10 Great Rebus Novels (John Rebus) (145 page)

He got bums all right, some of whom wouldn’t have looked amiss in the original Bowery. He also got some students and perennial hard drinkers, partly because of the pub’s location but mostly because of the late licence. There had never been any trouble though, well, none to speak of. Half the drinkers in the Bowery feared the other half, who meantime were busy fearing
them
. Besides which, it was rumoured Big Ger gave round-the-clock insurance – for a price.

Chick Muir often drank there, though he managed not to participate in what was reckoned to be Edinburgh’s least musical karaoke. Eddie Ringan for one would have died on the spot at the various awful deaths suffered by ‘Hound Dog’ and ‘Wooden Heart’. Off-key and out of condition, the singers could transform a simple word like ‘crying’ into a multi-syllabled meaningless drawl. Huh-kuh-rye-a-yeng was an approximation of the sound that greeted Rebus as he pulled at the double doors to the pub and slitted his eyes against the cigarette fug.

As ‘Crying in the Chapel’ came to its tearful end, Rebus felt a hand squeeze his arm.

‘You made it then.’

‘Hullo, Chick. What are you having?’

‘A double Grouse would hit the spot, not that I believe they keep real Grouse in their Grouse bottles.’ Chick Muir grinned, showing two rows of dull gold teeth. He was a foot and a half shorter than Rebus, and looked in this crowd like a wee boy lost in the woods. ‘Still,’ he said, ‘it might not be Grouse, but it’s a quarter gill.’

Well, there was logic in that somewhere. So Rebus pushed his way to the bar and shouted his order. There was applause all around as a favourite son of song took the stage. Rebus glanced along the bar and saw Deek Torrance, looking no more drunk or sober than the last time they’d met. As Rebus was paying for his drinks (he’d never to wait; they knew him in here) Torrance saw him, and gave a nod and a wave. Rebus indicated that he had to take the drinks but would be back, and Torrance nodded again.

The music had started up. Oh please, no, thought Rebus. Not ‘Little Red Rooster’. On the video, a cockerel seemed to be taking an interest in the blonde farm-girl who had come out to collect the morning eggs.

‘Here you are, Chick. Cheers.’

‘Slainte.’ Chick took a sip, savoured, then shook his head. ‘I’m sure this isn’t Grouse. Did you see him?’

‘I saw him.’

‘And it’s the right chap?’

Rebus handed over a folded tenner, which Chick pocketed. ‘It’s him, all right.’

And indeed, Deek Torrance was squeezing his way towards them through the crush. But he stopped short and leaned over another drinker to tap Rebus’s shoulder.

‘John, just going –’ He yanked his head towards the toilets at the side of the stage. ‘Back in a min.’ Rebus nodded his understanding and Torrance moved away again through the tide. Chick Muir sank his whisky. ‘I’ll make myself scarce,’ he said.

‘Aye, see you around, Chick.’ Chick nodded and, placing his glass on a table, made for the exit. Rebus tried to shut out ‘Little Red Rooster’, and when this failed he followed Torrance to the toilets. He saw Deek having a word with the DJ on the stage, then pushing open the door of the gents’. Rebus glared at the singer as he passed, but the crowd was whipping the middle-aged man to greater and greater depths.

Deek was at the communal urinal, laughing at a cartoon on the wall. It showed two football players in Hearts strips involved in an act of buggery, and above it was the caption ‘Jam Tarts – Well Stuffed!’ It was the sort of thing you had to expect on Easter Road. In a pub somewhere in Gorgie there would be a similar cartoon portraying two Hibernian players. Rebus checked that no one else was in the gents’. Deek, looking over his shoulder, spotted him.

‘John, I thought for a minute you were a willie-watcher.’

But Rebus was in serious mood. ‘I need you to get me something, Deek.’

Torrance grunted.

‘Remember when you said you could lay your hands on anything?’

‘Anything from a shag to a shooter,’ quoted Deek.

‘The latter,’ Rebus said simply. Deek Torrance looked like he might be about to comment. Instead, he grunted, zipped his fly, and went over to the washbasin.

‘You could get into trouble.’

‘I could.’

Torrance dried his hands on the filthy roller-towel. ‘When would you need it?’

‘ASAP.’

‘Any particular model?’ They were both serious now, talking in quiet, level tones.

‘Whatever you can get will be fine. How much?’

