Mortal Causes

by Ian Rankin

  ‘I really don’t see, Inspector –’

  ‘You think you’re doing a good job here, sir?’

  Cave thought about it before answering. ‘Yes, I do.’

  ‘You think the experiment is a success?’

  ‘A limited success so far, but yes, once again.’ He had his hands behind his back, head bowed a little. He looked like he didn’t have a care in the world.

  ‘No regrets?’

  ‘None.’

  ‘Funny then …’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Your church doesn’t seem so sure.’

  Cave stopped in his tracks. ‘Is that what this is about? You’re in Conor’s congregation, is that it? He’s sent you here to … what’s the phrase? Come down heavy on me?’

  ‘Nothing like that.’

  ‘He’s paranoid. He was the one who wanted me here. Now suddenly he’s decided I should leave, ipso facto I must leave. He’s used to getting his way after all. Well, I don’t choose to leave. I like it fine here. Is that what he’s afraid of? Well there’s not much he can do about it, is there? And as far as I can see, Inspector, there’s nothing you can do about it either, unless someone from the club is found breaking the law.’ Cave’s face had reddened, his hands coming from behind his back so he could gesture with them.

  ‘That lot break the law every day.’

  ‘Now just a –’

  ‘No, listen for a minute. Okay, you got the Jaffas and the Tims together, but ask yourself why they were amenable. If they’re not divided, they’re united, and they’re united for a reason. They’re the same as before, only stronger. You must see that.’

  ‘I see nothing of the sort. People can change, Inspector.’

  Rebus had been hearing the line all his professional life. He sighed and toed the ground.

  ‘You don’t believe that?’

  ‘Frankly, sir, not in this particular case, and the crime stats back me up. What you’ve got just now is a truce of sorts, and it suits them because while there’s a truce they can get busy carving up territory between them. Anyone threatens them, they can retaliate in spades … or even with spades. But it won’t last, and when they split back into their separate gangs, there’s going to be blood spilled, no way round it. Because now there’ll be more at stake. Tell me, in your club tonight, how many Catholics were there?’

  Cave didn’t answer, he was too busy shaking his head. ‘I feel sorry for you, really I do. I can smell cynicism off you like sulphur. I don’t happen to believe anything you’ve just said.’

  ‘Then you’re every bit as naive as I am cynical, and that means they’re just using you. Which is good, because the only way of looking at this is that you’ve been sucked into it and you accept it, knowing the truth.’

  Cave’s cheeks were red again. ‘How dare you say that!’ And he punched Rebus in the stomach, hard. Rebus had been punched by professionals, but he was unprepared and felt himself double over for a moment, getting his wind back. There was a burning feeling in his gut, and it wasn’t whisky. He could hear cheering in the distance. Tiny figures were dancing up and down on the community centre roof. Rebus hoped they’d fall through it. He straightened up again.

  ‘Is that what you call setting a good example, Mr Cave?’

  Then he punched Cave solidly on the jaw. The young man stumbled backwards and almost fell.

  He heard a double roar from the community centre. The youth of the Gar-B were clambering down from the roof, starting to run in his direction. Burns had started the car and was bumping it across the football pitch towards him. The car was outpacing the crowd, but only just. An empty can bounced off its rear windscreen. Burns barely braked as he caught up with Rebus. Rebus yanked the door open and got in, grazing a knee and an elbow. Then they were off again, making for the roadway.

  ‘Well,’ Burns commented, checking the rearview, ‘that seemed to go off okay.’ Rebus was catching his breath and examining his elbow.

  ‘How did you know Davey Soutar’s name?’

  ‘He’s a maniac,’ Burns said simply. ‘I try to keep abreast of these things.’

  Rebus exhaled loudly, rolling his sleeve back down. ‘Never do a favour for a priest,’ he said to himself.

  ‘I’ll bear that in mind, sir,’ said Burns.

  7

  Rebus walked into the Murder Room next morning with a cup of delicatessen decaf and a tuna sandwich on wholemeal. He sat at his desk and peeled off the top from the styrofoam cup. From the corner of his eye he could see the fresh mound of paperwork which had appeared on his desk since yesterday. But he could ignore it for another five minutes.

