He didn’t feel very clever.
‘Hello, Arthur,’ he said, passing the desk, making towards the staircase. ‘Any messages for me?’
‘Give me a break, John. I’ve only been on two minutes.’
‘Fair enough.’ Rebus pushed his hands deep into his pockets, where the fingers of his right hand touched something alien, metal. He brought the brooch-clip out and studied it. Then froze.
McCall looked at him, puzzled.
‘Go on up,’ Rebus told him. ‘I’ll just be a second.’
‘Right you are, John.’
Back at the desk, Rebus held his left hand out to the sergeant. ‘Do me a favour, Arthur. Give me your tie.’
‘What?’
‘You heard me.’
Knowing that he would have a story to tell tonight in the canteen, the desk sergeant pulled at his tie. As it came away from his shirt, the clip made a single snapping sound. Simple but clever, thought Rebus, holding the tie between finger and thumb.
‘Thanks, Arthur,’ he said.
‘Anytime, John,’ the sergeant called, watching carefully as Rebus walked back towards the stairs. ‘Anytime.’
‘Know what this is, Tony?’
McCall had seated himself in Rebus’s chair, behind Rebus’s desk. He had one fist in a drawer, and looked up, startled. Rebus was holding the necktie out in front of him. McCall nodded, then brought his hand out of the drawer. It was curved around a bottle of whisky.
‘It’s a tie,’ he said. ‘Got any cups?’
Rebus placed the tie on the desk. He went to a filing cabinet and searched amongst the many cups which sat unloved and uncleaned on top of it. Finally, one seemed to satisfy him, and he brought it to the desk. McCall was studying the cover of a file lying on the desk.
‘“Ronnie,”’ he read out, ‘“Tracy – caller”. I see your casenotes are as precise as ever.’
Rebus handed the cup to McCall.
‘Where’s yours?’ asked McCall, pointing to the cup.
‘I don’t feel like drinking. To tell you the truth, I hardly touch the stuff now.’ Rebus nodded at the bottle. ‘That’s for visitors.’ McCall pursed his lips, his eyes opening wide. ‘Besides,’ Rebus went on, ‘I’ve got the mother and father of a headache. In-laws, too. Kids, neighbours, town and country.’ He noticed a large envelope on the desk: PHOTOGRAPHS – DO NOT BEND.
‘You know, Tony, when I was a sergeant, this sort of thing would take days to arrive. It’s like royalty being an inspector.’ He opened the envelope and took out the set of prints, ten by eights, black and white. He handed one to McCall.
‘Look,’ Rebus said, ‘no writing on the wall. And the pentagram’s unfinished. Today it was complete.’ McCall nodded, and Rebus took back the picture, handing over another in its place. ‘The deceased.’
‘Poor little sod,’ said McCall. ‘It could be one of our kids, eh, John?’
‘No,’ said Rebus firmly. He rolled the envelope into the shape of a tube, and put it in his jacket pocket.
McCall had picked up the tie. He waved it towards Rebus, demanding an explanation.
‘Have you ever worn one of those?’ Rebus asked.
‘Sure, at my wedding, maybe a funeral or a christening.…’
‘I mean like this. A clip-on. When I was a kid, I remember my dad decided I’d look good in a kilt. He bought me the whole get-up, including a little tartan bow tie. It was a clip-on.’
‘I’ve worn one,’ said McCall. ‘Everybody has. We all came through the ranks, didn’t we?’
‘No,’ said Rebus. ‘Now get out of my bloody chair.’
McCall found another chair, dragging it over from the wall to the desk. Rebus meantime sat down, picking up the tie.
‘Police issue.’
‘What is?’
‘Clip-on ties,’ said Rebus. ‘Who else wears them?’
‘Christ, I don’t know, John.’
Rebus threw the clip across to McCall, who was slow to react. It fell to the floor, from where he retrieved it.
‘It’s a clip-on,’ he said.
‘I found it in Ronnie’s house,’ said Rebus. ‘At the top of the stairs.’
‘So?’
‘So someone’s tie broke. Maybe when they were dragging Ronnie downstairs. Maybe a police constable someone.’
