10 Great Rebus Novels (John Rebus) (36 page)

But then that was the rumour anyway.

Not that Holmes believed rumours. Well, not always.

As it turned out, Rebus was the later of the two for the meeting, though he had phoned ahead to apologise, which was something. Holmes was seated in front of Rebus’s desk when Rebus finally arrived, pulling off rather a gaudy tie and dumping it into a drawer. Only then did he turn to Holmes, stare at him, smile, and stretch out a hand, which Holmes accepted.

Well that’s something, thought Rebus: he’s not a mason either.

‘Your first name is Brian, isn’t it?’ said Rebus sitting down.

‘That’s right, sir.’

‘Good. I’ll call you Brian, and you can keep on calling me sir. That seem fair enough?’

Holmes smiled. ‘Very fair, sir.’

‘Right, any progress?’

So Holmes started at the beginning. As he spoke, he noticed that Rebus, though trying his damnedest to be attentive, was drowsy. His breath across the table was strong-smelling. Whatever he’d had for lunch had agreed with him too well. Finishing his report, he waited for Rebus to speak.

Rebus merely nodded, and was silent for some time. Collecting his thoughts? Holmes felt the need to fill the vacuum.

‘What’s the problem, sir, if you don’t mind my asking?’

‘You’ve every right to ask,’ said Rebus at last. But he stopped at that.

‘Well, sir?’

‘I’m not sure, Brian. That’s the truth. Okay, here’s what I know – and I stress
know
, because there’s plenty I
think
, which isn’t quite the same thing in this case.’

‘There is a case then?’

‘You tell me, as soon as you’ve listened.’ And it was Rebus’s turn to make his ‘report’ of sorts, fixing it again in
his mind as he told the story. But it was too fragmented, too speculative. He could see Holmes struggling with the pieces, trying to see the whole picture. Was there a picture there to see?

‘So you see,’ Rebus ended, ‘we’ve got a junkie full of poison, self-inflicted. Someone who supplied the poison. Bruising on the body, and the hint of a witchcraft connection. We’ve got a missing camera, a tie clip, some photographs, and a girlfriend being followed. You see my problem?’

‘Too much to go on.’

‘Exactly.’

‘So what do we do now?’

That ‘we’ caught Rebus’s attention. For the first time, he realised that he was no longer in this alone, whatever ‘this’ was. The thought cheered him a little, though the hangover was starting now, the sleepy slow thumping either side of his forehead.

‘I’m going to see a man about a coven,’ he said, sure now of the next steps. ‘And you’re going to visit Hutton’s Photographic Studios.’

‘That sounds reasonable,’ said Holmes.

‘So it bloody well should,’ said Rebus. ‘I’m the one with the brains, Brian. You’re the one with the shoeleather. Call me later on to let me know how you get on. Meantime, bugger off.’

Rebus didn’t mean to be unkind. But there had been something just too cosy and conspiratorial in the younger man’s tone towards the end, and he’d felt the need to re-establish boundaries. His own mistake, he realised as the door closed behind Holmes. His own mistake, for coming on so chattily, for telling all, for confiding, and for using Holmes’s first name. That bloody lunch had been to blame. Call me Finlay, call me James, call me Tommy. . . . Never mind, it would all work out. They had begun well,
then less well. Things could only get worse, which was fine by Rebus. He enjoyed a measure of antagonism, of competition. They were distinct bonuses in this line of work.

So Rebus was a bastard after all.

Brian Holmes stalked out of the station with hands in pockets tightened to fists. Knuckles red.
You’re the one with the shoeleather
. That had really brought him down with a thump, just when he’d thought they were getting on so well. Almost like human beings rather than coppers. Should’ve known better, Brian. And as for the reason behind all this work. . . . Well, it hardly bore thinking about. It was so flimsy, so personal to Rebus. It wasn’t police work at all. It was an inspector with nothing to do for a while, trying to fill the time by playing at being Philip Marlowe. Jesus, they both had better things they could be doing. Well, Holmes did anyway. He wasn’t about to head some cushy anti-drugs campaign. And what a choice Rebus was for that! Brother inside Peterhead, doing time for pushing. Biggest dealer in Fife, he’d been. That should have screwed up Rebus’s career forever and anon, but instead they’d given him promotion. A naughty world, all right.

He had to visit a photographer. Maybe he could get some passport shots done at the same time. Pack his bags and fly off to Canada, Australia, the States. Sod his flat hunting. Sod the police force. And sod Detective Inspector John Rebus and his witch hunt.

