by Ian Rankin
‘How many men were working on the job?’
Abbot exhaled noisily. ‘Now you’re asking. It was over thirty years ago, Inspector.’
‘I appreciate that, sir. Would there be any records?’
Abbot shook his head. ‘There might have been up to about ten years ago, but when we moved into this place a lot of the older stuff got chucked out. I regret it now. It’d be nice to have a display of stuff from the old days, something we could set up in the reception. But no, all the Abbot & Ford stuff got dumped.’
‘So you don’t remember how many men were on that particular job? Is there anyone else I could talk to, someone who might — ’
‘We were small back then, I can tell you that. Mostly using casual labour and part-timers. A job that size, I wouldn’t think we’d be using more than three or four men, if that.’
‘You don’t recall anyone going missing? Not turning up for work, that sort of thing?’
Abbot bristled. ‘I’m a stickler for time-keeping, Inspector. If anyone had done a bunk, I’d remember, I’m pretty sure of that. Besides, we were careful about who we took on. No lazy buggers, nobody who’d do a runner halfway through a job.’
Rebus sighed. Here was one of the dead ends. He rose to his feet. ‘Well, thanks anyway, Mr Abbot. It was good of you to find time to see me.’ The two men shook hands, Abbot rising to his feet.
‘Not at all, Inspector. Wish I could help you with your little mystery. I like a good detective story myself.’ They were almost at the door now.
‘Oh,’ said Rebus, ‘just one last thing. Where could I find your old partner Mr Ford?’
Abbot’s face lost its animation. His voice was suddenly that of an old man. ‘Hugh died, Inspector. A boating accident. He was drowned. Hell of a thing to happen. Hell of a thing.’
Two dead ends.
Mr Hillbeith’s telephone call came later that day, while Rebus was ploughing through the transcript of an interview with a rapist. His head felt full of foul-smelling glue, his stomach acid with caffeine.
‘Is that Inspector Rebus?’
‘Yes, hello, Mr Hillbeith. What can I do for you?’ Rebus pinched the bridge of his nose and screwed shut his eyes.
‘I was thinking all last night about that skeleton.’
‘Yes?’ In between bottles of wine, Rebus didn’t doubt.
‘Well, I was trying to think back to when the work was being done. It might not be much, but I definitely recall that there were four people involved. Mr Abbot and Mr Ford worked on it pretty much full-time, and there were two other men, one of them a teenager, the other in his forties. They worked on a more casual basis.’
‘You don’t recall their names?’
‘No, only that the teenager had a nickname. Everyone called him by that. I don’t think I ever knew his real name.’
‘Well, thanks anyway, Mr Hillbeith. I’ll get back to Mr Abbot and see if what you’ve told me jogs his memory.’
‘Oh, you’ve spoken to him then?’
‘This morning. No progress to report. I didn’t realise Mr Ford had died.’
‘Ah, well, that’s the other thing.’
‘What is?’
‘Poor Mr Ford. Sailing accident, wasn’t it?’
‘That’s right.’
‘Only I remember that, too. You see, that accident happened just after they’d finished the job. They kept talking about how they were going to take a few days off and go fishing. Mr Abbot said it would be their first holiday in years.’
Rebus’s eyes were open now. ‘How soon was this after they’d finished your floor?’
‘Well, directly after, I suppose.’
‘Do you remember Mr Ford?’
‘Well, he was very quiet. Mr Abbot did all the talking, really. A very quiet man. A hard worker though, I got that impression.’
‘Did you notice anything about his hands? A misshapen pinkie?’
‘Sorry, Inspector, it was a long time ago.’
Rebus appreciated that. ‘Of course it was, Mr Hillbeith. You’ve been a great help. Thank you.’
He put down the receiver. A long time ago, yes, but still murder, still calculated and cold-blooded murder. Well, a path had opened in front of him. Not much of a path perhaps, a bit overgrown and treacherous. Nevertheless ... Best foot forward, John. Best foot forward.
Of course, he kept telling himself, he was still ruling possibilities out rather than ruling them in, which was why he wanted to know a little more about the boating accident. He didn’t want to get the information from Alexander Abbot.
