The Hanging Garden

by Ian Rankin

  Rebus knocked on Danny Simpson’s door. He didn’t know what he was going to say to the young man. He just wanted to see him again. He wanted to see him without the blood and the pain. Wanted to see him whole and of a piece.

  Wanted to see him.

  But Danny Simpson wasn’t in, and neither was his mother. A neighbour, lacking her top set of dentures, came out and explained the situation.

  The situation took Rebus to the Infirmary, where, in a small, gloomy ward not easily found, Danny Simpson lay in bed, head bandaged, sweating like he’d just played a full ninety minutes. He wasn’t conscious. His mother sat beside him, stroking his wrist. A nurse explained to Rebus that a hospice would be the best place for Danny, supposing they could find him a bed.

  ‘What happened?’

  ‘We think infection must have set in. When you lose your resistance ... the world’s a lethal place.’ She shrugged, looked like she’d been through it all once too often. Danny’s mother had seen them talking. Maybe she thought Rebus was a doctor. She got up and came towards him, then just stood there, waiting for him to speak.

  ‘I came to see Danny,’ he said.

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘The night he ... the night of his accident, I was the one who brought him here. I just wondered how he was doing.’

  ‘See for yourself.’ Her voice was breaking.

  Rebus thought: a five-minute walk from here, he’d be in Sammy’s room. He’d thought her situation unique, because it was unique to him. Now he saw that within a short radius of Sammy’s bed, other parents were crying, and squeezing their children’s hands, and asking why.

  ‘I’m really sorry,’ he said. ‘I wish ...’

  ‘Me, too,’ the woman said. ‘You know, he’s never been a bad laddie. Cheeky, but never bad. His problem was, he was always itching for something new, something to stop him getting bored. We all know where that can lead.’

  Rebus nodded, suddenly not wanting to be here, not wanting to hear Danny Simpson’s life story. He had enough ghosts to contend with as it was. He squeezed the woman’s arm.

  ‘Look,’ he said, ‘I’m sorry, but I have to go.’

  She nodded distractedly, wandered off in the direction of her son’s bed. Rebus wanted to curse Danny Simpson for the mere possibility that he’d passed on the virus. He realised now that if they’d met on the doorstep, that’s the way their conversation would have gone, and maybe Rebus would have gone further.

  He wanted to curse him ... but he couldn’t. It would be every bit as efficacious as cursing the Big Man. A waste of time and breath. So instead he went to Sammy’s room, to find that she was back on her own. No other patients, no nursing staff, no Rhona. He kissed her forehead. It tasted salty. Sweat: she needed wiping down. There was a smell he hadn’t noticed before. Talcum powder. He sat down, took her warm hands in his.

  ‘How are you doing, Sammy? I keep meaning to bring in some Oasis, see if that would bring you round. Your mum sits here listening to classical. I wonder if you can hear it. I don’t even know if you like that sort of stuff. Lots of things we’ve never got round to talking about.’

  He saw something. Stood up to be sure. Movement behind her eyelids.

  ‘Sammy? Sammy?’

  He hadn’t seen her do that before. Pushed the button beside her bed. Waited for a nurse to come. Pushed it again.

  ‘Come on, come on.’

  Eyelids fluttering ... then stopping.

  ‘Sammy!’

  Door opening, nurse coming in.

  ‘What is it?’

  Rebus: ‘I thought I saw ... she was moving.’

  ‘Moving?’

  ‘Just her eyes, like she was trying to open them.’

  ‘I’ll fetch a doctor.’

  ‘Come on, Sammy, try again. Wakey-wakey, sweetheart.’ Patting her wrists, then her cheeks.

  The doctor arrived. He was the same one Rebus had shouted at that first day. Lifted her eyelids, shone a thin torch into them, pulling it away, checking her pupils.

  ‘If you saw it, I’m sure it was there.’

  ‘Yes, but does it mean anything?’

  ‘Hard to say.’

  ‘Try anyway.’ Eyes boring into the doctor’s.

  ‘She’s asleep. She has dreams. Sometimes when you dream you experience REM: Rapid Eye Movement.’

  ‘So it could be ...’ Rebus sought the word ‘... involuntary?’

  ‘As I say, it’s hard to tell. Latest scans show definite improvement.’ He paused. ‘Minor improvement, but certainly there.’

