Mortal Causes

by Ian Rankin

  ‘Ach, that’s nothing,’ Holmes said dismissively.

  ‘What anarchist stuff?’ asked Rebus.

  ‘There were some magazines in his wardrobe,’ Clarke explained. ‘Soft porn, football programmes, a couple of those survivalist mags teenagers like to read to go with their diet of Terminator films.’ Rebus almost said something, but stopped himself. ‘And a flimsy little pamphlet called …’ She sought the title. ‘The Floating Anarchy Factfile.’

  ‘It was years old, sir,’ said Holmes. ‘Not relevant.’

  ‘Do we have it here?’

  ‘Yes, sir,’ said Siobhan Clarke.

  ‘It’s from the Orkneys,’ said Holmes. ‘I think it’s priced in old money. It belongs in a museum, not a police station.’

  ‘Brian,’ said Rebus, ‘all that fat you’re eating is going to your head. Since when do we dismiss anything in a murder inquiry?’ He picked a thin rasher of streaky from the plate and dropped it into his mouth. It tasted wonderful.

  The Floating Anarchy Factfile consisted of six sheets of A4 paper, folded over with a single staple through the middle to keep it from falling apart. It was typed on an old and irregular typewriter, with hand printed titles to its meagre articles and no photographs or drawings. It was priced not in old money but in new pence: five new pence to be exact, from which Rebus guessed it to be fifteen to twenty years old. There was no date, but it proclaimed itself ‘issue number three’. To a large extent Brian Holmes was right: it belonged in a museum. The pieces were written in a style that could be termed ‘Celtic hippy’, and this style was so uniform (as were the spelling mistakes) that the whole thing looked to be the work of a single individual with access to a copying machine, something like an old Roneo.

  As for the content, there were cries of nationalism and individualism in one paragraph, philosophical and moral lethargy the next. Anarcho-syndicalism was mentioned, but so were Bakunin, Rimbaud and Tolstoy. It wasn’t, to Rebus’s eye, the sort of stuff to boost advertising revenue. For example:

  ‘What Dalriada needs is a new commitment, a new set of mores which look to the existent and emerging youth culture. What we need is action by the individual without recourse or prior thought to the rusted machinery of law, church, state.

  ‘We need to be free to make our own decisions about our nation and then act self-consciously to make those decisions a reality. The sons and daughters of Alba are the future, but we are living in the mistakes of the past and must change those mistakes in the present. If you do not act then remember: Now is the first day of the rest of your strife. And remember too: inertia corrodes.’

  Except that ‘mores’ was spelt ‘moeres’ and ‘existent’ as ‘existant’. Rebus put the pamphlet down.

  ‘A psychiatrist could have a field day,’ he muttered. Holmes and Clarke were seated on the other side of his desk. He noticed that while he’d been at Fettes, people had been using his desktop as a dumping ground for sandwich wrappers and polystyrene cups. He ignored these and turned the pamphlet over. There was an address at the bottom of the back page: Zabriskie House, Brinyan, Rousay, Orkney Isles.

  ‘Now that’s what I call dropping out,’ said Rebus. ‘And look, the house is named after Zabriskie Point.’

  ‘Is that in the Orkneys too?’ asked Holmes.

  ‘It’s a film,’ said Rebus. He’d gone to see it a long long time ago, just for the ’60s soundtrack. He couldn’t remember much about it, except for an explosion near the end. He tapped his finger against the pamphlet. ‘I want to know more about this.’

  ‘You’re kidding, sir,’ said Holmes.

  ‘That’s me,’ said Rebus sourly, ‘always a smile and a joke.’

  Clarke turned to Holmes. ‘I think that means he’s serious.’

  ‘In the land of the blind,’ said Rebus, ‘the one-eyed man is king. And even I can see there’s more to this than meets your eyes, Brian.’

  Holmes frowned. ‘Such as, sir?’

  ‘Such as its provenance, its advanced years. What would you say, 1973? ’74? Billy Cunningham wasn’t even born in 1974. So what’s this doing in his wardrobe beside up-to-date scud mags and football programmes?’ He waited. ‘Answer came there none.’

  Holmes looked sullen; an annoying trait whenever Rebus showed him up. But Clarke was ready. ‘We’ll get Orkney police to check, sir, always supposing the Orkneys possess any police.’

  ‘Do that,’ said Rebus.

