10 Great Rebus Novels (John Rebus)

by Ian Rankin

  ‘There is,’ said Andy Steele. Rebus was right, if you told a deaf man something on Monday, by Tuesday it was in the evening paper. ‘They’ve got a watch on his hangouts, including the operation in Gorgie.’

  Oliphant looked mightily suspicious. ‘How do you know?’

  ‘Luck, really. I bumped into one of them. I knew him in Aberdeen. He told me to get out if I didn’t want to get mixed up in it.’

  ‘But you’re still here.’

  ‘I’m on the mail train tomorrow morning.’

  ‘So something’s happening tonight?’ Oliphant still sounded highly sceptical, but then that was his way.

  Steele shrugged. ‘All I know is, they’re keeping watch. I think maybe they just want to talk.’

  Oliphant considered, running his fingers over a video-box. ‘There were two pubs last night got their windows smashed.’ Steele didn’t blink. ‘Pubs where the gentleman drank. Could be a connection?’

  Steele shrugged. ‘Could be.’ If he were being honest, he’d have told how he acted as getaway driver while Rebus himself tossed the large rocks through the glass. One of the pubs had been the Firth at Tollcross, the other the Bowery at the bottom of Easter Road.

  But instead he said, ‘Loon called McPhail, he’s the one watching Gorgie. He’s in charge.’

  Oliphant nodded. ‘You know the way it works, come back in a day or two. There’ll be money if the gen’s on the nail.’

  But Steele shook his head. ‘I’m off up to Aberdeen.’

  ‘So you are,’ said Oliphant. ‘Tell you what,’ he tore a sheet from a pad, ‘give me your address and I’ll send on the cash.’

  Andy Steele had fun inventing the address.

  Cafferty was playing snooker when he got the message. He had a quarter share in an upmarket snooker hall and leisure complex in Leith. The intended market had been yuppies, working class lads scraping their way up the greasy pole. But the yuppies had vanished in a puff of smoke. So now the complex was shifting cannily downmarket with video bingo, happy hour, an arcade full of electronic machines, and plans for a bowling alley. Teenagers always seemed to have money in their pockets. They would carve the bowling alley out of the little-used gymnasium, the restaurant next to it, and the aerobics room beyond that.

  Staying in business, Cafferty had found, was all about remaining flexible. If the wind changed, you didn’t try to steer in the opposite direction. Mooted future plans included a soul club and a 1940s ballroom, the latter complete with tea dances and ‘blackout nights’. Groping nights, Cafferty called them.

  He knew he was crap at snooker, but he liked the game. His theory was fine; it was the practice that was lacking. Vanity prevented him taking lessons, and his renowned lack of patience would have dissuaded all but the most foolhardy from giving them. On Mo’s advice, he’d tried a few other sports – tennis, squash, even skiing one time. The only one he’d enjoyed was golf. He loved thwacking that ball all over the place. Problem was, he didn’t know when to hold back, he was always overshooting. If he hadn’t split at least a couple of balls after nine holes, he wasn’t happy.

  Snooker suited him. It had everything. Tactics, ciggies, booze, and a few sidebets. So here he was again in the hall, overhead lights flooding the green tables, dusk everywhere else. Quiet, too, therapeutic; just the clack of the balls, the occasional comment or joke, a floor-stomp with the cue to signal a worthy shot. Then Jimmy the Ear was coming towards him.

  ‘Phone call from the house,’ he told Cafferty. Then he gave him Oliphant’s message.

  Andrew McPhail trusted Rebus about as far as he could toss a caber into a gale. He knew he should be running for cover right now, let the caber land where it might. There were several ways it could go. Rebus might be setting up a meeting between McPhail and Maclean. Well, McPhail could prepare himself against this. Or it might be some other kind of ruse, probably ending up with a beating and the clear message to get the fuck out of Edinburgh.

  Or it could be straight. Aye, if the spirit-level was bent. Rebus had asked McPhail to deliver a message, a letter. He’d even handed over the envelope. The message was for a man called Cafferty, who would be leaving the taxi office on Gorgie Road around ten.

  ‘So what’s the message?’

  ‘Never you mind,’ Rebus had said.

  ‘Why me?’

  ‘It can’t come from me, that’s all you need to know. Just make sure it’s him, and give him the envelope.’

  ‘This stinks.’

