10 Great Rebus Novels (John Rebus) (217 page)

It worried him, because now there was nothing to stop him raising two fingers to the shade of Wee Shug McAnally, a man not exactly universally mourned, and get on with some serious bevvying instead. He could spend a seven-to-ten stretch in the Ox no problem, augmented by betting-shop gossip and nourished by pies and bridies. It would be wonderfully easy.

Then there was the second problem, not unconnected to the first.

For, now that he had so much time on his hands, what was to stop him booking a dentist’s appointment?

The only thing to do was to keep working. Besides, there were some things he needed to do in a hurry, before word got around that he was on leave. The first of these involved another visit to C Division in Torphichen Place.

DI Davidson was again on duty, to Rebus’s relief.

‘I can smell it off you,’ Davidson said, leading him to the CID room.

‘What?’

‘The drink. How can you torture me like that? There’s another two hours before I finish my shift.’

Rebus saw that they were alone in the CID room. ‘I need the casenotes on McAnally, the ones from the rape charge.’

‘What for?’

Rebus shrugged. ‘I just need to see them.’

Davidson went to a desk drawer and brought out a
bunch of keys. ‘You know, John, there’s enough to be getting on with in the here-and-now.’ He went to a walk-in cupboard and opened it. ‘I don’t suppose there’ll be a copy still here. Everything’ll have been archived by now.’

There were reports packed tight along each shelf. On every spine, in fat felt-marker, was an officer’s name, depending on whose copy the report was. The spines faced upwards, the base of each report facing out. On the base was the name of the accused. There was no McAnally.

So then they’d to traipse to another part of the building, locate another set of keys, and unlock a storeroom, inside which stood a dozen tall double-doored filing cupboards. Davidson stood in thought for a moment, then pointed at one.

‘That’s probably got the year we’re after.’ He unlocked the cabinet. There was a smell of musty paper, much stronger than in the cupboard they’d tried earlier. Davidson ran his finger along each row of spines. ‘McAnally,’ he said at last, pulling out two thick files of A4 paper and handing them to Rebus. Each was loose-bound, held together by two removable metal clips. The blue covers were faded at their edges. Davidson’s surname was on the spine. Rebus read from one of the covers.

‘“The Case Against Hugh McAnally, Born 12.1.44.”’ He flipped through both files, not surprised to see their bulk consisted of witness statements.

‘Enjoy,’ said Davidson, relocking the cabinet.

Rebus stopped off on his way home and bought a jar of coffee, rolls, bacon, and two four-packs of Export. He was preparing for a long haul.

The flat was fairly warm. He emptied the jar beneath the leaking radiator and replaced it, then turned the hi-fi on. He washed three aspirin down with a swig of beer, then checked his face in the bathroom mirror. The skin around
and below his nose was definitely inflamed. When he waggled one particular tooth it felt deadened, anaesthetised, while its neighbours jangled like they’d been wired to the mains. The blister on his palm had receded, and now sported only a thin strip of sticking-plaster. Beneath the plaster, the engine’s serial number was still there.

I’m in great shape, he thought. I’m the perfect fucking specimen.

He took the beer through to the living room, sat down with the reports in his chair, and started to read.

He started with the Summary of Evidence, barely glanced down the List of Productions and List of Witnesses, skipped the Annual Leave of Officers, and got to work on the Statements and Tape Transcriptions. The witnesses comprised neighbours, the victim, the accused’s wife, a couple of barmen, and the police doctor (Dr Curt, as it turned out), who had examined and taken samples from both victim and accused. Maisie Finch had been examined in hospital, where she spent the rest of the night under observation. It was noted that her mother – unaware of her daughter’s presence – was in the same hospital at the time, just one floor up.

Hugh McAnally had been examined in the medical examination room at Torphichen. During the examination he kept protesting, ‘I used a johnny, for fuck’s sake, what’s the problem?’

These words had endeared him to no one.

The story from the victim’s point of view: Maisie had been alone in the flat, her mum being in hospital for a minor operation. At this time, her mother was already all but housebound, looking after her a full-time occupation for Maisie. (Nobody had asked her how it felt to be cooped up all day with an invalid; or how it felt when her mum had been taken into hospital . . . Rebus remembered his own meeting with her – the bottles of strong lager, the ‘holiday
mood’.) Maisie knew Mr McAnally very well, had known him for years. She regarded him not just as a neighbour but as a family friend.