  10

  Like a rubber ball, he thought as he drove, I’ll come bouncing back to you. He’d been summoned back to Fettes by DCI Kilpatrick. In his pocket there was a message from Caroline Rattray, asking him to meet her in Parliament House. He was curious about the message, which had been taken over the phone by a Detective Constable in the Murder Room. He saw Caroline Rattray as she’d been that night, all dressed up and then dragged down into Mary King’s Close by Dr Curt. He saw her strong masculine face with its slanting nose and high prominent cheekbones. He wondered if Curt had said anything to her about him … He would definitely make time to see her.

  Kilpatrick had an office of his own in a corner of the otherwise open-plan room used by the SCS. Just outside it sat the secretary and the clerical assistant, though Rebus couldn’t work out which was which. Both were civilians, and both operated computer consoles. They made a kind of shield between Kilpatrick and everyone else, a barrier you passed as you moved from your world into his. As Rebus passed them, they were discussing the problems facing South Africa.

  ‘It’ll be like on Uist,’ one of them said, causing Rebus to pause and listen. ‘North Uist is Protestant and South Uist is Catholic, and they can’t abide one another.’

  Kilpatrick’s office itself was flimsy enough, just plastic partitions, see-through above waist height. The whole thing could be dismantled in minutes, or wrecked by a few judicious kicks and shoulder-charges. But it was definably an office. It had a door which Kilpatrick told Rebus to close. There was a certain amount of sound insulation. There were two filing-cabinets, maps and print-outs stuck to the walls with Blu-Tak, a couple of calendars still showing July. And on the desk a framed photograph of three grinning gap-toothed children.

  ‘Yours, sir?’

  ‘My brother’s. I’m not married.’ Kilpatrick turned the photo around, the better to study it. ‘I try to be a good uncle.’

  ‘Yes, sir.’ Rebus sat down. Beside him sat Ken Smylie, hands crossed in his lap. The skin on his wrists had wrinkled up like a bloodhound’s face.

  ‘I’ll get straight to the point, John,’ said Kilpatrick. ‘We’ve got a man undercover. He’s posing as a long-distance lorry driver. We’re trying to pick up information on arms shipments: who’s selling, who’s buying.’

  ‘Something to do with The Shield, sir?’

  Kilpatrick nodded. ‘He’s the one who’s heard the name mentioned.’

  ‘So who is he?’

  ‘My brother,’ Smylie said. ‘His name’s Calumn.’

  Rebus took this in. ‘Does he look like you, Ken?’

  ‘A bit.’

  ‘Then I dare say he’d pass as a lorry driver.’

  There was almost a smile at one corner of Smylie’s mouth.

  ‘Sir,’ Rebus said to Kilpatrick, ‘does this mean you think the Mary King’s Close killing had something to do with the paramilitaries?’

  Kilpatrick smiled. ‘Why do you think you’re here, John? You spotted it straight off. We’ve got three men working on Billy Cunningham, trying to track down friends of his. For some reason they had to kill him, I’d like to know why.’

  ‘Me too, sir. If you want to find out about Cunningham, try his flatmate first.’

  ‘Murdock? Yes, we’re talking to him.’

  ‘No, not Murdock, Murdock’s girlfriend. I went round there when they reported him missing. There was something about her, something not quite right. Like she was holding back, putting on an act.’

  Smylie said, ‘I’ll take a look.’

  ‘Her and her boyfriend both work wi
th computers. Think that might mean something?’

  ‘I’ll take a look,’ Smylie repeated. Rebus didn’t doubt that he would.

  ‘Ken thinks you should meet Calumn,’ Kilpatrick said.

  Rebus shrugged. ‘Fine by me.’

  ‘Good,’ said Kilpatrick. ‘Then we’ll take a little drive.’

  Out in the main office they all looked at him strangely, like they knew precisely what had been said to him in Kilpatrick’s den. Well, of course they knew. Their looks told Rebus he was resented more than ever. Even Claverhouse, usually so laid back, was managing a snide little grin.

  DI Blackwood rubbed a smooth hand over the hairless crown of his head, then tucked a stray hair back behind his ear. His tonsure was positively monasterial, and it bothered him. In his other hand he held his telephone receiver, listening to someone on the line. He ignored Rebus as Rebus walked past.

  At the next desk along, DS Ormiston was squeezing spots on his forehead.

