10 Great Rebus Novels (John Rebus) (386 page)

Petrie put his glass down on the worktop. He wasn’t looking at Rebus when he spoke. ‘This is strictly between us? No way I’m taking this any further.’

‘Fair enough,’ Rebus said.

Petrie folded his arms around himself, looking skinnier than ever. ‘I did borrow money from Mackenzie. We knew, those of us who frequented the Clipper, knew he’d
lend money. And I found myself needing some. My father can be generous when it suits him, Inspector, but I’d managed to fritter away a good deal of his money. I didn’t want him knowing. So I went to Mackenzie instead.’

‘Surely you could have arranged an overdraft?’

‘I dare say I could.’ Petrie looked away. ‘But there was something . . . the idea of dealing with Mackenzie was so much more appealing.’

‘How so?’

‘The danger, the whiff of the illicit.’ He turned back towards Rebus. ‘You know Edinburgh society loves that sort of thing. Deacon Brodie didn’t need to break into people’s houses, but that didn’t stop him. Strait-laced old town, how else are we going to get our thrills?’

Rebus stared at him. ‘Know something, Nicky? I almost believe you. Almost, but not quite.’ He raised a hand towards Petrie, who flinched. But all Rebus did was place a fingertip against the young man’s temple. It came away with a bead of perspiration clinging to it. The droplet fell, splashed onto the worktop.

‘Better wipe that up,’ Rebus said, turning away. ‘You wouldn’t want anything marking that stainless surface of yours, would you?’

There was still no sign of Billy Horman.

His mother Joanna had cried at the press conference, ensuring TV coverage. Ray Heggie, Joanna’s lover, had sat beside her, saying nothing. When the crying started, he’d tried to comfort her, but she’d pushed him away. Rebus knew he’d drift away eventually, as long as he was innocent.

GAP was as active as ever. They were holding a vigil outside the High Court while the jury retired to reach a verdict in the Shiellion case. They’d lit candles and tied placards to the railings. The placards detailed child-killers and paedophiles and their victims. The police were instructed not to move the protesters on. Meantime, there were fresh news reports of paedophiles being released from prison. GAP sent members to the relevant towns. It had become a movement now, Van Brady its unlikely figurehead. She hosted her own news conferences, blown-up photos of Billy Horman and Darren Rough on the wall behind her.

‘The world,’ she’d said at one meeting, ‘should be a green field without limits, where our children can play free from harm, and where parents can leave their children without fear. That is the purpose and intention of the Green Field Project.’

Rebus wondered who was writing her speeches for her. GFP was a departure for GAP, a funding application to set up patrolled play areas with security cameras and the like. To Rebus, it sounded less like the world as green field, more like the world as prison camp. They were applying
to the Lottery and the EC for cash. Other housing schemes had made successful bids in the past, and were lending a hand to Greenfield. They wanted something like two million quid. Rebus shuddered to think of Van and Cal Brady in charge of such a fund.

But then it wasn’t his problem, was it?

His immediate problem, as he knew when he picked up the ringing phone, was Cary Oakes.

The voice on the line belonged to Alan Archibald. ‘He’s agreed.’

‘Agreed to what?’

‘To go out to Hillend with me. To walk across the hills.’

‘He’s admitted it?’

‘As good as.’ Archibald’s voice shook with excitement.

‘But has he said anything
specific
?’

‘Once we get out there, John, I know he’ll tell me, one way or the other.’

‘You’re going to torture him, are you?’

‘I don’t mean it like that. I mean once he’s there, the scene of the crime, I think he’ll crack.’

‘I wouldn’t be so sure. What if it’s a trap?’

‘John, we’ve been through this.’

‘I know.’ Rebus paused. ‘And you’re still going.’

The voice quiet now, calm. ‘I’ve got to, whatever happens.’

‘Yes,’ Rebus said. Of course Archibald would go. It was his destiny. ‘Well, count me in.’

‘I’ll ask him—’

‘No, Alan, you’ll
tell
him. It’s both of us or no go.’

‘What if he—’

‘He won’t. Trust me on this. I think he’ll want me out there too.’

The tape was still running, but Cary Oakes hadn’t spoken for a couple of minutes. Jim Stevens was used to it, used to long pauses as Oakes gathered his thoughts. He let
another sixty seconds spool on before asking: ‘Anything else, Cary?’

Oakes looked surprised. ‘Should there be?’

