A Good Hanging - Rankin: Short 01

by Ian Rankin

  ‘No, Inspector, as I told you, it was Mr Abbot who handled all the paperwork, all that side of things. If there is an invoice or a receipt, it will be in his hand, not Mr Ford’s. I don’t recall ever seeing Mr Ford writing anything.’

  No through road.

  Chief Inspector Lauderdale was not wholly sympathetic. So far all Rebus had to offer were more suppositions to add to those of the Fife Police at the time. There was no proof that Alexander Abbot had killed his partner. No proof that the skeleton was Hugh Ford. Moreover, there wasn’t even much in the way of circumstantial evidence. They could bring in Abbot for questioning, but all he had to do was plead innocence. He could afford a good lawyer; and even bad lawyers weren’t stupid enough to let the police probe too deeply.

  ‘We need proof, John,’ said Lauderdale, ‘concrete evidence. The simplest proof would be that hotel signature. If we prove it’s not Ford’s, then we have Abbot at that hotel, Abbot in the boat and Abbot shouting that his friend has drowned, all without Ford having been there. That’s what we need. The rest of it, as it stands, is rubbish. You know that.’

  Yes, Rebus knew. He didn’t doubt that, given an hour alone with Abbot in a darkened alley, he’d have his confession. But it didn’t work like that. It worked through the law. Besides, Abbot’s heart might not be too healthy. BUSINESSMAN, 55, DIES UNDER QUESTIONING. No, it had to be done some other way.

  The problem was, there was no other way. Alexander Abbot was getting away with murder. Or was he? Why did his story have to be false? Why did the body have to be Hugh Ford’s? The answer was: because the whole thing seemed to fit. Only, the last piece of the jigsaw had been lost under some sofa or chair a long time ago, so long ago now that it might remain missing forever.

  He didn’t know why he did it. If in doubt, retrace your steps... something like that. Maybe he just liked the atmosphere. Whatever, Rebus found himself back in the National Library, waiting at his desk for the servitor to bring him his bound volume of old news. He mouthed the words of ‘Yesterday’s Papers’ to himself as he waited. Then, when the volume appeared, he unbuckled it with ease and pulled open the pages. He read past the April editions, read through into May and June. Football results, headlines — and what was this? A snippet of business news, barely a filler at the bottom right-hand corner of a page. About how the Kirkwall Construction Company was swallowing up a couple of smaller competitors in Fife and Midlothian.

  ‘The 1960s will be a decade of revolution in the building industry,’ said Managing Director Mr Jack Kirkwall, ‘and Kirkwall Construction aims to meet that challenge through growth and quality. The bigger we are, the better we are. These acquisitions strengthen the company, and they’re good news for the workforce, too.’

  It was the kind of sentiment which had lasted into the 1980s. Jack Kirkwall, Alexander Abbot’s bitter rival. Now there was a man Rebus ought to meet...

  The meeting, however, had to be postponed until the following week. Kirkwall was in hospital for a minor operation.

  ‘I’m at that age, Inspector,’ he told Rebus when they finally met, ‘when things go wrong and need treatment or replacing. Just like any bit of well-used machinery.’

  And he laughed, though the laughter, to Rebus’s ears, had a hollow centre. Kirkwall looked older than his sixty-two years, his skin saggy, complexion wan. They were in his living-room, from where, these days, he did most of his work.

  ‘Since I turned sixty, I’ve only really wandered into the company headquarters for the occasional meeting. I leave the daily chores to my son, Peter. He seems to be managing.’ The laughter this time was self-mocking.

  Rebus had suggested a further postponement of the meeting, but when Jack Kirkwall knew that the subject was to be Alexander Abbot, he was adamant that they should go ahead.

  ‘Is he in trouble then?’

  ‘He might be,’ Rebus admitted. Some of the colour seemed to reappear in Kirkwall’s cheeks and he relaxed a little further into his reclining leather chair. Rebus didn’t want to give Kirkwall the story. Kirkwall and Abbot were still business rivals, after all. Still, it seemed, enemies. Given the story, Kirkwall might try some underhand tactic, some rumour in the media, and if it got out that the story originally came from a police inspector, well. Hello, being sued and goodbye, pension.

  No, Rebus didn’t want that. Yet he did want to know whether Kirkwall knew anything, knew of any reason why Abbot might wish, might need to kill Ford.

