Mortal Causes

by Ian Rankin

  In one of the drawers, Siobhan Clarke came up with a Fringe programme. It contained the usual meltdown of Abigail’s Partys and Krapp’s Last Tapes, revues called things like Teenage Alsatian Orgy, and comic turns on the run from London fatigue.

  ‘He’s ringed a show,’ said Clarke.

  So he had, a country and western act at the Crazy Hose Saloon. The act had appeared for three nights back at the start of the Festival.

  ‘There’s no country music in his collection,’ Clarke commented.

  ‘At least he showed taste,’ said Rebus.

  On the way back to the station, he pushed the Orange tape into his car’s antiquated machine.

  The tape played slow, which added to the grimness. Rebus had heard stuff like it before, but not for a wee while. Songs about King Billy and the Apprentice Boys, the Battle of the Boyne and the glory of 1690, songs about routing the Catholics and why the men of Ulster would struggle to the end. The singer had a pub vibrato and little else, and was backed by accordion, snare and the occasional flute. Only an Orange marching band could make the flute sound martial to the ears. Well, an Orange marching band or Iain Anderson from Jethro Tull. Rebus was reminded that he hadn’t listened to Tull in an age. Anything would be better than these songs of … the word ‘hate’ sprang to mind, but he dismissed it. There was no vitriol in the lyrics, just a stern refusal to compromise in any way, to give ground, to accept that things could change now that the 1690s had become the 1990s. It was all blinkered and backward-looking. How narrow a view could you get?

  ‘The sod is,’ said Siobhan Clarke, ‘you find yourself humming the tunes after.’

  ‘Aye,’ said Rebus, ‘bigotry’s catchy enough all right.’

  And he whistled Jethro Tull all the way back to St Leonard’s.

  Lauderdale had arranged a press conference and wanted to know what Rebus knew.

  ‘I’m not positive,’ was the answer. ‘Not a hundred percent.’

  ‘How close?’

  ‘Ninety, ninety-five.’

  Lauderdale considered this. ‘So should I say anything?’

  ‘That’s up to you, sir. A fingerprint team’s on its way to the flat. We’ll know soon enough one way or the other.’

  One of the problems with the victim was that the last killing shot had blown away half his face, the bullet entering through the back of the neck and tearing up through the jaw. As Dr Curt had explained, they could do an ID covering up the bottom half of the face, allowing a friend or relative to see just the top half. But would that be enough? Before today’s potential break, they’d been forced to consider dental work. The victim’s teeth were the usual result of a Scottish childhood, eroded by sweets and shored up by dentistry. But as the forensic pathologist had said, the mouth was badly damaged, and what dental work remained was fairly routine. There was nothing unusual there for any dentist to spot definitively as his or her work.

  Rebus arranged for the party photograph to be reprinted and sent to Glasgow with the relevant details. Then he went to Lauderdale’s press conference.

  Chief Inspector Lauderdale loved his duels with the media. But today he was more nervous than usual. Perhaps it was that he had a larger audience than he was used to, Chief Superintendent Watson and DCI Kilpatrick having emerged from somewhere to listen. Both sported faces too ruddy to be natural, whisky certainly the cause. While the journalists sat towards the front of the room, the police officers stood to the back. Kilpatrick saw Rebus and sidled over to him.

  ‘You may have a positive ID?’ he whispered.

  ‘Maybe.’

  ‘So is it drugs or the IRA?’ There was a wry smile on his face. He didn’t really expect an answer, it was the whisky asking, that was all. But Rebus had an answer for him anyway.

  ‘If it’s anybody,’ he said, ‘it’s not the IRA but the other lot.’ There were so many names for them he didn’t even begin to list them: UDA, UVF, UFF, UR … The U stood for Ulster in each case. They were proscribed organisations, and they were all Protestant. Kilpatrick rocked back a little on his heels. His face was full of questions, fighting their way to the surface past the burst blood vessels which cherried nose and cheeks. A drinker’s face. Rebus had seen too many of them, including his own some nights in the bathroom mirror.

  But Kilpatrick wasn’t so far gone. He knew he was in no condition to ask questions, so he made his way back to the Farmer instead, where he spoke a few words. Farmer Watson glanced across to Rebus, then nodded to Kilpatrick. Then they turned their attention back to the press briefing.

