Let It Bleed

by Ian Rankin

  ‘John?’ It was the Farmer’s voice.

  Here it comes, thought Rebus. ‘Morning, sir. What’s it to be – reprimand, suspension, or dismissal?’

  ‘Damn you, John. I had a hell of a weekend because of you.’

  ‘I’m sorry, sir. I never meant to get you into trouble.’

  ‘That’s your problem, Inspector – you’re selfish, no other word for it. I think you know damned well that these obsessions of yours end up damaging everyone around you, friend, foe and civilians alike.’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘But it doesn’t bother you, does it?’ Rebus didn’t answer. The Farmer had obviously been preparing his speech for a while. ‘As long as your own personal morality is satisfied, that’s all that counts. Sod everybody else, isn’t that right?’

  ‘It feels that way sometimes, sir,’ Rebus said quietly.

  ‘Well, maybe you should consider that morality of yours, because it’s no code I’d want to live with.’

  ‘You don’t have to live with it, sir. I do.’

  ‘Well, you lead a charmed existence, that’s all I can say.’

  Rebus frowned. ‘How do you mean?’

  ‘I’ve discussed things with the DCC. He said he’d apologise to the Lord Provost on your behalf. He also said he thought HMIC would be investigating F Troop instead of us.’

  F Troop: meaning F Division, Livingston. ‘What are you saying, sir?’

  ‘I’m saying I want you back here. The holiday’s over. Report to my office this morning.’

  ‘I’ve a dentist’s appointment.’

  ‘Well, this afternoon then.’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘Look, John, have you and the DCC had any contact?’

  ‘I’ve been on holiday, sir.’

  ‘Yes, but all the same?’

  ‘Well, maybe I did bump into him by the pool …’

  It was another grim day. No snow or ice, but a freezing wind and gusts of rain, the sky oppressively weighted with cloud. It was like the city was in a box, and someone had pushed the lid on too tightly.

  Rebus’s second visit to Dr Keene wasn’t so traumatic. You could get used to anything. The tooth had drained nicely, and Keene did the root canal while Rebus concentrated on the photograph on the ceiling. He plotted Paul Duggan’s property portfolio. Maybe Duggan had a point: nobody was suggesting he was overcharging his ‘tenants’ – he was making a profit out of each house and flat, but nothing outrageous. And meantime, he was putting roofs over heads. Rebus knew there might needs be a trade-off: if he wanted to see Kirstie, Duggan might want Rebus to put in a good word come trial time. Always supposing it came to trial. The district council was about to be replaced with another body. Who knew what would be written off?

  Suddenly, something clicked in Rebus’s brain. He saw something he should have seen before. He was so busy thinking that he didn’t hear Dr Keene say that, while Rebus was there, he might as well start on the fillings …

  * * *

  There were no cheers, no banners or bunting as Rebus walked back into St Leonard’s and poured himself a cup of coffee.

  ‘A word to the wise,’ Siobhan Clarke said.

  ‘What?’

  ‘You’re pouring coffee down your tie.’

  It was true: with his mouth still numb, he was dribbling. He went to the toilets and pulled out a clump of paper towels, soaked them in water and dabbed at his tie.

  ‘Here he is,’ said Flower, pushing open the door, ‘the proverbial bad penny.’

  ‘Don’t be so hard on yourself,’ Rebus retorted. Flower came to the sink and checked his hair in the mirror. ‘I see you managed to start a fire, then take credit for putting it out.’

  Flower chuckled. ‘Word gets around, eh?’

  ‘Speaking of words that get around, I had a chat with someone about your snitch.’

  ‘Which one?’

  ‘Shug McAnally. We could all have been spared some grief if you’d told me at the start he was working for you.’

  ‘It’s not the sort of thing you can publicise. I mean,’ Flower looked around, ‘planting a snitch in somebody’s cell.’

  ‘You don’t mind telling me now though. Has the DCC had a word?’

  ‘He said you’d been asking.’ Flower looked unnaturally pleased with himself. Rebus could guess why.

  ‘You think you’re quids-in with the DCC, don’t you?’

  ‘Well, if it ever came out about McAnally, the DCC could get into trouble.’ Flower winked. ‘He needs to keep me sweet.’

