The Beat Goes On: The Complete Rebus Stories

  There were two floors to the reading room, both enveloped by shelves of reference books. The people working at the long desks downstairs seemed bleary. Just another morning’s graft for them; but Rebus found it all fascinating. One person worked with a card index in front of him, to which he referred frequently. Another seemed asleep, head resting on arms. Pens scratched across countless sheets of paper. A few souls, lost for inspiration, merely chewed on their pens and stared at the others around them, as Rebus was doing.

  Eventually, his volume was brought to him. It was a bound edition of the Scotsman, containing every issue for the months from January to June, 1960. Two thick leather buckles kept the volume closed. Rebus unbuckled these and began to turn the pages.

  He knew what he was looking for, and pretty well where to find it, but that didn’t stop him browsing through football reports and front page headlines. 1960. He’d been busy trying to lose his virginity and supporting Hearts. Yes, a long time ago.

  The story hadn’t quite made the front page. Instead, there were two paragraphs on page three. ‘Drowning Off Lower Largo.’ The victim, Mr Hugh Ford, was described as being twenty-six years of age (a year older than the survivor, Mr Alex Abbot) and a resident of Duddingston, Edinburgh. The men, on a short fishing-holiday, had taken a boat out early in the morning, a boat hired from a local man, Mr John Thomson. There was a squall, and the boat capsized. Mr Abbot, a fair swimmer, had made it back to the shore. Mr Ford, a poor swimmer, had not. Mr Ford was further described as a ‘bachelor, a quiet man, shy according to Mr Abbot, who was still under observation at the Victoria Hospital, Kirkcaldy’. There was a little more, but not much. Apparently, Ford’s parents were dead, but he had a sister, Mrs Isabel Hammond, somewhere out in Australia.

  Why hadn’t Abbot mentioned any of this? Maybe he wanted to forget. Maybe it still gave him the occasional bad dream. And of course he would have forgotten all about the Hillbeith contract precisely because this tragedy happened so soon afterwards. So soon. Just the one line of print really bothered Rebus; just that one sentence niggled.

  ‘Mr Ford’s body has still not been recovered.’

  Records might get lost in time, but not by Fife Police. They sent on what they had, much of it written in fading ink on fragile paper, some of it typed – badly. The two friends and colleagues, Abbot and Ford, had set out on Friday evening to the Fishing-Net Hotel in Largo, arriving late. As arranged, they’d set out early next morning on a boat they’d hired from a local man, John Thomson. The accident had taken place only an hour or so after setting out. The boat was recovered. It had been overturned, but of Ford there was no sign. Inquiries were made. Mr Ford’s belongings were taken back to Edinburgh by Mr Abbot, after the latter was released from hospital, having sustained a bump to the head when the boat went over. He was also suffering from shock and exhaustion. Mr Ford’s sister, Mrs Isabel Hammond, was never traced.

  They had investigated a little further. The business run jointly by Messrs Abbot and Ford now became Mr Abbot’s. The case-notes contained a good amount of information and suspicion – between the lines, as it were. Oh yes, they’d investigated Alexander Abbot, but there had been no evidence. They’d searched for the body, had found none. Without a body, they were left with only their suspicions and their nagging doubts.

  ‘Yes,’ Rebus said quietly to himself, ‘but what if you were looking for the body in the wrong place?’ The wrong place at the wrong time. The work on the cellar had ended on Friday afternoon and by Saturday morning Hugh Ford had ceased to exist.

  The path Rebus was on had become less overgrown, but it was still rock-strewn and dangerous, still a potential dead-end.

  The Fishing-Net Hotel was still in existence, though apparently much changed from its 1960 incarnation. The present owners told Rebus to arrive in time for lunch if he could and it would be on the house. Largo was north of Burntisland but on the same coastline. Alexander Selkirk, the original of Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe, had a connection with the fishing village. There was a small statue of him somewhere which Rebus had been shown as a boy (but only after much hunting, he recalled). Largo was picturesque, but then so were most, if not all, of the coastal villages in Fife’s ‘East Neuk’. But it was not yet quite the height of the tourist season and the customers taking lunch at the Fishing-Net Hotel were businessmen and locals.

