by Ian Rankin
When he got back to Arden Street, there was no sign of the skulking hulk. But Rebus would recognise him if he saw him again. Oh yes, he’d know him, all right.
Indoors, he had another argument with Michael, the two of them in the living room, everyone else in the kitchen. That was another thing: how many tenants did he have? There seemed to be a shifting population of about a dozen, where he’d rented to three with a possible fourth. He could swear he saw different faces every morning, and as a result could never remember anyone’s name.
So there was another row about that, this time with the students in the kitchen while Michael sat in the box room, at the end of which Rebus said, ‘Away to hell,’ and proceeded to follow his own instructions by getting back in his car and making for one of the city’s least respectable quarters, there to dine on pies and pints while staring at a soundless TV. He spoke with a few of his contacts, who had nothing to report regarding the assault on Brian Holmes.
So it was just another evening, really.
He got back purposely late, hoping everyone else would have gone to bed. He fumbled with the door-catch of the tenement and let the door swing shut loudly behind him, searching in his pockets for the flat key, eyes to the ground. So he didn’t see the man, who must have been sitting on the bottom step of the stairs.
‘Hello there.’
Rebus looked up, startled, recognised the figure, and sent small change and keys scattering as he threw a punch. He wasn’t that drunk, but then his target was stone cold sober and twenty years younger. The man palmed the punch easily. He looked surprised at the attack, but also somehow excited by it. Rebus cut short the thrill of it all by sharply raising his knee into unprotected groin. The man expelled air noisily, and started to double over, which gave Rebus the opportunity to punch down onto the back of his neck. He felt his knuckles crackle with the force of the blow.
‘Jesus,’ the man gasped. ‘Stop it.’
Rebus stopped it and wagged his aching hand. But he wasn’t about to offer help. He kept his distance, and asked ‘Who are you?’
The man managed to stop retching for a moment. ‘Andy Steele.’
‘Nice to meet you, Andy. What the fuck do you want?’
The man looked up at Rebus with tears in his eyes. It took him a while to catch his breath. When he spoke, Rebus either couldn’t understand the accent or else just didn’t believe what he was saying. He asked Steele to repeat himself.
‘Your auntie sent me,’ said Steele. ‘She’s got a message for you.’
Rebus sat Andy Steele down on the sofa with a cup of tea, including the four sugars Steele himself had requested.
‘Can’t be good for your teeth.’
‘They’re not my own,’ Steele replied, huddled over the hot mug.
‘Then whose are they?’ asked Rebus. Steele gave the flicker of a smile. ‘You’ve been following me all day.’
‘Not exactly. Maybe if I had a car, but I don’t.’
You don’t have a car?’ Steele shook his head. ‘Some private detective.’
‘I didn’t say I was a private detective exactly. I mean, I want to be one.’
‘A sort of trainee, then?’
‘Aye, that’s right. Testing the water, so to speak.’
‘And how’s the water, Andy?’
Another smile, a sip of tea. ‘A bit hot. But I’ll be more careful next time.’
‘I didn’t even know I had an aunt. Not up north.’ Steele’s accent was a giveaway.
Andy Steele nodded. ‘She lives next door to my mum and dad, just across the road from Pittodrie.’
‘Aberdeen?’ Rebus nodded to himself. ‘It’s coming back to me. Yes, an uncle and aunt in Aberdeen.’
‘Your dad and Jimmy – that’s your uncle – fell out years ago. You’re probably too young to remember.’
‘Thanks for the compliment.’
‘It’s just what Ena told me.’
‘And now Uncle Jimmy’s dead?’
‘Three weeks past.’
‘And Aunt Ena wants to see me?’ Steele nodded. ‘What about?’
‘I don’t know. She was just talking about how she’d like to see you again.’
‘Just me? No mention of my brother?’
Steele shook his head. Rebus had checked to see if Michael was in the box room. He wasn’t. But the other bedrooms seemed to be occupied.
‘Right enough,’ said Rebus, ‘if they argued when I was wee, maybe it was before Michael was born.’
