Mortal Causes

  ‘Afternoon,’ Ormiston said. ‘You’re right to stand up, by the way. Sitting on concrete gives you piles.’

  In the hall, Jim Hay and his theatre group were sitting on the stage. Hay too recognised Rebus.

  ‘Guess what?’ he said. ‘We have to mount a guard, otherwise they rip the stuff off.’

  Rebus didn’t know whether to believe him or not. He was more interested in the youth sitting next to Hay.

  ‘Remember me, Malky?’

  Malky Haston shook his head.

  ‘I’ve got a few questions for you, Malky. Want to do it here or down the station?’

  Haston laughed. ‘You couldn’t take me out of here, not if I didn’t want to go.’

  He had a point. ‘We’ll do it here then,’ said Rebus. He turned to Hay, who raised his hands.

  ‘I know, you want us to take a fag break.’ He got up and led his troupe away. Ormiston went to the door to stop anyone else coming in.

  Rebus sat on the stage next to Haston, getting close, making the teenager uncomfortable.

  ‘I’ve done nothing, and I’m saying nothing.’

  ‘Have you known Davey a while?’

  Haston said nothing.

  ‘I’d imagine since you were kids,’ Rebus answered. ‘Remember the first time we met? You had bits in your hair. I thought it was dandruff, but it was plaster. I spoke to ScotScaf. They hire out scaffolding to building contractors, and when it comes back it’s your job to clean it. Isn’t that right?’

  Haston just looked at him.

  ‘You’re under orders not to talk, eh? Well, I don’t mind.’ Rebus stood up, facing Haston. ‘There was ScotScaf scaffolding at the two murder sites, Billy’s and Calumn Smylie’s. You told Davey, didn’t you? You knew where building work was going on, empty sites, all that.’ He leaned close to Haston’s face. ‘You knew. That makes you an accessory at the very least. And that means we’re going to throw you in jail. We’ll pick out a nice Catholic wing for you, Malky, don’t worry. Plenty of the green and white.’

  Rebus turned his back and lit a cigarette. When he turned back to Haston, he offered him one. Ormiston was having a bit of bother at the door. The gang wanted in. Haston took a cigarette. Rebus lit it for him.

  ‘Doesn’t matter what you do, Malky. You can run, you can lie, you can say nothing at all. You’re going away, and we’re the only friends you’ll ever have.’

  He turned away and walked towards Ormiston. ‘Let them in,’ he ordered. The gang came crashing through the doors, fanning out across the hall. They could see Malky Haston was all right, though he was sitting very still on the edge of the stage. Rebus called to him.

  ‘Thanks for the chat, Malky. We’ll talk again, any time you want.’ Then he turned to the gang. ‘Malky’s got his head screwed on,’ he told them. ‘He knows when to talk.’

  ‘Lying bastard!’ Haston roared, as Rebus and Ormiston walked into the daylight.

  Rebus met Lachlan Murdock at the Crazy Hose, despite Bothwell’s protests.

  Murdock’s uncombed hair was wilder than ever, his clothes sloppy. He was waiting in the foyer when Rebus arrived.

  ‘They all think I had something to do with it,’ Murdock protested as Rebus led him into the dancehall.

  ‘Well, you did, in a way,’ Rebus said.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Come on, I want to show you something.’

  He led Murdock up to the attic. In the daytime, the attic was a lot lighter. Even so, Rebus had brought a torch. He didn’t want Murdock to miss anything.

  ‘This,’ he said, ‘is where I found her. She’d suffered, believe me.’ Already, Murdock was close to fresh tears, but sympathy could wait, the truth couldn’t. ‘I found this on the floor.’ He handed over the disk cover. ‘This is what they killed her for. A computer disk, same size as would fit your machine at home.’ He walked up close to Murdock’s slouched figure. ‘They killed her for this!’ he hissed. He waited a moment, then moved away towards the windows.

  ‘I thought maybe she’d have made a copy. She wasn’t daft, was she? But I went to the shop, and there’s nothing there. Maybe in your flat?’ Murdock just sniffed. ‘I can’t believe she –’

  ‘There was a copy,’ Murdock groaned. ‘I wiped it.’

  Rebus walked back towards him. ‘Why?’

