Fleshmarket Alley

by Ian Rankin

  “Here it comes,” someone called out.

  “Things have changed . . .” The drinker almost relished the groans all around him. Siobhan realized that this was a regular performance, unscripted but dependable. She glanced at Malky, but he shook his head, telling her it wasn’t worth fighting her corner. The drinker would relish such a prospect. Instead she excused herself and headed to the loo. Inside the cubicle, she sat down, placing Ishbel’s address book and Susie’s note on her lap, comparing the writing to the messages on the wall. Nothing new had been added since her last visit. She was pretty sure that “Donny Pervo” had been done by Susie, “Cook the Cruik” by Ishbel. But there were other hands at work. She thought of Angie, and even the women under the dryers.

  Claimed in blood . . .

  Dead Man Walking . . .

  Neither Ishbel nor Susie had written those, but someone had.

  The solidarity of the hair salon.

  A town full of suspects . . .

  Flicking through the address book, she noticed that under the letter C there was an address that looked familiar—HMP Barlinnie. E Wing, which was where they kept the sex offenders. Written there in Ishbel’s hand, filed under C for Cruikshank. Siobhan went through the rest of the book but found nothing else of note.

  All the same, did this mean Ishbel had written to Cruikshank? Were there ties between them Siobhan didn’t yet know of? She doubted the parents would know—they’d be horrified at the thought. She walked back into the bar, lifted her drink, fixed her eyes on those of Malky the barman.

  “Do Donny Cruikshank’s parents still live locally?”

  “His dad comes in here,” one of the drinkers said. “He’s a good man, Eck Cruikshank. Near did for him when Donny was put away . . .”

  “Donny didn’t live at home, though,” Siobhan added.

  “Not once he came out of jail,” the drinker said.

  “Mum wouldn’t have him in the house,” Malky chipped in. Soon, the whole bar was talking about the Cruikshanks, forgetting they had a detective in their midst.

  “Donny was aye a terror . . .”

  “Dated my lassie for a couple of months, never said boo to a goose . . .”

  “Dad works at a machine-tool place in Falkirk . . .”

  “Didn’t deserve an end like that . . .”

  “No one does . . .”

  Siobhan stood there taking sips of her drink, adding the occasional comment or question. When her glass was empty, two of the drinkers offered to buy her another, but she shook her head.

  “My shout,” she said, reaching into her bag for money.

  “I won’t have a lass buying me drinks,” one of the men tried to protest. But he allowed the fresh pint to be placed in front of him anyway. Siobhan started putting her change away.

  “What about since he got out?” she asked casually. “Been catching up with any old mates?”

  The men fell silent, and she realized she hadn’t been casual enough. She offered a smile. “Someone else will come round, you know . . . asking the selfsame questions.”

  “Doesn’t mean we have to answer,” Malky said sternly. “Careless talk and all that . . .”

  The drinkers nodded their agreement.

  “It’s a murder inquiry,” Siobhan reminded him. There was a chill in the pub now, all goodwill frozen.

  “Maybe so, but we’re not rats.”

  “I’m not asking you to be.”

  One of the men slid his pint back towards Malky. “I’ll buy my own,” he said. The man beside him did the same.

  The door opened and two uniforms walked in. One of them carried a clipboard.

  “You’ll have heard about the fatality?” he asked. Fatality: a nice euphemism but also accurate. It wouldn’t be murder until the pathologist gave his verdict. Siobhan decided to leave. The uniform with the clipboard said he’d need to take down her details. She showed him her warrant card instead.

  Outside, a car horn sounded. It was Les Young. He came to a stop and waved her over, winding down his window as she approached.

  “Has the sleuth from the big city broken the case?” he asked.

  She ignored this, instead filling him in on her visits to the Jardines, the Salon, and the Bane.

  “So it’s not that you’ve got a drinking problem, then?” he asked, gazing past her to the door of the bar. When she said nothing, he seemed to decide the time for teasing was past. “Good work,” he said. “We’ll maybe get someone to study the handwriting, see who else Donny Cruikshank might have considered an enemy.”

