Set in Darkness

by Ian Rankin

  ‘I’m a doctor, not a detective.’

  Mackie’s Edinburgh address was the hostel. Date of birth was different from that on Drew’s filing-card. Clarke had the uneasy feeling that Mackie had laid a false trail all the way along. She went back to the records. Once or twice a year he’d attended the surgery, usually with some minor complaint: a facial cut turned septic; influenza; a boil requiring to be lanced.

  ‘He was in pretty good health, considering his circumstances,’ Dr Talbot said. ‘I don’t think he drank or smoked, which helped.’

  ‘Drugs?’

  The doctor shook his head.

  ‘Is that unusual in someone who’s homeless?’

  ‘I’ve known people with stronger constitutions than Mr Mackie.’

  ‘Yes, but someone homeless, not doing drink or drugs . . . ?’

  ‘I’m no expert.’

  ‘But in your opinion . . . ?’

  ‘In my opinion, Mr Mackie gave me very little trouble.’

  ‘Thank you, Dr Talbot.’

  She left the surgery and headed for the Department of Social Security office, where a Miss Stanley sat her down in a lifeless cubicle usually reserved for claimant interviews.

  ‘Looks like he didn’t have a National Insurance number,’ she said, going through the file. ‘We had to issue an emergency one at the start.’

  ‘When was this?’

  It was 1980, of course: the year of Christopher Mackie’s invention.

  ‘I wasn’t here at the time, but there are some notes from whoever it was interviewed him initially.’ Miss Stanley read from these. ‘“Filthy, not sure of where he is, no NI number or tax reference.” Previous address is given as London.’

  Clarke dutifully jotted it all down.

  ‘Does it answer your questions?’

  ‘Pretty much,’ she admitted. The night he’d died, that was as close to ‘Chris Mackie’ as she was going to get. Since then she’d been moving away from him, because he didn’t exist. He was a figment, imagined by someone with something to hide.

  The who and what she might never discover.

  Because Mackie had been clever. Everyone else had said he kept himself clean, but for the DSS he’d camouflaged himself with filth. Why? Because it made his act the more believable: bumbling, forgetful, unhelpful. The sort of person a hard-pressed official would want rid of pronto. No NI number? Never mind, issue an emergency one. Vague address in London? Fine, leave it be. Just sign your name to his claim and get him out of the cubicle.

  A call on her mobile to Register House confirmed that there was no birth record of a Christopher Mackie on the date she’d given. She could try the other date she had, or spread the net wider, ask Register House in London . . . But she knew she was chasing shadows. She sat in a cramped café, drinking her drink, staring into space, and wondered if it was time to write up her report and call an end to the hunt.

  She could think of half a dozen reasons for doing so.

  And just four hundred thousand for not.

  Back at her desk, she found over a dozen messages waiting for her. A couple of the names she recognised: local journalists. They’d tried calling three times apiece. She screwed shut her eyes and mouthed a word her grandmother would have clapped her ear for using. Then she headed downstairs to the Coms Room, knowing someone there would have the latest edition of the News. Front page: TRAGIC MYSTERY OF MILLIONAIRE TRAMP. As they didn’t have a photograph of Mackie, they’d opted for one of the spot where he’d jumped. There wasn’t much to the piece: well-known face around city centre . . . bank account well into six figures . . . police trying to establish who might have ‘a claim on the cash’.

  Siobhan Clarke’s worst nightmare.

  When she got upstairs, her phone was ringing again. Hi-Ho Silvers came across the floor on his knees, hands held in mock prayer.

  ‘I’m his love child,’ he said. ‘Give me a DNA test, but for God’s sake give me the dosh!’

  Laughter in the CID suite. ‘It’s for yoo-ou,’ someone else said, pointing to her phone. Every nutter and chancer in the kingdom would be getting ready. They’d call 999 or Fettes, and to get them off the line, someone would eventually admit that it was a St Leonard’s matter.

  They all belonged to Siobhan now. They were her children.

  So she turned on her heels and left, ignoring the pleas from behind her.