  ‘What you mean is, you’ve got him either way. If the plan succeeded, it’d be because of you. If it went badly, it would need covering up – which would take your help. Gunner would still owe you. That’s why you’ve been blocking me: you didn’t want me getting to the DCC – he’s your little investment.’

  Flower chuckled again, and tucked a stray hair back behind his ear. There was a sound of flushing from one of the two cubicles. Flower’s head jerked around, his mouth open, as the cubicle door opened and the Farmer came out.

  This came as no surprise to Rebus: he’d seen the Farmer enter the toilets just before him.

  ‘Morning, sir,’ he said.

  Flower didn’t say anything. The Farmer pointed at him. ‘My office, Inspector Flower, now!’ Then he opened the door and was gone. Flower turned on Rebus.

  ‘You knew! You bloody well knew!’

  Rebus tossed the ball of sodden paper into the bin.

  One-nil.

  Someone was at the front desk asking for him, that was the message. But when Rebus got there, there was nobody about. Then he saw a figure outside, motioning to him. It was Paul Duggan. He was wearing his long black coat again, but it had a small tear in the sleeve, and a white smudge on one shoulder.

  ‘Nothing personal like,’ he said when Rebus joined him outside, ‘but I hate police stations.’

  ‘There’s a café across –’

  Duggan was shaking his head. ‘She’s waiting for us.’

  ‘Kirstie?’ Duggan nodded. ‘Where?’

  ‘Have you got a car?’

  They went to Rebus’s car.

  Duggan directed him down the Pleasance and right on Holyrood Road. This was a dispiriting part of town; all empty sites and disused warehouses. The Younger Universe was under construction, and was going to make everything all right again, if you believed the publicity. Rebus hoped it would succeed; he liked the symbolism: the USA had Disneyland, and Scotland gets a theme park built by a brewery. The theme park would be a neighbour to Holyrood Palace, the monarch’s Edinburgh residence. This, too, Rebus liked.

  ‘Where are we going?’

  ‘Just park by the palace gates.’

  It was easy to park this time of year; in warmer seasons, the place was a log-jam of tourist coaches. A kid was at the locked gates, peering through them at the palace beyond.

  ‘Toot your horn,’ Duggan ordered. Rebus did so, to no effect.

  ‘She’s on another planet.’ Duggan wound down his window. ‘Hiy, Kirstie!’

  Slowly the ‘kid’ turned, and Rebus saw a face older than the frame which supported it. Nobody had said Kirstie Kennedy would be so scrawny, so tiny. But as she walked towards the car her face was set like cement. Lipstick, eyeshadow and panstick provided her with a mask. She wore tight black jeans, accentuating her matchstick legs, and a long shapeless black jumper whose arms stretched down past her hands. Her hair was greasy, shoulderlength, tied back with a band. A spiky fringe, dyed blood-red, fell into her eyes. She was chewing gum. She pulled open the back door and climbed in.

  ‘Hello, Kirstie,’ Rebus said. ‘Where do you want to go?’

  ‘I want ice cream.’

  Rebus thought of Luca’s, but it was too far. ‘Tollcross?’ he suggested.

  Tollcross would do her.

  They sat in the ice-cream parlour and she ordered the biggest concoction on the menu, plus a giant Coke. The place was quiet: an old couple, smoking and drinking frothy coffe
e; a harassed mother hissing at her two children who were arguing over bowls of garish ice cream.

  Rebus had ordered coffee, Duggan orange juice and some apple pie with cream. Rebus remembered that he used to bring Sammy in here when she was a kid. He looked at the Lord Provost’s daughter and tried to remember she was seventeen.

  ‘Paul says you want a word.’ Her voice was polite in a way no attitude could hide. Rebus knew that her street diction, her low-class language, had been only recently learned.

  ‘How long have you been on the Bob Hope, Kirstie?’

  ‘You mean the Merry?’

  Duggan looked at Rebus. ‘Merry Mac, crack,’ he explained.

  ‘Long enough,’ Kirstie answered.

  ‘Long enough to be tired of it?’

  ‘Long enough to know you never get tired of it.’ Her ice cream arrived: three different flavours with chocolate sauce, nuts, tinned peaches and wafers. The sight of it made Rebus’s teeth crackle.

  ‘Your dad’s been worried,’ he said.

  ‘So what?’

  ‘And your mum.’

