by Ian Rankin
McPhail thought about it—for two seconds. ‘A deal,’ he said.
‘Fine then.’ Rebus put his hand on McPhail’s shoulder again, drawing him a little closer. ‘There’s just one small thing I’d like you to do for me firs…’
It had been quiet in the social club, and Chick Muir was thinking of heading home when the young chap at the bar asked if he could buy him a drink. Chick readily agreed.
‘I don’t like drinking on my own,’ the young man explained.
‘Who can blame you?’ said Chick agreeably, handing his empty glass to the barman. ‘Not from round here?’
‘Aberdeen,’ said the young man.
‘A long way from home. Is it still like Dallas up there?’
Chick meant the oil-boom, which had actually disappeared almost as quickly as it had begun, except in the mythology of those people not living in Aberdeen.
‘Maybe it is,’ said the young man, ‘but that didn’t stop them sacking me.’
‘Sorry to hear it.’ Chick really was too. He’d been hoping the young man was off the oil rigs with cash to burn. He was planning to tap him for a tenner, but now shrugged away the idea.
‘I’m Andy Steele, by the way.’
‘Chick Muir.’ Chick placed his cigarette in his mouth so he could shake Andy Steele’s hand. The grip was like a rubbish-crusher.
‘The money didn’t bring much luck to Aberdeen, you know,’ Steele was reminiscing. ‘Just a load of sharks and gangsters.’
‘I’ll believe it.’ Muir was already halfway through his drink. He wished he’d been drinking a whisky instead of the half-pint when he’d been asked about another. It didn’t look good exchanging a half-pint for a nip, so he was stuck with a half.
‘That’s mostly why I’m here,’ said Steele.
‘What? Gangsters?’ Muir sounded amused.
‘In a way. I’m visiting a friend, too, but I thought while I was here I might pick up a few bob.’
‘How’s that?’ Chick was beginning to feel uncomfortable, but also distinctly curious.
Steele dropped his voice, though they were alone at the bar. ‘There’s word going around Aberdeen that someone’s out to get a certain individual in Edinburgh.’
The barman had turned on the tape machine behind the bar. The low-ceilinged room was promptly filled with a folk duet. They’d played the club last week, and the barman had made a tape of them. It sounded worse now than it had then.
‘In the name of Auld Nick, turn that down!’ Chick didn’t have a loud voice, but no one could say it lacked authority. The barman turned the sound down a bit, and when Chick still glared at him turned it even lower. ‘What was that?’ he asked Andy Steele. Andy Steele, who had been enjoying his drink, put down the glass and told Chick Muir again. And a little while later, mission accomplished, he bought Chick a final drink and then left.
Chick Muir didn’t touch this fresh half pint. He stared past it at his own reflection in the mirror behind the row of optics. Then he made a few phone calls, again roaring at the barman to ‘turn that shite off!’ The third call he made was to St Leonard’s, where he was informed, a bit too light-heartedly, he thought, that Inspector Rebus had been suspended from duty pending enquiries. He tried Rebus at his flat, but no joy there either. Ach well, it wasn’t so important. What mattered was that he’d talked to the big man. Now the big man owed him, and that was quite enough for the penniless Chick Muir to be going on with.
Andy Steele gave the same performance in a meanly lit pub and a betting shop, and that evening was at Powderhall for the greyhound racing. He recited to himself the description Rebus had given him, and eventually spotted the man tucking into a meal of potato crisps at a window-seat in the bar.
‘Are you Shuggie Oliphant?’ he asked.
‘That’s me,’ said the huge thirtyish man. He was poking a finger into the farthest corner of the crisp-bag in search of salt.
‘Somebody told me you might be interested in a bit of information I’ve got.’
Oliphant still hadn’t looked at him. The bag emptied, he folded it into a thin strip, then tied it in a knot and placed it on the table. There were four other granny knots just like it in a row. ‘You don’t get paid till I do,’ Oliphant informed him, sucking on a greasy finger and smacking his lips.
Andy Steele sat down across from him. ‘That’s okay by me,’ he said.
