10 Great Rebus Novels (John Rebus) (43 page)

‘Are you leaving?’

He did not reply to Vanderhyde’s question, but walked smartly to the bottom of the dark oak staircase. Halfway up, it twisted in a ninety-degree angle. From the bottom, Rebus’s view was of this halfway point, this small landing. A second before, there had been someone there, someone crouching, listening. He hadn’t seen the figure so much as
sensed
it. He cleared his throat, a nervous rather than necessary action.

‘Come down here, Charlie.’ He paused. Silence. But he could still sense the young man, just beyond that turning on the stairs. ‘Unless you want me to come up. I don’t think you want that, do you? Just the two of us, up there in the dark?’ More silence, broken by the shuffling of Vanderhyde’s carpet-slippered feet, the walking cane tapping against the floor. When Rebus looked round, the
old man’s jaw was set defiantly. He still had his pride. Rebus wondered if he felt any shame.

Then the single creak of a floorboard signalled Charlie’s presence on the stair landing.

Rebus broke into a smile: of conquest, of relief. He had trusted himself, and had proved worthy of that trust.

‘Hello, Charlie,’ he said.

‘I didn’t mean to hit her. She had a go at me first.’

The voice was recognisable, but Charlie seemed rooted to the landing. His body was slightly hunched, his face in silhouette, his arms hanging by his side. The educated voice seemed discorporate, somehow not part of this shadow-puppet.

‘Why don’t you join us?’

‘Are you going to arrest me?’

‘What’s the charge?’ The question was Rebus’s, his voice tinged with amusement.

‘That should be
your
question, Charles,’ Vanderhyde called out, making it sound like an instruction.

Rebus was suddenly bored with these games. ‘Come on down,’ he commanded. ‘Let’s have another mug of Earl Grey.’

Rebus had pulled open the crimson velvet curtains in the living room. The interior seemed less cramped in what was left of the daylight, less overpowering, and certainly a lot less gothic. The ornaments on the mantelpiece were revealed as just that: ornaments. The books in the bookcase were revealed as by and large works of popular fiction: Dickens, Hardy, Trollope. Rebus wondered if Trollope
was
still popular.

Charlie had made tea in the narrow kitchen, while Vanderhyde and Rebus sat in silence in the living room, listening to the distant sounds of cups chinking and spoons ringing.

‘You have good hearing,’ Vanderhyde stated at last.
Rebus shrugged. He was still assessing the room. No, he couldn’t live here, but he could at least imagine visiting some aged relative in such a place.

‘Ah, tea,’ said Vanderhyde as Charlie brought in the unsteady tray. Placing it on the floor between chairs and sofa, his eyes sought Rebus’s. They had an imploring look. Rebus ignored it, accepting his cup with a curt nod of the head. He was just about to say something about how well Charlie seemed to know his way around his chosen bolt-hole, when Charlie himself spoke. He was handing a mug to Vanderhyde. The mug itself was only half filled – a wise precaution – and Charlie sought out the old man’s hand, guiding it to the large handle.

‘There you go, Uncle Matthew,’ he said.

‘Thank you, Charles,’ said Vanderhyde, and if he had been sighted, his slight smile would have been directed straight at Rebus, rather than a few inches over the detective’s shoulder.

‘Cosy,’ Rebus commented, sipping the dry perfume of Earl Grey.

Charlie sat on the sofa, crossing his legs, almost relaxed. Yes, he knew this room well, was slipping into it the way one slipped into an old, comfortable pair of trousers. He might have spoken, but Vanderhyde seemed to want to put his points forward first.

‘Charles has told me all about it, Inspector Rebus. Well, when I say that, I mean he has told me as much as he deems it necessary for me to know.’ Charlie glared at his uncle, who merely smiled, knowing the frown was there. ‘I’ve already told Charles that he should talk to you again. He seems unwilling.
Seemed
unwilling. Now the choice has been taken away from him.’

‘How did you know?’ asked Charlie, so much more at home here, Rebus was thinking, than in some ugly squat in Pilmuir.

‘Know?’ said Rebus.

‘Know where to find me? Know about Uncle Matthew?’

‘Oh, that.’ Rebus picked at invisible threads on his trousers. ‘Your essay. It was sitting on your desk. Handy that.’

‘What?’

‘Doing an essay on the occult, and having a warlock in the family.’

Vanderhyde chuckled. ‘Not a warlock, Inspector. Never that. I think I’ve only ever met one warlock, one
true
warlock, in my whole life. Local he is, mind.’

