The Hanging Garden (14 page)

Not that the statistics mattered. A death was a death. Something unique had disappeared from the world. One murder or several hundred … they all meant something to the survivors. Rebus thought of Villefranche’s sole existing survivor. He hadn’t met her, probably never would. Another reason it was hard to get passionate about a historical case. In a contemporary one, you had many of the facts to hand, and could talk to witnesses. You could gather forensic evidence, question people’s stories. You could measure guilt and grief. You became part of the whole story. This was what interested Rebus. The people interested him; their stories fascinated him. When part of their lives, he could forget his own.

He noticed the answering-machine was flashing: one message.

‘Oh, hello there. I’m … um, I don’t know how to put this …’ Placed the voice: Kirstin Mede. She sighed. ‘Look, I can’t do this any more. So please don’t … I’m sorry, I just can’t. There are other people who can help you. I’m sure one of them …’

End of message. Rebus stared down at the machine. He didn’t blame her.
I can’t do this any more
. That makes two of us, Rebus thought. The only thing was,
he
had to keep going. He sat down at his table and pulled the Villefranche paperwork towards him: lists of names and occupations, ages and dates of birth. Picat, Mesplede, Rousseau, Deschamps. Wine merchant, china painter, cartwright, housemaid. What did any of it mean to a middle-aged Scot? He pushed it aside and lifted Siobhan’s paperwork on to the table.

Off with Van the Man; on with side one of
Wish You
Were Here
. Scratched to hell. He remembered it had come in a black polythene wrapper. When opened, there’d been this smell, which afterwards he’d learned was supposed to be burning flesh …

‘I need a drink,’ he said to himself, sitting forward in his chair. ‘I want a drink. A few beers, maybe with whiskies attached.’ Something to smooth the edges …

He looked at his watch; not even near to closing time. Not that it mattered much in Edinburgh, the land that closing time forgot. Could he make it to the Ox before they shut up shop? Yes, too easily. It was nicer to have a challenge. Wait an hour or so and then repeat the debate.

Or call Jack Morton.

Or go out, right now.

The telephone rang. He picked it up.

‘Hello?’

‘John?’ Making it sound like ‘Sean’.

‘Hello, Candice. What’s up?’

‘Up?’

‘Is there a problem?’

‘Problem, no. I just wanting … I say to you, see you tomorrow.’

He smiled. ‘Yes, see you tomorrow. You speak very good English.’

‘I was chained to a razor blade.’

‘What?’

‘Line from song.’

‘Oh, right. But you’re not chained to it now?’

She didn’t seem to understand. ‘I’m … uh …’

‘It’s okay, Candice. See you tomorrow.’

‘Yes, see you.’

Rebus put down the receiver. Chained to a razor blade … Suddenly he didn’t want a drink any more.

He picked Candice up the next afternoon. She had two carrier bags, her worldly belongings. She gave Sammy as much of a hug as her bandaged arms would allow.

‘See you again, Candice,’ Sammy said.

‘Yes, see you. Thanks …’ Lost for an ending to the sentence, Candice opened her arms wide, bags swinging.

They stopped off at McDonald’s (her choice) for something to eat. Zappa and the Mothers: ‘Cruising for Burgers’. The day was bright and crisp, just right for crossing the Forth Bridge. Rebus took it slowly, so Candice could take in the view. He was heading towards Fife’s East Neuk, a cluster of fishing villages popular with artists and holidaymakers. Out of season, Anstruther seemed practically deserted. Though Rebus had an address, he stopped to ask directions. Finally, he parked in front of a small terraced house. Candice stared at the red door until he gestured for her to follow him. He hadn’t been able to make her understand what they were doing here. Hoped Mr and Mrs Drinic would make a better job of it.

The door was opened by a woman in her early forties. She had long black hair, and peered at him over half-moon glasses. Then her attention shifted to Candice, and she said something in a language both women understood. Candice replied, looking a little shy, not sure what was going on.

‘Come in, please,’ Mrs Drinic said. ‘My husband is in the kitchen.’

They sat around the kitchen table. Mr Drinic was heavily
built, with a thick brown moustache and wavy brown and silver hair. A pot of tea was produced, and Mrs Drinic drew her chair beside Candice’s and began talking again.

‘She’s explaining to the girl,’ Mr Drinic said.