On Sunday morning Rebus waited at the top of a blustery Calton Hill. He walked around the observatory, as the other Sunday strollers were doing. His leg was definitely improving. People were pointing out distant landmarks. Broken clouds were moving rapidly over a pale blue sky. Nowhere else in the world, he reckoned, had this geography of bumps and valleys and outcrops. The volcanic plug beneath Edinburgh Castle had been the start of it. Too good a place not to build a fortress. And the town had grown around it, grown out as far as Wester Hailes and beyond.
The observatory was an odd building, if functional. The folly, on the other hand, was just that, and served no function at all save as a thing to clamber over and a place to spray paint your name. It was one side of a projected Greek temple (Edinburgh, after all, being ‘the Athens of the north’). The all-too-eccentric brain behind the scheme had run out of money after completion of this first side. And there it stood, a series of pillars on a plinth so tall kids had to stand on each other’s shoulders to climb aboard.
When Rebus looked towards it, he saw a woman there swinging her legs from the plinth and waving towards him. It was Siobhan Clarke. He walked over to her.
‘How long have you been here?’ he called up.
‘Not long. Where’s your stick?’
‘I can manage fine without it.’ This was true, though by ‘fine’ he meant that he could hobble along at a reasonable pace. ‘I see Hibs got a result yesterday.’
‘About time.’
‘No sign of himself?’
But Siobhan pointed to the car park. ‘Here he comes now.’
A Mini Metro had climbed the road to the top of the hill and was squeezing into a space between two shinier larger cars. ‘Give me a hand down,’ said Siobhan.
‘Watch for my leg,’ Rebus complained. But she felt almost weightless as he lifted her down.
‘Thanks,’ she said. Brian Holmes had watched the performance before locking his car and coming towards them.
‘A regular Baryshnikov,’ he commented.
‘Bless you,’ said Rebus.
‘So what’s this all about, sir?’ Siobhan asked. ‘Why the secrecy?’
‘There’s nothing secret,’ Rebus said, starting to walk, ‘about an Inspector wanting to talk with two of his junior colleagues. Trusted junior colleagues.’
Siobhan caught Holmes’ eye. Holmes shook his head: he wants something from us. As if she didn’t know.
They leaned against a railing, enjoying the view, Rebus doing most of the talking. Siobhan and Holmes added occasional questions, mostly rhetorical.
‘So this would be off our own bats?’
‘Of course,’ Rebus answered. ‘Just two keen coppers with a little bit of initiative.’ He had a question of his own. ‘Will the lighting be difficult?’ Holmes shrugged. ‘I’ll ask Jimmy Hutton about that. He’s a professional photographer. Does calendars and that sort of thing.’
‘It’s not going to be wee kittens or a Highland glen,’ replied Rebus. ‘No, sir,’ said Holmes.
‘And you think this’ll work?’ asked Siobhan.
Rebus shrugged. ‘Let’s wait and see.’
‘We haven’t said we’ll do it, sir.’
‘No,’ said Rebus, turning away, ‘but you will.’
34
Off their own initiative then, Holmes and Siobhan decided to spend Monday evening doing a surveillance shift on Operation Moneybags. Without heating, the room they crouched in was cold and damp, and dark enough to attract the odd mouse. Holmes had set the camera up, after taking advice from the calendar man. He’d even borrowed a special lens for the occasion, telephoto
and night-sighted. He hadn’t bothered with his Walkman and his Patsy Cline tapes: in the past, there’d always been more than enough to talk about with Siobhan. But tonight she didn’t seem in the mood. She kept gnawing on her top and bottom lips, and got up every now and then to do stretching exercises.
‘Don’t you get stiff?’ she asked him.
‘Not me,’ said Holmes quietly. ‘I’ve been in training for this—years of being a couch potato.’
‘I thought you kept pretty fit.’
He watched her bend forward and lay her arms down the length of one leg. ‘And you must be double-jointed.’
‘Not quite. You should’ve seen me in my teens.’ Holmes’ grin was illuminated by the street light’s diffuse orange glow. ‘Down, Rover,’ said Siobhan. There was a scuttling overhead.
‘A rat,’ said Holmes. ‘Ever cornered one?’ She shook her head. ‘They can jump like a Tummel salmon.’
‘My parents took me to the hydro dam when I was a kid.’
