Rebus looked at Wylie. She wasn't smiling. 'Another appointment,' he told her. 'Just thought I'd drop by.'

'Much appreciated, sir,' Hood said, catching something of his partner's tone. They went back to work, watched Rebus leave.

Wylie heard an engine start, and flung down her sheaf of papers. 'Do you believe that? Swans in, finishes off the tea, and swans out again. And if we'd found anything, he'd have been off back to the station with it to bag the glory.'

Hood was staring at the door. 'Think so?'

She looked at him. 'Don't you?'

He shrugged. 'Not his style,' he said.

'Then why did he come?'

Hood was still looking at the door. 'Because he can't let go-'

'Another way of saying he doesn't trust us.' Hood was shaking his head. He picked up another box-file. 'Seventy-one,' he said, looking at it. 'Year I was born.'

'I hope you don't mind the choice of meeting place,' Cammo Grieve said, picking his way over lengths of scaffolding which had either just come down or were just going up.

'No problem,' Rebus said.

'Only I wanted the excuse for a poke around here.'

Here being the temporary home of the Scottish Parliament in the General Assembly building at the top of The Mound. The builders were hard at work. Black metal lighting gantreys had already appeared amidst the wooden ceiling beams. Gyproc walls were being cut to shape, their skeletal wooden frames standing ready to receive them. A new floor was being laid on top of the existing one. It rose amphitheatre-style in a graduated semicircle. The desks and chairs hadn't arrived yet. In the courtyard outside, the statue of John Knox had been boxed in - some said for safekeeping, some so that he could not show his disgust at the renovations to the Church of Scotland's supreme court.

'I hear Glasgow had a building ready and waiting to accommodate the parliament,' Grieve said. He tutted, smiling. 'As if Edinburgh would let them get away with that. All the same...' He looked around.

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