A Good Hanging - Rankin: Short 01

  ‘As a rule. Maybe this will be the exception.’ The detective smiled, seemingly used to such disappointments in his life. Rebus had noticed earlier that the young man possessed badly chewed fingernails and even the skin around the nails was torn and raw-looking. A stressed young man. In a few years he would be overweight and then would become heart attack material. Rebus knew that he himself was heart attack material: h.a.m., they called it back at the station. You were lean (meaning fit) or you were ham. Rebus was decidedly the latter.

  ‘So anyway, where were you?’

  ‘I bumped into an old friend. Well, to be precise an old adversary. Jackie Crawford.’

  ‘Jackie Crawford? You mean Trigger Crawford?’ The young detective was rifling through his memory files. ‘Oh yes, I heard he was out.’

  ‘Did you? Nobody bothered to tell me.’

  ‘Yes, something about his son dying. Drug overdose. All the fire went out of Crawford after that. Turned into a Bible basher.’

  They were walking back towards the crowd. Back towards where Alan Lyons waited for a suitcase full of heroin. Rebus stopped dead in his tracks.

  ‘Drugs? Did you say his son died from drugs?’

  The detective nodded. ‘The big H. It wasn’t too far from my patch. Somewhere in Partick.’

  ‘Did Crawford’s son live in Glasgow then?’

  ‘No, he was just visiting. He stayed here in Edinburgh.’ The detective was not as slow as some. He knew what Rebus was thinking. ‘Christ, you don’t mean ...?’

  And then they were both running, pushing their way through the crowd, and the detective from Glasgow was shouting into his radio, but there was noise all around him, yelling and cheering and singing, smothering his words. Their progress was becoming slower. It was like moving through water chest-high. Rebus’s legs felt useless and sore and there was a line of sweat trickling down his spine. Crawford’s son had died from heroin, heroin purchased most probably in Edinburgh, and the man behind most of the heroin deals in Edinburgh was waiting somewhere up ahead. Coincidence? He had never really believed in coincidences, not really. They were convenient excuses for shrugging off the unthinkable.

  What had Crawford said? Something about coming here tonight to make peace. Well, there were ways and ways of making peace, weren’t there? ‘If any mischief should follow, then thou shalt give life for life.’ That was from Exodus. A dangerous book, the Bible. It could be made to say anything, its meaning in the mind of the beholder.

  What was going through Jackie Crawford’s mind? Rebus dreaded to think. There was a commotion up ahead, the crowd forming itself into a tight semi-circle around a shop-front. Rebus squeezed his way to the front.

  ‘Police,’ he shouted. ‘Let me through, please.’

  Grudgingly, the mass of bodies parted just enough for him to make progress. Finally he found himself at the front, staring at the slumped body of Alan Lyons. A long smear ran down the shop window to where he lay and his chest was stained dark red. One of the Glasgow officers was trying unsuccessfully to stem the flow of blood, using his own rolled-up coat, now sopping wet. Other officers were keeping back the crowd. Rebus caught snatches of what they were saying.

  ‘Looked like he was going to shake hands.’

  ‘Looked like he was hugging him.’

  ‘Then the knife ...’

  ‘Pulled out a knife.’

  ‘Stabbed him twice before we could do anything.’

  ‘Couldn’t do anything.’

  A siren had started nearby, inching closer. There were always ambulances on standby near the Tron on Hogmanay. Beside Lyons, still gripped in his left hand, was the bag containing the money for the deal.

  ‘Will he be all right?’ Rebus said to nobody in particular, which was just as well since nobody answered. He was remembering back a month to another dealer, another knife ... Then he saw Crawford. He was being restrained on the edge of the crowd by two more plainclothes men. One held his arms behind him while the other frisked him for weapons. On the pavement between where Crawford stood and Alan Lyons lay dying or dead there was a fairly ordinary looking knife, small enough to conceal in a sock or a waistband, but enough for the job required. More than an inch of blade was excess. The other detective was beside Rebus.

  ‘Aw, Christ,’ he said. But Rebus was staring at Crawford and Crawford was staring back, and in that moment they understood one another well enough. ‘I don’t suppose,’ the detective was saying, ‘we’ll be seeing the party with the merchandise. Always supposing he was going to turn up in any event.’

