The Naming Of The Dead (2006) by Ian Rankin Read Free Book Online

compelled?
    Vets had access to drugs. Maybe not heroin, but other drugs which could be exchanged for heroin. Dealers sold ketamine to clubbers—Starr himself had made the point. It was used by vets to treat horses. Vicky had been raped in an alley, Colliar killed in one. Thomas Jensen had appeared outraged by the insinuations.
    “You mean you’ve really never thought of it, sir? Never planned any sort of revenge?”
    Of course he had: images of Colliar rotting in a cell or burning in hell. “But that doesn’t happen, does it, Inspector? Not in this world...”
    Vicky’s friends had been questioned too, none of them ready to own up. Rebus moved to the next table. Morris Gerald Cafferty stared back at him from photographs and interview transcripts. Rebus had needed to argue his case before Macrae would let him anywhere near. Feeling was, their shared history ran too deep. Some knew them for enemies; others thought them too similar...and way too familiar with each other. Starr for one had voiced his concerns in front of both Rebus and DCI Macrae. Rebus’s snarled attempt to grab his fellow DI by the shirtfront had been, in Macrae’s later words, “just another goal for the other team, John.”
    Cafferty was dexterous: fingers in every imaginable criminal pie. Saunas and protection, muscle and intimidation. Drugs, too, which would give him access to heroin. And if not him personally, Colliar’s fellow bouncers for sure. It wasn’t unknown for clubs to be shut down when it emerged that the so-called doormen were controlling the flow of dope into the premises. Any one of them could have decided to get rid of the Rape Beast. Might even have been personal: a disrespectful remark; a slight against a girlfriend. The many and varied possible motives had been explored at length and in detail. On the surface, then, a by-the-book investigation. Nobody could say otherwise. Except...Rebus could see the team’s heart hadn’t been in it. A few questions missed here and there; avenues left unexplored. Notes typed up sloppily. It was the sort of thing only someone close to the case would spot. Effort had been spared throughout, just enough to show what the officers really thought of their victim.
    The autopsy, however, had been scrupulous. Professor Gates had said it before: it didn’t bother him who was lying on his slab. They were human beings, and somebody’s daughter or son.
    “Nobody’s born bad, John,” he’d muttered, leaning over his scalpel.
    “Well, nobody makes them do bad things either,” Rebus had retorted.
    “Ah,” Gates had conceded. “A conundrum pored over by wiser heads than ours through the centuries. What makes us keep doing these terrible things to each other?”
    Gates hadn’t offered an answer. But something else he’d pointed out resonated with Rebus now as he moved to Siobhan’s desk and picked up one of the postmortem photographs of Colliar. In death we all return to innocence, John ...It was true that Colliar’s face seemed at peace, as though nothing had ever troubled it.
    The phone was ringing again in Starr’s office. Rebus let it ring, picked up Siobhan’s extension instead. There was a Post-it note affixed to the side of her hard disk: rows of names and phone numbers. He knew better than to try the lab, punched in the cell number instead.
    Picked up almost immediately by Ray Duff.
    “Ray? It’s DI Rebus.”
    “Inviting me to join him on a Friday-night pub crawl?” Rebus’s silence was answered with a sigh. “Why am I not surprised?”
    “I’m surprised at you though, Ray, shirking your duties.”
    “I don’t sleep in the lab, you know.”
    “Except we both know that’s a lie.”
    “Okay, I work the odd night...”
    “And that’s what I like about you, Ray. See, we’re both driven by that passion for the job.”
    “A passion I’m jeopardizing by showing my face at my local pub’s trivia night?”
    “Not my place to judge you, Ray. Just wondering how this new Colliar