10 Great Rebus Novels (John Rebus) (371 page)

‘It’s what I want. I just need to know if I’ll have your help.’

Rebus rubbed his hands over the steering-wheel. ‘I’ll need to think.’

‘Well, don’t be too long about it. I get the feeling maybe you need this as much as I do.’

Rebus looked at him.

‘We can’t always live by faith alone,’ Archibald went on. ‘Now and then, there has to be something more.’

After a further hour of conversation, Archibald left, saying he’d find himself a taxi. He’d talked about his niece, his memories of her, the way her murder had affected the family.

‘We disintegrated,’ he’d said. ‘So slowly, I don’t think anybody noticed. I think we felt guilty whenever we met, like we were to blame. Because when we got together, there was only one possible subject, one thing on our minds, and we didn’t want that.’

He’d talked too about his work on the case: weeks spent in police archives; months spent piecing together Cary Oakes’s history; trips to the US.

‘It must all have cost a lot,’ Rebus had said.

‘Worth every penny, John.’

Rebus hadn’t added that money wasn’t his point. He knew all about obsession, knew how it could rob you of everything. He’d been given a jigsaw one year as a Christmas present, back when Sammy was just a kid. He’d cleared a table and started work on it, found he worked late into the night, even though he knew the picture he was making – knew because it was right there on the box. Only he tried not to look at it, wanting to complete the puzzle without any help.

And one piece was missing. He’d asked Rhona, questioned Sammy: had she taken it? Rhona told him maybe it wasn’t in the box to start with, but he couldn’t accept that. He’d stripped the sofa and chairs, pulled up the carpet, gone over the room inch by inch, then the rest of the flat – just in case Sammy
had
put it somewhere. Never
found it. Even years later, he would find himself wondering if maybe it had slipped between the floorboards, or under the skirting-board . . .

Police work could affect you like that, if you let it. Unsolved cases; questions that niggled; people you
knew
were the culprits but couldn’t incriminate . . . He’d had more than his fair share of those. But eventually he let them go, even if it meant drinking them into oblivion. Alan Archibald didn’t look capable of putting Cary Oakes behind him. Rebus got the feeling that even if Oakes were proved innocent, Archibald would go on believing in his guilt. It was in the nature of obsession.

Alone with his thoughts, Rebus reached into his pocket for the quarter-bottle, drained it dry.

Proved innocent . . . He thought of Darren Rough, shaking with fear, holed up in his locked toilet. All because Social Work had put him in a flat above a kids’ playground. And because John Rebus had placed on Rough’s shoulders the sins of others – the sins of men who had themselves abused Rough.

Rebus rubbed at his eyes. It wasn’t unusual for him to feel a weight of guilt. He carried Jack Morton’s death with him. But something had changed. In the old days, he wouldn’t have given much thought to Darren Rough. He’d have told himself Rough deserved what he got, for being what he so evidently was. But go back further . . . back to the cop he had once been, so long ago now, and he wouldn’t have taken Rough’s story to the tabloids. Maybe Mairie Henderson was right:
something’s gone bad inside you
.

He admired Alan Archibald’s persistence, but wondered what would happen if he were proved
wrong
. Would he still pursue Cary Oakes? Would he take things further than mere pursuit . . .? Rebus stared out at the night sky.

It’s all pretty tricky down here, isn’t it, Big Man?

He wondered what point the surveillance was serving. Oakes seemed to be turning it to his own advantage,
coming and going as he pleased, letting them know he could do it. So that all their efforts seemed so much waste. He closed his eyes, listened to the occasional message on the police radio, his thoughts turning to Damon Mee. The boat looked like another dead end. Damon had walked out of the world, given his life the slip. Thoughts of Damon took him to Janice, and from there to his schooldays, when everything had just started to get complicated in his life.

Alec Chisholm had disappeared one day; never found.

Rebus had gone to the school leaving dance, with something he wanted to tell Mitch.

Then Janice had knocked him cold, a gang had descended on Mitch, and suddenly Rebus’s whole life was decided . . .

