A Good Hanging - Rankin: Short 01

by Ian Rankin

  What roadworks? The road outside was clear, and Rebus hadn’t heard any gossip concerning work about to start. Something else Frank had heard them say. Lavatories or laboratories. Of course, his own cherished conspiracy theory had made him plump for ‘laboratories’, but what if he’d misheard again? Where did lavatories fit into the scheme? And if, as seemed certain, these were the two men, what was a local councillor doing staying at a bed and breakfast? Maybe he owned it, of course. Maybe it was run by his wife.

  Rebus was a couple of paces further down his hall when it hit him. He stopped dead. Slow, John, slow. Blame the whisky, maybe. And Jesus, wasn’t it so obvious when you thought of it? He went back to his door opened it quietly, and slipped out onto the landing.

  There was no such thing as silent movement on an Edinburgh stairwell. The sound of shoe on stone, a sound like sandpaper at work, was magnified, and distorted, bouncing off the walls upwards and downwards. Rebus slipped off his shoes and left them on his landing, then started downstairs. He listened outside Mrs Cochrane’s door. Muffled voices from the living-room. The layout of her flat was the same as Rebus’s own: a long hallway off which were half a dozen doors, the last of which - actually around a corner - led to the living-room. He crouched down and pushed open the letterbox. The cat was just inside the door and it swiped at him with its paw. He let the hinge fall back.

  Then he tried the doorhandle, which turned. The door opened. The cat swept past him and down the stairs. Rebus began to feel that the odds were going his way. The door was open just wide enough to allow him to squeeze inside. Open it an inch or two further, he knew, and it creaked with the almightiest groan. He tiptoed into the hallway. Councillor Waugh’s voice boomed from the living-room.

  ‘Bowel trouble. Terrible in a man so young.’

  Yes, he’d no doubt be explaining why his assistant was taking so long in the lavatory: that was the excuse they always made. Well, either that or a drink of water. Rebus passed the toilet. The door wasn’t locked and the tiny closet was empty. He pushed open the next door along - Mrs Cochrane’s bedroom. The young man was closing the wardrobe doors.

  ‘Well,’ said Rebus, ‘I hope you didn’t think that was the toilet.’

  The man jerked around. Rebus filled the doorway. There was no way past him; the only way to get out was to go through him, and that’s what the man tried, charging at the doorway, head low. Rebus stood back a little, giving himself room and time, and brought his knee up hard, aiming for the bridge of the nose but finding mouth instead. Well, it was an imprecise science, wasn’t it? The man flew backwards like a discarded ragdoll and fell onto the bed. Flat out, to Rebus’s satisfaction.

  They’d heard the noise of course, and the ‘councillor’ was already on his way. But he, too, would need to get past Rebus to reach the front door. He stopped short. Rebus nodded slowly.

  ‘Very wise,’ he said. ‘Your colleague’s going to need some new teeth when he wakes up. I’m a police officer by the way. And you, “councillor”, are under arrest.’

  ‘Arresting the councillor?’ This from Mrs Cochrane, who had appeared in the hall.

  ‘He’s no more a councillor than I am, Mrs Cochrane. He’s a conman. His partner’s been raking through your bedroom.’

  ‘What?’ She went to look.

  ‘Bakewell,’ Rebus said, smiling. They would try the same ruse at every door where they didn’t fancy their chances. Sorry, wrong address, and on to the next potential sucker until they found someone old enough or gullible enough. Rebus was trying to remember if Mrs Cochrane had a telephone. Yes, there was one in her living-room, wasn’t there? He gestured to his prisoner.

  ‘Let’s go back into the living-room,’ he said. Rebus could call the station from there...

  Mrs Cochrane was back beside him. ‘Blood on my good quilt,’ she muttered. Then she saw that Rebus was in his stocking-soles. ‘You’ll get chilblains, son,’ she said. ‘Mark my words. You should take better care of yourself. Living on your own like that. You need somebody to look after you. Mark my words. He told me he was a councillor. Would you credit it? And me been wanting to talk to them for ages about the dogs’ mess on the Links.’

  ‘Hello, Shuffler.’

  ‘Mr Rebus! Day off is it? Don’t usually see you around here during the week.’

