A Good Hanging - Rankin: Short 01

by Ian Rankin

  ‘No, sir,’ said Rebus, ‘you keep it.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘It will always remind you,’ said Rebus, his voice cold and level, ‘that you could have saved your daughter.’

  McKenzie was aghast. ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘I mean,’ said Rebus, his voice still lacking emotion, ‘that Suzanne wasn’t intending to kill herself, not really. It was just something to attract your attention, to shock you into ... I don’t know, action I suppose, a reaction of some kind.’

  McKenzie positioned himself slowly so that he rested on the armrest of one of the upholstered chairs.

  ‘Yes,’ Rebus went on, ‘a reaction. That’s as good a way of putting it as any. Suzanne knew what time you got up every morning. She wasn’t stupid. She timed the slashing of her wrists so that you would find her while there was still time to save her. She also had a sense of the dramatic, didn’t she? So she stuck her little note to the bathroom door. You saw the note and you went into the bathroom. And she wasn’t dead, was she?’

  McKenzie had screwed shut his eyes. His mouth was open, the teeth gritted in remembrance.

  ‘She wasn’t dead,’ Rebus continued, ‘not quite. And you knew damned well why she’d done it. Because she’d warned you she would. She had told you she would. Unless you stopped seeing Hazel, unless you owned up to her mother. Perhaps she had a lot of demands, Mr McKenzie. You never really got on with her anyway, did you? You didn’t know what to do. Help her, or leave her to die? You hesitated. You waited.’

  Rebus had risen from his seat now. His voice had risen, too. The tears were streaming down McKenzie’s face, his whole body shuddering. But Rebus was relentless.

  ‘You walked around a bit, you walked into her room. You threw her note into the waste-bin. And eventually, eventually you reached for a telephone and made the calls.’

  ‘It was already too late,’ McKenzie bawled. ‘Nobody could have saved her.’

  ‘They could have tried!’ Rebus was yelling now, yelling close to McKenzie’s own twisted face. ‘You could have tried, but you didn’t. You wanted to keep your secret. Well by God your secret’s out.’ The last words were hissed and with them Rebus felt his fury ebb. He turned and started to walk away.

  ‘What are you going to do?’ McKenzie moaned.

  ‘What can I do?’ Rebus answered quietly. ‘I’m not going to do anything, Mr McKenzie. I’m just going to leave you to get on with the rest of your life.’ He paused. ‘Enjoy it,’ he said, closing the doors of the drawing-room behind him.

  He stood on the steps of the house, trembling, his heart pounding. In a suicide, who was to blame, who the victim? He still couldn’t answer the question. He doubted he ever would. His watch told him it was five minutes to five. He knew the pub near the circus, a quiet bar frequented by thinkers and amateur philosophers, a place where nothing happened and the measures were generous. He felt like having one drink, maybe two at most. He would raise his glass and make a silent toast: to the lassies.

  Monstrous Trumpet

  John Rebus went down onto his knees.

  ‘I’m begging you,’ he said, ‘don’t do this to me, please.’

  But Chief Inspector Lauderdale just laughed, thinking Rebus was clowning about as per usual. ‘Come on, John,’ he said. ‘It’ll be just like Interpol.’

  Rebus got back to his feet. ‘No it won’t,’ he said. ‘It’ll be like a bloody escort service. Besides, I can’t speak French.’

  ‘Apparently he speaks perfect English, this Monsieur ...’ Lauderdale made a show of consulting the letter in front of him on his desk.

  ‘Don’t say it again, sir, please.’

  ‘Monsieur Cluzeau.’ Rebus winced. ‘Yes,’ Lauderdale continued, enjoying Rebus’s discomfort, ‘Monsieur Cluzeau. A fine name for a member of the gendarmerie, don’t you think?’

  ‘It’s a stunt,’ Rebus pleaded. ‘It’s got to be. DC Holmes or one of the other lads ...’

  But Lauderdale would not budge. ‘It’s been verified by the Chief Super,’ he said. ‘I’m sorry about this, John, but I thought you’d be pleased.’

  ‘Pleased?’

  ‘Yes. Pleased. You know, showing a bit of Scots hospitality.’

  ‘Since when did the CID job description encompass “tourist guide”?’

  Lauderdale had had enough of this: Rebus had even stopped calling him ‘sir’. ‘Since, Inspector, I ordered you to do it.’

