10 Great Rebus Novels (John Rebus) (194 page)

He moved the beam up past splayed legs to the rest of the body. She was propped against the corner in a sitting position. ‘Stay here,’ he ordered, approaching the body, trying to keep the torch steady. The fire-hose was coiled around Millie Docherty’s neck. Someone had tried strangling her with it, but they hadn’t succeeded. The perished rubber had snapped. So instead they’d taken the brass nozzle and stuffed it down her throat. It was still there, looking like the mouth of a funnel. And that’s what they’d used it as. Rebus put his nose close to the funnel and sniffed.

He couldn’t be sure, but he thought they’d used acid. They’d tipped it down into her while she’d been choking on the nozzle. If he looked closer, he’d see her throat burnt away. He didn’t look. He shone the torch on the floor instead. Her bag was lying there, its contents emptied onto the floorboards. There was something small and crumpled beside a wooden chest. He picked it up and flattened it out. It was the sleeve for a computer disk. Written on it were the letters SaS.

‘Looks like they got what they wanted,’ he said.

Nobody was dancing in the Crazy Hose Saloon.

Everyone had been sent home. Because the Hose was in Tollcross, it was C Division’s business. They’d sent officers out from Torphichen Place.

‘John Rebus,’ one of the CID men said. ‘You get around more than a Jehovah’s Witness.’

‘But I never try to sell you religion, Shug.’

Rebus watched DI Shug Davidson climb onto the stage and disappear through the door. They were all upstairs; the action was upstairs. They were setting up halogen lamps on tripods to assist the photographers. No key could be found for the first floor padlock, so they’d taken a sledgehammer to it. Rebus didn’t like to ask who or what they thought they’d find hidden behind a door padlocked from the outside. He doubted it would be germane to the case. Only one thing was germane, and it was standing at the bar near the spittoon, drinking a long cold drink. Rebus walked over.

‘Have you talked to your boss yet, Kevin?’

‘I keep getting his answering machine.’

‘Bad one.’

Kevin Strang nearly bit through the glass. ‘How do you mean?’

‘Bad for business.’

‘Aye, right enough.’

‘Mairie tells me you and her are friends?’

‘Went to school together. She was a couple of years above me, but we were both in the school orchestra.’

‘That’s good, you’ll have something to fall back on.’

‘Eh?’

‘If Bothwell sacks you, you can always busk for a living. Did you ever see her? Talk to her?’

Kevin knew who he meant. He was shaking his head before Rebus had finished asking.

‘No?’ Rebus persisted. ‘You weren’t even a wee bit curious? Didn’t want to see what she looked like?’

‘Never thought about it.’

Rebus looked across to the distant table where Mairie was being questioned by one of the Torphichen squad, with a WPC in close attendance. ‘Bad one,’ he said again. He leaned closer to Kevin Strang. ‘Just between us, Kevin, who did you tell?’

‘I didn’t tell anyone.’

‘Then you’re going down, son.’

‘How do you mean?’

‘They didn’t find her by accident, Kevin. They
knew
she was there. Only two people could have provided that information: Mairie or you. C Division are hard bastards. They’ll want to know all about you, Kevin. You’re about the only suspect they’ve got.’

‘I’m not a suspect.’

‘She died about six hours ago, Kevin. Where were you six hours ago?’ Rebus was making this up: they wouldn’t know for sure until the pathologist took body temperature readings. But he reckoned it was a fair guess all the same.

‘I’m telling you nothing.’

Rebus smiled. ‘You’re just snot, Kevin. Worse, you’re hired snot.’ He made to pat Kevin Strang’s face, but Strang flinched, staggered back, and hit the spittoon. They watched it tip with a crash to the floor, rock to and fro, and then lie there. Nothing happened for a second, then with a wet sucking sound a thick roll of something barely liquid oozed out. Everyone looked away. The only thing Strang found to look at was Rebus. He swallowed.

‘Look, I had to tell Mr Bothwell, just to cover myself. If I hadn’t told him, and he’d found out . . .’

‘What did he say?’

‘He just shrugged, said she was
my
responsibility.’ He shuddered at the memory.

‘Where were you when you told him?’

‘In the office, off the foyer.’

‘This morning?’ Strang nodded. ‘Tell me, Kevin, did Mr Bothwell go check out the lodger?’

Strang looked down at his empty glass. It was answer enough for Rebus.

