The Black Book (25 page)

‘Yes, that’s the man I found,’ she had said.

‘Yes, that’s Edward Ringan,’ Pat Calder had said, before being led away by Toni the barman.

Rebus now stood with Curt beside the slab on which what was left of the corpse was being tidied up by an assistant. The assistant was whistling ‘Those Were the Days’ as he scraped miscellany into a bucket of offal. Rebus was reading through a list. He’d been through it three times already, trying to take his mind off the scene around him. Curt was smoking a cigarette. At the age of fifty-five, he’d decided he might as well start, since nothing else had so far managed to kill him. Rebus might have taken a cigarette from him, but they were Player’s untipped, the smoking equivalent of paint stripper.

Maybe because he’d perused the list so often, something clicked at last. ‘You know,’ he said, ‘we never found a suicide note.’

‘They don’t always leave them.’

‘Eddie would have.
And
he’d have had Elvis singing
Heartbreak Hotel
on a tape player beside the oven.’

‘Now that’s style,’ Curt said disingenuously.

‘And now,’ Rebus went on, ‘from this list of the contents of his pockets, I see he didn’t have any keys on him.’

‘No keys, eh.’ Curt was enjoying his break too much to bother trying to work it out. He knew Rebus would tell him anyway.

‘So,’ Rebus obliged, ‘how did he get in? Or if he
did
use his keys to get in, where are they now?’

‘Where indeed.’ The attendant frowned as Curt stubbed his cigarette into the floor.

Rebus knew when he’d lost an audience. He put the list away. ‘So what have you got for me?’

‘Well, the usual tests will have to be carried out, of course.’

‘Of course, but in the meantime …?’

‘In the meantime, a few points of interest.’ Curt turned to the cadaver, forcing Rebus to do the same. There was a cover over the charred face, and the attendant had roughly sewn up the chest and stomach, now empty of their major organs, with thick black thread. The face had been badly burnt, but the rest of the body remained unaffected. The plump flesh was pale and shiny.

‘Well,’ Curt began, ‘the burns were superficial merely. The internal organs were untouched by the blast. That made things easier. I would say he probably asphyxiated through inhalation of North Sea gas.’ He turned to Rebus. ‘That “North Sea” is pure conjecture.’ Then he grinned again, a lopsided grin that meant one side of his mouth stayed closed. ‘There was evidence of alcoholic intake. We’ll have to wait for the test results to determine how much. A lot, I’d guess.’

‘I’ll bet his liver was a treat. He’s been putting the stuff away for years.’

Curt seemed doubtful. He went to another table and returned with the organ itself, which had already been cross-sectioned. ‘It’s actually in pretty good shape. You said he was a spirits drinker?’

Rebus kept his eyes out of focus. It was something you learned. ‘A bottle a day easy.’

‘Well, it doesn’t show from this.’ Curt tossed the liver a few inches into the air. It slapped back down into his palm. He reminded Rebus of a butcher showing off to a potential buyer. ‘There was also a bump to the head and bruising and minor burns to the arms.’

‘Oh?’

‘I’d imagine these are injuries often incurred by chefs in their daily duties. Hot fat spitting, pots and pans everywhere …’

‘Maybe,’ said Rebus.

‘And now we come to the section of the programme Hamish has been waiting for.’ Curt nodded towards his assistant, who straightened his back in anticipation. ‘I call him Hamish,’ Curt confided, ‘because he comes from the Hebrides. Hamish here spotted something
I
didn’t. I’ve been putting off talking about it lest he become encephalitic.’ He looked at Rebus. ‘A little pathologist’s joke.’

‘You’re not so small,’ said Rebus.

‘You need to know, Inspector, that Hamish has a fascination with teeth. Probably because his own as a child were terribly bad and he has memories of long days spent under the dentist’s drill.’

Hamish looked as though this might actually be true.

‘As a result, Hamish always looks in people’s mouths, and this time he saw fit to inform me that there was some damage.’

‘What sort of damage?’

‘Scarring of the tissues lining the throat. Recent damage, too.’

‘Like he’d been singing too loud?’

‘Or screaming. But much more likely that something has been forced down his throat.’

Rebus’s mind boggled. Curt always seemed able to do this to him. He swallowed, feeling how dry his own throat was. ‘What sort of thing?’

Curt shrugged. ‘Hamish suggested … You understand, this is entirely conjecture – usually
your
field of expertise. Hamish suggested a pipe of some kind, something solid. I myself would add the possibility of a rubber or plastic tube.’