  ‘I can’t make it any simpler. We’ll meet afterwards and fix up your new future. The ball’s already rolling.’

  ‘Aye,’ said McPhail, ‘but where the fuck’s the net?’

  Yet here he was, walking up Gorgie Road. A bit cold, threatening rain. Rebus had taken him to St Leonard’s this afternoon, let him shower and shave, even provided some clean clothes which he’d picked up from Mrs Mackenzie’s.

  ‘I don’t want a tramp delivering my post,’ he’d explained. Ah, the letter. McPhail wasn’t donnert; he’d torn the envelope open earlier this evening. Inside was a smaller brown envelope with some writing on the front: NO PEEKING NOW, McPHAIL!

  He’d thought about opening it anyway. It didn’t feel like there was much inside, a single sheet of paper. But something stopped him, a pale spark of hope, the hope that everything was going to be all right.

  He didn’t have a watch, but was a good judge of time. It felt like ten o’clock. And here he was in front of the taxi office. There were lights on inside, and cabs ready and waiting outside. Their busiest shift would be starting soon, the rides home after closing time. The night air smelt like ten o’clock. Diesel from the railway lines, rain close by. Andrew McPhail waited.

  He saw the headlights, and when the car – a Jag – swerved and mounted the pavement his first thought was: drunk driver. But the car braked smoothly, stopping beside him, almost pinning him to the wire fence. The driver got out. He was big. A gust of wind flapped his long hair, and McPhail saw that one ear was missing.

  ‘You McPhail?’ he demanded. The back door of the Jag was opening slowly, another man getting out. He wasn’t as big as the driver, but he somehow seemed larger. He was smiling unkindly.

  The letter was in McPhail’s pocket. ‘Cafferty?’ he asked, forcing the word from his lungs.

  The smiling man blinked lazily in acknowledgement. In McPhail’s other pocket was the broken neck of a whisky bottle he’d found beside an overflowing bottle bank. It wasn’t much of a weapon, but it was all he could afford. Even so, he didn’t rate his chances. His bladder felt painfully full. He reached for the letter.

  The driver pinned his arms to his side and swung him around, so he was face to face with Cafferty, who swung a kick into his groin. The butt of a three-section snooker cue slipped expertly from Cafferty’s coat sleeve into his hand. As McPhail doubled over, the cue caught him on the side of the jaw, fracturing it, dislodging teeth. He fell further forwards and was rewarded with the cue on the back of his neck. His whole body went numb. Now the driver was pulling his head up by the hair and Cafferty was forcing his mouth open with the cue, working it past his tongue and into his throat.

  ‘Hold it there!’ Two of them, a man and a woman, running from across the street and holding open their IDs. ‘Police officers.’

  Cafferty lifted both hands away, raising them head high. He had left the cue in McPhail’s mouth. The driver released the battered man, who remained upright on his knees. Shakily, Andrew McPhail started to pull the snooker cue out of his throat. There were sirens close by as a police car approached.

  ‘It’s nothing, officer,’ Cafferty was saying, ‘a misunderstanding.’

  ‘Some misunderstanding,’ said the male police officer. His sidekick slipped her hand into McPhail’s pocket. She felt a broken bottle. Wrong pocket. From the other pocket she produced the letter, crumpled now. She handed it to Cafferty.

  ‘Open this, please, sir,’ she said.

  Cafferty stared at it. ‘Is this a set-up?’ But
he opened it anyway. Inside was a scrap of paper, which he unfolded. The note was unsigned. He knew who it was from anyway. ‘Rebus!’ he spat. ‘That bastard Rebus!’

  A few minutes later, as Cafferty and his driver were being taken away, and the ambulance was arriving for Andrew McPhail, Siobhan picked up the note which Cafferty had dropped. It said simply, ‘I hope they sell your skin for souvenirs.’ She frowned and looked up at the surveillance window, but couldn’t see anyone there.

  Had she seen anything, it would have been the outline of a man making the shape of a gun from his fist, lining up the thumb so Cafferty was in its sights, and pulling the imaginary trigger.

  Bang!

  35

  Nobody at St Leonard’s believed Holmes and Siobhan were there that night simply out of an exaggerated sense of duty. The more credible version had them meeting for a clandestine shag and just happening upon the beating. Lucky there was film in the surveillance camera. And didn’t the photos come out well?