McAnally told her he had come to ask after her mother. Though he smelled of alcohol, she’d let him into the flat and offered to make a cup of tea. He asked if she had anything stronger. She knew there was a bottle of whisky in the bottom of her mother’s wardrobe. It had been there since her father’s death. Maisie went to fetch it, and McAnally followed. He pushed her on to the bed so she was face down, and held her head down with one hand . . .

Afterwards, he mumbled something. She thought it might have been an apology, but maybe not. He went out, leaving the door to the flat ajar. She could hear him tramping noisily down the stairwell. She ran to Mrs McAnally’s door and thumped on it till she got an answer. Mrs McAnally herself called the police.

McAnally, by his own admission, left the tenement and headed for Lothian Road, drinking in a couple of pubs he frequented. This was backed up by the two barmen. Then he bought a fish supper, and was finishing it as he approached the main door of the tenement, where he was apprehended by two police officers who had been waiting in their car. He was taken to Torphichen Place police station and questioned, then charged.

McAnally’s version was: he had indeed gone to Maisie Finch’s flat to inquire about her mother, but also in the hope of having sex with Maisie. They’d had sex once before, while her mother was asleep in the other room. Both times, Maisie initiated proceedings. McAnally knew she was a ‘good girl’, but thought she got bored at home. He knew he was ‘no spring chicken’ nor yet ‘Mr Universe’, and her home life explained why Maisie wanted to have sex with him – ‘I dare say I wasn’t the only one.’ Maisie herself
had never said anything, never explained, and McAnally wasn’t really bothered, ‘so long as I was getting my hole.’

After a minute or so’s conversation in the living room, Maisie suggested going through to her mother’s bedroom, her reasoning being that her mother had a double bed, while Maisie only had a single. (Asked to describe Maisie’s bedroom, McAnally was able to, though this proved nothing, since as he later acknowledged, he’d been in there the previous month to change a faulty light-fitting.)

On the night in question, they progressed to the mother’s bedroom, where – McAnally’s version – intercourse took place, ‘doggy style’. Asked why that particular position, McAnally said he thought maybe Maisie didn’t like to look at his ‘ugly old coupon’. (Rebus was glad
he
hadn’t interviewed McAnally; he’d probably have taken a swing at him.) McAnally said he left the flat immediately afterwards, as Maisie didn’t like him to hang about. One thing he said was that Maisie herself had provided the condom: ‘I can’t run around with johnnies in my pooch, Tresa’d be bound to find them.’

Yes, he was a choice article, Mr Hugh McAnally.

Rape cases could be difficult. Scottish law required corroboration, not just one person’s word against another’s. With allegations of rape, there was seldom absolute corroboration – rapists didn’t work to an uninvited audience. But in this case there was the girl’s cry, heard by some in the tenement (though not by all), and the fact that she made, as Davidson himself commented, a ‘stonking good witness’. She would go into the witness box – not all rape victims would, for very good emotional reasons – and she would testify. She would ‘put the old bastard behind bars’.

And she did.

Asked about the cry, McAnally at first said she was ‘a screamer’ – in other words, that she cried out at the point
of climax. Davidson had added a pencilled comment in the margin, perhaps meaning to erase it later: ‘What young girl would climax with the likes of you?’ McAnally then changed his mind and said there was no scream, no cry at all. Which was excellent news for the prosecution, who had witnesses ready to testify that they had heard a cry.

Which point, Rebus mused, though tiny in the wider scheme of the case, was almost certainly what had swung the jury. Mostly it was his word against hers; but there were witnesses to the scream, witnesses like Helena Profitt.

Miss Profitt had given a statement, but had not been called to give evidence at the trial. That was probably the Procurator-fiscal’s decision. The Fiscal’s office would have precognosced Miss Proffit, and would have made a note for future reference that she was timid, nervy, and unlikely to perform well in court. Crown counsel had picked the best neighbours to show to the jury. It was part of their particular skill.

