Even dogs in the wild

by Ian Rankin

  Various newspapers and magazines were mentioned, sometimes with a couple of lines about the stories Spiers had contributed and even the fee received.

  ‘I didn’t get your name,’ he said as he looked.

  ‘Molly.’ He turned towards her and they shook hands. She was in her early thirties, about five and a half feet tall with curly black hair and a prominent mole on her chin. She wore a wedding band on her left hand.

  ‘I’m John Rebus,’ he said. ‘Your husband’s not with you, Molly?’

  ‘You are a detective, then?’ She played with the ring. ‘We broke up a couple of months back.’

  ‘Do you live in Edinburgh?’

  ‘Glasgow,’ she corrected him. ‘Dad used to live there too.’

  ‘How long was he in Edinburgh?’

  ‘Best part of a decade.’

  ‘And your mum?’

  ‘Left me so she could go “find herself” in India.’

  ‘Oh aye? How’s that working out?’

  ‘Horribly, I hope.’ She laughed again.

  ‘You the only child?’

  ‘That we know about. Dad was quite the rogue in his day.’

  She examined Rebus as he scanned the boxes. ‘What is it you’re looking for?’

  ‘An acorn in a forest,’ he muttered.

  ‘People usually say needle, don’t they? A needle in a haystack?’

  ‘Your father wrote about a place called Acorn House,’

  Rebus explained.

  ‘That rings a bell.’ Rebus watched as she went to another teetering tower of box files. ‘Help me with this,’ she said. There were two boxes marked Acorn House, halfway down the pile.

  Rebus removed the top three or four, then two more, and Molly lifted the boxes in question.

  ‘They don’t weigh much,’ she said.

  Because they were empty, apart from a single sheet of paper in each. On the first were written words that stopped Rebus dead.

  They took the lot! They took the fucking lot!

  The second note consisted of a short string of numbers. ‘Any ideas?’ he asked Molly.

  ‘Dates maybe?’ She shrugged. Then she took another look.

  ‘Dad has boxes of disks. Some of them have numbers . . .’

  It took a further ten minutes of sifting until she plucked one disk from a box and held it up. ‘This one,’ she said. Rebus took it from her. It was a black plastic square with an index sticker on it. Written in pencil were numerals that matched the note. A thin brushed-metal cover could be pushed to one side, giving a glimpse of the flimsy brown circle within, the recording tape containing the data.

  ‘“Formatted for IBM PS/2 and compatibles”,’ Rebus recited.

  ‘“1.44 MB, High Density MFD-2HD”.’

  ‘Cutting edge at the time, I dare say,’ Molly said, folding her arms.

  ‘Let’s see what’s on it, then.’

  They fell at the first hurdle, however. Patrick Spiers’s computer was password-protected. Molly offered some suggestions, but none proved right. Rebus ejected the disk and cursed silently.

  ‘Sorry,’ Molly said in sympathy.

  ‘Not your fault. But I’ll have to take it with me – is that okay?’

  She nodded. ‘Is this you making your excuses and your getaway? You don’t want to help me sift through the rest, just in case?’

  ‘I wish I had time, Molly. But if Acorn House comes up . . .’

  He handed her a business card. ‘In fact, if you see anything you think I might be interested in . . .’

  ‘I’ll phone you,’ she agreed.

  As Rebus made his exit, he half turned to give her a wave, but she wasn’t paying attention. She just stood there, looking suddenly tiny and exhausted, dwarfed by her father’s life and times, the stories he’d written and the ones he hadn’t lived to tell.

  Twenty Nine

  Rebus had called Cafferty from his flat, giving him a progress report and asking for help. Just over an hour later, his intercom buzzed. He unlocked the door and waited for the delivery. It was carried in a loose cardboard box by a young man for whom acne was proving a challenge. His head was shaved and he wore a hooded jacket under a black padded gilet.

  ‘All right?’ he said by way of greeting. Rebus showed him where to put the box, having cleared space on the table in the living room. The computer was not a make Rebus recognised. It comprised a single bulky unit with a fourteen-inch screen.

  ‘Gold standard at one time,’ the youth assured him, plugging it in. ‘MS Works and Word.’

