by Ian Rankin
Then he turned and walked away. He was worried though. If they were serious — whoever they were — when he was so far from solving the puzzle, how would they react if he got any closer? He stopped at the door.
‘By the way,’ he said, ‘your fag-end just set fire to that bin.’
Flower turned and saw that the contents of the waste-bin were indeed smouldering. He reached for some liquid to douse the fire.
He’d forgotten that it was whisky, not coffee, in his mug.
Rebus’s phone was ringing as he got home. It was Rico Briggs.
‘I had a word with a friend,’ he told Rebus. Rico never liked to say too much on the phone.
‘And?’
‘Be in the bus station at eleven.’
‘Tonight?’
‘Tonight.’
‘Whereabouts in the bus station?’
‘Just be there. You’ll pay him his share and mine.’
The line went dead.
24
At ten to eleven, Rebus was in the St Andrew’s Square bus station. A few early drunks had assembled for the last bus home. There was a pub in the bus station; it sounded busy. A man sprinted out of it, slipped in a patch of oil, and fell like a sniper’s bullet had got him. He got back to his feet in time to see his bus pull away, and started swearing. There was a gash in the knee of his trousers.
Exhaust fumes lay in heavy strata just above ground level. Rebus tried not to breathe too deeply as he walked up and down the ranks. A few teenagers were asleep on the precarious benches. An old man, looking dazed, crossed the concourse dressed in a duffel coat, pyjamas and slippers. The slippers looked brand new, maybe a Christmas present.
‘Where are you?’ Rebus hissed, stamping his feet. He pushed his hands deeper into his pockets and walked the ranks again.
‘Sit down,’ a voice said.
Rebus looked down at the figure. He’d thought the man was asleep, arms folded, head tucked into the front of his jacket. He was sitting at the last rank. There was a bus there, but with its lights off.
Rebus sat down, and the man looked up at him. He had greasy brown hair which fell over one eye, and he could have done with a shave. There was a small scar, no more than a nick, below his right eye. The eyes were piercing blue with long lashes. When he spoke, Rebus saw there was a tooth missing from the front of his mouth.
‘Money.’
‘You’re Rico’s friend?’
The man nodded. ‘Money,’ he repeated.
Rebus showed him two twenties, then handed them over. ‘He said half for him.’
‘He’ll get half.’ The voice was a lazy west coast drawl. ‘You want to know about Saughton?’
‘A man killed himself with a shotgun. He was fresh out of Saughton.’
‘Which bit?’
‘C Hall.’
The man shook his head. ‘Can’t help you then.’
A driver had come over to the bus, cashbox in hand. He opened the doors and went inside, closing them after him. Lights came on all the way up the bus.
‘What do you mean?’
‘Just what I say. I can’t help.’
The engine started up, spewing fumes. A couple of people had joined the queue and were wondering whether to jump ahead of the two seated down-and-outs.
‘Why not?’
‘Never really knew anyone in C Hall.’ The man stood up, Rebus rising with him. ‘This is my bus.’
‘Wait a minute.’
The man turned to him. The bus doors were opening, the people behind wanting to be in the warm. ‘Ask Gerry Dip.’
‘Gerry Dip?’
‘He was in C Hall, came out a few weeks back.’
‘Where can I find him?’
‘Dipping fish, that’s how he got the name.’ The man climbed on to the platform. ‘I hear he’s working in a chip shop on Easter Road.’
Every chip shop in Scotland was at its busiest after the pubs had emptied. Even the bad ones, the ones with bony fish and rubber batter, had queues. Rebus took one look at the wares on display in the second chip shop he tried, and decided he would go without.
There was a queue almost out the door, but he walked to the front, ignoring the stares. A teenage girl was serving, mouth open in concentration.
‘Salt and sauce?’ she asked the customer.
‘Is Gerry in?’ Rebus asked.
She nodded further along the counter. There was a small man there dipping fish in a bucket of batter before tossing them into the fryer.
‘Gerry?’ Rebus asked. The man shook his head and pointed towards the back of the narrow shop, where a very tall, very skinny young man wearing a white cotton apron was playing the video machine.
