20
He telephoned first, Morris Cafferty not being a man you just dropped in on.
‘Will I need my lawyer?’ Cafferty growled, sounding amused. ‘I’ll answer that for you, Strawman, no I fucking won’t. Because I’ve got something better than a lawyer here, better than a fucking judge in my pocket. I’ve got a dog that’ll rip your oesophagus out if I tell it to lick your chops. Be here at six.’ The phone went dead, leaving Rebus dry-mouthed and persuading himself all over again that this jumped-up bastard didn’t scare him.
What scared him more was the realisation that someone somewhere in the ranks of the Lothian and Borders Police was probably listening in to Cafferty’s telephone conversations. Rebus felt like he was in a corridor with doors locking behind him all the time. He saw a gas chamber in his mind and shivered, changing the picture.
Six o’clock wasn’t very far away. And at least in dentists’ waiting rooms they gave you magazines to pass the time.
Morris Gerald Cafferty lived in a mansion house in the expensive suburb of Duddingston. Duddingston was a ‘suburb’ by dint of having Arthur’s Seat and Salisbury Crags between it and central Edinburgh. Cafferty liked living in Duddingston because it annoyed his neighbours, most of whom were lawyers, doctors and bankers, and also because it wasn’t far from his actual and spiritual birthplace, Craigmillar. Craigmillar was one of the tougher Edinburgh housing schemes. Cafferty grew up there, seeing his first trouble there and in neighbouring Niddrie. He’d led a gang of Craigmillar youths into Niddrie to sort out their rivals. There was a stabbing … with an uprooted iron railing. Police discovered that the teenage Cafferty had already been in trouble at school for ‘accidentally’ jamming a ballpoint pen into the corner of a fellow pupil’s eye.
It was the quiet start to a long career.
The wrought iron gates at the bottom of the driveway opened automatically as Rebus approached. He drove his car along a well-gritted private road with mature trees either side. You caught a glimpse of the house from the main road, nothing more. But Rebus had been here before; to ask questions, to make an arrest. He knew there was another smaller house behind the main house, linked by a covered walkway. This smaller house had been staff quarters in the days when a city merchant might have lived here. The gravel road forked to the front and back of the main house. A man directed Rebus towards the back: the servants’ entrance. The man was very big with a biker helmet haircut, cut high at the fringe but falling over the ears. Where did Cafferty get them, these throw-backs?
The man followed him to the back of the house. Rebus knew where to park. There were three spaces, two vacant and one taken up by a Volvo estate. Rebus thought he recognised the Volvo, though it wasn’t Cafferty’s. Cafferty’s collection of cars was kept in the vast garage. He had a Bentley and a cherry-red ’63 T-Bird, neither of which he ever drove. For daily use, there was always the Jag, an XJS-HE. And for weekends there was a dependable Roller which Cafferty had owned for at least fifteen years.
The man opened Rebus’s door for him, and pointed towards the small house. Rebus got out.
‘Vidal Sassoon was booked up then,’ he said.
‘Uh?’ The man turned his head right-side towards Rebus.
‘Never mind.’ He was about to walk away, but paused. ‘Ever been in a fight with a man called Dougary?’
‘Nane i’ your business.’
Rebus shrugged. The big man closed the car door and stood watching Rebus walk away. So there was no chance to check the tax disc or anything else about the Volvo; nothing to do except memorise the number plate.
Rebus pulled open the door to the small house and was greeted by a wave of heat and steam. The whole structure had been gutted, so that a swimming pool and gymnasium could be installed. The pool was kidney-shaped, with a small circular pool off it – a Jacuzzi, presumably. Rebus had always hated kidney pools: it was impossible to do laps in them. Not that he was much of a swimmer.
‘Strawman! About bastardin’ time!’
He didn’t see Cafferty at first, though he had no trouble seeing who was standing over him. Cafferty lay on a massage table, head resting on a pile of towels. His back was being kneaded by none other than the Organ Grinder, who just happened to own a Volvo estate. The Organ Grinder sensibly pretended not to know Rebus; and when Cafferty wasn’t looking, Rebus nodded almost imperceptibly his agreement with the pretence.
Cafferty had spun around on his backside and was now easing himself into a standing position. He tested his back and shoulders. ‘That’s magic,’ he said. He removed the towel from around his loins and padded towards Rebus on bare feet.
