by Ian Rankin
‘Somewhere else.’
‘Who’ll feed the pets?’
‘I’ll get someone to do it, don’t worry.’
‘I’m not worried.’ She took a sip of coffee. ‘Yes I am. What is going on?’
‘A bad man’s coming to town.’ Something struck him. ‘There you are, that’s another old film I like: High Noon.’
Rebus booked into a small hotel in Bruntsfield. He knew the night manager and phoned first, checking they had a room.
‘You’re lucky, we’ve one single.’
‘How come you’re not full?’
‘The old gent who was in it, he’s been coming here for years, he died of a stroke yesterday afternoon.’
‘Oh.’
‘You’re not superstitious or anything?’
‘Not if it’s your only room.’
He climbed the steps to street level and looked around. When he was happy, he gestured for Patience to join him. She carried a couple of bags. Rebus was already holding her small suitcase. They put the stuff in the back of her car and embraced hurriedly.
‘I’ll call you,’ he said. ‘Don’t try phoning me.’
‘John …’
‘Trust me on this if on nothing else, Patience, please.’
He watched her drive off, then hung around to make sure no one was following her. Not that he could be absolutely sure. They could pick her up on Queensferry Road. Cafferty wouldn’t hesitate to use her, or anyone, to get to him. Rebus got his own bag from the flat, locked the flat tight, and headed for his car. On the way he stopped at the next door neighbour’s door, dropping an envelope through the letterbox. Inside were keys to the flat and feeding instructions for Lucky the cat, the budgie with no name, and Patience’s goldfish.
It was still early morning, the quiet streets unsuitable for a tail. Even so, he took every back route he could think of. The hotel was just a big family house really, converted into a small family hotel. Out front, where a garden once separated it from the pavement, tarmac had been laid, making a car park for half a dozen cars. But Rebus drove round the back and parked where the staff parked. Monty, the night manager, brought him in the back way, then led him straight up to his room. It was at the top of the house, all the way up one of the creakiest staircases Rebus had ever climbed. No one would be able to tiptoe up there without him and the woodworm knowing about it.
He lay on the solid bed wondering if lying on a dead man’s bed was like stepping into his shoes. Then he started to think about Cafferty. He knew he was taking half-measures only. How hard would it be for Cafferty to track him down? A few men staked outside Fettes and St Leonard’s and in a few well-chosen pubs, and Rebus would be in the gangster’s hands by the end of the day. Fine, he just didn’t want Patience involved, or Patience’s home, or those of his friends.
Didn’t most suicides do the same thing, come to hotels so as not to involve family and friends?
He could have gone home of course, back to his flat in Marchmont, but it was still full of students working in Edinburgh over the summer. He liked his tenants, and didn’t want them meeting Cafferty. Come to that, he didn’t want Monty the night manager meeting Cafferty either.
‘He’s not after me,’ he kept reminding himself, hands behind his head as he stared at the ceiling. There was a clock radio by the bed, and he switched it on, catching the news. Police were still searching for Morris Gerald Cafferty. ‘He’s not after me,’ he repeated. But in a sense, Cafferty was. He’d know Rebus was his best bet to finding the killers. There was a short item about the body at the Crazy Hose, though no gruesome details. Not yet, anyway.
When the news finished, he washed and went downstairs. He got a black cab to take him to St Leonard’s. Once told the destination, the driver switched off his meter.
‘On the house,’ he said.
Rebus nodded and sat back. He’d commandeer someone’s car during the course of the day, either that or find a spare car from the pool. No one would complain. They all knew who’d put Cafferty in Barlinnie. At St Leonard’s, he walked smartly into the station and went straight to the computer, tapping into Brains. Brains had a direct link to PNC2, the UK mainland police database at Hendon. As he’d expected, there wasn’t much on Lee Francis Bothwell, but there was a note referring him to files kept by Strathclyde Police in Partick.
The officer he talked to in Partick was not thrilled.
‘All that old stuff’s in the attic,’ he told Rebus. ‘I’ll tell you, one of these days the ceiling’ll come down.’