  ‘As long as it’ll play this.’ Rebus handed over the floppy.

  The lad slotted it home and waited while the computer churned and whirred. Then he clicked the mouse.

  ‘It’s an old Word file by the look of it,’ he mused. ‘And not too much on it.’

  ‘Could anything be hidden?’

  ‘Hidden?’

  ‘It happens,’ Rebus said. ‘Encryption, that sort of thing.’

  ‘You’re talking to the wrong guy.’

  ‘Doesn’t matter,’ Rebus said, knowing he could hand the disk over to the forensic lab if necessary, let them explore it.

  For now, he had a single file of sixty-five kilobytes, which had been given the catchy title ‘Doc 1’. He showed the youth out, adding a ten-pound note to whatever Cafferty had already paid. He took his time in the kitchen, opening a bottle of IPA and pouring it into a pint glass. Then he wandered through to where the computer sat waiting. Placing his drink on the table near the mouse, he lit a cigarette and took a couple of puffs, then drew his chair in closer and opened the document.

  The bastards took the lot! Every note, every interview, every bit of wild speculation. Plus the few photos I had. Every scrap was gone when I got home. No sign of forced entry, just the two boxes lying open, so I’d get the message loud and clear. ‘We can do this, and a lot more besides.’ That’s what they’re telling me. So here I am, past midnight and woozy with booze, but determined to get as much down as I can remember while wondering who stole my story.

  There’s a villain called Cafferty, apparently he’s close to Howard Champ, and Champ is one of the men who uses Acorn House – and no doubt other places like it – as a personal sexual playground. But Champ has other friends too.

  Our esteemed David Minton for one. They control the newspapers – or rather, they know the men who own the media, and that’s even

  better. Or maybe they got the cops to break in.

  Special Branch? MI5? They’ll want to protect their own. They don’t want a scandal – awfully bad for business, don’t you know. The cops, though – no way THEY want their precious Chief Constable getting found out. No, sir, that can’t be allowed to happen. Did he know I was getting close? Let me tell you about how sloppy he was getting, every single fucking one of them thinking they lived in a parallel universe where they were never going to be found out.

  Right, here goes . . .

  Rebus read for a further hour. There were only fifteen pages, but fifteen was enough. Booze or no booze, Spiers’s memory had been unimpaired. He remembered dates, names, locations.

  He had spoken off the record to hotel workers, taxi drivers, and even a couple of kids from Acorn House. No names, though – he hadn’t put their names in print, maybe to protect them? Yes, probably.

  There was one name, though: Bryan Holroyd. A kid who had done a bunk, so the other kids said, fed up of being hounded by Howard Champ.

  Bryan Holroyd. Rebus felt the temperature in the room drop.

  The dead kid? The ‘accident’?

  When his intercom buzzed, he ignored it, but whoever was outside wasn’t about to give up. He crossed to the window and looked down. Siobhan Clarke had taken a few steps back and was peering up at him. Rebus returned to the intercom and pressed the button to let her in. He turned the PC’s screen off

  before unlocking the door, listening to her feet as she climbed the stone staircase.

  ‘Hiya, you,’ he said, ushering her inside. �
�Any news of Malcolm’s dad?’

  ‘He told you?’ She watched him nod. They were standing in the living room. She noted the computer and knew it was a new addition to the room – the box it had come in was sitting on the floor.

  ‘Thought it was time to upgrade,’ Rebus joked.

  ‘What’s going on?’ she asked quietly.

  ‘One of my private clients.’

  ‘John . . .’

  ‘What?’

  She gave a sigh. ‘Never mind. I’m here to deliver a bollocking – do you want to stand or would you rather sit down?’

  He grabbed what little was left of his beer and made for his armchair. Clarke took the sofa.

  ‘Ready when you are,’ he told her.

  ‘Actually, before that, let me ask you something – what are the odds that Darryl Christie has someone from our side telling him stories?’

  ‘Telling or selling?’

  ‘Either.’

  Rebus gave a shrug. ‘It’s a racing certainty.’

  ‘And if I was a punter looking for a hot tip?’

  ‘What’s happened?’