‘That’s it then?’ Still Stevens left the tape running. Oakes only nodded, and reached his hands behind his head, job done. Stevens checked his watch, spoke the time into the machine, then squeezed the Stop button. He slipped the recorder into the breast pocket of his pale mauve shirt. It was pale because it had been through about three hundred washes in the five years since Stevens had bought it. He knew the other reporters thought he’d filled out in the past half-decade. The shirt could have proved them wrong, but would also have proved how seldom he bought new clothes.

‘Satisfied?’ Oakes said, getting to his feet, stretching as if after a long day at the coal-face.

‘Not really. Journalists never are.’

‘Why’s that?’

‘Because no matter how much we’re told, we
know
we’re not getting everything.’

Oakes held his hands out. ‘I’ve given you blood, Jim. I feel like you’ve taken a transfusion from me.’ That unnerving grin again; so lacking in humour. Stevens wrote date and time on a sticker, peeled it off and placed it down one edge of the cassette case. He made this tape number eleven. Eleven hours of Cary Oakes. It wasn’t enough for a book, but it might get him the contract, and the rest of the book could be padded: trial reports, interviews, photographs.

Only thing was, he didn’t think he was going to find a publisher. He wasn’t even going to try.

‘What are you thinking, big man?’ Oakes asked. He’d taken to calling Stevens ‘big man’. Stevens wasn’t naive enough to take it as a compliment; at best it was weighted with irony.

‘I’m . . . not really thinking at all.’ Stevens shrugged. ‘Just that it’s over, that’s all.’

‘So now it’s pay-off time for old Cary.’

‘You’ll get your cheque.’

‘What good’s a cheque? I said cash.’

Stevens shook his head. ‘A cheque, has to be or our accounts department would have a breakdown. You can use it to open a bank account.’

‘And sit around how long waiting for it to clear?’ Oakes had been pacing the room. Now he came to Stevens’ chair and leaned down over him, staring him out. Stevens blinked first, which seemed victory enough for Oakes. He propelled himself back upright and angled his head to the ceiling, letting out a whoop of laughter. Then he leaned down again long enough to pat one of Stevens’ resilient cheeks.

‘It’s OK, Jim, really it is. I never really needed the money anyway. What I needed was for you to think you had me by the balls.’

‘I never ever thought that, Oakes.’

‘No more first names, huh? Did I upset you or something?’

Stevens shook the tape box. ‘How much of this is crap?’

Oakes grinned again. ‘How much do you think, partner?’

‘I don’t know. That’s why I’m asking.’ He saw Oakes glance towards the clock by the bed. ‘Going somewhere?’

‘My work here’s finished. Nothing to keep me.’

‘Where are you going?’ Stevens didn’t know why, but while Oakes had been laughing, he’d switched the recorder back on. Situated as it was in his shirt pocket, he didn’t know how much it would pick up. He could hear its small motor working, feel it grinding against his chest.

‘Why should you care?’

‘I’m a reporter. You’re still a story.’

‘You haven’t seen the best of it, Jimmy baby.’

Stevens ran a dry tongue over his lips.

‘Do I scare you, Jim?’

‘Sometimes,’ Stevens admitted.

‘You’re bigger than me, heavier anyway. You could take me, couldn’t you?’

‘It’s not always down to size.’

‘True, true. Sometimes it’s down to just how rip-roaring crazy and ferocious your opponent is. Is there a touch of madness in me, Jimbo?’

Stevens nodded slowly. ‘And ferocity too,’ he added.

‘You better believe it.’ Oakes was examining himself in the wall-mirror, running a hand over his cropped head. ‘And it’s a hungry madness, Jim. It wants me to eat people up.’ A sly sideways look. ‘Not you, though, don’t worry on that score.’

‘What score should I worry on?’

‘You’ll find out soon enough.’ He studied himself in the mirror again. ‘I have a date with my past, Jim. A date with destiny, as you and your fellow hacks might put it. With someone who never listened to me.’ He was nodding to himself. ‘Just one last thing, Jim.’ Turning towards the journalist. ‘I knew when I came out I’d be telling my story. I’ve had a long time to get it straight.’

‘“Straight” rather than true?’

‘You’re smarter than you look, Jimbo.’ Oakes laughed.

Stevens’ heart beat a little faster. It was what he’d suspected for some days, but that didn’t make it any easier to hear.

‘Some of it must have been accurate,’ he managed to utter.

‘Scots are a nation of storytellers, Jim, isn’t that right?’ He patted Stevens’ cheek again, then headed for the door. ‘It was all shit, Jim. Remember that till the day you die.’

After the door had closed on Oakes, Stevens put his head in his hands and sat there for a few moments, relieved it was all over, whatever the outcome. When his phone rang, he remembered the recorder in his pocket. Removed it and switched it off, rewound and hit Play.