Instead, the morning after Hillbeith’s phone-call, Rebus went to the National Library of Scotland on George IV Bridge. The doorman let him through the turnstile and he climbed an imposing staircase to the reading room. The woman on the desk filled in a one-day reader’s card for him, and showed him how to use the computer. There were two banks of computers, being used by people to find the books they needed. Rebus had to go into the reading room and find an empty chair, note its number and put this on his slip when he’d decided which volume he required. Then he went to his chair and sat, waiting.
There were two floors to the reading room, both enveloped by shelves of reference books. The people working at the long desks downstairs seemed bleary. Just another morning’s graft for them; but Rebus found it all fascinating. One person worked with a card index in front of him, to which he referred frequently. Another seemed asleep, head resting on arms. Pens scratched across countless sheets of paper. A few souls, lost for inspiration, merely chewed on their pens and stared at the others around them, as Rebus was doing.
Eventually, his volume was brought to him. It was a bound edition of the Scotsman, containing every issue for the months from January to June, 1960. Two thick leather buckles kept the volume closed. Rebus unbuckled these and began to turn the pages.
He knew what he was looking for, and pretty well where to find it, but that didn’t stop him browsing through football reports and front page headlines. 1960. He’d been busy trying to lose his virginity and supporting Hearts. Yes, a long time ago.
The story hadn’t quite made the front page. Instead, there were two paragraphs on page three. ‘Drowning Off Lower Largo.’ The victim, Mr Hugh Ford, was described as being twenty-six years of age (a year old than the survivor, Mr Alex Abbot) and a resident of Duddingston, Edinburgh. The men, on a short fishing-holiday, had taken a boat out early in the morning, a boat hired from a local man, Mr John Thomson. There was a squall, and the boat capsized. Mr Abbot, a fair swimmer, had made it back to the shore. Mr Ford, a poor swimmer, had not. Mr Ford was further described as a ‘bachelor, a quiet man, shy according to Mr Abbot, who was still under observation at the Victoria Hospital, Kirkcaldy’. There was a little more, but not much. Apparently, Ford’s parents were dead, but he had a sister, Mrs Isabel Hammond, somewhere out in Australia.
Why hadn’t Abbot mentioned any of this? Maybe he wanted to forget. Maybe it still gave him the occasional bad dream. And of course he would have forgotten all about the Hillbeith contract precisely because this tragedy happened so soon afterwards. So soon. Just the one line of print really bothered Rebus; just that one sentence niggled.
‘Mr Ford’s body has still not been recovered.’
Records might get lost in time, but not by Fife Police. They sent on what they had, much of it written in fading ink on fragile paper, some of it typed - badly. The two friends and colleagues, Abbot and Ford, had set out on Friday evening to the Fishing-Net Hotel in Largo, arriving late. As arranged, they’d set out early next morning on a boat they’d hired from a local man, John Thomson. The accident had taken place only an hour or so after setting out. The boat was recovered. It had been overturned, but of Ford there was no sign. Inquiries were made. Mr Ford’s belongings were taken back to Edinburgh by Mr Abbot, after the latter was released from hospital, having sustained a bump to the head when the boat went over. He was also suffering from shock and exhaustion. Mr Ford’s sister, Mrs Isabel Hammond, w
as never traced.
They had investigated a little further. The business run jointly by Messrs Abbot and Ford now became Mr Abbot’s. The case-notes contained a good amount of information and suspicion - between the lines, as it were. Oh yes, they’d investigated Alexander Abbot, but there had been no evidence. They’d searched for the body, had found none. Without a body, they were left with only their suspicions and their nagging doubts.
‘Yes,’ Rebus said quietly to himself, ‘but what if you were looking for the body in the wrong place?’ The wrong place at the wrong time. The work on the cellar had ended on Friday afternoon and by Saturday morning Hugh Ford had ceased to exist.
The path Rebus was on had become less overgrown, but it was still rock-strewn and dangerous, still a potential dead-end.
