by Ian Rankin
“If we’re in luck, Father Joe might be there,” he’d said, referring to his snitch, Joe Daly.
“It’s not called the Zombie Bar anymore,” he explained now, leading them along Tolbooth Wynd. “That place lost its license.”
“Too many brawls?” Allan Ward guessed.
“Too many drunken poets and writers,” Hogan corrected. “The more they tart Leith up, the more people seem to come looking for the sleazy side.”
“And where’s that to be found these days?” Ward asked. Hogan offered a smile, eyes turning to Rebus.
“We’ve got a live one here, John.”
Rebus nodded. Tam Barclay wasn’t looking too lively: as the day had progressed, so had his hangover. “Mixing the beer and whiskey,” he said, rubbing at his temples. He wasn’t looking forward to their trip to the pub . . .
“What’s the Zombie called now?” Rebus asked Hogan.
“Bar Z,” came the answer. “And here it is . . .”
Bar Z had windows which were all frosted glass except for a large letter Z in the center of each. The interior was chrome and gray, the tables made from some light, trendy wood which captured and retained every beer ring and cigarette burn. The music was probably called something like “trance” or “ambient,” and a chalkboard menu offered Huevos Rancheros — listed as “a Tex-Mex all-day breakfast treat” — and Snack Attacks such as blini and baba ghanoush.
However, something had gone badly wrong with the Bar Z. The only people drinking the afternoon away were the same mixture of desperate businessmen and down-at-the-heels drunks who had probably called the Zombie Bar home. The place carried an aroma of soured dreams. Hogan pointed to one of the many empty tables and asked the trio what they wanted.
“Our round, Bobby,” Rebus insisted. “You’re the one helping us out.” Ward decided on a bottle of Holsten, while Barclay only wanted cola — “as much as you can fit in a glass.” Hogan, who said he was undecided, went up to the bar with Rebus.
“Is your man here?” Rebus asked in an undertone. Hogan shook his head.
“Doesn’t mean he won’t come in. Father Joe’s the restless type: if he goes in a place and there’s no one he knows, he moves on; never stays anywhere for more than two drinks.”
“Does he have a job?”
“He has a vocation.” Hogan saw the look on Rebus’s face. “Don’t worry, he’s not a real priest. It’s just that he has the kind of face strangers tell their troubles to. That seems to fill Joe’s days to the brim . . .” The barman came up, and Rebus put in their order, including a half of IPA for Hogan and the same for himself.
“A game of two halves, eh?” Hogan announced with a smile.
“Aye, it’s a game all right, Bobby.”
Hogan picked up Rebus’s meaning. “So what’s reopened this particular can of worms?”
“I wish I knew.”
“Dickie Diamond was an arsehole, whole world knew it.”
“Any of his other cronies still around?”
“There’s one of them in here right now.”
Rebus looked around at the disconsolate, blank-eyed faces. “Who?”
Hogan just winked, and waited till the drinks had been paid for. When the barman slouched back with Rebus’s change, Hogan greeted him by name.
“Okay, Malky?”
The young man frowned. “Do I know you?”
Hogan shrugged. “Thing is, I know you.” He paused. “Still on the smack?”
Rebus, too, had placed the young man as a drug user. It was something about the eyes, the facial muscles, something about the way the body held itself. In turn, the barman recognized pigs when he saw them.
“I’m off that stuff,” Malky said.
“Take your methadone religiously?” Hogan asked with a smile. “DI Rebus here is wondering whatever happened to your uncle.”
“Which one?”
“The one we don’t hear about so much these days . . . unless you know different.” Hogan turned to Rebus. “Malky here is Dickie’s sister’s kid.”
“How long you been working here then, Malky?” Rebus asked.
“Nearly a year.” The barman’s attitude had changed from indifference to surliness.
“Did you know the place when it was the Zombie?”
“I was too young, wasn’t I?”
“Doesn’t mean they wouldn’t have served you.” Rebus lit a cigarette, offering one to Hogan.
“Has Uncle Dickie turned up?” Malky asked. Rebus shook his head. “It’s just that my mum . . . every now and then she gets all weepy, says Uncle Dickie must be dead and buried somewhere.”
“What does she think happened to him?”