‘You think one of our lot …?’
‘Just an idea,’ said Rebus. ‘Of course, it could belong to one of the lads who found the body.’ He held out his hand, and McCall gave him back the clip. ‘Maybe I’ll talk to them.’
‘John, what the hell.…’ McCall ended with a sort of choking sound, unable to find words for the question he wanted to ask.
‘Drink your whisky,’ said Rebus solicitously. ‘Then you can listen to that tape, see if you think Tracy’s telling the truth.’
‘What are you going to do?’
‘I don’t know.’ He put the desk sergeant’s tie in his pocket. ‘Maybe I’ll tie up a few loose ends.’ McCall was pouring out a measure of whisky as Rebus left, but the parting shot, called from the staircase, was loud enough for him to hear.
‘Maybe I’ll just go to the devil!’
‘Yes, a simple pentangle.’
The psychologist, Dr Poole, who wasn’t really a psychologist, but rather, he had explained, a lecturer in psychology, quite a different thing, studied the photographs carefully, bottom lip curling up to cover his top lip in a sign of confident recognition. Rebus played with the empty envelope and stared out of the office window. The day was bright, and some students were lying in George Square Gardens, sharing bottles of wine, their text books forgotten.
Rebus felt uncomfortable. Institutes of higher education, from the simplest college up to the present confines of the University of Edinburgh, made him feel stupid. He felt that his every movement, every utterance, was being judged and interpreted, marking him down as a clever man who could have been cleverer, given the breaks.
‘When I returned to the house,’ he said, ‘someone had drawn some symbols between the two circles. Signs of the zodiac, that sort of thing.’
Rebus watched as the psychologist went over to the bookshelves and began to browse. It had been easy to find this man. Making use of him might be more difficult.
‘Probably the usual arcana,’ Dr Poole was saying, finding the page he wanted and bringing it back to the desk to show Rebus. ‘This sort of thing?’
‘Yes, that’s it.’ Rebus studied the illustration. The pentagram was not identical to the one he had seen, but the differences were slight. ‘Tell me, are many people interested in the occult?’
‘You mean in Edinburgh?’ Poole sat down again, pushing his glasses back up his nose. ‘Oh yes. Plenty. Look at how well films about the devil do at the box office.’
Rebus smiled. ‘Yes, I used to like horror films myself. But I mean an active interest.’
The lecturer smiled. ‘I know you do. I was being facetious. So many people think that’s what the occult is about – bringing Old Nick back to life. There’s much more to it, believe me, Inspector. Or much less to it, depending on your point of view.’
Rebus tried to work out what this meant. ‘You know occultists?’ he said meantime.
‘I know of occultists, practising covens of white and black witches.’
‘Here? In Edinburgh?’
Poole smiled again. ‘Oh yes. Right here. There are six working covens in and around Edinburgh.’ He paused, and Rebus could almost see him doing a recount. ‘Seven, perhaps. Fortunately, most of these practise white magic.’
‘That’s using the occult as a supposed force for good, right?’
‘Quite correct.’
‘And black magic …?’
The lecturer sighed. He suddenly became interested in the scene from his window. A summer’s day. Rebus was remembering something. A long time ago, he’d bought a book of paintings by H.R. Giger, paintings of Satan flanked by vestal whores.… He couldn’t say why he’d done it, but it must still be somewhe
re in the flat. He remembered hiding it from Rhona.…
‘There is one coven in Edinburgh,’ Poole was saying. ‘A black coven.’
‘Tell me, do they … do they make sacrifices?’
Dr Poole shrugged. ‘We all make sacrifices.’ But, seeing that Rebus was not laughing at his little joke, he straightened in his chair, his face becoming more serious. ‘Probably they do, some token. A rat, a mouse, a chicken. It may not even go that far. They could use something symbolic, I really don’t know.’
Rebus tapped one of the photographs which were spread across the desk. ‘In the house where we found this pentagram, we also found a body. A dead body, in case you were wondering.’ He brought these photographs out now. Dr Poole frowned as he glanced at them. ‘Dead from a heroin overdose. Laid out with legs together, arms apart. The body was lying between two candles, which had burned down to nothing. Mean anything to you?’
