Beggars Banquet

  ‘He waited till you’d gone downstairs.’

  ‘Then what?’ said Sneddon. ‘You mean he’s still in the flat?’

  Rebus wondered. ‘No,’ he said at last, shaking his head. ‘But think of what he just told us, about how Ribs was tricking us.’

  He led Sneddon out of the flat, but instead of heading down, he climbed up a further flight to the top floor. Set into the ceiling was a skylight, and it too was open.

  ‘A walk across the rooftops,’ said Rebus.

  Sneddon just shook his head. ‘Sorry, sir,’ he offered.

  ‘Never mind,’ said Rebus, knowing, however, that his boss would.

  At seven next morning, Ribs Mackay left his flat and walked jauntily to the corner shop, followed by Sneddon. Then he walked back again, enjoying a cigarette, not a care in the world. He’d shown himself to the surveillance team, and now they had something to tell the new shift, something to occupy them during the changeover.As usual the changeover happened at eight. And exactly a minute after Jamphlar and Connaught entered the tenement, the door across the street opened and Ribs Mackay flew out.

  Rebus and Sneddon, snug in Rebus’s car, watched him go. Then Sneddon got out to follow him. He didn’t look back at Rebus, but he did wave an acknowledgement that his superior had been right. Rebus hoped Sneddon was better as a tail than he was as a watcher. He hoped they’d catch Ribs with the stuff on him, dealing it out perhaps, or taking delivery from his own supplier. That was the plan. That had been the plan throughout.

  He started the ignition and drove out on to Buccleuch Street. Scott’s Bar was an early opener, and John Rebus had an appointment there.

  He owed Bernie Few a drink.

  The Serpent’s Back

  This was, mind you, back in 1793 or ’94. Edinburgh was a better place then. Nothing ever happens here now, but back then . . . back then everything was happening.Back then a caddie was indispensable if you happened to be visiting the town. If you wanted someone found, if a message needed delivering, if you wanted a bed for the night, fresh oysters, a shirtmaker or the local hoor, you came to a caddie. And if the claret got the better of you, a caddie would see you safely home.

  See, the town wasn’t safe, Lord no. The streets were mean. The high-falutin’ were leaving the old town and crossing the Nor’ Loch to the New. They lived in Princes Street and George Street, or did until they could no longer stand the stench. The old loch was an open sewer by that time, and the old town not much better.

  I was called Cullender, Cully to my friends. No one knew my first name. They need only say ‘Cullender’, and they’d be pointed in my direction. That was how it was with young Master Gisborne. He had newly arrived by coach from London, and feared he’d never sit down again . . .

  ‘Are you Cullender? My good friend Mr Wilks told me to ask for you.’‘Wilks?’

  ‘He was here for some weeks. A medical student.’

  I nodded. ‘I recall the young gentleman particularly,’ I lied.

  ‘I shall require a clean room, nothing too fancy, my pockets aren’t bottomless.’

  ‘How long will you be staying, master?’

  He looked around. ‘I’m not sure. I’m considering a career in medicine. If I like the faculty, I may enrol.’

  And he fingered the edges of his coat. It was a pale blue coat with bright silver buttons. Like Master Gisborne it was overdone and didn’t quite fit together. His face was fat like a whelp’s, but his physique was lean and his eyes shone. His skin had suffered neither disease nor malnourishment. He was, I suppose, a fine enough specimen, but I’d seen fine specimens before. Many of them stayed, seduced by Edinburgh. I saw them daily in the pungent howffs, or slouching through the narrow closes, heads bowed. None of them looked so fresh these days. Had they been eels, the fishwives would have tossed them in a bucket and sold them to only the most gullible.

  The most gullible, of course, being those newly arrived in the city.

  Master Gisborne would need looking after. He was haughty on the surface, cocksure, but I knew he was troubled, wondering how long he could sustain the act of worldliness. He had money, but not in limitless supply. His parents would be professional folk, not gentry. Some denizens would gull him before supper. Me? I was undecided.

  I picked up his trunk. ‘Shall I call a chair?’ He frowned. ‘The streets here are too narrow and steep for coaches, haven’t you noticed? Know why they’re narrow?’ I sidled up to him. ‘There’s a serpent buried beneath.’ He looked ill at ease, so I laughed. ‘Just a story, master. We use chairmen instead of horses. Good strong Highland stock.’