‘Anything up to a couple of hundred. You sure you want to do this?’

‘I’m sure.’

‘You could get a licence, make it legit.’

‘I could.’

‘But you probably won’t.’

‘You don’t want to know, Deek.’

Deek grunted again. The door swung open and a young man, grinning from one side of his mouth while holding a cigarette in the other, breezed in. He ignored the two men and made for the urinal.

‘Give me a phone number.’ The youth half-glanced over his shoulder at them. ‘Eyes front, son!’ Torrance snarled at him. ‘Guide dogs are gey expensive these days!’

Rebus tore a sheet from his notepad. ‘Two numbers,’ he said. ‘Home and work.’

‘I’ll be in touch.’

Rebus pulled open the door. ‘Buy you a drink?’

Torrance shook his head. ‘I’m heading off.’ He paused. ‘You’re sure about this?’

John Rebus nodded.

When Deek had gone, he bought himself another drink. He was shaking, his heart racing. A good-looking woman had been singing ‘Band of Gold’, and adequately too. She got the biggest cheer of the night. The DJ came to the microphone and repeated her name. There were more cheers as her boyfriend helped her down from the stage. His fingers were covered with gold rings. Now the DJ was introducing the next act.

‘He’s chosen to sing for us that great old number “King of the Road”. So let’s have a big hand for John Rebus!’

There was some applause, and the people who knew him lowered their drinks and looked towards where Rebus stood at the bar.

‘You bastard, Deek!’ he hissed. The DJ was looking out over the crowd.

‘John, are you still with us?’ The audience were looking around too. Someone, Rebus realised later, must have pointed him out, for suddenly the DJ was announcing that John was a shy one but he was standing at the bar with the black padded jacket on and his head buried in his glass. ‘So let’s coax him up here with an extra big hand.’

There was an extra big hand for John Rebus as he turned to face the crowd. It was fortunate indeed, he later decided, that Deek hadn’t given him a gun then and there. Just the one bullet would have done.

Deek Torrance hated himself, but he made the phone call anyway. He made it from a public box beside a patch of waste ground. Despite the late hour, some children were riding their bikes noisily across the churned-up tarmac. They had set up a ramp from two planks and a milk crate, and launched themselves into darkness, landing heavily on their suffering tyres.

‘It’s Deek Torrance,’ he said when the telephone was answered. He knew he would have to wait while his name was passed along. He rested his forehead against the side of the call-box. The plastic was cool. We all grow up, he said to himself. It’s not much fun, but we all do it. No Peter Pans around these days.

Someone was on the line now. The telephone had been picked up at the other end.

‘It’s Deek Torrance,’ he repeated, quite unnecessarily. ‘I’ve got a bit of news . . .’

Rebus was at work surprisingly early on Wednesday morning. He’d never been known as the earliest of arrivals, and his presence in the CID room made his more punctual colleagues look twice, just to be sure they weren’t still warm and safe and dreaming in their beds.

They didn’t get too close though, an early morning Rebus not being in the best of humours. But he’d wanted to get here before the day’s swarm began: he didn’t want too many people seeing just what information he was calling up on the computer.

Not that there was much on Aengus Grahame Fairmile Gibson. Public drunkenness mostly, usually with associated high jinks. Knocking the policeman’s helmet off seemed to be a game enjoyed by youthful Gibson and his cronies. Other indiscretions included kerb-crawling in a part of town not renowned for its prostitutes, and an attempt to enter a friend’s flat by the window (the key having been lost) which landed him in the wrong flat.

But it all came to a stop five years ago. From then till now, Gibson had received not so much as a parking ticket or a speeding fine. So much for his police files. Rebus punched in Broderick Gibson, too, not expecting anything. His expectations were fulfilled. The elder Gibson’s ‘youthful indiscretions’ would be the stuff of musty old files in an annexe somewhere – always supposing there were any to begin with. Rebus had the feeling that anyone associated with Scottish Sword & Shield would probably have been arrested for disorderly conduct or breach of the peace at
some
point in their career. The possible exception, perhaps, being Matthew Vanderhyde.

He made a phone call to check that the meeting he’d arranged yesterday was still on, then switched off the computer and headed out of the building, just as a bleary Chief Superintendent Watson was coming in.

He waited in the newspaper office’s public area, flipping through the past week’s editions. A few early punters came in with Spot the Ball coupons or the like, and a few more hopefuls were checking copy with the people on the classified ads desk.

