Beggars Banquet

  ‘Sure about that?’ Santa’s eyes narrowed.

  ‘I wouldn’t lie to Father Christmas.’

  ‘What about this plan of yours, the offender register?’

  Aitchison blinked a couple of times. ‘What about it?’

  Santa held a piece of paper aloft, his voice rising. ‘Your own nephew’s serving time for fraud. Managed to keep that quiet, haven’t you?’

  Aitchison stared at the letter. ‘Where in hell . . . ? How . . . ?’

  The journalist stepped forward. ‘Mind if I take a look?’

  Santa handed over the letter, then pulled off his hat and beard. Started heading for the stairs down. Rebus blocked his way.

  ‘Time to hand out the presents,’ he said quietly. Joey looked at him and understood immediately, slid the sack from his shoulder. Rebus took it. ‘Now on you go.’

  ‘You’re not arresting me?’

  ‘Who’d feed Dancer and Prancer?’ Rebus asked.

  His stomach full of steak and wine, a bottle of malt in the capacious pocket of his costume, Joey smiled his way back towards the outside world.

  Death Is Not The End

  AN INSPECTOR REBUS STORY

  One

  Is loss redeemed by memory? Or does memory merely swell the sense of loss, becoming the enemy? The language of loss is the language of memory: remembrance, memorial, memento. People leave our lives all the time: some we met only briefly, others we’d known since birth. They leave us memories - which become skewed through time - and little more.

  The silent dance continued. Couples writhed and shuffled, threw back their heads or ran hands through their hair, eyes darting around the dance floor, seeking out future partners maybe, or past loves to make jealous. The TV monitor gave a greasy look to everything.

  No sound, just pictures, the tape cutting from dance floor to main bar to second bar to toilet hallway, then entrance foyer, exterior front and exterior back. Exterior back was a puddled alley, full of rubbish bins and a Merc belonging to the club’s owner. Rebus had heard about the alley: a punter had been knifed there the previous summer. Mr Merc had complained about the bloody smear on his passenger-side window. The victim had lived.The club was called Gaitanos, nobody knew why. The owner just said it sounded American and a bit jazzy. The larger part of the clientele had decided on the nickname ‘Guisers’, and that was what you heard in the pubs on a Friday and Saturday night - ‘Going down Guisers later?’ The young men would be dressed smart-casual, the women scented from heaven and all stations south. They left the pubs around ten or half past - that’s when it would be starting to get lively at Guisers.

  Rebus was seated in a small uncomfortable chair which itself sat in a stuffy dimly lit room. The other chair was filled by an audio-visual technician, armed with two remotes. His occasional belches - of which he seemed blissfully ignorant - bespoke a recent snack of spring onion crisps and Irn-Bru.

  ‘I’m really only interested in the main bar, foyer and out front,’ Rebus said.

  ‘I could edit them down to another tape, but we’d lose definition. The recording’s duff enough as it is.’ The technician scratched inside the sagging armpit of his black T-shirt.

  Rebus leaned forward a little, pointing at the screen. ‘Coming up now.’ They waited. The view jumped from back alley to dance floor. ‘Any second.’ Another cut: main bar, punters queuing three deep. The technician didn’t need to be told, and froze the picture. It wasn’t so much black and white as sepia, the colour of dead photographs. Interior light, the audio-visual wizard had explained. He was adjusting the tracking now, and moving the action along one frame at a time. Rebus moved in on the screen, bending so one knee rested on the floor. His finger was touching a face. He took out the assortment of photos from his pocket and held them against the screen.

  ‘It’s him,’ he said. ‘I was pretty sure before. You can’t go in a bit closer?’

  ‘For now, this is as good as it gets. I can work on it later, stick it on the computer. The problem is the source material, to wit: one shitty security video.’

  Rebus sat back on his chair. ‘All right,’ he said. ‘Let’s run forward at half-speed.’

  The camera stayed with the main bar for another fifteen seconds, then switched to the second bar and all points on the compass. When it returned to the main bar, the crush of drinkers seemed not to have moved. Unbidden, the technician froze the tape again.

  ‘He’s not there,’ Rebus said. Again he approached the screen, touched it with his finger. ‘He should be there.’

  ‘Next to the sex goddess.’ The technician belched again.

