by Ian Rankin
Rebus stared at the message on the screen. Yes, he could see i…well, most of it. The pen pal was talking again.
‘It helped that you told me he’d gassed himself. I still had that half in mind when I started working, and spotted “gas” straight off. A suicide note, maybe?’
Rebus looked disbelieving. ‘What, scored out and surrounded by doodles on the inside cover of a jotter he tucked away on a shelf? Stick to what you know and you’ll do fine.’
What Rebus knew was that Eddie Ringan had suffered nightmares during which he cried out the word ‘gas’. Was this scribble the remnant from one of his bad nights? But then why score it out so heavily? Rebus picked up the jotter from the OCR machine. The inside cover looked old, the stuff there going back a year or more. Some of the doodles looked more recent than the defaced message. Whenever Eddie had written this, it wasn’t last night. Which meant, presumably, that it had no direct connection to his gassing himself. Making i…a coincidence? Rebus didn’t believe in coincidence, but he did believe in serendipity. He turned to the pen pal, who was looking not happy at Rebus’s put-down.
‘Thanks,’ he said.
‘You’re welcome.’
Each was sure the other was being less than sincere.
Brian Holmes was waiting for him at St Leonard’s, waiting to be welcomed back into the world.
‘What the hell are you doing here?’
‘Don’t worry,’ said Holmes, ‘I’m just visiting. I’ve got another week on the sick.’
‘How are you feeling?’ Rebus was glancing nervously around, wondering if anyone had told Holmes about Eddie. He knew in his heart they hadn’t, of course; if they had, Brian wouldn’t be half as chipper.
‘I get thumping headaches, but that apart I feel like I’ve had a holiday.’ He patted his pocket. ‘And DI Flower got up a collection. Nearly fifty quid.’
‘The man’s a saint,’ said Rebus. ‘I had a present I was going to bring you.’
‘What?’
‘A tape, the Stones’ Let it Bleed.’
‘Thanks a lot.’
‘Something to cheer you up after Patsy De-Cline.’
‘At least she can sing.’
Rebus smiled. ‘You’re fired. Are you at your aunt’s?’
This quietened Holmes, as Rebus had hoped it would. Bring him down slowly, then drop the real news into his lap. ‘For the meantime. Nell’…well, she says she’s not quite ready yet.’
Rebus knew the feeling; he wondered when Patience would be ready. for that drink. ‘Still,’ he offered, ‘things sound a bit brighter between the two of you.’
‘Ach.’ Holmes sat down opposite his superior. ‘She wants me to leave the police.’
‘That’s a bit drastic.’
‘So is separation.’
Rebus exhaled. ‘I suppose so, but all the sam…What are you going to do?’
‘Think it over, what else can I do?’ He got back to his feet. ‘Listen, I’d better get going. I only came in to — ’
‘Brian, sit down.’ Holmes, recognising Rebus’s tone, sat. ‘I’ve got some bad news about Eddie.’
‘Chef Eddie?’ Rebus nodded. ‘What about him?’
‘There’s been an accident. Well, sort of. Eddie was involved.’
There was no mistaking Rebus’s meaning. He’d become good at this sort of speech through repetition over the years to the families of car crash victims, accidents at work, murders …
‘He’s dead?’ Holmes asked quietly. Rebus, lips pursed, nodded. ‘Christ, I was going to drop in and see him. What happened?’
‘We’re not sure yet. The post-mortem will probably be this afternoon.’ Holmes was no fool; again he caught the gist. ‘Accident, suicide or murder?’
‘One of those last two.’
‘And your money’d be on murder?’
‘My money stays in my pocket till I’ve spoken to the tipster.’
‘Meaning Dr Curt?’
Rebus nodded. ‘Till then, there’s not much we can do. Listen, let me get a car to take you hom…’
‘No, no, I’ll be all right.’ He rose to his feet slowly, as though checking his bones for solidity. ‘I’ll be fine really. It’s jus…poor Eddie. He was a friend of mine, you know?’
‘I know,’ said Rebus.
