by Ian Rankin
‘Bit of a temper, your wife,’ Rebus commented. He saw that Gillespie didn’t have a free hand, so did the kindly thing and opened the office door for him.
‘Has he gone yet?’ Mrs Gillespie snarled.
‘Just on my way, Mrs Gillespie,’ Rebus told her, popping his head round the door, taking a good look round. ‘Nice to have met you.’
Her face was flushed, anger turning quickly to embarrassment. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said.
‘No need for that.’
And Rebus left them to it, whatever it was . . .
18
It took Rebus half the afternoon to decide that he was doing the right thing.
More accurately, it took him ten minutes to make up his mind, and a couple of hours to drink himself into a state where he was confident enough to follow through.
He wasn’t just drinking though, he was hunting; eyes and ears open for news of Rico Briggs.
Rico was just about the best and worst housebreaker on the east coast. It wasn’t that he was cack-handed: he could be in and out of most homes in minutes flat, be the occupants asleep, slumped in front of the TV, or making merry at a party. Rico’s problem was that he was conspicuous, and fences didn’t like that. Rico had been a big Hearts fan, not missing a fixture in seasons 1977–80, except when he’d served a wee stretch in Peterhead. One night in Leith Walk, dizzy after a trouncing of the Hibees, Rico had marched into a tattoo parlour and demanded the works.
Next morning, Rico had looked at his face in his bathroom mirror and seen that both tender cheeks now boasted the Hearts badge, a maroon heart with a cross in the middle. It took him only a day or two to start loathing his once-loved team; which was ironic, considering he was now a public poster-site for the men of Gorgie.
Not surprisingly, the tattoos were unique, and as good as fingerprints as far as the police were concerned. Realising this, Rico had started sporting a balaclava when working, which accentuated his other remarkable facial feature – a nose the dimensions of the Pyramid of Cheops. This, too, people tended to notice.
Rebus had tried talking Rico Briggs into retiring, and had been semi-successful. These days, Rico concentrated on passing his skills on to a series of apprentices; he’d even given Rebus a few clandestine lessons in lock-picking. They helped when the policeman mislaid his house-keys; and at other times too.
Rebus finally found Rico in a bar off Nicolson Street, a place whose sad-faced clients were usually in hiding after a haircut at the half-blind barber’s next door. Surrounded by bad haircuts, it was surprising how Rico blended in.
‘Hiya, Rico,’ Rebus said, sliding on to the wooden stool next to him. ‘How are you doing?’
Rico had the daily tabloid folded at the quick crossword, and was tapping it with a half-size betting-shop pen, the kind with a ten-minute lifetime guarantee.
‘Eight letters,’ Rico said in a voice like road-salt, ‘M-something-R-something-O. “On a desert island”.’ He looked to Rebus.
‘Marooned.’
‘Thanks, in that case I’ll have a double,’ Rico chuckled. ‘Not heard that one before, Mr Rebus?’
‘Not since Double Barrel was at the top of the charts.’
Rebus ordered the drinks while Rico rubbed both cheeks, the idea being that if he rubbed them often enough he’d sand the tattoos away.
‘So, Mr Rebus, is it a job?’
Rebus nodded, wary of saying too much: he might be surrounded by bad haircuts, but nobody’s ears had been severed.
‘Tell you later.’
They drank their drinks in silence. The whole bar was quiet. Further down the bar, a customer nodded to the barman for a refill and the barman nodded back. A silent order, Rebus thought. Like monks. Which, given the tonsures, wasn’t such a bad image.
They got out of the pub and walked towards the Pleasance. If they took a right, they’d come to St Leonard’s, but they went left instead and headed to the Cowgate and Canongate. They talked as they walked, then entered a howff on the High Street to toast the mission.
At six o’clock, dark overhead except for an arc of moon looking like someone had pressed their thumbnail into the sky, Rebus and Rico sat in Rebus’s parked car, engine running to keep the heater on. They were across the road from the Gillespie house, and Rebus was describing the layout. Rebus was more nervous than he would admit: if Rico were caught, if he talked, then Rebus could end up one of Big Jim Flett’s clients. Rico asked a few questions, and Rebus supplied answers where he could.