Oakes’s voice had grown small and tinny, but no less devilish.
It was all shit, Jim
. He turned off the tape and
went to answer the phone. Cleared his throat first, sat down on the edge of the bed.

‘Hello?’ he said into the receiver.

‘Jim, is that you? Peter Barclay here.’

Barclay worked for a rival tabloid. ‘What do you want, Peter?’

‘Caught you at a bad time?’ Barclay chuckled. He always spoke with a cigarette in his mouth. It made him sound like a bad ventriloquist.

‘You might say that.’

‘I do say that. Your boy’s been telling tales out of school.’

‘What?’ Stevens stopped rubbing the back of his neck.

‘He’s sent a letter to all your lovely competitors, saying his “autobiography” is complete bollocks. Any comment to make, Jim? On the record, naturally.’

Stevens slammed the receiver back into its cradle, then swiped the apparatus off the bedside table and on to the floor.

‘Number disconnected,’ he said, giving it a kick for good measure.

There was mist on the Pentland Hills, leaching colour from the landscape and threatening to cut Hillend and Swanston off from the city just north of them.

‘I don’t like it,’ Rebus said as they parked.

‘Afraid we’ll get lost?’ Cary Oakes smiled. ‘Wouldn’t that be a blow to humanity?’

He was sitting in the passenger seat, Alan Archibald in the back. Rebus hadn’t wanted Oakes in the back; had wanted him where he could see him. Before setting off, he’d insisted on patting Oakes down. Oakes had asked if Rebus would reciprocate.

‘I’m not the killer here,’ Rebus had said.

‘I’ll take that as a no.’ Oakes had turned to Archibald. ‘I thought it would just be the two of us. More intimate that way.’ Nodding towards Rebus. ‘No need for outsiders, Mr Archibald.’

‘You’re going nowhere without me,’ Rebus had said.

And here they were. Archibald seemed nervous. Getting out of the car, he dropped his Ordnance Survey map. Oakes picked it up for him.

‘Maybe we should leave a little trail of breadcrumbs,’ he suggested.

‘Let’s just get on with it,’ Archibald answered, nerves lending his voice an edge of irritation.

Rebus was looking around. No other cars in the vicinity; no hill-walkers; no sounds of dogs being exercised.

‘Creepy, isn’t it?’ Oakes said. He was donning a cheap green kagoul.

Rebus’s jacket had an integral hood. He rolled it out but didn’t put it over his head. He knew it would work like a pair of blinkers, and didn’t want to be deprived of his peripheral vision. Archibald had a flat tweed cap with him, and was wearing hiking boots. Cap and boots looked brand new: they’d been waiting on this day for a while.

‘Drinkie anyone?’ Oakes said, taking out a hip flask. Rebus stared at him. ‘You going to be scowling like that all day?’ Oakes laughed. ‘Got something you want to get off your mind, maybe?’

‘Plenty.’ Rebus’s fists were clenched.

‘Not here, John,’ Archibald pleaded. ‘Not now.’

Eyes on Rebus, Oakes held out the flask to Archibald, who shook his head. Oakes tipped the flask to his own mouth, showing them the liquid trickling in. He swallowed noisily.

‘See,’ he said, ‘it’s not poisoned.’ He made the offer again, and this time Archibald took a sip. ‘I had them fill it at the hotel bar.’ He took the flask back from Archibald. ‘And yourself, Inspector?’

Rebus took the flask, sniffed its contents. Christ, it did smell good, but he handed it back untouched.

‘Balvenie,’ he said. ‘If I’m not mistaken.’

Oakes laughed again; Archibald forced a smile.

‘I thought you didn’t drink,’ Rebus said.

‘I don’t, but this is in the nature of a special occasion, wouldn’t you say?’

Then Archibald started unfolding the map, and it became business, Oakes studying the area intently, aware of Rebus immediately behind him, and finally saying: ‘I’m not sure this is going to be much use.’ He looked around. ‘I think I’m going to have to follow my nose.’ He glanced at Archibald. ‘Sorry about that.’

‘Just take me to where she was killed,’ the older man said.

‘Maybe you should lead the way,’ Oakes said. ‘After all, I’ve never been here before.’ And he gave a wink.

They started walking.

Eventually Rebus said: ‘Another game, Oakes?’

Oakes stopped walking, caught his breath. ‘You know how the song goes, Inspector: we can’t go on together, if you’re going to have a suspicious mind. Far as I’m concerned, we’re just out for a breath of country air. Besides, I’m curious to see where the body was found.’