  ‘But why me?’

  Lauderdale shrugged. ‘Why not you?’ He sighed, opened a drawer of his desk and dropped the letter into it. ‘Look, it’s only a day, two at most. Just do it, eh? Now if you don’t mind, Inspector, I’ve got rather a lot to do.’

  But the fight had gone out of Rebus anyway. His voice was calm, resigned. ‘When does he get here?’

  Again, there was a pause while that missing ‘sir’ hung motionless in the air between them. Well, thought Lauderdale, the sod deserves this. ‘He’s already here.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I mean, he’s in Edinburgh. The letter took a bit of a time to get here.’

  ‘You mean it sat in someone’s office for a bit of time.’

  ‘Well, whatever the delay, he’s here. And he’s coming to the station this afternoon.’

  Rebus glanced at his watch. It was eleven-fifty. He groaned.

  ‘Late afternoon, I’d imagine,’ said Lauderdale, trying to soften the blow now that Rebus was heading for the canvas. This had been a bit of a mess all round. He’d only just received final confirmation himself that Monsieur Cluzeau was on his way. ‘I mean,’ he said, ‘the French like to take a long lunch, don’t they? Notorious for it. So I don’t suppose he’ll be here till after three.’

  ‘Fine, he can take us as he finds us. What am I supposed to do with him anyway?’

  Lauderdale tried to retain his composure: just say it once, damn you! Just once so I know that you recognise me for what I am! He cleared his throat. ‘He wants to see how we work. So show him. As long as he can report back to his own people that we’re courteous, efficient, diligent, scrupulous, and that we always get our man, well, I’ll be happy.’

  ‘Right you are, sir,’ said Rebus, opening the door, making ready to leave Lauderdale’s newly refurbished office. Lauderdale sat in a daze: he’d said it! Rebus had actually ended a sentence with ‘sir’ !

  ‘That should be easy enough,’ he was saying now. ‘Oh, and I might as well track down Lord Lucan and catch the Loch Ness monster while I’m at it. I’m sure to have a spare five minutes.’

  Rebus closed the door after him with such ferocity that Lauderdale feared for the glass-framed paintings on his walls. But glass was more resilient than it looked. And so was John Rebus.

  Cluzeau had to be an arse-licker, hell-bent on promotion. What other reason could there be? The story was that he was coming over for the Scotland-France encounter at Murrayfield. Fair enough, Edinburgh filled with French-men once every two years for a weekend in February, well-behaved if boisterous rugby fans whose main pleasure seemed to be dancing in saloon bars with ice-buckets on their heads.

  Nothing out of the ordinary there. But imagine a Frenchman who, having decided to take a large chunk of his annual leave so as to coincide with the international season, then has another idea: while in Scotland he’ll invite himself to spend a day with the local police force. His letter to his own chief requesting an introduction so impresses the chief that he writes to the Chief Constable. By now, the damage is done, and the boulder starts to bounce down the hillside - Chief Constable to Chief Super, Chief Super to Super, Super to Chief Inspector - and Chief Inspector to Mr Muggins, aka John Rebus.

  Thank you and bonne nuit. Ha! There, he did remember a bit of French after all. Rhona, his wife, had done one of those teach-yourself French courses, all tapes and repeating phrases. It had driven Rebus bonkers, but some of it had stuck. And all of it in preparation for a long weekend in Paris, a weekend which hadn’t come off because Rebus had been drawn into a murder inquir
y. Little wonder she’d left him in the end.

  Bonne nuit. Bonjour. That was another word. Bonsoir. What about Bon accord? Was that French, too? Bo’ness sounded French. Hadn’t Bonnie Prince Charlie been French? And dear God, what was he going to do with the Frenchman?

  There was only one answer: get busy. The busier he was, the less time there would be for small-talk, xenophobia and falling-out. With the brain and the body occupied, there would be less temptation to mention Onion Johnnies, frogs’-legs, the war, French letters, French kissing and French & Saunders. Oh dear God, what had he done to deserve this?

  His phone buzzed.

  ‘Oui?’ said Rebus, smirking now because he remembered how often he’d managed to get away with not calling Lauderdale ‘sir’.

  ‘Eh?’

  ‘Just practising, Bob.’

  ‘You must be bloody psychic then. There’s a French gentleman down here says he’s got an appointment.’

