by Ian Rankin
‘With pleasure,’ Hanson said with a smile.
Back at St Leonards, Rebus was passing the front desk when he saw the duty sergeant emerging from the comms room, shaking his head in disbelief. ‘I’m not that late,’ Rebus said.
‘It’s not that, John. It’s Mother Hubbard.’
Now Rebus knew: Edwina Hubbard from down the road. Two or three times a week she would call to report some imagined mischief.
‘What is it this time?’ Rebus asked. ‘The peeping postmen or the disappearing dustbins?’
‘Christmas trees,’ the sergeant said. ‘Being collected and taken away.’
‘And did you explain to her that it happens every year, courtesy of our caring, sharing council?’
The sergeant nodded. ‘Thing is, she says they’re early. And using a double-decker bus.’
‘A bus?’ Rebus laughed. ‘Firs, please.’
The sergeant laughed too, turning to retreat into the comms room. ‘It gets better,’ he said. ‘The bus is covered in Christmas decorations.’
Rebus was still laughing as he climbed the stairs. After the morning he’d had, he needed something to cheer him up. Then he froze. A Christmas bus … Kiddie Wonderland. Collecting Christmas trees … Two men running around Edinburgh, looking for a tree … The name flashed from brain to mouth.
‘Neil Bryant!’ Rebus took the stairs two at a time, sat down at a computer and typed in Bryant’s name. Ex-bouncer, convictions for violence. Clever with it. The other man, the taller one, had looked like bouncer material too. And hadn’t Sash Hooper run a nightclub a few years back? Sash … ready to take an unlikely turn as Santa on the bus.
‘Santa,’ Rebus hissed. Then he was back downstairs and in the comms room, grabbing the sergeant’s arm.
‘The bus with the trees,’ he said. ‘Where did she see it?’
Rink.
The bus was full of trees, both decks. But finally they’d found one with that single word scratched on its trunk.
Rink.
The way Bryant had explained it to Sash Hooper, they needed the bus so they could collect as many trees as possible, as quickly as possible. Eventually Hooper had seen the wisdom of the plan. He had got a buyer for the necklace, but the sale had to be quick.
Rink.
Well it didn’t take a genius, did it? They’d turned the bus round and headed for Leith Links. The costume had been Bryant’s idea too, when he’d heard that the First Minister was throwing a party. Send someone in there dressed as Santa, they could walk out with anything they liked. He’d gone to Sash with the idea, and Sash had suggested Benny Welsh, a pretty good housebreaker in his time, now down on his luck. Benny had been good as gold – until he’d found out how much the necklace was worth. After which he’d tried upping out. Wasn’t going to hand it over until they had a deal.
Three of them now – Sash, Malky and Bryant – slipping and sliding across the ice. Looking for the telltale dark patch, finding it. Benny had cut himself a hole, stuffed the necklace in, then poured in some water, letting it freeze over again. Sash had his penknife out. It took a while, the day darkening around them.
‘Give me the knife,’ Malky said, chipping away with it.
‘Watch the blade doesn’t snap,’ Sash Hooper warned, as if the knife were somehow more precious than the necklace. Eventually all three men clambered to their feet, Hooper holding the necklace, examining it. A string of shimmering diamonds, embracing a vast blood-red ruby. He actually gasped. They came off the ice and back on to solid earth. They were almost in the shadow of the bus before they noticed Rebus. And he wasn’t alone.
Two uniforms could be seen through the upper-deck windows. Two more were downstairs. Another was outside, circling the bus.
‘Nice little stocking-filler,’ Rebus said, motioning towards the necklace.
‘You got a warrant?’ Hooper asked.
‘Do I look as if I need one?’
‘You can’t just go trampling all over my bus. That’s private property.’ Hooper was attempting to slide the necklace into his pocket.
Malky tugged at Bryant’s sleeve. His eyes had widened. They were on the policeman who’d been circling the bus, the policeman who was now turning the handle that would open the vehicle’s luggage compartment. Bryant saw his friend’s look, and his own mouth dropped open in dismay.