It was one of those kick-and-chop games, the enemy bounding into view only long enough to be taken out again by the snarling cartoon hero.
‘Gerry Dip?’ Rebus said.
The player was in his mid-twenties, with cropped black hair and a nose-stud. His bare arms sported tattoos, and there were more on the backs of his hands. On his right wrist was a tattooed watch, the hands of which pointed to twelve. Rebus checked his own watch and saw that Gerry Dip’s was dead-on.
Rebus saw that Dip was watching him in the screen’s reflection. ‘Not many people call me that,’ he said.
‘I’m a friend of a friend, someone you knew in Saughton. He said you could maybe help me. There’d be a drink in it.’
‘How big a drink?’
Rebus had been to a cash machine. He laid a crisp twenty on the console. Maybe it affected Dip’s concentration. A landmine tore the arms and legs off his man. The Game Over message flashed, and a digitised voice said, ‘Feed … Money … Me … Hungry.’
Gerry Dip palmed the note. ‘Let’s retire to my office.’
He led Rebus behind the counter and told the fish batterer he’d swop places in five minutes. Then he pushed open a door and led Rebus into a kitchen-cum-storeroom. Sacks of potatoes waited to be peeled, and two large freezers hummed.
‘I hope you’re not Environmental Health,’ Gerry Dip said, getting a glass of water from the sink and gulping it. ‘Actually, I know what you are, it gets so you can smell it after a while.’
Rebus let the remark go. ‘A man was released from C Hall a couple of weeks back. He stuck a gun into his — ’
‘Wee Shug.’ Dip nodded. ‘I knew him, played cards a few times, talked about telly and the football.’ Dip refilled his glass. ‘You’re up from six in the morning till nine at night, lights-out isn’t till ten. You get to know people. Plus I worked with him in the upholstery workshop. He said he’d come down the chippie and see me — then I read about him in the papers.’
‘Did you know he was ill?’
‘He saw the doctor a lot, never talked about it though. I know he had some medicine: we wanted him to hand it round so we could get a buzz. What was wrong with him?’
‘Cancer.’
‘That why he topped himself?’
‘Could be.’
‘Well, if you want to know about Wee Shug, you should talk to his cell-mate. Now there was a fucking character. Hoity-toity, stayed in his cell even when he didn’t need to.’
Big Jim Flett had mentioned a cell-mate; Rebus saw suddenly why Flett had been relieved at the end of their interview.
‘Gerry, what was Wee Shug in for?’
‘Housebreaking.’
‘You sure about that?’
‘That’s what I heard.’
‘Not rape?’
‘What?’
No, thought Rebus, because rapists are usually kept away from the other prisoners. But the governor had let it slip that Wee Shug shared a cell.
‘He wasn’t inside for rape,’ Gerry Dip said.
‘How can you be sure?’
‘We’d’ve known.’
‘He’s not likely to have told you himself.’
‘No, but the screws would have, somebody would have. It’s one secret you can’t have in the nick.’
‘Unless,’ Rebu
s said quietly, ‘nobody wanted you to know.’
25
Rebus called CID from a phone box near St Leonard’s and, without identifying himself, asked to speak to either DS Holmes or DC Clarke.
It was a morning of heavy haar, floating across the city in a wet cloud from the coast. The kind of morning where you could imagine yourself back in time, a horse and coach clopping out of the mist rather than cars with their headlights on full. Rebus’s skin and clothes were damp to the touch.
‘DC Clarke speaking.’
‘It’s me. I want you to look up a name on the computer.’
‘Well, it’s a bit chaotic here just now. There was a small fire last night, a waste-bin went up. It’s a bit of a mystery, nobody was here at the time.’
‘Dear me.’
‘The chief super’s ordered an investigation. Meantime, half the office is off limits.’
‘But the computer system’s OK?’
‘The only damage is the bin and the desk next to it. It was Inspector Flower found the blaze.’
‘Really?’
‘He threw a coat over the bin to snuff it out. It was Holmes’s coat.’
‘The one Nell gave him for Christmas?’
