by Ian Rankin
‘What’s the matter?’ Mickey asked.
‘Nothing.’
‘Ready for that beer yet? The food’ll be here any second.’
Rebus stared at the cooling mug of coffee. ‘More than ready,’ he said, putting the rubber band back around his past. ‘But I’ll stick to this.’ He lifted the mug, toasted his brother.
10
Next morning, Rebus went to St Leonard’s, telephoned the NCIS centre at Prestwick and asked if they had anything connecting British criminals to European prostitution. His reasoning: someone had brought Candice – she was still Candice to him – from Amsterdam to Britain, and he didn’t think it was Telford. Whoever it was, Rebus would get to them somehow. He wanted to show Candice her chains could be broken.
He got NCIS to fax him what information they had. Most of it concerned the ‘Tippelzone’, a licensed car park where drivers went for sex. It was worked by foreign prostitutes mainly, most of them lacking work permits, many smuggled in from Eastern Europe. The main gangs seemed to be from former Yugoslavia. NCIS had no names for any of these kidnappers-cum-pimps. There was nothing about prostitutes making the trip from Amsterdam to Britain.
Rebus went into the car park to smoke his second cigarette of the day. There were a couple of other smokers out there, a small brotherhood of social pariahs. Back in the office, the Farmer wanted to know if there was any progress on Lintz.
‘Maybe if I brought him in and slapped him around a bit,’ Rebus suggested.
‘Be serious, will you?’ the Farmer growled, stalking back to his office.
Rebus sat down at his desk and pulled forward a file.
‘Your problem, Inspector,’ Lintz had said to him once, ‘is that you’re afraid of being taken seriously. You want to give people what you think they expect. I mention the Ishtar gate, and you talk of some Hollywood movie. At first I thought this was meant to rouse me to some indiscretion, but now it seems more a game you are playing against yourself.’
Rebus: seated in his usual chair in Lintz’s drawing-room. The view from the window was of Queen Street Gardens. They were kept locked: you had to pay for a key.
‘Do educated people frighten you?’
Rebus looked at the old man. ‘No.’
‘Are you sure? Don’t you perhaps wish you were more like them?’ Lintz grinned, showing small, discoloured teeth. ‘Intellectuals like to see themselves as history’s victims, prejudiced against, arrested for their beliefs, even tortured and murdered. But Karadzic thinks himself an intellectual. The Nazi hierarchy had its thinkers and philosophers. And even in Babylon …’ Lintz got up, poured himself more tea. Rebus declined a refill.
‘Even in Babylon, Inspector,’ Lintz continued, getting comfortable again, ‘with its opulence and its artistry, with its enlightened king … do you know what they did? Nebuchadnezzar held the Jews captive for seventy years. This splendid, awe-inspiring civilisation … Do you begin to see the madness, Inspector, the flaws that run so deep in us?’
‘Maybe I need glasses.’
Lintz threw his cup across the room. ‘You need to listen and to learn! You need to understand!’
The cup and saucer lay on the carpet, still intact. Tea was soaking into the elaborate design, where it would become all but invisible …
He parked on Buccleuch Place. The Slavic Studies department was housed in one of the tenements. He tried the secretary’s office first, asked if Dr Colquhoun was around.
‘I haven’t seen him today.’
When Rebus explained what he wanted, the secretary tried a couple of numbers but didn’t find anyone. Then she suggested he take a look in their library, which was one floor up and kept locked. She handed him a key.
The room was about sixteen feet by twelve, and smelled stuffy. The shutters across the windows were closed, giving the place no natural light. A No Smoking sign sat on one of four desks. On another sat an ashtray with three butts in it. One entire wall was shelved, filled with books, pamphlets, magazines. There were boxes of press cuttings, and maps on the walls showing Yugoslavia’s changing demarcation lines. Rebus lifted down the most recent box of cuttings.
Like a lot of people he knew, Rebus didn’t know much about the war in ex-Yugoslavia. He’d seen some of the news reports, been shocked by the pictures, then had got on with his life. But if the cuttings were to be believed, the whole region was being run by war criminals. The Implementation Force seemed to have done its damnedest to avoid confrontation. There had been a few arrests recently, but nothing substantial: out of a meagre seventy-four suspects charged, only seven had been apprehended.