  Yes. Spun silver hair, almost like a cloud of candy-floss, dark eyes and lips. While those around her were either intent on catching the eyes of the bar staff or on the dance floor, she was looking off to one side. There were no shoulders to her dress.

  ‘Let’s check the foyer,’ Rebus said.

  Twenty seconds there showed a steady stream entering the club, but no one leaving. Exterior front showed a queue awaiting admittance by the brace of bouncers, and a few passers-by.

  ‘In the toilet maybe,’ the technician suggested. But Rebus had studied the tape a dozen times already, and though he watched just once more he knew he wouldn’t see the young man again, not at the bar, not on the dance floor, and not back around the table where his mates were waiting - with increasing disbelief and impatience - for him to get his round in.

  The young man’s name was Damon Mee and, according to the timer running at the bottom right-hand corner of the screen, he had vanished from the world sometime between 11.44 and 11.45 p.m. on Friday 22 April.

  ‘Where is this place anyway? I don’t recognise it.’

  ‘Kirkcaldy,’ Rebus said.

  The technician looked at him. ‘How come it ended up here?’

  Good question, Rebus thought, but not one he was about to answer. ‘Go back to that bar shot,’ he said. ‘Take it nice and slow again.’

  The technician aimed his right-hand remote. ‘Yes, sir, Mr DeMille,’ he said.

  April meant still not quite spring in Edinburgh. A few sunny days to be sure, buds getting twitchy, wondering if winter had been paid the ransom. But there was snow still hanging in a sky the colour of chicken bones. Office talk: how Rangers were going to retain the championship; why Hearts and Hibs would never win it - was it finally time for the two local sides to become friends, form one team which might - might - stand half a chance? As someone said, their rivalry was part and parcel of the city’s make-up. Hard to imagine Rangers and Celtic thinking of marriage in the same way, or even of a quick poke on the back stairs.

  After years of following football only on pub televisions and in the back of the daily tabloid, Rebus was starting to go to matches again. DC Siobhan Clarke was to blame, coaxing him to a Hibs game one dreary afternoon. The men on the green sward weren’t half as interesting as the spectators, who proved by turns sharp-witted, vulgar, perceptive and incorrigible. Siobhan had taken him to her usual spot. Those in the vicinity seemed to know her pretty well. It was a good-humoured afternoon, even if Rebus couldn’t have said who scored the eventual three goals. But Hibs had won: the final-whistle hug from Siobhan was proof of that.It was interesting to Rebus that, for all the barriers around the ground, this was a place where shields were dropped. After a while, it felt like one of the safest places he’d ever been. He recalled fixtures his father had taken him to in the fifties and early sixties - Cowdenbeath home games, and a crowd numbered in the hundreds; getting there necessitated a change of buses, Rebus and his younger brother fighting over who could hold the roll of tickets. Their mother was dead by then and their father was trying to carry on much as before, like they might not notice she was missing. Those Saturday trips to the football were supposed to fill a gap. You saw a lot of fathers and sons on the terraces but not many mothers, and that in itself was reminder enough. There was a boy of Rebus’s age who stood near them. Rebus had walked over to him one day and blurted out the truth.


  ‘I don’t have a mum at home.’

  The boy had stared at him, saying nothing.

  Ever since, football had reminded him of those days and of his mother. He stood on the terraces alone these days and followed the game mostly - movements which could be graceful as ballet or as jagged as free association - but sometimes found that he’d drifted elsewhere, to a place not at all unpleasant, and all the time surrounded by a community of bodies and wills.

  ‘I’ll tell you how to beat Rangers,’ he said now, addressing the whole office.

  ‘How?’ Siobhan Clarke offered.

  ‘Clone Stevie Scoular half a dozen times.’

  There were murmurs of agreement, and then the Farmer put his head around the door.

  ‘John, my office.’

  The Farmer - Chief Superintendent Watson to his face - was pouring a mug of coffee from his machine when Rebus knocked at the open door.

  ‘Sit down, John.’ Rebus sat. The Farmer motioned with an empty mug, but he turned down the offer and waited for his boss to get to his chair and the point both.‘My birthday’s coming up,’ the Farmer said. This was a new one on Rebus, who kept quiet. ‘I’d like a present.’

  ‘Not just a card this year then?’

  ‘What I want, John, is Topper Hamilton.’

