It was at this point that McPhail lifted the pan and swung it at Maclean, showering him with boiling water. Then he’d opened the back door and fled. Over three fences and through a close. End of melodrama.
Rebus watched them lift Maclean into the back of the ambulance. They’d be taking him to the Infirmary. Soon everyone Rebus knew in Edinburgh would be lying in the Infirmary. McPhail had been lucky this time. If he knew what was good for him, he would now take Rebus’s advice and flee the city, dodging the police who would be looking for him.
Rebus wondered if McPhail really did know what was good for him. This, after all, was a man who thought little girls were good for him. He wondered this as he sat in heavy lunchtime traffic, slowly oozing towards St Leonard’s. The route he’d taken to Broughton had been so slow, he saw little to lose by sticking to the bigger roads – Leith Street, The Bridges, and Nicolson Street. Something made him stay on this road till he came to the butcher’s shop where Rory Kintoul had ended up, bleeding beneath the meat counter.
He registered only slight surprise at the wooden board which had been placed across the entire front window of the shop. Pinned to the board was a large white sheet of paper with thick felt-pen writing. The sign said simply ‘Business as Usual’. Interesting, thought Rebus, parking his car. He noticed that rain or general wear underfoot had done away with the splashes of blood which had once left a crimson trail along the pavement.
Mr Bone the butcher was slicing corned beef with a manual machine whose circular blade hissed through the meat. He was smaller and thinner than most butchers Rebus had come across, his face all cheekbone and worry line, hair thinning and grey. There was no one else in the front of the shop, though Rebus could hear someone whistling as they worked in the back. Bone noticed that he had a customer.
‘And what’ll it be today, sir?’
Rebus noticed that the display cases just inside the front window were empty, doubtless waiting to be checked for slivers of glass before restocking. He nodded towards the wooden board. ‘When did that happen?’
‘Ach, last night.’ Bone placed the sliced corned beef in an unsullied section of the display case, then skewered the price marker into it. He wiped his hands on his white apron. ‘Kids or drunks.’
‘What was it, a brick?’
‘Search me.’
‘Well, if there was nothing lying in the shop it must have been a sledgehammer. I can’t see a kick with a steel toecap doing that sort of damage.’
Now Bone looked at him properly, and recognised him. ‘You were here when Rory …’
‘That’s right, Mr Bone. They didn’t use a sledgehammer on him though, did they?’
‘I don’t know what you mean.’
‘Pound of beef links, by the way.’
Bone hesitated, then took out the string of sausages and cut a length from it.
‘You could be right, of course,’ Rebus continued. ‘Could have been kids or drunks. Did anyone see anything?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘You didn’t report it?’
‘Didn’t have to. Police phoned me at two this morning to tell me about it.’ He sounded disgruntled.
‘All part of the service, Mr Bone.’
‘That’s just over the pound,’ Bone said, looking at the weighing scales. He wrapped the sausages in white paper, then in brown, marking the price with a pencil on this outer wrapper. Rebus handed over a five-pound note.
‘Insurance will take care of it, I suppose,’ he said.
‘Bloody hope so, the money they charge.’
Rebus accepted his change, and made sure to catch Bone’s eye. ‘But I meant the real insurance people, Mr Bone.’ An elderly couple were coming into the shop.
‘What happened, Mr Bone?’ the woman asked, her husband shuffling along behind her.
‘Just kids, Mrs Dowie,’ said Bone in the voice he used with customers, a voice he hadn’t been using with Rebus. He was staring at Rebus, who gave him a wink, picked up his package, and left. Outside, he looked down at the brown paper parcel. It was chill in his hand. He was supposed to be cutting down on meat, wasn’t he? Not that there was much meat in sausages anyway. Another passing shopper stopped to examine the boarded-up window, then went into the shop. Jim Bone would do good business today. Everyone would want to know what had happened. Rebus was different; he knew what had happened, though proving it wasn’t going to be easy. Siobhan Clarke hadn’t managed to talk to the stabbing victim yet. Maybe Rebus should push her along, especially now that she could tell Rory Kintoul all about his cousin’s broken window.
