Fleshmarket Alley (2004) (19 page)

And then he opened his eyes, and was staring directly at Rebus. The pupils were small and dark, the face overfed. Cafferty’s short gray hair stuck damply to his skull. The upper half of his chest, visible above the surface of the water, was covered in a mat of darker, curled hair. He didn’t seem surprised to see someone standing in front of him, even at this time of night.

“Have you brought your trunks?” he asked. “Not that I’m wearing any . . .” He glanced down at himself.

“I heard you’d moved house,” Rebus said.

Cafferty turned to a control panel by his left hand and pressed a button. The music faded. “CD player,” he explained. “The speakers are inside.” He rapped the tub with his knuckles. Pressing another button, the motor ceased, and the water became still.

“Light show, too,” Rebus commented.

“Any color you like.” Cafferty jabbed a farther button, changing the water from red to green, and from green to blue, then ice-white and back to red.

“Red suits you,” Rebus stated.

“The Mephistopheles look?” Cafferty chuckled. “I love it out here, this time of night. Hear the wind in the trees, Rebus? They’ve been here longer than any of us, those trees. Same with these houses. And they’ll still be here when we’ve gone.”

“I think you’ve been in there too long, Cafferty. Your brain’s getting all wrinkled.”

“I’m getting old, Rebus, that’s all . . . And so are you.”

“Too old to bother with a bodyguard? Reckon you’ve buried all your enemies?”

“Joe knocks off at nine, but he’s never too far away.” A two-beat pause. “Are you, Joe.”

“No, Mr. Cafferty.”

Rebus turned to where the bodyguard was standing. He was barefoot, dressed hurriedly in underpants and a T-shirt.

“Joe sleeps in the room above the garage,” Cafferty explained. “Off you go now, Joe. I’m sure I’m safe with the Inspector.”

Joe glowered at Rebus, then padded back across the lawn.

“It’s a nice area, this,” Cafferty was saying conversationally. “Not much in the way of crime . . .”

“I’m sure you’re doing your best to change that.”

“I’m out of the game, Rebus, same as you’ll be pretty soon.”

“Oh aye?” Rebus held up the clippings he’d brought from home. Photos of Cafferty from the tabloids. They’d all been taken in the past year; all showed him with known villains from as far afield as Manchester, Birmingham, London.

“Are you stalking me or something?” Cafferty said.

“Maybe I am.”

“I don’t know whether to be flattered . . .” Cafferty stood up. “Hand me that robe, will you?”

Rebus was glad to. Cafferty climbed over the edge of the tub onto a wooden step, wrapping himself in the white cotton gown and sliding his feet into a pair of flip-flops. “Help me put the cover on,” Cafferty said. “Then we’ll go indoors and you’ll tell me whatever the hell it is you want from me.”

Again, Rebus obliged.

At one time, Big Ger Cafferty had run practically every criminal aspect of Edinburgh, from drugs and saunas to business scams. Since his last stretch of jail time, however, he’d kept his head down. Not that Rebus believed the crap about retirement: people like Cafferty didn’t ever jack it in. To Rebus’s mind, Cafferty had just grown wilier with age—and wiser to the ways police might go about investigating him.

He was around sixty now and had known most of the well-known gangsters from the 1960s on. There were stories that he’d worked with the Krays and Richardson in London, as well as some of the better-known Glasgow villains. Past inquiries had tried linking him to drug gangs in Holland and the sex slavers of Eastern Europe. Very little had ever stuck. Sometimes it was down to a lack of either resources or evidence compelling enough to persuade the Procurator Fiscal into a prosecution. Sometimes it was because witnesses vanished from the face of the earth.

Following Cafferty into the conservatory and from there to the limestone-floored kitchen, Rebus stared at the broad back and shoulders, wondering not for the first time how many executions the man had ordered, how many lives he’d wrecked.

“Tea or something stronger?” Cafferty said, shuffling across the floor in his flip-flops.

“Tea’s fine.”

“Christ, it must be serious . . .” Cafferty smiled a little smile to himself as he switched the kettle on and dropped three tea bags into the pot. “I suppose I better put some clothes on,” he said. “Come on, I’ll show you the drawing room.”

It was one of the rooms at the front, with a large bay window and a dominating marble fireplace. An assortment of canvases hung from the picture rails. Rebus didn’t know much about art, but the frames looked expensive. Cafferty had headed upstairs, giving Rebus the opportunity to browse, but there was precious little to attract his attention: no books or hi-fi, no desk . . . not even any ornaments on the mantelpiece. Just a sofa and chairs, a huge Oriental rug, and the exhibits. It wasn’t a room for living in. Maybe Cafferty held meetings there, impressing with his collection. Rebus placed his fingers against the marble, hoping against hope that it would prove fake.

