by Ian Rankin
He turned from the window and shone his torch onto the face of a young man with short dark hair. The man shielded his eyes from the beam, and Rebus angled the light down onto the man’s body.
It was dressed in a police constable’s uniform.
‘You must be Neil,’ said Rebus calmly. ‘Or do you prefer Neilly?’
He levelled the torch at the floor. There was enough light for him to see and be seen by. The young man nodded.
‘Neil’s fine. Only my friends call me Neilly.’
‘And I’m not your friend,’ Rebus said, nodding acquiescence. ‘Ronnie was though, wasn’t he?’
‘He was more than that, Inspector Rebus,’ said the constable, moving into the room. ‘He was my brother.’
There was nowhere in Ronnie’s bedroom for them to sit, but that didn’t matter, since neither could have sat still for more than a second or two anyway. They were filled with energy: Neil needing to tell his story, Rebus needing to be told. Rebus chose in front of the window as his territory, and paced backwards and forwards without seeming to, his head down, stopping from time to time to lend more concentration to Neil’s words. Neil stayed by the door, swinging the handle to and fro, listening for that moment before the whole door creaked, and then pulling or pushing the door through that slow, rending sound. The torch served the scene well, casting unruly shadows over the walls, making silhouettes of each man’s profile, the talker and the listener.
‘Sure, I knew what he was up to,’ Neil said. ‘He may have been older than me, but I always knew him better than he knew me. I mean, I knew how his mind worked.’
‘So you knew he was a junkie?’
‘I knew he took drugs. He started when we were at school. He was caught once, almost expelled. They let him back in after three months, so he could do his exams. He passed the lot of them. That’s more than I did.’
Yes, Rebus thought, admiration could make you turn a blind eye….
‘He ran away after the exams. We didn’t hear anything from him for months. My mum and dad almost went crazy. Then they just shut him out completely, switched off. It was like he didn’t exist. I wasn’t supposed to mention him in the house.’
‘But he got in touch with you?’
‘Yes. Wrote a letter to me care of a pal of mine. Clever move that. So I got the letter without Mum and Dad knowing. He told me he had come to Edinburgh. That he liked it better than Stirling. That he had a job and a girlfriend. That was it, no address or phone number.’
‘Did he write often?’
‘Now and then. He lied a lot, made things seem better than they were. Said he couldn’t come back to Stirling until he had a Porsche and a flat, so he could prove something to Mum and Dad. Then he stopped writing. I left school and joined the police.’
‘And came to Edinburgh.’
‘Not straight away, but yes, eventually.’
‘Specifically to find him?’
Neil smiled.
‘Not a bit of it. I was forgetting him, too. I had my own life to think about.’
‘So what happened?’
‘I caught him one night, out on my regular beat.’
‘What beat is that exactly?’
‘I’m based out at Musselburgh.’
‘Musselburgh? Not exactly walking distance of here, is it? So what do you mean “caught him”?’
‘Well, not caught, since he wasn’t really doing anything. But he was high as a kite, and he’d been bashed up a bit.’
‘Did he tell you what he’d been doing?’
‘No. I could guess though.’
‘What?’
‘Acting as a punchbag for some of the rough traders around Calton Hill.’
‘Funny, someone else mentioned that.’
‘It happens. Quick money for people who don’t give a shit.’
‘And Ronnie didn’t give a shit?’
‘Sometimes he did. Other times…. I don’t know, maybe I didn’t know his mind as well as I thought.’
‘So you started to visit him?’
‘I had to help him home that first night. I came back the next day. He was surprised to see me, didn’t even remember that I’d helped him home the previous night.’
‘Did you try to get him off drugs?’
Neil was silent. The door creaked on its hinges.
‘At the beginning I did,’ he said at last. ‘But he seemed to be in control. That sounds stupid, I know, after what I’ve said about finding him in such a state that first night, but it was his choice, after all, as he kept reminding me.’
‘What did he think of having a brother in the force?’
‘He thought it was funny. Mind you, I never came round here with my uniform on.’
‘Not till tonight.’
