10 Great Rebus Novels (John Rebus) (136 page)

‘Hello, can I speak to Mr Maclean please? Mr Maclean? You don’t know me, but I have some information I’d like to share with you. It concerns a man called Andrew McPhail . . .’

Matthew Vanderhyde too made a telephone call that afternoon, but only after long thought in his favourite armchair. He held the cordless phone in his hand, tapping it with a long fingernail. He could hear a dog outside, the one from down the street with the nasal whine. The clock on the mantelpiece ticked, the tick seeming to slow as he concentrated on it. Time’s heartbeat. At last he made the call. There was no preamble.

‘I’ve just had a policeman here,’ he said. ‘He was asking about the night the Central Hotel caught fire.’ He hesitated slightly. ‘I told him about Aengus.’ He could pause now, listening with a weary smile to the fury on the other end of the line, a fury he knew so well. ‘Broderick,’ he interrupted, ‘if any skeletons are being uncloseted,
I
don’t want to be the only one shivering.’

When the fury began afresh, Matthew Vanderhyde terminated the call.

Rebus noticed the man for the first time that evening. He thought he’d seen him outside St Leonard’s in the afternoon. A young man, tall and broad-shouldered. He was standing outside the entrance to Rebus’s communal stairwell in Arden Street. Rebus parked his car across the street, so that he could watch the man in his rearview mirror. The man looked agitated, pumped up about something. Maybe he was only waiting for his date. Maybe.

Rebus wasn’t scared, but he started the car again and drove off anyway. He’d give it an hour and see if the man was still there. If he was, then he wasn’t waiting on any date, no matter how bonny the girl. He drove along the Meadows to Tollcross, then took a right down Lothian Road. It was slow going, as per. The number of vehicles needing to get through the city of an evening seemed to grow every week. Edinburgh in the twilight looked much the same as any other place: shops and offices and crowded pavements. Nobody looked particularly happy.

He crossed Princes Street, cut into Charlotte Square, and began the crawl along Queensferry Street and Queensferry Road until he could take a merciful (if awkward) right turn into Oxford Terrace. But Patience wasn’t home. He knew Patience’s sister was expected this week, staying a few days then taking the girls home. Patience’s cat, Lucky, sat outside, demanding entry, and Rebus for once was almost sympathetic.

‘Nae luck,’ he told it, before starting back up the steps.

When he got back to Arden Street, there was no sign of the skulking hulk. But Rebus would recognise him if he saw him again. Oh yes, he’d know him, all right.

Indoors, he had another argument with Michael, the two of them in the living room, everyone else in the kitchen. That was another thing: how many tenants did he have? There seemed to be a shifting population of about a dozen, where he’d rented to three with a possible fourth. He could swear he saw different faces every morning, and as a result could never remember anyone’s name.

So there was another row about that, this time with the students in the kitchen while Michael sat in the box room, at the end of which Rebus said, ‘Away to hell,’ and proceeded to follow his own instructions by getting back in his car and making for one of the city’s least respectable quarters, there to dine on pies and pints while staring at a soundless TV. He spoke with a few of his contacts, who had nothing to report regarding the assault on Brian Holmes.

So it was just another evening, really.

He got back purposely late, hoping everyone else would have gone to bed. He fumbled with the door-catch of the tenement and let the door swing shut loudly behind him, searching in his pockets for the flat key, eyes to the ground. So he didn’t see the man, who must have been sitting on the bottom step of the stairs.

‘Hello there.’

Rebus looked up, startled, recognised the figure, and sent small change and keys scattering as he threw a punch. He wasn’t that drunk, but then his target was stone cold sober and twenty years younger. The man palmed the punch easily. He looked surprised at the attack, but also somehow excited by it. Rebus cut short the thrill of it all by sharply raising his knee into unprotected groin. The man expelled air noisily, and started to double over, which gave Rebus the opportunity to punch down onto the back of his neck. He felt his knuckles crackle with the force of the blow.

‘Jesus,’ the man gasped. ‘Stop it.’

Rebus stopped it and wagged his aching hand. But he wasn’t about to offer help. He kept his distance, and asked ‘Who are you?’

The man managed to stop retching for a moment. ‘Andy Steele.’

‘Nice to meet you, Andy. What the fuck do you want?’

The man looked up at Rebus with tears in his eyes. It took him a while to catch his breath. When he spoke, Rebus either couldn’t understand the accent or else just didn’t believe what he was saying. He asked Steele to repeat himself.