“Here you go,” Cafferty said, carrying two mugs into the room. Rebus took one from him.

“Milk, no sugar,” Cafferty informed him. Rebus nodded. “What are you smiling at?”

Rebus nodded towards the corner of the ceiling above the door, where a small white box was emitting a blinking red light. “You’ve got a burglar alarm,” he explained.

“So?”

“So . . . that’s funny.”

“You think nobody’d break in here? It’s not like there’s a big sign on the wall saying who I am . . .”

“I suppose not,” Rebus said, trying to be agreeable.

Cafferty was dressed in gray jogging bottoms and a V-neck sweater. He seemed tanned and relaxed; Rebus wondered if there was a sunbed somewhere on the premises. “Sit down,” Cafferty said.

Rebus sat. “I’m interested in someone,” he began. “And I think you might know him: Stuart Bullen.”

Cafferty’s top lip curled. “Wee Stu,” he said. “I knew his old man better.”

“I don’t doubt it. But what do you know about the son’s recent activities?”

“He been a naughty boy, then?”

“I’m not sure.” Rebus took a sip of tea. “You know he’s in Edinburgh?”

Cafferty nodded slowly. “Runs a strip club, doesn’t he?”

“That’s right.”

“And as if that wasn’t hard enough work, now he’s got you digging at his scrotum.”

Rebus shook his head. “All it is, a girl’s run off from home and her mum and dad got the idea she might be working for Bullen.”

“And is she?”

“Not that I know of.”

“But you went to see Wee Stu and he got up your nose?”

“I just came away with a few questions . . .”

“Such as?”

“Such as what’s he doing in Edinburgh?”

Cafferty smiled. “You telling me you don’t know any west-coast hard-men who’ve made the move east?”

“I know a few.”

“They come here because in Glasgow they can’t walk ten yards without someone having a go at them. It’s the culture, Rebus.” Cafferty gave a theatrical shrug.

“You’re saying he wants a clean break?”

“Through there, he’s Rab Bullen’s son, always will be.”

“Which means someone somewhere just might have put a price on his head?”

“He’s not running scared, if that’s what you’re thinking.”

“How do you know?”

“Because Stu’s not the type. He wants to prove himself . . . stepping out from his old man’s shadow . . . you know what it’s like.”

“And running a lap bar’s going to do that?”

“Maybe.” Cafferty studied the surface of his drink. “Then again, maybe he’s got other plans.”

“Such as.”

“I don’t know him well enough to answer that. I’m an old man, Rebus: people don’t tell me as much as they used to. And even if I did know something . . . why the hell would I bother to tell you?”

“Because you nurse a grudge.” Rebus placed his half-empty mug on the varnished wooden floor. “Didn’t Rab Bullen rip you off on one occasion?”

“Mists of time, Rebus, mists of time.”

“So as far as you know, the son’s clean?”

“Don’t be stupid—nobody’s
clean.
Have you looked around you recently? Not that there’s much to see from Gayfield Square. Can you still smell the drains in the corridors?” Cafferty smiled at Rebus’s silence. “
Some
people still tell me stuff . . . just now and again.”

“Which people?”

Cafferty’s smile widened. “‘Know thine enemy,’ that’s what they say, isn’t it? I dare say it’s why you keep all my press cuttings.”

“It’s not for your pop-star looks, that’s for sure.”

Cafferty’s mouth gaped in a huge yawn. “Hot tub always does that to me,” he said by way of apology, fixing Rebus with a stare. “Something else I hear is that you’re working the Knoxland stabbing. Poor sod had . . . what? Twelve? Fifteen wounds? What do Messrs. Curt and Gates think of that?”

“How do you mean?”

“Looks to me like a frenzy . . . someone out of control.”

“Or just very, very angry,” Rebus countered.

“Same thing in the end. All I’m saying is, it might have given them a taste.”

Rebus’s eyes narrowed. “You know something, don’t you?”

“Not me, Rebus . . . I’m happy just sitting here and growing old.”

“Or heading down to England to meet your scumbag friends.”

“Sticks and stones . . . sticks and stones.”

“The Knoxland victim, Cafferty . . . what is it you’re not telling me?”

“Think I’m going to sit here and do your job for you?” Cafferty shook his head slowly, then grasped the arms of the chair and started to rise to his feet. “But now it’s time for bed. Next time you come, bring that nice DS Clarke with you and tell her to pack her bikini. In fact, if you’re sending her,
you
can stay at home.” Cafferty laughed longer and louder than was merited as he led Rebus towards the front door.