  ‘Joe Stark arrived fuming at Fettes because he’d found out the note left with Dennis was a copycat. This after he’d had a powwow with Darryl Christie.’

  Rebus nodded his understanding. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘you could try asking Charlie Sykes how much that hand-tailored suit of his cost.’

  ‘That’s what I thought.’

  ‘So am I in your good books now? Bollocking deferred?’

  ‘Afraid not. I had Laura Smith on the phone. She wasn’t happy.’

  ‘She’s a crime reporter – that probably comes with the territory.’

  ‘Any idea why she’d be so annoyed with me this time, though?’

  ‘Do tell.’

  ‘It’s because she’d had Albert Stout on the phone, teasing her about some huge story that’s brewing and how he knows about it and she doesn’t. He mentioned your name before ringing off. So Laura wanted to know why I hadn’t said anything. Seems to her it’s all one-way traffic between us and we’re supposed to be friends.’

  ‘It’s a mistake to make friends with reporters – I’ve always told you that.’

  ‘This isn’t funny, John. Is it to do with that thing?’ She nodded towards the computer.

  ‘Yes,’ Rebus admitted.

  ‘And Lord Minton and Michael Tolland?’

  ‘And Cafferty too.’

  ‘Then it’s more my business than yours.’

  ‘You can’t take it to Page, not yet.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘You just can’t. Fob Laura Smith off with something.’

  ‘She’ll smell it.’

  ‘Let her smell it then.’ Rebus leapt from his armchair and paced the room.

  ‘It’s eating away at you, John – you know it and I know it.

  Time you opened up, a trouble shared and all that.’

  ‘Maybe. But I’m not joking about keeping it to yourself – at least for now.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because it’s basically plutonium on a floppy disk,’ Rebus said.

  And then he told her.

  Joe Stark was back home, seated on the bed in what had been, for the first nineteen years of his life, Dennis’s room. Joe remembered the announcement that he was moving into a flat with some pals. A year later, he’d bought a place of his own.

  Joe had never asked how much it had cost or how Dennis could afford it. He’d always seen that the boy was all right for money without going overboard. Later on, of course, with Dennis part of the company, the spoils had been shared.

  They had become commercial partners rather than father and son. Joe had taken counsel earlier from Walter Grieve and Len Parker, who had argued that he needed to stamp his authority on the sides of the business that Dennis had overseen.

  It had to be soon, too, before others stepped in to fill the vacuum.

  When Joe’s phone rang, he saw it was Jackie Dyson and decided to answer.

  ‘Jackie,’ he said. ‘Is this you bringing me an update?’

  ‘A straight answer’s what I need, Joe.’

  ‘Depends on the question.’

  ‘Did you leave a couple of us here so there’s less chance of us making a move against you?’

  ‘You’ve got brains, son.’ Stark couldn’t help smiling. ‘But there’s another way of looking at it – you might even say I’m protecting you. Things could get ugly at home.’

  ‘And are we still looking for Wright’s stash?’

  ‘Reckon we’re ever going to find it? I think our best chance died some time back.’

  ‘How about whoever did for Dennis?’

  ‘Got to be down to either Christie or Cafferty, unless you’ve got a better idea. That’s why I want you to keep an eye on them.’

  ‘Then that’s what I’ll do.’

  ‘You’ll have to track Cafferty down first – Christie tells me he’s not been seen.’

  ‘No problem.’

  ‘And if you get wind of mutterings in the ranks . . .’

  ‘I know where my loyalties lie, Mr Stark.’

  ‘There’s going to be a bit of restructuring, Jackie. By the time you come back to Glasgow, your life’s going to have changed for the better. Majorly for the better, if you take my meaning.’

  ‘I can’t wait.’

  ‘Good lad.’ Stark ended the call and stretched himself out on his son’s mattress. There were cracks on the ceiling. As a kid, Dennis had fretted that chunks of plaster might fall off and hit him.

  If they do, Joe had advised, hit them back – they’ll break before you do.

  And the pair of them had laughed.

  *

  Cafferty watched from the corner as Siobhan Clarke drove away from Arden Street in her Astra. She looked distracted, her face pale. Another time, she might have spotted him, but not today, so he started walking again, ending up at the door to Rebus’s tenement and pressing the bell.

