10 Great Rebus Novels (John Rebus) (141 page)

‘Jailhouse Roquefort,’ Rebus guessed. Ringan whooped again, losing his balance slightly and sliding back with one foot.

‘
Your
idea, Inspector Rabies.’

‘I’m flattered, but the name’s Rebus.’

‘Aye, well, you should be flattered. Maybe we’ll gie you a wee mention on the menu. How about that, eh?’ He studied the golden nuggets, turning them expertly with a fork. ‘I’m giving this lot six minutes. Willie!’

‘I’m right here.’

‘How long’s that been?’

The protégé checked his watch. ‘Three and a half. I’ve put the butter down there next to the eggs.’

‘Willie’s my assistant, Inspector.’

The exasperation in Willie’s voice and expressions made Rebus doubt he would be assisting for much longer. Though younger than Ringan, Willie was about the same size. You wouldn’t call him slender. Rebus reckoned chefs were partial to too much R&D. ‘Can we talk for a minute?’

‘Two and a half minutes if you like.’

‘I’d like to know about the Central Hotel.’ Ringan didn’t seem to hear this, his attention on the contents of the frying-pan. ‘You were there the night it burned down.’

El was short for Elvis, and Elvis was code for Eddie Ringan. Holmes hadn’t wanted the wrong people getting hold of the Black Book and being able to identify the person who’d been talking. That’s why he’d gone an extra step in disguising Ringan’s identity.

He’d also made Rebus promise that he wouldn’t tell the chef Holmes had shared their secret. It
was
to have been a secret, a little tale spilt from a bottle of bourbon. But Ringan hadn’t poured out nearly enough, he’d just given Holmes a taste.

‘Did you hear me, Eddie?’

‘A minute left, Inspector.’

‘You never cropped up on the list of staff because you were moonlighting, working there some nights without the other place you worked at knowing anything about it. So you were able to give a false name, and nobody ever found out it was you there that night, the night of the poker game.’

‘Nearly done.’ There was more sweat on Eddie Ringan’s face now, and his mouth seemed stiff with suppressed anger.

‘I’m nearly done too, Eddie. When did you start on the booze, eh? Just after that night, wasn’t it? Because something happened in that hotel. I wonder what it was. Whatever it was, you saw it, and if you don’t tell me about it, I’m going to find out anyway, and then I’m going to come back here for you.’ To emphasise this, Rebus pushed a finger against the chef’s arm.

Ringan snatched the frying-pan and swung it at Rebus, sending bits of Jailhouse Roquefort flying in arcs across the kitchen.

‘Get the fuck away from me!’

Rebus dodged the frying-pan, but Ringan was still holding it in front of him, ready to lunge.

‘Just you get the fuck out of here! Who told you, anyway?’

‘Nobody needed to tell me, Eddie. I worked it out for myself.’

Willie meantime was down on one knee. A hot cube of cheese had caught him smack in the eye.

‘I’m dying!’ he called. ‘Get an ambulance, get a lawyer! This is an industrial injury.’

Eddie Ringan glanced towards the trainee chef, then back at the frying-pan in his hand, then at Rebus, and he began to laugh, the laughter becoming uproarious, hysterical. But at least he put down the pan. He even picked up one of the cheese cubes and took a bite out of it.

‘Tastes like shite,’ he said, still laughing and spluttering bits of breadcrumb at Rebus.

‘Are you going to tell me, Eddie?’ Rebus asked calmly.

‘I’m going to tell you this: get the fuck out.’

Rebus stood his ground, though Eddie had already turned his back. ‘Tell me where I can find the Bru-Head Brothers.’

This brought more laughter.

‘Just give me a start, Eddie. Then it’ll be off your conscience.’

‘I lost my conscience a long time ago, Inspector. Willie, let’s get a fresh batch going.’

The young man was still checking for damage. He held one hand across his good eye like a patch. ‘I cannae see a thing,’ he complained. ‘I think the retina’s cracked.’

‘And the cornea’s melted,’ added Ringan. ‘Come on, I’m hoping to have this on the menu tonight.’ He turned to Rebus, making a show of astonishment. ‘Still here? A definite case of too many cooks.’

Rebus looked at him with sad, steady eyes. ‘Just a start, Eddie.’

‘Away tae fuck.’

Slowly, Rebus turned around and pushed open the door.

‘Inspector!’ He turned his head towards the chef. ‘There’s a pub in Cowdenbeath called The Midtown. The locals call it the Midden. I wouldn’t eat the food there.’