“Knoxland,” Rebus said.

“What about it?”

“Well, since you brought it up . . . remember a few months back, we had the Irish trying to muscle in on the drugs scene there?” Cafferty made a noncommittal gesture. “Seems they could be back . . . Would you happen to know anything about that?”

“Drugs are for losers, Rebus.”

“That’s an original line.”

“Maybe I don’t think you merit any of my better ones.” Cafferty held the front door open. “Tell me, Rebus . . . all those stories about me, do you keep them in a scrapbook with little hearts doodled on the front?”

“Daggers, actually.”

“And when they make you retire, that’s what you’ll have waiting for you . . . a few final years alone with your scrapbook. Not much of a legacy, is it?”

“And what exactly are
you
leaving behind, Cafferty? Any hospitals out there named after you?”

“Amount I give to charity, there might well be.”

“All that guilt money, it doesn’t change who you are.”

“It doesn’t need to. Thing you have to realize is, I’m happy with my lot.” He paused. “Unlike some I could name.”

Cafferty was chuckling softly as he closed the door on Rebus.

DAY FIVE

Friday

15

T
he first Siobhan heard of it was on the morning news. Muesli with skimmed milk; coffee; multivitamin juice. She always ate at the kitchen table, wrapped in her dressing gown—that way, if she spilled anything, she didn’t have to worry. A shower afterwards, and then her clothes. Her hair took only a few minutes to dry, which was why she was keeping it short. Radio Scotland was usually just background noise, a babble of voices to fill the silence. But then she picked up the word “Banehall” and turned the volume up. She’d missed the gist, but the studio was handing over to an outside broadcast:

“
Well, Catriona, police from Livingston are at the scene as I speak. We’re being kept behind a cordon, of course, but a forensic team, dressed in regulation white overalls with hoods and masks, is entering the terraced house. It’s a council-owned property, maybe two or three bedrooms, with gray rough-stone walls and all its windows curtained. The front garden’s overgrown, and a small crowd of onlookers has gathered. I’ve managed to talk to some of the neighbors and it appears the victim was known to police, though whether this will have any bearing on the case remains to be seen . . .”

“Colin, have they revealed his identity yet?”

“Nothing official, Catriona. I can tell you that he was a local man of twenty-two years, and that his demise appears to have been pretty brutal. Again, though, we’ll have to await the press conference for a more detailed account. Officers here say that’ll happen in the next two to three hours.”

“Thank you, Colin . . . and there’ll be more on that story in our lunchtime program. Meantime, a Central Scotland list MSP is calling for the closure of the Whitemire detention center situated just outside Banehall . . .”

Siobhan unhooked her phone from its charger but then couldn’t remember the number for Livingston police station. And who did she know there anyway? Only DC Davie Hynds, and he’d been there less than a fortnight: another casualty of the changes at St. Leonard’s. She headed to the bathroom, checked her face and hair in the mirror. A splash and a wet comb might do for once. She didn’t have time for anything else. Decided, she dashed into the bedroom and yanked open the wardrobe doors.

Less than an hour later, she was in Banehall. Drove past the Jardines’ old house. They’d moved so they wouldn’t be so close to Tracy’s rapist. Donny Cruikshank, whose age Siobhan calculated as twenty-two . . .

There were a couple of police vans parked in the next street. The milling crowd had grown. A guy with a microphone was doing a vox pop—she guessed he was the same radio reporter she’d been listening to. The house at the center of all the attention was flanked by two others. All three doors stood open. She saw Steve Holly disappear into the right-hand one. Doubtless money had changed hands and Holly was being given access to the rear garden, where he might have a better view of things. Siobhan double-parked and approached the uniform standing guard at the blue-and-white tape. She showed her warrant card and he raised the tape for her so she could duck beneath.

“Body been ID’d?” she asked.

“Probably the guy who lived there,” he said.

“Pathologist been?”

“Not yet.”

She nodded and moved on, pushing open the gate, walking up the path towards the shadowy interior. She took a few deep breaths, releasing them slowly; needed to look casual when she stepped indoors, needed to be professional. The lobby was narrow. Downstairs there appeared to be only a cramped living room and an equally small kitchen. A door led from the kitchen to the back garden. The stairs were steep to the only other floor: four doors here, all of them open. One was a hall cupboard, filled with cardboard boxes, spare duvets, and sheets. Through another she could see part of a pale pink bath. Two bedrooms, then: one a single, unused. Which left the larger, facing the front of the house. This was where all the activity was: scene-of-crime officers; photographers; a local GP consulting with a detective. The detective noticed her.