  ‘What? Already?’ Rebus checked his watch again. It was two minutes past twelve. Christ, like sitting in a dentist’s waiting-room and being called ahead of your turn. Would he really look like Peter Sellers? What if he didn’t speak English?

  ‘John?’

  ‘Sorry, Bob, what?’

  ‘What do you want me to tell him?’

  ‘Tell him I’ll be right down.’ Right down in the dumps, he thought to himself, letting the receiver drop like a stone.

  There was only one person in the large, dingy reception. He wore a biker’s leather jacket and had a spider’s-web tattoo creeping up out of his soiled T-shirt and across his throat. Rebus stopped in his tracks. But then he saw another figure, over to his left against the wall. This man was studying various Wanted and Missing posters. He was tall, thin, and wore an immaculate dark blue suit with a tightly-knotted red silk tie. His shoes looked brand new, as did his haircut.

  Their eyes met, forcing Rebus into a smile. He was suddenly aware of his own rumpled chain-store suit, his scuffed brogues, the shirt with a button missing on one cuff.

  ‘Inspector Rebus?’ The man was coming forward, hand held out.

  ‘That’s right.’ They shook. He was wearing after-shave too, not too strong but certainly noticeable. He had the bearing of someone much further up the ladder, yet Rebus had been told they were of similar ranks. Having said which, there was no way Rebus was going to say ‘Inspector Cluzeau’ out loud. It would be too ... too ...

  ‘For you.’

  Rebus saw that he was being handed a plastic carrier-bag. He looked inside. A litre of duty-free malt, a box of chocolates and a small tin of something. He lifted out the chocolates.

  ‘Escargots,’ Cluzeau explained. ‘But made from chocolate.’

  Rebus studied the picture on the box. Yes, chocolates in the shape of snails. And as for the tin ...

  ‘Foie gras. It is a pâté made from fatted goose liver. A local delicacy. You spread it on your toast.’

  ‘Sounds delicious,’ Rebus said, with just a trace of irony. In fact, he was overwhelmed. None of this stuff looked as though it came cheap, meat paste or no. ‘Thank you.’

  The Frenchman shrugged. He had the kind of face which, shaved twice a day, still sported a five o‘clock shadow. Hirsute: that was the word. What was that joke again, the one that ended with someone asking ‘Hirsute?’ and the guy replying ‘No, the suit’s mine, but the knickers are hers’? Hairy wrists, too, on one of which sat a thin gold wristwatch. He was tapping this with his finger.

  ‘I am not too early, I hope.’

  ‘What?’ It was Rebus’s curse to remember the endings of jokes but never their beginnings. ‘No, no. You’re all right. I was just, er, hold on a second, will you?’

  ‘Sure.’

  Rebus walked over to the reception desk, behind which stood the omnipresent Bob Leach. Bob nodded towards the bag.

  ‘Not a bad haul,’ he said.

  Rebus kept his voice low, but not so low, he hoped, as to arouse Cluzeau’s suspicions. ‘Thing is, Bob, I wasn’t expecting him for a few hours yet. What the hell am I going to do with him? I don’t suppose you’ve got any calls?’

  ‘Nothing you’d be interested in, John.’ Leach examined the pad in front of him. ‘Couple of car smashes. Couple of break-ins. Oh, and the art gallery.’

  ‘Art gallery?’

  ‘I think young Brian’s on that one. Some exhibition down the High Street. One of the pieces seems to have walked.’

  Well, it wasn’t too far away, and it was a tourist spot. St Giles. John Knox’s House. Holyrood.

  ‘The very dab,’ said Rebus. ‘That’ll do us nicely. Give me the address, will you?’

  Leach scribbled onto a pad of paper and tore off the sheet, handing it across the counter.

  ‘Thanks, Bob.’

  Leach was nodding towards the bag. Not only omnipresent, thought Rebus, but omniscrounging too. ‘What else did you get apart from the whisky?’

  Rebus bent towards him and hissed: ‘Meat paste and snails!’

  Bob Leach looked disheartened. ‘Bloody French,’ he said. ‘You’d think he’d bring you something decent.’

  Rebus didn’t bother with back-street shortcuts as they drove towards the Royal Mile. He gave Cluzeau the full tour. But the French policeman seemed more interested in Rebus than in the streets of his city.