‘They might no’ even know about him,’ Steele conceded. Well, that was families for you. ‘Anyway, Ena kept harping on about you, so I told her I’d come south and have a look. I got laid off from the fishing boats six months ago, and I’ve been going up the wall ever since. Besides, I told you I’ve always fancied being a private eye. I love all those films.’
‘Films don’t get you a knee in the balls.’
‘True enough.’
‘So how did you find me?’
Steele’s face brightened. ‘I went to the address Ena gave me, where you and your dad used to live. All the neighbours knew was that you were a policeman in Edinburgh. So I got the directory out and phoned every station I could find, asking for John Rebus.’ He shrugged and returned to his tea.
‘But how did you get my home address?’
‘Someone in CID gave it to me.’
‘Don’t tell me, Inspector Flower?’
‘A name like that, aye.’
Seated on the sofa, Andy Steele looked to be in his mid-twenties. He had the sort of large frame which could be kept in shape only through hard work, such as that found on a North Sea fishing boat. But already, deprived of work for six months, that frame was growing heavy with disuse. Rebus felt sorry for Andy Steele and his dreams of becoming a private eye. The way he stared into space as he drank the tea, he looked lost, his immediate life without form or plan.
‘So are you going to go and see her?’
‘Maybe at the weekend,’ said Rebus.
‘She’d like that.’
‘I can give you a lift back.’
But the young man was shaking his head. ‘No, I’d like to stay in Edinburgh for a bit.’
‘Suit yourself,’ said Rebus. ‘Just be careful.’
‘Careful? I could tell you stories about Aberdeen that would make your hair stand on end.’
‘And could they thicken it a bit at the temples while they’re at it?’
It took Andy Steele a minute to get the joke.
The next day, Rebus paid a visit to Andrew McPhail. But McPhail wasn’t home, and his landlady hadn’t seen him since the previous evening.
‘Usually he comes down at seven sharp for a wee bitty breakfast. So I went upstairs and there was no sign of him. Is he in any trouble, Inspector?’
‘No, nothing like that, Mrs MacKenzie. This is a lovely Madiera by the way.’
‘Ach, it’s a few days since I made it, it’s probably a bit dry by now.’
Rebus shook his head and gulped at the tea, hoping to wash the crumbs down his throat. But they merely formed into a huge solid lump which he had to force down by degrees, and without a public show of gagging.
There was a bird-cage standing in one corner of the room, boasting mirrors and cuttle-fish and millet spray. But no sign of any bird. Maybe it had escaped.
He left his card with Mrs MacKenzie, telling her to pass it on to Mr McPhail when she saw him. He didn’t doubt that she would. It had been unfair of him to introduce himself as a policeman to the landlady. She would probably become suspicious, and might even give McPhail a week’s notice on the strength of those suspicions. That would be a terrible shame.
Actually, it didn’t look to Rebus as though Mrs MacKenzie would twig. And McPhail would doubtless come up with some reason for Rebus’s visit. Probably the City of Edinburgh Police were about to award him a commendation for saving some puppies from the raging torrents of the Water of Leith. McPhail was good at making up stories, after all. Children just love
d to hear stories.
Rebus stood outside Mrs MacKenzie’s house and looked across the road. It had to be coincidence that McPhail had chosen a boarding house within ogling distance of a primary school. Rebus had seen it on his arrival; it had been enough to decide him on identifying himself to the landlady. After all, he didn’t believe in coincidence.
And if McPhail couldn’t be persuaded to move, well, maybe the neighbours would find out the true story of Mrs MacKenzie’s lodger. Rebus got into his car. He didn’t always like himself or his job.
But some bits were okay.
Back at St Leonard’s, Siobhan Clarke had nothing new to report on the stabbing. Rory Kintoul was being very cagey about another interview. He’d cancelled one arranged meeting, and she’d not been able to contact him since.
‘His son’s seventeen and unemployed, spends most of the day at home, I could try talking to him.’
‘You could.’ But it was a lot of trouble. Maybe Holmes was right. ‘Just do your best,’ said Rebus. ‘After you’ve talked with Kintoul, if we’re no further forward we’ll drop the whole thing. If Kintoul wants to get himself stabbed, that’s fine with me.’