  ‘You forget something?’ Rebus’s voice crackled.

  ‘She’s skedaddled,’ Cafferty informed him. ‘So you’ll have to put up with me instead.’

  The lock clicked and Cafferty pushed the door open, climbing the two flights to Rebus’s flat.

  ‘You got the computer then,’ he said.

  ‘I don’t want to know where it came from.’

  ‘Oliver says you tipped him – that was a nice gesture. What did Siobhan want?’

  ‘Fox’s dad is at death’s door. She decided to tell me in person.’

  ‘Might explain why she looked like she’d had bad news. Are her and Fox close then?’ Cafferty had settled in front of the computer. The first page of the document was up on the screen.

  ‘Juicy stuff?’ he asked.

  ‘He starts by wondering if maybe you broke into his home and stole the evidence.’

  ‘I didn’t.’

  ‘He also says that the Chief Constable of the time, Jim Broadfoot, was up to his eyes.’

  ‘No doubt about that. Wasn’t he knighted eventually?’

  ‘Dead now, though.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘There’s a missing kid mentioned a bit further on – Bryan Holroyd. Could that be him?’

  ‘No one ever gave me a name.’

  ‘I’m going to see if I can source a photo.’

  ‘Will there still be records?’

  ‘From Acorn House? I doubt it. But the kids who went there had mostly been in trouble.’

  ‘And the police keep everything?’ Cafferty nodded his understanding. Then he looked at his watch. ‘I think you deserve a drink, and I’m buying.’

  ‘I don’t feel like a drink.’

  ‘Words I doubt you’ve uttered before. I did tell you it wasn’t going to be pleasant.’

  ‘You did,’ Rebus conceded.

  ‘And drink can do wonderful things to unpleasant memories.’

  Rebus nodded slowly. ‘Fine then.’ He ejected the floppy from its slot and stuck it
in his pocket.

  ‘Probably an unnecessary precaution,’ Cafferty said.

  ‘Probably,’ Rebus agreed. ‘But that won’t stop me making copies of it, first chance I get. And speaking of precautions . . .’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘If I hear that you’ve been back to Meadowlea to visit Paul Jeffries without me . . .’

  ‘I admit it’s crossed my mind.’

  ‘Staff there have my number. If they tell me you’ve as much as paused for breath at the end of the driveway, that’s us finished.’

  ‘Time was, a man could have some fun . . .’

  ‘For the likes of you and me, those days are over.’

  ‘Then what’s left to look forward to?’

  Rebus plucked his house keys from the table. ‘We’re heading there right now,’ he said.

  Thirty

  Fox’s sister Jude lived in a terraced house in Saughtonhall.

  He’d suggested picking her up, but she’d said she would take a cab.

  ‘Then I’ll wait outside for you.’

  ‘Because you want to pick up the tab? I’ve got money of my own, Malcolm.’

  He’d waited in the hospital’s main concourse instead, equidistant between the two entrances. Jude had come tottering through the sliding doors on three-inch heels, clad in skin-tight jeans, a shapeless T-shirt and a waist-length fur jacket. There were at least two gossamer-thin scarves wrapped around her neck, and her shoulder-length hair looked lifeless. Her face was pale, cheekbones prominent, eyeshadow overdone.

  She stopped a yard or so from him and adjusted her sparkly shoulder bag. No embrace, no peck on the cheek. ‘How’s he doing?’ she enquired.

  ‘He hasn’t regained consciousness.’

  ‘And they’re saying it’s a stroke?’

  ‘Have you been drinking, Jude?’

  ‘Would you blame me if I had?’

  ‘We should get you a coffee or something.’

  ‘I’ll be fine.’

  ‘You’re sure?’

  ‘Do we take the lift or what?’

  ‘We take the lift.’

  ‘Well then.’ She walked over to the wall and pressed the button. Fox had a sudden flashback – Jude as a toddler, dressed in her mother’s clothes and shoes, doing a fashion parade in their parents’ bedroom. Another time it had been make-up and perfume. ‘You coming?’