Dead Souls

by Ian Rankin

  5

  The silent dance resumed. Couples writhed and shuffled, threw back their heads or ran hands through their hair, eyes seeking out future partners or past loves to make jealous. The video monitor gave a greasy look to everything.

  No sound, just pictures, the tape cutting from dancefloor to main bar to second bar to toilet hallway. Then the entrance foyer, exterior front and back. Exterior back was a puddled alley boasting rubbish bins and a Merc belonging to the club’s owner. The club was called Gaitano’s, nobody knew why. Some of the clientele had come up with the nickname ‘Guiser’s’, and that was the name by which Rebus knew it.

  It was on Rose Street, started to get busy around ten thirty each evening. There’d been a stabbing in the back alley the previous summer, the owner complaining of blood on his Merc.

  Rebus was seated in a small uncomfortable chair in a small dimly lit room. In the other chair, hand on the video’s remote, sat DC Phyllida Hawes.

  ‘Here we go again,’ she said. Rebus leaned forward a little. The view jumped from back alley to dancefloor. ‘Any second.’ Another cut: main bar, punters queuing three deep. She froze the picture. It wasn’t so much black and white as sepia, the colour of dead photographs. Interior light, she’d explained earlier. She moved the action along one frame at a time as Rebus moved in on the screen, bending so one knee touched the floor. His finger touched a face.

  ‘That’s him,’ she agreed.

  On the desk was a slim file. Rebus had taken from it a photograph, which he now held to the screen.

  ‘All right,’ he said. ‘Forward at half-speed.’

  The security camera stayed with the main bar for another ten seconds, then switched to second bar and all points on the compass. When it returned to the main bar, the crush of drinkers seemed not to have moved. She froze the tape again.

  ‘He’s not there,’ Rebus said.

  ‘No chance he got served. The two ahead of him are still waiting.’ Rebus nodded. ‘He should be there.’ He touched the screen again.

  ‘Next to the blonde,’ Hawes said.

  Yes, the blonde: spun-silver hair, dark eyes and lips. While those around her were intent on catching the eyes of the bar staff, she was looking off to one side. There were no sleeves to her dress.

  Twenty seconds of footage from the foyer showed a steady stream entering the club, but no one leaving.

  ‘I went through the whole tape,’ Hawes said. ‘Believe me, he’s not on it.’

  ‘So what happened to him?’

  ‘Easy, he walked out, only the cameras didn’t pick him up.’

  ‘And left his pals gasping?’

  Rebus studied the file again. Damon Mee had been out with two friends, a night in the big city. It had been Damon’s shout—two lagers and a Coke, this last for the designated driver. They’d waited for him, then gone looking. Initial reaction: he’d scored and slunk off without telling them. Maybe she’d been a dinosaur, not something to brag about. But then he hadn’t turned up at home, and his parents had started asking questions, questions no one could answer.

  Simple truth: Damon Mee had, as the timer on the camera footage showed, vanished from the world between 11.44 and 11.45 p.m. the previous Friday night.

  Hawes switched off the machine. She was tall and thin and knew her job; hadn’t liked Rebus appearing at Gayfield cop shop like this; hadn’t liked the implication.

  ‘There’s no hint of foul play,’ she said defensively. ‘Quarter of a million MisPers every year, most turn up again in their own sweet time.’

  ‘Look,’ Rebus assured her, ‘I’m doing this for an old friend, that’s all. He just wants to know we’ve done all we can.’

  ‘What’s to do?’

  Good question, and one Rebus was unable to answer right that minute. Instead, he brushed dust from the knees of his trousers and asked if he could look at the video one last time.

  ‘And something else,’ he said. ‘Any chance we can get a print-out?’

  ‘A print-out?’

  ‘A photo of the crush at the bar.’

  ‘I’m not sure. It’s not going to be much use though, is it? And we’ve decent photos of Damon as it is.’

  ‘It’s not him I’m interested in,’ Rebus said as the tape began to play. ‘It’s the blonde who watched him leave.’