  With Cafferty in custody, they got the chance to take away his things and have yet another look at them . . . including the infamous coded diary. Watson and Lauderdale were poring over xeroxed sheets from it when there was a knock at the Chief Super’s door.

  ‘Come!’ called Watson.

  John Rebus walked in and looked around admiringly at the sudden floorspace. ‘I see you got your cabinets, sir.’

  Lauderdale pulled himself up straight. ‘What the hell are you doing here? You’re suspended from duty.’

  ‘It’s all right, Frank,’ said Watson, ‘I asked Inspector Rebus to come in.’ He turned the xeroxed pages towards Rebus. ‘Take a look.’

  It didn’t take long. The problem with the code in the past was that they hadn’t known what to look for. But now Rebus had a more than fair idea. He stabbed one entry. ‘There,’ he said. ‘3TUB SCS.’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘It means the butcher on South Clerk Street owes three thousand. He’s abbreviated ‘butcher’ and written it backwards.’

  Lauderdale looked disbelieving. ‘Are you sure?’

  Rebus shrugged. ‘Put the experts at Fettes onto it. They should be able to find at least a few more late-payers.’

  ‘Thank you, John,’ said Watson. Rebus turned smartly and left the room. Lauderdale stared at his superior.

  ‘I get the feeling,’ he said, ‘something’s going on here I don’t know about.’

  ‘Well, Frank,’ said Watson, ‘why should today be different from any other?’

  Which, as the saying went, put CI Lauderdale’s gas at a very low peep.

  It was Siobhan Clarke who came up with the most important piece of information in the whole case.

  It was a case now. Rebus didn’t mind that the machine was in operation without him. Holmes and Clarke reported back to him at the end of each day. The code-breakers had been hard at work, as a result of which detectives were talking to Cafferty’s black book victims. It would only take one or two of them in court, and Cafferty would be going down. So far, though, no one was talking. Rebus had an idea of one person who, given enough persuasion, might.

  Then Siobhan mentioned that Cafferty’s company Geronimo Holdings held a seventy-nine per cent share in a large farm in the south-west Borders, not so very far from the coastline where the bodies had been washing up until recently. A party was sent to the farm. They found plenty for the forensic scientists to start working on . . . especially the pigsties. The sties themselves were clean enough, but there was an enclosed area of storage space above each ramshackle sty. Most of the farm had turned itself over to the latest in high-tech agriculture, but not the sties. It was this which initially alerted the police. Above the pigsties, in the dark enclosures strewn with rank straw, there was a tangible reek of something unwholesome, something putrid. Strips of cloth were found; in one corner there lay a man’s trouser-belt. The area was photographed and picked over for its least congruous particles. Upstairs in the farmhouse, meanwhile, a man who claimed initially to be an agricultural labourer eventually admitted to being Derek Torrance, better known as Deek.

  At the same time, Rebus was driving out to Dalkeith, to Duncton Terrace, to be precise. It was early evening, and the Kintoul family was at home. Mother, father and son took up three sides of a fold-down table in the kitchen. The chip-pan was still smouldering and spitting on the greasy gas cooker. The vinyl wallpaper was slick with condensation. Most of the food on the plates was disguised by brown sauce. Rebus could smell vinegar and washing-up liquid. Rory Kintoul excused himself and went with Rebus into the living room. Kitchen and living room were connected by a serving hatch. Rebus wondered if wife and son would be listening at the hatch.

  Rebus sat in one fireside chair, Kintoul opposite him.

  ‘Sorry if it’s a bad time,’ Rebus began. There was a ritual to be followed, after all.

  ‘What is it, Inspector?’

  ‘You’ll have heard, Mr Kintoul, we’ve arrested Morris Cafferty. He’ll be going away for quite a while.’ Rebus looked at the photos on the mantelpiece, snapshots of gap-toothed kids, nephews and nieces. He smiled at them. ‘I just thought maybe it was time you got it off your chest.’

  He kept silent for a moment, still examining the framed photos. Kintoul said nothing.

  ‘Only,’ said Rebus, ‘I know you’re a good man. I mean, a good man. You put family first, am I right?’ Kintoul nodded uncertainly. ‘Your wife and son, you’d do anything for them. Same goes for your other family, parents, sisters, brothers, cousins . . .’ Rebus trailed off.