  Rebus knew the reporters. They were old hands mostly, and knew what to expect from Chief Inspector Lauderdale. You might walk into a Lauderdale session sniffing and baying like a bloodhound, but you shuffled out like a sleepy-faced pup. So they stayed quiet mostly, and let him have his insubstantial say.

  Except for Mairie Henderson. She was down at the front, asking questions the others weren’t bothering to ask; weren’t bothering for the simple reason that they knew the answer the Chief Inspector would give.

  ‘No comment,’ he told Mairie for about the twentieth time. She gave up and slumped in her chair. Someone else asked a question, so she looked around, surveying the room. Rebus jerked his chin in greeting. Mairie glared and stuck her tongue out at him. A few of the other journalists looked around in his direction. Rebus smiled out their inquisitive stares.

  The briefing over, Mairie caught up with him in the corridor. She was carrying a legal notepad, her usual blue fineliner pen, and a recording walkman.

  ‘Thanks for your help the other night,’ she said.

  ‘No comment.’

  She knew it was a waste of time getting angry at John Rebus, so exhaled noisily instead. ‘I was first on the scene, I could have had a scoop.’

  ‘Come to the pub with me and you can have as many scoops as you like.’

  ‘That one’s so weak it’s got holes in its knees.’ She turned and walked off, Rebus watching her. He never liked to pass up the opportunity of looking at her legs.

  6

  Edinburgh City Mortuary was sited on the Cowgate, at the bottom of High School Wynd and facing St Ann’s Community Centre and Blackfriars Street. The building was low-built red brick and pebbledash, purposely anonymous and tucked in an out of the way place. Steep sloping roads led up towards the High Street. For a long time now, the Cowgate had been a thoroughfare for traffic, not pedestrians. It was narrow and deep like a canyon, its pavements offering scant shelter from the taxis and cars rumbling past. The place was not for the faint-hearted. Society’s underclass could be found there, when it wasn’t yet time to shuffle back to the hostel.

  But the street was undergoing redevelopment, including a court annexe. First they’d cleaned up the Grassmarket, and now the city fathers had the Cowgate in their sights.

  Rebus waited outside the mortuary for a couple of minutes, until a woman poked her head out of the door.

  ‘Inspector Rebus?’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘He told me to tell you he’s already gone to Bannerman’s.’

  ‘Thanks.’ Rebus headed off towards the pub.

  Bannerman’s had been just cellarage at one time, and hadn’t been altered much since. Its vaulted rooms were unnervingly like those of the shops in Mary King’s Close. Cellars like these formed connecting burrows beneath the Old Town, worming from the Lawnmarket down to the Canongate and beyond. The bar wasn’t busy yet, and Dr Curt was sitting by the window, his beer glass resting on a barrel which served as table. Somehow, he’d found one of the few comfortable chairs in the place. It looked like a minor nobleman’s perch, with armrests and high back. Rebus bought a double whisky for himself, dragged over a stool, and sat down.

  ‘Your health, John.’

  ‘And yours.’

  ‘So what can I do for you?’

  Even in a pub, Rebus would swear he could smell soap and surgical alcohol wafting up from Curt’s hands. He took a swallow of whisky. Curt frowned.


  ‘Looks like I might be examining your liver sooner than I’d hoped.’

  Rebus nodded towards the pack of cigarettes on the table. They were Curt’s and they were untipped. ‘Not if you keep smoking those.’

  Dr Curt smiled. He hadn’t long taken up smoking, having decided to see just how indestructible he was. He wouldn’t call it a death wish exactly; it was merely an exercise in mortality.

  ‘How long have you and Ms Rattray been an item then?’

  Curt laughed. ‘Dear God, is that why I’m here? You want to ask me about Caroline?’

  ‘Just making conversation. She’s not bad though.’

  ‘Oh, she’s quite something.’ Curt lit a cigarette and inhaled, nodding to himself. ‘Quite something,’ he repeated through a cloud of smoke.

  ‘We may have a name for the victim in Mary King’s Close. It’s up to fingerprints now.’

  ‘Is that why you wanted to see me? Not just to discuss Caro?’

  ‘I want to talk about guns.’