‘At Pitlochry?’ She nodded. ‘So you’ve seen the salmon leaping?’ She nodded again. ‘Well,’ said Holmes, ‘imagine one of those with hair and fangs and a long thick tail.’
‘I’d rather not.’ She watched from the window. ‘Do you think he’ll come.’
‘I don’t know. John Rebus isn’t often wrong.’
‘Is that why everyone hates him?’
Holmes seemed a little surprised. ‘Who hates him?’
She shrugged. ‘People I’ve talked to at St Leonard’…and other places. They don’t trust him.’
‘He wouldn’t have it any other way.’
‘Why not?’
‘Because he’s thrawn.’ He was remembering the first time Rebus had used him in a case. He’d spent a cold frustrating evening watching for a dog-fight that never took place. He was hoping tonight would be better.
The rat was moving again, to the back of the room now, over by the door.
‘Do you think he’ll come?’ Siobhan asked again.
‘He’ll come, lass.’ They both turned towards the shape in the doorway. It was Rebus. ‘You two,’ he said, ‘blethering like sweetie wives. I could have climbed those stairs in pit boots and you’d not have heard me.’ He came over to the window. ‘Anything?’
‘Nothing, sir.’
Rebus angled his watch towards the light. ‘I make it five to.’
The display on Siobhan’s digital watch was backlit. ‘Ten to, sir.’
‘Bloody watch,’ muttered Rebus. ‘Not long now. There’ll be some action by the top of the hour. Unless that daft Aberdonian’s put the kibosh on it.’
But the ‘daft Aberdonian’ wasn’t so daft. Big Ger Cafferty paid for information. Even if it was information he already knew, he tended to pay: it was a cheap way of making sure everything got back to him. For example, even though he’d already heard from two sources that the teuchters were planning to muscle in on him, he still paid Shug Oliphant a few notes for his effort. And Oliphant, who liked to keep his own sources sweet, handed over ten quid to Andy Steele, this representing two-fifths of Oliphant’s reward.
‘There you go,’ he said.
‘Cheers,’ said Andy Steele, genuinely pleased.
‘Found anything you like?’
Oliphant was referring to the videotapes which surrounded them in the small rental shop which he operated. The area behind the narrow counter was so small, Oliphant only just squeezed in there. Every time he moved he seemed to knock something off a shelf onto the floor, where it remained, since there was also no room for him to bend over.
‘I’ve got some bits and pieces under the counter,’ he went on, ‘if you’re interested.’
‘No, I don’t want a video.’
Oliphant grinned unpleasantly. ‘I’m not sure the gentleman really believed your story,’ Oliphant told Andy. ‘But I’ve heard the rumour a few times since, so maybe there’s something in it.’
‘There is,’ said Andy Steele. Rebus was right, if you told a deaf man something on Monday, by Tuesday it was in the evening paper. ‘They’ve got a watch on his hang-outs, including the operation in Gorgie.’
Oliphant looked mightily suspicious. ‘How do you know?’
‘Luck, really. I bumped into one of them. I knew him in Aberdeen. He told me to get out if I didn’t want to get mixed up in it.’
‘But you’re still here.’
‘I’m on the mail train tomorrow morning.’
‘So something’s happening tonight?’ Oliphant still sounded highly sceptical, but then that was his way.
Steele shrugged. ‘All I know is, they’re keeping watch. I think maybe they just want to talk.’
Oliphant considered, running his fingers over a video-box. ‘There were two pubs last night got their windows smashed.’ Steele didn’t blink. ‘Pubs where the gentleman drank. Could be a connection?’
Steele shrugged. ‘Could be.’ If he were being honest, he’d have told how he acted as getaway driver while Rebus himself tossed the large rocks through the glass. One of the pubs had been the Firth at Tollcross, the other the Bowery at the bottom of Easter Road.
But instead he said, ‘Loon called McPhail, he’s the one watching Gorgie. He’s in charge.’
Oliphant nodded. ‘You know the way it works, come back in a day or two. There’ll be money if the gen’s on the nail.’
But Steele shook his head. ‘I’m off up to Aberdeen.’
‘So you are,’ said Oliphant. ‘Tell you what,’ he tore a sheet from a pad, ‘give me your address and I’ll send on the cash.’
Andy Steele had fun inventing the address.
