by Ian Rankin
‘Ah, Inspector, what a pleasant surprise.’
Rebus blinked. ‘Really?’
‘Of course. Usually when you’re pestering me, it’s because of some current and pressing case. But toda…’ Curt opened his arms wide. ‘No case! And yet you phone me up and invite me to lunch. It can’t be very busy along at St Leonard’s.’
On the contrary, but Rebus knew the workload was in good hands. Before leaving, he’d loaded enough work onto Siobhan Clarke that she wouldn’t have time for a lunch-break, beyond a sandwich and a drink from the cafeteria. When she’d complained, he’d told her she could take time off later in the afternoon to visit Brian Holmes.
‘How have you settled in there, by the way?’
Rebus shrugged. ‘It doesn’t matter to me where they put me. Where do you want to eat?’
‘I’ve taken the liberty of reserving a table at the University Staff Club.’
‘What, some sort of canteen?’
Curt laughed, shaking his head. He had ushered Rebus out of his office and was locking the door. ‘No,’ said Curt. ‘There is a canteen, of course, but as you’re buying I thought we’d opt for something a little bit more refined.’
‘Then lead on to the refinery.’
The dining-room was on the ground floor, near the main door of the Staff Club on Chambers Street. They’d walked the short walk, talking about nothing in particular when they could hear one another above the traffic noise. Curt always walked as though he were late for some engagement. Well, he was a busy man: a full teaching load, plus the extra duties heaped on him at one time or another by most of the police forces in Scotland, and most onerously by the City of Edinburgh Police.
The dining-room was small but with plenty of space between the tables. Rebus was pleased to see that the prices were reasonable, though the tally was upped when Curt ordered a bottle of wine.
‘My treat,’ he said. But Rebus shook his head.
‘The Chief Constable’s treat,’ he corrected. After all, he had every intention of claiming it as a legitimate expense. The wine arrived before the soup. As the waitress poured, Rebus wondered when would be the right moment to open the real conversation.
‘Slainte!’ said Curt, raising his glass. Then: ‘So what’s this all about? You’re not the kind for lunch with a friend, not unless there’s something you want, and can’t get by buying pints and bridies in some smoky saloon.’
Rebus smiled at this. ‘Do you remember the Central Hotel?’
‘A dive of a place on Princes Street. It burnt down six or seven years ago.’
‘Five years ago actually.’
Curt took another sip of wine. ‘There was a smouldering body as I recall. “Crispy batter” we call those.’
‘But when you examined the corpse, he hadn’t died in the fire, had he?’
‘Some new evidence has come to light?’
‘Not exactly. I just wanted to ask what you remember about the case.’
‘Well, let’s see.’ Curt broke off as the soup arrived. He took three or four mouthfuls, then wiped a napkin around his lips. ‘The body was never identified. I know that we tried dental checks, but to no avail. There was no external evidence, of course, but people stupidly believe that a burned body tells no tales. I cut the deceased open and found, as I’d known I would, that the internal organs were in pretty good shape. Cooked on the outside, raw within, like a good French steak.’
A couple at a nearby table were soundlessly chewing their food, and staring hard at their tabletop. Curt seemed either not to notice or not to mind.
‘DNA fingerprinting had been around for four years, but though we got some blood from the heart, we were never given anything to match it against. Of course, the heart was the clincher.’
‘Because of the bullet wound.’
‘Two wounds, Inspector, entrance and exit. That set you lot scurrying back to the scene, didn’t it?’
Rebus nodded. They’d searched the immediate vicinity of the body, then widened the search until a cadet found the bullet. Its calibre was eight millimetre, matching the wound to the heart, but it offered no other clues.
‘You also found,’ said Rebus, ‘that the deceased had suffered a broken arm at some time in the past.’
‘Did I?’
‘But again it didn’t get us any further forward.’
‘Especially,’ said Curt, mopping his bowl with bread, ‘bearing in mind the reputation of the Central. Probably every second person in the place had been in a fight and suffered some breakages.’