He found nothing about slave traders, so thanked the secretary and gave her back her key, then crawled through the city traffic. When the call came on his mobile, he nearly went off the road.
Candice had disappeared.
Mrs Drinic was distraught. They’d had dinner last night, breakfast this morning, and Karina had seemed fine.
‘There was a lot she said she couldn’t tell us,’ Mr Drinic said, standing behind his seated wife, hands stroking her shoulders. ‘She said she wanted to forget.’
And then she’d gone out for a walk down to the harbour, and hadn’t returned. Lost maybe, though the village was small. Mr Drinic had been working; his wife had gone out, asking people if they’d seen her.
‘And Mrs Muir’s son,’ she said, ‘he told me she’d been taken away in a car.’
‘Where was this?’ Rebus asked.
‘Just a couple of streets away,’ Mr Drinic said.
‘Show me.’
Outside his home on Seaford Road, Eddie Muir, aged eleven, told Rebus what he’d seen. A car stopping beside a woman. A bit of chat, though he couldn’t hear it. The door opening, the woman getting in.
‘Which door, Eddie?’
‘One of the back ones. Had to be, there were two of them in the car already.’
‘Men?’
Eddie nodded.
‘And the woman got in by herself? I mean, they didn’t grab her or anything?’
Eddie shook his head. He was straddling his bike, keen to be going. One foot kept testing a pedal.
‘Can you describe the car?’
‘Big, a bit flash. Not from round here.’
‘And the men?’
‘Didn’t really get a good look. Driver was wearing a Pars shirt.’
Meaning a football shirt, Dunfermline Athletic. Which would mean he was from Fife. Rebus frowned. A pick-up? Could that be it? Candice back to her old ways so soon? Not likely, not in a place like this, on a street like this. It was no chance encounter. Mrs Drinic was right: she’d been snatched. Which meant someone had known where to find her. Had Rebus been followed yesterday? If he had, they’d been invisible. Some device on his car? It seemed unlikely, but he checked wheel-arches and the underbody: nothing. Mrs Drinic had calmed a little, her husband having administered medicinal vodka. Rebus could use a shot himself, but turned down the offer.
‘Did she make any phone calls?’ he asked. Drinic shook his head. ‘What about strangers hanging around the street?’
‘I would have noticed. After Sarajevo, it’s hard to feel safe, Inspector.’ He opened his arms. ‘And here’s the proof – nowhere’s safe.’
‘Did you tell anyone about Karina?’
‘Who would we tell?’
Who knew? That was the question. Rebus did. And Claverhouse and Ormiston knew about the place, because Colquhoun had mentioned it.
Colquhoun knew. The nervy old Slavic Studies specialist knew … On the way back to Edinburgh, Rebus tried phoning him at office and home: no reply. He’d told the Drinks to let him know if Candice came back, but he didn’t think she’d be coming back. He remembered the look she’d given him early on when he’d asked her to trust him. I won’t be surprised if you let me down. Like she’d known back then that he’d fail. And she’d given him a second chance, waiting for him beside his car. And he’d let her down. He got back on his mobile and called Jack Morton.
&nb
sp; ‘Jack,’ he said, ‘for Christ’s sake, talk me out of having a drink.’
He tried Colquhoun’s home address and the Slavic Studies office: both locked up tight. Then he drove to Flint Street and looked for Tommy Telford in the arcade. But Telford wasn’t there. He was in the café’s back office, surrounded as usual by his men.
‘I want to talk to you,’ Rebus said.
‘So talk.’
‘Without the audience.’ Rebus pointed to Pretty-Boy. ‘That one can stay.’
Telford took his time, but finally nodded, and the room began to empty. Pretty-Boy stood against a wall, hands behind his back. Telford had his feet up on his desk, leaning back in his chair. They were relaxed, confident. Rebus knew what he looked like: a caged bear.
‘I want to know where she is.’
‘Who?’
‘Candice.’
Telford smiled. ‘Still on about her, Inspector? How should I know where she is?’
