Mortal Causes

by Ian Rankin

  ‘No? Then understand this, we’re a bollock-hair’s breadth away from you. But more importantly, we want to find Davey Soutar, because if he’s gone rogue with rifles and plastic explosives …’

  ‘I still don’t know what you’re –’

  Rebus jumped from his seat and grabbed Bothwell’s lapels, pulling him tight against the desk. Bothwell’s smile evaporated.

  ‘I’ve been to Belfast, Bothwell, I’ve spent time in the North. The last thing that place needs is cowboys like you. So put away your forked tongue and tell us where he is!’

  Bothwell wrenched himself out of Rebus’s grip, his lapel tearing down the middle in the process. His face was purple, eyes blazing. He stood with his knuckles on the edge of the desk, leaning over it, his face close to Rebus’s.

  ‘Nobody meddles wi’ me!’ he spat. ‘That’s my motto.’

  ‘Aye,’ said Rebus, ‘and you know the Latin for it too. Did you get a kick that night in Mary King’s Close?’

  ‘You’re crazy.’

  ‘We’re the police,’ Abernethy said lazily. ‘We’re paid to be crazy, what’s your excuse?’

  Bothwell considered the two of them and sat down slowly. ‘I don’t know anyone called Davey Soutar. I don’t know anything about bombs or Sword and Shield or Mary King’s Close.’

  ‘I didn’t say Sword and Shield,’ said Rebus. ‘I just said The Shield.’

  Bothwell sat in silence.

  ‘But now you mention it, I see your father the minister was in the original Sword and Shield. His name’s on file. It was an offshoot of the Scottish National Party; I don’t suppose you know anything about it?’

  ‘Nothing.’

  ‘No? Funny, you were in the youth league.’

  ‘Was I?’

  ‘Did your dad get you interested in Ulster?’

  Bothwell shook his head slowly. ‘You never stop, do you?’

  ‘Never,’ said Rebus.

  The door opened. The two bouncers from the main door stood there, hands clasped in front of them, legs apart. They’d obviously been to the bouncers’ school of etiquette. And, just as obviously, Bothwell had summoned them with some button beneath the lip of his desk.

  ‘Escort these bastards off the premises,’ he ordered.

  ‘Nobody escorts me anywhere,’ said Abernethy, ‘not unless she’s wearing a tight skirt and I’ve paid for her.’ He got up and faced the bouncers. One of them made to take his arm. Abernethy grabbed the bouncer at the wrist and twisted hard. The man fell to his knees. There wasn’t much room for the other bouncer, and he looked undecided. He was still looking blank as Rebus pulled him into the room and threw him over the desk. Bothwell was smothered beneath him. Abernethy let the other bouncer go and followed Rebus outside with a real spring in his step, breathing deeply of Edinburgh’s warm summer air. ‘I enjoyed that.’

  ‘Aye, me too, but do you think it worked?’

  ‘Let’s hope so. We’re making liabilities of them. I get the feeling they’re going to implode.’

  Well, that was the plan. Every good plan, however, had a fall-back. Theirs was Big Ger Cafferty.

  ‘Is it too late to grab a curry?’ Abernethy added.

  ‘You’re not in the sticks now. The night’s young.’

  But as Rebus led Abernethy towards a good curry house, he was thinking about liabilities and risks … and dreading tomorrow’s showdown.

  28

  The day dawned bright, with blue skies and a breeze which would soon warm. It was expected to stay good all day, with a clear night for the fireworks. Princes Street would be bursting at the seams, but it was quiet as DCI Kilpatrick drove along it. He was an early riser, but even he had been caught by Rebus’s wake-up call.

  The industrial estate was quiet too. After being cleared by the guard on the gate, he drove up to the warehouse and parked next to Rebus’s car. The car was empty, but the warehouse door stood open. Kilpatrick went inside.

  ‘Morning, sir.’ Rebus was standing in front of the HGV.

  ‘Morning, John. What’s with all the cloak and dagger?’

  ‘Sorry about that, sir. I hope I can explain.’

  ‘I hope so too, going without breakfast never puts me in the best of moods.’

  ‘It’s just that there’s something I had to tell you, and this seems as quiet a place as any.’

  ‘Well, what is it?’

  Rebus had started walking around the lorry, Kilpatrick following him. When they were at the back of the vehicle, Rebus pulled on the lever and swung the door wide open. On top of the boxes inside sat Abernethy.