“How should I know?”
“You could try asking her.” Rebus had one of his cards out. It had his pager number as well as the police switchboard. “I’d be interested to know her answer.”
Malky stuck the card in the top pocket of his shirt.
“Dying of thirst over here!” Barclay called from the table. Hogan picked up two of the drinks. Rebus was staring at Malky.
“I mean it,” he said. “You ever hear anything, I’d really like to know what happened to him.”
Malky nodded, then turned away to answer the phone. But Rebus had gripped his arm. “Where do you live, Malky?”
“Sighthill. What’s it to you?” Malky wrestled his arm free, picked up the phone.
Sighthill was perfect. Rebus knew someone in Sighthill . . .
“So what happened to this place?” Ward was asking Hogan when Rebus reached the table.
“They got their market research wrong, thought there’d be enough yuppies in Leith by now to make them a fortune.”
“Maybe if they hang on a few more years,” Barclay said, pausing halfway down his cola.
Hogan nodded. “It’s coming,” he agreed. “Just a shame we didn’t get the parliament.”
Rebus snorted. “You’d’ve been welcome to it.”
“We wanted it.”
“So what was the problem?” Ward asked.
“The MSPs didn’t want to be in Leith. Too out of the way.”
“Maybe they were scared off by the temptations of the flesh,” Ward proposed. “Not that I’m seeing any around here . . .”
The door opened and another solitary drinker entered. He was all twitches and movement, as if someone had just wound up his mechanism. He saw Hogan and gave a nod of acknowledgment, but then started heading for the bar. Hogan, however, waved him over.
“Is this him?” Ward asked, already hardening his face, turning it into a mask.
“This is him,” Hogan said. Then, to the new arrival: “Father Joe . . . I was wondering if your pastoral wanderings would bring you in here.”
Joe Daly smiled at the joke, and nodded as if it were part of some ritual between Hogan and himself. Hogan meantime was making introductions. “Now talk to the good men,” he said in closing, “while I fetch you a small libation. Jameson’s and water, no ice, yes?”
“That would serve the purpose,” Daly said, his breath already sweetened by whiskey. He watched Hogan head for the bar. “A good man in his way,” he commented.
“And was Dickie Diamond a good man too, Father Joe?” Rebus asked.
“Ah, the Diamond Dog . . .” Daly was thoughtful for a moment. “Richard could be the best friend you’d ever had, but he could be a right bastard, too. He had no forgiveness in him.”
“You haven’t seen him recently?”
“Not in five or six years.”
“Did you ever meet another friend of his called Eric Lomax?” Ward asked. “Most people called him Rico.”
“Well, it was a long time ago, as I say . . .” Daly licked his lips expectantly.
“Of course, we’d pay the going rate,” Rebus informed him.
“Ah, well . . .” Daly’s whiskey arrived and he toasted the company in Gaelic. Rebus reckoned it was a double or treble — hard to tell with the added water.
“Father Joe was just
about to tell us about Rico,” Rebus explained to Hogan, who was sitting down now.
“Well,” Daly began, “Rico was from the west coast, wasn’t he? Gave a good party, so the story went. Of course, I was never invited.”
“But Dickie was?”
“Oh, assuredly.”
“This was over in Glasgow?” Barclay asked, his face more bloodless than ever.
“I suppose there would have been parties there,” Daly admitted.
“But that’s not what you meant, is it?” Rebus asked.
“Well, no . . . I meant out at the caravans. There was a site in East Lothian, Rico stayed there sometimes.”
“Caravans, plural?” Rebus checked.
“He owned more than one; rented them out to tourists and the like.”
And the like . . . They already knew Rico’s reputation, bad men from Glasgow sheltering beside east coast beaches . . . Rebus noticed that Malky the barman was busying himself wiping down the already pristine tables in their vicinity.
“They were pretty close then, Rico and Dickie?” Ward asked.
“I don’t know that I’d say that. Rico probably only came to Leith three or four times a year.”
“Did you think it strange,” Rebus asked, “that Dickie did a bunk around the same time Rico was murdered?”
“Can’t say I connected the two,” Daly said. He hoisted the glass to his mouth, drained the whiskey.