  Frank was back on his bench, a newspaper spread out on his lap. One of yesterday’s papers. It contained a story about some black magic conspiracy in the United States. Wealthy people, it was reckoned, influential people, taking part in orgies and rituals. Yes, and the arms manufacturers would be there, too. That’s how they got to know the politicians and the bankers. It all connected.

  ‘No, I’m off to work in a minute. Just thought I’d stop by. Here.’ He was holding out a ten-pound note. Frank looked at it suspiciously, moved his hand towards it, and took it. What? Didn’t Rebus even want to ask him the question?

  ‘You were right,’ Rebus was saying. ‘What you told me about those two men, dead right. Well, nearly dead right. Keep your ears open, Frank. And in future, I’ll try to keep my ears open when you talk to me.’

  And then he turned and was walking away, back across the grass towards Marchmont. Frank stared at the money. Ten pounds. Enough to finance another long walk. He needed a long walk to clear his head. Now that they’d had the council of war at Rhodes, the laboratories would be making potions for satanic rituals. They’d put the politicians in a trance, and ... No, no, it didn’t bear thinking about.

  ‘Mr Rebus!’ he called. ‘Mr Rebus! I go to my sister’s! She lives in Dunbar! That’s where I go in the winter!’

  But if the distant figure heard him, it made no sign. Just kept on walking. Frank shuffled his feet. Ten pounds would buy a transistor radio, or a pair of shoes, a jacket, or a new hat, maybe a little camping stove. That was the problem with having money: you ended up with decisions to make. And if you bought anything, where would you put it? He’d need either to ditch something, or to start on another carrier-bag.

  That was the problem, being Frank.

  Concrete Evidence

  ‘It’s amazing what you find in these old buildings,’ said the contractor, a middle-aged man in safety helmet and overalls. Beneath the overalls lurked a shirt and tie, the marks of his station. He was the chief, the gaffer. Nothing surprised him any more, not even unearthing a skeleton.

  ‘Do you know,’ he went on, ‘in my time, I’ve found everything from ancient coins to a pocket-watch. How old do you reckon he is then?’

  ‘We’re not even sure it is a he, not yet. Give us a chance, Mr Beesford.’

  ‘Well, when can we start work again?’

  ‘Later on today.’

  ‘Must be gey old though, eh?’

  ‘How do you make that out?’

  ‘Well, it’s got no clothes on, has it? They’ve perished. Takes time for that to happen, plenty of time...’

  Rebus had to concede, the man had a point. Yet the concrete floor beneath which the bones had been found... it didn’t look so old, did it? Rebus cast an eye over the cellar again. It was situated a storey or so beneath road-level, in the basement of an old building off the Cowgate. Rebus was often in the Cowgate; the mortuary was just up the road. He knew that the older buildings here were a veritable warren, long narrow tunnels ran here, there and, it seemed, everywhere, semi-cylindrical in shape and just about high enough to stand up in. This present building was being given the full works - gutted, new drainage system, rewiring. They were taking out the floor in the cellar to lay new drains and also because there seemed to be damp - certainly there was a fousty smell to the place - and its cause needed to be found.

  They were expecting to find old drains, open drains perhaps. Maybe even a trickle of a stream, something which would lead to damp. Instead, their pneumatic drills found what remained of a corpse, perhaps hundreds of years old. Except, of course, for that concrete floor. It couldn’t be more than fifty or sixty years old, could it? Would clothing deteriorate to a visible
nothing in so short a time? Perhaps the damp could do that. Rebus found the cellar oppressive. The smell, the shadowy lighting provided by portable lamps, the dust.

  But the photographers were finished, and so was the pathologist, Dr Curt. He didn’t have too much to report at this stage, except to comment that he preferred it when skeletons were kept in cupboards, not confined to the cellar. They’d take the bones away, along with samples of the earth and rubble around the find, and they’d see what they would see.

  ‘Archaeology’s not really my line,’ the doctor added. ‘It may take me some time to bone up on it.’ And he smiled his usual smile.

  It took several days for the telephone call to come. Rebus picked up the receiver.

  ‘Hello ?’

  ‘Inspector Rebus? Dr Curt here. About our emaciated friend.’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Male, five feet ten inches tall, probably been down there between thirty and thirty-five years. His left leg was broken at some time, long before he died. It healed nicely. But the little finger on his left hand had been dislocated and it did not heal so well. I’d say it was crooked all his adult life. Perfect for afternoon tea in Morningside.’