‘Malky, for the love of God, tell me you didn’t …’
Hooper was still concentrating on protesting his innocence. He knew this was the most important speech he would ever make. He felt that if he could just get the words right, then maybe …
‘DI Rebus,’ the constable was saying. ‘Something here you should take a look at …’
And Hooper shifted his gaze and saw what everyone else was seeing. Benny Welsh, still dressed in the telltale red suit, lying at peace on the floor of the luggage bay.
Rebus turned to face the three men.
‘I’m guessing that means you’re Saint Nicked,’ he said.
Atonement
‘They’re dropping like flies.’
The man collapsed into another fit of coughing, doubling over in the tattered armchair. Rebus looked around him, but no one in the large, overheated room was paying the slightest attention. Some were watching a daytime nature programme, others dozing or staring out of the window. It was a large sash window – three windows actually, forming a bay. The paintwork looked new. Rebus thought he could smell fresh paint, its aroma not quite exhausted. There were other smells, too: the remains of a fish lunch; talcum powder and perfume; perished rubber. The redecorating did not stretch as far as the cornices and ceiling. The cornicing was elaborate, the design almost Celtic. The ceiling was pale green, a few veined cracks radiating from the central light fitting.
At one time, this would have been a fine private home, enjoyed by a bank manager and his growing family. Edinburgh had no shortage of these detached Victorian mansions. Some had been divided into flats, of course. Others were business HQs, or owned by large institutions and charities. Renshaw House, however, had become a care home for the elderly, which meant that the man in the armchair must be elderly. His name was Ken Flatley. When Rebus had first joined the police, Flatley had been a mentor of sorts. Not that the word ‘mentor’ would ever have been used between them: Rebus was a detective, Ken Flatley the uniform who manned the police station’s front desk. All the same, the older man had looked at the younger and understood – understood that tips and hints would be appreciated.
This had been in the early 1970s, the era of boot boys and pub rock: Rod Stewart in his tartan scarf, and Elton John telling teenagers that it was all right to fight on a Saturday night. One such altercation had put Ken Flatley behind the desk: suedeheads clashing after a football derby, Flatley between them quickly becoming their shared target, leaving him with a limp. He used a walking frame these days. His thick brown hair had never gone grey, so that strangers sometimes mistook it for a wig. The face below the low fringe was creased but resolute. Take away the walking frame, Rebus reckoned, and his friend would seem younger than himself.
They had lost touch for a number of years, reunited briefly at the funeral of Flatley’s wife Irma. But when Rebus had learned that Flatley had sold the bungalow in Prestonfield and moved to a nursing home, he’d arranged to visit. That first meeting had not started well, Ken asserting that he needed no pity.
‘I’m not here for that,’ Rebus had told him.
‘What then?’
‘Maybe I’m just on the lookout,’ Rebus had replied, scanning the room. Flatley had caught his meaning and laughed.
‘Aye, not too long till you’ll be joining me.’
It was a thought Rebus had been pushing away ever since. After all, he was in his late fifties, maybe only fifteen years younger than Flatley. And he lived alone. If anything happened … if his faculties started to fail or went into reverse … He had no family nearby, and though he would try to cope, try to do everything for himself, there was always the possibility
that he would not succeed. When he had first married and moved into the tenement flat where he still lived, there’d been a man on the top floor who’d lived alone. Rebus had always been slightly wary of this man, especially when his daughter Sammy had been young; hadn’t even bothered to attend the neighbour’s funeral. And yet now … now there were students and young couples in his tenement, and he himself had become the oldest inhabitant.
‘Dropping like flies,’ Flatley repeated, clutching the arms of the chair. It was his own chair, one of the few possessions he’d been allowed to bring with him from home. Much of the rest had been disposed of at auction, a daughter in Bristol taking only a few mementoes – photograph albums and some bone china. Asked if he had thought of going to stay nearer his daughter, Flatley had shaken his head vigorously.
‘Got her own life now,’ he’d insisted.
Now Rebus watched him as he wiped the back of one tremulous hand across his mouth. ‘How do you mean?’ he asked.