  Rebus let that sink in. ‘I thought Topper was Mr Clean these days?’

  ‘Not in my books.’ The Farmer cupped his hands around his coffee mug. ‘He got a fright last time and, granted, he’s been keeping a low profile, but we both know the best villains have got little or no profile at all.’

  ‘So what’s he been up to?’

  ‘I heard a story he’s the sleeping partner in a couple of clubs and casinos. I also hear he bought a taxi firm from Big Ger Cafferty when Big Ger went into Barlinnie.’

  Rebus was thinking back three years to their big push against Topper Hamilton: they’d set up surveillance, used a bit of pressure here and there, got a few people to talk. In the end, it hadn’t so much amounted to a hill of beans as to a fart in an empty can. The procurator fiscal had decided not to proceed to trial. But then God or Fate, call it what you like, had provided a spin to the story. Not a plague of boils or anything for Topper Hamilton, but a nasty little cancer which had given him more grief than the whole of the Lothian and Borders Police. He’d been in and out of hospital, endured chemo and the whole works, and had emerged a more slender figure in every sense.

  The Farmer - who’d once settled an office argument by reeling off the books in both Old and New Testaments - wasn’t yet content that God and life had done their worst to Topper, or that retribution had been meted out in some mysterious divine way. He wanted Topper in court, even if they had to wheel him there on a trolley.

  It was a personal thing.

  ‘Last time I looked,’ Rebus said now, ‘it wasn’t illegal to invest in a casino.’

  ‘It is if your name hasn’t come up during the vetting procedure. Think Topper could get a gaming licence?’

  ‘Fair point. But I still don’t see—’

  ‘Something else I heard. You’ve got a snitch works as a croupier.’

  ‘So?’

  ‘Same casino Topper has a finger in.’

  Rebus saw it all and started shaking his head. ‘I made him a promise. He’ll tell me about punters, but nothing on the management.’

  ‘And you’d rather keep that promise than give me a birthday present?’

  ‘A relationship like that . . . it’s eggshells.’

  The Farmer’s eyes narrowed. ‘You think ours isn’t? Talk to him, John. Get him to do some ferreting.’

  ‘I could lose a good snitch.’

  ‘Plenty more bigmouths out there.’ The Farmer watched Rebus get to his feet. ‘I was looking for you earlier. You were in the video room.’

  ‘A missing person.’

  ‘Suspicious?’

  Rebus shrugged. ‘Could be. He went up to the bar for a round of drinks, never came back.’

  ‘We’ve all done that in our time.’

  ‘His parents are worried.’

  ‘How old is he?’

  ‘Twenty-three.’

  The Farmer thought about it. ‘Then what’s the problem?’

  Two

  The problem was the past. A week before, he’d received a phone call from a ghost.

  ‘Inspector John Rebus, please.’‘Speaking.’

  ‘Oh, hello there. You probably won’t remember me.’ A short laugh. ‘That used to be a bit of a joke at school.’

  Rebus, immune to every kind of phone call, had this pegged a crank. ‘Why’s that?’ he asked, wondering which punchline he was walking into.

  ‘Because it’s my name: Mee.’ The caller spelt it for him. ‘Brian Mee.’

  Inside Rebus’s head, a fuzzy photograph took sudden shape - a mouth full of prominent teeth, freckled nose and cheeks, a kitchen-stool haircut. ‘Barney Mee?’ he said.

  More laughter on the line. ‘Aye, they used to call me Barney. I’m not sure I ever knew why.’

  Rebus could have told him: after Barney Rubble in The Flintstones. He could have added, because you were a dense wee bastard. But instead he asked how this ghost from his past was doing.

  ‘No’ bad, no’ bad.’ The laugh again; Rebus recognised it now as a sign of nerves.

  ‘So what can I do for you, Brian?’

  ‘Well, me and Janis, we thought . . . Well, it was my mum’s idea actually. She knew your dad. Both my mum and dad knew him, only my dad passed away, like. They all used to drink at the Goth.’

  ‘Are you still in Bowhill?’

  ‘Never quite escaped. Ach, it’s all right really. I work in Glenrothes though. Lucky to have a job these days, eh? Mind, you’ve done well for yourself, Johnny. Do you still get called that?’

  ‘I prefer John.’

