10 Great Rebus Novels (John Rebus) (128 page)

‘Must be later than we thought if the birds are up.’ They readied themselves for opening the back of the van, then did so. The smell really was foul. Even the stoical passenger wrinkled his nose and tried hard not to breathe.

‘Quicker the better,’ he said in a rush. The body had been placed in two thick plastic fertiliser sacks, one pulled over the feet and one over the head, so that they overlapped in the middle. Tape and string had been used to join them. Inside the bags were also a number of breeze blocks, making for a heavy and awkward load. They carried the grotesque parcel low, brushing the wet grass. Their shoes were squelching by the time they passed the sign warning about the cliff face ahead. Even more difficult was the climb over the fence, though it was rickety enough to start with.

‘Wouldn’t stop a bloody kid,’ the driver commented. He was peching, the saliva like glue in his mouth.

‘Ca’ canny,’ said the passenger. They shuffled forwards two inches at a time, until they could all too clearly make out the edge. There was no more land after that, just a vertical fall to the agitated sea. ‘Right,’ he said. Without ceremony, they heaved the thing out into space, glad immediately to be rid of it. ‘Let’s go.’

‘Man, but that air smells good.’ The driver reached into his pocket for a quarter-bottle of whisky. They were halfway back to the van when they heard a car on the road, and the crunch of tyres on gravel.

‘Aw, hell’s bells.’

The headlights caught them as they reached the van.

‘The fuckin’ polis!’ choked the driver.

‘Keep the heid,’ warned the passenger. His voice was quiet, but his eyes burned ahead of him. They heard a handbrake being engaged, and the car door opened. A uniformed officer appeared. He was carrying a torch. The headlights and engine had been left on. There was no one else in the car.

The passenger knew the score. This wasn’t a set-up. Probably the copper came here towards the end of his night shift. There’d be a flask or a blanket in the car. Coffee or a snooze before signing off for the day.

‘Morning,’ the uniform said. He wasn’t young, and he wasn’t used to trouble. A Saturday night punch-up maybe, or disputes between neighbouring farmers. It had been another long boring night for him, another night nearer his pension.

‘Morning,’ the passenger said. He knew they could bluff this one, if the driver stayed calm. But then he thought,
I’m
the conspicuous one.

‘A right pea-souper, eh?’ said the policeman.

The passenger nodded.

‘That’s why we stopped,’ explained the driver. ‘Thought we’d wait it out.’

‘Very sensible.’

The driver watched as the passenger turned to the van and started inspecting its rear driver-side tyre, giving it a kick. He then walked to the rear passenger-side and did the same, before getting down on his knees to peer beneath the vehicle. The policeman watched the performance too.

‘Got a bit of trouble?’

‘Not really,’ the driver said nervously. ‘But it’s best to be safe.’

‘I see you’ve come a ways.’

The driver nodded. ‘Off up to Dundee.’

The policeman frowned. ‘From Edinburgh? Why didn’t you just stick to the motorway or the A914?’

The driver thought quickly. ‘We’ve a drop-off in Tayport first.’

‘Even so,’ the policeman started. The driver watched as the passenger rose from his inspection, now sited behind the policeman. He was holding a rock in his hand. The driver kept his eyes glued to the policeman’s as the rock rose, then fell. The monologue finished mid-sentence as the body slumped to the ground.

‘That’s just beautiful.’

‘What else could we do?’ The passenger was already making for his door. ‘Come on, vamoose!’

‘Aye,’ said the driver, ‘another minute and he’d have spotted your . . . er . . .’

The passenger glowered at him. ‘What you mean is, another minute and he’d’ve smelt the booze on your breath.’ He didn’t stop glowering until the driver shrugged his agreement.

They turned the van and drove out of the car park. The gulls were still noisy in the distance. The police car’s engine was turning over. The headlights picked out the prone unconscious figure. But the torch had broken in the fall.

It all happened because John Rebus was in his favourite massage parlour reading the Bible.

It all happened because a man walked in through the door in the mistaken belief that any massage parlour sited so close to a brewery and half a dozen good pubs had to be catering to Friday night pay packets and anytime drunks; and therefore had to be bent as a paperclip.