Next to his car someone had parked a Land Rover-style 4x4, inside which a huge black dog was ravening to get out. Pedestrians were giving the car a wide berth, and quite right too: the whole vehicle rocked on its axle when the dog lunged at the back window. Rebus noticed that the considerate owner had left the window open an inch. Maybe it was a trap intended for a particularly stupid car thief.
Rebus stopped in front of the open window and unrolled the package of sausages into the car. They fell onto the seat where the dog sniffed them for a nanosecond before starting to dine.
The street was blessedly quiet as Rebus unlocked his own car.
‘All part of the service,’ he said to himself.
At the station, he telephoned the Heartbreak Cafe, where what sounded like a hastily recorded message told him the place would be shut ‘due to convalescence’. In Brian Holmes’ desk drawer, he found a print-out of names and phone numbers, those most often used by Holmes himself. Some numbers had been added at the bottom in blue biro, including one for Eddie Ringan marked (h).
Rebus returned to his desk and made the call. Pat Calder answered on the third ring.
‘Mr Calder, it’s DI Rebus.’
‘Oh.’ The hope left Calder’s voice.
‘No sign of him then?’
‘None.’
‘Right, let’s make it official, then. He’s a missing person. I’ll have someone come over and –’
‘Why can’t you come?’
Rebus thought about it. ‘No reason at all, sir.’
‘Make it anytime you like, we’re shut today.’
‘What happened to wonderchef Willie?’
‘We had a busy night, busier than usual.’
‘He cracked up?’
‘Came flying out of the kitchen yelling, “I’m the chef! I’m the chef!” Lifted some poor woman’s entrée and started eating it himself with his face in the bowl. I think he’d been taking drugs.’
‘Sounds like he was just doing a good impersonation of late-period Elvis. I’ll be there in half an hour, if that’s all right.’
Stockbridge’s ‘Colonies’ had been constructed to house the working poor, but were now much desired by young professional types. They were designed as maisonettes, with steep flights of stone stairs leading to the first floor properties. Rebus found the proportions mean in comparison with his Marchmont tenement. No high ceilings here, and no huge rooms with splendid windows and original shutters.
But he could see miners and their families being cosy here a hundred years ago. His own father had been born in a miners’ row in Fife. Rebus imagined it must have been very like this … at least on the outside.
On the inside, Pat Calder had done incredible things. (Rebus didn’t doubt that his was the designing and decorating hand.) There were wooden and brass ship’s trunks, black anglepoise lamps, Japanese prints in ornate frames, a dinner table whose candelabra resembled some Jewish icon, and a huge TV/hi-fi centre. But of Elvis there was nary a jot. Rebus, seated in a black leather sofa, nodded towards one of the coffin-sized loudspeakers.
‘Neighbours ever complain?’
‘All the time,’ admitted Calder. ‘Eddie’s proudest moment was when the guy from four doors down phoned to tell us he couldn’t hear his TV.’
‘Considerate, eh?’
Calder smiled. ‘Eddie’s never been exactly “politic”.’
‘Have you known on
e another long?’
Calder, lying stretched on the floor with his bum on a beanbag, blew nervous smoke from a black Sobranie cigarette. ‘Two years casually. We moved in together about the time we had the idea for the Heartbreak.’
‘What’s he like? I mean, outside the restaurant?’
‘Brilliant one minute, a spoilt brat the next.’
‘Do you spoil him?’
‘I buffer him from the world. At least, I used to.’
‘So what was he like when you met?’
‘Drinking more than he does now, if you can believe that.’
‘Ever tell you why he started?’ Rebus had refused a cigarette, but the smoke was getting to him. Maybe he’d have to change his mind.
‘He said he drank to forget. Now you’re going to ask, Forget what? And I’m going to say that he never told me.’