A noise brought him out of his reverie. He thought it had come from the back of the hotel. He decided to investigate. The car park and service entrance in darkness, but he swept his torch around. Looked up at the hotel windows. You could tell the corridors: lights still burned in those windows. One of the windows was open, curtains flapping. Rebus moved his torch in a downward arc, its beam landing on the roof of a lock-up garage, one of a row of three. They were separated from the hotel property by a wall. Rebus pulled himself up and over it. A narrow alley, puddles and rubbish underfoot. No sign of life, but footprints in the mud. He followed the path. It led him around the back of a factory unit and tenement, then up on to the busy thoroughfare of Bernard Street, where late-night cars and taxis idled at traffic lights. Where drunks stumbled their way home. One man was doing an elaborate dance and providing his own musical accompaniment. The woman with him thought he was hilarious. Can: ‘Tango Whiskyman’.

There was no sign of Cary Oakes, no sign at all, but Rebus got the feeling he was out there. He retraced his steps, stopped at a rubbish skip parked next to one of the
service doors, took the empty bottle from his pocket and tossed it in.

Felt his head jerk forward as a blow hit him from behind. Searing pain, his eyes screwing shut. He raised a hand, half-turned. A second blow laid him out cold.

It was pitch black, and when he moved there was a dull steel echo.

And a smell.

He was lying on something soft. Voices above him, then blinding light.

‘Dear oh dear.’

Second voice, amused: ‘Sleeping it off, sir?’

Rebus shielded his eyes, peered up at sheer walls. Two heads bobbing over the rim. He pulled his knees up, slithered as he tried to stand. His hands were tingling. His head pulsed with pain.

He was . . . he knew where he was. In a rubbish skip, the one behind the hotel. Wet cardboard boxes beneath him, and Christ knew what else. Hands were helping him to his feet.

‘Come on then, sir. Let’s . . .’ The voice died as the torch found his face again. Two uniforms, probably from Leith cop shop. And one of them had recognised him.

‘DI Rebus?’

Rebus: dishevelled, whisky on his breath, being helped from a skip. Supposedly on surveillance. He knew how it must look.

‘Christ, sir, what happened to you?’

‘Get that torch out of my face, son.’ Their faces were shadows to him, no way to tell if he knew them. He asked the time, worked out that he’d been unconscious only ten or fifteen minutes.

‘Call from a public box on Bernard Street,’ one of the uniforms was explaining. ‘Said there was a fight going on at the back of the hotel.’

Rebus examined the back of his head: no blood on his
palm. Hands still tingling. He rubbed at the fingers. They hurt when he worked them. Lifted them into the torchlight. One of the uniforms whistled.

The knuckles were grazed, bruised. A couple of the joints seemed to be swelling.

‘Gave him a sore one, whoever he was,’ the uniform said.

Rebus studied the scrapes. Like he’d been punching concrete. ‘I didn’t hit anyone,’ he said. The uniforms shared a glance.

‘If you say so, sir.’

‘I suppose it’s asking too much to tell you to keep this to yourselves.’

‘We won’t breathe a word, sir.’

An outright lie; it didn’t do to beg favours from uniforms.

‘Anything else we can do, sir?’

Rebus started to shake his head, felt a wave of nausea as the pain slammed in. Steadied himself with a hand on the skip.

‘My car’s round the corner,’ he said, voice brittle.

‘You’ll want a shower when you get home.’

‘Thank you, Sherlock.’

‘Only trying to help,’ the uniform muttered.

Rebus walked slowly around the building. The receptionist looked ready to call security until Rebus produced ID and asked her to buzz Oakes’s room. There was no reply.

‘Will there be anything else, sir?’

Rebus was looking in his wallet. His cards were there, but the cash had gone.

‘Any idea where Mr Oakes is?’ he asked.

She shook her head. ‘I didn’t see him leave.’

Rebus thanked her and walked over to a sofa, fell down on to it. A little later, he asked for aspirin. When she brought them, she had to shake his shoulder to wake him up.

He headed for Patience’s: sod the surveillance. Oakes wasn’t in his room. He was out on the streets. Rebus needed clean clothes, a shower, and more painkillers. As he stumbled through the door, Patience came into the hall, blinking her eyes sleepily. He held up both hands to pacify her.

‘It’s not what you think,’ he said.

She came forward, held his hands, looking at the swelling.

‘Explain,’ she said. So Rebus did just that.

He lay in the bath, a cold compress on the back of his skull. Patience had rigged it up from a sandwich bag, some ice cubes, and a bandage. She was treating his hands with antiseptic cream, having cleaned them and established nothing was broken.