There were strict rules covering the investigation of a serious crime such as murder. For one, Rebus should talk to the officer in charge and tell him everything he knew about Millie Docherty. For two, he should also mention his conversation with Kevin Strang. For three, he should then leave well alone and let C Division get on with it.

But at two in the morning, he was parked outside Frankie Bothwell’s house in Ravelston Dykes, giving serious thought to going and ringing the doorbell. If nothing else, he might learn whether Bothwell’s night attire was as gaudy as his daywear. But he dismissed the idea. For one thing, C Division would be speaking with Bothwell before the night was out, always supposing they managed to get hold of him. They would not want to be told by Bothwell that Rebus had beaten them to it.

For another, he was too late. He heard the garage doors lift automatically, and saw the dipped headlights as Bothwell’s car, a gloss-black Merc with custom bodywork, bounced down off the kerb onto the road and sped away. So he’d finally got the message, and was on his way to the Hose. Either that or he was fleeing.

Rebus made a mental note to do yet more digging on Lee Francis Bothwell.

But for now, he was relieved the situation had been taken out of his hands. He drove back to Oxford Terrace at a sedate pace, trying hard not to fall asleep at the wheel. No one was waiting in ambush outside, so he let himself in quietly and went to the living room, his body too tired to stay awake but his mind too busy for sleep. Well, he had a cure for that: a mug of milky tea with a dollop of whisky in it. But there was a note on the sofa in Patience’s handwriting. Her writing was better than most doctors’, but not by much. Eventually Rebus deciphered it, picked up the phone, and called Brian Holmes.

‘Sorry, Brian, but the note said to call whatever the time.’

‘Hold on a sec.’ He could hear Holmes getting out of bed, taking the cordless phone with him. Rebus imagined Nell Stapleton awake in the bed, rolling back over to sleep and cursing his name. The bedroom door closed. ‘Okay,’ said Holmes, ‘I can talk now.’

‘What’s so urgent? Is it about our friend?’

‘No, all’s quiet on that front. I’ll tell you about it in the morning. But I was wondering if you’d heard the news?’

‘I was the one who found her.’

Rebus heard a fridge opening, a bottle being taken out, something poured into a glass.

‘Found who?’ Brian asked.

‘Millie Docherty. Isn’t that what we’re talking about?’ But of course it wasn’t; Brian couldn’t possibly know so soon. ‘She’s dead, murdered.’

‘They’re piling up, aren’t they? What happened to her?’

‘It’s not a bedtime story. So what’s your news?’

‘A breakout from Barlinnie. Well, from a van actually, stopped between Barlinnie and a hospital. The whole thing was planned.’

Rebus sat down on the sofa. ‘Cafferty?’

‘He does a good impersonation of a perforated ulcer. It happened this evening. The prison van was sandwiched between two lorries. Masks, sawn-offs and a miracle recovery.’

‘Oh Christ.’

‘Don’t worry, there are patrols all up and down the M8.’

‘If he’s coming back to Edinburgh, that’s the last road he’ll use.’

‘You think he’ll come back?’

‘Get a grip, Brian, of course he’s coming back. He’s going to have to kill whoever butchered his son.’

He didn’t get much sleep that night, in spite of the tea and whisky. He sat by the recessed bedroom window wondering when Cafferty would come. He kept his eyes on the stairwell outside until dawn came. His mind made up, he started packing. Patience sat up in bed.

‘I hope you’ve left a note,’ she said.

‘We’re both leaving, only not together. What’s the score in an emergency?’

‘My dream was making more sense than this.’

‘Say you had to go away at very short notice?’

She was rubbing her hair, yawning. ‘Someone would cover for me. What did you have in mind, elopement?’

‘I’ll put the kettle on.’

When he came back from the kitchen carrying two mugs of coffee, she was in the shower.

‘What’s happening?’ she asked afterwards, rubbing herself dry.

‘You’re going to your sister’s,’ he told her. ‘So drink your coffee, phone her, get dressed, and start packing.’

She took the mug from him. ‘In that order?’

‘Any order you like.’

‘And where are you going?’

‘Somewhere else.’

‘Who’ll feed the pets?’

‘I’ll get someone to do it, don’t worry.’

‘I’m not worried.’ She took a sip of coffee. ‘Yes I am. What
is
going on?’

‘A bad man’s coming to town.’ Something struck him. ‘There you are, that’s another old film I like:
High Noon
.’

Rebus booked into a small hotel in Bruntsfield. He knew the night manager and phoned first, checking they had a room.

