10 Great Rebus Novels (John Rebus) (184 page)

‘Yes, sir.’

‘The date, of course, means more than a mere
annus mirabilis
. One-six-nine-o. One and six make seven, nine plus nought equals nine, seven and nine being crucial numbers.’ He paused. ‘Do you know anything of numerology, Inspector?’

‘No, sir.’

‘What about the lassie?’

Siobhan Clarke bristled visibly. ‘It’s sort of a crank science, isn’t it?’ she offered. Rebus gave her a cooling look. Humour him, the look ordered.

‘Not crank, no. It’s ancient, with the ring of truth. Can I get you something to drink?’

‘No, thanks, Mr Gowrie.’

They were seated in Arch Gowrie’s ‘front room’, a parlour kept for visitors and special occasions. The real living room, with comfortable sofa, TV and video, drinks cabinet, was elsewhere on this sprawling ground floor. The house was at least three storeys high, and probably boasted an attic conversion too. It was sited in The Grange, a leafy backwater of the city’s southern side. The Grange got few visitors, few strangers, and never much traffic, since it was not a well-known route between any two other areas of the city. A lot of the huge detached houses, one-time merchants’ houses with walled grounds and high wooden or metal gates, had been bought by the Church of Scotland or other religious denominations. There was a retirement home to one side of Gowrie’s own residence, and what Rebus thought was a convent on the other side.

Archibald Gowrie liked to be called ‘Arch’. Everyone knew him as Arch. He was the public face of the Orange Lodge, an eloquent enough apologist (not that he thought there was anything to apologise for), but by no means that organisation’s most senior figure. However, he was high enough, and he was easy to find – unlike Millie and Murdock, who weren’t home.

Gowrie had agreed readily to a meeting, saying he’d be free between seven and quarter to eight.

‘Plenty of time, sir,’ Rebus had said.

He studied Arch Gowrie now. The man was big and fiftyish and probably attractive to women in that way older men could be. (Though Rebus noticed Siobhan Clarke didn’t seem too enthralled.) Though his hair – thinning nicely – was silver, his thick moustache was black. He wore his shirt with the sleeves rolled up, showing darkly haired arms. He was always ready for business. In fact, ‘open for business’ had been his public motto, and he worked tirelessly whenever he got his teeth into a new development.

From what Rebus knew, Gowrie had made his money initially as director of a company which had nippily shifted its expertise from ships and pipelines to building exploration platforms and oil rigs for the North Sea. That was back in the early ’70s. The company had been sold at vast profit, and Gowrie had disappeared for several years before reappearing in the guise of property developer and investment guru. He was still a property developer, his name on several projects around the city as well as further afield. But he had diversified into wildly different areas: film production, hi-fi design, edible algae, forestry, two country house hotels, a woollen mill, and the Eyrie restaurant in the New Town. Probably Arch was best known for his part-ownership of the Eyrie, the city’s best restaurant, certainly its most exclusive, by far its most expensive. You wouldn’t find nutritious Hebridean Blue Algae on its menu, not even written in French.

Rebus knew of only one large loss Gowrie had taken, as money man behind a film set predominantly in Scotland. Even boasting Rab Kinnoul as its star, the film had been an Easter turkey. Still, Gowrie wasn’t shy: there was a framed poster for the film hanging in the entrance hall.

‘
Annus mirabilis
,’ Rebus mused. ‘That’s Latin, isn’t it?’

Gowrie was horrified. ‘Of course it’s Latin! Don’t tell me you never studied Latin at school? I though we Scots were an educated bunch. Miraculous year, that’s what it means. Sure about that drink?’

‘Maybe a small whisky, sir.’ Kill or cure.

‘Nothing for me, sir,’ said Siobhan Clarke, her voice coming from the high moral ground.

‘I won’t be a minute,’ said Gowrie. When he’d left the room, Rebus turned to her.

‘Don’t piss him off!’ he hissed. ‘Just keep your gob shut and your ears open.’

‘Sorry, sir. Have you noticed?’

‘What?’

‘There’s nothing green in this room, nothing at all.’

He nodded again. ‘The inventor of red, white and blue grass will make a fortune.’

Gowrie came back into the room. He took a look at the two of them on the sofa, then smiled to himself and handed Rebus a crystal tumbler.

‘I won’t offend you by offering water or lemonade with that.’

Rebus sniffed the amber liquid. It was a West Highland malt, darker, more aromatic than the Speysides. Gowrie held his own glass up.

‘
Slainte
.’ He took a sip, then sat in a dark blue armchair. ‘Well now,’ he said, ‘how exactly can I help you?’

