by Ian Rankin
‘Keep the change.’
‘Giving a quid qualifies you as a patron.’ Leitch stuck his feet up on the edge of the desk, knees bent. He was wearing moccasins, their stitched seams coming undone. The bottoms of his denims were frayed too. He usually described himself as ‘just another old hippy’.
‘How’s the centre doing?’ Rebus asked.
‘We’re hanging on by the skin of our teeth.’
‘You get district council funding?’
‘Some.’ Leitch frowned. ‘Why do you ask?’
‘What happens when the district council is replaced?’
‘We pray the new authority keeps up our funding.’
Rebus nodded thoughtfully. ‘I was asking if you were surprised about Willie and Dixie.’
Leitch thought for a moment. ‘No,’ he said, ‘I don’t suppose I was, except that it was a dafter stunt than I would have expected from them.’
‘Because Willie was smarter than that?’
‘He must have known they’d never get away with it. Dixie was a different proposition, crazy at times, a real heid-the-ba’, but Willie could keep him under control.’
‘Like Keitel and DeNiro in Mean Streets.’
‘That’s not a bad comparison. Dixie would do something daft, and Willie would slap him about the head. Dixie wouldn’t have taken it from anyone else. You realise a lot of what I’m telling you is second-hand? Like I said, I only met Willie a couple of times.’ He paused. ‘You were there, weren’t you?’
‘I was there,’ Rebus said quietly. He shifted in his chair. ‘They just … Willie put his arm around Dixie and then leaned back over the rail, and Dixie went with him. There was no resistance. They didn’t jump, they just slipped away.’
‘Christ.’ Leitch took his feet off the desk.
‘Why would they do that?’
Leitch got up and walked around the desk. ‘I think you know the answer to that, or at least you have an inkling. They couldn’t go to jail.’
‘I know,’ Rebus said. Two people die rather than go to jail; another dies rather than be out. Rebus touched his mouth with a finger, feeling the pain, the pressure, almost enjoying it.
Leitch landed a hand on his shoulder. ‘Have you seen a counsellor?’
‘What?’
‘Don’t the police have counselling?’
‘Why would I want counselling?’
Leitch squeezed Rebus’s shoulder and withdrew his hand. ‘It’s up to you,’ he said, going back to his chair. They sat in silence for a while.
‘Ever come across a guy called Paul Duggan?’ Rebus asked at last.
‘Name rings a bell. I can’t put a face to it. Maybe I’ve just heard him mentioned around the centre.’
‘He loaned Willie and Dixie his car. He was their landlord.’
‘Oh, right, yes. A couple of guys who sometimes come in are tenants of his.’
‘Any idea where they live?’
‘Abbey Hill, somewhere round there.’
‘What about the name Dalgety – does it mean anything to you?’ Leitch thought about it and shook his head. Rebus dug into his pocket and brought out the photo of Kirstie Kennedy. ‘I know it’s a long shot,’ he said, ‘but have you seen her around the centre?’
‘This is the Lord Provost’s daughter. A couple of uniforms came asking about her just after she went missing.’
‘The photo’s a bit out of date, she’d look different now.’
‘Then bring me a more recent photo. Don’t tell me an out-of-date picture’s the best her parents can do?’
Rebus thought about that as he left Fraser Leitch’s office. The man had a point. Then again, how many photos did Rebus have of his own daughter? Precious few after age twelve. He was standing in the short dark hallway, half its walls taken up with noticeboards, the other half with marker-pen graffiti. Rebus studied the notices. One card was recent, its edges not yet dog-eared. It was printed, unlike its ballpoint neighbours. Altogether a very superior card.
ROOMS TO LET CHEAP.
There was a phone number and a name. The name was Paul. Rebus removed the card and put it in his pocket next to Kirstie Kennedy’s photo.
He glanced into the two open rooms. In one, a couple of rows of plastic chairs were positioned in front of a TV. The TV was a twelve-inch black and white. One lad was in there, holding the indoor aerial above his head as he stared at the screen from a distance of about thirty inches. Another kid sat on one of the chairs, sleeping. In the other room, three more teenagers, two boys and a girl, were trying to play table tennis with one cracked ball, two rubberless bats, and a paperback book. Their net was a row of upended cigarette packets. They played quietly, without enthusiasm or hope.