Rebus nodded, sipped the strong tea, listened to a conversation he could not understand. Candice, cautious at first, grew more animated as she told her story, and Mrs Drinic was a skilled listener, sympathising, showing shared horror and exasperation.

‘She was taken to Amsterdam, told there would be a job there for her,’ Mr Drinic explained. ‘I know this has happened to other young women.’

‘I think she left a child behind.’

‘A son, yes. She’s telling my wife about him.’

‘What about you?’ Rebus asked. ‘How did you end up here?’

‘I was an architect in Sarajevo. No easy decision, leaving your whole life behind.’ He paused. ‘We went to Belgrade first. A refugee bus brought us to Scotland.’ He shrugged. ‘That was nearly five years ago. Now I am a carpenter.’ A smile. ‘Distance no object.’

Rebus looked at Candice, who had started crying, Mrs Drinic comforting her.

‘We will look after her,’ Mrs Drinic said, staring at her husband.

Later, at the door, Rebus tried to give them some money, but they wouldn’t take it.

‘Is it all right if I come and see her sometime?’

‘But of course.’

He stood in front of Candice.

‘Her real name is Karina,’ Mrs Drinic said quietly.

‘Karina.’ Rebus tried out the word. She smiled, her eyes softer than Rebus remembered them, as if some transformation were beginning. She bent forward.

‘Kiss the girl,’ she said.

A peck on both cheeks. Her eyes filling with tears again. Rebus nodded, to let her know he understood everything.

At his car, he waved once, and she blew him another kiss. Then he drove around the corner and stopped, gripping the steering-wheel hard. He wondered if she’d cope. If she’d learn to forget. He thought again of his ex-wife’s words. What would she think of him now? Had he exploited Karina? No, but he wondered if that was only because she hadn’t been able to give him anything on Telford. He felt he had somehow failed to do the right thing. So far, the only choice she’d had to make was when she’d waited for him by his car rather than going back to Telford. Before then and after, all the decisions had been taken for her. In a sense, she was still as trapped as ever, because the locks and chains were in her mind; they were what she expected from life. It would take time for her to change, to begin trusting the world again. The Drinics would help her.

Heading south down the coast, thinking about families, he decided to visit his brother.

Mickey lived on an estate in Kirkcaldy, his red BMW parked in the driveway. He was just home from work and suitably surprised to see Rebus.

‘Chrissie and the kids are at her mum’s,’ he said. ‘I was going to grab a curry for dinner. How about a beer?’

‘Maybe just a coffee,’ Rebus said. He sat in the lounge until Mickey returned, toting a couple of old shoe-boxes.

‘Look what I dug out of the attic last weekend. Thought you might like a look. Milk and sugar?’

‘A spot of milk.’

While Mickey went to the kitchen to fetch the coffee, Rebus examined the boxes. They were filled with packets of photographs. The packets had dates on them, some with questionmarks. Rebus opened one at random. Holiday snaps. A fancy dress parade. A picnic. Rebus didn’t have
any pictures of his parents, and the photos startled him. His mother had thicker legs than he remembered, but a tidy body, too. His father used the same grin in every shot, a grin Rebus shared with Mickey. Digging further into the box, he found one of himself with Rhona and Sammy. They were on a beach somewhere, the wind playing havoc. Peter Gabriel: ‘Family Snapshot’. Rebus couldn’t place it at all. Mickey came back through with a mug of coffee and a bottle of beer.

‘There are some,’ he said, ‘I don’t know who the people are. Relatives maybe? Grandma and Grandad?’

‘I’m not sure I’d be much help.’

Mickey handed over a menu. ‘Here,’ he said, ‘best Indian in town. Pick what you want.’

So Rebus chose, and Mickey phoned the order in. Twenty minutes till delivery. Rebus was on to another packet. These photos were older still, the 1940s. His father in uniform. The soldiers wore hats like McDonald’s counter staff. They also wore long khaki shorts. ‘Malaya’ written on the backs of some, ‘India’ on the others.

‘Remember, the old man got himself wounded in Malaya?’ Mickey said.

‘No, he didn’t.’

‘He showed us the wound. It was in his knee.’

Rebus was shaking his head. ‘Uncle Jimmy told me it was a cut Dad got playing football. He kept picking the scab off, ended with a scar.’

‘He told us it was a war wound.’

‘He was fibbing.’

Mickey had started on the other box. ‘Here, look at these …’ Handing over an inch-thick collection of postcards and photographs, secured with an elastic band. Rebus pulled the band off, turned the cards over, saw his own writing. The photos were of him, too: posed snaps, badly taken.