‘I’ll go in through the conservatory,’ Rico decided. ‘You’re sure about the alarm?’
‘No alarm,’ Rebus said.
People were hurrying along the pavement, faces down to avoid the icy wind which, Edinburgh fashion, was blowing horizontally just at head height. Rebus was having doubts about the whole enterprise, but could see no way round it. He thought of something else he’d wanted to ask Rico.
‘Know anyone who’s just come out of Saughton?’
‘I don’t mix with felons, Inspector.’
‘Of course you don’t, you’ve gone straight, we both know that.’ Rebus’s voice was quiet but insistent. ‘Only, if you did know anyone, I’d like to talk to them. Nothing heavy or official, just a chat, a bit of info on Saughton itself.’
‘There’d be a cash incentive?’
‘There’d be a drink in it for both of you.’
‘Well, wouldn’t do any harm to ask around.’
‘No harm at all,’ Rebus agreed. He looked over to the Gillespie house. ‘What time will you go in?’
‘Two in the morning should do it. Best not stay here much longer though – we don’t want to attract attention.’
Rico had a point: in Marchmont, you were always in somebody else’s parking space. There were barely enough gaps for the residents, never mind visitors. Rebus put the gearstick into first.
‘We’ll get a bite to eat,’ he said.
‘Hiy, hold on.’ Rico was pointing towards the house. The front door was standing open, and Mrs Gillespie suddenly appeared carrying two black binbags. Behind her, her husband carried two more. They opened their gate and deposited the bags on the pavement outside. Something wonderful dawned on Rebus. He looked up and down the street. Sure enough, a few bags were already out.
‘Rubbish day the morn?’ Rico suggested.
‘Rico, it looks like I won’t be needing you after all.’
In the end, Rico helped load the boot.
Rebus sat alone in his flat, having paid Rico off and dropped him back in the town centre. One of the binbags had contained nothing but empty tins, bags and boxes, and now it sat outside the main door of Rebus’s tenement. But the other three sat open in the middle of Rebus’s living room. He emptied the first bag on to the floor. Strands of white paper fell in a shivering heap. Rebus picked up one strand. It was the length of an A4 sheet and no more than two millimetres wide. He’d heard stories that shredded documents could be reconstructed. All it took was patience: colossal patience. He was sure there were clever ways of doing it – UV analysis or watermark-matching or batch-sorting – but all he had were his eyes. He couldn’t just march into Howdenhall and drop the stuff off. Too many questions would be asked. He sat on the floor, picked up a few strands, and tried putting them together.
It took him about four minutes to realise the job was impossible.
He sat there smoking a cigarette, staring at the strands. They might tell him everything he needed to know. He finished the cigarette, poured himself a drink, and tried again. It took him a while to lose his temper. He dragged the kitchen table through and sat at it. Then he brought the anglepoise lamp through from his bedroom and plugged it in. The machine had jammed; there was a chance not all the strips had been separated completely.
He didn’t find as many as two strips still joined at any one point.
He swore for a while and walked around the flat, emptied the coffee jar and set it back under the radiator, then put his coat on and went to buy cigarettes and
whisky. The corner shop was closed when he reached it. His watch said eleven-fifteen; he couldn’t believe it was so late.
He walked on to the nearest pub and waded through the smoky, shouting throng. The barmaid gave him change for the cigarette machine but couldn’t sell him a carry-out: it was after last orders. She told him about a licensed chip shop he could try, but it was a car-run away, so he walked briskly back to the flat and sought out untried bottles. There was a quarter of Bacardi for emergency dispensation should he ever manage to drag a woman as far as his bedroom. The thought of neat Bacardi repelled him only slightly more than the thought of mixing it with anything.
Which means, he thought, I can’t be an alcoholic.
He unscrewed the top from the Bacardi anyway and sniffed it, then screwed it back on. He’d have to be a lot more desperate . . . say, come four in the morning. Then he remembered the freezer. He opened it up and chipped away at the ice until he’d broken through to two trays of ice cubes, a single fish finger . . . and a small bottle. It was Polish vodka; a neighbour had given it to him after a trip home to Lodz; a present for feeding the cat for a week.