  ‘I remember you hated it when anyone called you Jock.’ Another wheezing laugh. The photo was even sharper now, bordered with a white edge the way photos always were in the past. A decent footballer, a bit of a terrier, the hair reddish-brown. Dragging his satchel along the ground until the stitching rubbed away. Always with some huge hard sweet in his mouth, crunching down on it, his nose running. And one incident: he’d lifted some nude mags from under his dad’s side of the bed and brought them to the toilets next to the Miners’ Institute, there to be pored over like textbooks. Afterwards, half a dozen twelve-year-old boys had looked at each other, minds fizzing with questions.

  ‘So what can I do for you, Brian?’

  ‘Like I say, it was my mum’s idea. Only, she remembered you were in the police in Edinburgh - saw your name in the paper a while back - and she thought you could maybe help.’

  ‘With what?’

  ‘Our son. I mean, mine and Janis’s. He’s called Damon.’

  ‘What’s he done?’ Rebus thought: something minor, and way outside his territory anyway.

  ‘He’s vanished.’

  ‘Run away?’

  ‘More like in a puff of smoke. He was in this club with his pals, see, and he went—’

  ‘Have you tried calling the police?’ Rebus caught himself. ‘I mean Fife Constabulary.’

  ‘Oh aye.’ Mee sounded dismissive. ‘They asked a few questions, like, sniffed around a bit, then said there was nothing they could do. Damon’s twenty-three. They say he’s got a right to bugger off if he wants.’

  ‘They’ve got a point. People run away all the time, Brian. Girl trouble maybe.’

  ‘He was engaged.’

  ‘Maybe he got scared?’

  ‘Helen’s a lovely girl. Never a raised voice between them.’

  ‘Did he leave a note?’

  ‘Nothing. I went through this with the police. He didn’t take any clothes or anything. He didn’t have any reason to go.’

  ‘So you think something’s happened to him?’

  ‘I know what those buggers are thinking. They say we should give him another week or so to come back, or at least get in to
uch, but I know they’ll only start doing something about it when the body turns up.’

  Again, Rebus could have confirmed that this was only sensible. Again, he knew Mee wouldn’t want to hear it.

  ‘The thing is, Brian,’ he said, ‘I work in Edinburgh. Fife’s not my patch. I mean, I can make a couple of phone calls, but it’s hard to know what else to do.’

  The voice was close to despair. ‘Well, if you could just do something. Like, anything. We’d be very grateful. It would put our minds at rest.’ A pause. ‘My mum always speaks well of your dad. He’s remembered in this town.’

  And buried there, too, Rebus thought. He picked up a pen. ‘Give me your phone number, Brian.’ And, almost an afterthought, ‘Better give me the address, too.’

  That evening, he drove north out of Edinburgh, paid his toll at the Forth Bridge, and crossed into Fife. It wasn’t as if he never went there - he had a brother in Kirkcaldy. But though they spoke on the phone every month or so, there were seldom visits. He couldn’t think of any other family he still had in Fife. The place liked to call itself ‘the Kingdom’ and there were those who would agree that it was another country, a place with its own linguistic and cultural currency. For such a small place it seemed almost endlessly complex - had seemed that way to Rebus even when he was growing up. To outsiders the place meant coastal scenery and St Andrew’s, or a stretch of motorway between Edinburgh and Dundee, but the west-central Fife of Rebus’s childhood had been very different, ruled by coal mines and linoleum, dockyards and chemical plants, an industrial landscape shaped by basic needs, and producing people who were wary and inward-looking with the blackest humour you’d ever find.

  They’d built new roads since Rebus’s last visit, and knocked down a few more landmarks, but the place didn’t feel so very different from thirty-odd years before. It wasn’t such a great span of time after all, except in human terms; maybe not even then. Entering Cardenden - Bowhill had disappeared from road signs in the 1960s, even if locals still knew it as a village distinct from its neighbour - Rebus slowed to see if the memories would turn out sweet or sour. Then he caught sight of a Chinese takeaway and thought: both, of course.Brian and Janis Mee’s house was easy enough to find: they were standing by the gate waiting for him. Rebus had been born in a prefab but brought up in a house just like the one he now parked in front of. Brian Mee practically opened the car door for him, and was trying to shake his hand while Rebus was still emerging from his seat.