Rebus nodded slowly. ‘Thanks for the tip.’

‘It’s
you
that’s supposed to give
me
the tip!’ he heard Ringan roar as he exited from the kitchen. He placed his empty glass on the bartop.

‘Kitchen’s off limits,’ the barman informed him.

‘More like the outer bloody limits.’

But no, he knew that only now would he be going to the outer limits, back to the haunts of his youth.

He had only dropped into St Leonard’s to pick up a few things from his desk, but the duty sergeant stopped him short.

‘Gentleman here has been waiting to see you. He seems a bit anxious.’

The ‘gentleman’ in question had been standing in a corner, but was now directly in front of Rebus. ‘You don’t recognise me?’

Rebus studied the man for a moment longer, and felt an old loathing. ‘Oh yes,’ he said, ‘I recognise you all right.’

‘Didn’t you get my message?’

This had been the other message relayed to him when he’d called in from Gorgie Road. He nodded.

‘Well, what are you going to do?’

‘What would you like me to do, Mr McPhail?’

‘You’ve got to stop him!’

‘Stop who exactly? And from what?’

‘You said you got the message.’

‘All I was told was that someone called Andrew McPhail had phoned wanting to speak to me.’

‘What I want is bloody protection!’

‘Calm down now.’ Rebus saw that the desk sergeant was getting ready for action, but he didn’t think there would be any need for that.

‘What have I got to do?’ McPhail was saying. ‘You want me to hit you? That’d get me a night in the cells, wouldn’t it? I’d be safe there.’

Rebus nodded. ‘You’d be safe all right, until we told your cell mates about your past escapades.’

This seemed to calm McPhail down like a bucket of ice. Maybe he was remembering particular incidents during his spell in the Canadian prison. Or maybe it was a less localised fear. Whatever it was, it worked. His tone became quietly plaintive. ‘But he’ll kill me.’

‘Who will?’

‘Stop pretending! I know you set him on to me. It had to be you.’

‘Humour me,’ said Rebus.

‘Maclean,’ said McPhail. ‘Alex Maclean.’

‘And who is Alex Maclean?’

McPhail looked disgusted. He spoke in an undertone. ‘The wee girl’s stepfather. Melanie’s stepfather.’

‘Ah,’ said Rebus, nodding now. He knew immediately what Jack Morton had done, bugger that he was. No wonder McPhail got in touch. And as Rebus had been round to see Mrs MacKenzie, he’d thought Rebus must be behind the whole scheme.

‘Has he threatened you?’

McPhail nodded.

‘In what way?’

‘He came to the house. I wasn’t there. He told Mrs MacKenzie he’d be back to get me. Poor woman’s in a terrible state.’

‘You could always move, get out of Edinburgh.’

‘Christ, is that what you want? That’s why you’ve set Maclean on me. Well, I’m staying put.’

‘Heroic of you, Mr McPhail.’

‘Look, I know what I’ve done, but that’s behind me.’

Rebus nodded. ‘And all you’ve got in front of you is the view from your bedroom.’

‘Jesus,
I
didn’t know Mrs MacKenzie lived across from a primary school!’

‘Still, you could move. A location like that, it’s bound to rile Maclean further.’

McPhail stared at Rebus. ‘You’re repulsive,’ he said. ‘Whatever I’ve done in my life, I’m willing to bet you’ve done worse. Never mind about me, I’ll look after myself.’ McPhail made show of pushing past Rebus towards the door.

‘Ca’ canny, Mr McPhail,’ Rebus called after him.

‘Christ,’ said the desk sergeant, ‘who was that?’

‘That,’ said Rebus, ‘was someone finding out how it feels to be a victim.’

All the same, he felt a bit guilty. What if McPhail
had
been rehabilitated, and Maclean
did
do him some damage? Scared as he was, McPhail might even decide a first strike was his only form of defence. Well, Rebus had slightly more pressing concerns, hadn’t he?

In the CID room, he studied the only available mug-shots of Tam and Eck Robertson, taken over five years ago. He got a DC to make him some photocopies, but then had a better idea. There was no police artist around, but that didn’t bother Rebus. He knew where an artist could always be found.

It was five o’clock when he got to McShane’s Bar near the bottom of the Royal Mile. McShane’s was a haven for bearded folk fans and their woolly sweaters. Upstairs, there was always music, be it a professional performer or some punter who’d taken the stage to belt out ‘Will Ye Go Lassie Go’ or ‘Both Sides O’ The Tweed’.

