‘True enough,’ said Rebus. After the meal, while Siobhan drank a cup of coffee Rebus ordered some takeaway for Michael.
‘Is he all right?’ Siobhan asked.
‘He’s getting better,’ Rebus insisted. ‘Those pills are nearly finished. He’ll be fine once he’s shot of them.’
As if to prove the point, when they got back to the flat Michael was in the kitchen, dunking a teabag in a mug of hot milky water. He looked like he’d just had a shower. He’d also shaved.
‘I fetched you a curry,’ Rebus said.
‘You must be a mind reader.’ Michael sniffed into the brown paper bag. ‘Rogan Josh?’ Rebus nodded and turned to Siobhan. ‘Michael is the city’s Rogan Josh expert.’
‘There was a call while you were out.’ Michael lifted the cardboard containers out of the bag.
‘Hendry?’
‘That was the name.’
‘Did he leave a message?’
Michael unpeeled both cartons, meat and rice. ‘He said you should get a pen and a lot of paper ready.’
Rebus smiled at Siobhan. ‘Come on,’ he said, ‘let’s save Hendry’s phone bill.’
‘I’m glad you phoned back,’ were Hendry’s first words. ‘For one thing, I’m due at an indoor bowls tourney in half an hour. For another, this is a big list.’
‘So let’s have it,’ said Rebus.
‘I could fax it to you at the station?’
‘No you couldn’t, I’m out of the game.’
‘I hadn’t heard.’
‘Funny, that; you hear about my love life fast enough. Ready when you are.’
As Hendry reeled off the names, addresses and phone numbers, Rebus relayed them to Siobhan. She claimed to be a fast writer, so was given the job of transcribing. But after ten minutes they switched over, her hand being sore. The final list covered three sides of A4. As well as the basic information, Hendry dropped in snippets of his own, such as licensing wrangles, suspected handling of stolen goods, hangouts for ne’er-do-wells and the like. Rebus was grateful for all of it.
‘A fine institution, the bookie’s,’ he commented, when Siobhan handed him the receiver.
‘You bet,’ said Hendry. ‘Can I go now?’
‘Sure, and thanks for everything.’
‘So long as it helps you get back in the game. We need all the fly-halfs we can get. Those two names didn’t click with me, by the way. And Rebus?’
‘What?’
‘She sounds a right wee smasher.’
Hendry severed the connection before Rebus could explain. When it came to gossip, Hendry was a regular sweetie-wife. Rebus dreaded to think what stories he’d be hearing about himself in the next week or two.
‘What was he saying?’ Siobhan asked.
‘Nothing.’
She’d been running through the list for herself. ‘Well,’ she said, ‘no names there that mean anything to me.’ Rebus took the list from her.
‘Me neither.’
‘Next stop Fife?’
‘For me, yes. On Monday, I suppose.’ Except that on Monday he’d to report to Chief Superintendent Watson and attend Eddie Ringan’s funeral. ‘You,’ he said, ‘are going to be busy shoring up our side of Operation Moneybags.’
‘Oh, I thought I might go to the funeral. That’d give us the excuse for a couple of hours’ work in Fife.’
Rebus shook his head. ‘I appreciate the thought, but you’re still on the force. I’m the one with time for this sort of legwork.’ She looked bitterly disappointed. ‘And that’s an order,’ Rebus told her.
‘Yes, sir,’ said Siobhan.
27
The thought of another interminable Sunday bothered Rebus so much that, after attending Mass, he drove across the Forth Road Bridge back into Fife.
He’d been to Our Lady of Perpetual Hell, sitting at the back, watching and wondering if the priest who led the worship was his priest. The accent was Scots-Irish; hard to tell. His priest had spoken quietly, while this one belted everything out at the top of his voice. Maybe some of the congregation were deaf. But at least there were a fair number of young folk in attendance. He was almost alone in not accepting communion.
West-central Fife could use a spot of communion itself. It would drink the wine and pawn the chalice. He decided to leave Dunfermline till last; it was the biggest town with the most locations. He’d start small. He couldn’t recall whether it was quicker to get to Ballingry by coming off the motorway at Kinross, but certainly it was a much bonnier drive. He was tempted to stop at Loch Leven, site of many a childhood picnic and game of football. He still had a lump below his knee where Michael had kicked him once. The narrow, meandering roads were busy with Sunday drivers, their cars polished like medals. There was half a chance Hendry would be at the Loch Leven bird sanctuary, but Rebus didn’t stop. Soon enough he was in the glummer confines of Ballingry. He didn’t loiter longer than he needed to.