Poole looked horror-struck. ‘No,’ he said. ‘But you think that Satanists.…’
‘I don’t think anything, sir. I’m just trying to piece things together, going through all the possibilities.’
Poole thought for a moment. ‘One of our students might be of more use to you than I can. I’d no idea we were talking about a death.…’
‘A student?’
‘Yes. I only know him vaguely. He seems very interested in the occult, wrote rather a long and knowledgeable essay this term. Wants to do some project on demonism. He’s a second-year student. They have to do a project over the summer. Yes, maybe he can give you more help than I’m able to.’
‘And his name is …?’
‘Well, his surname escapes me for the moment. He usually just calls himself by his first name. Charles.’
‘Charles?’
‘Or maybe Charlie. Yes, Charlie, that’s it.’
Ronnie’s friend’s name. The hair on Rebus’s neck began to prickle.
‘That’s right, Charlie,’ Poole confirmed to himself, nodding. ‘Bit of an eccentric. You can probably find him in one of the student union buildings. I believe he’s addicted to these video machines.…’
No, not video machines. Pinball machines. The ones with all the extras, all the little tricks and treats that made a game a game. Charlie loved them with a vengeance. It was the kind of love which was all the more fervent for having come to him late in life. He was nineteen after all, life was streaming past, and he wanted to hang on to any piece of driftwood he could. Pinball had played no part in his adolescence. That had belonged to books and music. Besides, there had been no pinball machines at his boarding school.
Now, released into university, he wanted to live. And to play pinball. And do all the other things he had missed out on during the years of prep, sensitive essay-writing, and introspection. Charlie wanted to run faster than anyone had ever run, to live not one life, but two or three or four. As the silver ball made contact with the left flipper, he threw it back up the table with real ferocity. There was a pause while the ball sat in one of the bonus craters, collecting another thousand points. He picked up his lager, took a gulp of it, and then returned his fingers to the buttons. In another ten minutes, he’d have the day’s high score.
‘Charlie?’
He turned at the sound of his name. A bad mistake, a naive mistake. He turned back to the game again, but too late. The man was striding towards him. The serious man. The unsmiling man.
‘I’d like a word, Charlie.’
‘Okay, how about carbohydrate. That was always one of my favourites.’
John Rebus’s smile lasted less than a second.
‘Very clever,’ he said. ‘Yes, that’s what we call a smart answer.’
‘We?’
‘Lothian CID. My name’s Inspector Rebus.’
‘Pleased to meet you.’
‘Likewise, Charlie.’
‘No, you’re mistaken. My name’s not Charlie. He comes in here sometimes though. I’ll tell him you called.’
Charlie was just about to hit the high score, five minutes ahead of schedule, when Rebus gripped his shoulder and spun him around. There were no other students in the games room, so he kept squeezing the shoulder while he spoke.
‘You’re about as funny as a maggot sandwich, Charlie, and patience isn’t my favourite card game. So you’ll excuse me if I become irritable, short-tempered, that sort of thing.’
‘Hands off.’ Charlie’s face had taken on a new sheen, but not of fear.
‘Ronnie,’ Rebus said, calmly now, releasing his grip on the young man’s shoulder.
The colour drained from Charlie’s face. ‘What about him?’
‘He’s dead.’
‘Yes.’ Charlie’s voice was quiet, his eyes unfocussed. ‘I heard.’
Rebus nodded. ‘Tracy tried to find you.’
‘Tracy.’ There was venom in the word. ‘She’s no idea, no idea at all. Have you seen her?’ Rebus nodded. ‘Yeah, what a loser that woman is. She never understood Ronnie. Never even tried.’
As Charlie spoke, Rebus was learning more about him. His accent was Scottish private school, which was the first surprise. Rebus didn’t know what he had expected. He knew he hadn’t expected this. Charlie was well built, too, a product of the rugby-playing classes. He had curly dark brown hair, cut not too long, and was dressed in traditional student summer wear: training shoes, denims, and a T-shirt. The T-shirt was black, torn loose at the arms.