  ‘You didn’t warn me it was a party,’ Kilpatrick said.

  ‘Here, let me help you up.’

  Kilpatrick looked at Rebus. ‘I’m not a pensioner.’ And he pulled himself into the back, Rebus clambering after him.

  ‘Hello again, sir,’ Abernethy said, putting his hand out for Kilpatrick to shake. Kilpatrick folded his arms instead.

  ‘What’s this all about, Abernethy?’

  But Abernethy shrugged and nodded towards Rebus.

  ‘Notice anything, sir?’ said Rebus. ‘I mean, about the load.’

  Kilpatrick put on a thoughtful face and looked around. ‘No,’ he said finally, adding: ‘I never was one for party games.’

  ‘No games, sir. Tell me, what happens to all this stuff if we’re not going to use it in a sting operation?’

  ‘It goes to be destroyed.’

  ‘That’s what I thought. And the papers go with it, don’t they?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘But since the stuff has been under our stewardship, those papers will be from the City of Edinburgh Police?’

  ‘I suppose so. I can’t see –’

  ‘You will, sir. When the stuff came here, there was a record with it, detailing what it was and how much of it there was. But we replace that record with one of our own, don’t we? And if the first record goes astray, well, there’s always our record.’ Rebus tapped one of the boxes. ‘There’s less here than there was.’

  ‘What?’

  Rebus lifted the lid from a crate. ‘When you showed me around before with Smylie, there were more AK 47s than this.’

  Kilpatrick looked horrified. ‘Are you sure?’ He looked inside the crate.

  ‘Yet the current inventory shows twelve AK 47s, and that’s how many are here.’

  ‘Twelve,’ Abernethy confirmed, as Rebus got out the sheet of paper and handed it to Kilpatrick.

  ‘Then you must have made a mistake,’ said Kilpatrick.

  ‘No, sir,’ said Rebus, ‘with all due respect. I’ve checked with Special Branch. They hold a record of the original delivery. Two dozen AK 47s. The other dozen are missing. There’s other stuff too: a rocket launcher, some of the ammo …’

  ‘You see, sir,’ said Abernethy, ‘normally nobody would bother to backtrack, would they? The stuff is going for disposal, and there’s a chitty says everything checks. No one ever looks back down the line.’

  ‘But it’s impossible.’ Kilpatrick still held the sheet of paper, but he wasn’t looking at it.

  ‘No, sir,’ said Rebus, ‘it’s dead easy. If you can alter the record. You’re in charge of this load, it’s your name on the sheet.’

  ‘What are you saying?’

  Rebus shrugged and slipped his hands into his pockets. ‘The surveillance on the American, that was your operation too, sir.’

  ‘As requested by you, Inspector.’

  Rebus nodded. ‘And I appreciated it. It’s just, I can’t understand a few things. Such as how your trusted team from Glasgow didn’t spot me and a friend of mine having a drink with Clyde Moncur and his wife.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘The details you gave me, sir, there was nothing about that. I didn’t think there would be. That’s partly why I did it. Nor was there any mention of a meeting between Clyde Moncur and Frankie Bothwell. All your men say is that Moncur and his wife go for walks, see the sights, act the perfect tourists. But there is
no surveillance, is there? I know because I put a couple of colleagues onto Moncur myself. You see, I knew something was up the minute I met Inspector Abernethy here.’

  ‘You put an unofficial surveillance on Moncur?’

  ‘And I’ve the pictures to prove it.’ On cue, Abernethy rustled a white paper bag, one side of which was clear cellophane. The black and white photos could be seen inside.

  ‘There’s even one here,’ Abernethy said, ‘of you meeting Moncur in Gullane. Maybe you were talking about golf?’

  ‘You must have promised The Shield some of these arms before I came along,’ Rebus went on. ‘You brought me into the investigation to keep an eye on me.’

  ‘But why would I bring you here in the first place?’

  ‘Because Ken Smylie asked you to. And you didn’t want to raise his suspicions. There’s not much gets past Ken.’

  Rebus had expected Kilpatrick to deflate, but he didn’t, if anything he grew bigger. He plunged his hands into his jacket pockets and slid his shoulders back. His face showed no emotion, and he wasn’t about to talk.

