10 Great Rebus Novels (John Rebus) (197 page)

They worked amid brain and offal, thick blood and shit, in a sanitised environment of whitewash and piped radio music. A huge electrical unit reached down from the ceiling to suck the smell away and pump in fresh air. The young man hosing blood into a drain did so expertly, spraying none of the liquid anywhere other than where he wanted it. And afterwards he turned down the pressure at the nozzle and hosed off his black rubber boots. He wore a white rubberised apron round his neck and stretching down to his knees, as did most of those around him. Aprons to Rebus meant barmen, masons and butchers. He was reminded only of this last as he walked across the floor.

They were working with cattle. The cows looked young and fearful, eyes bulging. They’d probably already been injected with muscle relaxants, so moved drunkenly along the line. A jolt of electricity behind either ear numbed them, and quickly the wielder of the bolt-gun took aim with the cold muzzle hard against each skull. Their back legs seemed to crumple first. Already the light was vanishing from behind their eyes.

He’d been told Davey Soutar was working near the back of the operation, so he had to pick his way around the routine. Men and women speckled with blood smiled and nodded as he passed. They all wore hats to keep their hair off the meat.

Or perhaps to keep the meat off their hair.

Soutar was by the back wall, resting easily against it, hands tucked into the front of his apron. He was talking to a girl, chatting her up perhaps.

So romance isn’t dead, thought Rebus.

Then Soutar saw him, just as Rebus slipped on a wet patch of floor. Soutar placed him immediately, and seemed to raise his head and roll his eyes in defeat. Then he ran forward and picked something up from a shiny metal table. He was fumbling with it as Rebus advanced. It was only when Soutar took aim and the girl screamed that Rebus realised it was a bolt-gun. There was the sound of a two-pound hammer hitting a girder. The bolt flew, but Rebus dodged it. Soutar threw the gun at him and dived for the rear wall, hitting the bar of the emergency exit. The door swung open then closed again behind him. The girl was still screaming as Rebus ran towards her, pushed the horizontal bar to unlock the door, and stumbled into the abattoir’s back yard.

There were a couple of large transporters in the middle of disgorging their doomed cargo. The animals were sending out distress calls as they were fed into holding pens. The entire rear area was walled in, so nobody from the outside world could glimpse the spectacle. But if you went around the transporters, a lane led back to the front of the building. Rebus was about to head that way when the blow felled him. It had come from behind. On his hands and knees, he half-turned his head to see his attacker. Soutar had been hiding behind the door. He was holding a long metal stick, a cattle prod. It was this which he had swung at Rebus’s head, catching him on the left ear. Blood dropped onto the ground. Soutar lunged with the pole, but Rebus caught it and managed to pull himself up. Soutar kept moving forwards, but though wiry and young he did not possess the older man’s bulk and strength. Rebus twisted the pole from his hands, then dodged the kick which Soutar aimed at him. Kick-fighting wasn’t so easy with rubber boots on.

Rebus wanted to get close enough to land a good punch or kick of his own, or even to wrestle Soutar to the ground. But Soutar reached into his apron and came out with a gold-coloured butterfly knife, flicking its two moulded wings to make a handle for the vicious looking blade.

‘There’s more than one way to skin a pig,’ he said, grinning, breathing hard.

‘I like it when there’s an audience,’ Rebus said. Soutar turned for a second to take in the sight of the cattle herders, all of whom had stopped work to watch the fight. By the time he looked back, Rebus had caught the knife hand with the toe of his shoe, sending the knife clattering to the ground. Soutar came straight for him then, butting him on the bridge of the nose. It was a good hit. Rebus’s eyes filled with tears, he felt energy earth out of him into the ground, and blood ran down his lips and chin.

‘You’re dead!’ Soutar screamed. ‘You just don’t know it yet!’ He picked up his knife, but Rebus had the metal pole, and swung it in a wide arc. Soutar hesitated, then ran for it. He took a short cut, climbing the rail which funnelled the cattle into the pens, then leaping one of the cows and clearing the rail at the other side.

‘Stop him!’ Rebus called, spraying blood. ‘I’m a police officer!’ But by then Davey Soutar was out of sight. All you could hear were his rubber boots flapping as he ran.

The doctor at the Infirmary had seen Rebus several times before, and tutted as usual before getting to work. She confirmed what he knew: the nose was not broken. He’d been lucky. The cut to his ear required two stitches, which she did there and then. The thread she used was thick and black and ugly.