‘So,’ Charlie was saying, ‘Ronnie did the big one, eh? Well, it’s a good age to die. Live fast, die young.’
‘Do you want to die young, Charlie?’
‘Me?’ Charlie laughed, a high-pitched squeal like a small animal. ‘Hell, I want to live to be a hundred. I never want to die.’ He looked at Rebus, something sparkling in his eyes. ‘Do you?’
Rebus considered the question, but wasn’t about to answer. He was here on business, not to discuss the death instinct. The lecturer, Dr Poole, had told him about the death instinct.
‘I want to know what you know about Ronnie.’
‘Does that mean you’re going to take me away for questioning?’
‘If you like. We can do it here if you’d prefer.…’
‘No, no. I want to go to the police station. Come on, take me there.’ There was a sudden eagerness about Charlie which made him seem much younger than his years. Who the hell wanted to go to a police station for questioning?
On the route to the car park and Rebus’s car, Charlie insisted on walking a few paces ahead of Rebus, and with his hands behind his back, head slumped. Rebus saw that Charlie was pretending to be handcuffed. He was doing a good impersonation too, drawing attention to Rebus and himself. Someone even called out ‘bastard’ in Rebus’s direction. But the word had lost all meaning over the years. They would have disturbed him more by wishing him a pleasant trip.
‘Can I buy a couple of these?’ Charlie asked, examining the photographs of his work, his pentagram.
The interview room was bleak. It was its purpose to be bleak. But Charlie had settled in like he was planning to rent it.
‘No,’ Rebus said, lighting a cigarette. He didn’t offer one to Charlie. ‘So, why did you paint it?’
‘Because it’s beautiful.’ He still studied the photographs. ‘Don’t you think? So full of meaning.’
‘How long had you known Ronnie?’
Charlie shrugged. For the first time, he looked in the direction of the cassette recorder. Rebus had asked if he minded having the dialogue recorded. He had shrugged. Now he seemed a little pensive. ‘Maybe a year,’ he said. ‘Yes, a year. I met him around the time of my first-year exams. That was when I started to get interested in the real Edinburgh.’
‘The real Edinburgh?’
‘Yes. Not just the piper on the ramparts, or the Royal Mile, or the Scott Monument.’ Rebus recalled Ronnie’s photographs of the Castle.
‘I saw some photos on Ronnie’s wall.’ Charlie screwed up his face.
‘God, those. He had the idea he was going
to be a professional photographer. Taking bloody tourist snaps for postcards. That didn’t last long. Like most of Ronnie’s schemes.’
‘Nice camera he had though.’
‘What? Oh, yes, his camera. Yes, it was his pride and joy.’ Charlie crossed his legs. Rebus continued to stare into the young man’s eyes, but Charlie was busily studying the photographs of the pentagram.
‘So what was that you were telling me about the “real” Edinburgh?’
‘Deacon Brodie,’ said Charlie, suddenly interested again, ‘Burke and Hare, justified sinners, the lot. But it’s all been cleaned up for the tourists, you see. And I thought, hang on, all this Lowland low-life still exists. That was when I started touring the housing estates, Wester Hailes, Oxgangs, Craigmillar, Pilmuir. And sure enough, it’s all still here, the past replaying itself in the present.’
‘So you started hanging around Pilmuir?’
‘Yes.’
‘In other words, you became a tourist yourself?’ Rebus had seen Charlie’s kind before, though usually the older model, the prosperous businessman debasing himself for kicks, visiting sleazy rooms for a dry cough of pleasure. He didn’t like the species.
‘I wasn’t a tourist!’ Charlie’s anger rose, a trout snapping a hooked worm. ‘I was there because I wanted to be there, and they wanted me there.’ His voice began to sound sulky. ‘I belong there.’
‘No you don’t, son, you belong in a big house somewhere with parents interested in your university career.’
‘Crap.’ Charlie pushed back his chair and walked to the wall, resting his head against it. Rebus thought for a moment that he might be about to beat himself senseless, then claim police brutality. But he seemed merely to need something cool against his face.