Resurrection Men, Chapter 6

Rebus has spent Saturday in the Oxford bar, and due to lack of sleep on Saturday night slept a lot of Sunday, then going to the laundrette and the Oxford later. It is revealed he had been having blackouts at the start of the Eddie Marber Inquiry, remembering the past as if it were the present. He gets back to Tulliallan for Monday morning, witnessing a fundraising parachute jump after breakfast.

That morning they are back on the case again, and Rebus slips the paper about Richard Diamond back into the case notes. Jazz McCullough finds it, and asks Rebus about it. DCI Tennant then asks if Richard Diamond’s name has come up elsewhere, and when he finds out that it hasn’t he asks them all to look out for it. Then Andrea Thompson comes in, asking to reschedule her afternoon meeting with Rebus for the morning. They leave together, but when Rebus enters her office he meets his mystery caller…Sir David Strathern, the Chief Constable.

Just over two weeks ago the CC had arranged a meeting with Rebus, driving him to a pub and buying him lunch. He then asked him to partake in an undercover operation, by getting himself thrown off his current case and into a rehabilitation course at Tulliallan. The reason being that a drug dealer, Bernard Johns, had been taken down several years earlier in an operation led by Francis Gray, Allan Ward and James McCullough. The Chief Constables of Scotland suspected these three of taking Johns’ money or drugs when they arrested him. Strathern asks Rebus to gain their trust and find out what they know, and he agrees to it.

Back in Andrea’s office, Rebus claims he isn’t getting anything from the three men. He also asks why they have been given a case that both he and Gray have worked on, from around the time of Bernie Johns. Strathern says it is a coincidence, but when Rebus leaves he thinks that maybe Gray is undercover to investigate his role in the Rico Lomax inquiry…of which he knows more than he is letting on. He runs back and intercepts Strathern, asking him for detailed notes of his suspicions about the three men as soon as possible, to see if the whole thing is a ruse.