POLICE OFFICIAL BUSINESS

Was that grammatically correct? What was wrong with OFFICIAL POLICE BUSINESS? Or just POLICE? He kept looking at that word. He had given so much of his life to it, but with each passing year he wondered just what it meant and how he fitted. There’s really not a lot for you to do here…His phone was letting him know it had a message for him.

Is it just me or is this turning into a world record attempt for slowest cigarette ever smoked?

Cowan again. Rebus decided against answering. Instead he took a business card from his pocket. He had swapped it with Nina Hazlitt for one of his own. On one side were the details for DI Gregor Magrath; on the other was a scribbled telephone number, with Hazlitt’s name beneath it. He placed it on the seat next to him, tucked under the plastic sign, and started the engine.

3

It took the best part of a week for the first batch of files to arrive. Rebus had spent a whole day trying to find the right people to talk to in the right departments of Central Scotland Police and Northern Constabulary. Central covered the garden center near Auchterarder, though at first Rebus had been told he’d need to talk to Tayside Police instead. Northern covered both Aviemore and Strathpeffer, but these involved different divisions, meaning calls to Inverness and Dingwall.

It was all about to get simpler—allegedly. There were plans to merge the eight regions into a single force, but this had been no help to Rebus as he felt the telephone receiver generate heat under his grip.

Bliss and Robison had asked what he was up to and he’d treated them to a drink in the cafeteria while he explained.

“And we’re not telling the boss?” Robison had asked.

“Not unless we have to,” Rebus had replied.

After all, one folder looked much like any other, didn’t it? The first to arrive had been dispatched from Inverness. It smelled slightly of damp and there was a faint bloom on its outer covering. It was the file on Brigid Young. Rebus spent half an hour on it and rapidly concluded that there was a lot of padding. Having no leads, the local cops had interviewed everyone within reach, adding nothing except pages of meandering transcript. The photos from the scene shed almost as little light. Young had driven a white Porsche with cream upholstery. Her shoulder bag hadn’t been found and neither had the key fob. Her briefcase had been left on the passenger seat. No diary, but there was one at her place of work in Inverness. She’d had one meeting in Culbokie and been on her way to another at a hotel on the shore of Loch Garve. She hadn’t used her phone to call anyone about the puncture or let the client at the hotel know she’d been held up, for the simple reason that she’d left it behind at her previous meeting. The folder included some family photographs and newspaper clippings. Rebus would have called her handsome rather than pretty: a strong square jaw and a no-nonsense way of looking at the camera, as if the photo was just another task to be ticked off her list. There was a note to say that the briefcase, together with everything else in the car, had eventually been returned to the family, along with the Porsche itself. No husband: she’d lived alone in a house on the River Ness. Mother resided locally, in the same house as Brigid’s sister. The file had been added to sporadically since 2002. There had been an appeal for information on the first anniversary of the disappearance, plus a reconstruction on a local TV news program, neither producing any new leads. The most recent update consisted of a rumor that Brigid Young’s business had been in trouble, leading to the theory that she could have done a runner.