Rebus found a glass, filled it, and belatedly toasted Solidarity before draining it. The stuff was as smooth as anything he’d ever tried. A third of a litre of eighty-four proof. He took glass and bottle into the living room and put Exile on Main Street on the hi-fi. It sounded as good as ever.
He got back into the game, then decided to leave the first bag and start on the second. He filled the first bag back up, then dumped bag two on to the floor.
And his doorbell rang.
It was a little after midnight.
The main door was sometimes left unlocked. No need for visitors, welcome or not, to announce their presence until they were outside the door of the flat.
At this time on a Thursday night?
Rebus looked at the mess on the floor, then went out into the hall and tiptoed to the front door, just as the bell rang again. He could hear two voices at least, little more than murmurs. Suddenly, fingers pushed open his letterbox. Rebus stood to the side of the door, back pressed to the wall.
‘Maybe he leaves the lights on when he’s out.’
‘Aye, and maybe he’s half-shot and sleeping it off.’
Rebus turned the snib silently and yanked open the door. Siobhan Clarke, who’d been peering through the letterbox, stood up, but Rebus’s eyes were on Brian Holmes.
‘Half-shot, is it, Brian? I’m glad you hold me in such high regard.’
Holmes just shrugged. ‘It’s what I’d do on holiday.’
Rebus filled the doorway, his arms folded. ‘So what are you doing: canvassing, polling, or maybe you were just passing?’
‘We were working,’ Brian Holmes explained. ‘We went to get something to eat afterwards, and when we ran out of interesting topics, the conversation came round to you.’
‘What about me?’
‘We wondered,’ Siobhan Clarke said, ‘what the hell’s going on.’
Rebus smiled. ‘You and me both.’ He stood back from the doorway. ‘You better come in. You’re the first to arrive; I haven’t even got the party snacks out.’ He noticed a brown carrier bag on the landing behind Brian Holmes.
‘We brought our own party with us.’ When Holmes picked up the bag, Rebus heard cans and bottles collide.
‘You’re always welcome here, Brian,’ Rebus said, leading them indoors.
They sat in the living room, staring at the pile of paper strips. Siobhan Clarke took a gulp of coffee.
‘You stole these?’
Rebus shook his head. ‘A public service; I saved the binmen a job.’
Holmes looked to Siobhan. ‘We did say we were coming here to help.’
‘Yes, but this lot . . .?’ She flapped her arms. ‘I doubt the “Blue Peter” appeal could sort this lot out. Talk about shreds of evidence.’
Rebus held up a pacifying hand. ‘Look, this is my problem, not yours. I won’t be disappointed if you scurry off home. In fact, it would be better for you if you did.’
‘We know,’ said Holmes.
Rebus looked at him. ‘What do you mean?’
Siobhan Clarke explained. ‘The Farmer spoke to us this afternoon. Basically, he warned us off. He said you were on leave, but he didn’t think that would stop you sticking your nose in.’ She looked up. ‘His words, not mine.’
‘We’ve been given new duties,’ Brian Holmes added. ‘Desk work, restructuring the filing system prior to full computerisation.’
‘To keep you busy?’
‘Yes.’
‘And away from me?’
They both nodded.
‘So naturally you come straight here?’ Rebus got to his feet. ‘You could be fucking up both your careers!’
‘I’m not in CID to sort through a lot of old paperwork,’ Siobhan Clarke retorted. Then she realised what she’d said, looked at the mound of shredded paper in front of her, and laughed.
They all did.
They hit lucky with the third bag.
‘Look,’ Siobhan Clarke said, ‘it’s not just white paper.’
Rebus took a strip from her: yellow card. ‘Files,’ he said. ‘They shredded the folders as well!’
‘Must be some machine,’ Brian Holmes added.
‘That’s a bloody good point, Brian.’
The folders were a breakthrough. The problem with the paper was that there was so much of it. There wasn’t nearly so much card, and what there was could be grouped by colour. The front of each file had a white printed label, and these were what Rebus wanted. He wanted the reconstructed labels.
