10 Great Rebus Novels (John Rebus) (382 page)

Rebus’s mother had been cremated, but his father had insisted on a ‘proper burial’. His headstone was over by the end wall. Loving husband to . . . and father of . . . And at the bottom, the words
Not Dead, But at Rest in the Arms of the Lord
. But as they approached, Rebus saw that something was wrong.

‘Oh, John,’ Janice gasped.

White paint had been poured down the headstone, covering most of the lettering.

‘Bloody kids,’ Janice said.

Rebus saw tracks of paint on the grass, but no sign of the empty tin.

‘This wasn’t kids,’ he said. Too much of a coincidence.

‘Who then?’

He touched his finger to the headstone: the paint was still viscous. Oakes
had
been in town. Janice was squeezing his arm.

‘I’m so sorry.’

‘It’s only a bit of stone,’ he said quietly. ‘It can be fixed.’

They drank tea in the living room. Rebus had tried Oakes’s hotel – Stevens’ room, the bar, no one was there.

‘We’ve had phone calls,’ Janice told him.

‘Cranks?’ he guessed.

She nodded. ‘Telling us Damon’s dead, or we killed him. Thing is, the callers . . . their voices sound local.’

‘Probably are local then.’

She offered him a cigarette. ‘It’s pretty sick, isn’t it?’

Rebus, looking around, nodded his agreement.

They were still sitting in the living room when Brian came back from the pub.

‘I’ll just take a shower,’ he said.

Janice explained that he always did this. ‘Clothes in the washing basket, and a good wash. I think it’s the cigarette smoke.’

‘He doesn’t like it?’

‘Hates it,’ she said. ‘Maybe that’s why I started.’ The front door was opened again. It was Janice’s mum. ‘I’ll fetch a cup,’ Janice said, getting to her feet.

Mrs Playfair nodded a greeting towards Rebus and sat down opposite him.

‘You haven’t found him yet?’

‘Not for want of trying, Mrs Playfair.’

‘Ach, I’m sure you’re doing your best, son. He’s our only grandchild, you know.’

Rebus nodded.

‘A good laddie, wouldn’t harm a fly. I can’t believe he’d get into trouble.’

‘What makes you think he’s in trouble?’

‘He wouldn’t do this to us otherwise.’ She was studying him. ‘So what happened to you, son?’

‘How do you mean?’ Wondering if she’d read his thoughts.

‘I don’t know . . . the way your life’s gone. Are you happy enough?’

‘I never really think about it.’

‘Why not?’

He shrugged his shoulders. ‘I like looking into people’s lives. That’s what detective work is.’

‘The army didn’t work out?’

‘No,’ he said simply.

‘Sometimes things don’t work out,’ she said, as Janice came back into the room. She watched her daughter pour the tea. ‘A lot of marriages break up round here.’

‘Do you think Damon and Helen would have made a go of it?’

She took a long time thinking about it, accepted the cup from Janice. ‘They’re young, who knows?’

‘What odds would you give them?’

‘You’re talking to Damon’s gran, John,’ Janice said. ‘No girl in the world’s good enough for Damon, eh, Mum?’ She smiled to let him know she was half-joking. Then, to her mother again: ‘Johnny’s had a shock.’ Describing the vandalised grave. Brian came in rubbing his hair. He’d changed his clothes. Janice repeated the story for him.

‘Wee bastards,’ Brian said. ‘It’s happened before. They push the stones over, break them.’

‘I’ll fetch you a mug,’ Janice said, making to get up again.

‘I’m fine,’ Brian said, waving her back. He looked
towards Rebus. ‘Probably don’t feel like eating out then? Only we were going to treat you.’

After a moment’s thought, Rebus said, ‘I’d like to get out. But I should be paying.’

‘You can pay next time,’ Brian said.

‘Judging on past history,’ Rebus said, ‘that’ll be roughly thirty years from now.’

Rebus drank nothing but mineral water with his curry. Brian was on the beers, and Janice managed two large glasses of white wine. Mr and Mrs Playfair had been invited, but had declined.

‘We’ll let you young things get on with it,’ Mrs Playfair had said.

From time to time, when Janice wasn’t looking, Brian would glance in her direction. Rebus thought he was worried: worried his wife was going to leave him, and wondering what he was doing wrong. His life was falling apart, and he was on the lookout for clues as to why.

Rebus considered himself something of an expert on break-ups. He knew sometimes a perspective could shift, one partner could start wanting things that seemed outwith their reach as long as they stayed married. It hadn’t been that way with his own marriage. There, it had been down to the fact that he never should have married in the first place. When work had begun to consume him, there hadn’t been much left to sustain Rhona.