  That evening, he drove north out of Edinburgh, paid his toll at the Forth Road Bridge, and crossed into Fife. The place liked to call itself the Kingdom’ and there were those who would agree that it was another country, a place with its own linguistic and cultural currency. For such a small place, it seemed almost endlessly complex, had seemed that way to Rebus even when he’d been growing up there. To outsiders the place meant coastal scenery and St Andrews, or just a stretch of motorway between Edinburgh and Dundee, but the west central Fife of Rebus’s childhood had been very different, ruled by coal mines and linoleum, dockyard and chemical plant, an industrial landscape shaped by basic needs and producing people who were wary and inward-looking, with the blackest humour you’d ever find.

  They’d built new roads since Rebus’s last visit, and knocked down a few more landmarks, but the place didn’t feel so very different from thirty-odd years before. It wasn’t such a great span of time after all, except in human terms, and maybe not even then. Entering Cardenden—Bowhill had disappeared from road-signs in the 1960s, even if locals still knew it as a village distinct from its neighbour—Rebus slowed to see if the memories would turn out sweet or sour. Then he caught sight of a Chinese takeaway and thought: both, of course.

  Brian and Janice Mee’s house was easy enough to find: they were standing by the gate waiting for him. Rebus had been born in a pre-fab but brought up in a terrace much like this one. Brian Mee practically opened the car door for him, and was trying to shake his hand while Rebus was still undoing his seat-belt.

  ‘Let the man catch his breath!’ his wife snapped. She was still standing by the gate, arms folded. ‘How have you been, Johnny?’

  And Rebus realised that Brian had married Janice Playfair, the only girl in his long and trouble-strewn life who’d ever managed to knock John Rebus unconscious.

  The narrow low-ceilinged room was full to bursting—not just Rebus, Brian and Janice, but Brian’s mother and Mr and Mrs Playfair, plus a billowing three-piece suite and assorted tables and units. Introductions had to be made and Rebus guided to the seat by the fire’. The room was overheated. A pot of tea was produced, and on the table by Rebus’s armchair sat enough slices of cake to feed a football crowd.

  ‘He’s a brainy one,’ Janice’s mother said, handing Rebus a framed photograph of Damon Mee. ‘Plenty of certificates from school. Works hard. Saving to get married.’

  The photo showed a smiling imp, not long out of school.

  We gave the most recent pictures to the police,’ Janice explained. Rebus nodded: he’d seen them in the file. All the same, when a packet of holiday snaps was handed to him, he went through them slowly: it saved having to look at the expectant faces. He felt like a doctor, expected to produce both immediate diagnosis and remedy. The photos showed a face more careworn than in the framed print. The impish smile remained, but noticeably older: some effort had gone into it. There was something behind the eyes, disenchantment maybe. Damon’s parents were in a few of the photos.

  We all went together,’ Brian explained. ‘The whole family.’

  Beaches, a big white hotel, poolside games. ‘Where is it?’

  ‘Lanzarote,’ Janice said, handing him his tea. ‘Do you still take sugar?’

  ‘Haven’t done for years,’ Rebus said. In a couple of the pictures she was wearing her bikini: good body for her age, or any age come to that. He tried not to linger.

  ‘Can I take a couple of the close-ups?’ he asked. Janice looked at him.

  ‘Of Damon.’

  She nodded and he put the other photos back in the packet.

  ‘We’re really grateful,’ someone said: Janice’s mum? Brian’s? Rebus couldn�
�t tell.

  ‘You said his girlfriend’s called Helen?’

  Brian nodded. He’d lost some hair and put on weight, his face jowly. There was a row of cheap trophies above the mantelpiece: darts and pool, pub sports. He reckoned Brian kept in training most nights. Janice … Janice looked the same as ever. No, that wasn’t strictly true. She had wisps of grey in her hair. But all the same, talking to her was like stepping back into a previous age.

  ‘Does Helen live locally?’ he asked.

  ‘Practically round the corner.’

  ‘I’d like to talk to her.’

  ‘I’ll give her a bell.’ Brian got to his feet, left the room.

  ‘Where does Damon work?’ Rebus asked, for want of a better question.

  ‘Same place as his dad,’ Janice said, lighting a cigarette. Rebus raised an eyebrow: at school, she’d been anti-tobacco. She saw his look and smiled.

  ‘He got a job in packaging,’ her dad said. He seemed frail, chin quivering. Rebus wondered if he’d had a stroke. One side of his face looked slack. ‘He’s learning the ropes. It’ll be management soon.’

  Working-class nepotism, jobs handed down from father to son. Rebus was surprised it still existed.

