Beggars Banquet (35 page)

Nor did he. Dinner was over, the actor playing Scrooge was flat out on the mezzanine floor, and Rebus was as far away from solving the crime as ever. Thankfully, a bar had been opened up, and he spent most of his time perched on a high stool, pretending to read the background notes while taking sips of beer. Jean had hooked up with Miss Havisham, while Aitchison’s wife was slumped in one of the armchairs, drawing on a cigarette. The MSP himself was playing ringmaster, and had twice confronted Rebus, calling for him to reveal himself as the villain.

‘Innocent, m’lud,’ was all Rebus had said.

‘We think it’s Magwitch,’ Jean said, suddenly breathless by Rebus’s side, her bonnet at a jaunty angle. ‘He and Scrooge knew one another in prison.’

‘I didn’t know Scrooge served time,’ Rebus said.

‘That’s because you’re not asking questions.’

‘I don’t need to; I’ve got you to tell me. That’s what makes a good detective.’

He watched her march away. Four of the diners had encircled the poor man playing Magwitch. Rebus had harboured suspicions, too . . . but now he was thinking of jail time, and how it affected those serving it. It gave them a certain look, a look they brought back into the world on their release. The same look he’d seen in Santa’s eyes.

And here was Santa now, coming back down the stairs, his sack slung over one shoulder. Crossing the mezzanine floor as if seeking someone out. Then finding them: Scully Aitchison. Rebus rose from his stool and wandered over.

‘Have you been good this year?’ Santa was asking Aitchison.

‘No worse than anyone else,’ the MSP smirked.

‘Sure about that?’ Santa’s eyes narrowed.

‘I wouldn’t lie to Father Christmas.’

‘What about this plan of yours, the offender register?’

Aitchison blinked a couple of times. ‘What about it?’

Santa held a piece of paper aloft, his voice rising. ‘Your own nephew’s serving time for fraud. Managed to keep that quiet, haven’t you?’

Aitchison stared at the letter. ‘Where in hell . . . ? How . . . ?’

The journalist stepped forward. ‘Mind if I take a look?’

Santa handed over the letter, then pulled off his hat and beard. Started heading for the stairs down. Rebus blocked his way.

‘Time to hand out the presents,’ he said quietly. Joey looked at him and understood immediately, slid the sack from his shoulder. Rebus took it. ‘Now on you go.’

‘You’re not arresting me?’

‘Who’d feed Dancer and Prancer?’ Rebus asked.

His stomach full of steak and wine, a bottle of malt in the capacious pocket of his costume, Joey smiled his way back towards the outside world.

The club was called Gaitanos, nobody knew why. The owner just said it sounded American and a bit jazzy. The larger part of the clientele had decided on the nickname ‘Guisers’, and that was what you heard in the pubs on a Friday and Saturday night - ‘Going down Guisers later?’ The young men would be dressed smart-casual, the women scented from heaven and all stations south. They left the pubs around ten or half past - that’s when it would be starting to get lively at Guisers.

Rebus was seated in a small uncomfortable chair which itself sat in a stuffy dimly lit room. The other chair was filled by an audio-visual technician, armed with two remotes. His occasional belches - of which he seemed blissfully ignorant - bespoke a recent snack of spring onion crisps and Irn-Bru.

‘I’m really only interested in the main bar, foyer and out front,’ Rebus said.

‘I could edit them down to another tape, but we’d lose definition. The recording’s duff enough as it is.’ The technician scratched inside the sagging armpit of his black T-shirt.

Rebus leaned forward a little, pointing at the screen. ‘Coming up now.’ They waited. The view jumped from back alley to dance floor. ‘Any second.’ Another cut: main bar, punters queuing three deep. The technician didn’t need to be told, and froze the picture. It wasn’t so much black and white as sepia, the colour of dead photographs. Interior light, the audio-visual wizard had explained. He was adjusting the tracking now, and moving the action along one frame at a time. Rebus moved in on the screen, bending so one knee rested on the floor. His finger was touching a face. He took out the assortment of photos from his pocket and held them against the screen.

‘It’s him,’ he said. ‘I was pretty sure before. You can’t go in a bit closer?’

‘For now, this is as good as it gets. I can work on it later, stick it on the computer. The problem is the source material, to wit: one shitty security video.’

Rebus sat back on his chair. ‘All right,’ he said. ‘Let’s run forward at half-speed.’

The camera stayed with the main bar for another fifteen seconds, then switched to the second bar and all points on the compass. When it returned to the main bar, the crush of drinkers seemed not to have moved. Unbidden, the technician froze the tape again.

‘He’s not there,’ Rebus said. Again he approached the screen, touched it with his finger. ‘He should be there.’

‘Next to the sex goddess.’ The technician belched again.

Yes. Spun silver hair, almost like a cloud of candy-floss, dark eyes and lips. While those around her were either intent on catching the eyes of the bar staff or on the dance floor, she was looking off to one side. There were no shoulders to her dress.

‘Let’s check the foyer,’ Rebus said.