‘Your auntie sent me,’ said Steele. ‘She’s got a message for you.’

Rebus sat Andy Steele down on the sofa with a cup of tea, including the four sugars Steele himself had requested.

‘Can’t be good for your teeth.’

‘They’re not my own,’ Steele replied, huddled over the hot mug.

‘Then whose are they?’ asked Rebus. Steele gave the flicker of a smile. ‘You’ve been following me all day.’

‘Not exactly. Maybe if I had a car, but I don’t.’

You don’t have a car?’ Steele shook his head. ‘Some private detective.’

‘I didn’t say I was a private detective exactly. I mean, I
want
to be one.’

‘A sort of trainee, then?’

‘Aye, that’s right. Testing the water, so to speak.’

‘And how’s the water, Andy?’

Another smile, a sip of tea. ‘A bit hot. But I’ll be more careful next time.’

‘I didn’t even know I had an aunt. Not up north.’ Steele’s accent was a giveaway.

Andy Steele nodded. ‘She lives next door to my mum and dad, just across the road from Pittodrie.’

‘Aberdeen?’ Rebus nodded to himself. ‘It’s coming back to me. Yes, an uncle and aunt in Aberdeen.’

‘Your dad and Jimmy – that’s your uncle – fell out years ago. You’re probably too young to remember.’

‘Thanks for the compliment.’

‘It’s just what Ena told me.’

‘And now Uncle Jimmy’s dead?’

‘Three weeks past.’

‘And Aunt Ena wants to see me?’ Steele nodded. ‘What about?’

‘I don’t know. She was just talking about how she’d like to see you again.’

‘Just me? No mention of my brother?’

Steele shook his head. Rebus had checked to see if Michael was in the box room. He wasn’t. But the other bedrooms seemed to be occupied.

‘Right enough,’ said Rebus, ‘if they argued when I was wee, maybe it was before Michael was born.’

‘They might no’ even know about him,’ Steele conceded. Well, that was families for you. ‘Anyway, Ena kept harping on about you, so I told her I’d come south and have a look. I got laid off from the fishing boats six months ago, and I’ve been going up the wall ever since. Besides, I told you I’ve always fancied being a private eye. I love all those films.’

‘Films don’t get you a knee in the balls.’

‘True enough.’

‘So how
did
you find me?’

Steele’s face brightened. ‘I went to the address Ena gave me, where you and your dad used to live. All the neighbours knew was that you were a policeman in Edinburgh. So I got the directory out and phoned every station I could find, asking for John Rebus.’ He shrugged and returned to his tea.

‘But how did you get my home address?’

‘Someone in CID gave it to me.’

‘Don’t tell me, Inspector Flower?’

‘A name like that, aye.’

Seated on the sofa, Andy Steele looked to be in his mid-twenties. He had the sort of large frame which could be kept in shape only through hard work, such as that found on a North Sea fishing boat. But already, deprived of work for six months, that frame was growing heavy with disuse. Rebus felt sorry for Andy Steele and his dreams of becoming a private eye. The way he stared into space as he drank the tea, he looked lost, his immediate life without form or plan.

‘So are you going to go and see her?’

‘Maybe at the weekend,’ said Rebus.

‘She’d like that.’

‘I can give you a lift back.’

But the young man was shaking his head. ‘No, I’d like to stay in Edinburgh for a bit.’

‘Suit yourself,’ said Rebus. ‘Just be careful.’

‘Careful? I could tell you stories about Aberdeen that would make your hair stand on end.’

‘And could they thicken it a bit at the temples while they’re at it?’

It took Andy Steele a minute to get the joke.

The next day, Rebus paid a visit to Andrew McPhail. But McPhail wasn’t home, and his landlady hadn’t seen him since the previous evening.

‘Usually he comes down at seven sharp for a wee bitty breakfast. So I went upstairs and there was no sign of him. Is he in any trouble, Inspector?’

‘No, nothing like that, Mrs MacKenzie. This is a lovely Madiera by the way.’

‘Ach, it’s a few days since I made it, it’s probably a bit dry by now.’

Rebus shook his head and gulped at the tea, hoping to wash the crumbs down his throat. But they merely formed into a huge solid lump which he had to force down by degrees, and without a public show of gagging.

There was a bird-cage standing in one corner of the room, boasting mirrors and cuttle-fish and millet spray. But no sign of any bird. Maybe it had escaped.