  ‘You two make a picture,’ Rebus said. Ormiston didn’t appear to get it, but that wasn’t Rebus’s problem. His problem was that Kilpatrick was taking him into his confidence, and Rebus still didn’t know why.

  There are lots of warehouses in Sighthill, most of them anonymous. They weren’t exactly advertising that one of them had been leased by the Scottish Crime Squad. It was a big old prefabricated building surrounded by a high wire fence and protected by a high barred gate. There was barbed wire strung out across the top of the fence and the gate, and the gatehouse was manned. The guard unlocked the gate and swung it open so they could drive in.

  ‘We got this place for a song,’ Kilpatrick explained. ‘The market’s not exactly thriving just now.’ He smiled. ‘They even offered to throw in the security, but we didn’t think we’d need any help with that.’

  Kilpatrick was sitting in the back with Rebus, Smylie acting as chauffeur. The steering wheel was like a frisbee in his paws. But he was a canny driver, slow and considerate. He even signalled as he turned into a parking bay, though there was only one other car in the whole forecourt, parked five bays away. When they got out, the Sierra’s suspension groaned upwards. They were standing in front of a normal sized door whose nameplate had been removed. To its right were the much bigger doors of the loading bay. From the rubbish lying around, the impression was of a disused site. Kilpatrick took two keys from his pocket and unlocked the side door.

  The warehouse was just that, no offices or partitions off, just one large space with an oily concrete floor and some empty packing cases. A pigeon, disturbed by their entrance, fluttered near the ceiling for a moment before settling again on one of the iron spars supporting the corrugated roof. It had left its mark more than once on the HGV’s windshield.

  ‘That’s supposed to be lucky,’ said Rebus. Not that the articulated lorry looked clean anyway. It was splashed with pale caked-on mud and dust. It was a Ford with a UK licence plate, K registration. The cab door opened and a large man heaved himself out.

  He didn’t have his brother’s moustache and was probably a year or two younger. But he wasn’t smiling, and when he spoke his voice was high-pitched, almost cracking from effort.

  ‘You must be Rebus.’

  They shook hands. Kilpatrick was doing the talking.

  ‘We impounded this lorry two months back, or rather Scotland Yard did. They’ve kindly loaned it to us.’

  Rebus hoisted himself onto the running-plate and peered in the driver’s window. Behind the driving seat had been fixed a nude calendar and a dog-eared centrefold. There was space for a bunk, on which a sleeping bag was rolled up ready for use. The cab was bigger than some of the caravans Rebus had stayed in for holidays. He climbed back down.

  ‘Why?’

  There was a noise from the back of the lorry. Calumn Smylie was opening its container doors. By the time Rebus and Kilpatrick got there, the two Smylies had swung both doors wide and were standing inside the back, just in front of a series of wooden crates.

  ‘We’ve taken a few liberties,’ said Kilpatrick, hoisting himself into the back beside them, Rebus following. ‘The stuff was originally hidden beneath the floor.’

  ‘False fuel tanks,’ explained Ken Smylie. ‘Good ones too, welded and bolted shut.’

  ‘The Yard cut into them from up here.’ Kilpatrick stamped his foot. ‘And inside they found what the tip-off had told them they’d find.’

  Calumn Smylie lifted the lid off a crate so Rebus could look in. Inside, wrapped in oiled cloths, were eighteen or so AK 47 assault rifles. Rebus lifted one of them out by its folded metal butt. He knew how to handle a gun like this, even if he didn’t like doing it. Rifles had gotten lighter since his Army days, but they hadn’t gotten any more comfortable. They’d also gotten a deal more lethal. The wooden hand-grip was as cold as a coffin handle.

  ‘We don’t know exactly where they came from,’ Kilpatrick explained. ‘And we don’t even know where they were headed. The driver wouldn’t say anything, no matter how scary the Anti-Terrorist Branch got with him. He denied all knowledge of the load, and wasn’t about to point a finger anywhere else.’

  Rebus put the gun back in its crate. Calumn Smylie leaned past him to wipe off any fingerprints with a piece of rag.

  ‘So what’s the deal?’ Rebus asked. Calumn Smylie gave the answer.

  ‘When the driver was pulled in, there were some phone numbers in his pocket, two in Glasgow, one in Edinburgh. All three of them were bars.’

  ‘Could mean nothing,’ Rebus said.

  ‘Or everything,’ commented Ken Smylie.

  ‘See,’ Calumn added, ‘could be those bars are his contacts, maybe his employers, or the people his employers are selling to.’

