10 Great Rebus Novels (John Rebus) (360 page)

‘Have you ever forgiven me?’ she asked.

‘For what?’

‘I think you know.’

He nodded. ‘But I want to hear you say it.’

She smiled. ‘For knocking you out.’

He looked around. ‘Keep your voice down, someone might hear.’

She laughed, the way he’d meant her to. ‘You were always the joker, Johnny.’

‘Was I’ He tried to remember.

‘Did you keep in touch with Mitch?’

He puffed out his cheeks. ‘Now there’s a name from the past.’

‘The two of you were like this.’ She twisted two fingers together.

‘I’m not sure that’s legal these days.’

She smiled, looked down at the tabletop. ‘Always the joker.’ There were spots of red high on her cheeks. Yes, he’d been able to make her blush back then too.

‘What about you?’ he asked.

‘What about me?’

‘You and Barney.’

‘Nobody calls him Barney these days.’ She sat back in her chair. ‘We were just friendly, stayed that way for a few years. One night he asked me out. Started seeing one another.’ She shrugged. ‘That’s how it works sometimes. No Cupid’s arrow, no fireworks. Just . . . nice.’ She looked up at him, smiled again. ‘As for the rest of the crew . . . Billy and Sarah are still around. They got married but split up, three kids. Tom’s still around, got some industrial injury, hasn’t been back to work in years. Cranny – you remember her?’ Rebus nodded. ‘Some moved away . . . a few died.’

‘Died?’

‘Car smashes, accidents. Wee Paula got cancer. Midge had a heart attack.’ She paused as their coffees arrived, topped with a froth of milk.

‘I’ve got some biscuits . . .?’ the café owner suggested. They shook their heads.

Janice blew on the coffee, sipped. ‘Then there was Alec . . .’

‘Never turned up?’ Alec Chisholm, who’d gone to play football. Alec, who’d never reached the park.

‘His mum’s still alive, you know. She’s in her eighties. Still wonders what happened to him.’

Rebus said nothing. He could see what she was thinking:
maybe that’s my future too
. He leaned across the table, squeezed her hand. It was warm, pliant.

‘You can help me,’ he said.

She looked in her bag for a handkerchief. ‘How?’

Rebus took out the list he’d printed that morning. ‘Hostels and charities,’ he told her. She blew her nose and examined the list. ‘They all need contacting. I was going to do it myself, but we’d save time if you made a start.’

‘OK.’

‘Then there are the taxis. That means putting the word out, visiting each rank and letting them know what we need. Damon and the blonde, across the road from The Dome.’

Janice was nodding. ‘I can do that,’ she said.

‘I’ll give you a list of where to find them.’

The café owner was standing by the counter, smoking a breakfast cigarette and opening the morning’s paper. Rebus caught a headline, knew he had to buy the paper for himself. Janice was checking in her purse.

‘I’ll get these,’ Rebus told her.

‘I’ll need coins for the phone,’ she said.

Rebus thought for a moment. ‘Why not use my flat as a base? It’s not that much more comfortable than most phone boxes, but at least you can sit down, have a cup of coffee . . .’ He held out a bunch of keys to her. She looked at him.

‘Are you sure?’

‘Sure I’m sure.’ He wrote his address on a page of his notebook, added his work and mobile phone numbers, tore the page out and handed it to her. She studied it.

‘No secrets there you don’t want anyone to see?’

He smiled. ‘I don’t use the place much, to be honest. There’s a couple of local shops if you need—’

‘So where do you usually stay?’

He cleared his throat. ‘With a friend.’

Her turn to smile. ‘That’s nice.’

Why had he said ‘friend’ rather than ‘lover’? Rebus wondered if they sounded as awkward as he felt: kids again, language the clumsiest form of communication.

‘I’ll give you a lift,’ he said.

‘Remember the list of taxi ranks,’ she told him. ‘And an A to Z if you’ve got one.’

Rebus went to pay. The owner rang it up on the till. His paper was open at a court headline: previous day’s testimony from the Shiellion case. KIDS’ BOSS BRANDED MONSTER. There was a photograph of Harold Ince being led to a police van by the court guard Rebus had shared a smoke with. Ince looked tired, ordinary.

That was the trouble with monsters. They could be every bit as ordinary as anyone else.

Jim Stevens couldn’t hide the relief on his face when he walked into the dining room. He made for one of the window tables. A couple of guests nodded and smiled at him as he passed them. He got the idea they’d been in the bar last night.