  ‘I know Cafferty’s going away,’ said Kintoul.

  ‘And?’

  Kintoul shrugged.

  ‘It’s like this,’ said Rebus. ‘We know just about all there is to know. We just need a little corroboration.’

  ‘That means testifying?’

  Rebus nodded. Eddie Ringan would be testifying too, telling all he knew about the Central Hotel, in return for a good word from the police come his own trial. ‘Mr Kintoul, you’ve got to accept something. You’ve got to accept that you’ve changed, you’re not the same man you were a year or two ago. Why did you do it?’ Rebus asked the way a friend would, just curious.

  Kintoul wiped a smear of sauce from his chin. ‘It was a favour. Jim always needed favours.’

  ‘So you drove the van?’

  ‘Yes, I did his rounds.’

  ‘But you were a lab technician!’

  Kintoul smiled. ‘And I could earn more on the butcher’s round.’ He shrugged again. ‘Like you say, Inspector, I put family first, especially where money’s concerned.’

  ‘Go on.’

  ‘How much do you know?’

  ‘We know the van was used to dump the bodies.’

  ‘Nobody ever notices a butcher’s van.’

  ‘Except a poor constable in north-east Fife. He ended up with concussion.’

  ‘That was after my time. I was shot of it by then.’ He waited till Rebus nodded agreement, then went on. ‘Only, when I wanted out Cafferty didn’t want me out. He was putting pressure on.’

  ‘That’s how you got stabbed?’

  ‘It was that bodyguard of his, Jimmy the Ear. He lost the head. Knifed me as I was getting out of the car. Crazy bastard.’ Kintoul glanced towards the serving-hatch. ‘You know what Cafferty did when I said I wanted to stop driving the van? He offered Jason a job “driving” for him. Jason’s my son.’

  Rebus nodded. ‘But why all this fuss? Cafferty could get a hundred guys to drive a van for him.’

  ‘I thought you knew him, Inspector. Cafferty’s like that. He’s . . . particular about his flesh.’

  ‘He’s off his head,’ commented Rebus. ‘How did you get sucked in in the first place?’

  ‘I was still driving full-time when Cafferty won half the business from Jimmy. One evening, one of Cafferty’s men turned up all smarmy, told me we’d be taking a run to the coast early next morning. Via some farm in the Borders.’

  ‘You went to the farm?’ So t
hat’s why there was straw in the van.

  The colour was seeping from Kintoul’s face like blood from a cut of meat.

  ‘Oh aye. There was something in the pigsties, tied up in fertiliser bags. Stank to high heaven. I’d been working in a butcher’s long enough to know it had been rotting in that sty for a good few weeks, months, even.’

  ‘A corpse?’

  ‘Easy to tell, isn’t it? I threw my guts up. Cafferty’s man said what a waste, I should’ve done it into the trough.’ Kintoul paused. He was still wiping at his chin, though the sauce mark had long ago been erased. ‘Cafferty liked the bodies to be rotten, less chance of them washing ashore in any recognisable state.’

  ‘Christ.’

  ‘I haven’t come to the worst part yet.’ In the next room, Kintoul’s wife and son were speaking in undertones. Rebus was in no hurry, and merely watched as Kintoul got up to stare from his back window. There was a patch of garden out there he could call his own. It was small, but it was his. He came back and stood in front of the gas fire, not looking at Rebus.

  ‘I was there one day when he killed someone,’ he said baldly. Then he screwed shut his eyes. Rebus was trying to control his own breathing. This guy would make a gem of a witness.

  ‘Killed them how?’ Still not pressing; still the friend.

  Kintoul tipped his head back, feeding tears back where they had come from. ‘How? With his bare hands. We’d arrived late. The van had broken down in the middle of nowhere. It was about ten in the morning. Mist all around the farm, like driving into Brigadoon. They were both wearing business suits, that’s what got me. And they were up to their ankles in glaur.’

  Rebus frowned, not quite comprehending. ‘They were in the pigsty?’

  Kintoul nodded. ‘There’s a fenced run. Cafferty was in there with this man. There were other people watching through the fence.’ He swallowed. ‘I swear Cafferty looked like he was enjoying it. There with the mud lapping at him, and the pigs squealing in their boxes wondering what the hell was happening, and all the silent onlookers.’ Kintoul tried to shake the memory away, probably a daily event.