  Murdock shook his head. ‘I didn’t think it …’ He took a deep breath. ‘It reminded me …’

  Rebus nodded. ‘Ah yes, Billy Cunningham. It reminded you of the pair of them. When did you begin to suspect?’

  Murdock shook his head again.

  ‘See,’ said Rebus, ‘I know most of it. I know enough. But I don’t know it all. Did you look at the files on the disk?’

  ‘I looked.’ He wiped his red-rimmed eyes. ‘It was Billy’s disk, not hers. But a lot of the stuff on it was hers.’

  ‘I don’t understand.’

  Murdock managed a weak smile. ‘You’re right, I did know about the two of them. I didn’t want to know, but I knew all the same. When I wiped the disk, I was angry, I was so angry.’ He turned to look at Rebus. ‘I don’t think he could have done it without Millie. You need quite a setup to hack into the kinds of systems they were dealing with.’

  ‘Hacking?’

  ‘They probably used the stuff in her shop. They hacked into Army and police computers, bypassed security, invaded datafiles, then marched out again without leaving any trace.’

  ‘So what did they do?’

  Murdock was talking now, enjoying the release. He wiped tears from below his glasses. ‘They monitored a couple of police investigations and altered a few inventories. Believe me, once they were in, they could have done a lot more.’

  The way Murdock went on to explain it, it was almost ludicrously simple. You could steal from the Army (with inside assistance, there had to be inside assistance), and then erase the theft by altering the computer records to show stocks as they stood, not as they had been. Then, if SCS or Scotland Yard or anyone else took an interest, you could monitor their progress or lack of it. Millie: Millie had been the key throughout. Whether or not she knew what she was doing, she got Billy Cunningham in. He placed her in the lock and turned. The disk had contained instructions on their hacking procedures, tips for bypassing security checks, the works.

  Rebus didn’t doubt that the further Billy Cunningham got in, the more he wanted out. He’d been killed because he wanted out. He’d probably mentioned his little insurance policy in the hope they would let him leave quietly. Instead, they’d tried to torture its whereabouts out of him, before delivering the final silencing bullet. Of course, The Shield knew Billy wasn’t hacking alone. It wouldn’t have taken them long to get to Millie Docherty. Billy had stayed silent to protect her. She must have known. That’s why she’d run.

  ‘There was stuff about this group, too, The Shield,’ Murdock was saying. ‘I thought they were just a bunch of hackers.’

  Rebus tried him with a few names. Davey Soutar and Jamesie MacMurray hit home. Rebus reckoned that in an interview room he could crack Jamesie like a walnut under a hammer. But Davey Soutar … well, he might need a real hammer for that. The final file on the computer was all about Davey Soutar and the Gar-B.

  ‘This Soutar,’ Murdock said, ‘Billy seemed to think he’d been skimming. That was the word he used. There’s some stuff stashed in a lock-up out at Currie.’

  Currie: the lock-up would belong to the MacMurrays.

  Murdock looked at Rebus. ‘He didn’t say what was being skimmed. Is it money?’

  ‘I underestimated you, Davey,’ Rebus said aloud. ‘All down the line. It might be too late now, but I swear I won’t underestimate you again.’ He thought of how Davey and his kind hated the Festival. Hated it with a vengeance. He thought of the anonymous threats.

  ‘Not money, Mr Murdock. Weapons and explosives. Come on, let’s get out of here.’

  Jamesie talked like a man coming out of silent retreat, especially when his father, hearing the story from Rebus,
ordered him to. Gavin MacMurray was incensed, not that his son should be in trouble, but that the Orange Loyal Brigade hadn’t been enough for him. It was a betrayal.

  Jamesie led Rebus and the other officers to a row of wooden garages on a piece of land behind MacMurray’s Garage. Two Army men were on hand. They checked for booby traps and trip wires and it took them nearly half an hour to get round to going in. Even then, they did not enter by the door. Instead, they climbed a ladder to the roof and cut through the asphalt covering, then dropped through and into the lock-up. A minute later, they gave the all clear, and a police constable broke open the door with a crowbar. Gavin MacMurray was with them.

  ‘I haven’t been in here for years,’ he said. He’d said it before, as if they didn’t believe him. ‘I never use these garages.’