  It was a good lunch, as picturesque as its surroundings but with a bit more flavour. And afterwards, the owner, an Englishman for whom life in Largo was a long-held dream come true, offered to show Rebus round, including ‘the very room your Mr Ford stayed in the night before he died’.

  ‘How can you be sure?’

  ‘I looked in the register.’

  Rebus managed not to look too surprised. The hotel had changed hands so often since 1960, he despaired of finding anyone who would remember the events of that weekend.

  ‘The register?’

  ‘Yes, we were left a lot of old stuff when we bought this place. The store-rooms were choc-a-bloc. Old ledgers and what have you going back to the 1920s and ’30s. It was easy enough to find 1960.’

  Rebus stopped in his tracks. ‘Never mind showing me Mr Ford’s room, would you mind letting me see that register?’

  He sat at a desk in the manager’s office with the register open in front of him, while Mr Summerson’s finger stabbed the line. ‘There you are, Inspector, H. Ford. Signed in at 11.50 p.m., address given as Duddingston. Room number seven.’

  It wasn’t so much a signature as a blurred scrawl and above it, on a separate line, was Alexander Abbot’s own more flowing signature.

  ‘Bit late to arrive, wasn’t it?’ commented Rebus.

  ‘Agreed.’

  ‘I don’t suppose there’s anyone working here nowadays who worked in the hotel back then?’

  Summerson laughed quietly. ‘People do retire in this country, Inspector.’

  ‘Of course, I just wondered.’ He remembered the newspaper story. ‘What about John Thomson? Does the name mean anything to you?’

  ‘Old Jock? Jock Thomson? The fisherman?’

  ‘Probably.’

  ‘Oh, yes, he’s still about. You’ll almost certainly find him down by the dockside or else in the Harbour Tavern.’

  ‘Thanks. I’d like to take this register with me if I may?’

  Jock Thomson sucked on his pipe and nodded. He looked the archetype of the ‘old salt’, from his baggy cord trousers to his chiselled face and silvery beard. The only departure from the norm was, perhaps, the Perrier water in front of him on a table in the Harbour Tavern.

  ‘I like the fizz,’ he explained after ordering it, ‘and besides, my doctor’s told me to keep off the alcohol. Total abstinence, he said, total abstinence. Either the booze goes, Jock, or the pipe does. No contest.’

  And he sucked greedily on the pipe. Then complained when his drink arrived without ‘the wee slice of lemon’. Rebus returned to the bar to fulfil his mission.

  ‘Oh aye,’ said Thomson, ‘remember it like it was yesterday. Only there’s not much to remember, is there?’

  ‘Why do you say that?’

  ‘Two inexperienced laddies go out in a boat. Boat tips. End of story.’

  ‘Was the weather going to be bad that morning?’

  ‘Not particularly. But there was a squall blew up. Blew up and blew out in a matter of minutes. Long enough though.’

  ‘How did the two men seem?’

  ‘How do you mean?’

  ‘Well, were they looking forward to the trip?’

  ‘Don’t know, I never saw them. The younger one, Abbot was it? He phoned to book a boat from me, said they’d be going out early, six or thereabouts. I told him he was daft, but he said there was no need for me to be on the dockside, if I’d just have the boat ready and tell him which one it was. And that’s what I did. By the time I woke up that morning, he was swimming for the shore and his pal was food for the fish.’

  ‘So you never actually saw Mr Ford?’

  ?
??No, and I only saw the lad Abbot afterwards, when the ambulance was taking him away.’

  It was fitting into place almost too easily now. And Rebus thought, sometimes these things are only visible with hindsight, from a space of years. ‘I don’t suppose,’ he ventured, ‘you know anyone who worked at the hotel back then?’

  ‘Owner’s moved on,’ said Thomson, ‘who knows where to. It might be that Janice Dryman worked there then. Can’t recall if she did.’

  ‘Where could I find her?’

  Thomson peered at the clock behind the bar. ‘Hang around here ten minutes or so, you’ll bump into her. She usually comes in of an afternoon. Meantime, I’ll have another of these if you’re buying.’

  Thomson pushed his empty glass over to Rebus. Rebus, most definitely, was buying.

  Miss Dryman – ‘never married, never really saw the point’ – was in her early fifties. She worked in a gift-shop in town and after her stint finished usually nipped into the Tavern for a soft drink and ‘a bit of gossip’. Rebus asked what she would like to drink.