After Holmes had gone, Rebus was able to reflect that he’d gotten off lightly. Brian still wasn’t operating at full throttle; partly the convalescence, partly the shock. So he hadn’t asked Rebus any difficult questions. Questions like, does Eddie’s death have anything to do with the person who nearly killed me? It was something Rebus had been wondering himself. Last night Eddie was missing, and Rebus had gone to see Cafferty. Today, first thing, Eddie was dead. Meaning one less person who could say anything about the night the Central burnt down; one less person who’d been there. But Rebus still had the gut feeling Cafferty had been surprised to learn of Holmes’ attack. So what was the answer?
‘I’m buggered if I know,’ John Rebus said quietly to himself. His phone rang. He picked it up and heard pub noises, then Flower’s voice.
‘That’s some team you’ve got there, Inspector. One gets his face mashed in, and now the other falls on her arse.’ The connection was briskly severed.
‘And bugger you, too, Flower,’ Rebus said, all too aware that no one was listening.
22
Edinburgh’s public mortuary was sited on the Cowgate, named for the route cattle would take when being brought into the city to be sold. It was a narrow canyon of a street with few businesses and only passing traffic. Way up above it were much busier streets, South Bridge for instance. They seemed so far from the Cowgate, it might as well have been underground.
Rebus wasn’t sure the area had ever been anything other than a desperate meeting place for Edinburgh’s poorest denizens, who often seemed like cattle themselves, dull-witted from lack of sunlight and grazing on begged handouts from passers-by. The Cowgate was ripe for redevelopment these days, but who would slaughter the cattle?
A fine setting for the understated mortuary where, when he wasn’t teaching at the University, Dr Curt plied his trade.
‘Look on the bright side,’ he told Rebus. ‘The Cowgate’s got a couple of fine pubs.’
‘And a few more you could shave a dead man with.’
Curt chuckled. ‘Colourful, though I’m not sure the image conjured actually means anything.’
‘I bow to your superior knowledge. Now, what have you got on Mr Ringan?’
‘Ah, poor Orphan Eddie.’ Curt liked to find names for all his cadavers. Rebus got the feeling the ‘Orphan’ prefix had been used many a time before. In Eddie Ringan’s case, though, it was accurate. He had no living relations that anyone knew of, and so had been identified by Patrick Calder, and by Siobhan Clarke, since she’d been the one to find the body.
‘Yes, that’s the man I found,’ she had said.
‘Yes, that’s Edward Ringan,’ Pat Calder had said, before being led away by Toni the barman.
Rebus now stood with Curt beside the slab on which what was left of the corpse was being tidied up by an assistant. The assistant was whistling ‘Those Were the Days’ as he scraped miscellany into a bucket of offal. Rebus was reading through a list. He’d been through it three times already, trying to take his mind off the scene around him. Curt was smoking a cigarette. At the age of fifty-five, he’d decided he might as well start, since nothing else had so far managed to kill him. Rebus might have taken a cigarette from him, but they were Player’s untipped, the smoking equivalent of paint stripper.
Maybe because he’d perused the list so often, something clicked at last. ‘You know,’ he said, ‘we never found a suicide note.’
‘They don’t always leave them.’
‘Eddie would have. And he’d have had Elvis singing Heartbreak Hotel on a tape player beside the oven.’
‘Now that’s style,’ Curt said disingenuously.
‘And now,’ Rebus went on, ‘from this list of the contents of his po
ckets, I see he didn’t have any keys on him.’
‘No keys, eh.’ Curt was enjoying his break too much to bother trying to work it out. He knew Rebus would tell him anyway.
‘So,’ Rebus obliged, ‘how did he get in? Or if he did use his keys to get in, where are they now?’
‘Where indeed.’ The attendant frowned as Curt stubbed his cigarette into the floor.
Rebus knew when he’d lost an audience. He put the list away. ‘So what have you got for me?’
‘Well, the usual tests will have to be carried out, of course.’
‘Of course, but in the meantim…?’
‘In the meantime, a few points of interest.’ Curt turned to the cadaver, forcing Rebus to do the same. There was a cover over the charred face, and the attendant had roughly sewn up the chest and stomach, now empty of their major organs, with thick black thread. The face had been badly burnt, but the rest of the body remained unaffected. The plump flesh was pale and shiny.
‘Well,’ Curt began, ‘the burns were superficial merely. The internal organs were untouched by the blast. That made things easier. I would say he probably asphyxiated through inhalation of North Sea gas.’ He turned to Rebus. ‘That “North Sea” is pure conjecture.’ Then he grinned again, a lopsided grin that meant one side of his mouth stayed closed. ‘There was evidence of alcoholic intake. We’ll have to wait for the test results to determine how much. A lot, I’d guess.’