‘Because a couple of your boys grabbed her.’ But as he spoke, Rebus realised he was making a mistake. Telford’s gang was a family: they’d grown up together in Paisley. Not many Dunfermline supporters that distant from Fife. He stared at Pretty-Boy, who ran Telford’s prostitutes. Candice had arrived in Edinburgh from a city of bridges, maybe Newcastle. Telford had Newcastle connections. And the Newcastle United strip – vertical black and white lines – was damned close to Dunfermline’s. Probably only a kid in Fife could make the mistake.
A Newcastle strip. A Newcastle car.
Telford was talking, but Rebus wasn’t listening. He walked straight out of the office and back to the Saab. Drove to Fettes – the Crime Squad offices – and started looking. He found a contact number for a DS Miriam Kenworthy. Tried the number but she wasn’t there.
‘Fuck it,’ he told himself, getting back into his car.
The Al was hardly the country’s fastest road – Abernethy was right about that. Still, without the daytime traffic Rebus made decent time on his way south. It was late evening when he arrived in Newcastle, pubs emptying, queues forming outside clubs, a few United shirts on display, looking like prison bars. He didn’t know the city. Drove around it in circles, passing the same signs and landmarks, heading further out, just cruising.
Looking for Candice. Or for girls who might know her.
After a couple of hours, he gave up, headed back into the centre. He’d had the idea of sleeping in his car, but when he found a hotel with an empty room, the thought of en-suite facilities suddenly seemed too good to miss.
He made sure there was no mini-bar.
A long soak with his eyes closed, mind and body still racing from the drive. He sat in a chair by his window and listened to the night: taxis and yells, delivery lorries. He couldn’t sleep. He lay on the bed, watching soundless TV, remembering Candice in the hotel room, asleep under sweet wrappers. Deacon Blue: ‘Chocolate Girl.’
He woke up to breakfast TV. Checked out of the hotel and had breakfast in a café, then called Miriam Kenworthy’s office, relieved to find she was an early starter.
‘Come right round,’ she said, sounding bemused. ‘You’re only a couple of minutes away.’
She was younger than her telephone voice, face softer than her attitude. It was a milkmaid’s face, rounded, the cheeks pink and plump. She studied him, swivelling slightly in her chair as he told her the story.
‘Tarawicz,’ she said when he’d finished. ‘Jake Tarawicz. Real name Joachim, probably.’ Kenworthy smiled. ‘Some of us around here call him Mr Pink Eyes. He’s had dealings – meetings anyway – with this guy Telford.’ She opened the brown folder in front of her. ‘Mr Pink Eyes has a lot of European connections. You know Chechnia?’
‘In Russia?’
‘It’s Russia’s Sicily, if you know what I mean.’
‘Is that where Tarawicz comes from?’
‘It’s one theory. The other is that he’s Serbian. Might explain why he set up the convoy.’
‘What convoy?’
‘Running aid lorries to former Yugoslavia. A real humanitarian, our Mr Pink.’
‘But also a way of smuggling people out?’
Kenworthy looked at him. ‘You’ve been doing your homework.’
‘Call it an educated guess.’
‘Well, it gets him noticed. He got a papal blessing six months ago. Married to an Englishwoman – not for love. She was one of his girls.’
‘But it gives him residency here.’
She nodded. ‘He hasn’t been around that long, five or six years …’
Like Telford, Rebus thought.
‘But he’s built himself a rep, muscled in where there used to be Asians, Turks … Story is, he started with a nice line in stolen icons. A ton of stuff has been lifted out of the Soviet bloc. And when that operation started drying, he moved into prossies. Cheap girls, and he could keep them docile with a bit of crack. The crack comes up from London – the Yardies control that particular scene. Mr Pink spreads their goods around the north-east. He also deals heroin for the Turks and sells some girls to Triad brothels.’ She looked at Rebus, saw she had his attention. ‘No racial barriers when it comes to business.’
‘So I see.’
‘Probably also sells drugs to your friend Telford, who distributes them through his nightclubs.’
‘“Probably”?’
‘We’ve no hard proof. There was even a story going around that Pink wasn’t selling to Telford, he was buying.’
Rebus blinked. ‘Telford’s not that big.’
She shrugged.
‘Where would he get the stuff?’
‘It was a story, that’s all.’