‘Whatever happened to invisible mending?’

‘It wasn’t a deterrent.’

‘Fair point.’

‘If it stings, you can always get your girlfriend to lick your wounds.’

Rebus smiled. Was that a chat-up line? Well, he had enough problems without adding another to the inventory. So he didn’t say anything. He acted the good patient, then went to Fettes and filed the assault.

‘You look like Ken Buchanan on a good night,’ said Ormiston. ‘Here’s the stuff you wanted. Claverhouse has gone off in a huff; he didn’t like being turned into a messenger boy.’

Ormiston patted the heavy package on Rebus’s desk. It was a large brown cardboard box, smelling of dust and old paper. Rebus opened it and took out the ledger book which served as a membership record for the original Sword and Shield. The blue fountain-ink had faded, but each surname was in capitals so it didn’t take him long. He sat staring at the two names, managing a short-lived smile. Not that he’d anything to smile about, not really. There was nothing to be proud of. His desk drawer didn’t lock, but Ormiston’s did. He took the ledger with him.

‘Has the Chief seen this?’ Ormiston shook his head.

‘He’s been out of the office since before it arrived.’

‘I want it kept safe. Can you lock it in your drawer?’ He watched Ormiston open the deep drawer, drop the package in, then shut it again and lock it.

‘Tighter than a virgin’s,’ Ormiston confirmed.

‘Thanks. Listen, I’m going out hunting.’

Ormiston drew the key out of the lock and pocketed it. ‘Count me in,’ he said.

Not that Rebus expected to find Davey Soutar at home; he doubted Soutar was quite that daft. But he did want to take a look, and now he had the excuse. He also had Ormiston, who looked threatening enough to dissuade anyone who might look like complaining. Ormiston, cheered by the story of how Rebus came by his cuts and bruises (his eyes were purpling and swelling nicely, a consequence of the head butt), was further cheered by the news that they were headed for the Gar-B.

‘They should open the place as a safari park,’ he opined. ‘Remember those places? They used to tell you to keep your car doors locked and your windows rolled up. Same advice I’d give to anyone driving through the Gar-B. You never know when the baboons will stick their arses in your face.’

‘Did you ever find anything about Sword and Shield?’

‘You never expected us to,’ Ormiston said. When Rebus looked at him, he laughed coldly. ‘I might look daft, but I’m not. You’re not daft either, are you? Way you’re acting, I’d say you think you’ve cracked it.’

‘Paramilitaries in the Gar-B,’ Rebus said quietly, keeping his eyes on the road. ‘And Soutar’s in it up to his neck and beyond.’

‘He killed Calumn?’

‘Could be. A knife’s his style.’

‘Not Billy Cunningham though?’

‘No, he didn’t kill Billy.’

‘Why are you telling me all this?’

Rebus turned to him for a moment. ‘Maybe I just want someone else to know.’

Ormiston weighed this remark. ‘You think you’re in trouble?’

‘I can think of half a dozen people who’d throw confetti at my funeral.’

‘You should take this to the Chief.’

‘Maybe. Would you?’

Ormiston thought about this. ‘I haven’t known him long, but I heard good things from Glasgow, and he seems pretty straight. He expects us to show initiative, work off our own backs. That’s what I like about SCS, the leeway. I hear you like a bit of leeway yourself.’

‘That reminds me, Lee Francis Bothwell: know him?’

‘He owns that club, the one with the body in it?’

‘That’s him.’

‘I know he should change the music.’

‘What to?’

‘Acid house.’

It was worth a laugh, but Rebus didn’t oblige. ‘He’s an acquaintance of my assailant.’

‘What is he, slumming it?’

‘I’d like to ask him, but I can’t see him answering. He’s been putting money into the youth club.’ Rebus was measuring each utterance, wondering how much to feed Ormiston.

‘Very civic minded of him.’

‘Especially for someone who got kicked out of the Orange Lodge on grounds of zeal.’

Ormiston frowned. ‘How are you doing for evidence?’

‘The youth club leader’s admitted the connection. Some kids I spoke to a while back thought I was Bothwell, only my car wasn’t flash enough. He drives a customised Merc.’

‘How do you read it?’

‘I think Peter Cave blundered with good intention into something that was already happening. I think something very bad is happening in the Gar-B.’