  “He’s got a few champions, too,” Siobhan countered. “Men who think he shouldn’t have gone to jail in the first place.”

  “Maybe they’re right . . .” Young saw the look on her face. “I don’t mean he was innocent. It’s just . . . when a rapist goes to jail, they end up segregated for their own safety.”

  “And the only people they mix with are other rapists?” Siobhan guessed. “You think one of them might’ve killed Cruikshank?”

  Young shrugged. “You saw the amount of porn he had—pirate stuff, CDs . . .”

  “So?”

  “So his computer wasn’t up to making them. Not the right software or processor. He must have got them from somewhere.”

  “Mail order? Sex shops?”

  “Possibly . . .” Young gnawed at his bottom lip.

  Siobhan hesitated before speaking. “There’s something else.”

  “What?”

  “Ishbel Jardine’s address book—looks like she was writing to Cruikshank when he was in prison.”

  “I know.”

  “You do?”

  “Found her letters in a drawer in Cruikshank’s bedroom.”

  “What did they say?”

  Young reached over to the passenger seat. “Take a look, if you like.” Two sheets of paper, with an envelope for each, encased in polyethylene evidence bags. Ishbel wrote in angry capitals.

  WHEN YOU RAPED MY SISTER, YOU MIGHT AS WELL HAVE KILLED ME, TOO . . .

  MY LIFE’S GONE, AND YOU’RE TO BLAME . . .

  “You can see why we’re suddenly keen to speak to her,” Young said.

  Siobhan just nodded. She thought she could understand why Ishbel had written the letters—the need for Cruikshank to feel guilt. But why had he kept them? To gloat over? Did her anger fuel something within him? “How come the prison censor let them through?” she asked.

  “I wondered the same thing . . .”

  She looked at him. “You called Barlinnie?”

  “Spoke to the censor,” Young confirmed. “He let them through because he thought they might make Cruikshank face up to his guilt.”

  “And did they?”

  Young shrugged.

  “Did Cruikshank ever write back to her?”

  “Censor says not.”

  “And yet he kept her letters . . .”

  “Maybe he planned to tease her about them.” Young paused. “Maybe she took the teasing to heart . . .”

  “I don’t see her as a killer,” Siobhan stated.

  “Problem is, we don’t see her at all. Finding her is going to be your priority, Siobhan.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Meantime, we’re setting up a murder room.”

  “Where?”

  “Apparently there’s a space we can use at the library.” He nodded down the road. “Next to the primary school. You can help us set up if you like.”

  “We need to let my boss know where I am first.”

  “Hop in, then.” Young reached for his mobile. “I’ll let him know you’ve been poached.”

  16

  Rebus and Ellen Wylie were back at Whitemire. An interpreter had been brought in from Glasgow’s Kurdish community. She was a small, bustling woman who spoke with a broad west-coast accent and wore a lot of gold and layers of bright clothing. To Rebus’s eyes, she looked as if she should be reading palms in a fairground caravan. Instead, she was sitting at a table in the cafeteria with Mrs. Yurgii, the tw
o detectives, and Alan Traynor. Rebus had told Traynor that they’d be fine on their own, but he’d insisted on being present, sitting a little apart from the group, arms folded. There were staff in the cafeteria—cleaners and cooks. Pots occasionally clanked onto metal surfaces, causing Mrs. Yurgii to jump every time. Her children were being looked after in their room. She carried a handkerchief with her, rolled around the fingers of her right hand.

  It was Ellen Wylie who had found the interpreter; and it was Wylie who asked the questions.

  “Did she never hear from her husband? Never try contacting him?”

  The translated question would follow, and then the answer, translated back into English again.

  “How could she? She didn’t know where he was.”

  “Inmates are allowed to make phone calls out,” Traynor clarified. “There’s a pay phone . . . they’re welcome to use it.”

  “If they have the money,” the interpreter snapped.

  “He never tried contacting her?” Wylie persisted.

  “It’s always possible he heard things from those on the outside,” the interpreter answered, without posing the question to the widow.

  “How do you mean?”

