Mortal Causes

He turned away and walked towards Ormiston. 'Let them in,' he ordered. The gang came crashing through the doors, fanning out across the hall. They could see Malky Haston was all right, though he was sitting very still on the edge of the stage. Rebus called to him.

'Thanks for the chat, Malky. We'll talk again, any time you want.’

Then he turned to the gang. 'Malky's got his head screwed on,' he told them. 'He knows when to talk.’

'Lying bastard!' Haston roared, as Rebus and Ormiston walked into the daylight.

Rebus met Lachlan Murdock at the Crazy Hose, despite Bothwell's protests.

Murdock's uncombed hair was wilder than ever, his clothes sloppy. He was waiting in the foyer when Rebus arrived.

'They all think I had something to do with it,' Murdock protested as Rebus led him into the dancehall.

'Well, you did, in a way,' Rebus said.

'What?’

'Come on, I want to show you something.’

He led Murdock up to the attic. In the daytime, the attic was a lot lighter. Even so, Rebus had brought a torch. He didn't want Murdock to miss anything.

`This,' he said, 'is where I found her. She'd suffered, believe me.’

Already, Murdock was close to fresh tears, but sympathy could wait, the truth couldn't. 'I found this on the floor.’

He handed over the disk cover. 'This is what they killed her for. A computer disk, same size as would fit your machine at home.’

He walked up close to Murdock's slouched' figure. 'They killed her for this!' he hissed. He waited a moment, then moved away towards the windows.

'I thought maybe she'd have made a copy. She wasn't daft, was she? But I went to the shop, and there's nothing there. Maybe in your fiat?’

Murdock just sniffed. 'I can't believe she-‘

'There was a copy,'

Murdock groaned. 'I wiped it.’

Rebus walked back towards him. 'Why?’

Murdock shook his head. 'I didn't think it…’

He took a deep breath. 'It reminded me…’

Rebus nodded. 'Ah yes, Billy Cunningham. It reminded you of the pair of them. When did you begin to suspect?’

Murdock shook his head again.

'See,' said Rebus, 'I know most of it. I know enough. But I don't know it all. Did you look at the files on the disk?’

'I looked.’

He wiped his red-rimmed eyes. 'It was Billy's disk, not hers. But a lot of the stuff on it was hers.’

I don't understand.’

Murdock managed a weak smile. 'You're right, I did know about the two of them. I didn't want to know, but I knew all the same. When I wiped the disk, I was angry, I was so angry.’

He turned to look at Rebus. 'I don't think he could have done it without Millie. You need quite a setup to hack into the kinds of systems they were dealing with.’

'Hacking?’

'They probably used the stuff in her shop. They hacked into Army and police computers, bypassed security, invaded datafiles, then marched out again without leaving any trace.’

'So what did they do?’

Murdock was talking now, enjoying the release. He wiped tears from below his glasses. 'They monitored a couple of police investigations and altered a few inventories. Believe me, once they were in, they could have done a lot more.’

The way Murdock went on to explain it, it was almost ludicrously simple. You could steal from the Army (with inside assistance, there had to be inside assistance), and then erase the theft by altering the computer records to show stocks as they stood, not as they had been. Then, if SCS or Scotland Yard or anyone else took an interest, you could monitor their progress or lack of it. Millie: Millie had been the key throughout. Whether or not she knew what she was doing, she got Billy Cunningham in. He placed her in the lock and turned. The disk had contained instructions on their hacking procedures, tips for bypassing security checks, the works.

Rebus didn't doubt that the further Billy Cunningham got in, the more he wanted out. He'd been killed because he wanted out. He'd probably mentioned his little insurance policy in the hope they would let him leave quietly. Instead, they'd tried to torture its whereabouts out of him, before delivering the final silencing bullet. Of course, The Shield knew Billy wasn't hacking alone. It wouldn't have taken them long to get to Millie Docherty. Billy had stayed silent to protect her. She must have known. That's why she'd run.

'There was stuff about this group, too, The Shield,' Murdock was saying. 'I thought they were just a bunch of hackers.’

Rebus tried him with a few names. Davey Soutar and Jamesie MacMurray hit home. Rebus reckoned that in an interview room he could crack Jamesie like a walnut under a hammer. But Davey Soutar… well, he might need a real hammer for that. The final file on the computer was all about Davey Soutar and the Gar-B.

'This Soutar,' Murdock said, 'Billy seemed to think he'd been skimming. That was the word he used. There's some stuff stashed in a lock-up out at Currie.’

Currie: the lock-up would belong to the MacMurrays.

Murdock looked at Rebus. 'He didn't say what was being skimmed. Is it money?’