‘Morning, Jim,’ Cary Oakes said, wiping egg yolk from the corners of his mouth. He gazed out of the window. ‘Grey old day, just the way I remember.’ He picked up the last triangle of fried bread and started working on it. ‘Cops are still out there.’

Jim Stevens looked out of the window. An unmarked car, but unmistakable. A man in the driver’s seat, chewing on a roll.

‘How long do you think they’ll keep it up?’ Oakes asked.

Stevens looked at him. ‘I tried phoning your room.’

‘When?’

‘Fifteen, twenty minutes ago.’

‘I was down here, partner, soaking up the
ambience
.’

Stevens looked around for a waiter.

‘You help yourself to fruit juices and cereals,’ Oakes explained, nodding towards a self-serve area. ‘Then they take your order for the hot breakfast.’

Stevens looked at Oakes’s greasy plate. ‘After last night, I think I’ll stick to orange juice and coffee.’

Oakes laughed. ‘That’s why I don’t drink.’ Last night he’d been on pints of orange and lemonade: Stevens remembered now. ‘Besides,’ Oakes said, leaning over the table towards the reporter, ‘when I drink I do crazy things.’

‘Save it for the tape machine, Cary.’

When the waiter came, Oakes asked if he could have another cooked breakfast. ‘Just the bits I missed out on last time.’ He studied the menu. ‘Uh, how about fried liver, some onions and maybe some fried haggis and black pudding.’ He patted his stomach, smiling at Stevens. ‘Just today, you understand. The fitness regime recommences tomorrow.’

When the food arrived, Stevens, who’d been knocking back orange juice and trying to steel himself for toast, took one look at the plate and made his excuses. He drifted outside, lit a cigarette. There was a cold breeze blowing in from the docks. Just through the dock gates, he could see the Scot FM building. Turning his head, he saw the cop in the car watching him. He didn’t recognise the face. Through the dining room window, Oakes was tucking in with exaggerated relish, teasing the detective. Smiling, Stevens walked around to the car park, examined the executive motors: Beamers, Rover 600s, an Audi. Noticed something on the windscreen of his own car. At first he took it for a piece of rubbish, gusted there. Then thought maybe it was a flyer for a carpet sale or antique show. But when he unfolded it, he knew who it was from. Two words:

DROP HIM.

Stevens tucked the note in his pocket, headed back to the hotel. Oakes had finished breakfast and was sitting on one of the sofas in reception, flicking through a newspaper: one of the broadsheets.

‘I’m hurt,’ he said. ‘After that scrum at the airport . . .’

‘Try the tabloids,’ Stevens said, sitting down opposite him. ‘Plenty of coverage there. I think my favourite is “Killer Cary Comes Home”.’

‘Well, isn’t that nice?’ Oakes tossed the paper aside. ‘So when do we get down to work?’

‘Let’s say fifteen minutes in your room?’

‘Fine by me. Before that, though, I’ve another favour to ask.’

‘What?’

‘Someone I want to find. His name’s Archibald.’

‘Plenty of those around.’

‘That’s his surname. First name, Alan.’

‘Alan Archibald? Should I know him?’

Oakes shook his head.

‘Care to tell me who he is?’

‘He was a policeman – maybe still is. Got to be getting on a bit, though.’

‘And?’

Oakes shrugged. ‘For now, that’s all you need. If you’re a good boy, I’ll maybe tell you the story.’

‘For what we’re paying you, we want
all
the stories.’

‘Just find him, Jim. You’ll make me happy.’

Stevens studied his charge, wondering just who was pulling the strings. He knew it should be him. But all the same . . .

‘I can make a couple of calls,’ he conceded.

‘That’s my boy.’ Oakes got to his feet. ‘Fifteen minutes in my room. Bring all the papers with you. I like being the day’s news.’

And with that he set off towards the stairs.

It was Jamie’s job to fetch milk, papers and breakfast rolls from the shop. He’d turned it into an art, skimming cash by lying about the prices. His mum complained, knew they could be found cheaper elsewhere, but ‘elsewhere’ wasn’t walking distance for Jamie. She didn’t like him straying too far. That was fine: whenever he wanted to wander the city, he had Billy Boy to say he’d been round at his house.

Jamie thought he was pretty smart.

He stopped outside the shop for a cigarette. He didn’t buy them there – it was against the law and the Paki owner wouldn’t let him. Instead, he had a deal with an older kid at school, who supplied packets of twenty in exchange for scud mags. Jamie got the mags from under Cal’s bed. There were so many of them, Cal never seemed to notice. Even in freezing weather, Jamie liked his smoke outside the shop. Early-rise kids on their way to school would stare at him. Friends would sometimes join him. He got noticed.