‘That’s right. Anyway, yes, I visited a few times. We stayed up here mostly. He didn’t want the others to see me. He was afraid they’d smell pork.’
It was Rebus’s turn to smile. ‘You didn’t happen to follow Tracy, did you?’
‘Who’s Tracy?’
‘Ronnie’s girlfriend. She turned up at my flat last night. Some men had been following her.’
Neil shook his head. ‘Wasn’t me.’
‘But you were at my flat last night?’
‘Yes.’
‘And you were here the night Ronnie died.’ It was blunt, but necessarily so. Neil stopped playing with the door handle, was silent this time for twenty or thirty seconds, then took a deep breath.
‘For a while I was, yes.’
‘You left this behind.’ Rebus held out the shiny clip, but Neil couldn’t quite make it out in the torchlight. Not that he needed to see it to know what it was.
‘My tie clip? I wondered about that. My tie had broken that day, it was in my pocket.’
Rebus made no attempt to hand over the clip. Instead, he put it back in his pocket. Neil just nodded, understanding.
‘Why did you start following me?’
‘I wanted to talk to you. I just couldn’t pluck up the courage.’
‘You didn’t want news of Ronnie’s death getting back to your parents?’
‘Yes. I thought maybe you wouldn’t be able to trace his identity, but you did. I don’t know what it’ll do to my mum and dad. I think at worst it’ll make them happy, because they’ll know they were right all along, right not to give him a second’s thought.’
‘And at best?’
‘Best?’ Neil stared through the gloom, searching out Rebus’s eyes. ‘There’s no best.’
‘I suppose not,’ said Rebus. ‘But they’ve still got to be told.’
‘I know. I’ve always known.’
‘Then why follow me?’
‘Because now you’re closer to Ronnie than I am. I don’t know why you’re so interested in him, but you are. And that interests me. I want you to find whoever sold him that poison.’
‘I intend to, son, don’t worry.’
‘And I want to help.’
‘That’s the first stupid thing you’ve said, which isn’t bad going for a PC. Truth is, Neil, you’d be the biggest bloody nuisance I could ask for. I’ve got all the help I need for now.’
‘Too many cooks, eh?’
‘Something like that.’ Rebus decided that the confession was ending, that there was little left to be said. He came away from the window and walked to the door, stopping in front of Neil. ‘You’ve already been a bigger nuisance than I needed. It’s not pork I can smell off you, it’s fish. Herrings, to be precise. And guess what colour they are.’
‘What?’
‘Red, son, red.’
There was a noise from downstairs, pressure on floorboards, better than an infra-red alarm anyday. Rebus turned off the torch.
‘Stay here,’ he whispered. Then he went to the top of the stairs. ‘Who’s there?’ A shadow appeared below him. He switched on the torch, and shone it into Tony McCall’s squinting face.
‘Christ, Tony.’ Rebus started downstairs. ‘What a fright.’
‘I knew I’d find you here,’ said McCall. ‘I just knew it.’ His voice was nasal, and Rebus reckoned that since the time they’d parted some three hours before, McCall had kept on drinking. He stopped on the staircase, then turned and headed back up.
‘Where are you going now?’ called McCall.
‘Just shutting the door,’ said Rebus, closing the bedroom door, leaving Neil inside. ‘Don’t want the ghosts to catch cold, do we?’
McCall was chuckling as Rebus headed downstairs again.
‘Thought we might have a wee snifter,’ he said. ‘And none of that bloody alcohol-free stuff you were quaffing before.’
‘Fair enough,’ said Rebus, expertly manoeuvring McCall out of the front door. ‘Let’s do that.’ And he locked the door behind him, figuring that Ronnie’s brother would know of the many easy ways in and out of the house. Everybody else seemed to know them, after all.
Everybody.
‘Where’ll it be?’ said Rebus. ‘I hope you didn’t drive here, Tony.’
‘Got a patrol car to drop me off.’
‘Fine. We’ll take my car then.’
‘We could drive down to Leith.’
‘No, I fancy something more central. There are a few good pubs in Regent Road.’