‘Just go take a look, eh? Fax it to me, save yourself a phone call.’
An hour later, Rebus was handed several fax sheets relating to activities of the Tartan Army and the Workers’ Party in the early 1970s. Both groups had enjoyed short anarchic lives, robbing banks to finance their arms purchases. The Tartan Army had wanted independence for Scotland, at any price. What the Workers’ Party had wanted Rebus couldn’t recall, and there was no mention of their objectives in the fax. The Tartan Army had been the bigger terror of the two, breaking into explosives stores and Army bases, building up an arms cache for an insurrection which never came.
Frankie Bothwell was mentioned as a Tartan Army supporter, but with no evidence against him of illegal acts. Rebus reckoned this would be just before his move to the Orkneys and rebirth as Cuchullain. Cuchullain of the Red Hand.
Arch Gowrie was probably at breakfast when Rebus caught him. He could hear the clink of cutlery on plate.
‘Sorry to disturb you so early, sir.’
‘More questions, Inspector? Maybe I should start charging a consultancy fee.’
‘I was hoping you could help me with a name.’ Gowrie made a noncommittal noise, or maybe he was just chewing. ‘Lee Francis Bothwell.’
‘Frankie Bothwell?’
‘You know him?’
‘I used to.’
‘He was a member of the Orange Lodge?’
‘Yes, he was.’
‘But he got kicked out?’
‘Not quite. He left voluntarily.’
‘Might I ask why, sir?’
‘You might.’ There was a pause. ‘He was … unpredictable, had a temper on him. Most of the time he was fine. He coached the youth football teams for a couple of district lodges, he seemed to enjoy that.’
‘Was he interested in history?’
‘Yes, Scottish and Irish history.’
‘Cuchullain?’
‘Amongst other things. I think he wrote a couple of articles for Ulster, that’s the magazine of the UDA. He did them under a pseudonym, so we couldn’t discipline him, but the style was his. Loyalists, Inspector, are very interested in Irish pre-history. Bothwell was writing about the Cruithin. He was very bright like that, but he –’
‘Did he have any links with the Orange Loyal Brigade?’
‘Not that I know of, but it wouldn’t surprise me. Gavin MacMurray’s interested in pre-history too.’ Gowrie sighed. ‘Frankie left the Orange Lodge because he didn’t feel we went far enough. That’s as much as I’ll say, but maybe it tells you something about him.’
‘It does, Mr Gowrie, yes. Thanks for your help.’
Rebus put the phone down and thought it over. Then he shook his head sadly.
‘You picked some place to hide her, Mairie. Some fucking place.’
His desk now looked like a skip, and he decided to do something about it. He filled his waste bin with empty cups, plates, crumpled papers and packets. Until, only slightly buried, he came to an A4-size manila envelope. His name was written on it in black marker pen. The envelope was fat. It hadn’t been opened.
‘Who left this here?’
But nobody seemed to know. They were too busy discussing another call made to the newspaper by the lunatic with the Irish accent. Nobody knew about The Shield, of course, not the way Rebus knew. The media had stuck to the theory that the body in Mary King’s Close was that of the caller, a rogue from an IRA unit who’d been disciplined by his masters. It didn’t make an
y sense now, but that didn’t matter. There’d been another call now, another morning headline. ‘“Shut the Whole Thing Down,” says Threat Man.’ Rebus had considered what benefit SaS could derive from disrupting the Festival. Answer: none.
He looked at the envelope a final time, then ran his finger under the flap and eased out a dozen sheets of paper, photocopies of reports, news stories. American, the lot of them, though whoever had done the copying had been careful, leaving off letter headings, addresses, phone numbers. As Rebus read, he couldn’t be sure where half the stories originated. But one thing was clear, they were all about one man.
Clyde Moncur.
There were no messages, nothing handwritten, nothing to identify the sender. Rebus checked the envelope. It hadn’t been posted. It had been delivered by hand. He asked around again, but nobody owned up to having ever seen the thing before. Mairie was the only source he could think of, but she wouldn’t have sent the stuff like this.