‘See, Strawman, no concealed weapons.’ His laughter was like an apprentice with a rasp-file.
Rebus looked around. ‘I don’t see the –’
But suddenly there it was, pulling itself massively out of the swimming pool. Rebus hadn’t even noticed it in there, retrieving a bone. Not a plastic bone either. The black beast dropped the bone at Cafferty’s feet, sniffed at Rebus’s legs, then shook itself dry onto him.
‘Good boy, Kaiser,’ said Cafferty. The parking attendant had joined them in the sticky heat. Rebus nodded nowhere in particular.
‘I hope you got planning permission for this.’
‘All above board, Strawman. Come on, you’d better get changed.’
‘Changed for what?’
Laughter again. ‘Don’t worry, you’re not staying to dinner. I’m going for a run, and so are you – if you want to talk to me.’
A run, Jesus! Cafferty turned and walked away towards what looked like a changing cubicle. He slapped the Organ Grinder as he passed him.
‘Magic. Same time next week?’
He was hairily muscular, with a chest a borders farmer would be proud to own. There was flab, of course, but not as much as Rebus would have guessed. There was no doubt: Big Ger had got himself in shape. The backside and upper thighs were pockmarked, but the gut had been tightened. Rebus tried to remember when he’d last seen Cafferty. Probably in court …
Rebus would have enjoyed a quiet word with the Organ Grinder, but now that the parking attendant gorilla was in spying distance, it just wasn’t feasible. You couldn’t be sure how much the one-eared man could hear.
‘There’s some stuff here, it should fit.’
The ‘stuff’ consisted of sweatshirt, running shorts, socks and trainers … and a headband. There was no way Rebus was going to wear a headband. But when Cafferty emerged from his cubicle, he was wearing one, along with a white running vest and immaculate white shorts. He started to limber up while Rebus entered the cubicle to change.
What the hell am I doing? he asked himself. He had imagined a lot of things, but not this. Some things might be painful in life, but this, he had no doubt, was going to be torture.
‘Where to?’ he asked when they emerged from the overheated gym into the cool twilit evening. He wasn’t wearing the headband. And he had put the sweatshirt on inside out. The legend across its front had read ‘Kick me if I stop’. He supposed it represented Cafferty’s idea of a joke.
‘Sometimes I run to Duddingston Loch, sometimes up to the top of the Seat. You choose.’ Big Ger was bouncing on the spot.
‘The loch.’
‘Right,’ said Big Ger, and off they set.
Rebus spent the first few minutes checking that his body could take this sort of thing, which was why he was slow to spot the car following them. It was the Jag, driven by the parking attendant at a steady 0–5 mph.
‘Remember the last time you gave evidence against me?’ Big Ger said. As a conversational opening, it had its merits. Rebus merely nodded. They were running side by side, the pavements being all but deserted. He wondered if any undercover officers would be snapping photographs of this. ‘Over in Glasgow, it was.’
‘I remember.’
‘Not guilty, of course.’ Big Ger grinned. He looked like he’d had his teeth seen to as well. Rebus remembered them being greyish-green. Now they were a brilli
antly capped white. And his hair … was it thicker? One of those hair-weaves, maybe? ‘Anyway, I heard afterwards you went back down to London and had a bit of a time.’
‘You could say that.’
They ran another minute in silence. The pace wasn’t exactly taxing, but then neither was Rebus in condition. His lungs were already passing him warnings of the red hot and burning varieties.
‘You’re getting thin at the back,’ Cafferty noticed. ‘A hair weave would sort that out.’
It was Rebus’s turn to smile. ‘You know damned fine I got burned.’
‘Aye, and I know who burned you, too.’
Still, Rebus reckoned his own guess about the hair weave had been confirmed.
‘Actually,’ he said, ‘I wanted to talk to you about another fire.’
‘Oh aye?’
‘At the Central.’
‘The Central Hotel?’ Rebus was pleased to notice that the words weren’t coming so easily from Big Ger either now. ‘That’s prehistory.’
‘Not as far as I’m concerned.’
‘But what’s it to do with me?’
‘Two of your men were there that night, playing in a poker game.’