  I knew he had already walked a good way in search of me, hauling his trunk with him. He was tired, but counting his money too.

  ‘Let’s walk,’ he decided, ‘and you can acquaint me with the town.’

  ‘The town, master,’ I said, ‘will acquaint you with itself.’

  We got him settled in at Lucky Seaton’s. Lucky had been a hoor herself at one time, then had been turned to the Moderate movement and now ran a Christian rooming house.

  ‘We know all about medical students, don’t we, Cully?’ she said, while Gisborne took the measure of his room. ‘The worst sinners in Christendom.’

  She patted Master Gisborne on his plump cheek, and I led him back down the treacherous stairwell.

  ‘What did she mean?’ he asked me.

  ‘Visit a few howffs, and you’ll find out,’ I told him. ‘The medical students are the most notorious group of topers in the city, if you discount the lawyers, judges, poets, boatmen, and Lords this-and-that.’

  ‘What’s a howff?’

  I led him directly into one.

  There was a general fug in what passed for the air. Pipes were being smoked furiously, and there were no windows to open, so the stale fumes lay heavy at eye level. I could hear laughter and swearing and the shrieks of women, but it was like peering through a haar. I saw one-legged Jack, balancing a wench on his good knee. Two lawyers sat at the next table along, heads close together. A poet of minor repute scribbled away as he sat slumped on the floor. And all around there was wine, wine in jugs and bumpers and bottles, its sour smell vying with that of tobacco.

  But the most noise came from a big round table in the furthest corner, where beneath flickering lamplight a meeting of the Monthly Club was underway. I led Gisborne to the table, having promised him that Edinburgh would acquaint itself with him. Five gentlemen sat round the table. One recognised me immediately.

  ‘Dear old Cully! What news from the world above?’

  ‘No news, sir.’

  ‘None better than that!’

  ‘What’s the meeting this month, sirs?’

  ‘The Hot Air Club, Cully.’ The speaker made a toast of the words. ‘We are celebrating the tenth anniversary of Mr Tytler’s fight by montgolfier over this very city.’

  This had to be toasted again, while I explained to Master Gisborne that the Monthly Club changed its name regularly in order to have something to celebrate.

  ‘I see you’ve brought fresh blood, Cully.’

  ‘Mr Gisborne,’ I said, ‘is newly arrived from London and hopes to study medicine.’

  ‘I hope he will, too, if he intends to practise.’

  There was laughter, and replenishing of glasses.

  ‘This gentleman,’ I informed my master, ‘is Mr Walter Scott. Mr Scott is an advocate.’

  ‘Not today,’ said another of the group. ‘Today he’s Colonel Grogg!’

  More laughter. Gisborne was asked what he would drink.

  ‘A glass of port,’ my hapless charge replied.

  The table went quiet. Scott was smiling with half his mouth only.

  ‘Port is not much drunk in these parts. It reminds some people of the Union. Some people would rather drink whisky and toast their Jacobite “King O’er the Water”.’ Someone at the table actually did this, not heeding the tone of Scott’s voice. ‘But we’re one nation now,’ Scott continued. That man did like to make a sp
eech. ‘And if you’ll drink some claret with us, we may yet be reconciled.’

  The drinker who’d toasted Bonnie Prince Charlie, another lawyer whose name was Urquhart, now turned to Gisborne with his usual complaint to Englishmen. ‘“Rule Britannia”,’ he said, ‘was written by a Scot. John Bull was invented by a Scot!’

  He slumped back, having to his mind made his point. Master Gisborne looked like he had tumbled into Bedlam.

  ‘Now now,’ Scott calmed. ‘We’re here to celebrate montgolfiers.’ He handed Gisborne a stemless glass filled to the brim. ‘And new arrivals. But you’ve come to a dangerous place, sir.’

  ‘How so?’ my master enquired.

  ‘Sedition is rife.’ Scott paused. ‘As is murder. How many is it now, Cully?’

  ‘Three this past fortnight.’ I recited the names. ‘Dr Benson, MacStay the coffin-maker, and a wretch called Howison.’