He read through the file anyway. It reinforced his impression of Clyde Moncur. The man was a snake. He ran drugs up into Vancouver and across to Ontario. His boats brought in immigrants from the Far East, or often didn’t, though they were known to have picked up travellers along the way. What happened to them, these people who paid to be transported to a better life? The bottom of the deep blue sea, seemed to be the inference.
There were other murky areas to Moncur’s life, like his undeclared interest in a fish processing plant outside Toronto … Toronto, home of The Shield. The US Internal Revenue had been trying for years to get to the bottom of it all, and failing.
Buried in all the clippings was the briefest mention of a Scottish salmon farm.
Moncur had imported Scottish smoked salmon into the USA, though the Canadian stuff was just a mite closer to hand. The salmon farm he used was just north of Kyle of Lochalsh. Its name struck home. Rebus had come across the name very recently. He went back to the files on Cafferty, and there it was. Cafferty had been legitimate part-owner of the farm in the 1970s and early 80s … around the time him and Jinky Johnson were washing and drying dirty money for the UVF.
‘This is beautiful,’ Rebus said to himself. He hadn’t just squared the circle, he’d created an unholy triangle out of it.
He got a patrol car to take him to the Gar-B.
From the back seat, he had a more relaxed view of the whole of Pilmuir. Clyde Moncur had talked about the early Scottish settlers. The new settlers, of course, took on just as tough a life, moving into the private estates which were being built around and even in Pilmuir. This was a frontier life, complete with marauding natives who wanted the intruders gone, border skirmishes, and wilderness experiences aplenty. These estates provided starter homes for those making the move from the rented sector. They also provided starter courses in basic survival.
Rebus wished the settlers well.
When they got to the Gar-B, Rebus gave the uniforms their instructions and sat in the back seat enjoying the stares of passers-by. They were away a while, but when they came back one of them was pulling a boy by his forearm and pushing the boy’s bike. The other one had two kids, no bikes. Rebus looked at them. He recognised the one with the bike.
‘You can let the others go,’ he said. ‘But him, I want in here with me.’
The boy got into the car reluctantly. His pals ran as soon as the officers released them. When they were far enough away, they turned to watch. They wanted to know what would happen.
‘What’s your name, son?’ Rebus asked.
‘Jock.’
Maybe it was true and maybe it wasn’t. Rebus wasn’t bothered. ‘Shouldn’t you be at school, Jock?’
‘We’ve no’ started back yet.’
This too could be true; Rebus didn’t know. ‘Do you remember me, son?’
‘It wasnae me did your tyres.’
Rebus shook his head. ‘That’s all right. I’m not here about that. But you remember when I came here?’ The boy nodded. ‘Remember you were with a pal, and he thought I was someone else. Remember? He asked me where my flash car was.’ The boy shook his head. ‘And you told him that I wasn’t who he thought I was. Who did he think I was, son?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Yes you do.’
‘I don’t.’
‘But someone a bit like me, eh? Similar build, age, height? Fancier clothes though, I’ll bet.’
‘Maybe.’
‘What about his car, the swanky car?’
‘A custom Merc.’
Rebus smiled. There were some things boys just had eyes and a memory for. ‘What colour Merc?’
‘Black, all of it. The windows too.’
‘Seen him here a lot?’
‘Don’t know.’
‘Nice car though, eh?’
The boy shrugged.
‘Right, son, on you go.’
The boy knew from the pleased look on the policeman’s face that he’d made a mistake, that he’d somehow helped. His cheeks burned with shame. He snatched his bike from the constable and ran with it, looking back from time to time. His pals were waiting to question him.
‘Get what you were looking for, sir?’ asked one of the uniforms, getting back into the car.
‘Exactly what I was looking for,’ said Rebus.
25
He went to see Mairie, but a friend was looking after her and Mairie herself was sleeping. The doctor had given her a few sleeping pills. Left alone in the flat with an unconscious Mairie, he could have gone through her notes and computer files, but the friend didn’t even let him over the threshold. She had a pinched face with prominent cheeks and a few too many teeth in her quiet but determined mouth.