‘I’ll bet his liver was a treat. He’s been putting the stuff away for years.’
Curt seemed doubtful. He went to another table and returned with the organ itself, which had already been cross-sectioned. ‘It’s actually in pretty good shape. You said he was a spirits drinker?’
Rebus kept his eyes out of focus. It was something you learned. ‘A bottle a day easy.’
‘Well, it doesn’t show from this.’ Curt tossed the liver a few inches into the air. It slapped back down into his palm. He reminded Rebus of a butcher showing off to a potential buyer. ‘There was also a bump to the head and bruising and minor burns to the arms.’
‘Oh?’
‘I’d imagine these are injuries often incurred by chefs in their daily duties. Hot fat spitting, pots and pans everywher…’
‘Maybe,’ said Rebus.
‘And now we come to the section of the programme Hamish has been waiting for.’ Curt nodded towards his assistant, who straightened his back in anticipation. ‘I call him Hamish,’ Curt confided, ‘because he comes from the Hebrides. Hamish here spotted something I didn’t. I’ve been putting off talking about it lest he become encephalitic.’ He looked at Rebus. ‘A little pathologist’s joke.’
‘You’re not so small,’ said Rebus.
‘You need to know, Inspector, that Hamish has a fascination with teeth. Probably because his own as a child were terribly bad and he has memories of long days spent under the dentist’s drill.’ Hamish looked as though this might actually be true. ‘As a result, Hamish always looks in people’s mouths, and this time he saw fit to inform me that there was some damage.’
‘What sort of damage?’
‘Scarring of the tissues lining the throat. Recent damage, too.’
‘Like he’d been singing too loud?’
‘Or screaming. But much more likely that something has been forced down his throat.’
Rebus’s mind boggled. Curt always seemed able to do this to him. He swallowed, feeling how dry his own throat was. ‘What sort of thing?’
Curt shrugged. ‘Hamish suggeste…You understand, this is entirely conjecture-usually your field of expertise. Hamish suggested a pipe of some kind, something solid. I myself would add the possibility of a rubber or plastic tube.’
Rebus coughed. ‘Not anythin…er, organic then?’
‘You mean like a courgette? A banana?’
‘You know damned well what I mean.’
Curt smiled and bowed his head. ‘Of course I do, I’m sorry.’ Then he shrugged. ‘I wouldn’t rule anything out. But if you’re suggesting a penis, it must have been sheathed in sandpaper.’
Behind them, Rebus heard Hamish stifle a laugh.
Rebus telephoned Pat Calder and asked if they might meet. Calder thought it over before agreeing.
‘At the Colonies?’ Rebus asked.
‘Make it the Cafe, I’m heading over there anyway.’
So the Cafe it was. When Rebus arrived, the ‘convalescence’ sign had been replaced with one stating, ‘Due to bereavement, this establishment has ceased trading.’ It was signed Pat Calder.
As Rebus entered, he heard Calder roar, ‘Do fuck off!’ It was not, however, aimed at Rebus but at a young woman in a raincoat.
‘Trouble, Mr Calder?’ Rebus walked into the restaurant. Calder was busy taking the mementoes down off the walls and packing them in newspaper. Rebus noticed three tea chests on the floor between the tables.
‘This bloody reporter wants some blood and grief for her newspaper.’
‘Is that right, miss?’ Rebus gave Mairie Henderson a disapproving but, yes, almost fatherly look. The kind that let her know she should be ashamed.
‘Mr Ringan was a popular figure in the city,’ she told Rebus. ‘I’m sure he’d have wanted our readers to know — ’
Calder interrupted. ‘He’d have wanted them to stuff their faces here, leave a fat cheque, then get the fuck out. Print that!’
‘Quite an epitaph,’ Mairie commented.
Calder looked like he’d brain her with the Elvis clock, the one with the King’s arms replacing the usual clock hands. He thought better of it, and lifted the Elvis mirror (one of several) off the wall instead. He wouldn’t dare smash that: seven years’ bad junk food.
‘I think you’d better go, miss,’ Rebus said calmly.