  ‘Lucky to find any work at all around here,’ Mrs Playfair added.

  ‘Are things bad?’

  She made a tutting sound, dismissing the question.

  ‘Remember the old pit, John?’ Janice asked.

  Of course he remembered it, and the bing and the wilderness around it. Long walks on summer evenings, stopping for kisses that seemed to last hours. Wisps of coal-smoke rising from the bing, the dross within still smouldering.

  ‘It’s all been levelled now, turned into parkland. They’re talking about building a mining museum.’

  Mrs Playfair tutted again. ‘All it’ll do is remind us what we once had.’

  ‘Job creation,’ her daughter said.

  ‘They used to call Cowdenbeath the Chicago of Fife,’ Brian Mee’s mother added.

  ‘The Blue Brazil,’ Mr Playfair said, giving a croaking laugh. He meant Cowdenbeath football club, the nickname a self-imposed piece of irony. They called themselves the Blue Brazil because they were rubbish.

  ‘Helen’ll be here in a minute,’ Brian said, coming back in. ‘Are you not eating any cake, Inspector?’ added Mrs Playfair.

  On the drive back to Edinburgh, Rebus thought back to his chat with Helen Cousins. She hadn’t been able to add much to Rebus’s picture of Damon, and hadn’t been there the night he’d vanished. She’d been out with friends. It was a Friday ritual: Damon went out with the lads’, she went out with the girls’. He’d spoken with one of Damon’s companions; the other had been out. He’d learned nothing helpful.

  As he crossed the Forth Road Bridge, he thought about the symbol Fife had decided upon for its ‘Welcome to Fife’ signs: the Forth Rail Bridge. Not an identity so much as an admission of failure, recognition that Fife was for many people a conduit or mere adjunct to Edinburgh.

  Helen Cousins had worn black eyeliner and crimson lipstick and would never be pretty. Acne had carved cruel lines into her sallow face. Her hair had been dyed black and fell to a gelled fringe. When asked what she thought had happened to Damon, she’d just shrugged and folded her arms, crossing one leg over the other in a refusal to take any blame he might be trying to foist on her.

  Joey, who’d been at Guiser’s that night, had been similarly reticent.

  ‘Just a night out,’ he’d said. ‘Nothing unusual about it.’

  ‘And nothing different about Damon?’

  ‘Like what?’

  ‘I don’t know. Was he maybe preoccupied? Did he look nervous?’

  A shrug: the apparent extent of Joey’s concern for his friend …

  Rebus knew he was headed home, meaning Patience’s flat. But as he stop-started between the lights on Queensferry Road, he thought maybe he’d go to the Oxford Bar. Not for a drink, maybe just for a cola or a coffee, and some company. He’d drink a soft drink and listen to the gossip.

  So he drove past Oxford Terrace, stopped at the foot of Castle Street. Walked up the slope towards the Ox. Edinburgh Castle was just over the rise. The best view you could get of it was from a burger place on Princes Street. He pushed open the door to the pub, feeling heat and smelling smoke. He didn’t need cigarettes in the Ox: breathing was like killing a ten-pack. Coke or a coffee, he was having trouble making up his mind. Harry was on duty tonight. He lifted an empty pint glass and waved it in Rebus’s direction.

  ‘Aye, OK then,’ Rebus said, like it was the easiest decision he’d ever made.

  He got in at quarter to midnight. Patience was watching TV. She didn’t say much about his drinking these days: silence every bit as effective as lectures had ever been. But she wrinkled her nose at the cigarette smoke clinging to his clothes, so he dumped them in the washing basket and took a shower. She was in bed by the time he got out. There was a fresh glass of water his side of the bed.

  ‘Thanks,’ he said, draining it with two paracetamol.

  ‘How was your day?’ she asked: automatic question, automatic response.

  ‘Not so bad. Yours?’

  A sleepy grunt in reply. She had her eyes closed. There were things Rebus wanted to say, questions he’d like to ask. What are we doing here? Do you want me out? He thought maybe Patience had the same questions or similar. Somehow they never got asked; fear of the answers, perhaps, and what those answers would mean. Who in the world relished failure?

  ‘I went to a funeral,’ he told her. ‘A guy I knew.’

  ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘I didn’t really know him that well.’