‘Penny for them,’ Janice said at one point, tearing apart a nan bread.

‘I’m wondering about getting the headstone clean.’

Brian said he knew a man who could do it: worked for the council, took graffiti off walls.

‘I’ll send you the money,’ Rebus told him. Brian nodded.

After the meal, he drove them back to Cardenden. The karaoke night was held in a back room at the Railway
Tavern. The equipment sat on a stage, but the singers stayed on the dancefloor, eyes on the TV monitor with its syrupy videos and the words appearing along the bottom of the screen. Sheets came round, printed with all the songs. You wrote your choice on a slip of paper and handed it to the compère. A skinhead got up and did ‘My Way’. A middle-aged woman had a go at ‘You to Me are Everything’. Janice said she always took ‘Baker Street’. Brian switched between ‘Satisfaction’ and ‘Space Oddity’, depending on his mood.

‘So most people sing the same song every week?’ Rebus asked.

‘That guy getting up just now,’ she said, nodding towards the corner of the room, where people were shifting their seats to allow someone out, ‘he always chooses REM.’

‘So he’s probably pretty good at it by now?’

‘Not bad,’ she agreed. The song was ‘Losing My Religion’.

Drinkers were wandering through from the front bar, standing in the doorway to watch. There was a small bar specially for the karaoke: a hatch, manned by a teenager who kept testing the acne on his cheeks. People seemed to have their regular tables. Rebus, Janice and Brian were seated near one of the loudspeakers. Brian’s mum was there, alongside Mr and Mrs Playfair. An elderly man came over to talk to them. Brian leaned towards Rebus.

‘That’s Alec Chisholm’s dad,’ he said.

‘I wouldn’t have known him,’ Rebus admitted.

‘They don’t like talking to him. He’s always on about how long Alec’s been gone.’

It was true that the Playfairs and Mrs Mee sat stony-faced as they listened to Chisholm. Rebus got up to get a round in. He felt numb, remembering the scene which had greeted him in the cemetery, Oakes letting him know he was one step ahead, making it
personal
. Rebus saw it as another part of the test, knew Oakes was trying to break
him. Rebus was more determined than ever not to let that happen.

Janice’s mum was drinking Bacardi Breezes, watermelon flavour. Rebus doubted she’d ever seen a watermelon in her life. He saw Helen Cousins standing in the doorway with a couple of friends, went up to say hello.

‘Any news?’ she asked.

He shook his head, and she just shrugged, like she’d already given up on Damon. So much for the big romance. She was holding a bottle of Hooch, lemon flavour. All these sugary drinks, perfect for Scotland: a sweet tooth and a kick. Through in the saloon, he’d noticed they kept the bottles of mixers – lemonade and Irn Bru – on the bar, to be used freely by the punters. Not many pubs did that any more. Another thing: cheap beer. A lesson in economics: where you had a depressed area, you had to make your beer affordable. He’d spotted Heather Cranston through in the bar, seated on a stool, eyes drooping as some man talked into her ear and rested his hand on the back of her neck.

Helen handed her bottle to one of her friends, said she was off to the loo. Rebus hung around. The two girls were staring at him, wondering who he was.

‘She must be taking it hard,’ he said.

‘What?’ the one chewing gum asked, face creasing into puzzlement.

‘Damon disappearing.’

The girl shrugged.

‘More embarrassed than anything,’ her friend commented. ‘Doesn’t do much for your morale, does it, your boyfriend doing a runner?’

‘I suppose not,’ Rebus said. ‘I’m John, by the way.’

‘Corinne,’ the gum-chewer said. She had long black hair crimped with curling-tongs. Her pal was called Jacky and was tiny with dyed platinum hair.

‘So what do you think of Damon?’ he asked. He meant
about Damon disappearing, but they didn’t take it that way.

‘Ach, he’s all right,’ Jacky said.

‘Just all right?’

‘Well, you know,’ Corinne said. ‘Damon’s heart’s in the right place, but he’s a bit thick. A bit slow, like.’

Rebus nodded, as if this were his impression too. But the way Damon’s family had spoken of him, he’d been more of a genius in waiting. Rebus realised suddenly just how superficial his own portrait of Damon was. So far, he’d heard only one side of the story.

‘Helen likes him, though?’ he asked.

‘I suppose so.’

‘They’re engaged.’