  ‘So,’ said Kilpatrick, leaning against one of the crates, ‘we’ve got men watching all three pubs.’

  ‘In the hope of what?’

  It was Calumn’s turn again. ‘When Special Branch stopped the lorry, they managed to keep it quiet. It’s never been reported, and the driver’s tucked away somewhere under the Prevention of Terrorism Act and a few minor offences.’

  Rebus nodded. ‘So his employers or whoever won’t know what’s happened?’ Calumn was nodding too. ‘And they might get antsy?’ Now Rebus shook his head. ‘You should be a sniper.’

  Calumn frowned. ‘Why?’

  ‘Because that’s the longest shot I’ve ever heard.’

  Neither Smylie seemed thrilled to hear this. ‘I’ve already overheard a conversation mentioning The Shield,’ Calumn said.

  ‘But you’ve no idea what The Shield is,’ Rebus countered. ‘Which pub are we talking about anyway?’

  ‘The Dell.’

  It was Rebus’s turn to frown. ‘Just off the Garibaldi Estate?’

  ‘That’s the one.’

  ‘We’ve had some aggro there.’

  ‘Yes, so I hear.’

  Rebus turned to Kilpatrick. ‘Why do you need the lorry?’

  ‘In case we can operate a sting.’

  ‘How long are you going to give it?’

  Calumn shrugged. His eyes were dark and heavy from tension and a lack of sleep. He rubbed a hand through his uncombed hair, then over his unshaven face.

  ‘I can see it’s been like a holiday for you,’ Rebus said. He knew the plan must have been cooked up by the Smylie brothers. They seemed its real defenders. Kilpatrick’s part in it was more uncertain.

  ‘Better than that,’ Calumn was saying.

  ‘How so?’

  ‘The holiday I’m having, you don’t need to send postcards.’

  Not many people know of Parliament House, home of the High Court of Justiciary, Scotland’s highest court for criminal cases. There are few signposts or identifying markers outside, and the building itself is hidden behind St Giles, separated from it by a small anonymous car park containing a smattering of Jaguars and BMWs. Of the many doors facing the prospective visitor, only one normally stands open. This is the public entrance, and leads into Parliament Hall, from off wh
ich stretch the Signet Library and Advocates Library.

  There were fourteen courts in all, and Rebus guessed he’d been in all of them over the years. He sat on one of the long wooden benches. The lawyers around him were wearing dark pinstripe suits, white shirts with raised collars and white bow ties, grey wigs, and long black cloaks like those his teachers had worn. Mostly the lawyers were talking, either with clients or with each other. If with each other, they might raise their voices, maybe even share a joke. But with clients they were more circumspect. One well-dressed woman was nodding as her advocate talked in an undertone, all the while trying to stop the many files under his arm from wriggling free.

  Rebus knew that beneath the large stained glass window there were two corridors lined with old wooden boxes. Indeed, the first corridor was known as the Box Corridor. Each box was marked with a lawyer’s name, and each had a slat in the top, though the vast majority of boxes were kept open more or less permanently. Here documents awaited collection and perusal. Rebus had wondered at the openness of the system, the opportunities for theft and espionage. But there had never been any reports of theft, and security men were in any case never far away. He got up now and walked over to the stained glass. He knew the King portrayed was supposed to be James V, but wasn’t sure about the rest of it, all the figures or the coats of arms. To his right, through a wooden swing door with glass windows, he could see lawyers poring over books. Etched in gold on the glass were the words PRIVATE ROOM.

  He knew another private room close to here. Indeed, just on the other side of St Giles and down some flights of stairs. Billy Cunningham had been murdered not fifty yards from the High Court.

  He turned at the sound of heels clicking towards him. Caroline Rattray was dressed for work, from black shoes and stockings to powder-grey wig.

  ‘I wouldn’t have recognised you,’ he said.

  ‘Should I take that as a compliment?’ She gave him a big smile, and held it as she held his gaze. Then she touched his arm. ‘I see you’ve noticed.’ She looked up at the stained glass. ‘The royal arms of Scotland.’ Rebus looked up too. Beneath the large picture there were five smaller square windows, each showing a coat of arms. Caroline Rattray’s eyes were on the central panel. Two unicorns held the shield of the red Lion Rampant. Above on a scroll were the words IN DEFENCE, and at the bottom a Latin inscription. Rebus read it.