  And headed back on to the streets, finding new people to ask about Mackie. She knew she had to be quick: news travelled. Soon they’d all claim to have known him, to have been his best pal, his nephew, his executor. The street people knew her now, called her ‘doll’ and ‘hen’. One old man had even christened her ‘Diana, the Huntress’. She was wise to some of the younger beggars, too; not the ones who sold the Big Issue, but the ones who sat in doorways, blankets around them. She’d been sheltering from a downpour when one had come into Thin’s Bookshop, blanket discarded and a mobile phone to his ear, complaining because his taxi hadn’t turned up. He’d seen her, recognised her, but kept the diatribe going.

  The foot of the Mound was quiet. Two young guys with ponytails and cross-breeds; the dogs licking themselves while their owners shared a can of headnip.

  ‘Don’t know the guy, sorry. Got a fag on you?’

  She had learned to carry a packet with her, offered them each a cigarette, smiling when they took two. Then it was back up the Mound. John Rebus had told her something: the steep hill had been constructed from New Town rubble. The man whose idea it had been had owned a business at the top. Construction had meant the demolition of his shop. John Rebus hadn’t found the story amusing; he’d told her it was a lesson.

  ‘In what?’ she’d asked.

  ‘Scots history,’ he’d replied, failing to explain.

  She wondered now if it had been a reference to independence, to self-made, self-destructing schemes. It did seem to amuse him that, when pushed, she would defend independence. He wound her up, telling her it was a trick and she was an English spy, sent to undermine the process. Then he’d call her a ‘New Scot’, a ‘settler’. She never knew when he was being serious. People in Edinburgh were like that: obtuse, thrawn. Sometimes she thought he was flirting, that the jibes and jokes were part of some mating ritual made all the more complex because it consisted of baiting the subject rather than wooing them.

  She’d known John Rebus for several years now, and still they weren’t close friends. Rebus, so far as she could tell, saw none of his colleagues outside work hours, apart from when she invited him to Hibs matches. His only hobby was drinking, and he tended to indulge where few women did, his chosen pubs museum pieces in a gallery marked prehistoric.

  He’d been living on and off for years with Dr Patience Aitken, but that seemed to be over, not that he was saying anything about it. At first she’d thought him shy, awkward, but now she wasn’t so sure. It seemed more like a strategy, a wilfulness. She couldn’t imagine him joining a singles club the way Derek Linford had done. Linford . . . another of her little mistakes. She hadn’t spoken to him since The Dome. He’d left precisely one message on her answerphone: ‘Hope you’ve got over whatever it was.’ As if it was her fault! She’d almost called him back, forced an apology, but maybe that was his game: get her to make the move; contact of any kind the prelude to a rematch.

  Maybe there was method in John Rebus’s madness. Certainly there was a lot to be said for quiet nights in, a video rental, the gin, and a box of Pringle’s. Not trying to impress anyone; putting on some music and dancing by yourself. At parties and in clubs there was always that self-consciousness, that sense of being watched and graded by anonymous eyes.

  But next morning at the office it would be: ‘What did you get up to last night then?’ Asked innocently enough, but she never felt comfortable saying more than, ‘Not much, how about you?’ Because to utter the word alone implied that you were lonely.

  Or available. Or had something to hide.

  Hunter Square was empty save for a tourist couple
poring over a map. The coffee she’d drunk was asking permission to leave, so she headed for the public toilet. When she came out of her cubicle, a woman was standing by the sinks, hunting through a series of carrier bags. Bag lady was an American term, but it suddenly seemed right. The woman’s padded jacket was grubby, the stitching loose at the neck and shoulders. Her hair was short and greasy, cheeks red from exposure. She was talking to herself as she found what she’d been looking for: a half-eaten burger, still in its greaseproof wrapper. The woman held the comestible under the hand-dryer and let hot air play on it, turning it in her fingers. Clarke watched in fascination, unsure whether to be appalled or impressed. The woman knew she was being watched, but stuck to her task. When the dryer had finished its cycle, she pushed it on again with her finger. Then she spoke.

  ‘Nosy little beggar, aren’t you?’ She glanced towards Clarke. ‘You laughing at me?’

  ‘“Beggar”,’ Clarke quoted.

  The woman snorted. ‘Easy amused then. And I’m no beggar, by the way.’

  Clarke took a step forward. ‘Wouldn’t it heat up quicker if you opened it?’

  ‘Eh?’

  ‘Heat the inside rather than the outside.’