But the Organ Grinder, God-fearing tenant of the setup, ran a clean shop, a place where tired muscles were beaten mellow. Rebus was tired: tired of arguments with Patience Aitken, tired of the fact that his brother had turned up seeking shelter in a flat filled to the gunwales with students, and most of all tired of his job.

It had been that kind of week.

On the Monday evening, he’d had a call from his Arden Street flat. The students he’d rented to had Patience’s number and knew they could reach him there, but this was the first time they’d ever had reason. The reason was Michael Rebus.

‘Hello, John.’

Rebus recognised the voice at once. ‘Mickey?’

‘How are you, John?’

‘Christ, Mickey. Where are you? No, scratch that, I know where you are. I mean –’ Michael was laughing softly. ‘It’s just I heard you’d gone south.’

‘Didn’t work out.’ His voice dropped. ‘Thing is, John, can we talk? I’ve been dreading this, but I really need to talk to you.’

‘Okay.’

‘Shall I come round there?’

Rebus thought quickly. Patience was picking up her two nieces from Waverley Station, but all the same . . . ‘No, stay where you are. I’ll come over. The students are a good lot, maybe they’ll fix you a cup of tea or a joint while you’re waiting.’

There was silence on the line, then Michael’s voice: ‘I could have done without that.’ The line went dead.

Michael Rebus had served three years of a five-year sentence for drug dealing. During that time, John Rebus had visited his brother fewer than half a dozen times. He’d felt relief more than anything when, upon release, Michael had taken a bus to London. That was two years ago, and the brothers had not exchanged a word since. But now Michael was back, bringing with him bad memories of a period in John Rebus’s life he’d rather not remember.

The Arden Street flat was suspiciously tidy when he arrived. Only two of the student tenants were around, the couple who slept in what had been Rebus’s bedroom. He talked to them in the hallway. They were just going out to the pub, but handed over to him another letter from the Inland Revenue. Really, Rebus would have liked them to stay. When they left, there was silence in the flat. Rebus knew that Michael would be in the living room and he was, crouched in front of the stereo and flipping through stacks of records.

‘Look at this lot,’ Michael said, his back still to Rebus. ‘The Beatles and the Stones, same stuff you used to listen to. Remember how you drove dad daft? What was that record player again . . .?’

‘A Dansette.’

‘That’s it. Dad got it saving cigarette coupons.’ Michael stood up and turned towards his brother. ‘Hello, John.’

‘Hello, Michael.’

They didn’t hug or shake hands. They just sat down, Rebus on the chair, Michael on the sofa.

‘This place has changed,’ Michael said.

‘I had to buy a few sticks of furniture before I could rent it out.’ Already Rebus had noticed a few things – cigarette burns on the carpet, posters (against his explicit instructions) sellotaped to the wallpaper. He opened the taxman’s letter.

‘You should have seen them leap into action when I told them you were coming round. Hoovering and washing dishes. Who says students are lazy?’

‘They’re okay.’

‘So when did this all happen?’

‘A few months ago.’

‘They told me you’re living with a doctor.’

‘Her name’s Patience.’

Michael nodded. He looked pale and ill. Rebus tried not to be interested, but he was. The letter from the tax office hinted strongly that they knew he was renting his flat, and didn’t he want to declare the income? The back of his head was tingling. It did that when he was fractious, ever since it had been burned in the fire. The doctors said there was nothing he or they could do about it.

Except, of course, not get fractious.

He stuffed the letter into his pocket. ‘What do you want, Mickey?’

‘Bottom line, John, I need a place to stay. Just for a week or two, till I can get on my feet.’ Rebus stared stonily at the posters on the walls as Michael ran on. He wanted to find work . . . money was tight . . . he’d take any job . . . he just needed a chance.

‘That’s all, John, just one chance.’

Rebus was thinking. Patience had room in her flat, of course. There was space enough there even with the nieces staying. But no way was Rebus going to take his brother back to Oxford Terrace. Things weren’t going that well as it was. His late hours and her late hours, his exhaustion and hers, his job involvement and hers. Rebus couldn’t see Michael improving things. He thought: I am not my brother’s keeper. But all the same.

‘We might squeeze you into the box room. I’d have to talk to the students about it.’ He couldn’t see them saying no, but it seemed polite to ask. How
could
they say no? He was their landlord and flats were hard to find. Especially good flats, especially in Marchmont.