  ‘I’m not so sure about that,’ answered Rebus, turning his gaze from Crawford. ‘Ask yourself this: how did Crawford know Lyons would be in the High Street tonight?’ The detective did not answer. Behind them, the crowd was pressing closer for a look at the body and then making noises of revulsion before opening another can of lager or half-bottle of vodka. The ambulance was still a good fifty yards away. Rebus nodded towards Crawford.

  ‘He knows where the stuff is, but he’s probably dumped it somewhere. Somewhere nobody can ever touch it. It was just bait, that’s all. Just bait.’

  And as bait it had worked. Hook, line and bloody sinker. Lyons had swallowed it, while Rebus, equally fooled, had swallowed something else. He felt it sticking in his throat like something cancerous, something no amount of coughing would dislodge. He glanced towards the prone body again and smiled involuntarily. A headline had come to mind, one that would never be used.

  LYONS FED TO THE CHRISTIAN.

  Someone was being noisily sick somewhere behind him. A bottle shattered against a wall. The loudest voices in the crowd were growing irritable and hard-edged. In fifteen minutes or so, they would cease to be revellers and would be transformed into trouble-makers. A woman shrieked from one of the many darkened closes. The look on Jackie Crawford’s face was one of calm and righteous triumph. He offered no resistance to the officers. He had known they were watching Lyons, had known he might kill Lyons but he would never get away. And still he had driven home the knife. What else was he to do with his freedom?’

  The night was young and so was the year. Rebus held out his hand towards the detective.

  ‘Happy New Year,’ he said. ‘And many more of them.’

  The young man stared at him blankly. ‘Don’t think you’re blaming us for this,’ he said. ‘This was your fault. You let Crawford go. It’s Edinburgh’s balls-up, not ours.’

  Rebus shrugged and let his arm fall to his side. Then he started to walk along the pavement, moving further and further from the scene. The ambulance moved past him. Someone slapped him on the back and offered a hand. From a distance, the young detective was watching him retreat.

  ‘Away to hell,’ said Rebus quietly, not sure for whom the message was intended.

  The Gentlemen’s Club

  It was the most elegant of all Edinburgh’s elegant Georgian circuses, a perfect circle in design and construction, the houses themselves as yet untouched by the private contractors who might one day renovate and remove, producing a dozen tiny flats from each.

  A perfect circle surrounding some private gardens, the gardens a wash of colour despite the January chill: violet, pink, red, green and orange. A tasteful display, though. No flower was allowed to be too vibrant, too bright, too inelegant.

  The gate to the gardens was locked, of course. The keyholders paid a substantial fee each year for the privilege of that lock. Everyone else could look, could peer through the railings as he was doing now, but entrance was forbidden. Well, that was Edinburgh for you, a closed circle within a closed circle.

  He stood there, enjoying the subtle smells in the air now that the flurry of snowflakes had stopped. Then he shifted his attention to the houses, huge three- and four-storey statements of the architect’s confidence. He found himself staring at one particular house, the one outside which the white police Sierra was parked. It was too ripe a day to be spoiled, but duty was duty. Taking a final deep breath, he turned from the garden railings
and walked towards number 16, with its heavy closed curtains but its front door ajar.

  Once inside, having introduced himself, John Rebus had to climb three large flights of stairs to ‘the children’s floor’, as his guide termed it. She was slender and middle-aged and dressed from head to toe in grey. The house was quiet, only one or two shafts of sunlight penetrating its gloom. The woman walked near-silently and quickly, while Rebus tugged on the bannister, breathing hard. It wasn’t that he was unfit, but somehow all the oxygen seemed to have been pumped out of the house.

  Arriving at last at the third floor, the woman passed three firmly closed doors before stopping at a fourth. This one was open, and inside Rebus could make out the gleaming tiles of a large bathroom and the shuffling, insect-like figures of Detective Constable Brian Holmes and the police pathologist, not the lugubrious Dr Curt but the one everybody called - though not to his face, never to his face - Doctor Crippen. He turned to his guide.