  ‘All stabbed,’ Scott informed Gisborne. ‘Imagine, murdering a coffin-maker! It’s like trying to murder Death himself !’

  As was wont to happen, the Monthly Club shifted to another howff to partake of a prix fixe dinner, and thence to another where Scott would drink champagne and lead a discussion of ‘the chest’.The chest in question had been found when the Castle’s crown room was opened during a search for some documents. The crown room had been opened, according to the advocate, by special warrant under the royal sign manual. No one had authority to break open the chest. The crown room was locked again, and the chest still inside. At the time of the union with England the royal regalia of Scotland had disappeared. It was Scott’s contention that this regalia - crown, sceptre and sword - lay in the chest.

  Gisborne listened in fascination. Somewhere along the route he had misplaced his sense of economy. He would pay for the champagne. He would pay for dinner. A brothel was being discussed as the next destination . . . Luckily, Scott was taking an interest in him, so that Gisborne’s pockets were still fairly full, though his wits be empty.

  I sat apart, conversing with the exiled Comte d’Artois, who had fled France at the outset of revolution. He retained the habit of stroking his neck for luck, his good fortune being that it still connected his head to his trunk. He had reason to feel nervous. Prompted by events in France, sedition was in the air. There had been riots, and now the ringleaders were being tried.

  We were discussing Deacon Brodie, hanged six years before for a series of housebreakings. Brodie, a cabinet-maker and locksmith, had robbed the very premises to which he’d fitted locks. Respectable by day, he’d been nefarious by night. To the Comte (who knew about such matters) this was merely ‘the human condition’.

  I noticed suddenly that I was seated in shadow. A man stood over me. He had full thick lips, a meaty stew of a nose, and eyebrows which met at the central divide the way warring forces sometimes will.

  ‘Cullender?’

  I shook my head and turned away.

  ‘You’re Cullender,’ he said. ‘This is for you.’ He slapped his paw on to the table, then turned and pushed back through the throng. A piece of paper, neatly folded, sat on the wood where his hand had been. I unfolded it and read.

  Outside the Tolbooth, quarter before midnight.

  The note was unsigned. I handed it to the Comte.

  ‘You will go?’

  It was already past eleven. ‘I’ll let one more drink decide.’

  The Tolbooth was the city jail where Brodie himself had spent his final days, singing airs from The Beggar’s Opera. The night was like pitch, nobody having bothered to light their lamps, and a haar rolled through from the direction of Leith.In the darkness, I had trodden in something I did not care to study, and was scraping my shoe clean on the Tolbooth’s cornerstone when I heard a voice close by.

  ‘Cullender?’

  A woman’s voice; even held to a whisper I knew it for that. The lady herself was dressed top to toe in black, her face deep inside the hood of a cloak.

  ‘I’m Cullender.’

  ‘I’m told you perform services.’

  ‘I’m no minister, lady.’

  Maybe she smiled. A small bag appeared and I took it, weighing the coins inside.

  ‘There’s a book circulating in the town,’ said my new mistress. ‘I am keen to obtain it.’

  ‘We have several fine booksellers in the Luckenbooths . . .’

  ‘You are glib, sir.’

  ‘And you are mysterious.’

  ‘Then I’ll be plain. I know of only one copy of this book, a private printing. It is called Ranger’s Second Impartial List . . .’

  ‘Of the Ladies of Pleasure in Edinburgh.’

  ‘You know it. Have you seen it?’

  ‘It’s not meant for the likes of me.’

  ‘I would like to see this book.’

  ‘You want me to find it?’

  ‘It’s said you know everyone in the city.’

  ‘Everyone that matters.’

  ‘Then you can locate it?’

  ‘It’s possible.’ I examined my shoes. ‘But first I’d need to know a little more . . .’

  When I looked up again, she was gone.

  At The Cross, the caddies were speaking quietly with the chairmen. We caddies had organised ourselves into a company, boasting written standards and a Magistrate of Caddies in charge of all. We regarded ourselves superior to the chairmen, mere brawny Highland migrants.But my best friend and most trusted ally, Mr Mack, was a chairman. He was not, however, at The Cross. Work was nearly over for the night. The last taverns were throwing out the last soused customers. Only the brothels and cockpits were still active. Not able to locate Mr Mack, I turned instead to a fellow caddie, an old hand called Dryden.