“Can I help you?”

“DS Clarke,” she said, showing him her ID. So far, she hadn’t as much as glanced at the body, but it was there all right: no mistaking it. Blood soaking into the biscuit-colored carpet beneath it. Face twisted, mouth sagging as though in an effort to suck in a final lungful of life. The shaven head crusted with blood. The SOCOs were running detectors over the walls, seeking spatters which would give them a pattern, the pattern in turn giving clues to the ferocity and nature of the attack.

The detective handed back her ID. “You’re a ways from home, DS Clarke. I’m DI Young, officer in charge of this inquiry . . . and I don’t remember asking for any help from the big city.”

She tried a winning smile. DI Young was just that—young; younger than her anyway, and already above her in rank. A sturdy face above a sturdier body. Probably played rugby, maybe came from farming stock. He had red hair and fairer eyelashes, a few burst blood vessels either side of his nose. If someone had told her he wasn’t long out of school, she’d probably have believed them.

“I just thought . . .” She hesitated, trying to find the right combination of words. Looking around, she noticed the pictures stuck to the walls—soft porn, blondes with their mouths and legs open.

“Thought what, DS Clarke?”

“That I might be able to help.”

“Well, that’s a very kind thought, but I think we can manage, if that’s all right with you.”

“But the thing is . . .” And now she stared down at the corpse. Her stomach felt as though it had been replaced by a punching bag, but her face showed only professional interest. “I know who he is. I know quite a bit about him.”

“Well, we know who he is, too, so thanks again . . .”

Of course they knew him. With his reputation and his scarred face. Donny Cruikshank, lifeless on the floor of his bedroom.

“But I know things you don’t,” she persisted.

Young’s eyes narrowed, and she knew she was in.

“Plenty more porn in here,” one of the SOCOs was saying. He meant the living room: the floor beside the TV stacked with pirate DVDs and videos. There was a computer, too, another officer sitting in front of it, busy with the mouse. He had a lot of floppies and CDs to get through.

“Remember: this is work,” Young reminded them. He decided the room was still too busy, so he led Siobhan into the kitchen.

“I’m Les, by the way,” he said, softening now that she had something to offer him.

“Siobhan,” she replied.

“So . . .” He leaned against a countertop, arms folded. “How did you come to know Donald Cruikshank?”

“He was a convicted rapist—I worked that case. His victim committed suicide. She lived locally . . . parents still do. They came to me a few days back because their other daughter’s run off.”

“Oh?”

“They said they talked to someone at Livingston about it . . .” Siobhan tried to sound anything but judgmental.

“Any reason to think . . . ?”

“What?”

Young shrugged. “That this might have something to do with . . . I mean, connect in some way?”

“That’s what I’m wondering. It’s why I decided to come here.”

“If you could write this up as a report . . . ?”

Siobhan nodded. “I’ll do it today.”

“Thanks.” Young eased himself away from the countertop, readying to head back upstairs. But he paused in the doorway. “You busy in Edinburgh?”

“Not really.”

“Who’s your boss?”

“DCI Macrae.”

“Maybe I could have a word with him . . . see if he can spare you for a few days.” He paused. “Always supposing you’re agreeable?”

“I’m all yours,” Siobhan said. She could have sworn he was blushing as he left the room.

She was walking back through to the living room when she almost collided with a new arrival: Dr. Curt.

“You do get around, DS Clarke,” he said. He looked to left and right to make sure no one was eavesdropping. “Any progress on Fleshmarket Alley?”

“A little. I bumped into Judith Lennox.”

Curt winced at the name. “You didn’t tell her anything?”

“Of course not . . . your secret’s safe with me. Any plans to put Mag Lennox back on display?”

“I should think so.” He moved aside to let a SOCO past. “Well, I suppose I’d better . . .” He motioned to the stairs.

“Don’t worry—he’s not going anywhere.”

Curt stared at her. “If you don’t mind me saying, Siobhan,” he drawled, “that remark says much about you.”

“Such as?”

“You’ve been around John Rebus for far too long . . .” The pathologist started climbing the stairs, taking his black leather medical case with him. Siobhan could hear his knees clicking with each step.

“What’s the interest, DS Clarke?” someone outside was shouting. She looked towards the cordon and saw Steve Holly there, waving his notebook at her. “Bit off the beaten track, aren’t you?”

She muttered something under her breath and walked down the path, opening the gate again, ducking under the cordon. Holly was at her shoulder as she made for her car.