“I don’t think that’s quite true, Father Joe,” Rebus stated quietly.
The glass was placed back on the table. “Well, maybe you’re right. I suppose I did wonder about it, same as everyone else in Leith.”
“And?”
“And what?”
“And what conclusion did you draw?”
“None at all,” Daly said with a shrug. “Except that Our Lord moves in mysterious ways.”
“Amen to that,” said Hogan. Allan Ward rose to his feet, said he’d get another round.
“When you’ve finished polishing that ashtray . . . ,” he remarked to Malky. So he’d noted the barman’s actions, too. Maybe he was sharper than Rebus had given him credit for . . .
Linford was not to be deflected from his pursuit of Donny Dow. He’d called up what records they had, and was poring over them. Alongside them on his desk was a slim file with Laura Stafford’s name on it. Siobhan had taken a peek at the latter. The usual cautions and arrests: two sauna busts, one brothel bust. The brothel had been a flat above a video rental shop. The guy who owned the video shop, it was his girlfriend ran the operation upstairs. Laura had been one of the girls on duty the night the police, acting on a tip-off, had paid a visit. Bill Pryde had worked the case. His handwriting was in the margin of one page of the report: “tip-off anonymous, probably the sauna down the road . . .”
“The deep-throat business can be cutthroat, too” was Derek Linford’s comment.
He was having more joy with Donny Dow, who had been fighting since the age of ten. Arrests for vandalism and drunkenness, then Dow had taken up a healthy physical activity: Thai kickboxing. It had failed to keep him out of trouble: one charge of housebreaking — later dropped — several assaults, one drug bust.
“What sort of drugs?”
“Cannabis and speed.”
“A kickboxing headcase on speed? The mind boggles.”
“He worked as a bouncer for a time.” Linford pointed to the relevant line of the typed report. “His employer wrote a letter defending him.” He turned the page. The signature at the bottom of the letter was that of Morris G. Cafferty.
“Cafferty owned a security firm in the city,” Linford added. “Parted company with it a few years back.” He looked at Siobhan. “Still don’t think he could have clouted our art dealer?”
“I’m beginning to wonder,” Siobhan admitted.
Back at her desk, Davie Hynds had pulled his chair up alongside and was drumming a pen against his teeth.
“At a loose end?” Siobhan asked.
“I feel like the spare prick at an orgy.” He paused. “Sorry . . . that wasn’t a good way of putting it.”
Siobhan thought for a moment. “Wait here,” she said. She turned back towards Linford’s desk, but another man had entered the room and was shaking Linford’s hand. Linford nodded, as though the two knew each other, but not well. Frowning, Siobhan walked over.
“Hello,” she said. The man had picked up a sheet from Donny Dow’s file and was reading it. “I’m a DS here. Name’s Siobhan Clarke.”
“Francis Gray,” the man said. “Detective inspector.” He shook her hand, almost swamping it in his own. He was tall and broad, with a thick neck and salt-and-pepper hair, cut short.
“You two know one another?” she asked.
“We met once . . . a while back, at Fettes, right?” Gray said.
“Right,” Linford confirmed. “We’ve helped each other out by phone a couple of times.”
“I was just wondering how the inquiry was going,” Gray added.
“It’s fine,” Siobhan said. “You’re part of the Tulliallan crew?”
“For my sins.” Gray put down the sheet of paper, picked up another. “Looks like Derek here may be winding things up for you.”
“Oh, he’s a great windup merchant,” Siobhan said, crossing her arms. Gray laughed, and Linford himself joined in.
“Siobhan’s a bit of a doubting Thomas,” he stated.
Gray’s eyes widened. “Means, motive, opportunity. Looks to me like you’ve got two out of three. Least you can do now is interview the suspect.”
“Thank you, DI Gray, maybe we’ll take your advice.” The words came from behind Gray: Gill Templer had entered the room. Gray dropped the sheet. It wafted back to the desk. “Might I ask what you’re doing here?”
“Nothing, ma’am. Just out for a stroll. We have to take ten minutes every hour to stave off oxygen starvation.”
“I think you’ll find the station has plenty of corridors. There’s even a world outside, if you’d care to explore it. This, on the other hand, is the center of a murder inquiry. Last thing we need are unnecessary interruptions.” She paused. “Wouldn’t you agree?”