  “I’m assuming people do actually leave this place?” Again she glared at Traynor.

  “Most are sent home,” he retorted.

  “To be disappeared,” she spat back.

  “Actually,” Rebus interrupted, “it’s true that some people are bailed out of here, aren’t they, Mr. Traynor?”

  “That’s right. If someone stands as a referee . . .”

  “And that’s how Stef Yurgii might have heard news of his family—from people he met who’d been in here.”

  Traynor looked skeptical.

  “Do you have a list?” Rebus asked.

  “A list?”

  “Of people who’ve been bailed.”

  “Of course we do.”

  “And the addresses they’re staying at?” Traynor nodded. “So it would be easy to say how many of them are in Edinburgh, maybe even in Knoxland itself?”

  “I don’t think you understand the system, Inspector. How many people in Knoxland do you think would give shelter to an asylum seeker? I admit I don’t know the place, but from what I’ve seen in the newspapers . . .”

  “You’ve got a point,” Rebus agreed. “But all the same, maybe you could pull those records for me?”

  “They’re confidential.”

  “I don’t need to see all of them. Just the ones living in Edinburgh.”

  “And just the Kurds?” Traynor added.

  “I suppose so, yes.”

  “Well, that’s feasible, I suppose.” Traynor still sounded less than enthusiastic.

  “Maybe you could do it now, while we’re talking to Mrs. Yurgii?”

  “I’ll do it later.”

  “Or one of your staff . . . ?”

  “Later, Inspector.” Traynor had firmed up his voice. Mrs. Yurgii was talking. The interpreter nodded when she’d finished.

  “Stef could not go home. They would kill him. He was a human rights journalist.” She frowned. “I think that’s correct.” She checked with the widow, nodded again. “Yes, he worked on stories of state corruption, of campaigns against the Kurdish people. She tells me he was a hero, and I believe her . . .”

  The interpreter sat back, as if daring them to doubt her.

  Ellen Wylie leaned forward. “Was there anyone on the outside . . . anyone he knew? Someone he might go to?”

  The question was asked and answered.

  “He did not know anyone in Scotland. The family did not want to leave Sighthill. They were beginning to be happy there. The children made friends . . . they found places in a school. And then they were thrown into a van—a police van—and brought to this place in the middle of the night. They were terrified.”

  Wylie touched the interpreter on the forearm. “I don’t know how best to phrase this . . . maybe you can help me.” She paused. “We’re pretty sure Stef had at least one ‘friend’ on the outside.”

  It took the interpreter a moment to realize. “You mean a woman?”

  Wylie nodded slowly. “We need to find her.”

  “How can his widow help?”

  “I’m not sure . . .”

  “Ask her,” Rebus said, “what languages her husband spoke.”

  The interpreter looked at him as she asked the question. Then: “He spoke a little English, and some French. His French better than his English.”

  Wylie was looking at him, too. “The girlfriend speaks French?”

  “It’s a possibility. Got any French speakers in here, Mr. Traynor?”

  “From time to time.”

  “What countries are they from?”

  “Africa, mostly.”

  “Do you think any of them might have been given bail?”

  “Can I assume you’d like me to check?”

  “If it’s not too much trouble.” Rebus’s lips formed a smile of sorts. Traynor just sighed. The translator was talking again. Mrs. Yurgii answered by bursting into tears, burying her eyes in her handkerchief.

  “What did you say to her?” Wylie asked.

  “I asked if her husband was faithful.”

  Mrs. Yurgii wailed something. The translator wrapped an arm around her.

  “And now we have her answer,” she said.

  “Which is . . . ?”

  “‘Until death,’” the translator quoted.

  The silence was broken by a blast from Traynor’s walkie-talkie. He placed it to his ear. “Go ahead,” he said. Then, having listened: “Oh, Christ . . . I’ll be right there.”

  He left without a word. Rebus and Wylie exchanged a look, and Rebus rose to his feet, readying to follow.