Twenty seconds there showed a steady stream entering the club, but no one leaving. Exterior front showed a queue awaiting admittance by the brace of bouncers, and a few passers-by.

‘In the toilet maybe,’ the technician suggested. But Rebus had studied the tape a dozen times already, and though he watched just once more he knew he wouldn’t see the young man again, not at the bar, not on the dance floor, and not back around the table where his mates were waiting - with increasing disbelief and impatience - for him to get his round in.

The young man’s name was Damon Mee and, according to the timer running at the bottom right-hand corner of the screen, he had vanished from the world sometime between 11.44 and 11.45 p.m. on Friday 22 April.

‘Where is this place anyway? I don’t recognise it.’

‘Kirkcaldy,’ Rebus said.

The technician looked at him. ‘How come it ended up here?’

Good question, Rebus thought, but not one he was about to answer. ‘Go back to that bar shot,’ he said. ‘Take it nice and slow again.’

The technician aimed his right-hand remote. ‘Yes, sir, Mr DeMille,’ he said.

It was interesting to Rebus that, for all the barriers around the ground, this was a place where shields were dropped. After a while, it felt like one of the safest places he’d ever been. He recalled fixtures his father had taken him to in the fifties and early sixties - Cowdenbeath home games, and a crowd numbered in the hundreds; getting there necessitated a change of buses, Rebus and his younger brother fighting over who could hold the roll of tickets. Their mother was dead by then and their father was trying to carry on much as before, like they might not notice she was missing. Those Saturday trips to the football were supposed to fill a gap. You saw a lot of fathers and sons on the terraces but not many mothers, and that in itself was reminder enough. There was a boy of Rebus’s age who stood near them. Rebus had walked over to him one day and blurted out the truth.

‘I don’t have a mum at home.’

The boy had stared at him, saying nothing.

Ever since, football had reminded him of those days and of his mother. He stood on the terraces alone these days and followed the game mostly - movements which could be graceful as ballet or as jagged as free association - but sometimes found that he’d drifted elsewhere, to a place not at all unpleasant, and all the time surrounded by a community of bodies and wills.

‘I’ll tell you how to beat Rangers,’ he said now, addressing the whole office.

‘How?’ Siobhan Clarke offered.

‘Clone Stevie Scoular half a dozen times.’

There were murmurs of agreement, and then the Farmer put his head around the door.

‘John, my office.’

‘My birthday’s coming up,’ the Farmer said. This was a new one on Rebus, who kept quiet. ‘I’d like a present.’

‘Not just a card this year then?’

‘What I want, John, is Topper Hamilton.’

Rebus let that sink in. ‘I thought Topper was Mr Clean these days?’

‘Not in my books.’ The Farmer cupped his hands around his coffee mug. ‘He got a fright last time and, granted, he’s been keeping a low profile, but we both know the best villains have got little or no profile at all.’

‘So what’s he been up to?’

‘I heard a story he’s the sleeping partner in a couple of clubs and casinos. I also hear he bought a taxi firm from Big Ger Cafferty when Big Ger went into Barlinnie.’

Rebus was thinking back three years to their big push against Topper Hamilton: they’d set up surveillance, used a bit of pressure here and there, got a few people to talk. In the end, it hadn’t so much amounted to a hill of beans as to a fart in an empty can. The procurator fiscal had decided not to proceed to trial. But then God or Fate, call it what you like, had provided a spin to the story. Not a plague of boils or anything for Topper Hamilton, but a nasty little cancer which had given him more grief than the whole of the Lothian and Borders Police. He’d been in and out of hospital, endured chemo and the whole works, and had emerged a more slender figure in every sense.

The Farmer - who’d once settled an office argument by reeling off the books in both Old and New Testaments - wasn’t yet content that God and life had done their worst to Topper, or that retribution had been meted out in some mysterious divine way. He wanted Topper in court, even if they had to wheel him there on a trolley.

It was a personal thing.

‘Last time I looked,’ Rebus said now, ‘it wasn’t illegal to invest in a casino.’

‘It is if your name hasn’t come up during the vetting procedure. Think Topper could get a gaming licence?’

‘Fair point. But I still don’t see—’

‘Something else I heard. You’ve got a snitch works as a croupier.’

‘So?’

‘Same casino Topper has a finger in.’

Rebus saw it all and started shaking his head. ‘I made him a promise. He’ll tell me about punters, but nothing on the management.’

‘And you’d rather keep that promise than give me a birthday present?’

‘A relationship like that . . . it’s eggshells.’

The Farmer’s eyes narrowed. ‘You think ours isn’t? Talk to him, John. Get him to do some ferreting.’

‘I could lose a good snitch.’

‘Plenty more bigmouths out there.’ The Farmer watched Rebus get to his feet. ‘I was looking for you earlier. You were in the video room.’

‘A missing person.’

‘Suspicious?’

Rebus shrugged. ‘Could be. He went up to the bar for a round of drinks, never came back.’

‘We’ve all done that in our time.’

‘His parents are worried.’

‘How old is he?’

‘Twenty-three.’

The Farmer thought about it. ‘Then what’s the problem?’