by Ian Rankin
‘It all goes through the taxi firm,’ she explained, ‘so this is my treat. Just sign out of the rooms when you’re finished, they’ll send the bill to Joe’s Cabs.’
‘Your usual rooms, Ms Cudden,’ the clerk said, handing over the keys, ‘plus one a few doors further along.’
Jack had been looking through the hotel directory. ‘Sauna, health club, weight gym. We should fit right in, John.’
‘It’s all oil execs,’ Eve said, leading them to the lifts. ‘They like that kind of thing. Keeps them fit enough to handle the hokey-cokey. And I don’t mean the dance.’
‘Do you sell everything direct to Fuller and Stemmons?’ Rebus asked.
Eve stifled a yawn. ‘You mean, do I deal myself?’
‘Yes.’
‘Would I be that stupid?’
‘What about the punters – any names?’
She shook her head, smiled tiredly. ‘You never stop, do you?’
‘It takes my mind off things.’ Specifically: Bible John, Johnny Bible … out there somewhere, and maybe not so very far away …
She handed their room keys to Rebus and Jack. ‘Sleep well, boys. I’ll probably be long gone when you wake up … and I won’t be coming back.’
Rebus nodded. ‘How much will you be taking with you?’
‘About thirty-eight thou.’
‘A decent skim.’
‘Decent profits all round.’
‘How soon till Uncle Joe finds out about Stanley?’
‘Well, Malcolm won’t be in a hurry to tell him, and Joe’s used to him disappearing for a day or two on the trot… With any luck, I won’t even be in the country when the bomb goes off.’
‘You look the lucky type to me.’
They left the lift at the third floor and checked the numbers on their keys. Rebus ended up next door to Eve: Stanley’s old room. Jack was two doors further down.
Stanley’s old room was a good size and boasted what Rebus guessed were the usual corporate embellishments: mini-bar, trouser press, a little saucer of chocolates on the pillow, a bathrobe laid out on the turned-down bed. There was a notice clipped to the robe. It asked him not to take it home with him. If he wanted to, he could purchase one from the health club. ‘Thank you for being a considerate guest.’
The considerate guest made himself a cup of Café Hag. There was a price list on top of the mini-bar, detailing the delights within. He stuck it in a drawer. The wardrobe boasted a mini-safe, so he took the mini-bar key and locked it inside. Another barrier for him to get past, another chance to change his mind if he really wanted that drink.
Meantime, the coffee tasted fine. He had a shower, wrapped himself in the bathrobe, then sat on his bed and stared at the connecting door. Of course, there would have to be a connecting door: couldn’t have Stanley hopping around the corridor at all hours. There was a simple lock his side, as there would be on the other. He wondered what he would find if he unlocked the door: would Eve’s be standing open? If he knocked, would she let him in? What about if she knocked? He turned his eyes from the door, and they settled on the mini-bar. He felt peckish – there would be nuts and crisps inside. Maybe he could …? No, no, no. He turned his attention back to the connecting door, listened hard, couldn’t hear any movement from Eve’s room. Maybe she was already asleep – early start and all that. He found he wasn’t feeling tired any more. Now he was here, he wanted to get to work. He pulled open his curtains. It had started to rain, the tarmac glistening and black like the back of a huge fat beetle. Rebus pulled a chair over to the window. Wind was driving the rain, making shifting patterns in the sodium light. As he stared, the rain began to resemble smoke, billowing out of the darkness. The car park below was half full, the cars huddled like cattle while their owners stayed snug and dry.
Johnny Bible was out there, probably in Aberdeen, probably connected to the oil industry. He thought about the people he’d met these past days, everyone from Major Weir to Walt the tour guide. It was ironic that the person whose case had brought him here – Allan Mitchison – was not only connected to oil but was also the only candidate he could rule out, being long dead by the time Vanessa Holden met her killer. Rebus felt guilty about Mitchison. His case was becoming swamped by the serial killings. It was a job, something Rebus had to do. But it wasn’t wedged in his throat the way the Johnny Bible case was, something he had either to cough up or choke on.