There, it was done.

Rebus found some aspirin in one of his chaotic drawers, and crunched them to a bitter powder as he made his way downstairs. Bad mistake. They removed every fleck of saliva from his mouth, and he couldn’t even swallow,
couldn’t speak. The desk sergeant was sipping a polystyrene beaker of tea. Rebus grabbed it from him and gulped at the tepid liquid. Then squirmed.

‘How much sugar did you put in that, Jack?’

‘If I’d known you were coming to tea, John, I’d have made it just the way you like it.’

The desk sergeant always had a smart answer, and Rebus could never think of a smarter rejoinder. He handed back the cup and walked away, feeling the sugar cloy inside him.

I’ll never touch another drop, he was thinking as he started his car. Honest to God, only the occasional glass of wine. Allow me that. But no more indulgence, and no more mixing wine and spirits. Okay? So give me a break, God, and lift this hangover. I only drank the one glass of cognac, maybe two glasses of claret, one of Chablis. One gin and tonic. It was hardly the stuff of legend, hardly a case for the detox ward.

The roads were quiet though, which was a break. Not enough of a break, but a break. So he made good time to Pilmuir, and then remembered that he didn’t know where Charlie boy lived. Charlie, the person he needed to talk to if he was going to find an address for a coven. A white coven. He wanted to double-check the witchcraft story. He wanted to double-check Charlie, too, come to that. But he didn’t want Charlie to know he was being checked.

The witchcraft thing niggled. Rebus believed in good and evil, and believed stupid people could be attracted towards the latter. He understood pagan religions well enough, had read about them in books too thick and intense for their own good. He didn’t mind people worshipping the Earth, or whatever. It all came down to the same thing in the end. What he did mind was people worshipping Evil as a force, and as
more
than a force: as an entity. Especially, he disliked the idea of people doing it
for ‘kicks’ without knowing or caring what it was they were involved in.

People like Charlie. He remembered that book of Giger prints again. Satan, poised at the centre of a pair of scales, flanked by a naked woman left and right. The women were being penetrated by huge drills. Satan was a goat’s head in a mask. . . .

But where would Charlie be now? He’d find out. Stop and ask. Knock on doors. Hint at retribution should information be withheld. He’d act the big bad policeman if that was what it took.

He didn’t need to do anything, as it happened. He just had to find the police constables who were loitering outside one of the boarded-up houses, not too far from where Ronnie had died. One of the constables held a radio to his mouth. The other was writing in a notebook. Rebus stopped his car, stepped out. Then remembered something, leaned back into the car and drew his keys from out of the ignition. You couldn’t be too careful around here. A second later, he actually locked his driver’s side door, too.

He knew one of the constables. It was Harry Todd, one of the men who had found Ronnie. Todd straightened when he saw Rebus, but Rebus waved this acknowledgment aside, so Todd continued with his radio conversation. Rebus concentrated on the other officer instead.

‘What’s the score here?’ The constable turned from his writing to give Rebus that suspicious, near-hostile look almost unique to the constabulary. ‘Inspector Rebus,’ Rebus explained. He was wondering where Todd’s Irish sidekick O’Rourke was.

‘Oh,’ said the constable. ‘Well . . .’ He started to put away his pen. ‘We were called to a domestic, sir. In this house. A real screaming match. But by the time we got here, the man had fled. The woman is still inside. She’s got herself a black eye, nothing more. Not really your territory, sir.’

‘Is that right?’ said Rebus. ‘Well, thank you for telling me, sonny. It’s nice to be told what is and isn’t my “territory”. Thank you so much. Now, may I have your permission to enter the premises?’

The constable was blushing furiously, his cheeks an almighty red against his bloodless face and neck. No: even his
neck
was blushing now. Rebus enjoyed that. He didn’t even mind that behind the constable, but in full view of Rebus himself, Todd was smirking at this encounter.

‘Well?’ Rebus prompted.

‘Sorry, sir,’ said the constable.

‘Right,’ said Rebus, walking towards the door. But before he reached it, it was opened from the inside, and there stood Tracy, both eyes reddened from crying, one eye bruised a deep blue. She didn’t seem surprised to see Rebus standing in front of her; she seemed relieved, and threw herself at him, hugging him, her head against his chest, the tears beginning all over again.