‘All right, I’m going.’ She slung her bag over her shoulder and stalked past Rebus. She was wearing a skirt today, a short one too. But a good soldier knew when to keep eyes front. He smiled at Pat Calder, whose anguish was all too evident.
‘Bit soon for all this, isn’t it?’
‘You can cook, can you, Inspector? Without Eddie, this place i…it’s nothing.’
‘Looks like the local restaurants can sleep easy, then.’
‘How do you mean?’
‘Remember, Eddie thought the attack on Brian was a warning.’
‘Yes, but what’s tha…’ Calder froze. ‘You think someon…? It was suicide, wasn’t it?’
‘Looked that way, certainly.’
‘You mean you’re not sure?’
‘Did he seem the type who would kill himself?’
Calder’s reply was cold. ‘He was killing himself every day with drink. Maybe it all got too much. Like I said, Inspector, the attack on Brian affected Eddie. Maybe more than we knew.’ He paused, still with the mirror gripped in both hands. ‘You think it was murder?’
‘I didn’t say that, Mr Calder.’
‘Who would do it?’
‘Maybe you were behind with your payments.’
‘What payments?’
‘Protection payments, sir. Don’t tell me it doesn’t go on.’
Calder stared at him unblinking. ‘You forget, I was in charge of finances, and we always paid our bills on time. All of them.’
Rebus took this information in, wondering exactly what it meant. ‘If you think you know who might have wanted Eddie dead, best tell me, all right? Don’t go doing anything rash.’
‘Like what?’
Like buying a gun, Rebus thought, but he said nothing. Calder started to wrap the mirror. ‘This is about all a newspaper’s worth,’ he said.
‘She was only doing her job. You wouldn’t have turned down a good review, would you?’
Calder smiled. ‘We got plenty.’
‘What will you do now?’
‘I haven’t thought about it. I’ll go away, that’s all I know.’
Rebus nodded towards the tea chests. ‘And you’ll keep all that stuff?’
‘I couldn’t throw it a
way, Inspector. It’s all there is.’
Well, thought Rebus, there’s the bedroom too. But he didn’t say anything. He just watched Pat Calder pack everything away.
Hamish, real name Alasdair McDougall, had more or less been chased from his native Barra by his contemporaries, one of whom tried to drown him during a midnight boat crossing from South Uist after a party. Two minutes in the freezing waters of the Sound of Barra and he’d have been fit for nothing but fish-food, but they’d hauled him back into the boat and explained the whole thing away as an accident. Which is also what it would have been had he actually drowned.
He went to Oban first, then south to Glasgow before crossing to the east coast. Glasgow suited him in some respects, but not in others. Edinburgh suited him better. His parents had always denied to themselves that their son was homosexual, even when he’d stood there in front of them and said it. His father had quoted the Bible at him, the same way he’d been quoting it for seventeen years, a believer’s righteous tremble in his voice. It had once been a powerful and persuasive performance; but now it seemed laughable.
‘Just because it’s in the Bible,’ he’d told his father, ‘doesn’t mean you should take it as gospel.’
But to his father it was and always would be the literal truth. The Bible had been in the old man’s hand as he’d shooed his youngest son out of the door of the croft house. ‘Never dare to blacken our name!’ he’d called. And Alasdair reckoned he’d lived up to this through introducing himself as Dougall and almost never passing on a last name. He had been Dougall to the gay community in Glasgow, and he was Dougall here in Edinburgh. He liked the life he’d made for himself (there was never a dull night), and he’d only been kicked-in twice. He had his clubs and pubs, his bunch of friends and a wider circle of acquaintances. He was even beginning to think of writing to his parents. He would tell them, By the time my boss gets through with a body, believe me there isn’t very much left for Heaven to take.
He thought again of the plump young man who’d been gassed, and he laughed. He should have said something at the time, but hadn’t. Why not? Was it because he still had one foot in the closet? He’d been accused of it before, when he’d refused to wear a pink triangle on his lapel. Certainly, he wasn’t sure he wanted a policeman to know he was gay. And what would Dr Curt do? There was all sorts of homophobia about, an almost medieval fear of AIDS and its transmission. It wasn’t that he couldn’t live without the job, but he liked it well enough. He’d seen plenty of sheep and cattle slaughtered and quartered in his time on the island. This wasn’t so very different.