  ‘I was here before,’ he explained. ‘Two years ago, for the rugby.’

  ‘Do they play a lot of rugby down your way then?’

  ‘Oh yes. It is not so much a game, more a love affair.’

  Rebus assumed Cluzeau would be Parisian. He was not. Parisians, he said, were - his phrase - ‘cold fish’. And in any case the city was not representative of the real France. The countryside - that was the real France, and especially the countryside of the south-west. Cluzeau was from Périgueux. He had been born there and now lived and worked there. He was married, with four children. And yes, he carried a family photo in his wallet. The wallet itself he carried inside a black leather pouch, almost like a clutch-purse. The pouch also contained identity documents, passport, chequebook, diary, a small English-French dictionary. No wonder he looked good in a suit: no bulges in the pockets, no wear on the material.

  Rebus handed back the photograph.

  ‘Very nice,’ he said.

  ‘And you, Inspector?’

  So it was Rebus’s turn to tell his tale. Born in Fife. Out of school and into the Army. Paras eventually and from there to the SAS. Breakdown and recovery. Then the police. Wife, now ex-wife, and one daughter living with her mother in London. Cluzeau, Rebus realised, had a canny way of asking questions, making them sound more like statements. So that instead of answering, you were merely acknowledging what he already seemed to know. He’d remember that for future use.

  ‘And now we are going where?’

  ‘The High Street. You might know it better as the Royal Mile.’

  ‘I’ve walked along it, yes. You say separated, not divorced?’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘Then there is a chance ...?’

  ‘What? Of us getting back together? No, no chance of that.’

  This elicited another huge shrug from Cluzeau. ‘It was another man ...?’

  ‘No, just this man.’

  ‘Ah. In my part of France we have many crimes of passion. And here in Edinburgh?’

  Rebus gave a wry grin. ‘Where there’s no passion ...’

  The Frenchman seemed to make hard work of understanding this.

  ‘French policemen carry guns, don’t they?’ Rebus asked, filling the silence.

  ‘Not on vacation.’

  ‘I’m glad to hear it.’

  ‘Yes, we have guns. But it is not like in America. We have respect for guns. They are a way of life in the country. Every Frenchman is a hunter at heart.’

  Rebus signalled, and drew in to the roadside. ‘Scotsmen, too,’ he said, opening his door. ‘And right now I’m going to hunt down a sandwich. This cafe does the best boiled ham in Edinburg
h.’

  Cluzeau looked dubious. ‘The famous Scottish cuisine,’ he murmured, unfastening his seatbelt.

  They ate as they drove - ham for Rebus, salami for Cluzeau - and soon enough arrived outside the Heggarty Gallery. In fact, they arrived outside a wools and knitwear shop, which occupied the street-level. The gallery itself was up a winding stairwell, the steps worn and treacherous. They walked in through an unprepossessing door and found themselves in the midst of an argument. Fifteen or so women were crowded around Detective Constable Brian Holmes.

  ‘You can’t keep us here, you know!’

  ‘Look, ladies -’

  ‘Patronising pig.’

  ‘Look, I need to get names and addresses first.’

  ‘Well, go on then, what are you waiting for?’

  ‘Bloody cheek, like we’re criminals or something.’

  ‘Maybe he wants to strip-search us.’

  ‘Chance would be a fine thing.’ There was some laughter at this.

  Holmes had caught sight of Rebus and the look of relief on his face told Rebus all he needed to know. On a trellis table against one wall stood a couple of dozen wine bottles, mostly empty, and jugs of orange juice and water, mostly still full. Cluzeau lifted a bottle and wrinkled his nose. He sniffed the neck and the nose wrinkled even further.

  The poster on the gallery door had announced an exhibition of paintings and sculpture by Serena Davies. The exhibition was entitled ‘Hard Knox’ and today was its opening. By the look of the drinks table, a preview had been taking place. Free wine all round, glasses replenished. And now a squabble, which might be about to turn ugly.

  Rebus filled his lungs. ‘Excuse me!’ he cried. The faces turned from Brian Holmes and settled on him. ‘I’m Inspector Rebus. Now, with a bit of luck we’ll have you all out of here in five minutes. Please bear with us until then. I notice there’s still some drink left. If you’ll fill your glasses and maybe have a last look round, by the time you finish you should be able to leave. Now, I just need a word with my colleague.’