His friend leaned forward, inviting Rebus to do the same, until their heads were inches apart.
‘Faces in here,’ Flatley muttered, ‘they don’t last long.’
Rebus nodded as if he understood, but Flatley gave him the same hard gaze he’d given the young detective whenever Rebus had made some tiro’s error.
‘I don’t mean they just get old and peg it.’ He nodded towards an empty chair by the fireplace. ‘Mrs Edwards used to sit there. Sprightly, she was, when she came in here. Family said she couldn’t cope – what they meant was, they couldn’t cope. So in she comes and lights the place up … until last week. Ambulance came for her, and three days later they tell us she’s dead.’
‘Ken …’
‘She’s not the only one, John.’ Flatley’s voice was insistent, knowing the objection Rebus had been about to make. ‘Dot Parker took ill one day, died the next. Same with Manny Lehrer.’
‘You’re saying they’re being bumped off, one by one?’
‘It’s no joke, John.’
Rebus’s smile faded. ‘No, I’m sure it’s not. So what are we talking about here?’
‘I’m not sure … There was something in the paper recently about staff in care homes letting people die.’
‘Benign neglect?’
‘I don’t think “benign” enters into it.’
‘Are you saying they don’t feed you?’
‘Oh, they feed us all right … after a fashion.’
‘What then?’
‘You hear about it all the time, don’t you? Nurses who’re secretly poisoning their patients.’
‘Ken …’ The tone of warning had returned to Rebus’s voice. Flatley just stared at him and Rebus sighed, sitting back in his chair. ‘What is it you want me to do?’
‘I just thought someone should …’ The words trailed off.
‘You know, when someone dies unexpectedly, even if they’re old, there’s an autopsy.’
‘What if it’s not unexpected, though? They’ve been ill or frail … a pathologist is going to find what he expects to find. He’s not going to be as thorough as with a corpse with a knife in its back.’
Rebus held his hands up, palms towards his tormentor. He glanced around him, but no one seemed to have heard the outburst. ‘If it will help put your mind at rest,’ he said, ‘let me see what I can do.’
Some of the tension left Flatley’s face. He shifted his gaze floorwards. ‘Why do you keep coming here, John?’
‘Maybe I’m a fan of conspiracy theories.’
‘I’m serious.’ Flatley fixed him with a stare. ‘I mean, it’s good to have a visitor now and then … I just don’t see what you get out of it.’
‘Could be I’ve got a guilty conscience, Ken. All those years I never kept in touch.’
‘We have to share the dock then – I’m as guilty as you are.’
Rebus patted his friend’s leg. ‘Let me do some digging, see if someone really is doing a bit of drastic bed-clearing.’ He got to his feet. ‘And if I don’t find anything, will your mind be at rest?’
‘My mind gets too much bloody rest these days,’ Flatley snorted.
Rebus nodded slowly: maybe that’s the trouble, he thought to himself …
‘What exactly is it we’re being accused of, Inspector?’
Donald Morrison sat back in his black leather office chair. Rebus was seated at the other side of the desk. Diplomacy had never been his strong point, but all the same, he felt he’d presented the case fairly. Morrison, however, the owner of Renshaw House, was riled. Rebus could tell this because of the way the blood had risen to the man’s cheeks.
‘As I said, sir, I’m not here in any official capacity …’
‘But you are a police officer?’ Morrison waited for Rebus to nod agreement. ‘And you’re here to visit someone who was also a policeman.’ He forced the beginnings of a smile. ‘It seems Mr Flatley is finding it hard to give up his old job.’
Morrison rose from his chair and turned to face the window – a replica of the one in the communal sitting room. He clasped his hands behind his back and stared out at the expanse of mown lawn, broken only by a sundial at its centre. There were benches around its periphery, shaded by mature trees. He was broad-shouldered, had probably played rugby in his younger days. His hair was greying at the ears and temples, thinning on top. There were horizontal creases above the vents of his suit jacket.
‘He’s free to leave, you know,’ he said, patting one hand against the other. ‘Our waiting list is substantial.’
‘Of people wanting to leave?’