  ‘Thank you, Mrs McKenzie.’ But she had already averted her eyes and was making back for the safety of the stairs. She was a brave one though, to bring him all the way up here in the first place. And now there was nothing for it but to enter the room. ‘Hello, Doctor.’

  ‘Inspector Rebus, good morning. Not a pretty sight, is it?’

  Rebus forced himself to look. There was not much water in the bath, and what water there was had been dyed a rich ruby colour by the girl’s blood. She was undressed and as white as a statue. She had been very young, sixteen or seventeen, her body not yet quite fully formed. A late developer.

  Her arms lay peacefully by her sides, wrists turned upwards to reveal the clean incisions. Holmes used a pair of tweezers to hold up a single razor blade for Rebus’s inspection. Rebus winced and shook his head.

  ‘What a waste,’ he said. He had a daughter himself, not much older than this girl. His wife had taken their daughter with her when she left him. Years ago now. He’d lost touch, the way you do sometimes with family, though you keep in contact with friends.

  He was moving around the bath, committing the scene to memory. The air seemed to glow, but the glow was already fading.

  ‘Yes,’ said Holmes. ‘It’s a sin.’

  ‘Suicide, of course,’ Rebus commented after a silence. The pathologist nodded, but did not speak. They were not usually so awkward around a corpse, these three men. Each thought he had seen the worst, the most brutal, the most callous. Each had anecdotes to relate which would make strangers shudder and screw shut their eyes. But this, this was different. Something had been taken quietly, deliberately and ruinously from the world.

  ‘The question,’ Rebus said, for the sake of filling the void, ‘is why.’

  Why indeed. Here he was, standing in a bathroom bigger than his own living-room, surrounded by powders and scents, thick towels, soaps and sponges. But here was this gruesome and unnecessary death. There had to be a reason for it. Silly, stupid child. What had she been playing at? Mute anger turned to frustration, and he almost staggered as he made his way out to the landing.

  There had to be a reason. And he was just in the mood now to track it down.

  ‘I’ve told you already,’ said Thomas McKenzie irritably, ‘she was the happiest girl in Christendom. No, we didn’t spoil her, and no, we never forbade her seeing anyone. There is no reason in the world, Inspector, why Suzanne should have done what she did. It just doesn’t make sense.’

  McKenzie broke down again, burying his face in his hands. Rebus loathed himself, yet the questions had to be asked.

  ‘Did she,’ he began, ‘did she have a boyfriend, Mr McKenzie?’

  McKenzie got up from his chair, walked to the sideboard and poured himself another whisky. He motioned to Rebus who, still cradling a crystal inch of the stuff, shook his head. Mrs McKenzie was upstairs resting. She had been given a sedative by her doctor, an old friend of the family who had seemed in need of similar treatment himself.

  But Thomas McKenzie had not needed anything. He was sticking to the old remedies, sloshing a fresh measure of malt into his glass.

  ‘No,’ he said, ‘no boyfriends. They’ve never really been Suzanne’s style.’

  Though he would not be travelling to his office today, McKenzie had still dressed himself in a dark blue suit and tie. The drawing-room in which Rebus sat had about it the air of a commercial office, not at all homely or lived-in. He couldn’t imagine growing up in such a place.

  ‘What about school?’ he asked.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘I mean, was she happy there?’

  ‘Very.’ McKenzie sat down with his drink. ‘She gets good reports, good grades. She ... she was going to the University in October.’

  Rebus watched him gulp at the whisky. Thomas McKenzie was a tough man, tough enough to make his million young and then canny enough not to lose it. He was forty-four now, but looked younger. Rebus had no idea how many shops McKenzie now owned, how many company directorships he held along with all his other holdings and interests. He was new money trying to look like old money, making his home in Stockbridge, convenient for Princes Street, rather than further out in bungalow land.

  ‘What was she going to study?’ Rebus stared past McKenzie towards where a family portrait sat on a long, polished sideboard. No family snapshot, but posed, a sitting for a professional photographer. Daughter gleaming in the centre, sandwiched by grinning parents. A mock-up cloudscape behind them, the clouds pearl-coloured, the sky blue.

  ‘Law,’ said McKenzie. ‘She had a head on her shoulders.’