But even knowing what they were looking for, it took time and effort. Rebus’s eyes were stinging, and he kept rubbing them, which only blurred his vision.
‘Get you two anything?’ he kept saying. They would only shake their heads. Rebus demolished the cans on his own. He knew he’d had too much when he polished off a tin of Irn-Bru without realising it was non-alcoholic.
The streets grew quieter after the students had slouched home on the wings of blasphemy. Around two-thirty, the central heating clocked off and Rebus turned on the gas fire. They each worked on a different colour of folder.
‘I saw one of the folders when Mrs Gillespie dropped it,’ Rebus said. ‘It was marked SDA/SE. I presume the letters stand for Scottish Development Agency and Scottish Enterprise. Scottish Enterprise took over when the SDA was wound up. Councillor Gillespie, by the way, sits on an industrial planning committee.’
‘So,’ Holmes remarked, ‘the SDA file could be completely innocent.’
‘Certainly he had a genuine reason for having a file on the SDA. But why be in such a panic to shred it?’
Holmes conceded the point.
‘I think I’ve got something,’ Siobhan Clarke said. She’d all but completed a yellow file, the label intact save for a strip or two. ‘Looks like the letters A C,’ she said, ‘then a name: Haldayne.’
Rebus fetched the phone book. There was no A C Haldayne in Edinburgh.
‘Strange spelling,’ Brian Holmes said. ‘I’ve never come across Haldayne with a y.’
‘Misspelt?’ Siobhan Clarke said. ‘The name of one of the councillor’s constituents?’
Rebus shrugged. Half an hour later, it was Holmes’s turn to complete a red file.
‘“Gyle Park West”,’ he read out.
Rebus wasn’t paying much attention; he was close to completing the last of the coloured folders, this one a lurid green.
‘“Mensung”,’ he said, looking up. ‘What the hell is Mensung?’
Siobhan Clarke yawned and rubbed at her eyes, then blinked a few times, looking around the room.
‘You know,’ she said, ‘it’s a good job this paper’s lying everywhere. Without it, this place would look like a tip.’
It was six on Friday morning when Rebus’s phone started ringing.
He fell off the chair, the duvet sliding with him. The phone was underneath one of the heap
s of paper strips.
‘Whoever you are,’ he said, ‘whatever you want . . . you’re dead.’
‘It’s Siobhan, sir. I’ve been thinking about A C Haldayne.’
‘Me, too,’ Rebus lied.
‘I’ve been thinking about that funny spelling. American names are sometimes spelt differently, aren’t they?’
‘Is that why you woke me up?’
‘Well, it would tie in with AC.’
‘Would it?’
‘Christ, you’re slow, sir.’
‘It’s six in the morning, Clarke.’
‘All I mean is AC could stand for American Consulate. Haldayne could be a surname, and AC the consulate.’
Rebus sat up and opened his eyes. ‘That’s not bad.’
‘I tried phoning the consulate, but got an answering machine. It offered me a lot of options, mostly to do with visa applications, then put me through to the consulate proper, but all I got was another answering machine message telling me the opening hours.’
‘Try again in the morning.’
‘Yes, sir. Sorry for waking you.’
‘That’s all right. Listen, Siobhan . . . thanks for helping me.’
‘It’s no problem, really.’
‘Then you won’t mind doing something else?’ He could almost hear her smile.
‘What?’
‘That shredder. I’m wondering how long Gillespie’s owned it.’
‘You want me to check?’
‘Yes.’
‘Will do. Goodnight, sir.’
‘Goodnight, Clarke.’
Rebus put down the receiver and decided to get up. Half a minute later, he was asleep on the living-room carpet.
19
On Sunday, Rebus was invited to Oxford Terrace for afternoon tea.
He was glad of the break, having spent much of the previous forty-eight hours trying to piece together some of the strands of A4 paper. He hadn’t made any progress, but it had taken his mind off his swollen gum. By Saturday afternoon, he’d had enough and phoned a dentist, but of course by then all the dentists in Edinburgh were in the clubhouse, deciding over a second gin whether to bother with eighteen holes or, in this weather, just settle for nine.