  ‘Go on, Inspector.’

  ‘It goes back quite a way, sir. 1960, to be precise. Your firm was at that time in the process of expansion.’

  ‘Correct.’

  ‘What did you know about Abbot & Ford?’

  Kirkwall brushed the palm of one hand over the knuckles of the other. ‘Just that they were growing, too. Of course, they were younger than us, much smaller than us. ABC still is much smaller than us. But they were cocky, they were winning some contracts ahead of us. I had my eye on them.’

  ‘Did you know Mr Ford at all?’

  ‘Oh yes. Really, he was the cleverer of the two men. I’ve never had much respect for Abbot. But Hugh Ford was quiet, hardworking. Abbot was the one who did the shouting and got the firm noticed.’

  ‘Did Mr Ford have a crooked finger?’

  Kirkwall seemed bemused by the question. ‘I’ve no idea,’ he said at last. ‘I never actually met the man, I merely knew about him. Why? Is it important?’

  Rebus felt at last that his meandering, narrowing path had come to the lip of a chasm. Nothing for it but to turn back.

  ‘Well,’ he said, ‘it would have clarified something.’

  ‘You know, Inspector, my company was interested in taking Abbot & Ford under our wing.’

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘But then with the accident, that tragic accident. Well, Abbot took control and he wasn’t at all interested in any offer we had to make. Downright rude, in fact. Yes, I’ve always thought that it was such a lucky accident so far as Abbot was concerned.’

  ‘How do you mean, sir?’

  ‘I mean, Inspector, that Hugh Ford was on our side. He wanted to sell up. But Abbot was against it.’

  So, Rebus had his motive. Well, what did it matter? He was still lacking that concrete evidence Lauderdale demanded.

  ‘... Would it show up from his handwriting?’

  Rebus had missed what Kirkwall had been saying. ‘I’m sorry, sir, I didn’t catch that.’

  ‘I said, Inspector, if Hugh Ford had a crooked finger, would it show from his handwriting?’

  ‘Handwriting ?’

  ‘Because I had his agreement to the takeover. He’d written to me personally to tell me. Had gone behind Abbot’s back, I suppose. I bet Alex Abbot was mad as hell when he found out about that.’ Kirkwall’s smile was vibrant now. ‘I always thought that accident was a bit too lucky where Abbot was concerned. A bit too neat. No proof though. There was never any proof.’

  ‘Do you still have the letter?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘The letter from Mr Ford, do you still have it?’

  Rebus was tingling now, and Kirkwall caught his excitement. ‘I never throw anything away, Inspector. Oh yes, I’ve got it. It’ll be upstairs.’

  ‘Can I see it? I mean, can I see it now?’

  ‘If you like,’ Kirkwall made to stand up, but paused. ‘Is Alex Abbot in trouble, Inspector?’

  ‘If you’ve still got that letter from Hugh Ford, then, yes, sir, I’d say Mr Abbot could be in very grave trouble indeed.’

  ‘Inspector, you’ve made an old man very happy.’

  It was the letter against Alex Abbot’s word, of course, and he denied everything. But there was enough now for a trial. The entry in the hotel, while it was possibly the work of Alexander Abbot was certainly not the work of the man who had written the letter to Jack Kirkwall. A search warrant gave the police the powers to look through Abbot’s home and the ABC headquarters. A contract, drawn up between Abbot and Ford when the two men had gone into p
artnership, was discovered to be held in a solicitor’s safe. The signature matched that on the letter to Jack Kirkwall. Kirkwall himself appeared in court to give evidence. He seemed to Rebus a different man altogether from the person he’d met previously: sprightly, keening, enjoying life to the full.

  From the dock, Alexander Abbot looked on almost reproachfully, as if this were just one more business trick in a life full of them. Life, too, was the sentence of the judge.

  Seeing Things

  To be honest, if you were going to see Christ anywhere in Edinburgh, the Hermitage was perfect.

  Or, to give it its full title, the Hermitage of Braid, named after the Braid Burn which trickled through the narrow, bushy wilderness between Blackford Hill and Braid Hills Road. Across this road, the Hermitage became a golf course, its undulations cultivated and well-trodden, but on sunny weekend afternoons, the Hermitage itself was as wild a place as your imagination wished it to be. Children ran in and out of the trees or threw sticks into the burn. Lovers could be seen hand-in-hand as they tackled the tricky descent from Blackford Hill. Dogs ran sniffing to stump and post, watched, perhaps, by punks seated atop an outcrop. Can would be tipped to mouth, the foam savoured. Picnic parties would debate the spot most sheltered from the breeze.

