10 Great Rebus Novels (John Rebus) (233 page)

‘Your dad’s been worried,’ he said.

‘So what?’

‘And your mum.’

Her sudden convulsion almost sent a mouthful of ice cream on to the table. ‘My mum died when I was five. What you mean is, “that woman who lives with my dad”.’

‘OK.’

‘Have you met her?’

‘No.’

‘She’s off her trolley, praise the Lord.’

‘So you don’t get on with her. Is that why you ran away?’

‘Does there have to be a reason?’

Rebus shrugged. ‘Only, most teenagers I know who run away, they go a bit further.’

‘You mean London? I didn’t like it. My pals are all up here.’

‘You mean pals like Willie and Dixie?’

She put the spoon back on her plate and started on the Coke. ‘I liked Willie. Dixie was a nutter, you never knew what he’d do next, but Willie was all right.’

‘You heard what they did?’

She nodded.

‘You left that wreath for them on the bridge, didn’t you?’

Another nod. She dipped her finger into the chocolate sauce. She was trying not to care, but there was still a core of sentiment buried in her brain, a precious nugget of guilt.

‘Was it your idea, Kirstie?’ She looked up at him. ‘It was, wasn’t it?’

She got to her feet. ‘I have to go to the toilet.’

Rebus snatched her wrist. ‘Why did you do it, Kirstie? Just for the money? Why did you take the LABarum plans from your father’s office?’

She shook free of his grip. ‘Let me go!’ She stumbled away from the table and ran to the toilets. Rebus sat back and started to light a cigarette.

‘No smoking,’ the waitress told him.

‘Can I get a beer?’

‘We’re not licensed.’

Rebus nicked his cigarette and put it back in the packet. He looked across the table at Paul Duggan.

‘You like her, don’t you?’ Rebus said.

Duggan said nothing. He was making circles in the cream with his spoon.

‘Remember I told you she’d left something in Willie’s bedroom? It was some papers stolen from her father. Do you have any idea why she took them?’

Duggan shook his head slowly but determinedly. ‘She’s . . . go easy on her, OK?’

‘Or what?’

‘Or she’ll run.’ Duggan paused. ‘Again.’

Eventually the toilet door opened and she walked back to the table, arms hanging in a lazy slouch. Rebus looked into her eyes and saw pupils shrunk to pinheads.

‘That was stupid.’

‘So what?’ she said, starting back into her ice cream. After two mouthfuls, she pushed the plate away.

‘The kidnap,’ Rebus said, ‘the ransom demand – it was all your idea, wasn’t it?’

‘Yes.’

‘To get back at your stepmother?’

‘My dad.’

‘To get back at your dad?’

She nodded. ‘And everything he represents, the old bastard.’ She was much more together now, more confident. She didn’t care what she told him.

‘You know you committed an offence?’ Rebus asked.

‘I’d deny it in court. I’d deny it everywhere. Where’s the proof that it wasn’t just two wee boys with a daft scheme in their heads?’

‘There’s corroboration.’ Rebus glanced towards Duggan.

‘You think Paul would grass on me?’ She leaned into Duggan’s shoulder and stroked his face. ‘He wouldn’t do that.’

‘Not even if I offered him a deal on his slum landlord scam?’

Kirstie shook her head. ‘Paul wouldn’t hurt me. His mum likes me too much.’

‘Well, maybe I don’t need Paul. Maybe all I need is that LABarum document. It links you to Willie.’ He paused. ‘Did you write “Dalgety” on the last page?’ She nodded. ‘Why?’

‘It’s something I heard my dad say on the phone . . . when I was listening in. Dalgety sounded important, someone he was worried about.’

‘Dalgety’s a person then?’

‘Yes.’

‘Kirstie,
why
did you steal the LABarum plan?’

Her face creased in a sneer. ‘It’s my dad, don’t you see? If you look closely enough at it, if you read all the small print and between the lines, all you’ll find there is my dad’s face, smiling smugly back at you.’

‘Why is he smug?’

‘Because it’s going to make him a hero. And it’s all crooked. I heard him on the phone, they were talking about how to cover it all up. The whole fucking thing is just a lot of . . . a lot of . . . it’s all just so much
shit
!’

‘I can’t have language like that,’ the waitress warned. ‘There are children in here.’

‘Well, fuck them!’ Kirstie screeched, jumping to her feet. ‘Because they’re all fucked anyway, just like everybody else!’

‘I’ll have to ask you to leave.’

Rebus and Duggan were on their feet too.