Rebus was nodding. ‘Agreed, yet he was never identified. If he’d been a regular, or one of the staff, surely someone would have come forward. But nobody ever did.’
‘Well, it was a long time ago. Are you about to start dusting off some ghosts?’
‘There was nothing ghostly about whoever brained Brian Holmes.’
‘Sergeant Holmes? What happened?’
Rebus was hoping to spend some of the afternoon reading through more of the case-notes. He’d thought it would take half a day; but this had been optimistic from the start. He was now thinking in terms of half a week, including some evening reading in the flat. There was so much stuff. Lengthy reports from the fire department, the council’s building department, news clippings, police reports, interview statement…
But when he got back to St Leonard’s, Lauderdale was waiting. He had received Rebus’s hasty comment on the money-lending surveillance, and now wanted to push things on. Which meant that Rebus was trapped in the Chief Inspector’s office for the best part of two hours, an hour of it head-to-head stuff. For the other hour, they were joined by Detective Inspector Alister Flower, who had worked out of St Leonard’s since its opening day back in September 1989 and bragged continually that when he had shaken hands with the main dignitary at the occasion, they had both turned out to be Masons, with Flower’s being the older clan.
Flower resented the incomers from Great London Road. If there were friction and factions within the station, you could be sure Flower was at the back of them somewhere. If anything united Lauderdale and Rebus it was a dislike of Flower, though Lauderdale was slowly being drawn into the Flower camp.
Rebus, however, had contempt even for the funny way the man spelt his first name. He called him ‘Little Weed’ and thought probably Flower had something to do with the taxman’s sudden enquiries.
In the operation against the money lenders, Flower was to lead the other surveillance team. Typically, in an effort to appease the man, Lauderdale offered him the pick of the surveillances. One would be of a pub where the lenders were said to hang out and take payments. The other would be of what looked like the nominal HQ of the gang, an office attached to a mini-cab firm on Gorgie Road.
‘I’ve okayed the Gorgie surveillance with Divisional HQ West,’ said Lauderdale, as ever efficient behind a desk. Take him out onto the streets, Rebus knew, and he was about as efficient as pepper on a vindaloo.
‘Well,’ said Flower, ‘if it’s okay with Inspector Rebus, I think I’d prefer the watch on the pub. It’s a bit closer to home.’ And Flower smiled.
‘Interesting choice,’ said Rebus, his arms folded, legs stretched out in front of him.
Lauderdale was nodding, his eyes flitting between the two men. ‘Well, that’s settled then. Now, let’s get down to details.’
The same details, in fact, that Rebus and he had gone through in the hour prior to Flower’s arrival. Rebus tried to concentrate but couldn’t. He was desperate to get back to the Central Hotel records. But the more agitated he grew, the slower things moved.
The plan itself was simple. The money lenders worked out of the Firth Pub in Tollcross. They picked up business there, and generally hung around waiting for debtors to come and pay the weekly dues. The money was taken at some point to the office in Gorgie. This office also was used as a drop-off point by debtors, and here the leading visible player could be found.
The men working out of the Firth were bit-parts. Th
ey collected cash, and maybe even used some verbal persuasion when payment was late. But when it came to the crunch, everyone paid dues to Davey Dougary. Davey turned up every morning at the office as prompt as any businessman, parking his BMW 635CSi beside the battered mini-cabs. On the way from car to office, if the weather was warm he would slip his jacket off and roll up his shirt-sleeves. Yes, Trading Standards had been watching Davey for quite some time.
There would be Trading Standards officers involved in both surveillances. The police were really only there to enforce the law; it was a Trading Standards operation in name. The name they had chosen was Moneybags. Another interesting choice, thought Rebus, so original. Keeping surveillance in the pub would mean sitting around reading newspapers, circling the names of horses on the betting sheet, playing pool or the jukebox or dominoes. Oh yes, and drinking beer; after all, they didn’t want to stand out in the crowd.