  ‘Lemonade, please,’ she said, ‘with a drop of whisky in it.’ And she laughed with Jock Thomson, as though this were an old and cherished joke between them. Rebus, not used to playing the part of straight-man, headed yet again for the bar.

  ‘Oh yes,’ she said, her lips poised above the glass. ‘I was working there at the time all right. Chambermaid and general dogsbody, that was me.’

  ‘You wouldn’t see them arrive though?’

  Miss Dryman looked as though she had some secret to impart. ‘Nobody saw them arrive, I know that for a fact. Mrs Dennis who ran the place back then, she said she’d be buggered if she’d wait up half the night for a couple of fishermen. They knew what rooms they were in and their keys were left at reception.’

  ‘What about the front door?’

  ‘Left unlocked, I suppose. The world was a safer place back then.’

  ‘Aye, you’re right there,’ added Jock Thomson, sucking on his sliver of lemon.

  ‘And Mr Abbot and Mr Ford knew this was the arrangement?’

  ‘I suppose so. Otherwise it wouldn’t have worked, would it?’

  So Abbot knew there’d be nobody around at the hotel, not if he left it late enough before arriving.

  ‘And what about in the morning?’

  ‘Mrs Dennis said they were up and out before she knew anything about it. She was annoyed because she’d already cooked the kippers for their breakfast before she realised.’

  So nobody saw them in the morning either. In fact …

  ‘In fact,’ said Rebus, ‘nobody saw Mr Ford at all. Nobody at the hotel, not you, Mr Thomson, nobody.’ Both drinkers conceded this.

  ‘I saw his stuff though,’ said Miss Dryman.

  ‘What stuff ?’

  ‘In his room, his clothes and stuff. That morning. I didn’t know anything about the accident and I went in to clean.’

  ‘The bed had been slept in?’

  ‘Looked like it. Sheets all rumpled. And his suitcase was on the floor, only half unpacked. Not that there was much to unpack.’

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘A single change of clothes, I’d say. I remember them because they seemed mucky, you know, not fresh. Not the sort of stuff I’d take on holiday with me.’

  ‘What? Like he’d been working in them?’

  She considered this. ‘Maybe.’

  ‘No point wearing clean clothes for fishing,’ Thomson added. But Rebus wasn’t listening.

  Ford’s clothes, the clothes he had been working in while laying the floor. It made sense. Abbot bludgeoned him, stripped him and covered his body in fresh cement. He’d taken the clothes away with him and put them in a case, opening it in the hotel room, ruffling the sheets. Simple, but effective. Effective these past thirty years. The motive? A falling out perhaps, or simple greed. It was a small company, but growing, and perhaps Abbot hadn’t wanted to share. Rebus placed a five-pound note on the table.

  ‘To cover the next couple of rounds,’ he said, getting to his feet. ‘I’d better be off. Some of us are still on duty.’

  There were things to be done. He had to speak to his superior, Chief Inspector Lauderdale. And that was for starters. Maybe Ford’s Australian sister could be traced this time round. There had to be someone out there who could acknowledge that Ford had suffered from a broken leg in his youth, and that he had a crooked finger. So far, Rebus could think of only one person – Alexander Abbot. Somehow, he didn’t think Abbot could be relied on to tell the truth, the whole truth.

  Then there was the hotel register. The forensics lab could ply their cunning trade on it. Perhaps they’d be able to say for certain that Ford’s signature was merely a bad rendition of Abbot’s. But again, he needed a sample of Ford’s handwriting in order to substantiate that the signature was not genuine. Who did he know who might possess such a document? Only Alexander Abbot. Or Mr Hillbeith, but Mr Hillbeith had not been able to help.

  ‘No, Inspector, as I told you, it was Mr Abbot who handled all the paperwork, all that side of things. If there is an invoice or a receipt, it will be in his hand, not Mr Ford’s. I don’t recall ever seeing Mr Ford writing anything.’

  No through road.

  Chief Inspector Lauderdale was not wholly sympathetic. So far all Rebus had to offer were more suppositions to add to those of the Fife Police at the time. There was no proof that Alexander Abbot had killed his partner. No proof that the skeleton was Hugh Ford. Moreover, there wasn’t even much in the way of circumstantial evidence. They could bring in Abbot for questioning, but all he had to do was plead innocence. He could afford a good lawyer; and even bad lawyers weren’t stupid enough to let the police probe too deeply.

