Mortal Causes

by Ian Rankin

  ‘The IRA?’

  ‘To whoever has the money to pay for it. Right now, we think it’s more a Protestant thing. We just don’t know why.’

  ‘How much evidence do you have?’

  ‘Not enough.’

  Rebus was thinking. Kilpatrick had kept very quiet, but all along he’d thought there was a paramilitary angle to the murder, because it tied in with all of this.

  ‘You’re the one who spotted the six-pack?’ Smylie asked. Rebus nodded. ‘You might well be right about it. If so, the victim must’ve been involved.’

  ‘Or just someone who got caught up in it.’

  ‘That tends not to happen.’

  ‘But there’s another thing. The victim’s father is a local gangster, Big Ger Cafferty.’

  ‘You put him away a while back.’

  ‘You’re well informed.’

  ‘Well,’ said Smylie, ‘Cafferty adds a certain symmetry, doesn’t he?’ He rose briskly from his chair. ‘Come on, I’ll give you the rest of the tour.’

  Not that there was much to see. But Rebus was introduced to his colleagues. They didn’t look like supermen, but you wouldn’t want to fight them on their terms. They all looked like they’d gone the distance and beyond.

  One man, a DS Claverhouse, was the exception. He was lanky and slow-moving and had dark cusps beneath his eyes.

  ‘Don’t let him fool you,’ Smylie said. ‘We don’t call him Bloody Claverhouse for nothing.’

  Claverhouse’s smile took time forming. It wasn’t that he was slow so much as that he had to calculate things before he carried them out. He was seated at his desk, Rebus and Smylie standing in front of him. He was tapping his fingers on a red cardboard file. The file was closed, but on its cover was printed the single word SHIELD. Rebus had just seen the word on another file lying on Smylie’s desk.

  ‘Shield?’ he asked.

  ‘The Shield,’ Claverhouse corrected. ‘It’s something we keep hearing about. Maybe a gang, maybe with Irish connections.’

  ‘But just now,’ interrupted Smylie, ‘all it is is a name.’

  Shield, the word meant something to Rebus. Or rather, he knew it should mean something to him. As he turned from Claverhouse’s desk, he caught something Claverhouse was saying to Smylie, saying in an undertone.

  ‘We don’t need him.’

  Rebus didn’t let on he’d heard. He knew nobody liked it when an outsider was brought in. Nor did he feel any happier when introduced to the bald man, a DS Blackwood, and the freckled one, DC Ormiston. They were as enthusiastic about him as dogs welcoming a new flea to the area. Rebus didn’t linger; there was a small empty desk waiting from him in another part of the room, and a chair which had been found in some cupboard. The chair didn’t quite have three legs, but Rebus got the idea: they hadn’t exactly stretched themselves to provide him with a wholesome working environment. He took one look at desk and chair, made his excuses and left. He took a few deep breaths in the corridor, then descended a few floors. He had one friend at Fettes, and saw no reason why he shouldn’t visit her.

  But there was someone else in DI Gill Templer’s office. The nameplate on the door told him so. Her name was DI Murchie and she too was a Liaison Officer. Rebus knocked on the door.

  ‘Enter!’

  It was like entering a headmistress’s office. DI Murchie was young; at least, her face was. But she had made determined efforts to negate this fact.

  ‘Yes?’ she said.

  ‘I was looking for DI Templer.’

  Murchie put down her pen and slipped off her half-moon glasses. They hung by a string around her neck. ‘She’s moved on,’ she said. ‘Dunfermline, I think.’

  ‘Dunfermline? What’s she doing there?’

  ‘Dealing with rapes and sexual assaults, so far as I know. Do you have some business with Inspector Templer?’

  ‘No, I just … I was passing and … Never mind.’ He backed out of the room.

  DI Murchie twitched her mouth and put her glasses back on. Rebus went back upstairs feeling worse than ever.

  He spent the rest of the morning waiting for something to happen. Nothing did. Everyone kept their distance, even Smylie. And then the phone rang on Smylie’s desk, and it was a call for him.

  ‘Chief Inspector Lauderdale,’ Smylie said, handing over the receiver.

  ‘Hello?’

  ‘I hear you’ve been poached from us.’

  ‘Sort of, sir.’

  ‘Well, tell them I want to poach you back.’