A neighbour once told his mum, and she’d tried whacking him, but he was super-fast and dodged beneath her arm, spinning out of the door, laughing at her curses. One time she’d really gone for him had been when the school had sent the letter home. He’d been skiving, whole weeks at a time. His mum had belted him purple and sent him crying to his room, face red with shame at his own tears.

He’d probably go to school some time today. Cal was good at forging letters. He’d been doing it so long, the
school thought
his
signature was their mum’s, and when she’d signed some note about going on a school trip, the headmaster had quizzed Jamie about its origins. He’d even picked up the phone to talk to Jamie’s mum, which had made Jamie smile: they didn’t have a telephone in the flat. About two dozen ashtrays, most of them from holidays or nicked from pubs, but no telephone. Cal had a mobile, and that’s what they used in emergencies – when Cal was in a mood to let them.

That was the problem with Cal. He could be great . . . and then he could lose the rag. Boom: like a bottle exploding against a wall. Or he’d get all quiet and lock himself in his room and refuse to write notes to the school. Jamie would go out and get him something, maybe nick it from a shop: peace offerings for some wrong he hadn’t done. On good days, Cal would rub knuckles hard against Jamie’s head, tell him he was the peacemaker: Jamie liked the sound of that. Cal would say he was the United Nations, sustaining an uneasy truce. He got stuff like that from the papers: ‘United Nations’; ‘uneasy truce’. Jamie asked him once: ‘If nations are supposed to be united, how come we want to split away?’

‘How do you mean, pal?’

‘Split from England.’

Cal had folded the newspaper on his lap, flicked ash into an ashtray on the arm of his chair. ‘Because we don’t like the English.’

‘How no?’

‘Because they’re
English
.’ An edge to Cal’s voice, telling Jamie to back off.

‘We’ve got cousins in England, haven’t we? We don’t hate them, do we, Cal?’

‘Look . . .’

‘And fighting the Germans, we fought with the English, didn’t we?’

‘Look, Jamie, we want to run our own country, OK? That’s all it is. Scotland’s a country, isn’t it?’ He’d waited
for Jamie’s nod. ‘Then who should be in charge of it? London or Edinburgh?’

‘Edinburgh, Cal.’

‘Right then.’ Picking up the paper: discussion adjourned.

Jamie had a lot more questions, but never seemed to get answers. His mum was useless: ‘Don’t talk to me about politics,’ she’d say. Or ‘Don’t talk to me about religion.’ Or anything, really. As if she’d done all the hard thinking in her life, found satisfactory answers, and wasn’t about to start over again for
his
benefit.

‘That’s why you’ve got teachers,’ she’d say.

Which was fair enough, but at school Jamie had a rep to maintain. He was
Cal Brady’s brother
. He couldn’t go asking the teachers questions. They’d begin to wonder about him. Cal had told him a long time ago: ‘With school, Jamie, it’s definitely “us” and “them”, know what I mean? A battlefield, pal, take no prisoners, understood?’

And Jamie had nodded, understanding nothing.

As he stood at the shop, tapping the toe of one shoe against a rubbish bin, along came Billy Horman. Jamie straightened a bit.

‘All right, Billy Boy?’

‘No’ bad. Got a fag?’

Jamie handed over one of his precious cigarettes.

‘See the football last night?’

Jamie shook his head, sniffed. ‘Not bothered,’ he said.

‘Hearts, ya beauties.’ The way Billy looked at him as he said this, seeking approval or something, Jamie knew Billy had heard it from someone else, maybe his mum’s boyfriend, and wasn’t sure about it.

‘They’re doing OK,’ Jamie conceded as Billy mimed a blazing shot at goal.

‘You going home?’ Billy asked.

Jamie tapped the paper and rolls, held under one of his arms.

‘Wait a minute, I’ll come with you.’ Billy marched into
the shop, came out again with milk and a carton of marge. ‘Mum went spare this morning. Her new man got in from the pub and had about ten slices of toast.’ He tossed the marge and caught it. ‘Finished the tub.’

Jamie didn’t say anything. He was thinking about fathers, how it was funny neither Billy nor he had one. Jamie wondered where his was, which story about him to believe.

‘Who was that you were with yesterday?’ he asked as they began walking.

‘Eh?’

‘Bottom of St Mary’s Street. An uncle or somebody?’

‘Aye, that’s it. My Uncle Bill.’

But Billy Boy was lying. His ears always went red when he lied . . .