Morrison turned back to Rebus, tried out another smile on him. ‘Wanting to get in, Inspector. Time was, there were plenty of care homes, but not any more. So if Mr Flatley really isn’t happy here …’
‘Nobody’s saying he’s unhappy. He’s just worried.’
‘Of course he is.’ Morrison pulled out his chair and sat down again. ‘He’s surrounded by people who are not exactly in the first flush of youth. I’m afraid it’s part and parcel of the way of things, Inspector. People don’t come here to get younger and flourish – I only wish that were the case.’ He gave a slight shrug. ‘Mrs Edwards and Mrs Parker … Mr Lehrer … they were in their eighties, and hardly in the most robust health to begin with.’
‘Ken’s description of Mrs Edwards was “sprightly”.’
Morrison pondered this. ‘He saw what he wanted to see.’
‘You’re saying he fancied her?’
‘Age doesn’t always blinker the heart.’
‘And that’s why her death has hit him so hard?’
Morrison gave another shrug. ‘Do you think you can put Mr Flatley’s mind at rest, Inspector?’
‘I can try.’
Morrison bowed his head a little, satisfied at this outcome. ‘Mortality is sometimes a difficult concept even for the elderly.’
‘I don’t think it’s the concept that’s bothering Ken.’
‘You’re right, of course.’ Morrison had risen, indicating that the meeting was at its end. ‘It may not help that he doesn’t get many visitors.’
‘His daughter lives in England.’
‘He must have friends … ex-colleagues like yourself ?’
‘I’m not sure he wants them to see him in a care home.’
Morrison chose not to see this as a further slight. Instead he nodded slowly. ‘Self-reliance … it’s something we see a lot of: people too proud to ask for help, even when it’s needed.’ He held out his hand for Rebus to shake. Rebus took it.
‘Just out of curiosity,’ he asked, ‘what did they die of ?’
Morrison’s face darkened a little, the blood threatening to return to his cheeks. ‘Old age, Inspector, nothing more than that.’
‘Ken seemed to think they were taken to hospital.’
‘Yes?’
‘So they all died in hospital?’
‘That’s right. When a patron weakens dangerously, we’re duty-bound to seek medical attention for them.’
‘And I’m sure you do so conscientiously.’
‘We’d be closed down otherwise.’ Morrison reached out to open the door. ‘I wish I could feel that I’ve allayed your concerns, Inspector.’
‘I don’t have any concerns, Mr Morrison. Thanks for your time.’ Rebus was on the other side of the threshold when he stopped and turned. ‘I parked my car next to a silver Merc. Is it yours, by any chance?’
‘It’s mine.’ Morrison seemed to be waiting for something more, but Rebus just nodded thoughtfully. ‘Nice motor,’ he said, turning to leave.
Flatley was waiting for him at the main door. It stood open, letting some much-needed air into the place. Flatley was leaning heavily against his walking frame, but straightened up when he saw Rebus.
‘Keeping tabs on me, Ken?’ Rebus asked.
‘Just contemplating a nice long stroll.’
‘Anywhere in mind?’
‘Nearest pub’s in Marchmont.’
‘That’s a good half-mile. Maybe I’ll join you.’
Flatley’s mouth twitched. He looked down at the metal frame against which he leaned. ‘Maybe another time, eh? Did you get any joy from the commandant?’
‘You’re not a fan?’
Flatley wrinkled his nose. ‘He’s in it for the money, same as the rest of them.’
‘I think there’s probably better money out there somewhere.’
‘Maybe so, but something tells me he’s not giving himself the same minimum wage the rest of the staff have to swallow.’
‘Steady, Ken, you’re choking the life out of that thing.’
Flatley followed Rebus’s gaze to the frame’s rubber hand-grips, then smiled and relaxed his knuckles a little. ‘Did you ask him about the body count?’
‘I did.’
‘Mention my name at all?’
‘Hard not to.’
‘So that’s me on half-rations.’
‘No hardship – you don’t like the food anyway. I’ll bring you a couple of pies next time I visit.’
There was silence between them, punctuated only by the sounds of the TV set in the room opposite.