She nodded and turned away.
‘Any news on Brian?’
She turned back. ‘He’s been talking.’
‘Talking?’
‘In his sleep. I thought you’d know.’
‘What’s he been saying?’
‘Nothing they can make out, but it means he’s slowly regaining consciousness.’
‘Good.’
She started to turn away again, but Rebus thought of something. ‘How are you getting to Aberdeen on Saturday?’
‘Driving, why?’
‘Any room in the car?’
‘There’s just me.’
‘Then you won’t mind giving me a lift.’
She looked startled. ‘Not at all. Where to?’
‘Pittodrie.’
Now she looked even more surprised. ‘I wouldn’t have taken you for a Hibs fan, sir.’
Rebus screwed up his face. ‘No, you’re all alone in that category. I just need a lift, that’s all.’
‘Fine.’
‘And on the way, you can tell me what you’ve learned from the files on Big Ger.’
8
By Saturday, Rebus had argued three times with Michael (who was talking about moving out anyway), once with the students (also talking about moving), and once with the receptionist at Patience’s surgery when she wouldn’t put Rebus through. Brian Holmes had opened his eyes briefly, and it was reckoned by the doctors that he was on his way to recovery. None of them, however, hazarded the phrase ‘full recovery’. Still, the news had cheered Siobhan Clarke, and she was in a good mood when she arrived at Rebus’s Arden Street flat. He was waiting for her at street level. She drove a two-year-old cherry-red Renault 5. It looked young and full of life, while Rebus’s car (parked next to it) looked to be in terminal condition. But Rebus’s car had been looking like this for three or four years now, and just when he’d determined to get rid of it it always seemed to go into remission. Rebus had the feeling the car could read his mind.
‘Morning, sir,’ said Siobhan Clarke. There was pop music coming from the stereo. She saw Rebus cringe as he got into the passenger seat, and turned the volume down. ‘Bad night?’
‘People always seem to ask me that.’
‘Now why could that be?’
They stopped at a bakery so Rebus could buy some breakfast. There had been nothing in the flat worth the description ‘food’, but then Rebus couldn’t really complain. His contribution to the larder so far had filled a single shopping basket. And most of that had been meat, something the students didn’t touch. He noticed Michael had gone vegetarian too, at least in public.
‘It’s healthier, John,’ he’d told his brother, slapping his stomach.
‘What’s that supposed to mean?’ Rebus had snapped.
Michael had merely shaken his head sadly. ‘Too much caffeine.’
That was another thing, the kitchen cupboards were full of jars of what looked like coffee but turned out to be ‘infusions’ of crushed tree bark and chicory. At the bakery, Rebus bought a polystyrene beaker of coffee and two sausage rolls. The sausage rolls turned out to be a bad mistake, the flakes of pastry breaking off and covering the otherwise pristine car interior – despite Rebus’s best attempts with the paper bag.
‘Sorry about the mess,’ he offered to Siobhan, who was driving with her window conspicuously open. ‘You’re not vegetarian, are you?’
She laughed. ‘You mean you haven’t noticed?’
‘Can’t say I have.’
She nodded towards a sausage roll. ‘Well, have you heard of mechanically recovered meat?’
‘Don’t,’ warned Rebus. He finished the sausage rolls quickly, and cleared his throat.
‘Anything I should know about between you and Brian?’
The look on her face told him this was not the year’s most successful conversational gambit. ‘Not that I know of.’
‘It’s just that he and Nell were . . . well, there’s still a good chance –’
‘I’m not a monster, sir. And I know the score between Brian and Nell. Brian’s just a nice guy. We get along.’ She glanced away from the windscreen. ‘That’s all there is to it.’ Rebus was about to say something. ‘But if there was more to it than that,’ she went on, ‘I don’t see that it would be any of your business, with respect, sir. Not unless it was interfering with our work, which I wouldn’t let happen. I don’t suppose Brian would either.’
Rebus stayed silent.
‘I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have said that.’