“Absolutely, ma’am.” He glanced from Siobhan to Derek. “My apologies for keeping you from your noble efforts.” And with a wink he was off. Templer watched him leave. Then, saying nothing, but with a twinkle in her eye, she headed back to her own office.
Siobhan felt like cheering. She’d been about to have a go at Gray herself, but doubted she could have scored so palpable a hit. DCS Gill Templer had just risen like a rocket in Siobhan’s estimation.
“She can be a cold bitch, can’t she?” Linford muttered. Siobhan didn’t respond: she wanted a favor from Linford and upsetting him wasn’t going to help.
“Derek,” she said, “since you’re hell for leather on Donny Dow, mind if Hynds takes a look at Marber’s cash flow? I know you’ve covered the ground already, but it’ll give the poor sod something to do.”
She stood there, hands behind her back, hoping she didn’t look and sound too drippy.
Linford gazed in Hynds’s forlorn direction. “Go ahead,” he said, reaching down to pull the relevant folder from the box on the floor beside him.
“Thanks,” Siobhan cooed, skipping back to her desk.
“Here you go,” she said to Hynds, her voice back to normal.
“What’s this?” Hynds asked, staring at the folder but not touching it.
“Marber’s finances. Laura Stafford seemed to think he had some big money coming to him. I want to know the why, when and how much.”
“And his records will tell me?”
Siobhan shook her head. “But his accountant might. The name and phone number are in there.” She tapped the file. “And don’t say I’m not generous.”
“Who was that big bastard you were speaking to?” Hynds nodded in the direction of Linford’s desk.
“Detective Inspector Francis Gray. He’s part of the Tulliallan posse.”
�
�He’s a big bloke.”
“The bigger they are, the harder they fall, Davie.”
“If that bugger ever looks like falling, here’s hoping we’re not in the vicinity.” He stared at the folder. “Anything else I should be asking the accountant?”
“You could ask him if there’s anything he’s been hiding from us, or his client might have been hiding from him.”
“Rare paintings? Bundles of cash?”
“Those’ll do for a start.” She paused. “Think you can manage this one on your own, Davie?”
Hynds nodded. “No problem, DS Clarke. And what will you be up to while I’m toiling at the workface?”
“I have to go see a friend.” She smiled. “But don’t worry: it’s strictly business.”
Lothian and Borders Police HQ on Fettes Avenue was known to most of the local force as “the Big House.” Either that or “Rear Window,” which didn’t refer to the Hitchcock film but to an embarrassing episode when vital documents had been stolen from the building by someone who’d climbed in through an open window on the ground floor.
Fettes Avenue was a wide thoroughfare which ended at the gates to Fettes College — Tony Blair’s old school. Fettes was where the toffs sent their kids, paying dearly for the privilege. Siobhan had yet to meet any police officers who’d been schooled there, though she knew a few from Edinburgh’s other fee-paying schools. Eric Bain, for example, had spent two years at Stewart’s Melville — years he described simply as “rough.”
“Why rough?” she asked now as they walked down the first-floor corridor.
“I was overweight, wore specs and liked jazz.”
“Enough said.”
Siobhan made to turn into a doorway, but Bain stopped her. She’d just been priding herself on her remembrance of the building’s geography, having served in the Scottish Crime Squad for a time.
“They’ve moved,” Bain told her.
“Since when?”
“Since the SCS became the SDEA.”
He led her two doors farther along and into a large office. “This is what the Drug Enforcement Agency get. Me, I’m in a closet next floor up.”
“So why are we here?”
Bain seated himself behind a desk. Siobhan found a chair and dragged it across.
“Because,” he answered, “for so long as the SDEA need me, I get a window and a view.” He swiveled on his chair, peering out at the scenery. There was a laptop computer on the desk, a pile of paperwork beside it. On the floor were stacked little black and silver boxes — peripherals of some description. Most of them looked homemade, and Siobhan would bet that Bain had constructed them himself, maybe even designed them, too. In a parallel universe somewhere, a billionaire Eric Bain was sitting by the pool of his Californian mansion . . . and the Edinburgh police were struggling with cybercrimes of all descriptions.