  ‘We’ve been looking at you for a while,’ Abernethy continued. ‘Those Prod terrorists you let slip through your fingers in Glasgow …’ He shook his head slowly. ‘That’s one reason we moved you from Glasgow, to see if you could still operate. When news of the six-pack reached me, I knew you were still lending a hand to your friends in The Shield. They’ve always relied on inside help, and by Christ they’ve been getting it.’

  ‘You thought it was a drugs hit,’ Kilpatrick argued.

  Abernethy shrugged. ‘I’m a good actor. When you seconded Inspector Rebus, I knew it was because you saw him as a threat. You needed to keep an eye on him. Luckily he came to the same conclusion.’ Abernethy peered into the bag of photographs. ‘And here’s the result.’

  ‘Funny, sir,’ said Rebus, ‘when we were talking about Sword and Shield, the old Sword and Shield I mean, you never mentioned that you were a member.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘You didn’t think there were any records, but I managed to track some down. Back in the early ’60s you were in their youth league. Same time Frankie Bothwell was. Like I say, funny you never mentioned it.’

  ‘I didn’t think it was relevant.’

  ‘Then I was attacked by someone trying to put me out of the game. The man was a pro, I’d swear to that, a street-slugger with a cutthroat razor. He had a Glasgow accent. You must have met a few hard men during your stint over there.’

  ‘You think I hired him?’

  ‘With all respect,’ Rebus locked eyes with Kilpatrick, ‘you must be off your rocker.’

  ‘Madness comes from the head, not the blood, not the heart.’ Kilpatrick rested against a box. ‘You think you can trust Abernethy, John? Well, good luck to you. I’m waiting.’

  ‘For what?’

  ‘Your next gimmick.’ He smiled. ‘If you wanted to make a case against me, we wouldn’t be meeting like this. You know as well as I do that a filing mistake and an innocent photograph don’t make a case. They don’t make anything.’

  ‘You could be kicked off the force.’

  ‘With my record? No, I might retire early, say on health grounds, but no one’s going to sack me. It doesn’t happen that way, I thought two experienced officers would know that. Now answer me this, Inspector Rebus, you set up an illicit surveillance: how much trouble can that get you in? With your record of insubordination and bucking the rules, we could kick you off the force for not wiping your arse properly.’ He rose from the box and walked to the edge of the lorry, then dropped to the ground and turned towards them. ‘You haven’t proved anything to me. If you want to try your act with someone else, be my guests.’

  ‘You cold bastard,’ Abernethy said. He made it sound like a compliment. He walked to the edge of the lorry and faced Kilpatrick, then slowly began to pull his shirt out from his trousers. He lifted it up, showing bare flesh and sticking plasters and wires. He was miked up. Kilpatrick stared back at him.

  ‘Anything to add, sir?’ Abernethy said. Kilpatrick turned and walked away. Abernethy turned to Rebus. ‘Quiet all of a sudden, isn’t it?’

  Rebus leapt from the lorry and walked briskly to the door. Kilpatrick was getting into his car, but stopped when he saw him.

  ‘Three murders so far,’ Rebus said. ‘Including a police officer, one of your own. That’s a madness of the blood.’

  ‘That wasn’t me,’ Kilpatrick said quietly.

  ‘Yes, it was,’ Rebus said. ‘There’d be none of it without you.’

  ‘I don’t know how they got to Calumn Smylie.’

  ‘They hack into computers. Your secretary uses one.’

  Kilpatrick nodded. ‘And there’s a file on the operation in the computer.’ He shook his head slowly. ‘Look, Rebus …’ But Kilpatrick stopped himself. He shook his head again and got into the car, shutting the door.

  Rebus bent down to the driver’s-side window, and waited for Kilpatrick to wind it down.

  ‘Abernethy’s told me what it’s about, why the loyalists are suddenly arming themselves. It’s Harland and Wolff.’ This being a shipyard, one of the biggest employers in the province, its workforce predominantly Protestant. ‘They think it’s going to be wound up, don’t they? The loyalists are taking it as a symbol. If the British government lets Harland and Wolff go to the wall, then it’s washing its hands of the Ulster Protestants. Basically, it’s pulling out.’ Hard to know whether Kilpatrick was listening. He was staring through the windscreen, hands on the steering wheel. ‘At which point,’ Rebus went on anyway, ‘the loyalists are set to explode. You’re arming them for civil war. But worse than that, you’ve armed Davey Soutar. He’s a walking anti-personnel mine.’