He wasn’t sure what this trip was supposed to accomplish. All the betting shops would be tight shut. Maybe he’d find someone he could gossip with about this or that bookie’s, but he doubted it. He knew what he was doing. He was killing time, and this was a good place for it. At least here there was the illusion that he was doing something constructive about the case. So he parked outside the closed shop and constructively marked a tick against the address on his three-page list.
Of course, there was one more reason for his early rise this morning and his early exit from the house. In the car with him he had the Sunday paper. The Central Hotel story had stuck tenaciously to the front page, now with the headline CENTRAL MURDER BLAZE: GUN FOUND. Once Watson and co. saw it, they’d be on the phone to each other and, naturally, to John Rebus. But for once the students would have to field his calls. He’d read the story through twice to himself, knowing every word by heart. He was hoping that somewhere somebody was reading it and starting to panic …
Next stops: Lochore, Lochgelly, Cardenden. Rebus had been born and raised in Cardenden. Well, Bowhill actually, back when there had been four parishes: Auchterderran, Bowhill, Cardenden, and Dundonald. The ABCD, people called it. Then the post office had termed it all the one town, Cardenden. It wasn’t so very much changed from the place Rebus had known. He stopped the car at the cemetery and spent a few minutes by the grave of his father and mother. A woman in her forties placed some flowers against a headstone nearby and smiled at Rebus as she passed him. When Rebus got back to the cemetery gates, she was waiting there.
‘Johnny Rebus?’
It was so unexpected he grinned, the grin dissolving years from his face.
‘I went to school with you,’ the woman stated. ‘Heather Cranston.’
‘Heather …?’ He stared at her face. ‘Cranny?’
She put a hand to her mouth, blocking laughter. ‘Nobody’s called me that in twenty-odd years.’
He remembered her now. The way she always stifled laughs with her hand, embarrassed because her laugh sounded so funny to her. Now she nodded into the cemetery.
‘I walk past your mum and dad most weeks.’
‘It’s more than I do.’
‘Aye, but you’re in Edinburgh or someplace now, aren’t you?’
‘That’s right.’
‘Just visiting?’
‘Passing through.’ They had come out of the cemetery now, and were walking downhill into Bowhill. They passed by Rebus’s car, but he’d no wish to break off the conversation. So they walked.
‘Aye,’ she said, ‘plenty of folk pass through. Never many stay put. I used to ken everybody in the place, but not now …’
A yistiken awb-di. Listening to her, Rebus realised how much of the accent and the dialect he’d lost over the years.
‘Come round for a cup of tea,’ she was saying now. He’d looked in vain for an engagement or wedding ring on her hand. She was by no means an unlovely woman. Big, whereas at school she’d been tiny and shy. Or maybe Rebus wasn’t remembering right. Her cheeks were shining and there was mascara round her eyes. She w
as wearing black shoes with inch and a half heels, and tea-coloured tights on muscular legs. Rebus, who hadn’t had breakfast or lunch, would bet that she had a pantry full of cakes and biscuits.
‘Aye, why not?’ he said.
She lived in a house along Craigside Road. They’d passed one betting shop on the way from the cemetery. It was as dead as the rest of the street.
‘Are you going to take a look at the old house?’ She meant the house he’d grown up in. He shrugged and watched her unlock her door. In the lobby, she listened for a second then yelled, ‘Shug! Are you up there?’ But there was no sound from upstairs. ‘It’s a miracle,’ she said. ‘Out of his bed before four o’clock. He must’ve gone out somewhere.’ She saw the look on Rebus’s face, and her hand went to her mouth. ‘Don’t worry, it’s not a husband or boyfriend or anything. Hugh’s my son.’
‘Oh?’
She took off her coat. ‘Away through you go.’ She opened the living room door for him. It was a small room, choked with a huge three-piece suite, dining-table and chairs, wall-unit and TV. She’d had the chimney blocked off and central heating installed.