  The victim’s fingerprints had been matched with those taken from items in Billy Cunningham’s room. So now they had a name for the body, but precious little else. Murdock and Millie had been interviewed, and the Post Office were looking up their personnel flies. Today, Billy’s room would be searched again. They still didn’t know who he was really. They still didn’t know anything about where he came from or who his parents were. There was so much they didn’t know.

  In a murder investigation, Rebus had found, you didn’t always need to know everything.

  Chief Inspector Lauderdale was standing behind him. Rebus knew this because Lauderdale brought a smell with him. Not everyone could distinguish it, but Rebus could. It was as if talcum powder had been used in a bathroom to cover some less acceptable aroma. Then there was a click and the buzz of Lauderdale’s battery-shaver. Rebus straightened at the sound.

  ‘Chief wants to see you,’ Lauderdale said. ‘Breakfast can wait.’

  Rebus stared at his sandwich.

  ‘I said it can wait.’

  Rebus nodded. ‘I’ll bring you back a mug of coffee, shall I, sir?’

  He took his own coffee with him, sipping it as he listened for a moment at Farmer Watson’s door. There were voices inside, one of them more nasal than the other. Rebus knocked and entered. DCI Kilpatrick was sitting across the desk from the Farmer.

  ‘Morning, John,’ said the Chief Super. ‘Coffee?’

  Rebus raised his cup. ‘Got some, sir.’

  ‘Well, sit down.’

  He sat next to Kilpatrick. ‘Morning, sir.’

  ‘Good morning, John.’ Kilpatrick was nursing a mug, but he wasn’t drinking. The Farmer meantime was pouring himself a refill from his personal machine.

  ‘Right, John,’ he said at last, sitting down. ‘Bottom line, you’re being seconded to DCI Kilpatrick’s section.’ Watson took a gulp of coffee, swilling it around his mouth. Rebus looked to Kilpatrick, who obliged with a confirmation.

  ‘You’ll be based with us at Fettes, but you’re going to be our eyes and ears on this murder inquiry, liaison if you like, so you’ll still spend most of your time here at St Leonard’s.’

  ‘But why?’

  ‘Well, Inspector, this case might concern the Crime Squad.’

  ‘Yes, sir, but why me in particular?’

  ‘You’ve been in the Army. I notice you served in Ulster in the late ’60s.’

  ‘That was quarter of a century ago,’ Rebus protested. An age spent forgetting all about it.

  ‘Nevertheless, you’ll agree there seem to be paramilitary aspects to this case. As you commented, the gun is not your everyday hold-up weapon. It’s a type of revolver used by terrorists. A lot of guns have been coming into the UK recently. Maybe this murder will connect us to them.’

  ‘Wait a second, you’re saying you’re not interested in the shooting, you’re interested in the gun?’

  ‘I think it will become clearer when I show you our operation at Fettes. I’ll be through here in –’ he looked at his watch ‘– say twenty minutes. That should give you time to say goodbye to your loved ones.’ He smiled.

  Rebus nodded. He hadn’t touched his coffee. A cooling scum had formed on its surface. ‘All right, sir,’ he said, getting to his feet.

  He was still a little dazed when he got back to the Murder Room. Two detectives were being told a
joke by a third. The joke was about a squid with no money, a restaurant bill, and the guy from the kitchen who washed up. The guy from the kitchen was called Hans.

  Rebus was joining the SCS, the Bastard Brigade as some called it. He sat at his desk. It took him a minute to work out that something was missing.

  ‘Which bollocks of you’s eaten my sandwich?’

  As he looked around the room, he saw that the joke had come to an untimely end. But no one was paying attention to him. A message was being passed through the place, changing the mood. Lauderdale came over to Rebus’s desk. He was holding a sheet of fax paper.

  ‘What is it?’ Rebus asked.

  ‘Glasgow have tracked down Billy Cunningham’s mother.’

  ‘Good. Is she coming here?’

  Lauderdale nodded distractedly. ‘She’ll be here for the formal ID.’

  ‘No father?’

  ‘The father and mother split up a long time ago. Billy was still an infant. She told us his name though.’ He handed over the fax sheet. ‘It’s Morris Cafferty.’

  ‘What?’ Rebus’s hunger left him.

  ‘Morris Gerald Cafferty.’

  Rebus read the fax sheet. ‘Say it ain’t so. It’s just Glasgow having a joke.’ But Lauderdale was shaking his head.