On the steps outside, two more clients of the centre tried to bum first money and then cigarettes off him. He handed out a couple of ciggies, and even lit them.
‘Shame about Dixie, eh?’ he said.
‘Fuck off, porker,’ they said, moving back indoors.
* * *
Back at his flat, Rebus finally bled the central heating system, catching the water in empty coffee jars. One thing about the flat when he moved back in: plenty of empty coffee jars. He’d meant to ask the students why there were cupboards and boxes full of them.
He refilled the system, wondering what the pressure gauges on the front of the boiler should read. When he turned the system back on, there was a gushing, gurgling sound from the pipes, and the boiler shuddered as the gas jets burst into life.
He went through to the living room and stood with his hand on the radiator. It got warm, but stayed only warm, even with the thermostat all the way up. And there was a drip from the bleedcock. He twisted the key as hard as he could, but the drip remained. He tied a kitchen-cloth to it and let the cloth run down into one of the coffee jars. That would collect the drips, and stop them making a noise.
Yes, John Rebus had been here before.
He sat in his chair, lights out, and looked out of his window on to Arden Street, thinking of Maisie Finch, thinking of her mother and his own mother. There was frost on the roofs and bonnets of the parked cars. A group of students were laughing their way back to their digs. Rebus poured himself a whisky and told the students how lucky they were. Everybody out there was lucky. All the people sleeping rough, and bumming cigarettes, and plotting and scheming how to get ahead. Alister Flower, twisting and gnawing in his sleep; Gill Templer, still and unperturbed in hers; Frank Lauderdale, with an itch beneath his cast; Tresa McAnally, feet up in front of the TV; Kirstie Kennedy … wherever she was. They were all of them lucky.
Edinburgh was a lucky fucking town.
Two
SHREDS
14
The following Tuesday, Rebus was at work uncharacteristically early.
But not so early as to be the first to arrive. Gill Templer was already there, her door ajar, fighting her way through paperwork. Rebus knocked and pushed the door open a little further.
‘You’re early,’ she said, rubbing her eyes.
‘What about you? Have you been here all night?’
‘It feels like it. That coffee smells good.’
‘Want me to fetch you one?’
‘No, just give me half of yours.’ She handed him a clean mug, and he poured half the contents of his beaker into it. Standing over the wastebasket, he was able to see what she’d been working on. She was trying to acquaint herself with every ongoing case, everything Frank Lauderdale had left behind.
‘Tall order,’ he said.
‘You can help.’
‘How’s that, boss?’
‘You’re slow to type up your notes. The McBrane case and the Pettiford especially. I’d like to see them this morning.’
‘Do you know how fast I type?’
‘Just do it.’
‘Would you settle for one out of two? I’ve a funeral on.’
‘I want them both by lunchtime, Inspector.’
Rebus looked back at the open door. There wa
s still no one else around. ‘You know,’ he said quietly, ‘I’m going to start taking this personally.’
She looked up from her work. ‘What’s that?’
‘The way you’ve been treating me ever since you got here. Frankly, it stinks. At first I thought it was just for show, but I’m not so sure. I know you’ve got something to prove to everybody, but that doesn’t –’
‘Tread carefully, Inspector.’
Rebus stared at her. Finally she looked down at the work in front of her. ‘Thanks for the coffee,’ she said quietly. ‘I still want those case-notes by lunchtime.’
So he went to his desk and worked on them. He didn’t like typing up case-notes, the hard slog of always using the right words, of getting everything right. No police officer liked it when a report which had been painstakingly prepared was sent back by the Procurator-fiscal because of some tiny flaw in the surface of the whole. You were waiting for news that the precognition was being prepared, and instead the case came back to you with a note – ‘unable to proceed as stands’.