  Kilpatrick’s voice was hard, unfeeling. ‘Soutar’s not my problem.’

  ‘Frankie Bothwell can’t help. Maybe he could control Soutar once upon a time, but not now.’

  ‘There’s only one person Soutar respects,’ Kilpatrick said quietly, ‘Alan Fowler.’

  ‘The UVF man?’

  Kilpatrick had started the engine.

  ‘Wait a minute,’ said Rebus. As Kilpatrick moved off, Rebus kept a grip of the window-frame. Kilpatrick turned to him.

  ‘Nine tonight,’ he said. ‘At the Gar-B.’

  Then he sped out of the compound.

  Abernethy was just behind Rebus.

  ‘What was he telling you?’ he asked.

  ‘Nine o’clock at the Gar-B.’

  ‘Sounds like a nice little trap to me.’

  ‘Not if we take the cavalry.’

  ‘John,’ Abernethy said with a grin, ‘I’ve got all the cavalry we’ll need.’

  Rebus turned to face him. ‘You’ve been playing me like a pinball machine, haven’t you? That first time we met, all that stuff you told me about computers being the future of crime. You knew back then.’

  Abernethy shrugged. He pulled up his shirt again and started to pull off the wires. ‘All I did was point you in the general direction. Look at the way I got on your tits that first time. That’s how I knew I could trust you. I nettled you and you let it show. You’d nothing to hide.’ He nodded to himself. ‘Yes, I knew, I’ve known for a long time. Proving it was the bugger.’ Abernethy looked at the compound gates. ‘But Kilpatrick’s got enemies, remember that, not just you and me any more.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  But Abernethy just winked and tapped his nose. ‘Enemies,’ he said.

  Rebus had pulled Siobhan Clarke off the Moncur surveillance and put her on to Frankie Bothwell. But Frankie Bothwell had disappeared. She apologised, but Rebus only shrugged. Holmes had kept with Clyde Moncur, but Moncur and his wife were off on some bus tour, a two-day trip to the Highlands. Moncur could always get off the bus and double back, but Rebus discontinued the tail anyway.

  ‘You seem a bit glum, sir,’ Siobhan Clarke told him. Maybe she was right. The world seemed upside down. He’d seen bad cops before, of course he had. But
he had never before seen anything like Kilpatrick’s lack of an explanation or a decent defence. It was as if he didn’t feel he needed one, as if he’d just been doing the right thing; in the wrong way perhaps, but the right thing all the same.

  Abernethy had told him how deep the suspicions went, how long they’d been accumulating. But it was hard to investigate a policeman who, on the surface, seemed to be doing nearly everything right. Investigation required co-operation, and the co-operation wasn’t there. Until Rebus had come along.

  At the Gar-B lock-ups, outside the blocks of flats, police and Army experts were opening doors, just in case the stolen cache was inside one of the garages. Door to door inquiries were going on, trying to pin down Davey’s friends, trying to get someone to talk or to admit they were hiding him. Meantime, Jamesie MacMurray was already being charged. But they were minnows, their flesh not enough to merit the hook. Kilpatrick, too, had disappeared. Rebus had phoned Ormiston and found that the CI hadn’t returned to his office, and no one answered at his home.

  Holmes and Clarke returned from the warrant search of Soutar’s home, Holmes toting a plain cardboard box, obviously not empty. Holmes put the box on Rebus’s desk.

  ‘Let’s start,’ Holmes said, ‘with a jar of acid, carefully concealed under Soutar’s bed.’

  ‘His mother says he never lets her in to clean his room,’ Clarke explained. ‘He’s got a padlock on the door to prove it. We had to break the lock. His mum wasn’t best pleased.’

  ‘She’s a lovely woman, isn’t she?’ said Rebus. ‘Did you meet the dad?’

  ‘He was at the bookie’s.’

  ‘Lucky for you. What else have you got?’

  ‘Typhoid probably,’ Holmes complained. ‘The place was like a Calcutta rubbish tip.’

  Clarke dipped in and pulled out a few small polythene bags; everything in the box had been wrapped first and labelled. ‘We’ve got knives, most of them illegal, one still with what looks like dried blood on it.’ Some of it Calumn Smylie’s blood, Rebus didn’t doubt. She dipped in again. ‘Mogadon tablets, about a hundred of them, and some unopened cans of cola and beer.’

  ‘The Can Gang?’