  ‘You saying I’m cack-handed?’

  ‘No, I just . . .’

  ‘I mean, you’re the world expert, are you? Lucky for me you just happened to be passing. Got fifty pence on you?’

  ‘Yes, thanks.’

  The woman snorted again. ‘I make the jokes around here.’ She took an exploratory bite of the burger, spoke with her mouth full.

  ‘I didn’t catch that,’ Clarke said.

  The woman swallowed. ‘I was asking if you were a lesbian. Men who hang around toilets are poofs, aren’t they?’

  ‘You’re hanging around a toilet.’

  ‘I’m no lesbian, by the way.’ She took another bite.

  ‘Ever come across a guy called Mackie? Chris Mackie?’

  ‘Who’s asking?’

  Clarke produced her warrant card. ‘You know Chris is dead?’

  The woman stopped chewing. Tried swallowing but couldn’t, ended up coughing the mouthful out on to the floor. She went to one of the sinks, cupped water to her mouth. Clarke followed her.

  ‘He jumped from North Bridge. I’m assuming you knew him?’

  The woman was staring into the soap-flecked mirror. The eyes, though dark and knowing, were so much younger and less worn than the face. Clarke placed the woman in her mid-thirties, but knew that on a bad day she could pass for fifty.

  ‘Everybody knew Mackie.’

  ‘Not everybody’s reacted the way you just did.’

  The woman was still holding her burger. She stared at it, seemed about to ditch it, but finally wrapped it up again and placed it at the top of one of her bags.

  ‘I shouldn’t be so surprised,’ she said. ‘People die all the time.’

  ‘But he was your friend?’

  The woman looked at her. ‘Gonny buy me a cup of tea?’

  Clarke nodded.

  The nearest café wouldn’t take them. When pressed, the manager pointed to the woman and said she’d caused trouble, trying to beg at the tables. There was another café further along.

  ‘I’m barred there as well,’ the woman admitted. So Clarke went in, fetched two beakers of tea and a couple of sticky buns. They sat in Hunter Square, stared at by passengers on the top decks of the passing buses. The woman flicked the Vs from time to time, dissuading the spectators.

  ‘I’m a bad bugger, me,’ she confided.

  Clarke had her name now: Dezzi. Short for Desiderata. Not her real name: ‘Left that behind when I left home.’

  ‘And when was that, Dezzi?’

  ‘I don’t remember. A lot of years now, I suppose.’

  ‘You always been in Edinburgh?’

  A shake of the head. ‘All over. Last summer I ended up on a bus to some commune in Wales. Christ knows how that happened. Got a fag?’

  Clarke handed one over. ‘Why did you leave home?’

  ‘Like I said, nosy little beggar.’

  ‘All right, what about Chris?’

  ‘I always called him Mackie.’

  ‘What did he call you?’

  ‘Dezzi.’ She stared at Clarke. ‘Is that you trying to find out my last name?’

  Clarke shook her head. ‘Cross my heart.’

  ‘Oh aye, a cop’s as honest as the day is long.’

  ‘It’s true.’

  ‘Only, this time of year the days are awfy short.’

  Clarke laughed. ‘I walked into that one.’ She’d been trying to work out if Dezzi knew about Mackie, knew about the detective who was asking about him. Knew about the story in the News. ‘So what can you tell me about Mackie?’

  ‘He was my boyfriend, just for a few weeks.’ The sudden, unexpected smile lit up her face. ‘Wild weeks they were, mind.’

  ‘How wild?’

  An arch look. ‘Enough to get us arrested. I’m saying no more than that.’ She bit into her bun. She was alternating: mouthful of bun, puff on the cigarette.

  ‘Did he tell you anything about himself?’

  ‘He’s dead now, what does it matter?’

  ‘It matters to me. Why would he kill himself?’

  ‘Why does anyone?’

  ‘You tell me.’

  A slurp of tea. ‘Because you give in.’

  ‘Is that what he did, give in?’

  ‘All the shite out here . . .’ Dezzi shook her head. ‘I tried it once, cut my wrists with a bit of glass. Eight stitches.’ She turned one wrist as if to show it, but Clarke couldn’t see any scars. ‘Couldn’t have been serious, could I?’