  Rebus nodding, trembling. The doctor saw it, asked if he needed anything. Rebus shaking his head. The doctor checking his watch, other places to be. The nurse shuffling her feet. Rebus thanked them both and headed out.

  HOGAN: You agree to this interview being taped, Dr Colquhoun?

  COLQUHOUN: I’ve no objections.

  HOGAN: It’s in your interests as well as ours.

  COLQUHOUN: I’ve nothing to hide, Inspector Hogan. (Coughs.)

  HOGAN: Fine, sir. Maybe we’ll just start then?

  COLQUHOUN: Might I ask a question? Just for the record, you want to ask me about Joseph Lintz – nothing else?

  HOGAN: What else might there be, sir?

  COLQUHOUN: I just wanted to check.

  HOGAN: You wish to have a solicitor present?

  COLQUHOUN: No.

  HOGAN: Right you are, sir. Well, if I can begin ... it’s really just a question of your relationship with Professor Joseph Lintz.

  COLQUHOUN: Yes.

  HOGAN: Only, when we spoke before, you said you didn’t know Professor Lintz.

  COLQUHOUN: I think I said I didn’t know him very well.

  HOGAN: Okay, sir. If that’s what you said ...

  COLQUHOUN: It is, to the best of my recollection.

  HOGAN: Only, we’ve had some new information ...

  COLQUHOUN: Yes?

  HOGAN: That you knew Professor Lintz a little better than that.

  COLQUHOUN: And this is according to ...?

  HOGAN: New information in our possession. The informant tells us that Joseph Lintz accused you of being a war criminal. Anything to say to that, sir?

  COLQUHOUN: Only that it’s a lie. An outrageous lie.

  HOGAN: He didn’t think you were a war criminal?

  COLQUHOUN: Oh, he thought it all right! He told me to my face on more than one occasion.

  HOGAN: When?

  COLQUHOUN: Years back. He got it into his head ... the man was mad, Inspector. I could see that. Driven by demons.

  HOGAN: What did he say exactly?

  COLQUHOUN: Hard to remember. This was a long time ago, the early 1970s, I suppose.

  HOGAN: It would help us if you could ...

  COLQUHOUN: He came out with it in the middle of a party. I believe it was some function to welcome a visiting professor. Anyway, Joseph insisted on taking me to one side. He looked feverish. Then he came out with it: I was some sort of Nazi, and I’d come to this country by some circuitous route. He kept on about it.

  HOGAN: What did you do?

  COLQUHOUN: Told him he was drunk, babbling.

  HOGAN: And?

  COLQUHOUN: And he was. Had to be taken home in a taxi. I said no more about it. In academic circles, one becomes used to a certain amount of ... eccentric behaviour. We’re obsessive people, it can’t be helped.

  HOGAN: But Lintz persisted?

  COLQUHOUN: Not really, no. But every few years ... there’d ... he’d say something, allege some atrocity ...

  HOGAN: Did he approach you outside the university?

  COLQUHOUN: For a time, he telephoned my home.

  HOGAN: You moved?

  COLQUHOUN: Yes.

  HOGAN: To an unlisted phone number?

  COLQUHOUN: Eventually.

  HOGAN: To stop him calling you?

  COLQUHOUN: I suppose that was part of it.

  HOGAN: Did you speak to anyone about Lintz?

  COLQUHOUN: You mean the authorities? No,
no one. He was a nuisance, nothing more.

  HOGAN: And then what happened?

  COLQUHOUN: Then these stories started appearing in the papers, saying Joseph might be a Nazi, a war criminal. And suddenly he was on my back again.

  HOGAN: He phoned you at your office?

  COLQUHOUN: Yes.

  HOGAN: You lied to us about that?

  COLQUHOUN: I’m sorry. I panicked.

  HOGAN: What was there to panic about?

  COLQUHOUN: Just ... I don’t know.

  HOGAN: So you met him? To straighten things out?

  COLQUHOUN: We had lunch together. He seemed ... lucid. Only what he was saying, it was the stuff of madness. He had a whole history mapped out, only it wasn’t mine. I kept saying to him, ‘Joseph, when the war ended I wasn’t out of my teens.’ Besides, I was born and raised here. It’s all on record.

  HOGAN: What did he say to that?

  COLQUHOUN: He said records could be faked.

  HOGAN: Faked records ... one way Josef Linzstek could have gone undetected.

  COLQUHOUN: I know.

  HOGAN: You think Joseph Lintz was Josef Linzstek?