  It was sometimes hard to believe that the place was in Edinburgh, that the main entrance to the Hermitage was just off the busy Comiston Road at the southern reach of Morningside. The protesters - such as they were - had held vigil at these gates for a couple of days, singing songs and handing out their ‘No Popery’ pamphlets. Occasionally a megaphone would appear, so that they could deliver their rant. A seller of religious nick-nacks and candles had set up his pitch across the road from the protesters, and at a canny distance along the road from them. The megaphone was most often directed towards him, there being no other visible target.

  A rant was occurring as Inspector John Rebus arrived. Would the day of judgment be like this, he wondered, accepting a leaflet. Would the loudest voices belong to the saved? Megaphones will be provided, he thought to himself as he passed through the gates. He studied the leaflet. No Popery, indeed.

  ‘Why ever not?’ And so asking, he crumpled the paper and tossed it into the nearest wastepaper-bin. The voice followed him as though it had a mission and he was it.

  ‘There must be NO idolatry! There is but ONE God and it is HE ye should worship! Do not turn YOUR face to graven IMAGES! The Good Book is the ONLY truth ye NEED!’

  Rave on ...

  They were a minority of course, far outweighed by the curious who came to see. But they in their turn looked as though they might be outnumbered very soon by the shrine-builders. Rebus liked to think of himself as a Christian, albeit with too many questions and doubts to ally himself with either side, Catholic or Protestant. He could not escape the fact that he had been born a Protestant; but his mother, a religious woman, had died young, and his father had been indifferent.

  Rebus hadn’t even been aware of any difference between Catholic and Protestant until he’d started school. His preschooldays best friend was a Catholic, a boy called Miles Skelly. Come their first day at school, the boys had been split up, sent to schools on different sides of town. Parted like this daily, they soon grew to have new friends and stopped playing together.

  That had been Rebus’s first lesson in ‘the divide’. But he had nothing against Catholics. The Protestant community might call them ‘left-footers’, but Rebus himself kicked a ball with his left foot. He did, however, mistrust the shrine mentality. It made him uneasy: statues which wept or bled or moved. Sudden visions of the Virgin Mary. A face imprinted on a shroud.

  A faith should be just that, Rebus reasoned. And if you held belief, what need had you of miracles, especially ones that seemed more the province of the Magic Circle than of the divine? So the closer he came to the spot itself, the shakier became his legs. There was a tangle of undergrowth, and in front of it a stunted tree. Around this tree had been arranged candles, small statues, photographs, written prayers, flowers, all in the last two or three days. It was quite a transformation. A knot of people knelt nearby, but at a respectful distance. Their heads were bowed in prayer. Others sat, arms out behind them, supporting themselves on the grass. They wore beatific smiles, as though they could hear or see something Rebus couldn’t. He listened hard, but heard only whispers of prayer, the distant barking of dogs. He looked, but saw only a tree, though it had to be admitted that the sunlight seemed to catch it in a particularly striking way, picking it out from the undergrowth behind it.

  There was a rustling from beyond the tree itself. Rebus moved around the congregation - there was no other word for the gathering — towards the undergrowth, where several police cadets were on their hands and knees, not in worship this time but searching the ground.

  ‘Anything?’

  One of the figures straightened up, pressing his fingers into his spine as he exhaled. Rebus could hear the vertebrae crackling.

  ‘Nothing, sir, not a blasted thing.’

  ‘Language, Holmes, language. Remember, this is a holy site.’

  Detective Constable Brian Holmes managed a wry smile. He’d been smiling a lot this morning. For once he’d been put in charge and it didn’t matter to him that he was in a damp copse, or that he was in charge of a shower of disgruntled cadets, or that he had twigs in his hair. He was in charge. Not even John Rebus could take that away from him.

  Except that he could. And did.

  ‘All right,’ Rebus said, ‘that’s enough. We’ll have to make do with what we’ve got. Or rather, what the lab boys have got.’