  I’m not a fucking salmon, thought Rebus. ‘I’m still on the investigation, sir,’ he said.

  ‘Yes, I know that. The Chief Super told me all about it.’ He paused. ‘We want you to talk to Cafferty.’

  ‘He won’t talk to me.’

  ‘We think he might.’

  ‘Does he know about Billy?’

  ‘Yes, he knows.’

  ‘And now he wants someone he can use as a punchbag?’ Lauderdale didn’t say anything to this. ‘What good will it do talking to him?’

  ‘I’m not sure.’

  ‘Then why bother?’

  ‘Because he’s insisting. He wants to talk to CID, and not just any officer will do. He’s asked to speak to you.’ There was silence between them. ‘John? Anything to say?’

  ‘Yes, sir. This has been a very strange day.’ He checked his watch. ‘And it’s not even one o’clock yet.’

  8

  Big Ger Cafferty was looking good.

  He was fit and lean and had purpose to his gait. A white t-shirt was tight across his chest, flat over the stomach, and he wore faded work denims and new-looking tennis shoes. He walked into the Visiting Room like he was the visitor, Rebus the inmate. The warder beside him was no more than a hired flunkey, to be dismissed at any moment. Cafferty gripped Rebus’s hand just a bit too hard, but he wasn’t going to try tearing it off, not yet.

  ‘Strawman.’

  ‘Hello, Cafferty.’ They sat down at opposite sides of the plastic table, the legs of which had been bolted to the floor. Otherwise, there was little to show that they were in Barlinnie Jail, a prison with a tough reputation from way back, but one which had striven to remake itself. The Visiting Room was clean and white, a few public safety posters decorating its walls. There was a flimsy aluminium ashtray, but also a No Smoking sign. The tabletop bore a few burn marks around its rim from cigarettes resting there too long.

  ‘They made you come then, Strawman?’ Cafferty seemed amused by Rebus’s appearance. He knew, too, that as long as he kept using his nickname for Rebus, Rebus would be needled.

  ‘I’m sorry about your son.’

  Cafferty was no longer amused. ‘Is it true they tortured him?’

  ‘Sort of.’

  ‘Sort of?’ Cafferty’s voice rose. ‘There’s no halfway house with torture!’

  ‘You’d know all about that.’

  Cafferty’s eyes blazed. His breathing was shallow and noisy. He got to his feet.

  ‘I can’t complain about this place. You get a lot of freedom these days. I’ve found you can buy freedom, same as you can buy anything else.’ He stopped beside the warder. ‘Isn’t that right, Mr Petrie?’

  Wisely, Petrie said nothing.

  ‘Wait for me outside,’ Cafferty ordered. Rebus watched Petrie leave. Cafferty looked at him and grinned a humourless grin.

  ‘Cosy,’ he said, ‘just the two of us.’ He started to rub his stomach.

  ‘What do you want, Cafferty?’

  ‘Stomach’s started giving me gyp. What’s my point, Strawman? My point’s this.’ He was standing over Rebus, and now leant down, his hands pressing Rebus’s shoulders. ‘I want the bastard found.’ Rebus found himself staring at Cafferty’s bared teeth. ‘See, I can’t have people fucking with my family, it’s bad for my reputation. Nobody gets away with something like that … it’d be bad for business.’

  ‘Nice to see the paternal instinct’s so strong.’

  Cafferty ignored this. ‘My men are
out there hunting, understood? And they’ll be keeping an eye on you. I want a result, Strawman.’

  Rebus shrugged off Cafferty’s pressure and got to his feet. ‘You think we’re going to sit on our hands because the victim was your son?’

  ‘You better not … that’s what I’m saying. Revenge, Strawman, I’ll have it one way or the other. I’ll have it on somebody.’

  ‘Not on me,’ Rebus said quietly. He held Cafferty’s stare, till Cafferty opened his arms wide and shrugged, then went to his chair and sat down. Rebus stayed standing.

  ‘I need to ask you a few questions,’ he said.

  ‘Fire away.’

  ‘Did you keep in touch with your son?’

  Cafferty shook his head. ‘I kept in touch with his mum. She’s a good woman, too good for me, always was. I send her money for Billy, at least I did while he was growing up. I still send something from time to time.’

  ‘By what means?’

  ‘Someone I can trust.’