“You worked on the case, didn’t you?” he was saying. “The rape case, I mean. I remember trying to ask you . . .”

“Buzz off, Holly.”

“Look, I’m not going to quote you or anything . . .” He was in front of her now, walking backwards so he could make eye contact. “But you must be thinking the same as me . . . same as lots of us . . .”

“And what’s that?” she couldn’t help asking.

“Good riddance to bad rubbish. I mean, whoever did this, they deserve a medal.”

“I know limbo dancers that couldn’t go as low as you.”

“Your mate Rebus said much the same thing.”

“Great minds think alike.”

“But, come on, you must . . .” He broke off as he backed into her car, losing his balance and falling into the road. Siobhan got in and started the engine before he could climb to his feet again. He was brushing himself down as she reversed down the street. He made to pick up his pen, but noticed that she’d crushed it under her wheels.

She didn’t drive far, just to the junction with Main Street and across it. Found the Jardines’ house easily enough. Both were at home, and ushered her inside.

“You’ve heard?” she said.

They nodded, looking neither pleased nor displeased.

“Who could have done it?” Mrs. Jardine asked.

“Just about anyone,” her husband replied. His eyes were on Siobhan. “Nobody in Banehall wanted him back, not even his own family.”

Which explained why Cruikshank had lived alone.

“Is there any news?” Alice Jardine asked, trying to press Siobhan’s hands between her own. It was as if she’d already dismissed the murder from her mind.

“We went to the club,” Siobhan admitted. “Nobody seemed to know Ishbel. Still no word from her?”

“You’re the first person we’d tell,” John Jardine assured her. “But we’re forgetting our manners—you’ll take a cup of tea?”

“I really don’t have time.” Siobhan paused. “Something I did want, though . . .”

“Yes?”

“A sample of Ishbel’s handwriting.”

Alice Jardine’s eyes widened. “What for?”

“It’s nothing really . . . might just come in handy later on.”

“I’ll see what I can find,” John Jardine said. He went upstairs, leaving the two women alone. Siobhan had pushed her hands into her pockets, safe from Alice.

“You don’t think we’ll find her, do you?”

“She’ll let herself be found . . . when she’s ready,” Siobhan said.

“You don’t think anything’s happened to her?”

“Do you?”

“I’m guilty of thinking the worst,” Alice Jardine said, rubbing her hands together as though washing them clean of something.

“You know we’ll want to interview you?” Siobhan spoke softly. “There’ll be questions about Cruikshank . . . about how he died.”

“I suppose so.”

“You’ll be asked about Ishbel, too.”

“Gracious me, they can’t think . . . ?” The woman’s voice had risen.

“It’s just something that has to be done.”

“And will it be you asking the questions, Siobhan?”

Siobhan shook her head. “I’m too close. It might be a man called Young. He seems okay.”

“Well, if you say so . . .”

Her husband was returning. “There’s not much, to be honest,” he said, handing over an address book. It listed names and phone numbers, most of them in green felt-tip. Inside the cover, Ishbel had written her own name and address.

“Might do it,” Siobhan said. “I’ll bring it back when I’m finished.”

Alice Jardine had grabbed her husband’s elbow. “Siobhan says the police will want to talk to us about . . .” She couldn’t bring herself to use his name. “About
him.
”

“Will they?” Mr. Jardine turned to Siobhan.

“It’s routine,” she said. “Turning the victim’s life into a pattern . . .”

“Yes, I see.” Though he sounded unsure. “But they can’t . . . they
won’t
think Ishbel had anything to do with it?”

“Don’t be so stupid, John!” his wife hissed. “Ishbel wouldn’t do something like that!”

Maybe not, Siobhan thought, but then Ishbel was by no means the only member of the family who’d be regarded as a suspect . . .

Tea was offered again, and politely refused. She managed to get out of the door, escaping to her car. As she drove off, she looked in her rearview mirror and saw Steve Holly striding along the sidewalk, checking house numbers. For a moment, she considered stopping—heading back and warning him off. But that sort of thing would only pique his curiosity. However he acted, whatever he asked, the Jardines would have to survive without her help.

She turned along Main Street and stopped outside the Salon. Inside, the place smelled of perms and hairspray. Two customers sat beneath dryers. They had magazines open on their laps but were busy talking, voices raised above the machines.

“. . . and the best of British luck to them, I say.”

“No great loss, that’s for sure . . .”

“It’s Sergeant Clarke, isn’t it?” This last came from Angie. She spoke even more loudly than her clients, and they heeded her warning, falling silent, eyes on Siobhan.