Rebus sank into one of the fireside chairs. ‘But you’re not married?’
She had slung her coat over the banister. ‘Never really saw the point,’ she said, entering the room. She devoured space as she moved, first to the radiator to check it was warm, then to the mantelpiece for cigarettes and her lighter. She offered one to Rebus.
‘I’ve stopped,’ he said. ‘Doctor’s orders.’ Which was, in a sense, the truth.
‘I tried stopping once or twice, but the weight I put on, you wouldn’t credit it.’ She inhaled deeply.
‘So, Hugh’s father …?’
She blew the smoke out of her nostrils. ‘Never knew him, really.’ She saw the look on Rebus’s face. ‘Have I shocked you, Johnny?’
‘Just a bit, Cranny. You used to be … well …’
‘Quiet? That was a lifetime ago. What do you fancy, coffee, tea or me?’ And she laughed behind her cigarette hand.
‘Coffee’s fine,’ said John Rebus, shifting in his chair.
She brought in two mugs of bitter instant. ‘No biscuits, sorry, I’m all out.’ She handed him his mug. ‘I’ve already sugared it, hope that’s all right.’
‘Fine,’ said Rebus, who did not take sugar. The mug was a souvenir of Blackpool. They talked about people they’d known at school. Sitting opposite him, she decided at one point to cross one leg over the other. But her skirt was too tight, so she gave up and tugged at the hem of the garment.
‘So what brings you here? Passing through, you said?’
‘Well, sort of. I’m actually looking for a bookie’s shop.’
‘We passed one on the –’
‘This is a particular business. It’s probably either new in the past five or so years, or else has been taken over by a new operator during that time.’
‘Then you’re after Hutchy’s.’ She said this nonchalantly, sucking on her cigarette afterwards.
‘Hutchy’s? But that place was around when we were growing up.’
She nodded. ‘Named after Joe Hutchinson, he started it. Then he died and his son Howie took over. Tried changing the name of the place, but everybody kept calling it Hutchy’s, so he gave up. About, oh, five years ago, maybe a bit less, he sold up and buggered off to Spain. Imagine, same age as us and he’s made his pile. Retired to the sun. Nearest we get to the sun here is when the toaster’s on.’
‘So who did he sell the business to?’
She had to think about this. ‘Greenwood, I think his name is. But the place is still called Hutchy’s. That’s what the sign says above the door. Aye, Tommy Greenwood.’
‘Tommy? You’re sure of that. Not Tom or Tam?’
She shook her permed head. She’d had a salt-and-pepper dye done quite recently. Rebus supposed it was to hide some authentic grey. The style itself could only be termed Bouffant Junior. It took Rebus back in time …
‘Tommy Greenwood,’ she said. ‘Friend of mine used to go out with him.’
‘Had he been around Cardenden for long before he bought Hutchy’s?’
‘No time at all. We didn’t know him from Adam. Then in short order he’d bought Hutchy’s and the old doctor’s house down near the river. The story goes, he paid Howie from a suitcase stacked with cash. The story goes, he still doesn’t have a bank account.’
‘So where did the money come from?’
‘Aye, now you’re asking a good question.’ She nodded her head slowly. ‘A few folk would like to know the answer to that one.’
He asked a few more questions about Greenwood, but there wasn’t more she could tell. He kept himself to himself, walked between his house and the bookie’s every day. Didn’t own a flash car. No wife, no kids. Didn’t do much in the way of socialising or drinking.
‘He’d be quite a catch for some woman,’ she said, in tones that let Rebus know she’d tried with the rod and line. ‘Oh aye, quite a catch.’
Rebus escaped twenty minutes later, but not without an exchange of addresses and phone numbers and promises to keep in touch. He walked back slowly past Hutchy’s – an uninspiring little double-front with peeling paint and smoky windows – and then briskly up the brae to the cemetery. At the cemetery, he saw that another car had been parked tight in behind his. A cherry-red Renault 5. He passed his own car and tapped on the window of the Renault. Siobhan Clarke put down her newspaper and wound open the window.
‘What the hell are you doing here?’ Rebus demanded.
‘Following a hunch.’
‘I don’t have a hunch.’