‘He never even hinted?’
‘I think he told Brian Holmes more than he told me.’
Jesus, was there a hint of jealousy there? Rebus had a sudden vision of Calder bashing Holmes on the napper … and maybe even doing away with Fast Eddie too …?
Calder laughed. ‘I couldn’t hurt him, Inspector. I know what you’re thinking.’
‘It must be frustrating, though? This genius, you call him, wasting it all for booze. People like that take a lot of looking after.’
‘And you’re right, it can become frustrating.’
‘Especially when they’re gassed all the time.’
Calder frowned, peering through the smoke from his nostrils. ‘Why do you say “gassed”?’
‘It means drunk.’
‘I know it does. So do a lot of other words. It’s just that Eddie used to have these nightmares. About being gassed or gassing people. You know, with real gas, like in the concentration camps.’
‘He told you about these dreams?’
‘Oh no, but he used to shout out in his sleep. A lot of gays went to the gas chambers, Inspector.’
‘You think that’s what he meant?’
Calder stubbed out the cigarette into a porcelain bedpan beside the fireplace. He got up awkwardly from the floor. ‘Come on, I want to show you something.’
Rebus had already seen the kitchen and the bathroom, and so realised that the door Calder was leading him towards must be to the only bedroom. He didn’t know quite what to expect.
‘I know what you’ve been thinking,’ Calder said, swinging the door wide open. ‘This is all Eddie’s work.’
And what a work it was. A huge double bed covered with what looked like several zebra-skins. And on the walls, several large paintings of the rhinestone Elvis at work, the face an intentional blur of pink and sheen. Rebus looked up. There was a mirror on the ceiling. He guessed that pretty much any position you took on that bed, you’d be able to watch a white one-piece suit at work with a microphone-hand raised high.
‘Whatever turns you on,’ he commented.
He visited Clarke and Petrie for a couple of hours, just to show willing. Unsurprisingly, Jardine had been replaced by a young man called Madden with a stock of puns not heard since the days of valve radio.
‘Madden by name,’ the Trading Standards officer said by way of introduction, ‘mad ’un by nature.’
Make that steam radio. Rebus began to wonder if it had been such a good idea, phoning Jardine’s boss and swearing exotically at him for twenty minutes.
‘I make the jokes around here, son,’ he warned.
Rebus had spent more exciting afternoons in his life. For example, being taken by his father to watch Cowdenbeath reserves at home to Dundee. He managed to break the monotony only by stepping out to buy buns at a nearby bakery, though this sort of activity was supposed to be verboten. He kept the custard slice for himself, peeling away and discarding the icing. Madden asked if he could have it, and Rebus nodded.
Siobhan Clarke looked like she’d stepped under a gardyloo bucket. She tried not to show it, and smiled whenever she saw him looking in her direction, but there was definitely something up with her. Rebus couldn’t be bothered asking what. He got the idea it was to do with Brian … maybe Brian and Nell. He told her about Bone’s window.
‘Make some time,’ he said. ‘Track down Kintoul, if not at home then at the Infirmary. He works in the labs there, right?’
‘Right.’ Definitely something up with her.
As was his prerogative, Rebus eventually made his excuses and left. Back at St Leonard’s, there was a message for him to call Mairie Henderson at work.
‘Mairie?’
‘Inspector, that didn’t take long.’
‘You’re about the only lead I’ve got.’
‘It’s nice to feel wanted.’ She had one of those accents that could sound sarcastic without really flexing any muscle. ‘Don’t get too excited, though.’
‘Your Chief Sub didn’t remember?’
‘Only that it was around August, making it three months after the Central burnt down.’
‘Could mean something or nothing.’
‘I did my best.’
‘Yes, thanks, Mairie.’
‘Hold on, don’t hang up!’ Rebus wasn’t about to. ‘He did tell me something. Apparently some snippet that’s stuck with him.’ She paused.
‘In your own time, Mairie.’
‘This is my time, Inspector.’ She paused again.