The reporting officer – whose job was to liaise with the Crown – took most of the flak, and Rebus was RO on both the McBrane and Pettiford cases. It was his job to make a case that the Procurator-fiscal would accept. He supposed it was Gill Templer’s job to make sure he did the work, but her attitude still rankled. As far as he could gather, she’d been a far from popular choice as Frank Lauderdale’s replacement. If Lauderdale hadn’t been universally respected, at least he’d been a man; and more than that, he’d been ‘one of them’. Gill Templer had been brought in from Fife. And she was a woman. And she didn’t even play golf.
The female officers seemed happy enough – the ill-feeling was among the males only. Siobhan Clarke, Rebus had noticed, had a new spring in her step, working under a woman. Maybe she saw in Gill Templer a future that could be hers. But Gill would have to step carefully. Traps would be laid for her. She’d have to be careful who she trusted. Rebus had so far given her the benefit of the doubt, reckoning she was being hard on him because she couldn’t afford to be soft.
So far it looked like a one-way street.
He took his finished notes to her office, only to discover she was in conference with Farmer Watson. He left them prominently on her desk instead, and went to the washroom to change his tie, removing the blue one and replacing it with black. Brian Holmes came in as Rebus was checking himself in the mirror.
‘Off to a party then?’
‘In a manner of speaking, Brian. In a manner of speaking.’
Certainly, there was enough booze in the kitchenette to start a fair old hootenanny, but this was a wake rather than a celebration.
By the time Rebus got to Tresa McAnally’s flat, the place was bursting at the seams with middle-aged men and women and their disgruntled offspring, plus a few older souls who had the honour of being given chairs to sit on. And in the middle of the living room, dressed top to toe in black but with red gloss fingernails, sat the widow. The curtains were closed, as were those of the neighbouring flats – a sign of solidarity. The Scots always rallied round for a send-off.
Rebus squeezed his way through the whispering throng, and held out his hand. ‘Mrs McAnally,’ he said.
She took his hand and exerted the minimum of pressure. ‘Good of you to come.’
Then he was off again, backpedalling before she could turn to someone and say, ‘This is the policeman who went to the school, he saw Wee Shug flat out on the floor and missing half his head.’ Normally at these occasions the men retreated to the kitchen and got stuck into the whisky. But here there was only the kitchenette, separated from the living area by nothing more than a breakfast-bar. So the men had crammed themselves into the kitchenette, for all the world like a rush-hour busful. They passed around clean glasses, and then the whisky. Tumblers of sweet and dry sherry were passed out to the ladies. Soft drinks for the younger mourners, though you didn’t have to be too old to qualify for a nip of the harder stuff.
Rebus took a glassful and toasted the small man next to him. The man was in his seventies, and wore a wartime charcoal-and-chalkine suit. He had a pinched face and kept moving his lips, pursing and puckering them. When he spoke, it was in an undertone.
‘Here’s to you then, son.’
‘Slàinte.’ They drank for a moment, savouring the cheap whisky. Savouring was better than having to talk, one reason why so much whisky was consumed at funerals.
‘The hearse gets here in ten minutes,’ the man informed Rebus.
‘Right.’ A closed casket of course; Tresa McAnally had been denied a final peek at her husband’s blasted remains.
‘Here’s the minister.’
There was nothing wrong with the old guy’s eyesight, despite the thick smeary lenses in his glasses. Rebus watched the minister as he moved through the room towards Tresa McAnally. He wore black, with the white dog-collar, and as he moved the crush of mourners parted before him. Ministers didn’t make friends, not easily; they were like cops that way. People were always afraid they’d say the wrong thing in front of them. They had a skill though, these men of the cloth: they could conduct a conversation while remaining inaudible to all but the person they addressed.
The old man was unscrewing another whisky bottle, different brand. ‘She’s made the flat nice, hasn’t she? I haven’t been here for a couple of years.’
Rebus nodded, noticing that the huge TV set had been moved out to make more space. He guessed it was in the bedroom. He scanned the male mourners again, looking for old lags, known faces, looking for someone who could have procured a shotgun for Wee Shug.
‘Oh aye,’ the old man went on, ‘it’s lovely now. New carpets and wallpaper, really nice.’