  They had a good look round. Jamesie didn’t know the precise location of the cache, only that Davey had said he needed a place to keep it. The garage had operated as a motorcycle workshop – that was how Billy Cunningham had got to know Jamesie, and through him Davey Soutar, in the first place. There were long rickety wooden shelves groaning with obscure metal parts, a lot of them rusted brown with age, tools covered with dust and cobwebs, and tins of paint and solvent. Each tin had to be opened, each tool examined. If you could hide Semtex in a transistor radio, you could certainly hide it in a tool shed. The Army had offered a specialised sniffer dog, but it would have to come from Aldershot. So instead they used their own eyes and noses and instinct.

  Hanging from nails on the walls were old tyres and wheels and chains. Forks and handlebars lay on the floor along with engine parts and mouldy boxes of nuts, bolts and screws. They scraped at the floor, but found no buried boxes. There was a lot of oil on the ground.

  ‘This place is clean,’ said a smudged Army man. Rebus nodded agreement.

  ‘He’s been and cleared the place out. How much was there, Jamesie?’

  But Jamesie MacMurray had been asked this before, and he didn’t know. ‘I swear I don’t. I just said he could use the space. He got his own padlock fitted and everything.’

  Rebus stared at him. These young hard men, Rebus had been dealing with them all his life and they were pathetic, like husks in suits of armour. Jamesie was about as hard as the Sun crossword. ‘And he never showed you?’

  Jamesie shook his head. ‘Never.’

  His father was staring at him furiously. ‘You stupid wee bastard,’ Gavin MacMurray said. ‘You stupid, stupid wee fool.’

  ‘We’ll have to take Jamesie down the station, Mr Mac-Murray.’

  ‘I know that.’ Then Gavin MacMurray slapped his son’s face. With a hand callused by years of mechanical work, he loosened teeth and sent blood curdling from Jamesie’s mouth. Jamesie spat on the dirt floor but said nothing. Rebus knew Jamesie was going to tell them everything he knew.

  Outside, one of the Army men smiled in relief. ‘I’m glad we didn’t find anything.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Keeping the stuff in an environment like that, it’s bound to be unstable.’

  ‘Just like the guy who’s got it.’ Unstable … Rebus thought of Unstable from Dunstable, confessing to the St Stephen Street killing, raving to DI Flower about curry and cars … He walked back into the garage and pointed to the stain on the floor.

  ‘That’s not oil,’ he said, ‘not all of it.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Everybody out, I want this place secured.’

  They all got out. Flower should have listened to Unstable from Dunstable. The tramp had been talking about Currie, not curry. And he’d said cars because of the garages. He must have been sleeping rough nearby and seen or heard something that night.

  ‘What is it, sir?’ one of the officers asked Rebus.

  ‘If I’m right, this is where they killed Calumn Smylie.’

  That evening, Rebus moved out of the hotel and back into Patience’s flat. He felt exhausted, like a tool that had lost its edge. The stain on the garage floor had been a mixture of oil and blood. They were trying to separate the two so they could DNA-test the blood against Calumn Smylie’s. Rebus knew already what they’d find. It all made sense when you thought about it.

  He poured a drink, then thought better of it. Instead he phoned Patience and told her she could come home in the next day or two. But she was determined to return in the morning, so he told her why she shouldn’t. She was very quiet for a moment.

  ‘Be careful, John.’

  ‘I’m still here, aren’t I?’

  ‘Let’s keep it that way.’

  He rang off when he heard the doorbell. The manhunt for Davey Soutar was in full swing, under the control of CI Lauderdale at St Leonard’s. Arms would be issued as and when necessary. Though they didn’t know the extent of Soutar’s cache, no chances would be taken. Rebus had been asked if he’d like a bodyguard.

  ‘I’ll trust to my guardian angel,’ he’d said.

  The doorbell rang again. He felt naked as he walked down the long straight hall towards the door. The door itself was inch-and-a-half thick wood, but most guns could cope with that and still leave enough velocity in the bullet to puncture human flesh. He listened for a second, then put his eye to the spy-hole. He let his breath out and unlocked the door.

  ‘You’ve got things to tell me,’ he said, opening the door wide.

  Abernethy produced a bottle of whisky from behind his back. ‘And I’ve brought some antiseptic for those cuts.’

  ‘Internal use only,’ Rebus suggested.