  ‘I’m no expert on guns.’

  ‘Good. I’m not after an expert, I’m after someone I can talk to. Have you seen the ballistics report?’ Curt shook his head. ‘We’re looking at something like a Smith and Wesson model 547, going by the rifling marks – five grooves, right-hand twist. It’s a revolver, takes six rounds of nine millimetre parabellum.’

  ‘You’ve lost me already.’

  ‘Probably the version with the three-inch rather than four-inch barrel, which means a weight of thirty-two ounces.’ Rebus sipped his drink. There were whisky fumes in his nostrils now, blocking any other smells. ‘Revolvers don’t accept silencers.’

  ‘Ah.’ Curt nodded. ‘I begin to see some light.’

  ‘A confined space like that, shaped the way it was …’ Rebus nodded past the bar to the room beyond. ‘Much the same size and shape as this.’

  ‘It would have been loud.’

  ‘Bloody loud. Deafening, you might say.’

  ‘Meaning what exactly?’

  Rebus shrugged. ‘I’m just wondering how professional all of this really was. I mean, on the surface, if you look at the style of execution, then yes, it was a pro job, no question. But then things start to niggle.’

  Curt considered. ‘So what now? Do we scour the city for recent purchasers of hearing-aids?’

  Rebus smiled. ‘It’s a thought.’

  ‘All I can tell you, John, is that those bullets did damage. Whether meant to or not, they were messy. Now, we’ve both come up against messy killers before. Usually the facts of the mess make it easier to find them. But this time there doesn’t seem to be much evidence left lying around, apart from the bullets.’

  ‘I know.’

  Curt slapped his hand on the barrel. ‘Tell you what, I’ve got a suggestion.’

  ‘What is it?’

  He leaned forward, as if to impart a secret. ‘Let me give you Caroline Rattray’s phone number.’

  ‘Bugger off,’ said Rebus.

  That evening, a marked patrol car picked him up from Patience’s Oxford Terrace flat. The driver was a Detective Constable called Robert Burns, and Burns was doing Rebus a favour.

  ‘I appreciate it,’ said Rebus.

  Though Burns was attached to C Division in the west end, he’d been born and raised in Pilmuir, and still had friends and enemies there. He was a known quantity in the Gar-B, which was what mattered to Rebus.

  ‘I was born in one of the pre-fabs,’ Burns explained. ‘Before they levelled them to make way for the high-rises. The high-rises were supposed to more “civilised”, if you can believe that. Bloody architects and town planners. You never find one admitting he made a mistake, do you?’ He smiled. ‘They’re a bit like us that way.’

  ‘By “us” do you mean the police or the Wee Frees?’ Burns was more than just a member of the Free Church of Scotland. On Sunday afternoons he took his religion to the foot of The Mound, where he spouted hellfire and brimstone to anyone who’d listen. Rebus had listened a few times. But Burns took a break during the Festival. As he’d pointed out, even his voice would be fighting a losing battle against steel bands and untuned guitars.

  They were turning into the Gar-B, passing the gable end again with its sinister greeting.

  ‘Drop me as close as you can, eh?’

  ‘Sure,’ said Burns. And when they came to the dead end near the garages, he slowed only fractionally as he bumped the car up first onto the pavement and then onto the grass. ‘It’s not my car,’ he explained.

  They drove beside the path past the garages and a high-rise, until there was nowhere else to go. When Burns stopped, the car was resting about twelve feet from the community centre.

  ‘I can walk from here,’ said Rebus.

  Kids who’d been lying on the centre’s roof were standing now, watching them, cigarettes hanging from open mouths. People watched from the path and from open windows, too. Burns turned to Rebus.

  ‘Don’t tell me you wanted to sneak up on them?’

  ‘This is just fine.’ He opened his door. ‘Stay with the car. I don’t want us losing any tyres.’

  Rebus walked towards the community centre’s wide open doors. The teenagers on the roof watched him with practised hostility. There were paper planes lying all around, some of them made airborne again temporarily by a gust of wind. As Rebus walked into the building, he heard grunting noises above him. His rooftop audience were pretending to be pigs.