  COLQUHOUN: I don’t know. Maybe the stories got to him ... he started to believe ... I don’t know.

  HOGAN: Yes, but these accusations, they began before the media circus – decades before.

  COLQUHOUN: That’s true.

  HOGAN: So he was hounding you. Did he say he would go to the media with his version of events?

  COLQUHOUN: He may have ... I can’t remember.

  HOGAN: Mmm.

  COLQUHOUN: You’re looking for a motive, aren’t you? You’re looking for reasons why I’d want him dead.

  HOGAN: Did you kill him, Dr Colquhoun?

  COLQUHOUN: Emphatically not.

  HOGAN: Any idea who did?

  COLQUHOUN: No.

  HOGAN: Why didn’t you tell us? Why tell lies?

  COLQUHOUN: Because I knew this would happen. These suspicions. Stupidly, I thought I could circumvent them.

  HOGAN: Circumvent?

  COLQUHOUN: Yes.

  HOGAN: A young woman was seen dining with Lintz, same restaurant he took you to. Any idea who she might be?

  COLQUHOUN: None.

  HOGAN: You knew Professor Lintz a long time ... what did you think were his sexual proclivities?

  COLQUHOUN: Never thought about it.

  HOGAN: No?

  COLQUHOUN: No.

  HOGAN: What about yourself, sir?

  COLQUHOUN: I don’t see what that ... well, for the record, Inspector, I’m monogamous and heterosexual.

  HOGAN: Thank you, sir. I appreciate your frankness.

  Rebus switched off the tape.

  ‘I’ll bet you did.’

  ‘What do you think?’ Bobby Hogan asked.

  ‘I think you mistimed the did-you-do-it. Otherwise, not bad.’ Rebus tapped the tape machine. ‘Is there much more?’

  ‘Not a lot.’

  Rebus switched it back on.

  HOGAN: When you met in the restaurant, it was the same routine as before?

  COLQUHOUN: Oh, yes. Names, dates ... countries I was taken through on my way into Britain from the continent.

  HOGAN: He told you how this was achieved?

  COLQUHOUN: He called it the Rat Line. Said it was operated by the Vatican, if you can believe that. And all the western governments were in cahoots to get the top Nazis – the scientists and intellectuals – away from the Russians. I mean, really ... it’s Ian Fleming meets John Le Carré, isn’t it?

  HOGAN: But he was very detailed?

  COLQUHOUN: Yes, but it can be that way with obsessives.

  HOGAN: There have been books written alleging the same thing Professor Lintz was talking about.

  COLQUHOUN: Have there?

  HOGAN: Nazis smuggled overseas ... war criminals rescued from the gallows.

  COLQUHOUN: Well, yes, but those are just stories. You don’t seriously think ...?

  HOGAN: I’m just collecting information, Dr Colquhoun. In my job, we don’t throw anything away.

  COLQUHOUN: Yes, I can see that. The problem is, sorting out the wheat from the chaff.

  HOGAN: You mean the truths from the lies? Yes, that’s one problem.

  COLQUHOUN: I mean, the stories you hear about Bosnia and Croatia ... slaughterhouses, mass torture, the guilty being spirited away ... It’s hard to know what’s true.

  HOGAN: Just before we finish ... any idea what happened to the money?

  COLQUHOUN: What money?

  HOGAN: The withdrawal Lintz made from his bank. Five thousand pounds in cash.

  COLQUHOUN: This is the first I’ve heard of it. Another motive?

  HOGAN: Thank you for your time, Dr Colquhoun. It might be necessary for us to talk again. I’m sorry, but you shouldn’t have lied to us, it makes our job that much more difficult.

  COLQUHOUN: I’m sorry, Inspector Hogan. I quite understand, but I hope you can comprehend why I did it. HOGAN: My mum always told me never to lie, sir. Thanks again for your time.

  Rebus looked at Hogan. ‘Your mum?’

  Hogan shrugged. ‘Maybe it was my granny.’

  Rebus drained his coffee. ‘So we know one of Lintz’s mealtime companions.’

  ‘And we know he was hounding Colquhoun.’

  ‘Is he a suspect?’

  ‘I’m not exactly snowed under with them.’

  ‘Fair point, but all the same ...’

  ‘You think he’s on the level?’

  ‘I don’t know, Bobby. He sounded like he had it rehearsed. And he was relieved at the end.’