  ‘We need proof, John,’ said Lauderdale, ‘concrete evidence. The simplest proof would be that hotel signature. If we prove it’s not Ford’s, then we have Abbot at that hotel, Abbot in the boat and Abbot shouting that his friend has drowned, all without Ford having been there. That’s what we need. The rest of it, as it stands, is rubbish. You know that.’

  Yes, Rebus knew. He didn’t doubt that, given an hour alone with Abbot in a darkened alley, he’d have his confession. But it didn’t work like that. It worked through the law. Besides, Abbot’s heart might not be too healthy. BUSINESSMAN, 55, DIES UNDER QUESTIONING. No, it had to be done some other way.

  The problem was, there was no other way. Alexander Abbot was getting away with murder. Or was he? Why did his story have to be false? Why did the body have to be Hugh Ford’s? The answer was: because the whole thing seemed to fit. Only, the last piece of the jigsaw had been lost under some sofa or chair a long time ago, so long ago now that it might remain missing for ever.

  He didn’t know why he did it. If in doubt, retrace your steps … something like that. Maybe he just liked the atmosphere. Whatever, Rebus found himself back in the National Library, waiting at his desk for the servitor to bring him his bound volume of old news. He mouthed the words of ‘Yesterday’s Papers’ to himself as he waited. Then, when the volume appeared, he unbuckled it with ease and pulled open the pages. He read past the April editions, read through into May and June. Football results, headlines – and what was this? A snippet of business news, barely a filler at the bottom right-hand corner of a page. About how the Kirkwall Construction Company was swallowing up a couple of smaller competitors in Fife and Midlothian.

  ‘The 1960s will be a decade of revolution in the building industry,’ said Managing Director Mr Jack Kirkwall, ‘and Kirkwall Construction aims to meet that challenge through growth and quality. The bigger we are, the better we are. These acquisitions strengthen the company, and they’re good news for the workforce, too.’

  It was the kind of sentiment which had lasted into the 1980s. Jack Kirkwall, Alexander Abbot’s bitter rival. Now there was a man Rebus ought to meet …

  The meeting, however, had to be postponed until the following week. Kirkwall was in hospital for a minor operation.

  ‘I’m at t
hat age, Inspector,’ he told Rebus when they finally met, ‘when things go wrong and need treatment or replacing. Just like any bit of well-used machinery.’

  And he laughed, though the laughter, to Rebus’s ears, had a hollow centre. Kirkwall looked older than his sixty-two years, his skin saggy, complexion wan. They were in his living-room, from where, these days, he did most of his work.

  ‘Since I turned sixty, I’ve only really wandered into the company headquarters for the occasional meeting. I leave the daily chores to my son, Peter. He seems to be managing.’ The laughter this time was self-mocking.

  Rebus had suggested a further postponement of the meeting, but when Jack Kirkwall knew that the subject was to be Alexander Abbot, he was adamant that they should go ahead.

  ‘Is he in trouble then?’

  ‘He might be,’ Rebus admitted. Some of the colour seemed to reappear in Kirkwall’s cheeks and he relaxed a little further into his reclining leather chair. Rebus didn’t want to give Kirkwall the story. Kirkwall and Abbot were still business rivals, after all. Still, it seemed, enemies. Given the story, Kirkwall might try some underhand tactic, some rumour in the media, and if it got out that the story originally came from a police inspector, well. Hello, being sued and goodbye, pension.

  No, Rebus didn’t want that. Yet he did want to know whether Kirkwall knew anything, knew of any reason why Abbot might wish, might need to kill Ford.

  ‘Go on, Inspector.’

  ‘It goes back quite a way, sir. 1960, to be precise. Your firm was at that time in the process of expansion.’

  ‘Correct.’

  ‘What did you know about Abbot & Ford?’

  Kirkwall brushed the palm of one hand over the knuckles of the other. ‘Just that they were growing, too. Of course, they were younger than us, much smaller than us. ABC still is much smaller than us. But they were cocky, they were winning some contracts ahead of us. I had my eye on them.’