Rebus coughed. ‘Not anything … er, organic then?’

‘You mean like a courgette? A banana?’

‘You know damned well what I mean.’

Curt smiled and bowed his head. ‘Of course I do, I’m sorry.’ Then he shrugged. ‘I wouldn’t rule anything out. But if you’re suggesting a penis, it must have been sheathed in sandpaper.’

Behind them, Rebus heard Hamish stifle a laugh.

Rebus telephoned Pat Calder and asked if they might meet. Calder thought it over before agreeing.

‘At the Colonies?’ Rebus asked.

‘Make it the Cafe, I’m heading over there anyway.’

So the Cafe it was. When Rebus arrived, the ‘convalescence’ sign had been replaced with one stating, ‘Due to bereavement, this establishment has ceased trading.’ It was signed Pat Calder.

As Rebus entered, he heard Calder roar, ‘Do fuck off!’ It was not, however, aimed at Rebus but at a young woman in a raincoat.

‘Trouble, Mr Calder?’ Rebus walked into the restaurant. Calder was busy taking the mementoes down off the walls and packing them in newspaper. Rebus noticed three tea chests on the floor between the tables.

‘This bloody reporter wants some blood and grief for her newspaper.’

‘Is that right, miss?’ Rebus gave Mairie Henderson a disapproving but, yes, almost
fatherly
look. The kind that let her know she should be ashamed.

‘Mr Ringan was a popular figure in the city,’ she told Rebus. ‘I’m sure he’d have wanted our readers to know –’

Calder interrupted. ‘He’d have wanted them to stuff their faces here, leave a fat cheque, then get the fuck out. Print
that
!’

‘Quite an epitaph,’ Mairie commented.

Calder looked like he’d brain her with the Elvis clock, the one with the King’s arms replacing the usual clock hands. He thought better of it, and lifted the Elvis mirror (one of several) off the wall instead. He wouldn’t dare smash that: seven years’ bad junk food.

‘I think you’d better go, miss,’ Rebus said calmly.

‘All right, I’m going.’ She slung her bag over her shoulder and stalked past Rebus. She was wearing a skirt today, a short one too. But a good soldier knew when to keep eyes front. He smiled at Pat Calder, whose anguish was all too evident.

‘Bit soon for all this, isn’t it?’

‘You can cook, can you, Inspector? Without Eddie, this place is … it’s nothing.’

‘Looks like the local restaurants can sleep easy, then.’

‘How do you mean?’

‘Remember, Eddie thought the attack on Brian was a warning.’

‘Yes, but what’s that …’ Calder froze. ‘You think someone …? It was suicide, wasn’t it?’

‘Looked that way, certainly.’

‘You mean you’re not sure?’

‘Did he seem the type who would kill himself?’

Calder’s reply was cold. ‘He was killing himself every day with drink. Maybe it all got too much. Like I said, Inspector, the attack on Brian affected Eddie. Maybe more than we knew.’ He paused, still with the mirror gripped in both hands. ‘You think it was murder?’

‘I didn’t say that, Mr Calder.’

‘Who would do it?’

‘Maybe you were behind with your payments.’

‘What payments?’

‘Protection payments, sir. Don’t tell me it doesn’t go on.’

Calder stared at him unblinking. ‘You forget, I was in charge of finances, and we always paid our bills on time. All of them.’

Rebus took this information in, wondering exactly what it meant. ‘If you think you know who might have wanted Eddie dead, best tell me, all right? Don’t go doing anything rash.’

‘Like what?’

Like buying a gun, Rebus thought, but he said nothing. Calder started to wrap the mirror. ‘This is about all a newspaper’s worth,’ he said.

‘She was only doing her job. You wouldn’t have turned down a good review, would you?’

Calder smiled. ‘We got plenty.’

‘What will you do now?’

‘I haven’t thought about it. I’ll go away, that’s all I know.’

Rebus nodded towards the tea chests. ‘And you’ll keep all that stuff?’

‘I couldn’t throw it away, Inspector. It’s all there is.’

Well, thought Rebus, there’s the bedroom too. But he didn’t say anything. He just watched Pat Calder pack everything away.

Hamish, real name Alasdair McDougall, had more or less been chased from his native Barra by his contemporaries, one of whom tried to drown him during a midnight boat crossing from South Uist after a party. Two minutes in the freezing waters of the Sound of Barra and he’d have been fit for nothing but fish-food, but they’d hauled him back into the boat and explained the whole thing away as an accident. Which is also what it would have been had he actually drowned.