‘You’re lucky, we’ve one single.’

‘How come you’re not full?’

‘The old gent who was in it, he’s been coming here for years, he died of a stroke yesterday afternoon.’

‘Oh.’

‘You’re not superstitious or anything?’

‘Not if it’s your only room.’

He climbed the steps to street level and looked around. When he was happy, he gestured for Patience to join him. She carried a couple of bags. Rebus was already holding her small suitcase. They put the stuff in the back of her car and embraced hurriedly.

‘I’ll call you,’ he said. ‘Don’t try phoning me.’

‘John . . .’

‘Trust me on this if on nothing else, Patience, please.’

He watched her drive off, then hung around to make sure no one was following her. Not that he could be absolutely sure. They could pick her up on Queensferry Road. Cafferty wouldn’t hesitate to use her, or anyone, to get to him. Rebus got his own bag from the flat, locked the flat tight, and headed for his car. On the way he stopped at the next door neighbour’s door, dropping an envelope through the letterbox. Inside were keys to the flat and feeding instructions for Lucky the cat, the budgie with no name, and Patience’s goldfish.

It was still early morning, the quiet streets unsuitable for a tail. Even so, he took every back route he could think of. The hotel was just a big family house really, converted into a small family hotel. Out front, where a garden once separated it from the pavement, tarmac had been laid, making a car park for half a dozen cars. But Rebus drove round the back and parked where the staff parked. Monty, the night manager, brought him in the back way, then led him straight up to his room. It was at the top of the house, all the way up one of the creakiest staircases Rebus had ever climbed. No one would be able to tiptoe up there without him and the woodworm knowing about it.

He lay on the solid bed wondering if lying on a dead man’s bed was like stepping into his shoes. Then he started to think about Cafferty. He knew he was taking half-measures only. How hard would it be for Cafferty to track him down? A few men staked outside Fettes and St Leonard’s and in a few well-chosen pubs, and Rebus would be in the gangster’s hands by the end of the day. Fine, he just didn’t want Patience involved, or Patience’s home, or those of his friends.

Didn’t most suicides do the same thing, come to hotels so as not to involve family and friends?

He could have gone home of course, back to his flat in Marchmont, but it was still full of students working in Edinburgh over the summer. He liked his tenants, and didn’t want them meeting Cafferty. Come to that, he didn’t want Monty the night manager meeting Cafferty either.

‘He’s not after
me
,’ he kept reminding himself, hands behind his head as he stared at the ceiling. There was a clock radio by the bed, and he switched it on, catching the news. Police were still searching for Morris Gerald Cafferty. ‘He’s not after me,’ he repeated. But in a sense, Cafferty
was
. He’d know Rebus was his best bet to finding the killers. There was a short item about the body at the Crazy Hose, though no gruesome details. Not yet, anyway.

When the news finished, he washed and went downstairs. He got a black cab to take him to St Leonard’s. Once told the destination, the driver switched off his meter.

‘On the house,’ he said.

Rebus nodded and sat back. He’d commandeer someone’s car during the course of the day, either that or find a spare car from the pool. No one would complain. They all knew who’d put Cafferty in Barlinnie. At St Leonard’s, he walked smartly into the station and went straight to the computer, tapping into Brains. Brains had a direct link to PNC2, the UK mainland police database at Hendon. As he’d expected, there wasn’t much on Lee Francis Bothwell, but there was a note referring him to files kept by Strathclyde Police in Partick.

The officer he talked to in Partick was not thrilled.

‘All that old stuff’s in the attic,’ he told Rebus. ‘I’ll tell you, one of these days the ceiling’ll come down.’

‘Just go take a look, eh? Fax it to me, save yourself a phone call.’

An hour later, Rebus was handed several fax sheets relating to activities of the Tartan Army and the Workers’ Party in the early 1970s. Both groups had enjoyed short anarchic lives, robbing banks to finance their arms purchases. The Tartan Army had wanted independence for Scotland, at any price. What the Workers’ Party had wanted Rebus couldn’t recall, and there was no mention of their objectives in the fax. The Tartan Army had been the bigger terror of the two, breaking into explosives stores and Army bases, building up an arms cache for an insurrection which never came.

Frankie Bothwell was mentioned as a Tartan Army supporter, but with no evidence against him of illegal acts. Rebus reckoned this would be just before his move to the Orkneys and rebirth as Cuchullain. Cuchullain of the Red Hand.