‘Uncle Matthew,’ Charlie interrupted, ‘I don’t think the Inspector wants to hear –’

‘On the contrary,’ said Rebus. ‘It’s the reason I’m here.’

‘Oh.’ Charlie sounded disappointed. ‘Not to arrest me then?’

‘No, though you deserve a good slap for that bruise you gave Tracy.’

‘She deserved it!’ Charlie’s voice betrayed petulance, his lower lip filling out like a child’s.

‘You struck a woman?’ Vanderhyde sounded aghast. Charlie looked towards him, then away, as if unable to hold a stare that didn’t – couldn’t – exist.

‘Yes,’ Charlie hissed. ‘But look.’ He pulled the polo-necked jumper down from around his neck. There were two huge weals there, the result of prising fingernails.

‘Nice scratches,’ Rebus commented for the blind man’s benefit. ‘You got the scratches, she got a bruise on her eye. I suppose that makes it neck and neck in the eye-for-an-eye stakes.’

Vanderhyde chuckled again, leaning forward slightly on his cane.

‘Very good, Inspector,’ he said. ‘Yes, very good. Now –’ he lifted the mug to his lips and blew. ‘What can we do for you?’

‘I saw your name in Charlie’s essay. There was a footnote quoting you as an interview source. I reckoned
that made you local and reasonably extant, and there aren’t too many –’

‘– Vanderhydes in the phone book,’ finished the old man. ‘Yes, you said.’

‘But you’ve already answered most of my questions. Concerning the black magic connection, that is. However, I would just like to clear up a few points with your nephew.’

‘Would you like me to –?’ Vanderhyde was already rising to his feet. Rebus waved for him to stay, then realised the gesture was in vain. However, Vanderhyde had already paused, as though anticipating the action.

‘No, sir,’ Rebus said now, as Vanderhyde seated himself again. ‘This’ll only take a couple of minutes.’ He turned to Charlie, who was almost sinking into the deep padded cushions of the sofa. ‘So, Charlie,’ Rebus began. ‘I’ve got you down this far as thief, and as accessory to murder. Any comments to make?’

Rebus watched with pleasure as the young man’s face lost its tea-like colour and became more like uncooked pastry. Vanderhyde twitched, but with pleasure, too, rather than discomfort. Charlie looked from one man to the other, seeking friendly eyes. The eyes he saw were blind to his pleas.

‘I – I –’

‘Yes?’ Rebus prompted.

‘I’ll just fill my cup,’ Charlie said, as though only these five meagre words were left in his vocabulary. Rebus sat back patiently. Let the bugger fill and refill and boil another brew. But he’d have his answers. He’d make Charlie sweat tannin, and he’d have his answers.

‘Is Fife always this bleak?’

‘Only the more picturesque bits. The rest’s no’ bad at a’.’

The SSPCA officer was guiding Brian Holmes across a
twilit field, the area around almost completely flat, a dead tree breaking the monotony. A fierce wind was blowing, and it was a cold wind, too. The SSPCA man had called it an ‘aist wind’. Holmes assumed that ‘aist’ translated as ‘east’, and that the man’s sense of geography was somewhat askew, since the wind was clearly blowing from the west.

The landscape proved deceptive. Seeming flat, the land was actually slanting. They were climbing a slope, not steep but perceptible. Holmes was reminded of some hill somewhere in Scotland, the ‘electric brae’, where a trick of natural perspective made you think you were going uphill when in fact you were travelling
down
. Or was it vice versa? Somehow, he didn’t think his companion was the man to ask.

Soon, over the rise, Holmes could see the black, grainy landscape of a disused mineworking, shielded from the field by a line of trees. The mines around here were all worked out, had been since the 1960s. Now, money had appeared from somewhere, and the long-smouldering bings were being levelled, their mass used to fill the chasms left by surface mining. The mine buildings themselves were being dismantled, the landscape reseeded, as though the history of mining in Fife had never existed.

This much Brian Holmes knew. His uncles had been miners. Not here perhaps, but nevertheless they had been great deep workings of information and anecdote. The child Brian had stored away every detail.

‘Grim,’ he said to himself as he followed the SSPCA officer down a slight slope towards the trees, where a cluster of half a dozen men stood, shuffling, turning at the sound of approach. Holmes introduced himself to the most senior-looking of the plain-clothes men.

‘DC Brian Holmes, sir.’

The man smiled, nodded, then jerked his head in the
direction of a much younger man. Everyone, uniformeds, plain-clothes, even the SSPCA Judas, was smiling, enjoying Holmes’s mistake. He felt a rush of blood to his face, and was rooted to the spot. The young man saw his discomfort and stuck out a hand.