He went to Oban first, then south to Glasgow before crossing to the east coast. Glasgow suited him in some respects, but not in others. Edinburgh suited him better. His parents had always denied to themselves that their son was homosexual, even when he’d stood there in front of them and said it. His father had quoted the Bible at him, the same way he’d been quoting it for seventeen years, a believer’s righteous tremble in his voice. It had once been a powerful and persuasive performance; but now it seemed laughable.

‘Just because it’s in the Bible,’ he’d told his father, ‘doesn’t mean you should take it as gospel.’

But to his father it was and always would be the literal truth. The Bible had been in the old man’s hand as he’d shooed his youngest son out of the door of the croft house. ‘Never dare to blacken our name!’ he’d called. And Alasdair reckoned he’d lived up to this through introducing himself as Dougall and almost never passing on a last name. He had been Dougall to the gay community in Glasgow, and he was Dougall here in Edinburgh. He liked the life he’d made for himself (there was never a dull night), and he’d only been kicked-in twice. He had his clubs and pubs, his bunch of friends and a wider circle of acquaintances. He was even beginning to think of writing to his parents. He would tell them, By the time my boss gets through with a body, believe me there isn’t very much left for Heaven to take.

He thought again of the plump young man who’d been gassed, and he laughed. He should have said something at the time, but hadn’t. Why not? Was it because he still had one foot in the closet? He’d been accused of it before, when he’d refused to wear a pink triangle on his lapel. Certainly, he wasn’t sure he wanted a policeman to know he was gay. And what would Dr Curt do? There was all sorts of homophobia about, an almost medieval fear of AIDS and its transmission. It wasn’t that he couldn’t live without the job, but he liked it well enough. He’d seen plenty of sheep and cattle slaughtered and quartered in his time on the island. This wasn’t so very different.

No, he would keep his secret to himself. He wouldn’t let on that he
knew
Eddie Ringan. He remembered the evening a week or so back. They went to Dougall’s place and Eddie cooked up a chilli from stuff he found in the cupboards. Hot stuff. It really made you sweat. He wouldn’t stay the night, though, wasn’t that type. There’d been a long kiss before parting, and half-promises of further trysts.

Yes, he knew Eddie, knew him well enough to be sure of one thing.

Whoever it was on the slab, it wasn’t the guy who’d shared chilli in Dougall’s bed.

Siobhan Clarke felt unnaturally calm and in control the rest of the day. She’d been given the day off from Operation Moneybags to get over the shock of her experience at the Heartbreak Cafe, but by late afternoon was itching to do
some
thing. So she drove out to Rory Kintoul’s house on the half-chance. It was a neat and quite recent council semi in a cul-de-sac. The front garden was the size of a beer-mat but probably more hygienic; she reckoned she could eat her dinner off the trimmed weedless lawn without fear of food poisoning. She couldn’t even say that of the plates in most police canteens. One gate led her down the path, and another brought her to Kintoul’s front door. It was painted dark blue. Every fourth door in the street was dark blue. The others were plum-red, custard yellow, and battleship grey. Not exactly a riot of colour, but somehow in keeping with the pebbledash and tarmac. Some kids had chalked a complex hopscotch grid on the pavement and were now playing noisily. She’d smiled towards them, but they hadn’t looked up from their game. A dog barked in a back garden a few doors down, but otherwise the street was quiet.

She rang the doorbell and waited. Nobody, it seemed, was home. She thought of the phrase ‘gallus besom’ as she took the liberty of peering in through the front window. A living room stretched to the back of the house. The dog was barking louder now, and through the far window she caught sight of a figure. She opened the garden gate and turned right, running through the close separating Kintoul’s house from its neighbour. This led to the back gardens. Kintoul had left his kitchen door open so as not to make a noise. He had one leg over his neighbour’s fence, and was trying to shush the leashed mongrel.

‘Mr Kintoul!’ Siobhan called. When he looked up, she waved her hand. ‘Sitting on the fence, I see. How about the two of us going inside for a word?’

She wasn’t about to spare him any blushes. As he slouched towards her across the back green, she grinned. ‘Running away from the police, eh? What’ve you got to hide?’

‘Nuthin’.’

‘You should be careful,’ she warned. ‘A stunt like that could open those stitches in your side.’