  The cadets rose mercifully to their feet. One or two brushed white chalky powder from their knees, others scraped at dirt and grass stains. ‘Well done, lads,’ Rebus admitted. ‘Not very exciting, I know, but that’s what police work is all about. So if you’re joining for thrills and spills, think again.’

  That should have been my speech, Holmes thought to himself as the cadets grinned at Rebus’s words. They would agree with anything he said, anything he did. He was an Inspector. He was the Inspector Rebus. Holmes felt himself losing height and density, becoming like a patch of low mist or a particularly innocuous shadow. Rebus was in charge now. The cadets had all but forgotten their former leader. They had eyes for only one man, and that man was ordering them to go and drink some tea.

  ‘What’s up, Brian?’

  Holmes, watching the cadets shuffle away, realised Rebus was speaking to him. ‘Sorry?’

  ‘You look like you’ve found a tanner and lost a shilling.’

  Holmes shrugged. ‘I suppose I’m thinking about how I could have had one-and-six. No news yet on the blood?’

  ‘Just that it’s every bit as messianic as yours and mine.’

  ‘What a surprise.’

  Rebus nodded towards the clearing. ‘Try telling them that. They’ll have an answer for you.’

  ‘I know. I’ve already been ticked off for desecration. You know they’ve started posting an all-night guard?’

  ‘What for?’

  ‘In case the Wee Frees chop down the tree and run away with it.’

  They stared at one another, then burst out laughing. Hands quickly went to mouths to stifle the sound. Desecration upon desecration.

  ‘Come on,’ said Rebus, ‘you look like you could do with a cuppa yourself. My treat.’

  ‘Now that is a miracle,’ said Holmes, following his superior out of the trees. A tall, muscled man was approaching. He wore denims and a white T-shirt. A large wooden cross swung from his neck, around which was also tied a red kerchief. His beard was as thick and black as his hair.

  ‘Are you police officers?’

  ‘Yes,’ Rebus said.

  ‘Then I think you should know, they’re trying to steal the tree.’

  ‘Steal it, sir?’

  ‘Yes, steal it. We’ve got to keep watch twenty-four hours. Last night, one of them had a knife, but there were too many of us, thank God.’
/>
  ‘And you are?’

  ‘Steven Byrne.’ He paused. ‘Father Steven Byrne.’

  Rebus paused too, digesting this new information. ‘Well, Father, would you recognise this man again? The one with the knife?’

  ‘Yes, probably.’

  ‘Well, we could go down to the station and have a look at some photographs.’

  Father Byrne seemed to be appraising Rebus. Acknowledging that he was being taken seriously, he nodded slowly. ‘Thank you, I don’t think that’ll be necessary. But I thought you ought to know. Things might turn nasty.’

  Rebus bit back a comment about turning the other cheek. ‘Not if we can help it,’ he said instead. ‘If you see the man again, Father, let us know straight away. Don’t try anything on your own.’

  Father Byrne looked around him. ‘There aren’t so many telephones around here.’ His eyes were twinkling with humour. An attractive man, thought Rebus. Even a touch charismatic.

  ‘Well,’ he said, ‘we’ll try to make sure a patrol car comes by and checks on things. How would that be?’

  Father Byrne nodded. Rebus made to move away. ‘Bless you,’ he heard the man saying. Rebus kept walking, but for some reason his cheeks had turned deep red. But it was right and proper, after all, wasn’t it? Right that he should be blessed.

  ‘Blessed are the peacemakers,’ he quoted, as the megaphone came back into range.

  The story was a simple one. Three girls had been in the Hermitage one late afternoon. School over, they’d decided to cut through the park, climb Blackford Hill and come down the other side towards their homes. A long way round for a short-cut, as Rebus had put it at the time.

  They were sensible girls, from good Catholic homes. They were fifteen and all had future plans that included university and a career as well as marriage. They didn’t seem inclined to fantasy or exaggeration. They stuck to the same story throughout. They’d been about thirty yards or so from the tree when they’d seen a man. One second he wasn’t there, the next he was. Dressed in white and with a glow all around him. Long wavy dark hair and a beard. A very pale face, they were definite about that. He leaned with one hand against the tree, the other to his side. His right side - again, all three concurred on this. Then he took the hand away, and they saw that there was blood on his side. A dark red patch. They gasped. They looked to each other for confirmation that they’d seen what they had seen. When they looked again, the figure had vanished.