Rebus reached down for another tin of beer, and found they were all empty. He went to the fridge and found a solitary can, a couple of months past its expiry. It was freezing to the touch, but had plenty of gas when he opened it. He was drinking these days with one side of his mouth only, avoiding the painful side with anything too hot or cold. He put the can down and fried up some bacon, cutting open two rolls. He ate the rolls at the kitchen table.

It has to be serious, he thought. The governor of Saughton, the deputy chief constable . . . maybe even the Constabulary Inspectorate. They just didn’t want him around. Why not? That was the question. It had to have something to do with McAnally. It looked to Rebus very much as though it had something to do with McAnally’s time in Saughton.

He went back into the living room and got out McAnally’s list of previous convictions. Small beer, he
thought, taking a drink. He’d been lucky though, landing more than his fair share of fines and tickings-off when a custodial sentence might have been more usual. He’d served a year one time, eighteen months another – both for housebreaking – and that was about it. Otherwise it was just fines and admonitions.

Rebus sat back, forgetting to swallow the beer in his mouth. He was thinking something, something he didn’t want to think. There was only one good reason he could think of why Wee Shug had been so lucky, one good reason why a judge might be so lenient time and time again.

Someone had put in a word.

And who was it usually put in a word with the judge? Answer: policemen.

And why did they do it . . .?

Rebus swallowed the beer. ‘He was a grass! Wee Shug McAnally was somebody’s bloody snitch!’

Next morning, he woke up raring to go to work – then remembered he had no work to go to, no place he would be welcome. Just when he needed to ask some of his fellow officers a few very discreet questions.

He’d lain awake half the night, watching the amber streetlight on his bedroom ceiling, tumbling configurations in his mind. He couldn’t get past the notion that McAnally had been somebody’s eyes and ears on the street. All good policemen had them; anyone who wanted to get anywhere had them: grasses, stoolies, snitches, informers. They had a hundred titles and a hundred job descriptions.

It made sense; it explained those lenient sentences. But then McAnally had crossed the line – no judge was going to listen to too many pleas for leniency in a rape case. Four years off the street and a snitch lost his usefulness: there were new bandits around, people he didn’t know and could
never get to know. Four years was a long time on the street; the world moved fast down there.

Something else had occurred to Rebus in bed, around three a.m. by the blue-lit numerals on his clock. It – whatever ‘it’ was, whatever it was people were scared of – had to do with McAnally, yes, but the councillor was involved too. Rebus had let the councillor slip from the equation. He’d been busy on fractions on one half of the board, while the councillor sat untroubled on the other. And the councillor, unlike McAnally, was still alive to answer questions. Rebus was only going to get so far following the trail of the dead. It was time to concentrate on the living.

It was time to get concerned.

Councillor Tom Gillespie lived in a huge, bay-windowed semi not five minutes walk from Rebus’s flat. The house had been divided into two flats, one on the upper storey, one on the lower. Gillespie’s was the ground-floor property. There was a trim lawn in front of the house, and a low stone wall topped with black glossy railings which ended in arrow-headed points. Rebus opened the gate and walked up to the front door. Clay-coloured road-salt crunched underfoot, spread up and down the path during the worst of the snow and ice. Now the ice had melted, apart from trimmings of sooty white in corners the sun never reached, and roads and paths throughout the city were blighted by salt, as treacherous underfoot as the ice it replaced.

Rebus could see movement behind the bay window as he rang the doorbell. It was an old-fashioned pull affair, the sprung bell chiming inside. Rebus heard an inner hallway door open, then a lock being pulled. The solid main door was opened by the councillor himself.

‘Good morning, Mr Gillespie, mind if I have a word?’

‘I’m up to my eyes in it, Inspector.’

From within, Rebus heard a motorised whine, then the sound of a woman sneezing. Gillespie’s arm was across the doorway, blocking any attempt by Rebus to enter. It wasn’t exactly Costa del Sol weather on the doorstep, but the councillor was sweating.

‘I appreciate that, sir,’ Rebus said, ‘but this will only take a minute.’

‘Did you speak to Helena Profit?’

‘I did, yes. And, by the way, thanks for setting the Joint Police Board on me.’

Gillespie wasn’t about to apologise. ‘I told you I had friends.’