But it had Rebus thinking, because it might help explain the relationship between Tarawicz and Telford …
‘What does Tarawicz get out of it?’ he asked, making his thoughts flesh.
‘You mean apart from money? Well, Telford trains a good bouncer. Jock bouncers get respect down here. Then, of course, Telford has shares in a couple of casinos.’
‘A way for Tarawicz to launder his cash?’ Rebus thought about this. ‘Is there anything Tarawicz doesn’t have a finger in?’
‘Plenty. He likes businesses which are fluid. And he’s still a relative newcomer.’
Eagles: ‘New Kid in Town’.
‘We think he’s been dealing arms: a lot of stuff crossing into Western Europe. The Chechens seem to have weaponry to spare.’ She sniffed, gathered her thoughts.
‘Sounds like he’s one step ahead of Tommy Telford.’ Which would explain why Telford was so keen to do business with him. He was on a learning curve, learning how to fit into the bigger picture. Yardies and Asians, Turks and Chechens, and all the others. Rebus saw them as spokes on a huge wheel which was trundling mercilessly across the world, breaking bones as it went.
‘Why “Mr Pink Eyes”?’ he asked.
She’d been awaiting the question, slid a colour photo towards him.
It was the close-up of a face, the skin pink and blistered, white lesions running through it. The face was puffy, bloated, and in its midst sat eyes hidden by blue-tinted glasses. There were no eyebrows. The hair above the jutting forehead was thin and yellow. The man looked like some monstrous shaved pig.
‘What happened to him?’ he asked.
‘We don’t know. That’s the way he looked when he arrived.’
Rebus remembered the description Candice had given: sunglasses, looks like a car-crash victim. Dead ringer.
‘I want to talk to him,’ Rebus said.
But first, Kenworthy gave him a guided tour. They took her car, and she showed him where the street girls worked. It was mid-morning, no action to speak of. He gave her a description of Candice, and she promised she’d put the word out. They spoke with the few women they met. They all seemed to know Kenworthy, weren’t hostile towards her.
‘They’re the same as you or me,’ she told him, driving away. ‘Working to feed their kids.’
‘Or their habit.’
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�That too, of course.’
‘In Amsterdam, they’ve got a union.’
‘Doesn’t help the poor sods who’re shipped there.’ Kenworthy signalled at a junction. ‘You’re sure he has her?’
‘I don’t think Telford does. Someone knew addresses back in Sarajevo, addresses that were important to her. Someone shipped her out of there.’
‘Sounds like Mr Pink all right.’
‘And he’s the only one who can send her back.’
She looked at him. ‘Why would he do a thing like that?’
Just as Rebus was thinking their surroundings couldn’t get any grimmer – all industrial decay, gutted buildings and pot-holes – Kenworthy signalled to turn in at the gates of a scrapyard.
‘You’re kidding?’ he said.
Three Alsatians, tethered by thirty-foot chains, barked and bounded towards the car. Kenworthy ignored them, kept driving. It was like being in a ravine. Either side of them stood precarious canyon walls of car wrecks.
‘Hear that?’
Rebus heard it: the sound of a collision. The car entered a wide clearing, and he saw a yellow crane, dangling a huge grab from its arm, pluck up the car it had dropped and lift it high, before dropping it again on to the carcass of another. A few men were standing at a safe distance, smoking cigarettes and looking bored. The grab dropped on to the roof of the top car, denting it badly. Glass shimmered on the oily ground, diamonds against black velvet.
Jake Tarawicz – Mr Pink Eyes – was in the crane, laughing and roaring as he picked up the car again, worrying it the way a cat might play with a mouse without noticing it was dead. If he’d seen the new additions to his audience, it didn’t show. Kenworthy hadn’t got out of her car immediately. First, she’d fixed on a face from her repertoire. When finally she was ready, she nodded to Rebus and they opened their doors simultaneously.
As Rebus stood upright, he saw that the grab had dropped the car and was swinging towards them. Kenworthy folded her arms and stood her ground. Rebus was reminded of those arcade games where you had to pick up a prize. He could see Tarawicz in the cab, manipulating the controls like a kid with a toy. He remembered Tommy Telford on his arcade bike, and saw at once something the two men had in common: neither had ever really grown up.