  ‘You don’t think I got it all? I could bring him in again.’

  Rebus was thinking: stories you hear ... the guilty being spirited away. Not stories you read, but ones you hear ... Who might he have heard them from? Candice? Jake Tarawicz?

  Hogan rubbed the bridge of his nose. ‘I need a drink.’

  Rebus dropped his beaker into a waste-bin. ‘Message received and understood. By the way, any word from Abernethy?’

  ‘He’s a bloody nuisance,’ Hogan said, turning away.

  26

  ‘He’s in place,’ Claverhouse said, when Rebus phoned him to ask about Jack Morton. ‘Got him a little one-bedroom shit-hole in Polwarth. Measured him up for his uniform, and he’s now officially a member of on-site security.’

  ‘Is anyone else in on it?’

  ‘Just the big boss. His name’s Livingstone. We had a long session with him last night.’

  ‘Won’t the other security men find it a bit odd, a stranger arriving in their midst?’

  ‘It’s down to Jack to put them at ease. He was pretty confident.’

  ‘What’s his cover?’

  ‘Secret drinker, open gambler, busted marriage.’

  ‘He doesn’t drink.’

  ‘Yes, he told me. Doesn’t matter, so long as everyone thinks he does.’

  ‘Is he in character?’

  ‘Getting there. He’s going to be working double shifts. That way he makes more trips to the shop, some in the evening when the place is quieter. More chance to get to know Ken and Dec. We’ve no contact with him during the day. Debriefing takes place once he’s reached home. Telephone only, can’t risk too many meetings.’

  ‘You think they’ll watch him?’

  ‘If they’re being thorough. And if they fall for the plan.’

  ‘Did you talk to Marty Jones?’

  ‘That’s set for tomorrow. He’ll bring a couple of heavies, but they’ll go easy on Jack.’

  ‘Isn’t tomorrow a bit soon?’

  ‘Can we afford to wait? They might already have someone in mind.’

  ‘We’re asking a lot of him.’

  ‘He was your idea.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘You don’t think he’s up to it?’

  ‘It’s not that ... but he’s stepping into a war.’

  ‘Then get the ceasefire sorted out.’

  ‘It is.’

&n
bsp; ‘That’s not what I hear ...’

  Rebus heard it too, as soon as he got off the phone. He knocked on the Chief Super’s door. The Farmer was in conference with Gill Templer.

  ‘Did you talk to him?’ the Farmer asked.

  ‘He agreed to a ceasefire,’ Rebus said. He was looking at Templer. ‘What about you?’

  She took a deep breath. ‘I spoke to Mr Telford – his solicitor was present throughout. I kept telling him what we wanted, and the lawyer kept telling me I was blackening his client’s name.’

  ‘And Telford?’

  ‘Just sat there, arms folded, smiling at the wall.’ Colour was creeping up her face. ‘I don’t think he looked at me once.’

  ‘But you gave him the message?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘You said Cafferty would comply?’

  She nodded.

  ‘Then what the hell’s happening?’

  ‘We can’t let it get out of control,’ the Farmer said.

  ‘Looks to me like it already is.’

  The latest score-line: two of Cafferty’s men, their faces mashed to something resembling fruit-pulp.

  ‘Lucky they’re not dead,’ the Farmer went on.

  ‘You know what’s happening?’ Rebus said. ‘It’s Tarawicz, he’s the problem. Tommy’s playing up to him.’

  ‘It’s times like this you yearn for independence,’ the Farmer agreed. ‘Then we could just extradite the bugger.’

  ‘Why don’t we?’ Rebus suggested. ‘Tell him his presence here is no longer acceptable.’

  ‘And if he stays?’

  ‘We shadow him, make sure everyone knows we’re doing it. We make nuisances of ourselves.’

  ‘You think that would work?’ Gill Templer sounded sceptical.

  ‘Probably not,’ Rebus agreed, slumping into a chair.

  ‘We’ve no real leverage,’ the Farmer said, glancing at his watch. ‘Which isn’t going to please the Chief Constable. He wants me in his office in half an hour.’ He got on the phone, ordered a car, rose to his feet.

  ‘Look, see if you can thrash something out between you.’

  Rebus and Templer exchanged a look.

  ‘I’ll be back in an hour or two.’ The Farmer looked around, as if he were suddenly lost. ‘Lock the door when you leave.’ With that and a wave of his hand, he left. There was silence in the room.