  It wasn’t hard to keep his distance: Traynor was in a hurry, not quite running exactly but doing everything but. Down one corridor, and then left into another, until, at the far end, he pulled open a door. This led to a shorter corridor dead-ended by a fire exit. There were three small rooms—isolation cells. From inside one, someone was thumping the locked door. Thumping and kicking and yelling in a language Rebus didn’t recognize. But this wasn’t what interested Traynor. He’d entered another room, its door held open by a guard. There were further guards inside, crouched around the prone figure of a near-skeletal man, dressed only in underpants. The rest of his clothing had been removed to form a makeshift noose. It was still tied tight around his throat, his head purple and swollen, tongue bursting from its mouth.

  “Every ten bloody minutes,” Traynor was saying angrily.

  “We checked every ten minutes,” a guard was stressing.

  “I’ll bet you did . . .” Traynor looked up, saw Rebus standing in the doorway. “Get him out of here!” he roared. The nearest guard started pushing Rebus back into the corridor. Rebus held up both hands.

  “Easy, pal, I’m going.” He was backing away, the guard following. “Suicide watch, eh? Sounds like his neighbor’s going to be next, judging by the uproar he’s making . . .”

  The guard said nothing. He just closed the door on Rebus and stood there, watching through its glass panel. Rebus held his hands up again, then turned and walked away. Something told him that his requests to Traynor would have slipped a little down the man’s list of priorities . . .

  The session at the cafeteria was ending, Wylie shaking hands with the interpreter, who then guided the widow in the direction of the family unit.

  “So,” Wylie asked Rebus, “where was the fire?”

  “No fire, but some poor sod topped himself.”

  “Bloody hell . . .”

  “Let’s get out of here.” He started walking ahead of her towards the exit.

  “How did he do it?”

  “Turned his clothes into a kind of tourniquet. He couldn’t hang himself: there was nothing up high for him to swing from . . .”

  “Bloody hell,” she repeated. When they were out in the fresh air, Rebus lit a cigarette. Wylie unl
ocked her Volvo. “We’re getting nowhere with this, are we?”

  “It was never going to be easy, Ellen. The girlfriend’s the key.”

  “Unless she did it,” Wylie offered.

  Rebus shook his head. “Listen to her phone call . . . she knows why it happened, and that ‘why’ leads to the ‘who.’”

  “That’s a bit metaphysical, coming from you.”

  He shrugged again, flicked the remains of his cigarette onto the ground. “I’m a renaissance man, Ellen.”

  “Oh aye? Spell it for me, then, Mr. Renaissance Man.”

  As they drove out of the compound, he looked towards the site of Caro Quinn’s camp. When they’d arrived, she hadn’t been there, but she was there now, standing by the roadside, drinking from a thermos. Rebus asked Wylie to stop the car.

  “I’ll only be a minute,” he said, getting out.

  “What are you . . . ?” He closed his door on her question. Quinn smiled when she recognized him.

  “Hello, there.”

  “Listen,” he said, “do you know any friendly media people? I mean, friendly to what you’re trying to accomplish here?”

  Her eyes narrowed. “One or two.”

  “Well, you could slip them an exclusive: one of the inmates has just committed suicide.” As soon as the words were out, he knew he’d made a mistake. Could have phrased that better, John, he told himself as tears welled in Caro Quinn’s eyes.

  “I’m sorry,” he said. He could see Wylie watching in the wing mirror. “I just thought you could do something with it . . . There’ll be an inquiry . . . the more press interest there is, the worse it is for Whitemire . . .”

  She was nodding. “Yes, I can see that. Thanks for telling me.” The tears were pouring down her face. Wylie sounded the horn. “Your friend’s waiting,” Quinn said.

  “Are you going to be all right?”

  “I’ll be fine.” She rubbed her face with the back of her free hand. The other hand still held a cup, though most of the tea inside was dribbling onto the ground unnoticed.

  “Sure?”

  She nodded. “It’s just . . . so . . . barbaric.”

  “I know,” he said quietly. “Look . . . have you got a phone with you?” She nodded. “You’ve got my number, right? Can I take yours?” She reeled it off, and he jotted it down in his notebook.