  ‘Did Billy know who his father was?’

  ‘Absolutely not. His mum wasn’t exactly proud of me.’ He started rubbing his stomach again.

  ‘You should take something for that,’ Rebus said. ‘So, could anyone have got to him as a way of getting at you?’

  Cafferty nodded. ‘I’ve thought about it, Strawman. I’ve thought a lot about it.’ Now he shook his head. ‘I can’t see it. I mean, it was my first thought, but nobody knew, nobody except his mum and me.’

  ‘And the intermediary.’

  ‘He didn’t have anything to do with it. I’ve had people ask him.’

  The way Cafferty said this sent a shiver through Rebus.

  ‘Two more things,’ he said. ‘The word Nemo, mean anything?’

  Cafferty shook his head. But Rebus knew that by tonight villains across the east of Scotland would be on the watch for the name. Maybe Cafferty’s men would get to the killer first. Rebus had seen the body. He didn’t much care who got the killer, so long as someone did. He guessed this was Cafferty’s thinking too.

  ‘Second thing,’ he said, ‘the letters SaS on a tattoo.’

  Cafferty shook his head again, but more slowly this time. There was something there, some recognition.

  ‘What is it, Cafferty?’

  But Cafferty wasn’t saying.

  ‘What about gangs, was he in any gangs?’

  ‘He wasn’t the type.’

  ‘He had the Red Hand of Ulster on his bedroom wall.’

  ‘I’ve got a Pirelli calendar on mine, doesn’t mean I use their tyres.’

  Rebus walked towards the door. ‘Not much fun being a victim, is it?’

  Cafferty jumped to his feet. ‘Remember,’ he said, ‘I’ll be watching.’

  ‘Cafferty, if one of your goons so much as asks me the time of day, I’ll throw him in a cell.’

  ‘You threw me in a cell, Strawman. Where did it get you?’

  Unable to bear Cafferty’s smile, the smile of a man who had drowned people in pigshit and shot them in cold blood, a cold devious manipulator, a man without morals or remorse, unable finally to bear any of this, Rebus left the room.

  The prison officer, Petrie, was standing outside, shuffling his feet. His eyes couldn’t meet Rebus’s.

  ‘You’re an absolute disgrace,’ Rebus told him, walking away.

  While he was in Glasgow, Rebus could have talked to the boy’s mother, only the boy’s mother was in Edinburgh giving an official ID to the top half of her dead son’s face. Dr Curt would be sure she never saw the bottom half. As he’d said to Rebus, if Billy had been a ventriloquist’s dummy, he’d never have worked again.

  ‘You’re a sick man, doctor,’ John Rebus had said.

  He drove back to Edinburgh weary and trembling. Cafferty had that effect on him. He’d never thought he’d have to see the man again, at least not until both of them were of pensionable age. Cafferty had sent him a postcard the day he’d arrived in Barlinnie. But Siobhan Clarke had intercepted it and asked if he wanted to see it.

  ‘Tear it up,’ Rebus had told her. He still didn’t know what the message had been.

  Siobhan Clarke was still in the Murder Room when he got back.

  ‘You’re working hard,’ he told her.

  ‘It’s a wonderful thing, overtime. Besides, we’re a bit short of hands.’

  ‘You’ve heard then?’

  ‘Yes, congratulations.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘SCS, it’s like a lateral promotion, isn’t it?’

  ‘It’s only temporary, like a run of good games to Hibs. Where’s Brian?’

  ‘Out at Cunningham’s digs, talking to Murdock and Millie again.’

  ‘Was Mrs Cunningham up to questioning?’

  ‘Just barely.’

  ‘Who talked to her?’

  ‘I did, the Chief Inspector’s idea.’

  ‘Then for once Lauderdale’s had a good idea. Did you ask her about religion?’

  ‘You mean all that Orange stuff in Billy’s room? Yes, I asked. She just shrugged like it was nothing special.’

  ‘It is nothing special. There are hundreds of people with the same flag, the same music-tapes. Christ, I’ve seen them.’

  And this was the truth. He’d seen them at close quarters, not just as a kid, hearing the Sash sung by drunks on their way home, but more recently. He’d been visiting his brother in Fife, just over a month ago, the weekend before July 12th. There’d been an Orange march in Cowdenbeath. The pub they were in seemed to be hosting a crowd of the marchers in the dance hall upstairs. Sounds of drums, especially the huge drum they called the lambeg, and flutes and penny whistles, bad choruses repeated time and again. They’d gone upstairs to investigate, just as the thing was winding down. God Save the Queen was being destroyed on a dozen cheap flutes.