‘By Calton Hill?’ McCall was amazed. ‘Christ, John, I can think of better places to go for a drink.’
‘I can’t,’ said Rebus. ‘Come on.’
Nell Stapleton was Holmes’s girlfriend. Holmes had always preferred tall women, tracing the fixation back to his mother who had been five foot ten. Nell was nearly three quarters of an inch taller than Holmes’s mother, but he still loved her.
Nell was more intelligent than Holmes. Or, as he liked to think, they were more intelligent than one another in different ways. Nell could crack the Guardian cryptic crossword in under quarter of an hour on a good day. But she had trouble with arithmetic and remembering names: both strengths possessed by Holmes. People said they looked good together in public, looked comfortable with one another, which was probably true. They felt good together, too, living as they did by several simple rules: no talk of marriage, no thoughts of children, no hinting at living together, and definitely no cheating.
Nell worked as a librarian at Edinburgh University, a vocation Holmes found handy. Today, for example, he had asked her to find him some books on the occult. She had done even better, locating a thesis or two which he could read on the premises if he wished. She also had a printed bibliography of relevant materials, which she handed to him in the pub when they met that evening.
The Bridge of Sighs was at a mid-week and mid-evening cusp, as were most of the city centre bars. The just-one-after-work brigade had slung their jackets over their arms and headed off, while the revitalised night-time crowd had yet to catch their buses from the housing estates into the middle of town. Nell and Holmes sat at a comer table, away from the video games, but a bit too close to one of the hi-fi system’s loudspeakers. Holmes, at the bar to buy another half for himself, an orange juice and Perrier for Nell, asked if the volume could be turned down.
‘Sorry, can’t. The customers like it.’
‘We are the customers,’ Holmes persisted.
‘You’ll have to speak to the manager.’
‘Fine.’
‘He’s not in yet.’
Holmes shot the young barmaid a filthy look before turning towards his table. What he saw made him pause. Nell had opened his briefcase and was examining the photograph of Tracy.
‘Who is she?’ Nell said, closing the case as he placed her drink on the table.
‘Part of a case I’m working on,’ he said frostily, sitting down. ‘Who said you could open my briefcase?’
‘Rule seven, Brian. No secrets.’
‘All the same — ’
‘Pretty, isn’t she?’
‘What? I haven’t really — ’
‘I’ve seen her around the university.’
He was interested now. ‘You have?’
‘Mmm. In the library cafeteria. I remember her because she always seemed a little bit older than the other students she was with.’
‘She’s a student then?’
‘Not necessarily. Anybody can go into the cafe. It’s students only in the library itself, but I can’t recall having seen her there. Only in the cafe. So what’s she done?’
‘Nothing, so far as I know.’
‘So why is there a nude photo of her in your briefcase?’
‘It’s part of this thing I’m doing for Inspector Rebus.’
‘You’re collecting dirty pictures for him.’
She was smiling now, and he smiled too. The smile vanished as Rebus and McCall walked into the pub, laughing at some shared joke as they made for the bar. Holmes didn’t want Rebus and Nell to meet. He tried very hard to leave his police life behind him when he was spending the evening with her — favours such as the occult booklist notwithstanding. He was also planning to keep Nell very much up his sleeve, so that he could have a booklist ready to hand should Rebus ever need such a thing.
Now it looked as though Rebus was going to spoil everything. And there was something else, another reason he didn’t want Rebus to come sauntering across to their table. He was afraid Rebus would call him ‘Shoeleather’.
He kept his eyes to the table as Rebus took in the bar with a single sweep of his head, and was relieved when the two senior officers, drinks purchased, wandered off towards the distant pool table, where they started another argument about who shouldn’t and should provide the two twenty-pence pieces for the game.
‘What’s wrong?’
Nell was staring at him. To do so, she had brought herself to his level, her head resting against the table.
‘Nothing.’ He turned towards her, offering the rest of the room a hard profile. ‘Are you hungry?’
‘I suppose so, yes.’
‘Good, me too.’
‘I thought you said you’d eaten.’
‘Not enough. Come on, I’ll treat you to an Indian.’