They had to take a chance on parking the car and leaving it. If Rebus had thought about it, he’d have brought one other man, someone to guard the wheels. There were kids loitering by the parking bays, but not the same kids who’d done his tyres before, so he handed over a couple of quid and promised a couple more when he came back.

‘It’s dearer than the parking in town,’ Ormiston complained as they headed for the high-rises. The Soutars’ high-rise had been renovated, with a sturdy main door added to stop undesirables congregating in the entrance hall or on the stairwells. The entrance hall had been decorated with a green and red mural. Not that you would know any of this to look at the place. The lock had been smashed, and the door hung loosely on its hinges. The mural had been all but blocked out by penned graffiti and thick black coils of spray paint.

‘Which floor are they on?’ Ormiston asked.

‘The third.’

‘Then we’ll take the stairs. I don’t trust the lifts in these places.’

The stairs were at the end of the hall. Their walls had become a winding scribble-pad, but they didn’t smell too bad. At each turn in the stairs lay empty cider cans and cigarette stubs. ‘What do they need a youth club for when they’ve got the stairwell?’ Ormiston asked.

‘What’ve you got against the lift?’

‘Sometimes the kids’ll wait till you’re between floors then shut off the power.’ He looked at Rebus. ‘My sister lives in one of those H-blocks in Oxgangs.’

They entered the third floor at the end of a long hallway which seemed to be doubling as a wind tunnel. There were fewer scribbles on the walls, but there were also smeared patches, evidence that the inhabitants had been cleaning the stuff off. Some of the doors offered polished brass name plaques and bristle doormats. But most were also protected by a barred iron gate, kept locked shut when the flats were empty. Each flat had a mortice deadlock as well as a Yale, and a spyhole.

‘I’ve been in jails with laxer security.’

But conspicuously, the door with the name Soutar on it had no extra security, no gate or spyhole. This fact alone told Rebus a lot about Davey Soutar, or at least about his reputation amongst his peers. Nobody was going to break into Davey’s flat.

There was neither bell nor knocker, so Rebus banged his fist against the meat of the door. After a wait, a woman answered. She peered out through a chink, then opened the door wide.

‘Fuckin’ polis,’ she said. It was a statement of fact rather than a judgment. ‘Davey, I suppose?’

‘It’s Davey,’ said Rebus.

‘He did that to you?’ She meant Rebus’s face, so he nodded. ‘And what were you doing to him?’

‘Just the usual, Mrs Soutar,’ Ormiston interrupted. ‘A length of lead pipe on the soles of the feet, a wet towel over the face, you know how it is.’

Rebus nearly said something, but Ormiston had judged her right. Mrs Soutar smiled tiredly and stepped back into her hall. ‘You’d better come in. A bit of steak would stop those eyes swelling, but all I’ve got is half a pound of mince, and it’s the economy stuff. You’d get more meat from a butcher’s pencil. This is my man, Dod.’

She had led them along the short narrow hall and into a small living room where a venerable three-piece suite took up too much space. Along the sofa, his shoeless feet resting on one arm of it, lay an unshaven man in his forties, or perhaps even badly nurtured thirties. He was reading a war comic, his lips moving with the words on the page.

‘Hiy, Dod,’ Mrs Soutar said loudly, ‘these are the polis. Davey’s just put the heid on one of them.’

‘Good for him,’ Dod said without looking up. ‘No offence, like.’

‘None taken.’ Rebus had wandered over to the window, wondering what the view was like. The window, however, was a botched piece of double glazing. Condensation had crept between the panes, frosting the glass.

‘It wasn’t much of a view to start with,’ Mrs Soutar said. He turned and smiled at her. He didn’t doubt she would see through any scheme, any lie. She was a short, strong-looking woman, big boned with a chiselled jaw but a pleasant face. If she didn’t smile often, it was because she had to protect herself. She couldn’t afford to look weak. In the Gar-B, the weak didn’t last long. Rebus wondered how much influence she’d had over her son while he was growing up here. A lot, he’d say. But then the father would be an influence too.

She kept her arms folded while she talked, unfolding them only long enough to slap Dod’s feet off the end of the sofa so she could sit herself down on the arm.

‘So what’s he done this time?’

Dod put down his comic and reached into his packet of cigarettes, lighting one for himself and handing the pack to Mrs Soutar.

‘He’s assaulted a police officer for a start,’ Rebus said. ‘That’s a pretty serious offence, Mrs Soutar. It could land him a spell in the carpentry shop.’