Keeping surveillance on the office meant sitting in the window of a disused first floor room in the tenement block across the road. The place was without charm, toilet facilities, or heating. (The bathroom fittings had been stolen during a break-in earlier in the year, down to the very toilet-pan.) A happy prospect, especially for Holmes and Clarke who would bear the burden of the surveillance, always supposing Holmes recovered in time. He thought of his two junior officers spending long days huddling for warmth in a double sleeping-bag. Hell’s bells. Thank God Dougary didn’t work nights. And thank God there’d be some Trading Standards bodies around too.
Still, the thought of nabbing Davey Dougary warmed Rebus’s heart. Dougary was bad the way a rotten apple was. There was no repairing the damage, though the surface might seem untainted. Of course, Dougary was one of Big Ger Cafferty’s ‘lieutenants’. Cafferty had even turned up once at the office, captured on film. Much good would it do; he’d have a thousand good reasons for that visit. There’d be no pinning him in court. They might get Dougary, but Cafferty was a long way off, so far ahead of them they looked like they were pushing their heap of a car while he cruised in fifth gear.
‘So,’ Lauderdale was saying. ‘We can start with this as of next Monday, yes?’
Rebus awoke from his reverie. It was clear that much had been discussed in his spiritual absence. He wondered if he’d agreed to any of it. (His silence had no doubt been received as tacit consent.)
‘I’ve no problem with that,’ said Flower.
Rebus moved again in his seat, knowing that escape was close now. ‘I’ll probably need someone to fill in for DS Holmes.’
‘Ah yes, how is he doing?’
‘I haven’t heard today, sir,’ Rebus admitted. ‘I’ll call before I clock off.’
‘Well, let me know.’
‘We’re putting together a collection,’ Flower said.
‘For Christ’s sake, he’s no’ deid yet!’
Flower took the explosion without flinching. ‘Well, all the same.’
‘It’s a nice gesture,’ Lauderdale said. Flower shrugged his shoulders modestly. Lauderdale opened his wallet and dug out a reluctant fiver, which he handed to Flower.
Hey, big spender, thought Rebus. Even Flower looked startled. ‘Five quid,’ he said, unnecessarily.
Lauderdale didn’t want any thanks. He just wanted Flower to take the money. His wallet had disappeared back into its cave. Flower stuck the note in his shirt pocket and rose from his chair. Rebus stood too, not looking forward to being in the corridor alone with Flower. But Lauderdale stopped him.
‘A word, John.’
Flower sniffed as he left, probably thinking Rebus was to receive a dressing down for his outburst. In fact, this wasn’t what Lauderdale had in mind.
‘I was passing your desk earlier. I see you’ve got the files on the Central Hotel fire. Old news, surely?’ Rebus said nothing. ‘Anything I should know about?’
‘No, sir,’ said Rebus, rising and making for the door. He reckoned Flower would be on his way by now. ‘Nothing you should know about. Just some reading of mine. You could call it a history project.’
‘Archaeology, more like.’
True enough: old bones and hieroglyphs; trying to make the dead come to life.
‘The past is important, sir,’ said Rebus, taking his leave.
4
The past was certainly important to Edinburgh. The city fed on its past like a serpent with its tail in its mouth. And Rebus’s past seemed to be circling around again too. There was a message on his desk in Clarke’s handwriting. Obviously she’d gone to visit Holmes, but not before taking a telephone call intended for her superior.
DI Morton called from Falkirk. He’ll try again another time. He wouldn’t say what it’s about.
Very cagey. I’ll be back in two hours.
She was the sort who would make up the two hours by staying late a few nights, even though Rebus had deprived her of a reasonable lunch-break. Despite being English, there was something of the Scottish Protestant in Siobhan Clarke. It wasn’t her fault she was called Siobhan either. Her parents had been English Literature lecturers at Edinburgh University back in the 1960s. They’d lumbered her with the Gaelic name, then moved south again, taking her to be schooled in Nottingham and London. But she’d come back to Edinburgh to go to college, and fallen in love (her story) with Edinburgh. Then she’d decided on the police as a career (alienating her friends and, Rebus suspected, her liberal parents). Still, the parents had bought her a New Town flat, so it couldn’t be all strife.