The Fishing-Net Hotel was still in existence, though apparently much changed from its 1960 incarnation. The present owners told Rebus to arrive in time for lunch if he could and it would be on the house. Largo was north of Burntisland but on the same coastline. Alexander Selkirk, the original of Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe, had a connection with the fishing village. There was a small statue of him somewhere which Rebus had been shown as a boy (but only after much hunting, he recalled). Largo was picturesque, but then so were most, if not all, of the coastal villages in Fife’s ‘East Neuk’. But it was not yet quite the height of the tourist season and the customers taking lunch at the Fishing-Net Hotel were businessmen and locals.
It was a good lunch, as picturesque as its surroundings but with a bit more flavour. And afterwards, the owner, an Englishman for whom life in Largo was a long-held dream come true, offered to show Rebus round, including ‘the very room your Mr Ford stayed in the night before he died’.
‘How can you be sure?’
‘I looked in the register.’
Rebus managed not to look too surprised. The hotel had changed hands so often since 1960, he despaired of finding anyone who would remember the events of that weekend.
‘The register?’
‘Yes, we were left a lot of old stuff when we bought this place. The store-rooms were choc-a-bloc. Old ledgers and what have you going back to the 1920s and 30s. It was easy enough to find 1960.’
Rebus stopped in his tracks. ‘Never mind showing me Mr Ford’s room, would you mind letting me see that register?’
He sat at a desk in the manager’s office with the register open in front of him, while Mr Summerson’s finger stabbed the line. ‘There you are, Inspector, H. Ford. Signed in at 11.50 p.m., address given as Duddingston. Room number seven.’
It wasn’t so much a signature as a blurred scrawl and above it, on a separate line, was Alexander Abbot’s own more flowing signature.
‘Bit late to arrive, wasn’t it?’ commented Rebus.
‘Agreed.’
‘I don’t suppose there’s anyone working here nowadays who worked in the hotel back then?’
Summerson laughed quietly. ‘People do retire in this country, Inspector.’
‘Of course, I just wondered.’ He remembered the newspaper story. ‘What about John Thomson? Does the name mean anything to you?’
‘Old Jock? Jock Thomson? The fisherman?’
‘Probably.’
‘Oh, yes, he’s still about. You’ll almost certainly find him down by the dockside or else in the Harbour Tavern.’
‘Thanks. I’d like to take this register with me if I may?’
Jock Thomson sucked on his pipe and nodded. He looked the archetype of the ‘old salt’, from his baggy cord trousers to his chiselled face and silvery beard. The only departure from the norm was, perhaps, the Perrier water in front of him on a table in the Harbour Tavern.
‘I like the fizz,’ he explained after ordering it, ‘and besides, my doctor’s told me to keep off the alcohol. Total abstinence, he said, total abstinence. Either the booze goes, Jock, or the pipe does. No contest.’
And he sucked greedily on the pipe. Then complained when his drink arrived without ‘the wee slice of lemon’. Rebus returned to the bar to fulfil his mission.
‘Oh aye,’ said Thomson, ‘remember it like it was yesterday. Only there’s not much to remember, is there?’
‘Why do you say that?’
‘Two inexperienced laddies go out in a boat. Boat tips. End of story.’
‘Was the weather going to be bad that morning?’
‘Not particularly. But there was a squall blew up. Blew up and blew out in a matter of minutes. Long enough though.’
‘How did the two men seem?’
‘How do you mean?’
‘Well, were they looking forward to the trip?’
‘Don’t know, I never saw them. The younger one, Abbot was it? He phoned to book a boat from me, said they’d be going out early, six or thereabouts. I told him he was daft, but he said there was no need for me to be on the dockside, if I’d just have the boat ready and tell him which one it was. And that’s what I did. By the time I woke up that morning, he was swimming for the shore and his pal was food for the fish.’
‘So you never actually saw Mr Ford?’
‘No, and I only saw the lad Abbot afterwards, when the ambulance was taking him away.’
It was fitting into place almost too easily now. And Rebus thought, sometimes these things are only visible with hindsight, from a space of years. ‘I don’t suppose,’ he ventured, ‘you know anyone who worked at the hotel back then?’
‘Owner’s moved on,’ said Thomson, ‘who knows where to. It might be that Janice Dryman worked there then. Can’t recall if she did.’