But he wasn’t the only one with an interest in Johnny. Someone had broken into his flat. Someone had been checking library records. Someone using a false identity. Someone with something to hide. Not a reporter, not another policeman. Could Bible John really be out there still? Dormant somewhere until brought to life by Johnny Bible? Enraged by the act of imitation, by its temerity and the cold fact that it brought the original case back up into the light? Not only enraged, but feeling endangered, too – externally and internally: fear of being recognised and caught; fear of not being the bogeyman any longer.
A new bogeyman for the nineties, someone to be scared of again. One mythology erased and replaced by another.
Yes, Rebus could feel it. He could sense Bible John’s hostility to the young pretender. No flattery in imitation, none at all …
And he knows where I live, Rebus thought. He’s been there, touched my obsession, and wondered how far I’m willing to take it. But why? Why would he place himself in danger like that, breaking into a flat in the middle of the day? Looking for what exactly? Looking for something in particular? But what? Rebus turned the question over in his mind, wondered if a drink would help, got as far as the safe before turning back, standing there in the middle of the room, his whole body crackling with need.
The hotel felt asleep; easy to imagine the whole country asleep and dreaming blameless dreams. Stemmons and Fuller, Uncle Joe, Major Weir, Johnny Bible … everyone was innocent in sleep. Rebus walked over to the connecting door and unlocked it. Eve’s door was slightly ajar. Silently, he pushed it wide open. Her room was in darkness, curtains closed. Light from his own room lay like an arrow along the floor, pointing towards the king-size bed. She lay on her side, one arm on top of the covers. Her eyes were closed. He took one step into her room, not merely a voyeur now but an intruder. Then he just stood there, watching her. Maybe he’d have stayed that way for long minutes.
‘Wondered how long it would take you,’ she said.
Rebus walked across to her bed. She reached both arms up to him. She was naked beneath the covers, warm and sweet-smelling. He sat down on the bed, took her hands in his.
‘Eve,’ he said quietly, ‘I need one favour from you before you go.’
She sat up. ‘Not counting this?’
‘Not counting this.’
‘What?’
‘I want you to phone Judd Fuller. Tell him you need to see him.’
‘You should stay away from him.’
‘I know.’
She sighed. ‘But you can’t?’ He nodded, and she touched his cheek with the back of her hand. ‘OK, but now I want a favour in return.’
‘What?’
‘Take the rest of the night off,’ she said, pulling him towards her.
He woke up alone in her bed, and it was morning. He checked to see if she’d left a note or anything, but of course she hadn’t: she wasn’t the type.
He walked through the open doorway and locked his door after him, then switched off the lights in his room. There was a knock at his door: Jack. Rebus pulled on pants and trousers and was halfway to the door when he remembered something. He walked back to the bed and removed the chocolates from the pillow, then pulled the covers down, messing them up. He surveyed the scene, punched a head-shaped dent in one pillow, then answered the door.
And it wasn’t Jack at all. It was one of the hotel staff, carrying a tray.
‘Morning, sir.’ Rebus stood aside to let him in. ‘Sorry if I woke you. Miss Cudden specified the time.’
‘That’s OK.’ Rebus watched the young man slide the tray on to
the table by the window.
‘Would you like me to open it?’ Meaning the half bottle of champagne resting in an ice-bucket. There was a jug of fresh orange juice, a crystal glass, and a folded copy of the morning’s Press & Journal. In a slim porcelain vase stood a single red carnation.
‘No.’ Rebus lifted the bucket. ‘This, you can take away. The rest is fine.’
‘Yes, sir. If you’ll just sign …?’
Rebus took the proffered pen, and added a hefty tip to the bill. Fuck it, Uncle Joe was paying. The young man broke into a big grin, making Rebus wish he was this generous every morning.
‘Thank you, sir.’
When he’d gone, Rebus poured a glass of juice. The fresh-squeezed stuff, cost a fortune in the supermarket. Outside, the roads were still damp, and there was plenty of cloud overhead, but the sky looked like it might break into a grin of its own before the morning was out. A light aircraft took off from Dyce, probably Shetland-bound. Rebus looked at his watch, then called Jack’s room. Jack answered with a noise somewhere between an inquiry and an oath.