He left his card with Mrs MacKenzie, telling her to pass it on to Mr McPhail when she saw him. He didn’t doubt that she would. It had been unfair of him to introduce himself as a policeman to the landlady. She would probably become suspicious, and might even give McPhail a week’s notice on the strength of those suspicions. That would be a terrible shame.

Actually, it didn’t look to Rebus as though Mrs MacKenzie would twig. And McPhail would doubtless come up with some reason for Rebus’s visit. Probably the City of Edinburgh Police were about to award him a commendation for saving some puppies from the raging torrents of the Water of Leith. McPhail was good at making up stories, after all. Children just loved to hear stories.

Rebus stood outside Mrs MacKenzie’s house and looked across the road. It had to be coincidence that McPhail had chosen a boarding house within ogling distance of a primary school. Rebus had seen it on his arrival; it had been enough to decide him on identifying himself to the landlady. After all, he didn’t believe in coincidence.

And if McPhail couldn’t be persuaded to move, well, maybe the neighbours would find out the true story of Mrs MacKenzie’s lodger. Rebus got into his car. He didn’t always like himself or his job.

But some bits were okay.

Back at St Leonard’s, Siobhan Clarke had nothing new to report on the stabbing. Rory Kintoul was being very cagey about another interview. He’d cancelled one arranged meeting, and she’d not been able to contact him since.

‘His son’s seventeen and unemployed, spends most of the day at home, I could try talking to him.’

‘You could.’ But it was a lot of trouble. Maybe Holmes was right. ‘Just do your best,’ said Rebus. ‘After you’ve talked with Kintoul, if we’re no further forward we’ll drop the whole thing. If Kintoul wants to get himself stabbed, that’s fine with me.’

She nodded and turned away.

‘Any news on Brian?’

She turned back. ‘He’s been talking.’

‘Talking?’

‘In his sleep. I thought you’d know.’

‘What’s he been saying?’

‘Nothing they can make out, but it means he’s slowly regaining consciousness.’

‘Good.’

She started to turn away again, but Rebus thought of something. ‘How are you getting to Aberdeen on Saturday?’

‘Driving, why?’

‘Any room in the car?’

‘There’s just me.’

‘Then you won’t mind giving me a lift.’

She looked startled. ‘Not at all. Where to?’

‘Pittodrie.’

Now she looked even more surprised. ‘I wouldn’t have taken you for a Hibs fan, sir.’

Rebus screwed up his face. ‘No, you’re all alone in that category. I just need a lift, that’s all.’

‘Fine.’

‘And on the way, you can tell me what you’ve learned from the files on Big Ger.’

By Saturday, Rebus had argued three times with Michael (who was talking about moving out anyway), once with the students (also talking about moving), and once with the receptionist at Patience’s surgery when she wouldn’t put Rebus through. Brian Holmes had opened his eyes briefly, and it was reckoned by the doctors that he was on his way to recovery. None of them, however, hazarded the phrase ‘full recovery’. Still, the news had cheered Siobhan Clarke, and she was in a good mood when she arrived at Rebus’s Arden Street flat. He was waiting for her at street level. She drove a two-year-old cherry-red Renault 5. It looked young and full of life, while Rebus’s car (parked next to it) looked to be in terminal condition. But Rebus’s car had been looking like this for three or four years now, and just when he’d determined to get rid of it it always seemed to go into remission. Rebus had the feeling the car could read his mind.

‘Morning, sir,’ said Siobhan Clarke. There was pop music coming from the stereo. She saw Rebus cringe as he got into the passenger seat, and turned the volume down. ‘Bad night?’

‘People always seem to ask me that.’

‘Now why could that be?’

They stopped at a bakery so Rebus could buy some breakfast. There had been nothing in the flat worth the description ‘food’, but then Rebus couldn’t really complain. His contribution to the larder so far had filled a single shopping basket. And most of that had been meat, something the students didn’t touch. He noticed Michael had gone vegetarian too, at least in public.

‘It’s healthier, John,’ he’d told his brother, slapping his stomach.

‘What’s that supposed to mean?’ Rebus had snapped.

Michael had merely shaken his head sadly. ‘Too much caffeine.’

That was another thing, the kitchen cupboards were full of jars of what looked like coffee but turned out to be ‘infusions’ of crushed tree bark and chicory. At the bakery, Rebus bought a polystyrene beaker of coffee and two sausage rolls. The sausage rolls turned out to be a bad mistake, the flakes of pastry breaking off and covering the otherwise pristine car interior – despite Rebus’s best attempts with the paper bag.