  ‘No joke,’ he said.

  Big Ger Cafferty was in prison, had been for several months, would be for many years to come. He was a dangerous man, runner of protection rackets, extortioner, murderer. They’d pinned only two counts of murder on him, but there had been others, Rebus knew there had been others.

  ‘You think someone was sending him a message?’ he asked.

  Lauderdale shrugged. ‘This changes the case slightly, certainly. According to Mrs Cunningham, Cafferty kept tabs on Billy all the time he was growing up, made sure he didn’t want for anything. She still gets money from time to time.’

  ‘But did Billy know who his father was?’

  ‘Not according to Mrs Cunningham.’

  ‘Then would anyone else have known?’

  Lauderdale shrugged again. ‘I wonder who’ll tell Cafferty.’

  ‘They better do it by phone. I wouldn’t want to be in the same room with him.’

  ‘Lucky my good suit’s in my locker,’ said Lauderdale. ‘There’ll have to be another press conference.’

  ‘Best tell the Chief Super first though, eh?’

  Lauderdale’s eyes cleared. ‘Of course.’ He lifted Rebus’s receiver to make the call. ‘What did he want with you, by the way?’

  ‘Nothing much,’ said Rebus. He meant it too, now.

  ‘But maybe this changes things,’ he persisted to Kilpatrick in the car. They were seated in the back, a driver taking them the slow route to Fettes. He was sticking to the main roads, instead of the alleys and shortcuts and fast stretches unpoliced by traffic lights that Rebus would have used.

  ‘Maybe,’ said Kilpatrick. ‘We’ll see.’

  Rebus had been telling Kilpatrick all about Big Ger Cafferty. ‘I mean,’ he went on, ‘if it’s a gang thing, then it’s nothing to do with paramilitaries, is it? So I can’t help you.’

  Kilpatrick smiled at him. ‘What is it, John? Most coppers I know would give their drinking arm for an assignment with SCS.’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘But you’re not one of them?’

  ‘I’m quite attached to my drinking arm. It comes in handy for other things.’ Rebus looked out of the window. ‘The thing is, I’ve been on secondment before, and I didn’t like it much.’

  ‘You mean London? The Chief Superintendent told me all about it.’

  ‘I doubt that, sir,’ Rebus said quietly. They turned off Queensferry Road, not a minute’s walk from Patience’s flat.

  ‘Humour me,’ said Kilpatrick stiffly. ‘After all, it sounds like you’re an expert on this man Cafferty too. I’d be daft not to use a man like you.’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  And they left it at that, saying nothing as they turned into Fettes, Edinburgh’s police HQ. At the end of the long road you got a good view of the Gothic spires of Fettes School, one of the city’s most exclusive. Rebus didn’t know which was uglier, the ornate school or the low anonymous building which housed police HQ. It could have been a comprehensive school, not so much a piece of design as a lack of it. It was one of the most unimaginative buildings Rebus had ever come across. Maybe it was making a statement about its purpose.

  The Scottish Crime Squad’s Edinburgh operation was run from a cramped office on the fifth floor, a floor shared with the city’s Scene of Crime unit. One floor above worked the forensic scientists and the police photographers. There was a lot of interaction between the two floors.

  The Crime Squad’s real HQ was Stuart Street in Glasgow, with other branches in Stonehaven and Dunfermline, the latter being a technical support unit. Eighty-two officers in total, plus a dozen or so civilian staff.

  ‘We’ve got our own surveillance and drugs teams,’ Kilpatrick added. ‘We recruit from all eight Scottish forces.’ He kept his spiel going as he led Rebus through the SCS office. A few people looked up from their work, but by no means all of them. Two who did were a bald man and his freckle-faced neighbour. Their look wasn’t welcoming, just interested.

  Rebus and Kilpatrick were approaching a very large man who was standing in front of a wall-map. The map showed the British Isles and the north European mainland, stretching east as far as Russia. Some sea routes had been marked with long narrow strips of red material, like something you’d use in dressmaking. Only the big man didn’t look the type for crimping-shears and tissue-paper cut-outs. On the map, the ports had been circled in black pen. One of the routes ended on the Scottish east coast. The man hadn’t turned round at their approach.