‘That would be great.’ Michael sounded relieved. He got up from the sofa and walked over to the door of the box room. This was a large ventilated cupboard off the living room. Just big enough for a single bed and a chest of drawers, if you took all the boxes and the rubbish out of it.

‘We could probably store all that stuff in the cellar,’ said Rebus, standing just behind his brother.

‘John,’ said Michael, ‘the way I feel, I’d be happy enough sleeping in the cellar myself.’ And when he turned towards his brother, there were tears in Michael Rebus’s eyes.

On Wednesday, Rebus began to realise that his world was a black comedy.

Michael had been moved into the Arden Street flat without any fuss. Rebus had informed Patience of his brother’s return, but had said little more than that. She was spending a lot of time with her sister’s girls anyway. She’d taken a few days off work to show them Edinburgh. It looked like hard going. Susan at fifteen wanted to do all the things which Jenny, aged eight, didn’t or couldn’t. Rebus felt almost totally excluded from this female triumvirate, though he would sneak into Jenny’s room at night just to re-live the magic and innocence of a child asleep. He also spent time trying to avoid Susan, who seemed only too aware of the differences between women and men.

He was kept busy at work, which meant he didn’t think about Michael more than a few dozen times each day. Ah, work, now there was a thing. When Great London Road police station had burnt down, Rebus had been moved to St Leonard’s, which was Central District’s divisional HQ.

With him had come Detective Sergeant Brian Holmes and, to both their dismays, Chief Superintendent ‘Farmer’ Watson and Chief Inspector ‘Fart’ Lauderdale. There had been compensations – newer offices and furniture, better amenities and equipment – but not enough. Rebus was still trying to come to terms with his new workplace. Everything was so tidy, he could never find anything, as a result of which he was always keen to get out of the office and onto the street.

Which was why he ended up at a butcher’s shop on South Clerk Street, staring down at a stabbed man.

The man had already been tended to by a local doctor, who’d been standing in line waiting for some pork chops and gammon steaks when the man staggered into the shop. The wound had been dressed initially with a clean butcher’s apron, and now everyone was waiting for a stretcher to be unloaded from the ambulance outside.

A constable was filling Rebus in.

‘I was only just up the road, so he couldn’t have been here more than five minutes when somebody told me, and I came straight here. That’s when I radioed in.’

Rebus had picked up the constable’s radio message in his car, and had decided to stop by. He kind of wished he hadn’t. There was blood smeared across the floor, colouring the sawdust which lay there. Why some butchers still scattered sawdust on their floors he couldn’t say. There was also a palm-shaped daub of blood on the white-tiled wall, and another less conclusive splash of the stuff below this.

The wounded man had also left a trail of gleaming drips outside, all the way along and halfway up Lutton Place (insultingly close to St Leonard’s), where they suddenly stopped kerbside.

The man’s name was Rory Kintoul, and he had been stabbed in the abdomen. This much they knew. They didn’t know much more, because Rory Kintoul was refusing to speak about the incident. This was not an attitude shared by those who had been in the butcher’s at the time. They were outside now, passing on news of the excitement to the crowd who had stopped to gawp through the shop window. It reminded Rebus of Saturday afternoon in the St James Centre, when pockets of men would gather outside the TV rental shops, hoping to catch the football scores.

Rebus crouched over Kintoul, just a little intimidatingly.

‘And where do you live, Mr Kintoul?’

But the man was not about to answer. A voice came from the other side of the glass display case.

‘Duncton Terrace.’ The speaker was wearing a bloodied butcher’s apron and cleaning a heavy knife on a towel. ‘That’s in Dalkeith.’

Rebus looked at the butcher. ‘And you are . . .?’

‘Jim Bone. This is my shop.’

‘And you know Mr Kintoul?’

Kintoul had turned his head awkwardly, seeking the butcher’s face, as if trying to influence his answer. But, slouched as he was against the display case, he would have required demonic possession to effect such a move.

‘I ought to,’ said the butcher. ‘He’s my cousin.’

Rebus was about to say something, but at that moment the stretcher was trolleyed in by two ambulancemen, one of whom almost skited on the slippery floor. It was as they positioned the stretcher in front of Kintoul that Rebus saw something which would stay with him. There were two signs in the display cabinet, one pinned into a side of corned beef, the other into a slab of red sirloin.