‘Are you drawing on a fag?’
‘What if I am?’
‘Since when did you start smoking?’
‘It beats chewing the ends off pencils.’
‘You’ll stunt your growth.’
‘You sound like my dad.’
Well, that brought him back to earth. Here he’d thought they were … what? Chatting away? Chatting one another up? Aye, in your dreams, John Rebus. Now she’d reminded him of the not insignificant age gap between them.
‘Are you still there, Inspector?’
‘Sorry, my hearing aid slipped out. What did the Chief Sub say?’
‘Remember that story about Aengus Gibson entering the wrong flat?’
‘I remember.’
‘Well, the woman whose flat he broke into was called Mo Johnson.’
Rebus smiled. But then the smile faded. ‘That name almost rings a bell.’
‘He’s a football player.’
‘I know he’s a football player. But a female Mo Johnson, that’s what rings bells.’ But they were faint, too faint.
‘Let me know if you come up with anything.’
‘I will, Mairie. And Mairie?’
‘What?’
‘Don’t stay out too late.’ Rebus terminated the call.
Mo Johnson. He supposed it must be short for Maureen. Where had he come across that name? He knew how he might check. But if Watson found out, it would mean more trouble. Ach, to hell with Watson anyway. He wasn’t much more than slave to a coffee bean. Rebus went to the computer console and punched in the details, bringing up Aengus Gibson’s record. The anecdote was there, but no charges had ever been pressed. The woman was not mentioned by name, and there was no sign of her address. But, since Gibson was involved, CID had taken an interest. You couldn’t always depend on the lower ranks to hush things up properly.
And look who the investigating officer was: DS Jack Morton. Rebus closed the file and got back on the phone. The receiver was still warm.
‘You’re in luck, he got back from the pub five minutes ago.’
‘Away, ya gobshite,’ Rebus heard Morton say as he grabbed at the receiver. ‘Hello?’ Two minutes later, thanks to what was left of Jack Morton’s memory, Rebus had an address for Mo Johnson.
A day of contrasts. From bakery to butchery, from The Colonies to Gorgie Road. And now to the edge of Dean Village. Rebus hadn’t been down this way since the Water of Leith drowning. He had forgotten how beautiful it was. Tucked down a steep hill from Dean Bridge, the Village gave a good impression of rural peace. Yet it was a five-minute walk from the West End and Princes Street.
They
were spoiling it, of course. The developers had squeezed their hands around vacant lots and decaying buildings and choked them into submission. The prices asked for the resultant ‘apartments’, prices as steep as Bell’s Brae, boggled Rebus’s mind. Not that Mo Johnson lived in one of the new buildings. No, her flat was a chunk of an older property at the bottom of the brae, with a view of the Water of Leith and Dean Bridge. But she no longer lived there, and the people who did were reluctant to allow Rebus in. They didn’t think they had a new address for her. There had been another owner between her moving out and their moving in. They might still have that owner’s new address, though it would go back a couple of years.
Did they know when Ms Johnson herself moved out?
Four years ago, maybe five.
Which brought Rebus back to the fire at the Central Hotel. Everything he did in this case seemed to bounce straight back to a period five years ago, when something had happened which had changed a lot of people’s lives, and taken away at least one life too. He sat in his car wondering what to do next. He knew what to do, but had been putting it off. If tangling with the Gibsons could earn him minus points, he dreaded to think what he might earn by talking with the only other person he could think of who might be able to help.
Help? That was a laugh. But Rebus wanted to meet him all the same. Christ, Flower would have a field day if he found out. He’d hire tents and food and drink and invite everyone to the biggest party in town. Right up from Lauderdale to the Chief Constable, they’d be blowing fuses that could have run hydro stations.
Yes, the more Rebus thought about it, the more he knew it was the right thing to do. The right thing? He had so few openings left, it was the only thing. And looking on the bright side, if he did get caught, at least the celebration would bankrupt Little Weed …