  ‘The money it cost me, you better believe it. Still, a nice drop of Scotch is worth all the tea in China.’

  ‘We call it whisky up here.’ Rebus closed the door and led Abernethy back down the hall into the living room. Abernethy was impressed.

  ‘Been taking a few back-handers?’

  ‘I live with a doctor. It’s her flat.’

  ‘My mum always wanted me to be a doctor. A respectable job, she called it. Got some glasses?’

  Rebus fetched two large glasses from the kitchen.

  27

  Frankie Bothwell couldn’t afford to close the Crazy Hose.

  The Festival and Fringe had only a couple more days to go. All too soon the tourists would be leaving. But over the past fortnight he’d really been packing them in. Advertising and word of mouth helped, as had a three-night residency by an American country singer. The club was making more money than ever before, but it wouldn’t last. The Crazy Hose was unique, every bit as unique as Frankie himself. It deserved to do well. It had to do well. Frankie Bothwell had commitments, financial commitments. They couldn’t be broken or excused because of low takings. Every week needed to be a good week.

  So he was not best pleased to see Rebus and another cop walk into the bar. You could see it in his eyes and the smile as frozen as a Crazy Hose daiquiri.

  ‘Inspector, how can I help you?’

  ‘Mr Bothwell, this is DI Abernethy. We’d like a word.’

  ‘It’s a bit hectic just now. I haven’t had a chance to replace Kevin Strang.’

  ‘We insist,’ said Abernethy.

  With two conspicuous police officers on the premises, trade at the bars wasn’t exactly brisk, and nobody was dancing. They were all waiting for something to happen. Bothwell took this in.

  ‘Let’s go to my office.’

  Abernethy waved bye-bye to the crowd as he followed Rebus and Bothwell into the foyer. They went behind the admission desk and Bothwell unlocked a door. He sat behind his desk and watched them squeeze their way into the space that was left.

  ‘A big office is a waste of space,’ he said by way of apology. The place was like a cleaning cupboard. There were spare till rolls and boxes of glasses on a shelf above Bothwell’s head, framed cowboy posters stacked against a wall, bric-a-brac and debris like everything had just spilled out of a collision at a car boot sale.

  ‘We might be more comfortable talking in the toilets,’ Rebus said.

  ‘Or down the station,’ offered Ab
ernethy.

  ‘I don’t think we’ve met,’ Bothwell said to him, affably enough.

  ‘I usually only meet shit when I wipe my arse.’

  That took the smile off Bothwell’s face.

  ‘Inspector Abernethy,’ Rebus said, ‘is Special Branch. He’s here investigating The Shield.’

  ‘The Shield?’

  ‘No need to be coy, Mr Bothwell. You’re not being charged, not yet. We just want you to know we’re on to you in a big way.’

  ‘And we’re not about to let go,’ Abernethy said on cue.

  ‘Though it might help your case if you told us about Davey Soutar.’ Rebus placed his hands in his lap and waited. Abernethy lit a cigarette and blew the smoke across the strewn desk. Frankie Bothwell looked from one man to the other and back again.

  ‘Is this a joke? I mean, it’s a bit early for Halloween, that’s when you’re supposed to scare people without any reason.’

  Rebus shook his head. ‘Wrong answer. What you should have said was, “Who’s Davey Soutar?”’

  Bothwell sat back in his chair. ‘All right then, who’s Davey Soutar?’

  ‘I’m glad you asked me that,’ said Rebus. ‘He’s your lieutenant. Maybe he’s also your recruiting officer. And now he’s on the run. Did you know he’s been keeping back some of the explosives and guns for himself? We’ve got a confession.’ It was a blatant lie, and caused Bothwell to smile. That smile sealed Bothwell’s guilt in Rebus’s mind.

  ‘Why have you been funding the Gar-B youth centre?’ he asked. ‘Is it a useful recruiting station? You took the name Cuchullain when you were an anarchist. He’s the great Ulster hero, the original Red Hand. That was no accident. You were dismissed from the Orange Lodge for being a bit over-zealous. In the early ’70s your name was linked to the Tartan Army. They used to break into Army bases and steal weapons. Maybe that’s what gave you the idea.’

  Bothwell was still smiling as he asked, ‘What idea?’

  ‘You know.’

  ‘Inspector, I haven’t understood a word you’ve said.’