‘This man Oakes,’ she said, ‘I’m still not sure why he’d do it.’

Rebus adjusted the ice-pack. ‘To humiliate me. He made sure I’d be found by uniforms, out cold in a rubbish skip.’

‘Yes?’ She dabbed on more ointment.

‘Knuckles bruised like I’d been fighting. And whoever I’d fought had whipped me. Found like that at the back of the hotel, there’s only one real candidate. By morning, it’ll be round every station in the city.’

‘Why would he do that?’

‘To show me he can. Why else?’ He tried not to flinch as she rubbed cream into a cut.

‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘Maybe to distract you.’

He looked at her. ‘From what?’

She shrugged. ‘You’re the detective here.’ She examined her handiwork. ‘I need to wrap your hands.’

‘So long as I can still drive.’

‘John . . .’ Knowing he’d pay no attention.

‘Patience, if I go round with hands looking like a mummy’s, he’s won this round.’

‘Not if you refuse to play.’

He saw the depth of concern in her eyes, brushed her
cheek with the back of his hand. Saw Janice doing the self-same thing to him, and withdrew his hand guiltily.

‘Hurts, does it?’ Patience asked, misreading the gesture. He nodded, not trusting himself to speak.

Later, he sat on the sofa with a mug of weak tea. He’d washed down two more painkillers, prescription-strength. His soiled clothes had been bundled into a black bin-liner, ready for a trip to the cleaner’s. Such a shame, he thought, that his soiled thoughts couldn’t be steam-pressed so easily.

When his mobile phone sounded, he stared at it hard. It lay on the coffee table in front of him, alongside his keys and small change. Patience was standing in the doorway as he finally picked the phone up. There was a little smile on her lips, but no humour in her eyes. She’d known all along he would answer it.

Cal Brady came home from Guiser’s feeling pretty good. The buzz lasted all of ten seconds. As he flopped on to his bed, he remembered about the pervert. His mum was in her bedroom with some bloke; walls were so thin they’d have been as well having it off in front of him. All the flats were like that, so that things you wanted done in secrecy you had to do quietly. He put his ear to one wall, then another: his mum and her bloke; a couple of television stations – Jamie was still awake, watching the box in the living room, and the portable was on in Van’s room, a weak attempt to mask other sounds. He put his ear to the floor. He could still hear all of it, plus the people below’s movements, coughs and conversations. He’d gone to the doctor a while back, asked if maybe he had ears that were more sensitive than the norm.

‘I keep hearing things I don’t want to.’

When he’d explained that he lived in one of the high-rises in Greenfield, the doctor had suggested a personal stereo.

But it was the same on the street: he overheard snippets
of conversation, stuff the talkers didn’t think he could hear. Sometimes he thought it was getting worse, thought he could hear people’s hearts beating, the quick flow of blood around their bodies. He thought he could hear their
thoughts
. Like at Guiser’s, when girls looked at him and he smiled back. They were thinking: he might not look much, but he’s with Archie Frost, so he must be important in some way. They’d think: if I dance with him, let him buy me a drink, I’ll be closer to the
power
.

Which was why he seldom did anything, just stayed by the bar, affecting a cool poise and saying nothing. But listening, always listening.

Always hearing things . . . Things about Charmer, things about the clients – Ama Petrie, her brother and the rest. His own version of the
power
.

It had been quiet in the club tonight. If it hadn’t been for a busload from Tranent, the place would have been dead. They hadn’t looked too impressed: nobody to dance with but themselves. Archie doubted they’d be back. Archie was already looking for other work: plenty more clubs in the city. Cal hadn’t started looking though. Cal believed in loyalty.

‘I know Charmer’s trying to collect on some debts,’ Archie had said, ‘but the problem is, he’s got debts of his own. Only a matter of time before people come calling . . .’

Cal had straightened his back, as if to say: fine by me.

He wanted to think things through, get them straight in his head, which was why he’d come into his bedroom rather than sitting up with Jamie. But even before he’d reached that sanctuary, his thoughts had turned to Darren Rough. The hall was half-full of placards. They sat against the wall, still smelling of fresh paint. Cardboard boxes had been cut up flat, messages written on their blank sides. DESTROY ALL MONSTERS; KEEP AWAY FROM OUR KIDS; LET’S PLAY HANG THE PERV.