‘Your morning alarm call,’ Rebus trilled.
‘Fuck off.’
‘Come by for orange juice and coffee.’
‘Give me five minutes.’
Rebus said that was the least he could do. Next he tried phoning Siobhan at home – got her machine. Tried her at St Leonard’s, but she wasn’t there. He knew she wouldn’t be slow in going about the work he’d given her, but he wanted to stick close to her, needed to know when she got a result. He put down the phone and looked at the tray again, then smiled.
Eve had left him a message after all.
The dining room was quiet, most tables taken by single men, some of them already at work on portable phones and laptops. Rebus and Jack got stuck in – juice and cornflakes, then the Full Highland Breakfast with a big pot of tea.
Jack tapped his watch. ‘Quarter of an hour from now, Ancram’s going to hit the roof.’
‘Might knock some sense into him.’ Rebus scraped a pat of butter on to his toast. Five-star hotel, but the toast was still cold.
‘So what’s our plan of attack?’
‘I’m looking for a girl, she’s in photos with Allan Mitchison, an environmental protester.’
‘Where do we start?’
‘You sure you want in on this?’ Rebus looked around the dining room. ‘You could spend the day here, try the health club, watch a film … It’s all on Uncle Joe.’
‘John, I’m sticking by you.’ Jack paused. ‘As a friend, not Ancram’s dog’s-body.’
‘In that case, our first port of call’s the Exhibition Centre. Now eat up, it’s going to be a long day, believe me.’
‘One question.’
‘What?’
‘How come you got the orange juice this morning?’
The Exhibition Centre was almost deserted. The various stalls and stands – many of them, as Rebus now knew, designed by Johnny Bible’s fourth victim – had been dismantled and taken away, the floors hoovered and polished. There were no demonstrators outside, no inflatable whale. They asked to speak to someone in charge, and were eventually taken to an office where a brisk, bespectacled woman introduced herself as ‘the Deputy’ and asked them how she could help.
‘The North Sea Conference,’ Rebus explained, ‘you had a bit of trouble with protesters.’
She smiled, her mind on other things. ‘Bit late to do anything about that, isn’t it?’ She moved some papers around her desk, looking for something.
‘I’m interested in one particular protester. What was the name of the group?’
‘It wasn’t that organised, Inspector. They came from all over: Friends of the Earth, Greenpeace, Save the Whale, God alone knows.’
‘Did they cause any trouble?’
‘Nothing we couldn’t handle.’ Another frozen smile. But she was looking harassed: she really had misplaced something. Rebus got to his feet.
‘Well, sorry to trouble you.’
‘No trouble. Sorry I can’t help.’
‘Don’t worry about it.’
Rebus turned to go. Jack bent down and retrieved a sheet of paper from the floor, handed it to her.
‘Thanks,’ she said. Then she followed them out of her office. ‘Look, a local pressure group was responsible for the march on the Saturday.’
‘What march?’
‘It ended at Duthie Park, there was some music afterwards.’
Rebus nodded: Dancing Pigs. The day he’d visited Bannock.
‘I can give you their phone number,’ she said. The smile was human now.
Rebus telephoned the group’s headquarters.
‘I’m looking for a friend of Allan Mitchison’s. I don’t know her name, but she’s got short fair hair, with some of it braided, you know, with beads and stuff. One braid hangs down past her forehead to her nose. Sort of an American accent, I think.’
‘And who might you be?’ The voice was cultured; for some reason, Rebus visualised the speaker sporting a beard, but it wasn’t the kilted Jerry Garcia, different accent.
‘My name’s Detective Inspector John Rebus. You know Allan Mitchison is dead?’
A pause, then an exhalation: cigarette smoke. ‘I heard. Bloody shame.’
‘Did you know him well?’ Rebus was trying to recall the faces in the photographs.
‘He was the shy type. Only met him a couple of times. Big fan of Dancing Pigs, that’s why he tried so bloody hard to get them to top the bill. I was amazed when it worked. He bombarded them with letters, you know. Maybe a hundred or more, probably wore down their resistance.’