‘Took me a while. Did you start with Ballingry?’ He nodded. ‘That’s what threw me. I came off the motorway at Kelty.’
‘Listen,’ Rebus said, ‘I’ve found a contender.’
She didn’t seem interested. ‘Have you seen this morning’s paper?’
‘Oh that, I meant to tell you about it.’
‘No, not the front page, the inside.’
‘Inside?’
She tapped a headline and handed the paper through the window to him. THREE INJURED IN M8 SMASH. The story told how on Saturday morning a BMW left the motorway heading towards Glasgow and ended up in a field. The family in the car had all been hospitalised – wife, teenage son, and ‘Edinburgh businessman David Dougary, 41’.
‘Christ,’ gasped Rebus, ‘I knocked that off the front page.’
‘Pity you didn’t read it at the time. What’ll happen now?’
Rebus read the story through again. ‘I don’t know. It’ll depend. If they shut down or transfer the Gorgie operation, either we shut down or we follow it.’
‘“We”? You’re suspended, remember.’
‘Or else Cafferty brings someone else in to take over while Dougary’s on the mend.’
‘It would be short notice.’
‘Which means he’ll hand pick someone.’
‘Or fill in for Dougary himself?’
‘I doubt it,’ said Rebus, ‘but wouldn’t it be just magic if he did? The only way of knowing is to keep the surveillance going till something happens one way or the other.’
‘And meantime?’
‘Meantime, we’ve got a ton more bookie’s shops to check.’ Rebus turned and gave Bowhill a smiling glance. ‘But something tells me we’ve already had a yankee come up.’
‘What’s a yankee?’ Siobhan asked, as Rebus unlocked and got into his car.
When they stopped for a bite to eat and some tea in Dunfermline, Rebus told her the story of Hutchy’s and the man with the case full of cash. Her face twitched a little, as though her tea were too hot or the egg mayonnaise sandwich too strong.
‘What was that name again?’ she asked.
‘Tommy Greenwood.’
‘But he’s in the Cafferty file.’
‘What?’ It was Rebus’s turn to twitch.
‘Tommy Greenwood, I’m sure it is. He’s … he was one of Cafferty’s associates year
s ago. Then he disappeared from the scene, like so many others. They’d quarrelled about equal shares, or something.’
‘Sounds like a boulder round the balls and the old heave-ho off a bridge.’
‘As you say, it’s a mobile profession.’
‘Glub, glub, glub, all the way to the bottom.’
Siobhan smiled. ‘So is it the real Tommy Greenwood or not?’
Rebus shrugged. ‘If the bugger’s had plastic surgery, it could be hard to tell. All the same, there are ways.’ He was nodding to himself. ‘Oh yes, there are ways.’
Ways which started with a friendly taxman …
More than one person that Sunday read the story on the front page of their morning paper with a mixture of anguish, fear, guilt, and fury. Telephone calls were made. Words were exchanged like bullets. But being Sunday, there wasn’t much anyone could do about the situation except, if they were of a mind, pray. If the off-licences had been open, or the supermarkets and grocer’s shops allowed to sell alcohol, they might have drowned their sorrows or assuaged their anger. As it was, the anger just built, and so did the anguish. Block by block, the structure neared completion. A roof, that was all it lacked. Something to keep the pressure in, or nature’s forces out.
And it was all because of John Rebus. This was more or less agreed. John Rebus was out there with a battering ram, and more than one person was of a mind to unlock the door and let him in – let him into their lair. And then lock the door after him.
28
The meeting in Farmer Watson’s office had been arranged for nine in the morning. Presumably, they wanted Rebus at his groggiest and most supine. He might growl loudly in the morning, but he didn’t normally start biting till afternoon. That everyone from Watson to the canteen staff knew he was being fitted up didn’t make things any less awkward. For a start, the investigation into the Central Hotel murder wasn’t official, and Watson still wasn’t keen to sanction it. So Rebus had been working rogue anyway. Give the Farmer his due, he looked after his team. They managed between them to concoct a story whereby Rebus had been given permission to do some digging into the files on his own time.
‘With a view towards the case perhaps being reopened at a later date as fresh evidence allowed,’ said the Farmer. His secretary, a smart woman with a scary taste in hair colourants, copied down these closing words. ‘And date it a couple of weeks ago.’