  ‘Inspector John Rebus,’ said Kilpatrick, ‘this is Inspector Ken Smylie. He never smiles, so don’t bother joking with him about his name. He doesn’t say much, but he’s always thinking. And he’s from Fife, so watch out. You know what they say about Fifers.’

  ‘I’m from Fife myself,’ said Rebus. Smylie had turned round to grip Rebus’s hand. He was probably six feet three or four, and had the bulk to make the height work. The bulk was a mixture of muscle and fat, but mostly muscle. Rebus would bet the guy worked out every day. He was a few years younger than Rebus, with short thick fair hair and a small dark moustache. You’d take him for a farm labourer, maybe even a farmer. In the Borders, he’d definitely have played rugby.

  ‘Ken,’ Kilpatrick said to Smylie, ‘I’d like you to show John around. He’s going to be joining us temporarily. He’s ex-Army, served in Ulster.’ Kilpatrick winked. ‘A good man.’ Ken Smylie looked appraisingly at Rebus, who tried to stand up straight, inflating his chest. He didn’t know why he wanted to impress Smylie, except that he didn’t want him as an enemy. Smylie nodded slowly, sharing a look with Kilpatrick, a look Rebus didn’t understand.

  Kilpatrick touched Smylie’s arm. ‘I’ll leave you to it.’ He turned and called to another officer. ‘Jim, any calls?’ Then he walked away from them.

  Rebus turned to the map. ‘Ferry crossings?’

  ‘There isn’t a ferry sails from the east coast.’

  ‘They go to Scandinavia.’

  ‘This one doesn’t.’ He had a point. Rebus decided to try again.

  ‘Boats then?’

  ‘Boats, yes. We think boats.’ Rebus had expected the voice to be basso profondo, but it was curiously high, as though it hadn’t broken properly in Smylie’s teens. Maybe it was the reason he didn’t say much.

  ‘You’re interested in boats then?’

  ‘Only if they’re bringing in contraband.’

  Rebus nodded. ‘Guns.’

  ‘Maybe guns.’ He pointed to some of the east European ports. ‘See, these days things being what they are, there are a lot of weapons in and around Russia. If you cut back your military, you get excess. And the economic situation there being what it is, you get people who need money.’

  ‘So t
hey steal guns and sell them?’

  ‘If they need to steal them. A lot of the soldiers kept their guns. Plus they picked up souvenirs along the way, stuff from Afghanistan and wherever. Here, sit down.’

  They sat at Smylie’s desk, Smylie himself spilling from a moulded plastic chair. He brought some photographs out of a drawer. They showed machine guns, rocket launchers, grenades and missiles, armour-piercing shells, a whole dusty armoury.

  ‘This is just some of the stuff that’s been tracked down. Most of it in mainland Europe: Holland, Germany, France. But some of it in Northern Ireland of course, and some in England and Scotland.’ He tapped a photo of an assault rifle. ‘This AK 47 was used in a bank hold-up in Hillhead. You know Professor Kalashnikov is a travelling salesman these days? Times are hard, so he goes to arms fairs around the world flogging his creations. Like this.’ Smylie picked out another photograph. ‘Later model, the AK 74. The magazine’s made of plastic. This is actually the 74S, still quite rare on the market. A lot of the stuff travels across Europe courtesy of motorcycle gangs.’

  ‘Hell’s Angels?’

  Smylie nodded. ‘Some of them are in this up to their tattooed necks, and making a fortune. But there are other problems. A lot of stuff comes into the UK direct. The armed forces, they bring back souvenirs too, from the Falklands or Kuwait. Kalashnikovs, you name it. Not everyone gets searched, a lot of stuff gets in. Later, it’s either sold or stolen, and the owners aren’t about to report the theft, are they?’

  Smylie paused and swallowed, maybe realising how much he’d been talking.

  ‘I thought you were the strong silent type,’ Rebus said.

  ‘I get carried away sometimes.’

  Rebus wouldn’t fancy being on stretcher detail. Smylie began to tidy up the photographs.

  ‘That’s basically it,’ he said. ‘The material that’s already here we can’t do much about, but with the help of Interpol we’re trying to stop the trafficking.’

  ‘You’re not saying Scotland is a target for this stuff?’

  ‘A conduit, that’s all. It comes through here on its way to Northern Ireland.’