‘I’m DS Hendry, Brian. Sometimes I’m in charge here.’ There were more smiles. Holmes joined in this time.

‘Sorry, sir.’

‘I’m flattered actually. Nice to think I’m so young-looking, and Harry here’s so old.’ He nodded towards the man Holmes had mistaken for the senior officer. ‘Right, Brian. I’ll just tell you what I’ve been telling the lads. We have a good tip that there’s going to be a dog fight here tonight. It’s secluded, half a mile from the main road, a mile from the nearest house. Perfect, really. There’s a track the lorries take from the main road up to the site here. That’s the way they’ll come in, probably three or four vans carrying the dogs, and then who knows how many cars with the punters. If it gets to Ibrox proportions, we’ll call in reinforcements. As it is, we’re not bothered so much about nabbing punters as about catching the handlers themselves. The word is that Davy Brightman’s the main man. Owns a couple of scrap yards in Kirkcaldy and Methil. We know he keeps a few pit bulls, and we think he fights them.’

There was a blast of static from one of the radios, then a call sign. DS Hendry responded.

‘Do you have a Detective Constable Holmes with you?’ came the message. Hendry stared at Holmes as he handed him the radio. Holmes could only look apologetic.

‘DC Holmes speaking.’

‘DC Holmes, we’ve a message for you.’

‘Go ahead,’ said Holmes.

‘It’s to do with a Miss Nell Stapleton.’

Sitting in the hospital waiting room, eating chocolate
from a vending machine, Rebus went over the day’s events in his mind. Remembering the incident with Tracy in the car, his scrotum began to rise up into his body in an act of self-protection. Painful still. Like a double hernia, not that he’d ever had one.

But the afternoon had been very interesting indeed. Vanderhyde had been interesting. And Charlie, well, Charlie had sung like a bird.

‘What is it you want to ask me?’ he had said, bringing more tea into the living room.

‘I’m interested in time, Charlie. Your uncle has already told me that
he’s
not interested in time. He isn’t ruled by it, but policemen are. Especially in a case like this. You see, the chronology of events isn’t quite right in my mind. That’s what I want to clear up, if possible.’

‘All right,’ Charlie said. ‘How can I help?’

‘You were at Ronnie’s that night?’

‘Yes, for a while.’

‘And you left to look for some party or other?’

‘That’s right.’

‘Leaving Neil in the house with Ronnie?’

‘No, he’d left by then.’

‘You didn’t know, of course, that Neil was Ronnie’s brother?’

The look of surprise on Charlie’s face seemed authentic, but then Rebus knew him for an accomplished actor, and was taking nothing for granted, not any more.

‘No, I didn’t know that. Shit, his brother. Why didn’t he want any of us to meet him?’

‘Neil and I are in the same profession,’ Rebus explained. Charlie just smiled and shook his head. Vanderhyde was leaning back thoughtfully in his chair, like a meticulous juror at some trial.

‘Now,’ Rebus continued, ‘Neil says he left quite early. Ronnie was being uncommunicative.’

‘I can guess why.’

‘Why?’

‘Easy. He’d just scored, hadn’t he? He hadn’t seen any stuff for ages, and suddenly he’d scored.’ Charlie suddenly remembered that his aged uncle was listening, and stopped short, looking towards the old man. Vanderhyde, shrewd as ever, seemed to sense this, and waved his hand regally before him, as if to say, I’ve been too long on this planet and can’t be shocked any more.

‘I think you’re right,’ Rebus said to Charlie. ‘One hundred percent. So, in an empty house, Ronnie shoots up. The stuffs lethal. When Tracy comes in, she finds him in his room –’

‘So
she
says,’ interrupted Charlie. Rebus nodded, acknowledging his scepticism.

‘Let’s accept for the moment that’s what happened. He’s dead, or seems so to her. She panics, and runs off. Right. So far so good. Now it begins to get hazy, and this is where I need your help, Charlie. Thereafter, someone moves Ronnie’s body downstairs. I don’t know why. Maybe they were just playing silly buggers, or, as Mr Vanderhyde put it so succinctly, trying to muddy the water. Anyway, around this stage in the chronology, a second packet of white powder appears. Tracy only saw one –’ Rebus saw that Charlie was about to interrupt again ‘– so she says. So, Ronnie had one packet and shot up with it. When he died, his body came downstairs and another packet magically appeared. This new packet contains good stuff, not the poison Ronnie used on himself. And, to add a little more to the concoction, Ronnie’s camera disappears, to turn up later in your squat, Charlie, in your room, and in your black polythene bag.’