  ‘Yes?’ Rebus knew damned well Curt was leading up to something. He knew, too, that Curt was not a man to be hurried.

  ‘Tests on the soil and gravel around the skeleton show traces of human tissue, but no fibres or anything which might have been clothing. No shoes, socks, underpants, nothing. Altogether, I’d say he was buried there in the altogether.’

  ‘But did he die there?’

  ‘Can’t say.’

  ‘All right, what did he die of?’

  There was an almost palpable smile in Curt’s voice. ‘Inspector, I thought you’d never ask. Blow to the skull, a blow of considerable force to the back of the head. Murder, I’d say. Yes, definitely murder.’

  There were, of course, ways of tracing the dead, of coming to a near-infallible identification. But the older the crime, the less likely this outcome became. Dental records, for example. They just weren’t kept in the 50s and 60s the way they are today. A dentist practising then would most probably be playing near-full-time golf by now. And the record of a patient who hadn’t been in for his check-up since 1960? Discarded, most probably. Besides, as Dr Curt pointed out, the man’s teeth had seen little serious work, a few fillings, a single extraction.

  The same went for medical records, which didn’t stop Rebus from checking. A broken left leg, a dislocated left pinkie. Maybe some aged doctor would recall? But then again, maybe not. Almost certainly not. The local papers and radio were interested, which was a bonus. They were given what information the police had, but no memories seemed to be jogged as a result.

  Curt had said he was no archaeologist; well, Rebus was no historian either. He knew other cases - contemporary cases - were yammering for his attention. The files stacked up on his desk were evidence enough of that. He’d give this one a few days, a few hours of his time. When the dead ends started to cluster around him, he’d drop it and head back for the here and now.

  Who owned the building back in the 1950s? That was easy enough to discover: a wine importer and merchant. Pretty much a one-man operation, Hillbeith Vintners had held the premises from 1948 until 1967. And yes, there was a Mr Hillbeith, retired from the trade and living over in Burntisland, with a house gazing out across silver sands to the grey North Sea.

  He still had a cellar, and insisted that Rebus have a ‘wee taste’ from it. Rebus got the idea that Mr Hillbeith liked visitors - a socially acceptable excuse for a drink. He took his time in the cellar (there must have been over 500 bottles in there) and emerged with cobwebs hanging from his cardigan, holding a dusty bottle of something nice. This he opened and sat on the mantelpiece. It would be half an hour or so yet at the very least before they could usefully have a glass.

  Mr Hillbeith was, he told Rebus, seventy-four. He’d been in the wine trade for nearly half a century and had ‘never regretted a day, not a day, nor even an hour’. Lucky you, Rebus thought to himself.

  ‘Do you remember having that new floor laid in the cellar, Mr Hillbeith?’

  ‘Oh, yes. That particular cellar was going to be for best claret. It was just the right temperature, you see, and there was no vibration from passing buses and the like. But it was damp, had been ever since I’d moved in. So I got a building firm to take a look. They suggested a new floor and some other alterations. It all seemed fairly straightforward and their charges seemed reasonable, so I told them to go ahead.’

  ‘And when was this, sir?’

  ‘1960. The spring of that year. There you are, I’ve got a great memory where business matters are concerned.’ His small eyes beamed at Rebus through the thick lenses of their glasses. ‘I can even tell you how much the work cost me ... and it was a pretty penny at the time. All for nothing, as it turned out. The cellar was still damp, and there was always that smell in it, a very unwholesome smell. I couldn’t take a chance with the claret, so it became the general stock-room, empty bottles and glasses, packing-cases, that sort of thing.’

  ‘Do you happen to recall, Mr Hillbeith, was the smell there before the new floor was put in?’

  ‘Well, certainly there was a smell there before the floor was laid, but the smell afterwards was different somehow.’ He rose and fetched two crystal glasses from the china cabinet, inspecting them for dust. ‘There’s a lot of nonsense talked about wine, Inspector. About decanting, the type of glasses you must use and so on. Decanting can help, of course, but I prefer the feel of the bottle. The bottle, after all, is part of the wine, isn’t it?’ He handed an empty glass to Rebus. ‘We’ll wait a few minutes yet.’