Rebus suspected she’d do well in the police, despite people like him. Women did have to work harder in the force to progress at the same pace as their male colleagues: everyone knew it. But Siobhan worked hard enough, and by Christ did she have a memory. A month from now, he could ask her about this note on his desk, and she’d remember the telephone conversation word for word. It was scary.
It was slightly scary too that Jack Morton’s name had come up at this particular time. Another ghost from Rebus’s past. When they’d worked together six years ago, Rebus wouldn’t have given the younger Morton more than four or five years to live, such was his steady consumption of booze and cigarettes.
There was no contact phone number. It would have taken only a few minutes to find the number of Morton’s nick, but Rebus didn’t feel like it. He felt like getting back to the files on his desk. But first he phoned the Infirmary to check on Brian Holmes’ progress, only to be told that there wasn’t any, though there was also no decline.
‘That sounds cheery.’
‘It’s just an expression,’ the person on the phone said.
The test results wouldn’t be known until next morning. He thought for a moment, then made another call, this time to Patience Aitken’s group practice. But Patience was out on a call, so Rebus left a message. He got the receptionist to read it back so he could be sure it sounded right.
‘ “Thought I’d call to let you know how Brian’s doing. Sorry you weren’t in. You can call me at Arden Street if you like. John.”’
Yes, that would do. She’d have to call him now, just to show she wasn’t uncaring about Brian’s condition. With a speck of hope in his heart, Rebus went back to work.
He got back to the flat at six, having done some shopping en route. Though he’d proposed taking the files home, he really couldn’t be bothered. He was tired, his head ached, and his nose was stuffy from the old dust which rose from their pages. He climbed the flights of stairs wearily, opened the door, and took the grocery bags into the kitchen, where one of the students was spreading peanut butter onto a thick slice of brown bread.
‘Hiya, Mr Rebus. You got a phone call.’
‘Oh?’
‘Some woman doctor.’
‘When?’
‘Ten minutes ago, something like that.’
‘What did she say?’
‘She said if she wanted to find out abou…’
‘Brian? Brian Holmes?’
‘Aye, that’s it. If she wanted to find out about him, she could call the hos
pital, and that’s exactly what she’d done twice today already.’ The student beamed, pleased at having remembered the whole message. So Patience had seen through his scheme. He should have known. Her intelligence, amongst other things, had attracted him to her. Also, they were very much alike in many ways. Rebus should have learned long ago, never try to put one over on someone who knows the way your mind works. He lifted a box of eggs, tin of beans, and packet of bacon out of the bag.
‘Oh my God,’ said the student in disgust. ‘Do you know just how intelligent pigs are, Mr Rebus?’
Rebus looked at the student’s sandwich. ‘A damned sight more intelligent than peanuts,’ he said. Then: ‘Where’s the frying-pan?’
Later, Rebus sat watching TV. He’d nipped over to the Infirmary to visit Brian Holmes. He reckoned it was quicker to walk rather than driving around The Meadows. So he’d walked, letting his head clear. But the visit itself had been depressing. Not a bit of progress.
‘How long can he stay conked out?’
‘It can take a while,’ a nurse had consoled.
‘It’s been a while.’
She touched his arm. ‘Patience, patience.’
Patience! He almost took a taxi to her flat, but dropped the idea. Instead, he walked back to Arden Street, climbed the same old weary stairs, and flopped onto the sofa. He had spent so many evenings deep in thought in this room, but that had been back when the flat was his, only his.
Michael came into the living room, fresh from a shave and a shower. He wore a towel tight around his flat stomach. He was in good shape; Rebus hadn’t noticed before. But Michael saw him noticing now, and patted his stomach.
‘One thing about Peterhead, plenty of exercise.’
‘I suppose you’ve got to get fit in there,’ Rebus drawled, ‘so you can fight back when someone’s after your arse.’
Michael shook off the remark like it was so much water. ‘Oh, there’s plenty of that too. Never interested me.’ Whistling, he went into the box room and started to dress.
‘Going out?’ Rebus called.