‘That’s the one. What’s the name you want checking?’
‘Charters.’ He spelt it for her. ‘I don’t have a first name, but he’s serving time in Saughton. I’d like his record. I’m in a callbox about a hundred yards away. There’s a cafe across from the DIY store, I’ll wait for you there.’
‘I’ll be as quick as I can.’
‘The dough-rings are on me.’
But when Siobhan Clarke finally turned up at the cafe, she ordered a fried-egg sandwich instead, then handed Rebus a manila envelope.
‘Did anyone see you at the computer?’
‘I don’t think so.’
‘Watch your back. It’s not just the Farmer — Flower’s up to something, too.’
‘What?’
‘Fire-raising for a start.’ Rebus opened the envelope and read through the contents. Clarke’s food arrived and she bit into it, dripping yolk on to the plate.
“‘Derwood Charters”,’ Rebus read aloud, ‘“age forty-six, divorced, ex-company director. Found guilty of fraud, serving three years of a six-year sentence at HMP Edinburgh. Home address in Cramond till the place had to be sold. Date of birth … name of solicitor … no wife or next of kin”.’ Rebus skipped through what little else there was. ‘It’s a bit bald, isn’t it?’
‘A bit.’
‘Like somebody’s been into the computer and shorn it. Which station dealt with him?’ He looked through the notes again. ‘Well, well: St Leonard’s.’
‘But before our time?’
Rebus nodded. ‘I was still at Great London Road. But then so was Chief Inspector Lauderdale, yet his name’s down here as part of the team.’ He was thoughtful for a moment. ‘Right, what I want you to do is — ’
‘Go back to the station and pull the case-notes out of the vault?’
‘I know it’s asking a lot.’
‘Only my career.’
But he knew she’d do it anyway.
Rebus waited over an hour for Clarke to return. She carried a supermarket carrier-bag with her, and laid it on the floor next to him. He ordered her a mug of tea; his own stomach was swilling with the stuff.
‘It wasn’t where it should have been,’ she told him. ‘It had been put back out of order.’
‘Like someone wanted to hide it?’
‘But without being too obvious. There are so many reports in the vault, it’s easy for one to disappear if it’s filed in the wrong place.’
‘Did anyone see you?’
‘Brian came to see what I was up to. I got him to keep an eye out for anyone else. Meantime, the sooner you read the case-notes, the sooner I can put them back.’
The woman who ran the cafe brought Siobhan Clarke’s tea, and saw Rebus lift a heavy folder out of the carrier-bag.
‘Thinking of taking up residence?’ she asked him.
‘I’m doing you a favour,’ he said, glancing at all the empty tables. ‘Nobody comes into an empty cafe.’
‘You did,’ she replied.
Rebus just smiled and opened the case-notes, starting to read.
At lunchtime, Rebus made a dentist’s appointment.
When he explained the problem, the receptionist asked him to hold the line. When she came back, she told him Dr Keene could squeeze him in at five.
The surgery was in a substantial semi-detached property on Inverleith Row, facing the entrance to the Botanic Gardens. Rebus was in a sweat as he sat in the waiting room. There was a woman in there with him, and he was relieved when she was called first. But that left only him. His ears seemed more receptive than usual. He could hear the whine of a drill, the clatter of metal probes being dropped on to trays. When the woman patient came out, she walked to the reception desk to make another appointment. The dentist was with her. Then the dentist turned and, smiling, came to the waiting-room doorway.
‘Mr Rebus? Through here, please.’
He wore a white coat and half-moon glasses, and Rebus judged him to be in his late fifties.
‘Sit down, please,’ Dr Keene said, washing his hands. ‘Some swelling around the mouth?’
Rebus sat on the chair and swung his legs up on to it, his hands gripping the armrests. Dr Keene came over.
‘Now, just lie back and try to relax.’ Rebus could hear his own hoarse breathing. ‘That’s it.’ The dentist used an electric foot-switch to set the chair back so it was nearly flat, and to raise it up. He angled the lamp over the chair and switched it on. ‘We’ll just take a look.’ He swivelled a tray of dental tools towards him and sat down on a high chair by Rebus’s side.