  Her sudden convulsion almost sent a mouthful of ice cream on to the table. ‘My mum died when I was five. What you mean is, “that woman who lives with my dad”.’

  ‘OK.’

  ‘Have you met her?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘She’s off her trolley, praise the Lord.’

  ‘So you don’t get on with her. Is that why you ran away?’

  ‘Does there have to be a reason?’

  Rebus shrugged. ‘Only, most teenagers I know who run away, they go a bit further.’

  ‘You mean London? I didn’t like it. My pals are all up here.’

  ‘You mean pals like Willie and Dixie?’

  She put the spoon back on her plate and started on the Coke. ‘I liked Willie. Dixie was a nutter, you never knew what he’d do next, but Willie was all right.’

  ‘You heard what they did?’

  She nodded.

  ‘You left that wreath for them on the bridge, didn’t you?’

  Another nod. She dipped her finger into the chocolate sauce. She was trying not to care, but there was still a core of sentiment buried in her brain, a precious nugget of guilt.

  ‘Was it your idea, Kirstie?’ She looked up at him. ‘It was, wasn’t it?’

  She got to her feet. ‘I have to go to the toilet.’

  Rebus snatched her wrist. ‘Why did you do it, Kirstie? Just for the money? Why did you take the LABarum plans from your father’s office?’

  She shook free of his grip. ‘Let me go!’ She stumbled away from the table and ran to the toilets. Rebus sat back and started to light a cigarette.

  ‘No smoking,’ the waitress told him.

  ‘Can I get a beer?’

  ‘We’re not licensed.’

  Rebus nicked his cigarette and put it back in the packet. He looked across the table at Paul Duggan.

  ‘You like her, don’t you?’ Rebus said.

  Duggan said nothing. He was making circles in the cream with his spoon.

  ‘Remember I told you she’d left something in Willie’s bedroom? It was some papers stolen from her father. Do you have any idea why she took them?’

  Duggan shook his head slowly but determinedly. ‘She’s … go easy on her, OK?’

  ‘Or what?’

  ‘Or she’ll run.’ Duggan paused. ‘Again.’

  Eventually the toilet door opened and she walked back to the table, arms hanging in a lazy slouch. Rebus looked into her eyes and saw pupils shrunk to pinheads.

  ‘That was stupid.’

  ‘So what?’ she said, starting back into her ice cream. After two mouthfuls, she pushed the plate away.

  ‘The kidnap,’ Rebus said, ‘the ransom demand – it was all your idea, wasn’t it?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘To get back at your stepmother?’

  ‘My dad.’

  ‘To get back at your dad?’

  She nodded. ‘And everything he represents, the old bastard.’ She was much more together now, more confident. She didn’t care what she told him.

  ‘You know you committed an offence?’ Rebus asked.

  ‘I’d deny it in court. I’d deny it everywhere. Where’s the proof that it wasn’t just two wee boys with a daft scheme in their heads?’

  ‘There’s corroboration.’ Rebus glanced towards Duggan.

  ‘You think Paul would grass on me?’ She leaned into Duggan’s shoulder and stroked his face. ‘He wouldn’t do that.’

  ‘Not even if I offered him a deal on his slum landlord scam?’

  Kirstie shook her head. ‘Paul wouldn’t hurt me. His mum likes me too much.’

  ‘Well, maybe I don’t need Paul. Maybe all I need is that LABarum document. It links you to Willie.’ He paused. ‘Did you write “Dalgety” on the last page?’ She nodded. ‘Why?’

  ‘It’s something I heard my dad say on the phone … when I was listening in. Dalgety sounded important, someone he was worried about.’

  ‘Dalgety’s a person then?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Kirstie, why did you steal the LABarum plan?’

  Her face creased in a sneer. ‘It’s my dad, don’t you see? If you look closely enough at it, if you read all the small print and between the lines, all you’ll find there is my dad’s face, smiling smugly back at you.’

  ‘Why is he smug?’

  ‘Because it’s going to make him a hero. And it’s all crooked. I heard him on the phone, they were talking about how to cover it all up. The whole fucking thing is just a lot of … a lot of … it’s all just so much shit!’

  ‘I can’t have language like that,’ the waitress warned. ‘There are children in here.’