‘Come on, Kirstie.’

‘That girl’s on drugs or something, I know it!’

Rebus threw money down on the table. Kirstie Kennedy’s legs had buckled, and Duggan was holding her upright.

‘Let’s get her into the car,’ Rebus said, knowing he should take her straight to St Leonard’s, angry with himself because he knew that’s the last thing he was going to do.

Instead, Duggan gave him directions back to where she was staying. It was a flat in Leith, in the maze of narrow roads behind Great Junction Street.

‘One of yours, is it?’ Rebus asked Duggan. But Duggan was busy stroking Kirstie’s forehead, even though she was asleep.

They walked her up the stairs, one on either side, arms around her back, her arms over their shoulders. Rebus
could feel the swell of a small breast, and the thin rib-cage beneath.

‘You did say you wanted to see her,’ Duggan was saying, exculpating himself.

‘And I’ll want to see her again.’ He knew there was more she could tell him, more he needed to hear from her.

He was trying to figure out who or what was responsible for the deaths of Willie and Dixie. This weightless creature he carried? The lads themselves? The police for giving chase? The Lord Provost for agreeing to it all? Maybe even the stepmother for driving Kirstie away? Except that it hadn’t just been the stepmother, it had been some realisation about the Lord Provost himself . . .

Maybe it was the system, that same system Sammy so passionately attacked. A system that had failed Willie and Dixie as surely as it nurtured people like Sir Iain Hunter and Robbie Mathieson. In nature, there had to be balance; as some rose, others fell or were pushed or made the leap for themselves.

Or maybe . . . just maybe it had been Rebus himself, for crawling from the wreckage still with the need to confront them . . . standing there in front of them, forcing
them
to choose. My obsession, he thought. My private morality. Maybe the Farmer was right . . .

‘Will you stay with her?’ he asked Duggan when they reached the top of the stairs.

Duggan nodded. Rebus knew she’d be all right. She had someone who’d look after her.

‘What about you?’ Duggan asked. ‘What are you going to do?’

But Rebus had released his hold on the body and was heading back downstairs.

He went into a dive he knew near the foot of Leith Walk. It
had a burgundy linoleum floor and matching coloured walls, and was like staring into somebody’s throat.

‘Whisky,’ Rebus said. ‘A double.’

And when the whisky came, he drank it down in two gulps.

‘Know something?’ he said to the closest drinker. ‘A couple of days ago, I was eating wild smoked salmon and shooting clay-pigeons.’

‘Better that than the other way round, son,’ the elderly drinker said, adjusting the cap on his head.

That night, Mrs Cochrane came upstairs to tell him there was a small dark patch on her living-room ceiling. Rebus had forgotten to empty the coffee-jar. Water had soaked the bare floorboard beneath.

‘Wait till it’s dried out,’ he said by way of apology, ‘and I’ll touch up the paintwork.’

He’d been asleep in his chair, but now felt wide awake. It was half past eleven, too late to do anything. Then the telephone rang, and he picked it up.

‘I’m not interested,’ he said.

‘You’ll be interested in this.’

Rebus recognised the voice of DC Robert Burns. ‘Don’t tell me West End needs my help?’

‘We’re not that desperate. I just thought I’d do you a favour. Looks like we’ve got a murder.’

Rebus’s grip tightened on the receiver. ‘Anyone I know?’

‘Identification near the body suggests the name’s Thomas Gillespie.’

‘
Councillor
Gillespie?’

‘I haven’t told you the best part yet. He was found in a lane connecting Dundee Street to Dalry Road.’

Rebus tried to fix the geography. ‘Next to the cemetery?’

‘Yes. The lane’s called Coffin Walk.’

Coffin Walk climbed quite steeply from Dalry Road. It had the busy Western Approach Road on one side, Dalry Cemetery on the other. It was a narrow alley, well lit but long.

‘If someone stopped you halfway,’ Burns told Rebus, leading him down the lane, ‘there’d be no escape.’

‘But you’d see an attacker, wouldn’t you? There’s no place to hide.’

Burns nodded at the cemetery wall. ‘You could stand behind there, listen for someone coming, then jump over when they got close. It’s the perfect site for an ambush.’

‘You think that’s what this was?’

Burns shrugged. They were close to the body now. Police officers with torches were in the cemetery, looking for footprints and the murder weapon. The lane had been sealed off at both ends, and though there was a knot of policemen near the body, the only person actually next to it was the pathologist, Professor Gates. Gates was telling the photographer what to do, and DI Davidson was talking to the undertaker. Even in mufti – padded jacket and jeans rather than the black suit – an undertaker was recognisable.