  There was no preliminary chamber, just the hall itself. At one end stood a high basketball hoop. Some teenagers were in a ruck around the grounded ball, feet scraping at ankles, hands pulling at arms and hair. So much for non-contact sports. On a makeshift stage sat a ghetto blaster, blaring out the fashion in heavy metal. Rebus didn’t reckon he’d score many points by announcing that he’d been in at the birth. Most of these kids had been born after Anarchy in the UK, never mind Communication Breakdown.

  There was a mix of ages, and it was impossible to pick out Peter Cave. He could be nodding his head to the distorted electric guitar. He could be smoking by the wall. Or in with the basketball brigade. But no, he was coming towards Rebus from the other direction, from a tight group which included black t-shirt from Rebus’s first visit.

  ‘Can I help?’

  Father Leary had said he was in his mid-twenties, but he could pass for late-teens. The clothes helped, and he wore them well. Rebus had seen church people before when they wore denim. They usually looked as if they’d be more comfortable in something less comfortable. But Cave, in faded denim jeans and denim shirt, with half a dozen thin leather and metal bracelets around his wrists, he looked all right.

  ‘Not many girls,’ Rebus stated, playing for a little more time.

  Peter Cave looked around. ‘Not just now. Usually there are more than this, but on a nice night …’

  It was a nice night. He’d left Patience drinking cold rose wine in the garden. He had left her reluctantly. He got no initial bad feelings from Cave. The young man was fresh-faced and clear-eyed and looked level headed too. His hair was long but by no means untidy, and his face was square and honest with a deep cleft in the chin.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Cave said, ‘I’m Peter Cave. I run the youth club.’ His hand shot out, bracelets sliding down his wrist. Rebus took the hand and smiled. Cave wanted to know who he was, a not unreasonable request.

  ‘Detective Inspector Rebus.’

  Cave nodded. ‘Davey said a policeman had been round earlier. I thought probably he meant uniformed. What’s the trouble, Inspector?’

  ‘No trouble, Mr Cave.’

  A circle of frowning onlookers had formed itself around the two of them. Rebus wasn’t worried, not yet.

  ‘Call me Peter.’

  ‘Mr Cave,’ Rebus licked his lips, ‘how are things going here?’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘A simple question, sir. Only, crime in Pilmuir hasn’t exactly dropped since you started this place up.’

  Cave bristled at th
at. ‘There haven’t been any gang fights.’

  Rebus accepted this. ‘But housebreaking, assaults … there are still syringes in the playpark and aerosols lying –’

  ‘Aerosols to you too.’

  Rebus turned to see who had entered. It was the boy with the naked chest and denim jacket.

  ‘Hello, Davey,’ said Rebus. The ring had broken long enough to let denim jacket through.

  The youth pointed a finger. ‘I thought I said you didn’t want to know my name?’

  ‘I can’t help it if people tell me things, Davey.’

  ‘Davey Soutar,’ Burns added. He was standing in the doorway, arms folded, looking like he was enjoying himself. He wasn’t of course, it was just a necessary pose.

  ‘Davey Soutar,’ Rebus echoed.

  Soutar had clenched his fists. Peter Cave attempted to intercede. ‘Now, please. Is there a problem here, Inspector?’

  ‘You tell me, Mr Cave.’ He looked around him. ‘Frankly, we’re a little bit concerned about this gang hut.’

  Colour flooded Cave’s cheeks. ‘It’s a youth centre.’

  Rebus was now studying the ceiling. Nobody was playing basketball any more. The music had been turned right down. ‘If you say so, sir.’

  ‘Look, you come barging in here –’

  ‘I don’t recall barging, Mr Cave. More of a saunter. I didn’t ask for trouble. If Davey here can be persuaded to unclench his fists, maybe you and me can have a quiet chat outside.’ He looked at the circle around them. ‘I’m not one for playing to the cheap seats.’

  Cave stared at Rebus, then at Soutar. He nodded slowly, his face drained of anger, and eventually Soutar let his hands relax. You could tell it was an effort. Burns hadn’t put in an appearance for nothing.

  ‘There now,’ said Rebus. ‘Come on, Mr Cave, let’s you and me go for a walk.’

  They walked across the playing fields. Burns had returned to the patrol car and moved it to a spot where he could watch them. Some teenagers watched from the back of the community centre and from its roof, but they didn’t venture any closer than that.