‘It happens, doesn’t it?’ Jacky said. ‘I’ve got girlfriends who got engaged just so they could throw a party.’ She looked at her pal for support, then leaned towards Rebus to utter a confidentiality. ‘They used to have some mega arguments.’

‘What about?’

‘Jealousy, I suppose.’ She waited till Corinne had nodded confirmation. ‘She’d see him notice someone, or he’d say she’d been letting some guy chat her up. Just the usual.’ She looked at him. ‘You think he’s gone off with someone?’ Rebus saw behind her eyeliner to a sharp intelligence.

‘It’s possible,’ he said.

But Corinne was shaking her head. ‘He wouldn’t have had the guts.’

Looking along the corridor, Rebus saw that Helen hadn’t made it to the toilets. She was chatting to some guy, her back to the wall, hands behind her. Rebus asked Corinne and Jacky what they were drinking. Two Bacardi-Cokes. He added them to the shopping list.

When he got back to his table, Janice was taking the floor. She sang ‘Baker Street’ with real emotion, eyes closed, knowing the words by heart. Brian watched her,
his face giving away little. He probably didn’t realise he spent the whole song tearing a beer-mat into tinier and tinier pieces, piling them on the table before sweeping them on to the floor as the number finished.

Rebus stepped outside, took deep gulps of the crisp night air. He was sticking to whisky, heavily watered. There were shouts in the distance, football chants. UVF spray-painted on the side wall of the pub. A man was urinating there. Afterwards, he reeled towards Rebus, asked if he could borrow a cigarette. Rebus gave him one, lit it.

‘Cheers, Jimmy,’ the drunk said. Then he studied Rebus’s face. ‘I knew your father,’ he said, walking away before Rebus could quiz him further.

Rebus stood there. This wasn’t where he belonged, he knew that now. The past was a place you could visit, but it didn’t do to linger there. He’d drunk too much to drive, but first thing . . . first thing he would head back. Cary Oakes wasn’t here. He’d visited only long enough to leave a message. Rebus felt sorry for Janice and Brian, the way things had gone for them. But right now they were the least important of his many problems. He’d allowed his perspective to skew, and Oakes had made far too much capital from that.

Back indoors, no one tried to press the microphone on him. By now they all knew who he was, knew about the act of desecration. Stories passed quickly through a town the size of Cardenden. What else was history made up of?

It was still dark when he awoke. He dressed, folded the blankets, left a note on the dining table. Then headed out to his car, drove through the quiet streets and quieter countryside, hitting dual carriageway and giving the Saab’s engine a proper work-out as he sped south towards Edinburgh.

He found a space round the corner from Oxford Terrace and walked back to Patience’s flat. It was still too dark to see the door; he ran his fingers over it, found the lock and keyed it open. The hall was in darkness too. He walked on tiptoe, headed for the kitchen, poured water into the kettle. When he turned round, Patience was standing in the doorway.

‘Where the hell have you been?’ she said, tiredness failing to dampen her irritation.

‘Fife.’

‘You didn’t call.’

‘I told you I was going.’

‘I tried your mobile.’

He switched the kettle on. ‘I had it turned off.’ He saw pain suddenly crease her face. Took her by the arms. ‘What is it, Patience?’

She shook her head. There were tears in her eyes. She sniffed them back, took him by the hand into the hallway, where she switched on the light. He saw marks on the floor, a trail of them leading to the front door.

‘What happened?’ he asked.

‘Paint,’ she said. ‘It was dark, I didn’t see I was treading it in. I’ve tried cleaning it off.’

A white snail’s trail of footprints . . . Rebus thought of the white tracks leading to his father’s grave. He stared at her, then went to the front door and opened it. Behind him, she reached for the light-switch, illuminating the patio. Rebus saw the paint. Words daubed in foot-long letters on the paving-stones. He angled his head to read them.

YOUR COP LOVER KILLED DARREN.

The whole message underlined.

‘Christ,’ he gasped.

‘Is that all you can say?’ Her voice trembled. ‘I’ve been trying to get you all weekend!’

‘I was . . . When did it happen?’ He was walking around the message.

‘Friday night. I came home late, went to bed. About three, I woke up with a headache. Went to get some water, put the hall light on . . .’ She was pulling back her hair with her hands, her face stretching, tightening. ‘I saw the paint, came out here, and . . .’

‘I’m sorry, Patience.’

‘What does it mean?’

‘I’m not sure.’ Oakes again. All the time Rebus had been in Fife, Oakes had been right here, making his next move. He didn’t just know about Janice, he knew about Patience too. And had told Rebus as much, telling him it was lucky he knew a doctor.