  Clarke was well aware that a great many homeless people were ill; not physically, but mentally. She had a sudden thought: could she trust any stories Dezzi told her?

  ‘When did you last see Mackie?’

  ‘Maybe a couple of weeks back.’

  ‘How did he seem?’

  ‘Fine.’ She pushed the last morsel of bun into her mouth. Washed it down with tea, before concentrating on the cigarette.

  ‘Dezzi, did you really know him?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘You haven’t told me one thing about him.’

  Dezzi prickled. Clarke feared she would walk off. ‘If he meant something to you,’ Clarke went on, ‘help me get to know him.’

  ‘Nobody knew Mackie, not really. Too many defences.’

  ‘But you got past them?’

  ‘I don’t think so. He told me a few stories . . . but I think that’s all they were.’

  ‘What sort of stories?’

  ‘Oh, all about places he’d been – America, Singapore, Australia. I thought maybe he’d been in the navy or something, but he said he hadn’t.’

  ‘Was he well educated?’

  ‘He knew things. I’m positive he’d been to America, not sure about the others. He knew London, though, all the tourist places and the underground stations. When I first met him . . .’

  ‘Yes?’ Clarke was shivering; couldn’t feel her toes.

  ‘I don’t know, I got the feeling he was just passing through. Like, there was somewhere else he could go.’

  ‘But he didn’t?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Are you saying he was homeless by choice rather than necessity?’

  ‘Maybe.’ Dezzi’s eyes widened a little.

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘I can prove I knew him.’

  ‘How’s that?’

  ‘The present he gave me.’

  ‘What present?’

  ‘Only, I didn’t have much use for it, so I . . . I gave it to someone.’

  ‘Gave it to someone?’

  ‘Well, sold it. A second-hand shop on Nicolson Street.’

  ‘What was it?’

  ‘A briefcase sort of thing. Didn’t hold enough stuff, but it was made of leather.’

  Mackie had carried his cash to the building society in a briefcase. ‘So n
ow it’ll have been sold on to someone else?’ Clarke guessed.

  But Dezzi was shaking her head. ‘The shopkeeper’s still got it. I’ve seen him walking about with it. Leather it was, and the bastard only gave me five quid.’

  It wasn’t far from Hunter Square to Nicolson Street. The shop was an Aladdin’s cave of tat, narrow aisles leading them past teetering pillars of used goods: books, cassettes, music centres, crockery. Vacuum cleaners had been draped with feather boas; picture cards and old comics lay underfoot. Electrical goods and board games and jigsaw puzzles; pots and pans, guitars, music-stands. The shopkeeper, an Asian, didn’t seem to recognise Dezzi. Clarke showed her warrant card and asked to see the briefcase.

  ‘Five measly quid he gave me,’ Dezzi grumbled. ‘Genuine leather.’

  The man was reluctant, until Clarke mentioned that St Leonard’s was just around the corner. He reached down and placed a scuffed black briefcase on the counter. Clarke asked him to open it. Inside: a newspaper, packed lunch and a thick roll of banknotes. Dezzi seemed to want a closer look, but he snapped shut the case.

  ‘Satisfied?’ he asked.

  Clarke pointed to a corner of the case where the scuffing was worst.

  ‘What happened?’

  ‘The initials were not my initials. I attempted to erase them.’

  Clarke looked more closely. She was wondering if Valerie Briggs could identify the case. ‘Do you remember the initials?’ she asked Dezzi.

  Dezzi shook her head; she was looking, too.

  The shop was badly lit. The faintest indents remained.

  ‘ADC?’ she guessed.

  ‘I believe so,’ the shopkeeper said. Then he wagged a finger at Dezzi. ‘And I paid you a fair price.’

  ‘You as good as robbed me, you sod.’ She nudged Clarke. ‘Stick the handcuffs on him, girl.’

  ADC, Clarke was thinking, was Mackie really ADC?

  Or would it prove another dead end?

  Back at St Leonard’s, she kicked herself for not checking Mackie’s criminal record sooner. August 1997, Christopher Mackie and ‘a Ms Desiderata’ (she refused to give the police her full name) were apprehended while involved in a ‘lewd exhibition’ on the steps of a parish church in Bruntsfield.

  August: Festival time. Clarke was surprised they hadn’t been mistaken for an experimental theatre group.