Cafferty shook his head. ‘That can’t be right. I won’t have gamblers working for me. It’s against the Bible.’
‘Everything you do from waking till sleeping is against somebody’s Bible, Cafferty.’
‘Please, Strawman, call me Mr Cafferty.’
‘I’ll call you what I like.’
‘And I’ll call you the Strawman.’
The name jarred … every time. It had been at the Glasgow trial, a sheet of notes wrongly glanced at by the prosecution, mistaking Rebus for the only other witness, a pub landlord called Stroman.
‘Now then, Inspector Stroman …’ Oh, Cafferty had laughed at that, laughed from the dock so hard that he was in danger of contempt. His eyes had bored into Rebus like fat woodworm, and he’d mouthed the word one final time the way he’d heard it – Strawman.
‘Like I say,’ Rebus went on, ‘two of your hired heid-the-ba’s. Eck and Tam Robertson.’
They had just passed the Sheep’s Heid pub, Rebus sorely tempted to veer inside, Cafferty knowing it.
‘There’ll be herbal tea when we get back. Watch out there!’ His warning saved Rebus from stepping in a discreet dog turd.
‘Thanks,’ Rebus said grudgingly.
‘I was thinking of the shoes,’ Cafferty replied. ‘Know what “flowers of Edinburgh” are?’
‘A rock band?’
‘Keech. They used to chuck all their keech out of the windows and onto the street. There was so much of it lying around, the locals called it the flowers of Edinburgh. I read that in a book.’
Rebus thought of Alister Flower and smiled. ‘Makes you glad you’re living in a decent society.’
‘So it does,’ said Cafferty, with no trace of irony. ‘Eck and Tam Robertson, eh? The Bru-Heid Brothers. I won’t lie to you, they used to work for me. Tam for just a few weeks, Eck for longer.’
‘I won’t ask what they did.’
Cafferty shrugged. ‘They were general employees.’
‘Covers a multitude of sins.’
‘Look, I didn’t ask you to come out here. But now that you are, I’m answering your questions, all right?’
‘I appreciate it, really. You say you didn’t know they were at the Central that night?’
‘No.’
‘Do you know what happened to them afterwards?’
‘They stopped working for me. Not at the same time, Tam left first, I think. Tam then Eck. Tam was a dun-derheid, Strawman, a real loser. I can’t abide losers. I only hired him because Eck asked me to. Eck was a good worker.’ He seemed lost in thought for a minute. ‘You’re looking for them?’
‘That’s it.’
‘Sorry, I can’t help.’ Rebus wondered if Cafferty’s cheeks were half as red as his felt. He had a piercing stitch in his side, and didn’t know how he was going to make the run back. ‘You think they had something to do with the body?’
Rebus merely nodded.
‘What makes you so sure?’
‘I’m not sure. But if they did have something to do with it, I’m willing to bet you weren’t a hundred miles behind.’
‘Me?’ Cafferty laughed again, but the laugh was strained. ‘As I recall, I was on holiday in Malta with some friends.’
‘You always seem to be with friends when anything happens.’
‘I’m a gregarious man, I can’t help it if I’m popular. Know something else I read about Scotland? The Pope called it “the arse of Europe”.’ Cafferty slowed to a stop. They’d come to near the top of Duddingston Loch, the city just visible down below them. ‘Hard to believe, isn’t it? The arse of Europe, it doesn’t look like one to me.’
‘Oh, I don’t know,’ said Rebus, bent over with hands on knees. ‘If this is the arse …’ he looked up, ‘I’d know where to stick the enema.’
Cafferty’s laughter roared out all around. He was breathing deeply, trying to slow things down. When he spoke, it was in an undertone, though there was no one around to hear them. ‘But we’re a cruel people, Strawman. All of us, you and me. And we’re ghouls.’ His face was very close to Rebus’s, both of them bent over. Rebus kept his eyes on the grass below him. ‘When they killed the grave-robber Burke, they made souvenirs from his skin. I’ve got one in the house, I’ll show it to you.’ The voice might have been inside Rebus’s own head. ‘We like to watch, and that’s the truth. I bet even you’ve got a taste for pain, Strawman. You’re hurting all over, but you ran with me, you didn’t give up. Why? Because you like the pain. It’s what makes you a Calvinist.’