‘Tell her I called,’ Rebus said, giving up. He had retrieved his car from the back of the hotel. Cafferty would find him, with or without the rust-bucket to point the way. He drove to Fettes where DCI Kilpatrick had an update on the Clyde Moncur surveillance.
‘He’s acting the tourist, John, no more or less. He and his wife are admiring the sights, taking bus tours, buying souvenirs.’ Kilpatrick sat back in his chair. ‘The men I put on it are restless. Like they say, it’s hardly likely he’s here on business when his wife’s with him.’
‘Or else it’s the perfect cover.’
‘A couple more days, John, that’s all we can give it.’
‘I appreciate it, sir.’
‘What about this body at the Crazy Hose?’
‘Millie Docherty, sir.’
‘Yes, any ideas?’
Rebus just shrugged. Kilpatrick didn’t seem to expect an answer. Part of his mind was still on Calumn Smylie. They were about to open an internal inquiry. There would be questions to answer about the whole investigation.
‘I hear you had a run in with Smylie,’ Kilpatrick said.
So Ormiston had been talking. ‘Just one of those things, sir.’
‘Watch out for Smylie, John.’
‘That’s all I seem to do these days, sir, watch out for people.’ But he knew now that Smylie was the least of his problems.
At St Leonard’s, DCI Lauderdale was fighting his corner, arguing that his team should take on the Millie Docherty investigation from C Division. So he was too busy to come bothering Rebus, and that was fine by Rebus.
Officers were out at Lachlan Murdock’s flat, talking to him. He was being treated as a serious suspect now; you didn’t lose two flatmates to hideous deaths and not come under the microscope. Murdock would be on the petri dish from now till the case reached some kind of conclusion. Rebus returned to his desk. Since he’d last been there, earlier in the day, people had started using it as a rubbish bin again.
He phoned London, and waited to be passed along the line. It was not a call he could have made from Fettes.
‘Abernethy speaking.’
‘About bloody time. It’s DI Rebus here.’
‘Well well. I wondered if I’d hear from you.’
Rebus could imagine Abernethy leaning back in his chair. Maybe his fee
t were up on the desk in front of him. ‘I must have left a dozen messages, Abernethy.’
‘I’ve been busy, what about you?’ Rebus stayed silent. ‘So, Inspector Rebus, how can I help?’
‘I’ve got a few questions. How much stuff is the Army losing?’
‘You’ve lost me.’
‘I don’t think so.’ Someone walking past offered Rebus a cigarette. Without thinking he accepted it. But then the donor walked away, leaving Rebus without a light. He sucked on the filter anyway. ‘I think you know what I’m talking about.’ He opened the desk drawers, looking for matches or a lighter.
‘Well, I don’t.’
‘I think material has been going missing.’
‘Really?’
‘Yes, really.’ Rebus waited. He didn’t want to speculate too wildly, and he certainly didn’t want Abernethy to know any more than was necessary. But there was silence on the other end of the line. ‘Or you suspect it’s going missing.’
‘That would be a matter for Army Intelligence or the security service.’
‘Yes, but you’re Special Branch, aren’t you? You’re the public arm of the security service. I think you came up here in a hurry because you damned well know what’s going on. The question is, why did you disappear again in such a hurry too?’
‘You’ve lost me again. Maybe I’d better pack my bag for a trip, what do you say?’
Rebus didn’t say anything, he just put down the phone. ‘Anyone got a light?’ Someone tossed a box of matches onto the desk. ‘Cheers.’ He lit the cigarette and inhaled, the smoke rattling his nerves like they were dice in a cup.
He knew Abernethy would come.
He kept moving, the most difficult kind of target. He was trusting to his instincts; after all, he had to trust something. Dr Curt was in his office at the university. To get to the office you had to walk past a row of wooden boxes marked with the words ‘Place Frozen Sections Here’. Rebus had never looked in the boxes. In the Pathology building, you kept your eyes front and your nostrils tight. They were doing some work in the quadrangle. Scaffolding had been erected, and a couple of workmen were belying their name by sitting on it smoking cigarettes and sharing a newspaper.