And new TV, Rebus thought. New front door, and bedroom fittings that didn’t exactly look superannuated. Money: where the hell had the money come from?
‘New carpet in the hall, too,’ the man was saying. He lowered his voice still further. ‘I suppose she did it for Wee Shug. You know, to make his coming home a bit more welcome. I mean, after a jail cell you want something nice.’
Rebus looked at the man more closely. ‘Served time yourself?’
‘A long time ago, son. Back in the fifties. Saughton was a different place then, everything was different. And mind, I’m not saying it was worse.’ Their drinks replenished, he screwed the top back on and passed the bottle to the next man along. Rebus wondered how many more old lags there were in the crush around him. Then he saw someone else coming into the room, and he stopped with his glass half an inch from his mouth.
She was dressed in black, a small woman with a pillbox hat and a short veil which covered her eyes but not her mouth. And behind her, much taller, a younger woman wearing a simple navy suit, low-cut and tight at the hips. It looked the sort of thing you would wear a blouse under, but Maisie Finch wasn’t wearing a blouse, or anything else beneath it that Rebus could see.
For now though, he was more interested in the woman with her. It was Helena Profitt. Rebus turned towards the draining-board, where a rubicund man, hot and jacketless and sporting bright red braces, was dispensing the drinks.
‘Give us a couple of sherries,’ Rebus murmured in the man’s direction. The order was passed along and a few moments later Rebus had his sherries. He left his own whisky on the breakfast-bar and carried them into the living room.
Helena Profitt was having a muted conversation with Tresa McAnally, so Rebus tapped Maisie Finch on the shoulder. When she turned towards him, he handed her the glasses.
‘Thanks.’ She sniffed the contents before handing one glass on to Helena Profitt.
‘Funny,’ Rebus said, ‘you never mentioned knowing Miss Profitt.’
She smiled, then took a sip of sherry and screwed up her face.
‘Too sweet?’
‘It’s loupin’. Is there anything else?’
‘Whisky, dark rum, soft drinks. Maybe some vodka.’
‘A voddy would slip down.’ She surveyed
the scrum in the kitchenette and changed her mind, draining the glass.
‘So,’ Rebus said in an undertone, ‘how do you know Helena Profitt?’
‘Same way most folk in this room do.’ She smiled again and turned to the widow. ‘Tresa, hen, mind if I smoke?’ The packet was already out of her pocket.
‘Go ahead, Maisie.’ A pause. ‘It’s what Wee Shug would have wanted. He liked a ciggie himself.’
Taking their signal from this, a lot of hands reached into pockets and handbags. Packs were opened, handed round. Rebus took one from Maisie, and she lit it for him.
‘Nice lighter,’ he said.
‘It was a present.’ She looked at the slim onyx and gold lighter before returning it to her pocket.
‘So,’ Rebus said, ‘Miss Profitt used to live in the tenement?’
‘Floor below this.’
As more people arrived and had to offer their condolences, or else needed to say goodbye before leaving, Rebus and Maisie found themselves moved away from the widow and Miss Profitt. They ended up by the mantelpiece. Rebus picked up a bereavement card. It was signed simply, ‘From all Shug’s pals in Saughton. We shall remember him.’
‘Touching,’ Maisie Finch said.
‘Either that or a bit sick.’
‘How’s that, Inspector?’ He noted she said ‘Inspector’ quite loudly. The nearest mourners looked him up and down, and he knew word would now go around.
‘Depends why he killed himself,’ he said. ‘Maybe it had something to do with Saughton.’
‘Tresa tells me he had the big C.’
‘That’s only one possible reason.’ He found her eyes. ‘I can think of others.’
She looked away, almost casual. ‘Such as?’
‘Guilt, shame, embarrassment.’
She smiled sourly. ‘Not in Shug McAnally’s vocabulary.’
‘Self-pity?’
‘That’d be more like it.’
Rebus saw a pillbox hat and veil moving towards the door. ‘I’ll be back,’ he said.
Helena Profitt was at the front door when he caught her.
‘Miss Profitt?’ She turned to him. ‘I think we’d better talk.’