‘Inspector Rebus.’ She’d come from behind the main desk, where a stern security man had been keeping a watchful eye on Rebus. She was already wearing her raincoat, so there was to be no tour of the premises today, though she’d been promising him for weeks.

Her name was Mairie Henderson and she was in her early twenties. Rebus had come up against her when she was compiling a postmortem feature on the Gregor Jack case. Rebus had just wanted to forget about the whole ugly episode, but she’d been persistent . . . and persuasive. She was just out of college, where she’d won awards for her student journalism and for pieces she’d contributed to the daily and weekly press. She hadn’t yet forgotten how to be hungry; Rebus liked that.

‘Come on,’ she said. ‘I’m starving. I’ll buy you breakfast.’

So they went to a little cafe/bakery on South Bridge, where there were difficult choices to be made. Was it too early for pies and bridies? Too early for a fruit scone? Well then, they’d be like everyone else and settle for sliced sausage, black pudding and fried eggs.

‘No haggis or dumpling?’ Mairie was so imploring, the woman at the counter went off to ask the chef. Which made Rebus make a mental note to phone Pat Calder sometime today. But there was no haggis or dumpling, not even for ready money. So they took their trays to the cash till, where Mairie insisted on paying.

‘After all, you’re going to give me the story of the decade.’

‘I don’t know about that.’

‘One of these days you will, trust me.’

They squeezed into a booth and she reached for the brown sauce, then for the ketchup. ‘I can never decide between the two. Shame about the fried dumpling, that’s my favourite.’

She was about five feet five inches and had about as much fat on her as a rabbit in a butcher’s window. Rebus looked down at his fry-up and suddenly didn’t feel very hungry. He sipped the weak coffee.

‘So what’s it all about?’ she asked, having made a good start into the food on her plate.

‘You tell me.’

She waved a no-no with her knife. ‘Not till you tell me why you want to know.’

‘That’s not the way the game’s played.’

‘We’ll change the rules, then.’ She scooped up some egg-white with her fork. She had her coat wrapped tight around her, though it was steamy in the cafe. Good legs too; Rebus missed seeing her legs. He blew on the coffee, then sipped again. She’d be willing to wait all day for him to say something.

‘Remember the fire at the Central Hotel?’ he said at last.

‘I was still at school.’

‘A body turned up in the ruins.’ She nodded encouragement. ‘Well, maybe there’s new evidence . . . no, not new evidence. It’s just that some things have been happening, and I think they’ve got something to do with that fire and that shooting.’

‘This isn’t an official investigation, then?’

‘Not yet.’

‘And there’s no story?’

Rebus shook his head. ‘Nothing that wouldn’t get you pasted in a libel court.’

‘I could live with that, if the story was good enough.’

‘It isn’t, not yet.’

She began mopping-up operations with a triangle of buttered bread. ‘So let me get this straight: you’re on your own looking into a fire from five years ago?’

A fire which turned one man to drink, he could have said, and led another to the path of self-righteousness. But all he did was nod.

‘And what’s Gibson got to do with it?’

‘Strictly between us, he was there that night. Yet he was kept off the list of the hotel’s customers.’

‘His father pulled some strings?’

‘Could be.’

‘Well, that’s already a story.’

‘I’ve nothing to back it up.’ This was a lie, there was always Vanderhyde; but he wasn’t going to tell her that. He didn’t want her getting ideas. The way she was staring, she was getting plenty of those anyway.

‘Nothing?’

‘Nothing,’ he repeated.

‘Well, I don’t know that this will help.’ She opened her coat and pulled out the file which she’d been hiding, tucked down the front of her fashion-cut denims. He accepted the file from her, looking around the cafe. Nobody seemed to be paying attention.

‘A bit cloak and dagger,’ he told her. She shrugged.

‘So I’ve seen too many films.’

Rebus opened the file. It bore no title, but inside were cuttings and ‘spiked’ stories concerning Aengus Gibson.

‘Those are only from five years ago to the present. There isn’t much, mostly charity work, giving to good causes. A little bit about the brewery’s rising image and ditto profits.’

He glanced through the stuff. It was worthless. ‘I was hoping to find out something about him from just after the fire.’

Mairie nodded. ‘So you said on the phone. That’s why I talked to a few people, including our chief sub. He says Gibson went into a psychiatric hospital. Nervous breakdown was the word.’