‘Well, sir –’

‘It’s nothing to do with us, you know. We’ve told the Chief Constable that. They’re an offshoot of the Grand Lodge, less than that even, now that we’ve disbarred them.’

Rebus suddenly knew what Gowrie was talking about. There was to be a march along Princes Street on Saturday, organised by the Orange Loyal Brigade. He’d heard about it weeks ago, when the very idea had provoked attacks from republican sympathisers and anti-right wing associations. There were expected to be confrontations during the march.

‘When did you disbar the group exactly, sir?’

‘April 14th. That was the day we had the disciplinary hearing. They belonged to one of our district lodges, and at a dinner-dance they’d sent collecting tins round for the LPWA.’ He turned to Siobhan Clarke. ‘That’s the Loyalist Prisoners’ Welfare Association.’ Then back to Rebus. ‘We can’t have that sort of thing, Inspector. We’ve denounced it in the past. We’ll have no truck with the paramilitaries.’

‘And the disbarred members set up the Orange Loyal Brigade?’

‘Correct.’

Rebus was feeling his way. ‘How many do you think will be on the march?’

‘Ach, a couple of hundred at most, and that’s including the bands. I think they’ve got bands coming from Glasgow and Liverpool.’

‘You think there’ll be trouble?’

‘Don’t you? Isn’t that why you’re here?’

‘Who’s the Brigade’s leader?’

‘Gavin MacMurray. But don’t you know all this already? Your Chief Constable asked if I could intervene. But I told him, they’re nothing to do with the Orange Lodge, nothing at all.’

‘Do they have connections with the other right-wing groups?’

‘You mean with fascists?’ Gowrie shrugged. ‘They deny it, of course, but I wouldn’t be surprised to see a few skinheads on the march, even ones with Sassenach accents.’

Rebus left a pause before asking, ‘Do you know if there’s any link-up between the Orange Brigade and The Shield?’

Gowrie frowned. ‘What shield?’

‘Sword and Shield. It’s another splinter group, isn’t it?’

Gowrie shook his head. ‘I’ve never heard of it.’

‘No?’

‘Never.’

Rebus placed his whisky glass on a table next to the sofa. ‘I just assumed you’d know something about it.’ He got to his feet, followed by Clarke. ‘Sorry to have bothered you, sir.’ Rebus held out his hand.

‘Is that it?’

‘That’s all, sir, thanks for your help.’

‘Well . . .’ Gowrie was clearly troubled. ‘Shield . . . no, means nothing to me.’

‘Then don’t worry about it, sir. Have a good evening now.’

At the front door, Clarke turned and smiled at Gowrie. ‘We’ll let you get back to your wee numbers. Goodbye, sir.’

They heard the door close behind them with a solid click as they walked back down the short gravel path to the driveway.

‘I’ve only got one question, sir: what was all that about?’

‘We’re dealing with lunatics, Clarke, and Gowrie isn’t a lunatic. A zealot maybe, but not a madman. Tell me, what do you call a haircut in an asylum?’

By now Clarke knew the way her boss’s mind worked. ‘A lunatic fringe?’ she guessed.

‘
That’s
who I want to talk to.’

‘You mean the Orange Loyal Brigade?’

Rebus nodded. ‘And every one of them will be taking a stroll along Princes Street on Saturday.’ He smiled without humour. ‘I’ve always enjoyed a parade.’

Saturday was hot and clear, with a slight cooling breeze, just enough to make the day bearable. Shoppers were out on Princes Street in numbers, and the lawns of Princes Street Gardens were as packed as a seaside beach, every bench in full use, a carousel attracting the children. The atmosphere was festive if frayed, with the kids squealing and tiring as their ice-cream cones melted and dropped to the ground, turning instantly into food for the squirrels, pigeons, and panting dogs.

The parade was due to set off from Regent Road at three o’clock, and by two-fifteen the pubs behind Princes Street were emptying their cargo of brolly-toting white-gloved elders, bowler hats fixed onto their sweating heads, faces splotched from alcohol. There was a show of regalia, and a few large banners were being unfurled. Rebus couldn’t remember what you called the guy at the front of the march, the one who threw up and caught the heavy ornamental staff. He’d probably known in his youth. The flute players were practising, and the snare drummers adjusted their straps and drank from cans of beer.

People outside the Post Office on Waterloo Place could hear the flutes and drums, and peered along towards Regent Road. That the march was to set off from outside the old Royal High School, mothballed site for a devolved Scottish parliament, added a certain something to the affair.