‘And his girlfriend’s name?’
‘Not given out to strangers, I’m afraid. I mean, I’ve only your word for it you’re a police officer.’
‘I could come over —’
‘I don’t think so.’
‘Look, I’d really like to talk to you …’
But the telephone was dead.
‘Want to take a run down there?’ Jack suggested.
Rebus shook his head. ‘He won’t tell us anything he doesn’t want to. Besides, I’ve got the feeling by the time we got there he’d have gone out for the day. Can’t afford to waste time.’
Rebus tapped his pen against his teeth. They were back in his bedroom. The telephone had a speaker, and he’d kept it on so Jack could hear. Jack was helping himself to last night’s chocolates.
‘Local cops,’ Rebus said, picking up the receiver. ‘That gig was probably licensed, maybe Queen Street will have records of other organisers.’
‘Worth a go,’ Jack agreed, plugging in the kettle.
So Rebus spent twenty minutes knowing how a pinball feels, as he was shunted from one office to another. He was pretending to be a Trading Standards Officer, interested in bootleggers, following up on an operation at an earlier Dancing Pigs concert. Jack nodded his approval: not a bad story.
‘Yes, John Baxter here, City of Edinburgh Trading Standards. I was just explaining to your colleague …’ And off he went again. When he was passed on to yet another voice, and recognised it as belonging to the first person he’d spoken to, he slammed down the phone.
‘They couldn’t organise the proverbial piss-up.’
Jack handed him a cup of tea. ‘End of the road?’
‘No chance.’ Rebus consulted his notebook, picked up the phone again and was put through to Stuart Minchell at T-Bird Oil.
‘Inspector, what a pleasant surprise.’
‘Sorry to keep pestering you, Mr Minchell.’
‘How’s your investigation?’
‘To be honest, I could use a bit of help.’
‘Fire away.’
‘It’s about Bannock. The day I went out there, some protesters were brought aboard.’
‘Yes, I heard. Handcuffed themselves to the rails.’ Minchell sounded amused. Rebus remembered the platform, the strong gusts, the way his hard-hat wouldn’t stay on, and the helicopter overhead, filming everything …
>
‘I was wondering what happened to the protesters. I mean, were they placed under arrest?’ He knew they weren’t: a couple of them had been at the concert.
‘Best person to ask would be Hayden Fletcher.’
‘Do you think you could ask for me, sir? On the quiet, as it were.’
‘I suppose so. Give me your number in Edinburgh.’
‘That’s all right, I’ll call you back … say, twenty minutes?’ Rebus glanced towards the window: he could almost see the T-Bird headquarters from here.
‘Depends if I can find anyone.’
‘I’ll try again in twenty minutes. Oh, and Mr Minchell?’
‘Yes?’
‘If you should need to speak to Bannock, could you put a question from me to Willie Ford?’
‘What’s the question?’
‘I want to know if he knew Allan Mitchison had a girlfriend, blonde with braided hair.’
‘Braided hair.’ Minchell was writing it down. ‘Can do.’
‘If so, I’d like her name, and an address if possible.’ Rebus thought of something else. ‘When the protesters came to your headquarters, you had them videoed, didn’t you?’
‘I don’t remember.’
‘Could you find out? It would be security, wouldn’t it?’
‘Do I still have twenty minutes for all this?’
Rebus smiled. ‘No, sir. Let’s make it half an hour.’
Rebus put down the phone and drained his tea.
‘How about another phone call now?’ Jack asked.
‘Who to?’
‘Chick Ancram.’
‘Jack, look at me.’ Rebus pointed to his face. ‘Could a man this ill possibly pick up the telephone?’
‘You’ll swing.’
‘Like a pendulum do.’
Rebus gave Stuart Minchell forty minutes.
‘You know, Inspector, you make working for the Major seem like a picnic by comparison.’
‘Glad to be of service, sir. What have you got?’
‘Just about everything.’ A rustle of paper. ‘No, the protesters weren’t arrested.’
‘Isn’t that a bit generous, under the circumstances?’
‘It would only have generated more bad publicity.’