Rebus, startled and embarrassed, returned the embrace only lightly, with a patting of his hands on her back: a father’s ‘there, there’ to a frightened child. He turned his head to look at the constables, who were pretending to have noticed nothing. Then a car drew up beside his own, and he saw Tony McCall put on his handbrake before pushing open the driver’s door, stepping out and seeing Rebus there, and the girl.

Rebus laid his hands on Tracy’s arms and pushed her away from him a little, but still retaining that contact between them. His hands, her arms. She looked at him, and began to fight against the tears. Finally, she pulled one arm away so that she could wipe her eyes. Then the other arm relaxed and Rebus’s hand fell from it, the contact broken. For now.

‘John?’ It was McCall, close behind him.

‘Yes, Tony?’

‘Why is it my patch has suddenly become your patch?’

‘Just passing,’ said Rebus.

The interior of the house was surprisingly neat and tidy. There were numerous, if uncoordinated, sticks of furniture – two well-worn settees, a couple of dining chairs, trellis table, half a dozen pouffes, burst at the seams and oozing stuffing – and, most surprising of all, the electricity was connected.

‘Wonder if the electric board know about that,’ said McCall as Rebus switched on the downstairs lights.

For all its trappings, the place had an air of impermanence. There were sleeping bags laid out on the living-room floor, as though ready for any stray waifs and passers-by. Tracy went to one of the settees and sat down, wrapping her hands around her knees.

‘Is this your place, Tracy?’ said Rebus, knowing the answer.

‘No. It’s Charlie’s.’

‘How long have you known?’

‘I only found out today. He moves around all the time. It wasn’t easy tracking him down.’

‘It didn’t take you long.’ She shrugged her shoulders. ‘What happened?’

‘I just wanted to talk to him.’

‘About Ronnie?’ McCall watched Rebus as he said this. McCall was concentrating now, aware that Rebus was trying to fill him in on the situation while at the same time questioning Tracy. Tracy nodded.

‘Stupid, maybe, but I needed to talk to someone.’

‘And?’

‘And we got into an argument. He started it. Told me I was the cause of Ronnie’s death.’ She looked up at them; not pleadingly, but just to show that she was sincere. ‘It’s not true. But Charlie said I should have looked after Ronnie, stopped him taking the stuff, got him away from Pilmuir. How could I have done that? He wouldn’t have
listened to me. I thought he knew what he was doing. Nobody could tell him otherwise.’

‘Is that what you told Charlie?’

She smiled. ‘No. I only thought of it just now. That’s what always happens, isn’t it? You only think of the clever comeback after the argument’s finished.’

‘I know what you mean, love,’ said McCall.

‘So you started a slanging match –’

‘I never started the slanging match!’ she roared at Rebus.

‘Okay,’ he said quietly, ‘Charlie started shouting at you, and you shouted back, then he hit you. Yes?’

‘Yes.’ She seemed subdued.

‘And maybe,’ Rebus prompted, ‘you hit him back?’

‘I gave as good as I got.’

‘That’s my girl,’ said McCall. He was touring the room, turning up cushions on the settees, opening old magazines, crouching to pat each sleeping bag.

‘Don’t patronise me, you bastard,’ said Tracy.

McCall paused, looked up, surprised. Then smiled, and patted the next sleeping bag along. ‘Ah-ha,’ he said, lifting the sleeping bag and shaking it. A small polythene bag fell out onto the floor. He picked it up, satisfied. ‘A little bit of blaw,’ he said. ‘Makes a house into a home, eh?’

‘I don’t know anything about that,’ said Tracy, looking at the bag.

‘We believe you,’ said Rebus. ‘Charlie did a runner then?’

‘Yes. The neighbours must’ve phoned for the pigs . . . I mean, the police.’ She averted her eyes from them.

‘We’ve been called worse,’ said McCall, ‘haven’t we, John?’

‘That’s for sure. So the constables arrived at one door, and Charlie left by another, right?’

‘Out of the back door, yes.’

‘Well,’ said Rebus, ‘while we’re here we might as well have a look at his room, if such a thing exists.’

‘Good idea,’ said McCall, pocketing the polythene bag. ‘There’s no smoke without fire.’

Charlie had a room all right. It consisted of a single sleeping bag, a desk, anglepoise lamp, and more books than Rebus had ever seen in such an enclosed space. They were piled against the walls, reaching in precarious pillars from floor to ceiling. Many were library books, well overdue.