Rebus had been in a couple of the bars, taking a look at the Brigade members and supporters. They were a varied crew, taking in a few Doc Marten-wearing skinheads (just as Gowrie had predicted) as well as the bowler hats. There were also the dark suit/white shirt/dark tie types, their shoes as polished as their faces. Most of them were drinking like fury, though they didn’t seem completely mortal yet. Empty cans were being kicked along Regent Road, or trodden on and left by the edges of the pavement. Rebus wasn’t sure why these occasions always carried with them the air of threat, of barely suppressed violence, even before they started. Extra police had been drafted in, and were readying to stop traffic from coming down onto Princes Street. Metal-grilled barriers waited by the side of the road, as did the small groups of protesters, and the smaller group of protesters who were protesting against the protesters. Rebus wondered, not for the first time, which maniac on the Council had pushed through the okay for the parade.

The marching season of course had finished, the main parades being on and around the 12th of July, date of the Battle of the Boyne. Even then the biggest marches were in Glasgow. What was the point of this present parade? To stir things up, of course, to make a noise. To be noticed. The big drum, the
lambeg
, was being hammered now. There was competition from a few bagpipe buskers near Waverley Station, but they’d be silenced by the time the parade reached them.

Rebus wandered freely among the marchers as they drank and joked with each other and adjusted their uniforms. A Union Jack was unfurled, then ordered to be rolled up again, bearing as it did the initials of the British National Party. There didn’t seem to be any collecting tins or buckets, the police having pressed for a quick march with as little interaction with the public as possible. Rebus knew this because he’d asked Farmer Watson, and the Farmer had confirmed that it would be so.

‘Here’s tae King Billy!’ A can was raised. ‘God bless the Queen and King William of Orange!’

‘Well said, son.’

The bowler hats said little, standing with the tips of their umbrellas touching the ground, hands resting lightly on the curved wooden handles. It was easy to dismiss these unsmiling men too lightly. But God help you if you started an argument with one of them.

‘Why dae yis hate Catholics?’ a pedestrian yelled.

‘We don’t!’ somebody yelled back, but she was already bustling away with her shopping bags. There were smiles, but she’d made her point. Rebus watched her go.

‘Hey, Gavin, how long now?’

‘Five minutes, just relax.’

Rebus looked towards the man who had just spoken, the man who was probably called Gavin MacMurray and therefore in charge. He seemed to have appeared from nowhere. Rebus had read the file on Gavin MacMurray: two arrests for breach of the peace and actual bodily harm, but a lot more information to his name than that. Rebus knew his age (38), that he was married and lived in Currie, and that he ran his own garage. He knew Inland Revenue had no complaints against him, that he drove a red Mercedes Benz (though he made his money from more prosaic Fords, Renaults and the like), and that his teenage son had been in trouble for fighting, with two arrests after pitched battles outside Rangers matches and one arrest after an incident on the train home from Glasgow.

So Rebus assumed the teenager standing close beside Gavin MacMurray must be the son, Jamesie. Jamesie had pretensions of all obvious kinds. He wore sunglasses and a tough look, seeing himself as his father’s lieutenant. His legs were apart, shoulders back. Rebus had never seen anyone itching so badly for action of some kind. He had his father’s low square jaw, the same black hair cut short at the front. But while Gavin MacMurray was dressed in chainstore anonymity, Jamesie wanted people to look at him. Biker boots, tight black jeans, white t-shirt and black leather jacket. He wore a red bandana around his right wrist, a studded leather strap around the left. His hair, long and curling at the back, had been shaved above both ears.

Turning from son to father was like turning from overt to covert strength. Rebus knew which he’d rather tackle. Gavin MacMurray was chewing gum with his front teeth, his head and eyes constantly in movement, checking things, keeping things in check. He kept his hands in his windcheater pockets, and wore silver-framed spectacles which magnified his eyes. There seemed little charisma about him, little of the rouser or orator. He looked chillingly ordinary.

Because he
was
ordinary, they all were, all these semi-inebriated working men and retired men, quiet family types who might belong to the British Legion or their local Ex-Servicemen’s Club, who might inhabit the bowling green on summer evenings and go with their families on holiday to Spain or Florida or Largs. It was only when you saw them in groups like this that you caught a whiff of something else. Alone, they had nothing but a nagging complaint; together, they had a voice: the sound of the
lambeg
, dense as a heartbeat; the insistent flutes; the march. They always fascinated Rebus. He couldn’t help it. It was in his blood. He’d marched in his youth. He’d done a lot of things back then.