  Rebus swallowed drily. It had been a long drive. ‘Do you recall the name of the firm, sir, the one that did the work?’

  Hillbeith laughed. ‘How could I forget? Abbot & Ford, they were called. I mean, you just don’t forget a name like that, do you? Abbot & Ford. You see, it sounds like Abbotsford, doesn’t it? A small firm they were, mind. But you may know one of them, Alexander Abbot.’

  ‘Of Abbot Building?’

  ‘The same. He went on to make quite a name for himself, didn’t he? Quite a fortune. Built up quite a company, too, but he started out small like most of us do.’

  ‘How small, would you say?’

  ‘Oh, small, small. Just a few men.’ He rose and stretched an arm towards the mantelpiece. ‘I think this should be ready to taste, Inspector. If you’ll hold out your glass -’

  Hillbeith poured slowly, deliberately, checking that no lees escaped into the glass. He poured another slow, generous measure for himself. The wine was reddish-brown. ‘Robe and disc not too promising,’ he muttered to himself. He gave his glass a shake and studied it. ‘Legs not promising either.’ He sighed. ‘Oh dear.’ Finally, Hillbeith sniffed the glass anxiously, then took a swig.

  ‘Cheers,’ said Rebus, indulging in a mouthful. A mouthful of vinegar. He managed to swallow, then saw Hillbeith spit back into the glass.

  ‘Oxidisation,’ the old man said, sounding cruelly tricked. ‘It happens. I’d best check a few more bottles to assess the damage. Will you stay, Inspector?’ Hillbeith sounded keen.

  ‘Sorry, sir,’ said Rebus, ready with his get-out clause. ‘I’m still on duty.’

  Alexander Abbot, aged fifty-five, still saw himself as the force behind the Abbot Building Company. There might be a dozen executives working furiously beneath him, but the company had grown from his energy and from his fury. He was Chairman, and a busy man too. He made this plain to Rebus at their meeting in the executive offices of ABC. The office spoke of business confidence, but then in Rebus’s experience this meant little in itself. Often, the more dire straits a company was in, the healthier it tried to look. Still, Alexander Abbot seemed happy enough with life.

  ‘In a recession,’ he explained, lighting an overlong cigar, ‘you trim your workforce pronto. You stick with regular clients, good payers, and don’t take on too
much work from clients you don’t know. They’re the ones who’re likely to welch on you or go bust, leaving nothing but bills. Young businesses... they’re always hit hardest in a recession, no back-up you see. Then, when the recession’s over for another few years, you dust yourself off and go touting for business again, re-hiring the men you laid off. That’s where we’ve always had the edge over Jack Kirkwall.’

  Kirkwall Construction was ABC’s main competitor in the Lowlands, when it came to medium-sized contracts. Doubtless Kirkwall was the larger company. It, too, was run by a ‘self-made’ man, Jack Kirkwall. A larger-than-life figure. There was, Rebus quickly realised, little love lost between the two rivals.

  The very mention of Kirkwall’s name seemed to have dampened Alexander Abbot’s spirits. He chewed on his cigar like it was a debtor’s finger.

  ‘You started small though, didn’t you, sir?’

  ‘Oh aye, they don’t come much smaller. We were a pimple on the bum of the construction industry at one time.’ He gestured to the walls of his office. ‘Not that you’d guess it, eh?’

  Rebus nodded. ‘You were still a small firm back in 1960, weren’t you?’

  ‘1960. Let’s think. We were just starting out. It wasn’t ABC then, of course. Let’s see. I think I got a loan from my dad in 1957, went into partnership with a chap called Hugh Ford, another self-employed builder. Yes, that’s right. 1960, it was Abbot & Ford. Of course it was.’

  ‘Do you happen to remember working at a wine merchant’s in the Cowgate?’

  ‘When?’

  ‘The spring of 1960.’

  ‘A wine merchant’s?’ Abbot furrowed his brow. ‘Should be able to remember that. Long time ago, mind. A wine merchant’s?’

  ‘You were laying a new floor in one of his cellars, amongst other work. Hillbeith Vintners.’

  ‘Oh, aye, Hillbeith, it’s coming back now. I remember him. Little funny chap with glasses. Gave us a case of wine when the job was finished. Nice of him, but the wine was a bit off as I remember.’