Midgie McNair did good business in McShane’s sketching flattering likenesses of acquiescent customers, who paid for the privilege and often bought the drinks as well.

At this early hour, Midgie was downstairs, reading a paperback at a corner table. His sketch-pad sat on the table beside him, along with half a dozen pencils. Rebus placed two pints on the table, then sat down and produced the photos of the Bru-Head Brothers.

‘Not exactly Butch and Sundance, are they?’ said Midgie McNair.

‘Not exactly,’ said Rebus.

John Rebus had once known Cowdenbeath very well indeed, having gone to school there. It was one of those Fife mining communities which had grown from a hamlet in the late nineteenth or early twentieth centuries when coal was in great demand, such demand that the cost of digging it out of the ground hardly entered the equation. But the coalfields of Fife didn’t last long. There was still plenty of coal deep underground, but the thin warped strata were difficult (and therefore costly) to mine. He supposed some opencast mining might still be going on – at one time west central Fife had boasted Europe’s biggest hole in the ground – but the deep pitshafts had all been filled in. In Rebus’s youth there had been three obvious career choices for a fifteen-year-old boy: the pits, Rosyth Dockyard, or the Army. Rebus had chosen the last of these. Nowadays, it was probably the only choice on offer.

Like the towns and villages around it, Cowdenbeath looked and felt depressed: closed down shops and drab chainstore clothes. But he knew that the people were stronger than their situation might suggest. Hardship bred a bitter, quickfire humour and a resilience to all but the most terminal of life’s tragedies. He didn’t like to think about it too deeply, but inside he felt like he really was ‘coming home’. Edinburgh might have been his base for twenty years, but he was a Fifer. ‘Fly Fifers’, some people called them. Rebus was ready to do battle with some very fly people indeed.

Monday night was the quietest of the week for pubs across the land. The pay packets or dole money had disappeared over the course of the weekend. Monday was for staying in. Not that you would know this from the scene that greeted Rebus as he pushed open the door to the Midden. Its name belittled it; its interior was no worse than many a bar in Edinburgh and elsewhere. Basic, yes, with a red linoleum floor spotted black from hundreds of cigarette dowps. The tables and chairs were functional, and though the bar was not large enough space had been found for a pool table and dartboard. A game of darts was in progress when Rebus entered, and one young man marched around the pool table, potting shot after shot as he squinted through the smoke which rose from the cigarette in his mouth. At a corner table three old men, all wearing flat bunnets, were playing a tense game of dominoes, groups of steady drinkers filling the other tables.

So Rebus had no choice but to stand at the bar. There was just room for one more, and he nodded a greeting to the pint drinkers either side of him. A greeting no one bothered to return.

‘Pint of special, please,’ he said to the slick-haired barman.

‘Special, son, right you are.’

Rebus got the feeling this fiftyish bartender would call even the domino players ‘son’. The drink was poured with the proper amount of care, like the ritual it was in this part of the world.

‘Special, son, there you are.’

Rebus paid for the beer. It was the cheapest pint he’d bought in months. He started to think about how easy it would be to commute to work from Fife . . .

‘Pint of spesh, Dod.’

‘Spesh, son, right you are.’

The pool player stood just behind Rebus, not quite menacingly. He placed his empty glass on the bartop and waited for it to be refilled. Rebus knew the youth was interested, maybe waiting to see whether Rebus would speak. But Rebus didn’t say anything. He just took photocopies of the two drawings out of his jacket pocket and unfolded them. He’d had ten copies of each made up at a newsagent’s on the Royal Mile. The originals were safe in the glove compartment of his car; though how safe his car itself was, parked on the poorly lit street outside, was another matter.

He could feel the drinkers either side of him glance at the drawings, and didn’t doubt that the youth was having a look too. Still nobody said anything.

‘Spesh, son, there you are.’ The pool player picked up the glass, spilling some beer onto the sheets of paper. Rebus turned his head towards him.

‘Sorry about that.’

Rebus had seldom heard a less sincere tone of voice. ‘That’s all right,’ he said, matching the tone. ‘I’ve got plenty more copies.’

‘Oh aye?’ The youth took his change from the barman and went back to the pool table, crouching to load coins into the slot. The balls fell with a dull rumble and he started to rack them up, staring at Rebus.

‘You do a bit of drawing, eh?’

Rebus, who had been wiping the drawings with his hand, turned to Dod the barman. ‘Not me, no. Good though, aren’t they?’ He turned the drawings around slowly so Dod could get a better look.