Resurrection Men (2002) Read Free

walked back along the corridor and straight into the men’s toilets, where he splashed water on his face, dried off with a paper towel. Watched himself in the mirror above the sink as he pulled a cigarette from his packet and lit it, blowing the smoke ceilingwards.
    One of the lavatories flushed; a door clicked its lock off. Jazz McCullough came out.
    “Thought that might be you,” he said, turning on the tap.
    “How could you tell?”
    “One long sigh followed by the lighting of a cigarette. Had to be a shrink session finishing.”
    “She’s not a shrink.”
    “Size of her, she looks like she’s shrunk.” McCullough reached for a towel. Tossed it in the bin when he’d finished. Straightened his tie. His real name was James, but those who knew him seemed never to call him that. He was Jamesy, or more often Jazz. Tall, mid-forties, cropped black hair with just a few touches of gray at the temples. He was thin. Patted his stomach now, just above the belt, as if to emphasize his lack of a gut. Rebus could barely see his own belt, even in the mirror.
    Jazz didn’t smoke. Had a family back home in Broughty Ferry: wife and two sons about his only topic of conversation. Examining himself in the mirror, he tucked a stray hair back behind one ear.
    “What the hell are we doing here, John?”
    “Andrea was just asking me the same thing.”
    “That’s because she knows it’s a waste of time. Thing is, we’re paying her wages.”
    “We’re doing some good then.”
    Jazz glanced at him. “You dog! You think you’re in there!”
    Rebus winced. “Give me a break. All I meant was . . .” But what was the point? Jazz was already laughing. He slapped Rebus on the shoulder.
    “Back into the fray,” he said, pulling open the door. “Three-thirty, ‘Dealing with the Public.’ ”
     
    It was their third day at Tulliallan: the Scottish Police College. The place was mostly full of recent recruits, learning their lessons before being allowed out onto public streets. But there were other officers there, older and wiser. They were on refresher courses, or learning new skills.
    And then there were the Resurrection Men.
    The college was based at Tulliallan Castle, not in itself a castle but a mock-baronial home to which had been added a series of modern buildings, connected by corridors. The whole edifice sat in huge leafy grounds on the outskirts of the village of Kincardine, to the northern side of the Firth of Forth, almost equidistant between Glasgow and Edinburgh. It could have been mistaken for a university campus, and to some extent that was its function. You came here to learn.
    Or, in Rebus’s case, as punishment.
    There were four other officers in the seminar room when Rebus and McCullough arrived. “The Wild Bunch,” DI Francis Gray had called them, first time they’d been gathered together. A couple of faces Rebus knew — DS Stu Sutherland from Livingston; DI Tam Barclay from Falkirk. Gray himself was from Glasgow, and Jazz worked out of Dundee, while the final member of the party, DC Allan Ward, was based in Dumfries. “A gathering of nations,” as Gray had put it. But to Rebus they acted more like spokesmen for their tribes, sharing the same language but with different outlooks. They were wary of each other. It was especially awkward with officers from the same region. Rebus and Sutherland were both Lothian and Borders, but the town of Livingston was F Division, known to anyone in Edinburgh as “F Troop.” Sutherland was just waiting for Rebus to say something to the others, something disparaging. He had the look of a haunted man.
    The six men shared only one characteristic: they were at Tulliallan because they’d failed in some way. Mostly it was an issue with authority. Much of their free time the previous two days had been spent sharing war stories. Rebus’s tale was milder than most. If a young officer, fresh out of uniform, had made the mistakes they had made, he or she would probably not