Free Exit Music (2007) by Ian Rankin Page A

leading somewhere?” Rebus asked, turning his attention back to the windscreen.
    “Not really.” She ejected the CD from its slot. The radio blasted into life—Forth One, the DJ talking twenty to the dozen. She switched it off. Rebus had noticed something.
    “Didn’t know there was a camera there,” he said. He meant at the corner of the building, between the first and second stories. The camera was pointing into the car park.
    “They reckon it stops vandalism. Reminds me actually—think there’s any point looking at city-center footage from the night Todorov was killed? Bound to be cameras at the west end of Princes Street, maybe on Lothian Road, too. If someone was shadowing him . . .” She let the sentence drift.
    “It’s an idea,” he admitted.
    “Needle in a haystack,” she added. His silence seemed to confirm it, and she rested her head against the back of the seat, neither of them in any hurry to go back inside. “I remember reading in a paper that we’ve got the most surveillance of any country in the world; more CCTV in London than the whole of the USA . . . can that be right?”
    “Can’t say I’ve noticed it reducing the crime stats.” Rebus’s eyes narrowed. “What’s that noise?”
    Clarke saw that Tibbet was gesturing from an upstairs window. “I think we’re wanted.”
    “Maybe guilt got the better of our killer and he’s come to hand himself in.”
    “Maybe,” Clarke said, not believing it for one moment.

8
    B een here before?” Rebus asked, once they’d passed through the metal detector. He was scooping loose change back into his pocket.
    “Got the guided tour soon after it opened,” Clarke admitted.
    There were indented shapes in the ceiling; Rebus couldn’t tell if they were supposed to be Crusader-style crosses. Plenty of activity in the main entrance hall. Tables had been set up for the tour parties, ID badges lying on them and placards to say which groups were expected. Staff were everywhere, ready to direct visitors to the reception desk. At the far end of the hall, some school kids in uniform were settling down for an early lunch.
    “First time for me,” Rebus told Clarke. “Always wondered what four hundred million pounds looks like . . .”
    The Scottish Parliament had divided public opinion from the moment its plans were revealed in the media. Some thought it bold and revolutionary, others wondered at its quirks and its price tag. The architect had died before completing the project, as had the man who’d commissioned it. But it was built now and working, and Rebus had to admit that the debating chamber, whenever he’d seen it on the TV news, looked a bit special.
    When they told the woman at the reception desk that they were here to see Megan Macfarlane, she printed out a couple of visitor passes. A call to the MSP’s office confirmed that they were expected, and another member of staff stepped forward and asked them to follow him. He was a tall, brisk-stepping figure and, like the receptionist, probably not a day under sixty-five. They followed him down corridors and up in a lift and down more corridors.
    “Plenty of concrete and wood,” Rebus commented.
    “And glass,” Clarke added.
    “The special, expensive kind, of course,” Rebus speculated.
    Their guide said nothing until they turned yet another corner and found a young man waiting for them.
    “Thanks, Sandy,” the man said, “I’ll take it from here.”
    As the guide headed back the way they’d just come, Clarke thanked him, and received a little grunt of acknowledgment. Maybe he was just out of breath.
    “My name’s Roddy Liddle,” the young man was telling them. “I work for Megan.”
    “And who exactly is Megan?” Rebus asked. Liddle stared at him as if he were maybe making a joke. “All our boss told us,” Rebus explained, “was to come down here and talk to someone with that name. Apparently she phoned him.”
    “It was me who did the phoning,” Liddle said, making it sound