  ‘Mr Dryden,’ I said, all businesslike, ‘I require your services, the fee to be agreed between us.’

  Dryden, as ever, was willing. I knew he would work through the night. He was known to the various brothel-keepers, and could ask his questions discreetly, as I might have done myself had the lady’s fee not been sufficient to turn me employer.

  Me, I headed home, climbing the lonely stairs to my attic quarters and a cold mattress. I found sleep the way a pickpocket finds his gull.

  Which is to say, easily.

  Next morning, Dryden was dead.A young caddie called Colin came to tell me. We repaired to the Nor’ Loch where the body still lay, face down in the slime. The Town Guard - ‘Town Rats’ behind their backs - fingered their Lochaber axes, straightened their tall cocked hats, and tried to look important. One of their number, a red-faced individual named Fairlie, asked if we knew the victim.

  ‘Dryden,’ I said. ‘He was a caddie.’

  ‘He’s been run through with a dagger,’ Fairlie delighted in telling me. ‘Just like those other three.’

  But I wasn’t so sure about that . . .

  I went to a quiet howff, a drink steadying my humour. Dryden, I surmised, had been killed in such a way as to make him appear another victim of the city’s stabber. I knew though that in all likelihood he had been killed because of the questions he’d been asking . . . questions I’d sent him to ask. Was I safe myself? Had Dryden revealed anything to his killer? And what was it about my mistress’s mission that made it so deadly dangerous?

  As I was thus musing, young Gisborne entered the bar on fragile legs.

  ‘Did I have anything to drink last evening?’ he asked, holding his head.

  ‘Master, you drank like it was your last day alive.’

  Our hostess was already replenishing my wine jug. ‘Kill or cure,’ I said, pouring two glasses.

  Gisborne could see I was worried, and asked the nature of the problem. I was grateful to tell him. Any listener would have sufficed. Mind, I held back some. This knowledge was proving dangerous, so I made no mention of the lady and her book. I jumped from the messenger to my words with Dryden.

  ‘The thing to do then,’ my young master said, ‘is to track backwards. Locate the messenger.’

  I thought back to the previous evening. Ab
out the time the messenger had been arriving, the lawyer Urquhart had been taking his leave of the Monthly Club.

  ‘We’ll talk to Urquhart,’ I said. ‘At this hour he’ll be in his chambers. Follow me.’

  Gisborne followed me out of the howff and across the street directly into another. There, in a booth, papers before him and a bottle of wine beside them, sat Urquhart.

  ‘I’m pleased to see you,’ the lawyer announced. His eyes were bloodshot, his nose like a stoned cherry. His breath I avoided altogether. Aged somewhere in his thirties, Urquhart was a seasoned dissolute. He would have us take a bumper with him.

  ‘Sir,’ I began, ‘do you recall leaving the company last night?’

  ‘Of course. I’m only sorry I’d to leave so early. An assignation, you understand.’ We shared a smile at this. ‘Tell me, Gisborne, to which house of ill fame did the gang repair?’

  ‘I don’t recollect,’ Gisborne admitted.

  Urquhart enjoyed this. ‘Then tell me, did you awake in a bed or the gutter?’

  ‘In neither, Mr Urquhart. I awoke on the kitchen floor of a house I did not know.’

  While Urquhart relished this, I asked if he’d taken a chair from the tavern last night.

  ‘Of course. A friend of yours was front-runner.’

  ‘Mr Mack?’ Urquhart nodded. ‘You didn’t happen to see a grotesque, sir?’ I described the messenger to him. Urquhart shook his head.

  ‘I heard a caddie was murdered last night,’ Urquhart said. ‘We all know the Town Rats can’t be expected to bring anyone to justice.’ He leaned towards me confidentially. ‘Are you looking for justice, Cully?’

  ‘I don’t know what I’m looking for, sir.’

  Which was a lie. For now, I was looking for Mr Mack.

  I left Gisborne with Urquhart, and found Mack at The Cross.‘Yes,’ he said, ‘I saw that fellow going in. A big fat-lipped sort with eyebrows that met in the middle.’

  ‘Had you seen him before?’