‘What you said was fair enough. The problem was the way you said it. A police officer’s never off duty, and I’m your boss – even on a jaunt like this. Don’t forget that.’
There was more silence in the car, until Siobhan broke it. ‘It’s a nice part of town, Marchmont.’
‘Almost as nice as the New Town.’
She glared at him, her grip on the steering-wheel as determined as any strangler’s.
‘I thought,’ she said slyly, ‘you lived in Oxford Terrace these days, sir.’
‘You thought wrong. Now, what about turning that bloody music off? After all, we’ve got a lot to talk about.’
The ‘lot’, of course, being Morris Gerald Cafferty.
Siobhan Clarke hadn’t brought her notes with her. She didn’t need them. She could recite the salient details from memory, along with a lot of detail that might not be salient but was certainly interesting. Certainly she’d done her homework. Rebus thought how frustrating the job could be. She’d swotted up on Big Ger as background to Operation Moneybags, but Operation Moneybags almost certainly wouldn’t trap Cafferty. And she’d spent a lot of hours on the Kintoul stabbing, which might also turn out to be nothing.
‘And another thing,’ she said. ‘Apparently Cafferty’s got a little diary of sorts, all of it in code. We’ve never been able to crack his code, which means it must be highly personal.’
Yes, Rebus remembered. Whenever they brought Big Ger into custody, the diary would be collected along with his other possessions. Then they’d photocopy the pages of the diary and try to decipher them. They’d never been successful.
‘Rumour has it,’ Siobhan was saying, ‘the diary’s a record of bad debts, debts Cafferty takes care of personally.’
‘A man like that garners a lot of rumours. They help make him larger than life. In life, he’s just another witless gangster.’
‘A code takes wits.’
‘Maybe.’
‘In the file, there’s a recent clipping from the Sun. It’s all about how bodies keep washing up on the coastline.’
Rebus nodded. ‘On the Solway coast, not far from Stranraer.’
‘You think it’s Cafferty’s doing?’
Rebus shrugged. ‘The bodies have never been identified. Could be anything. Could be people pushed off the Larne ferry. C
ould be some connection with Ulster. There are some weird currents between Larne and Stranraer.’ He paused. ‘Could be anything.’
‘Could be Cafferty, in other words.’
‘Could be.’
‘It’s a long way to go to dispose of a body.’
‘Well, he’s not going to shit in his own nest, is he?’
She considered this. ‘There was mention in one of the papers of a van spotted on that coastline, too early in the morning to be delivering anything.’
Rebus nodded. ‘And there was nowhere along the road for it to be delivering to. I read the papers sometimes, Clarke. The Dumfries and Galloway Police have patrols along there now.’
Siobhan drove for a while, gathering her thoughts. ‘He’s just been lucky so far, hasn’t he, sir? I mean, I can understand that he’s a clever villain, and clever villains are harder to catch. But he has to delegate, and usually even though a villain’s clever his underlings are so stupid or lazy they would shit in the nest.’
‘Language, Clarke, language.’ He got a smile from her. ‘Point taken, though.’
‘Reading all about Cafferty’s “associates” I didn’t get an impression of many “O” Grades. They’ve all got names like Slink and Codge and the Radiator.’
Rebus grinned. ‘Radiator McCallum, I remember him. He was supposed to be descended from a family of Highland cannibals. He did research and everything, he was so proud of his ancestors.’
‘He disappeared from the scene, though.’
‘Yes, three or four years ago.’
‘Four and a half, according to the records. I wonder what happened to him.’
Rebus shrugged. ‘He tried to doublecross Big Ger, got scared and ran off.’
‘Or didn’t get the chance to run off.’
‘That too, of course. Or else he just got fed up, or had another job offer. It’s a very mobile profession, being a thug. Wherever the work is . . .’
‘Cafferty certainly gets through the personnel. McCallum’s cousins disappeared from view just before McCallum himself did.’
Rebus frowned. ‘I didn’t know he had any cousins.’
‘Known colloquially as the Bru-head Brothers. Something to do with a penchant for Irn-Bru.’