Cafferty was playing snooker when he got the message. He had a quarter share in an upmarket snooker hall and leisure complex in Leith. The intended market had been yuppies, working class lads scraping their way up the greasy pole. But the yuppies had vanished in a puff of smoke. So now the complex was shifting cannily downmarket with video bingo, happy hour, an arcade full of electronic machines, and plans for a bowling alley. Teenagers always seemed to have money in their pockets. They would carve the bowling alley out of the little-used gymnasium, the restaurant next to it, and the aerobics room beyond that.
Staying in business, Cafferty had found, was all about remaining flexible. If the wind changed, you didn’t try to steer in the opposite direction. Mooted future plans included a soul club and a 1940s ballroom, the latter complete with tea dances and ‘blackout nights’. Groping nights, Cafferty called them.
He knew he was crap at snooker, but he liked the game. His theory ‘was fine; it was the practice that was lacking. Vanity prevented him taking lessons, and his renowned lack of patience would have dissuaded all but the most foolhardy from giving them. On Mo’s advice, he’d tried a few other sports—tennis, squash, even skiing one time. The only one he’d enjoyed was golf. He loved thwacking that ball all over the place. Problem was, he didn’t know when to hold back, he was always overshooting. If he hadn’t split at least a couple of balls after nine holes, he wasn’t happy.
Snooker suited him. It had everything. Tactics, ciggies, booze, and a few sidebets. So here he was again in the hall, overhead lights flooding the green tables, dusk everywhere else. Quiet, too, therapeutic; just the clack of the balls, the occasional comment or joke, a floor-stomp with the cue to signal a worthy shot. Then Jimmy the Ear was coming towards him.
‘Phone call from the house,’ he told Cafferty. Then he gave him Oliphant’s message.
Andrew McPhail trusted Rebus about as far as he could toss a caber into a gale. He knew he should be running for cover right now, let the caber land where it might. There were several ways it could go. Rebus might be setting up a meeting between McPhail and Maclean. Well, McPhail could prepare himself against this. Or it might be some other kind of ruse, probably ending up with a beating and the clear message to get the fuck out of Edinburgh.
Or it could be straight. Aye, if the spirit-level was bent. Rebus had asked McPhail to deliver a message, a letter. He’d even
handed over the envelope. The message was for a man called Cafferty, who would be leaving the taxi office on Gorgie Road around ten.
‘So what’s the message?’
‘Never you mind,’ Rebus had said.
‘Why me?’
‘It can’t come from me, that’s all you need to know. Just make sure it’s him, and give him the envelope.’
‘This stinks.’
‘I can’t make it any simpler. We’ll meet afterwards and fix up your new future. The ball’s already rolling.’
‘Aye,’ said McPhail, ‘but where the fuck’s the net?’
Yet here he was, walking up Gorgie Road. A bit cold, threatening rain. Rebus had taken him to St Leonard’s this afternoon, let him shower and shave, even provided some clean clothes which he’d picked up from Mrs Mackenzie’s.
‘I don’t want a tramp delivering my post,’ he’d explained. Ah, the letter. McPhail wasn’t donnert; he’d torn the envelope open earlier this evening. Inside was a smaller brown envelope with some writing on the front: NO PEEKING NOW, McPHAIL!
He’d thought about opening it anyway. It didn’t feel like there was much inside, a single sheet of paper. But something stopped him, a pale spark of hope, the hope that everything was going to be all right.
He didn’t have a watch, but was a good judge of time. It felt like ten o’clock. And here he was in front of the taxi office. There were lights on inside, and cabs ready and waiting outside. Their busiest shift would be starting soon, the rides home after closing time. The night air smelt like ten o’clock. Diesel from the railway lines, rain close by. Andrew McPhail waited.
He saw the headlights, and when the car—a Jag—swerved and mounted the pavement his first thought was: drunk driver. But the car braked smoothly, stopping beside him, almost pinning him to the wire fence. The driver got out. He was big. A gust of wind flapped his long , hair, and McPhail saw that one ear was missing.
‘You McPhail?’ he demanded. The back door of the Jag was opening slowly, another man getting out. He wasn’t as big as the driver, but he somehow seemed larger. He was smiling unkindly.