  And some of the kids singing along, sweaty brows and shirts open, some of them had their arms raised, hands straight out in front of them. A Nazi-style salute.

  ‘Nothing else?’ he asked. Clarke shook her head. ‘She didn’t know about the tattoo?’

  ‘She thinks he must have done it in the last year or so.’

  ‘Well, that’s interesting in itself. It means we’re not dealing with some ancient gang or old flame. SaS was something recent in his life. What about Nemo?’

  ‘It didn’t mean anything to her.’

  ‘I’ve just been talking to Cafferty, SaS meant something to him. Let’s pull his records, see if they tell us anything.’

  ‘Now?’

  ‘We can make a start. By the way, remember that card he sent me?’ Clarke nodded. ‘What was on it?’

  ‘It was a picture of a pig in its sty.’

  ‘And the message?’

  ‘There wasn’t any message,’ she said.

  On the way back to Patience’s he dropped into the video store and rented a couple of movies. It was the only video store nearby that he hadn’t turned over at one time or another with vice or Trading Standards, looking for porn and splatter and various bootleg tapes. The owner was a middle-aged fatherly type, happy to tell you that some comedy was particularly good or some adventure film might prove a bit strong for ‘the ladies’. He hadn’t commented on Rebus’s selections: Terminator 2 and All About Eve. But Patience had a comment.

  ‘Great,’ she said, meaning the opposite.

  ‘What’s wrong?’

  ‘You hate old movies and I hate violence.’

  Rebus looked at the Schwarzenegger. ‘It’s not even an 18. And who says I don’t like old films?’

  ‘What’s your favourite black and white movie?’

  ‘There are hundreds of them.’

  ‘Name me five. No, three, and don’t say I’m not fair.’

  He stared at her. They were standing a few feet apart in the living room, Rebus with the videos still in his hands, Patience with her arms folded, her back erect. He knew she could probably smell the whisky on his breath, even keeping his mouth shut and breathing through his nose. It was so q
uiet, he could hear the cat washing itself somewhere behind the sofa.

  ‘What are we fighting about?’ he asked.

  She was ready for this. ‘We’re fighting about consideration, as usual. To wit, your lack of any.’

  ‘Ben Hur.’

  ‘Colour.’

  ‘Well, that courtroom one then, with James Stewart.’ She nodded. ‘And that other one, with Orson Welles and the mandolin.’

  ‘It was a zither.’

  ‘Shite,’ said John Rebus, throwing down the videos and making for the front door.

  Millie Docherty waited until Murdock had been asleep for a good hour. She spent the hour thinking about the questions the police had asked both of them, and thinking further back to good days and bad days in her life. She spoke Murdock’s name. His breathing remained regular. Only then did she slip out of bed and walk barefoot to Billy’s bedroom door, touching the door with her fingertips. Christ, to think he wasn’t there, would never be there again. She tried to control her breathing, fast in, slow out. Otherwise she might hyperventilate. Panic attacks, they called them. For years she’d suffered them not knowing she was not alone. There were lots of people out there like her. Billy had been one of them.

  She turned the doorknob and slipped into his room. His mother had been round earlier on, hardly in a state to cope with any of it. There had been a policewoman with her, the same one who’d come to the flat that first time. Billy’s mum had looked at his room, but then shook her head.

  ‘I can’t do this. Another time.’

  ‘If you like,’ Millie had offered, ‘I can bag everything up for you. All you’d have to do is have his things collected.’ The policewoman had nodded her gratitude at that. Well, it was the least … She felt the tears coming and sat down on his narrow bed. Funny how a bed so narrow could be made wide enough for two, if the two were close. She did the breathing exercises again. Fast in, slow out, but those words, her instructions to herself, reminded her of other things, other times. Fast in, slow out.

  ‘I’ve got this self-help book,’ Billy had said. ‘It’s in my room.’ He’d gone to find it for her, and she’d followed him into his room. Such a tidy room. ‘Here it is,’ he’d said, turning towards her quickly, not realising how close behind him she was.