  ‘Well, fuck them!’ Kirstie screeched, jumping to her feet. ‘Because they’re all fucked anyway, just like everybody else!’

  ‘I’ll have to ask you to leave.’

  Rebus and Duggan were on their feet too.

  ‘Come on, Kirstie.’

  ‘That girl’s on drugs or something, I know it!’

  Rebus threw money down on the table. Kirstie Kennedy’s legs had buckled, and Duggan was holding her upright.

  ‘Let’s get her into the car,’ Rebus said, knowing he should take her straight to St Leonard’s, angry with himself because he knew that’s the last thing he was going to do.

  Instead, Duggan gave him directions back to where she was staying. It was a flat in Leith, in the maze of narrow roads behind Great Junction Street.

  ‘One of yours, is it?’ Rebus asked Duggan. But Duggan was busy stroking Kirstie’s forehead, even though she was asleep.

  They walked her up the stairs, one on either side, arms around her back, her arms over their shoulders. Rebus could feel the swell of a small breast, and the thin rib-cage beneath.

  ‘You did say you wanted to see her,’ Duggan was saying, exculpating himself.

  ‘And I’ll want to see her again.’ He knew there was more she could tell him, more he needed to hear from her.

  He was trying to figure out who or what was responsible for the deaths of Willie and Dixie. This weightless creature he carried? The lads themselves? The police for giving chase? The Lord Provost for agreeing to it all? Maybe even the stepmother for driving Kirstie away? Except that it hadn’t just been the stepmother, it had been some realisation about the Lord Provost himself …

  Maybe it was the system, that same system Sammy so passionately attacked. A system that had failed Willie and Dixie as surely as it nurtured people like Sir Iain Hunter and Robbie Mathieson. In nature, there had to be balance; as some rose, others fell or were pushed or made the leap for themselves.

  Or maybe … just maybe it had been Rebus himself, for crawling from the wreckage still with the need to confront them … standing there in front of them, forcing them to choose. My obsession, he thought. My private morality. Maybe the Farmer was right …

  ‘Will you stay with her?’ he asked Duggan when they reach
ed the top of the stairs.

  Duggan nodded. Rebus knew she’d be all right. She had someone who’d look after her.

  ‘What about you?’ Duggan asked. ‘What are you going to do?’

  But Rebus had released his hold on the body and was heading back downstairs.

  He went into a dive he knew near the foot of Leith Walk. It had a burgundy linoleum floor and matching coloured walls, and was like staring into somebody’s throat.

  ‘Whisky,’ Rebus said. ‘A double.’

  And when the whisky came, he drank it down in two gulps.

  ‘Know something?’ he said to the closest drinker. ‘A couple of days ago, I was eating wild smoked salmon and shooting clay-pigeons.’

  ‘Better that than the other way round, son,’ the elderly drinker said, adjusting the cap on his head.

  That night, Mrs Cochrane came upstairs to tell him there was a small dark patch on her living-room ceiling. Rebus had forgotten to empty the coffee-jar. Water had soaked the bare floorboard beneath.

  ‘Wait till it’s dried out,’ he said by way of apology, ‘and I’ll touch up the paintwork.’

  He’d been asleep in his chair, but now felt wide awake. It was half past eleven, too late to do anything. Then the telephone rang, and he picked it up.

  ‘I’m not interested,’ he said.

  ‘You’ll be interested in this.’

  Rebus recognised the voice of DC Robert Burns. ‘Don’t tell me West End needs my help?’

  ‘We’re not that desperate. I just thought I’d do you a favour. Looks like we’ve got a murder.’

  Rebus’s grip tightened on the receiver. ‘Anyone I know?’

  ‘Identification near the body suggests the name’s Thomas Gillespie.’

  ‘Councillor Gillespie?’

  ‘I haven’t told you the best part yet. He was found in a lane connecting Dundee Street to Dalry Road.’

  Rebus tried to fix the geography. ‘Next to the cemetery?’

  ‘Yes. The lane’s called Coffin Walk.’

  * * *

  Coffin Walk climbed quite steeply from Dalry Road. It had the busy Western Approach Road on one side, Dalry Cemetery on the other. It was a narrow alley, well lit but long.

  ‘If someone stopped you halfway,’ Burns told Rebus, leading him down the lane, ‘there’d be no escape.’