  Yes, a head of mousy-brown hair. And her father had found her early in the morning, already cold. McKenzie hadn’t panicked. He’d made the phone calls before waking his wife and telling her. He always rose first, always went straight to the bathroom. He had remained calm, most probably from shock. But there was a stiffness to McKenzie, too, Rebus noticed. He wondered what it would take really to rouse the man.

  Something niggled. Suzanne had gone to the bathroom, run some water into the bath, lain down in it, and slashed her wrists. Fine, Rebus could accept that. Maybe she had expected to be found and rescued. Most failed suicides were cries for help, weren’t they? If you really wanted to kill yourself, you went somewhere quiet and secret, where you couldn’t possibly be found in time. Suzanne hadn’t done that. She had almost certainly expected her father to find her in time. Her timing had been a little awry.

  Moreover, she must have known her father always rose before her mother, and therefore that he would be the first to find her. This notion interested Rebus, though no one around him seemed curious about it.

  ‘What about friends at school,’ Rebus went on. ‘Did Suzanne have many friends?’

  ‘Oh yes, lots.’

  ‘Anyone in particular?’

  McKenzie was about to answer when the door opened and his wife walked in, pale from her drugged sleep.

  ‘What time is it?’ she asked, shuffling forwards.

  ‘It’s eleven, Shona,’ her husband said, rising to meet her. ‘You’ve only been asleep half an hour.’ They embraced one another, her arms tight around his body. Rebus felt like an intruder on their grief, but the questions still had to be asked.

  ‘You were about to tell me about Suzanne’s friends, Mr McKenzie.’

  Husband and wife sat down together on the sofa, hands clasped.

  ‘Well,’ said McKenzie, ‘there were lots of them, weren’t there, Shona?’

  ‘Yes,’ said his wife. She really was an attractive woman. Her face had the same smooth sheen as her daughter’s. She was the sort of woman men would instinctively feel protective towards, whether protection was needed or not. ‘But I always liked Hazel best,’ she went on.

  McKenzie turned to Rebus and explained. ‘Hazel Frazer, daughter of Sir Jimmy Frazer, the banker. A peach of a girl. A real peach.’ He paused, staring at his wife, and then began, softly, with dignity, to cry. She rested his head against her shoulder and stroked his hair, talking softly to him. Rebus averte
d his eyes and drank his whisky. Then bit his bottom lip, deep in thought. In matters of suicide, just who was the victim, who the culprit?

  Suzanne’s room was a cold and comfortless affair. No posters on the walls, no teenage clutter or signs of an independent mind. There was a writing-pad on the dressing table, but it was blank. A crumpled ball of paper sat in the bottom of an otherwise empty bin beside the wardrobe. Rebus carefully unfolded the sheet. Written on it, in a fairly steady hand, was a message: ‘Told you I would.’

  Rebus studied the sentence. Told whom? Her parents seemed to have no inkling their daughter was suicidal, yet the note had been meant for someone. And having written it, why had she discarded it? He turned it over. The other side, though blank was slightly tacky. Rebus sniffed the paper, but could find no smell to identify the stickiness. He carefully folded the paper and slipped it into his pocket.

  In the top drawer of the dressing-table was a leather-bound diary. But Suzanne had been no diarist. Instead of the expected teenage outpourings, Rebus found only one-line reminders, every Tuesday for the past six months or so, ‘The Gentlemen’s Club - 4.00’. Curiouser and curiouser. The last entry was for the previous week, with nothing in the rest of the diary save blank pages.

  The Gentlemen’s Club - what on earth could she have meant? Rebus knew of several clubs in Edinburgh, dowdy remnants of a former age, but none was called simply The Gentlemen’s Club. The diary went into his pocket along with the note.

  Thomas McKenzie saw him to the door. The tie around his neck was hanging loosely now and his voice was sweet with whisky.

  ‘Just two last questions before I go,’ Rebus said.

  ‘Yes?’ said McKenzie, sighing.

  ‘Do you belong to a club?’

  McKenzie seemed taken aback, but shrugged. ‘Several, actually. The Strathspey Health Club. The Forth Golf Club. And Finlay’s as was.’

  ‘Finlay’s Gentlemen’s Club?’