‘So what happened?’ Rebus asked Burns.

‘Somebody came out of the Diggers, walked up Angle Park Terrace, looked down here, and saw the body. They thought it was a tramp sleeping rough. Well, there’s a night shelter on Gorgie Road, so the guy came down here to say so.’

‘Like a good citizen.’

‘He saw the blood, knew fine well what had happened, and called us.’

Rebus pointed to a wallet, which lay a couple of feet from the body. ‘That was lying there?’

‘Yep, driver’s licence, blood donor card . . .’

‘But no cash or credit cards?’

‘Cleaned out.’

‘And nobody saw the attack?’

‘My guess is, he hoofed it back over the wall.’

Professor Gates had finished his initial examination. ‘We can wrap this one up,’ he said.

But Rebus wanted a look first. Tom Gillespie lay in a protective foetal position. He hadn’t been dead when he dropped. He’d curled himself around the pain in his gut.

‘Stab wound,’ Professor Gates said. ‘The shock probably killed him.’

‘Has his widow been notified?’

‘Are you volunteering, John?’ Davidson said.

‘This isn’t my patch, remember.’

‘No, but you knew the deceased. Anything you want to tell us?’

Rebus shook his head. ‘I will ask a question though: what was he doing here? He lives in Marchmont, chances are he’d never even heard of Coffin Walk. God knows I hadn’t. So why was he here, where was he headed?’

‘Maybe the Diggers.’

The Diggers was actually the Athletic Arms pub, but got its nickname from the gravediggers who’d used it in the past.

‘Not much of a shortcut, is it?’

‘Not much,’ Davidson agreed. ‘Lots of questions, John.’

‘I know the way your mind works, Davidson. You think it’s a simple mugging gone wrong – assailant: unknown; motive: robbery.’

‘So let’s hear your theory.’

Rebus smiled. His head was full of theories. Maybe too many for his own good. ‘Give me a cigarette,’ he said.

‘Not at the locus, John,’ Davidson warned. Rebus looked at the body again. It was being bagged. A trip to the mortuary first, and then the funeral parlour, your last journeys in the world as predictable as your first.

‘I asked if you had a theory,’ Davidson said.

‘OK, OK.’ Rebus put his hands up in surrender. ‘Take me back to your nice warm police station, give me a cigarette, and I’ll tell you a story. Just don’t blame me if it doesn’t make sense.’

He would tell Davidson what he knew, which wasn’t half as much as he suspected.

Which itself wasn’t half as much as he feared.

Next morning, when DI Davidson went to the widow’s house, Rebus went with him.

The curtains were closed, reminding Rebus of the day of McAnally’s funeral, inside Tresa’s flat. The door was answered not by Mrs Gillespie but by Helena Profitt, dressed in circumspect black – skirt, tights and shoes – and a plain white blouse.

‘I came as soon as I heard,’ she said, leading them inside. She looked surprised to see Rebus. We must, he thought, stop meeting like this.

‘Two policemen to see you, Audrey,’ Miss Profitt said, opening the living-room door.

It was a big light room, with prominence given to the floor-to-ceiling bookcases which lined two walls. The TV didn’t look much used, and though there was a video machine, Rebus couldn’t see more than half a dozen tapes. At one end of the room was a huge desk covered in paperwork, and a small table supporting a telephone and fax machine. The room, it seemed to him, was little more than an extension of the office at the front of the house, making Rebus wonder about Gillespie’s family life or, more pertinently, the lack of it.

His widow sat on the sofa, legs tucked beneath her. She’d started to rise, but Davidson had waved her back down. She looked as if she hadn’t slept. There was an empty mug on the floor, and next to it a tiny brown bottle
of tablets. Despite the central heating, Audrey Gillespie was trembling.

‘Shall I make some tea?’ Helena Profitt asked.

‘Not for us, thanks,’ Davidson said.

‘Well, I’ll leave you to it. Shall I pop back later, Audrey?’

‘Only if it’s not too much trouble.’

‘Of course not.’ Her eyes were red-rimmed from crying. Rebus saw through her act, saw she was as broken up as anyone. He followed her out of the room.

‘Could you wait in the kitchen? I’d like a quick word.’

She nodded hesitantly. Rebus went back into the living room and sat down next to Davidson.

‘Remember me, Mrs Gillespie?’ Davidson was saying. ‘We met last night.’