‘It’s what makes you a public menace.’
‘Me? A simple businessman who has managed to survive this disease called recession.’
‘No, you’re more than that,’ said Rebus, straightening up. ‘You’re the disease.’
Cafferty looked like he might throw a punch, but instead he pounded Rebus on the back. ‘Come on, time to go.’
Rebus was about to plead another minute’s rest, but saw Cafferty walking to the Jag. ‘What?’ Cafferty said. ‘You think I’d run it both ways? Come on now, your herbal tea is waiting.’
And herbal tea it was, served up poolside after Rebus had showered and changed back into his clothes. He had the feeling someone had been through his wallet and diary in his absence, but knew they wouldn’t have found much there. For one thing, he’d tucked his ID and credit cards into the front of his running shorts; for another, he’d about as much cash as would buy an evening paper and a packet of mints.
‘Sorry I couldn’t be more help,’ said Cafferty after Rebus had sat himself down.
‘You could if you tried,’ Rebus replied. He was trying to stop his legs from shaking. They hadn’t had this much exercise since the last time he’d flitted.
Cafferty just shrugged. He was now wearing baggy and wildly coloured swimming trunks, and had just had a dip. As he dried himself off, he showed enough anal cleavage to qualify as a construction worker.
The devil dog meantime sat by the pool licking its chops. Of the bone it had been chewing, there was not the slightest trace. Rebus suddenly placed the dog.
‘Do you own a 4x4?’ Cafferty nodded. ‘I saw it parked across from Bone’s the Butcher on South Clerk Street. This mutt was in the back.’
Cafferty shrugged. ‘It’s my wife’s car.’
‘And she often takes the dog into town?’
‘She gets Kaiser’s bones there. Besides, he’s cheaper than a car alarm.’ Cafferty smiled fondly at the dog. ‘And I’ve never known anyone bypass him.’
‘Maybe sausages would do it.’ But this was lost on Cafferty. Rebus decided he was getting nowhere. It was time to try one final tactic. He finished the brew. It tasted like spearmint chewing gum. ‘A colleague of mine was trying to track down the Robertson brothers. Someone put him in hospital.’
‘Really?’ Caffer
ty looked genuinely surprised. ‘What happened?’
‘He was attacked behind a restaurant called the Heartbreak Cafe.’
‘Dear me. Did he find them, Tam and Eck?’
‘If he’d found them, I wouldn’t have had to come here.’
‘I thought maybe it was just an excuse for a blether about the good old days.’
‘What good old days?’
‘True enough, you look about as bad as ever. Not me, though. My wild days are behind me.’ He sipped his tea to prove the point. ‘I’m a changed man.’
Rebus nearly laughed. ‘You tell that line so often in court, you’re beginning to believe it.’
‘No, it’s true.’
‘Then you wouldn’t be trying to put the frighteners on me?’
Cafferty shook his head. He was crouching beside the dog, rubbing its head briskly. ‘Oh no, Strawman, the day’s long past when I’d take a set of six-inch carpentry nails and fix you to the floorboards in some derelict house. Or tickle your tonsils with jump-leads connected to a generator.’ He was warming to his subject, looking almost as ready to pounce as his dog.
Rebus stayed nonchalant. Indeed, he had one to add to the list. ‘Or hang me over the Forth Rail Bridge?’ There was silence, except for the hum of the Jacuzzi and the snuffling of the dog. Then the door swung open and a woman’s head smiled heedlessly towards them.
‘Morris, dinner in ten minutes.’
‘Thanks, Mo.’
The door closed again, and Cafferty got up. So did the dog. ‘Well, Strawman, it’s been lovely chatting away like this, but I better take a shower before I eat. Mo’s always complaining I smell like chlorine. I keep telling her, we wouldn’t have to put chlorine in the pool if the visitors didn’t piss in it, but she blames Kaiser!’
‘She’s your … er …?’
‘My wife. As of four years and three months.’
Rebus was nodding. He knew Cafferty was married, of course. He’d just forgotten the name of the lucky bride.
‘She’s the one who’s changed me if anyone has,’ Cafferty was saying. ‘She makes me read all these books.’
Rebus knew the Nazis had read books too. ‘Just one thing, Cafferty.’