  ‘What did he die of?’ Head still on the pillow, eyes closed.

  ‘A fall.’

  ‘Accident?’

  She was drifting away from him. He spoke anyway. ‘His widow, she’d dressed their daughter to look like an angel. One way of dealing with it, I suppose.’ He paused, listening to Patience’s breathing grow regular. ‘I went to Fife tonight, back to the old town. Friends I haven’t seen in years.’ He looked at her. ‘An old flame, someone I could have ended up married to.’ Touched her hair. ‘No Edinburgh, no Dr Patience Aitken.’ His eyes turned towards the window. No Sammy … maybe no job in the police either.

  No ghosts.

  When she was asleep, he went back through to the living room and plugged headphones into the hi-fi. He’d added a record deck to her CD system. In a bag under the bookshelf he found his last purchases from Backbeat Records: Light of Darkness and Writing on the Wall, two Scottish bands he vaguely remembered from times past. As he sat to listen, he wondered why it was he was only ever happy on rewind. He thought back to times when he’d been happy, realising that at the time he hadn’t felt happy: it was only in retrospect that it dawned on him. Why was that? He sat back with eyes closed. Incredible String Band: The Half-Remarkable Question’. Segue to Brian Eno: ‘Everything Merges with the Night’. He saw Janice Playfair the way she’d been the night she’d laid him out, the night that had changed everything. And he saw Alec Chisholm, who’d walked away from school one day and never been seen again. He didn’t have Alec’s face, just a vague outline and a way of standing, of composing himself. Alec the brainy one, the one who was going to go far.

  Only nobody’d expected him to go the way he did.

  Without opening his eyes, Rebus knew Jack Morton was seated in the chair across from him. Could Jack hear the music? He never spoke, so it was hard to know if sounds meant anything to him. He was waiting for the track called ‘Bogeyman’; listening and waiting …

  It was nearly dawn when, on her way back from the toilet, Patience removed the headphones from his sleeping form and threw a blanket over him.

  6

  There were three men in the room, all in uniform, all wanting to hit Cary Oakes. He could see it in their eyes, in the way they stood half-tensed, cheekbones working at wads of gum. He made a sudden movement, but only stretching his leg
s out, shifting his weight on the chair, arching his head back so it caught the full glare of the sun, streaming through the high window. Bathed in heat and light, he felt the smile stretch across his face. His mother had always told him, ‘Your face shines when you smile, Cary.’ Crazy old woman, even back then. She’d had one of those double sinks in the kitchen, with a mangle you could fix between them. Wash the clothes in one sink, then through the mangle into the other. He’d stuck the tips of his fingers against the rollers once, started cranking the handle until it hurt.

  Three prison guards: that’s what they reckoned Cary Oakes was worth. Three guards, and chains for his legs and arms.

  ‘Hey, guys,’ he said, pointing his chin at them. ‘Take your best shot.’

  ‘Can it, Oakes.’

  Cary Oakes grinned again. He’d forced a reaction: of such small victories were his days made. The guard who’d spoken, the one with the tag identifying him as SAUNDERS, did tend towards the excitable. Oakes narrowed his eyes and imagined the moustached face pressed against a mangle, imagined the strength needed to force that face all the way through. Oakes rubbed his stomach; not so much as an ounce of flab there, despite the food they tried to serve him. He stuck to vegetables and fruit, water and juices. Had to keep the brain in gear. A lot of the other prisoners, they’d slipped into neutral, engines revving but heading nowhere. A stretch of confinement could do that to you, make you start believing things that weren’t true. Oakes kept up with events, had magazine and newspaper subscriptions, watched current affairs on TV and avoided everything else, except maybe a little sport. But even sport was a kind of novocaine. Instead of watching the screen, he watched the other faces, saw them heavy-lidded, no need to concentrate, like babies being spoon-fed contentment, bellies and brains filled to capacity with warmed-over gunk.

  He started whistling a Beatles song: ‘Good Day, Sunshine’, wondering if any of the guards would know it. Potential for another reaction. But then the door opened and his attorney came in. His fifth lawyer in sixteen years, not a bad average, batting 300. This lawyer was young—mid-twenties—and wore blue blazers with cream slacks, a combination which made him look like a kid trying on his dad’s clothes. The blazers had brass-effect buttons and intricate designs on the breast pocket.