‘Where could I find her?’
Thomson peered at the clock behind the bar. ‘Hang around here ten minutes or so, you’ll bump into her. She usually comes in of an afternoon. Meantime, I’ll have another of these if you’re buying.’
Thomson pushed his empty glass over to Rebus. Rebus, most definitely, was buying.
Miss Dryman — ‘never married, never really saw the point’ - was in her early fifties. She worked in a gift-shop in town and after her stint finished usually nipped into the Tavern for a soft drink and ‘a bit of gossip’. Rebus asked what she would like to drink.
‘Lemonade, please,’ she said, ‘with a drop of whisky in it.’ And she laughed with Jock Thomson, as though this were an old and cherished joke between them. Rebus, not used to playing the part of straight-man, headed yet again for the bar.
‘Oh yes,’ she said, her lips poised above the glass. ‘I was working there at the time all right. Chambermaid and general dogsbody, that was me.’
‘You wouldn’t see them arrive though?’
Miss Dryman looked as though she had some secret to impart. ‘Nobody saw them arrive, I know that for a fact. Mrs Dennis who ran the place back then, she said she’d be buggered if she’d wait up half the night for a couple of fishermen. They knew what rooms they were in and their keys were left at reception.’
‘What about the front door?’
‘Left unlocked, I suppose. The world was a safer place back then.’
‘Aye, you’re right there,’ added Jock Thomson, sucking on his sliver of lemon.
‘And Mr Abbot and Mr Ford knew this was the arrangement?’
‘I suppose so. Otherwise it wouldn’t have worked, would it ?’
So Abbot knew there’d be nobody around at the hotel, not if he left it late enough before arriving.
‘And what about in the morning?’
‘Mrs Dennis said they were up and out before she knew anything about it. She was annoyed because she’d already cooked the kippers for their breakfast before she realised.’
So nobody saw them in the morning either. In fact...
‘In fact,’ said Rebus, ‘nobody saw Mr Ford at all. Nobody at the hotel, not you, Mr Thomson, nobody.’ Both drinkers conceded this.
‘I saw his stuff though,’ said Miss Dryman.
‘What stuff?’
‘In his room, his clothes and stuff. That morning. I didn’t know anything about the acc
ident and I went in to clean.’
‘The bed had been slept in?’
‘Looked like it. Sheets all rumpled. And his suitcase was on the floor, only half unpacked. Not that there was much to unpack.’
‘Oh?’
‘A single change of clothes, I’d say. I remember them because they seemed mucky, you know, not fresh. Not the sort of stuff I’d take on holiday with me.’
‘What? Like he’d been working in them?’
She considered this. ‘Maybe.’
‘No point wearing clean clothes for fishing,’ Thomson added. But Rebus wasn’t listening.
Ford’s clothes, the clothes he had been working in while laying the floor. It made sense. Abbot bludgeoned him, stripped him and covered his body in fresh cement. He’d taken the clothes away with him and put them in a case, opening it in the hotel room, ruffling the sheets. Simple, but effective. Effective these past thirty years. The motive? A falling out perhaps, or simple greed. It was a small company, but growing, and perhaps Abbot hadn’t wanted to share. Rebus placed a five-pound note on the table.
‘To cover the next couple of rounds,’ he said, getting to his feet. ‘I’d better be off. Some of us are still on duty.’
There were things to be done. He had to speak to his superior, Chief Inspector Lauderdale. And that was for starters. Maybe Ford’s Australian sister could be traced this time round. There had to be someone out there who could acknowledge that Ford had suffered from a broken leg in youth, and that he had a crooked finger. So far, Rebus could think of only one person - Alexander Abbot. Somehow, he didn’t think Abbot could be relied on to tell the truth, the whole truth.
Then there was the hotel register. The forensics lab could ply their cunning trade on it. Perhaps they’d be able to say for certain that Ford’s signature was merely a bad rendition of Abbot’s. But again, he needed a sample of Ford’s handwriting in order to substantiate that the signature was not genuine. Who did he know who might possess such a document? Only Alexander Abbot. Or Mr Hillbeith, but Mr Hillbeith had not been able to help.