‘Where did you get these?’

‘You always used to send me a card or a photo, don’t you remember?’

They were all from Rebus’s own Army days. ‘I’d forgotten,’ he said.

‘Once a fortnight, usually. A letter to Dad, a card for me.’

Rebus sat back in his chair and started to go through them. Judging by the postmarks, they were in chronological sequence. Training, then service in Germany and Ulster, more exercises in Cyprus, Malta, Finland, and the desert of Saudi Arabia. The tone of each postcard was breezy, so that Rebus failed to recognise his own voice. The cards from Belfast consisted of almost nothing but jokes, yet Rebus remembered that as one of the most nightmarish periods of his life.

‘I used to love getting them,’ Mickey said, smiling. ‘I’ll tell you, you almost had me joining up.’

Rebus was still thinking of Belfast: the closed barracks, the whole compound a fortress. After a shift out on the streets, there was no way to let off steam. Booze, gambling and fights – all taking place within the same four walls. All culminating in the Mean Machine … And here were these postcards, here was the image of Rebus’s past life that Mickey had lived with these past twenty-odd years.

And it was all a lie.

Or was it? Where did the reality lie, other than in Rebus’s own head? The postcards were fake documents, but they were also the only ones in existence. There was nothing to contradict them, nothing except Rebus’s word. It was the same with the Rat Line, the same with Joseph Lintz’s story. Rebus looked at his brother and knew he could break the spell right now. All he had to do was tell him the truth.

‘What’s the matter?’ Mickey asked.

‘Nothing.’

‘Ready for that beer yet? The food’ll be here any second.’

Rebus stared at the cooling mug of coffee. ‘More than ready,’ he said, putting the rubber band back around his past. ‘But I’ll stick to this.’ He lifted the mug, toasted his brother.

Next morning, Rebus went to St Leonard’s, telephoned the NCIS centre at Prestwick and asked if they had anything connecting British criminals to European prostitution. His reasoning:
someone
had brought Candice – she was still Candice to him – from Amsterdam to Britain, and he didn’t think it was Telford. Whoever it was, Rebus would get to them somehow. He wanted to show Candice her chains could be broken.

He got NCIS to fax him what information they had. Most of it concerned the ‘Tippelzone’, a licensed car park where drivers went for sex. It was worked by foreign prostitutes mainly, most of them lacking work permits, many smuggled in from Eastern Europe. The main gangs seemed to be from former Yugoslavia. NCIS had no names for any of these kidnappers-cum-pimps. There was nothing about prostitutes making the trip from Amsterdam to Britain.

Rebus went into the car park to smoke his second cigarette of the day. There were a couple of other smokers out there, a small brotherhood of social pariahs. Back in the office, the Farmer wanted to know if there was any progress on Lintz.

‘Maybe if I brought him in and slapped him around a bit,’ Rebus suggested.

‘Be serious, will you?’ the Farmer growled, stalking back to his office.

Rebus sat down at his desk and pulled forward a file.

‘Your problem, Inspector,’ Lintz had said to him once, ‘is that you’re afraid of being taken seriously. You want to give people what you think they expect. I mention the Ishtar gate, and you talk of some Hollywood movie. At first I thought this was meant to rouse me to some indiscretion, but now it seems more a game you are playing against
yourself
.’

Rebus: seated in his usual chair in Lintz’s drawing-room. The view from the window was of Queen Street Gardens. They were kept locked: you had to pay for a key.

‘Do educated people frighten you?’

Rebus looked at the old man. ‘No.’

‘Are you sure? Don’t you perhaps wish you were more like them?’ Lintz grinned, showing small, discoloured teeth. ‘Intellectuals like to see themselves as history’s victims, prejudiced against, arrested for their beliefs, even tortured and murdered. But Karadzic thinks himself an intellectual. The Nazi hierarchy had its thinkers and philosophers. And even in Babylon …’ Lintz got up, poured himself more tea. Rebus declined a refill.

‘Even in Babylon, Inspector,’ Lintz continued, getting comfortable again, ‘with its opulence and its artistry, with its enlightened king … do you know what they did? Nebuchadnezzar held the Jews captive for seventy years. This splendid, awe-inspiring civilisation … Do you begin to see the madness, Inspector, the flaws that run so deep in us?’

‘Maybe I need glasses.’