‘Open wide.’
There was music playing. Radio Two, the airwaves’ answer to a placebo. Rebus opened his eyes and stared at the ceiling. There was a blown-up photograph there, a huge black and white aerial shot of Edinburgh, from Trinity in the north to as far south as the Braid Hills. He started to map out the streets in his mind.
‘Looks like a wee abscess,’ the dentist was saying. He put down one tool and reached for another, tapping it against one of Rebus’s teeth. ‘Feel anything?’ Rebus shook his head. The assistant had joined them. Dr Keene said a few things to her in a language the patient wasn’t supposed to understand, then started packing Rebus’s mouth with cotton.
‘What I’m going to do is drill into the tooth from behind, to try to drain off the poison. That’ll release the pressure. The tooth is pretty well dead anyway, I’ll do a root canal later. But for now the abscess needs to drain.’
Rebus could feel sweat on his forehead. A tube was being placed in his mouth, hoovering up what saliva there was.
‘A little injection first. It’ll take a minute or two to take.’
Rebus stared at the ceiling. There’s Calton Hill, where Davey Soutar ended up. There’s St Leonard’s … and Great London Road. Hyde’s Club was just down there. Ooyah! There’s Stenhouse, where Willie and Dixie lived. You could see Saughton Jail quite clearly. And Warrender School, where McAnally blew his head off. He had a sense of the way the streets interconnected, and with them the lives of the people who lived and died there. Willie and Dixie had known Kirstie Kennedy, whose father was Lord Provost. McAnally had sought out a councillor as witness to his act of self-destruction. The city might cover a fair old area, its population might be half a million, but you couldn’t deny how it all twisted together, all the crisscrossed lines which gave the structure its solidity …
‘Now,’ the dentist was saying, ‘you might feel some discomfort at first …’
Rebus raced up and down the streets. Marchmont, where he lived; Tollcross, Tresa McAnally’s home; South Gyle, only just taking off when the photograph was taken. There was no sign of the newer building work around the town. He saw holes in the ground and areas of wasteland where now there were structures and roads. And Jesus
Christ Almighty it was hurting!
‘Ah,’ Dr Keene said at last, ‘there we are.’ Rebus could feel something nasty trickling down his throat. The pressure beneath his nose was easing. Like bleeding a radiator, he thought. ‘Drill into the poison,’ the dentist was saying, almost to himself, ‘and you relieve the pressure.’
Yes, Rebus thought, that was absolutely right.
The dentist gave the rest of his mouth a once-over. The assistant had a card in her hand and was writing on it as Dr Keene recited a litany of decay.
‘I won’t do any of these fillings today,’ he said to Rebus’s relief.
Eventually he was allowed to rinse and spit, and the assistant removed the elasticated bib from around his neck. Rebus ran his tongue around his mouth. There was a gaping hole in the back of one of his front teeth.
‘We’ve got to let that drain, give it a few days. Once it’s drained, I can do the root canal. All right?’ And he smiled at Rebus. ‘Incidentally, when did you last have your teeth checked?’
‘Eleven, twelve years ago.’
The dentist shook his head.
‘I’ll make up your appointments,’ the assistant said, leaving the room. Dr Keene removed his latex gloves and went to wash his hands.
‘Now that we all wear gloves,’ he said, ‘I don’t really need to wash them. But I’ve done it for thirty years, hard to break the habit.’
‘You wear the gloves because of HIV?’
‘Yes. Well, goodbye then, Mr — ’
‘Inspector Rebus, actually.’
‘Oh?’
‘I wonder if I might have a word?’ Rebus knew he was mumbling — the anaesthetic had frozen his mouth. But Dr Keene had no trouble understanding him.
‘You mean officially?’
‘Sort of. I believe you know a man called Derwood Charters?’
Dr Keene snorted and started rearranging his instruments.
‘I’ll take that as a yes,’ Rebus said.
‘Very much to my cost. Like you, he walked into my surgery one day requiring treatment. Then I bumped into him socially. We met a few more times, and he put a proposition to me.’