‘Let me finish my drink first.’ She did so in three swallows, and they left together, the door swinging shut silently behind them.
‘Heads or tails?’ Rebus asked McCall, flipping a coin.
‘Tails.’
Rebus examined the coin. ‘Tails it is. You break.’
As McCall angled his cue down onto the table, closing one eye as he concentrated on the distant triangle of balls, Rebus stared at the door of the bar. Fair enough, he supposed. Holmes was off duty, and had a girl with him, too. He supposed that gave him grounds for ignoring his senior officer. Perhaps there had been no progress, nothing to report. Fair enough again. But Rebus couldn’t help thinking that the whole thing was meant to be taken as a snub. He had given Holmes a mouthful earlier on, and now Holmes was sulking.
‘You to play, John,’ said McCall, who had broken without potting.
‘Right you are, Tony,’ said Rebus, chalking the tip of his cue. ‘Right you are.’
McCall came to Rebus’s side as he was making ready to play.
‘This must be just about the only straight pub in the whole street,’ he said quietly.
‘Do you know what homophobia means, Tony?’
‘Don’t get me wrong, John,’ said McCall, straightening up and watching Rebus’s chosen ball miss the pocket. ‘I mean, each to his own and all that. But some of those pubs and clubs….’
‘You seem to know a lot.’
‘No, not really. It’s just what I hear.’
‘Who from?’
McCall potted one striped ball, then another. ‘Come on, John. You know Edinburgh as well as I do. Everybody knows the gay scene here.’
‘Like you said, Tony, each to his own.’ A voice suddenly sounded in Rebus’s mind: you’re the brother I never had. No, no, shut that out. He’d been there too often before. McCall missed on his next shot and Rebus approached the table.
‘How come,’ he said, completely miscuing, ‘y
ou can drink so much and play so well?’
McCall chuckled. ‘Alcohol cures the shakes,’ he said. ‘So finish that pint and I’ll buy you another. My treat.’
James Carew felt that he deserved his treat. He had sold a substantial property on the outskirts of Edinburgh to the financial director of a company new to Scotland, and a husband and wife architects’ partnership — Scottish in origin, but now relocating from Sevenoaks in Kent — had just made a rather better offer than expected for an estate of seven acres in the Borders. A good day. By no means the best, but nevertheless worthy of celebration.
Carew himself owned a pied d terre in one of the loveliest of the New Town’s Georgian streets, and a farmhouse with some acreage on the Isle of Skye. These were good days for him. London was shifting north, it seemed, the incomers brimming with cash from properties sold in the south-east, wanting bigger and better and prepared to pay.
He left his George Street offices at six thirty, and returned to his split-level flat. Flat? It seemed an insult to term it such: five bedrooms, living room, dining room, two bathrooms, adequate kitchen, walk-in cupboards the size of a decent Hammersmith bedsit…. Carew was in the right place, the only place, and the time was right, too. This was a year to be clutched, embraced, a year unlike any other. He removed his suit in the master bedroom, showered, and changed into something more casual, but without shrugging off the mark of wealth. Though he had walked home, he would need the car for tonight. It was garaged in a mews to the rear of his street. The keys were hanging on their appointed hook in the kitchen. Was the Jaguar an indulgence? He smiled, locking the flat as he left. Perhaps it was. But then his list of indulgences was long, and about to grow longer.
Rebus waited with McCall until the taxi arrived. He gave the driver McCall’s address, and watched the cab pull away. Damn, he felt a little groggy himself. He went back into the pub and headed for the toilets. The bar was busier now, the jukebox louder. The bar staff had grown in strength from one to three, and they were working hard to cope. The toilets were a cool tiled haven, free from much of the bar’s cigarette smoke. Pine disinfectant caught in Rebus’s nostrils as he leaned over into one of the sinks. Two fingers sought out his tonsils, pausing there at the back of his throat until he retched, bringing up half a pint of beer, then another half. He breathed deeply, feeling a little better already, then washed his face thoroughly with cold water, drying himself off with a fistful of paper towels.
