Exit Music (2007) (2 page)

2

R
ebus was giving Clarke a lift home when the call came in on her mobile.

They did a U-turn and headed for the Cowgate, home to the city’s mortuary. There was an unmarked white van sitting by the loading bay. Rebus parked next to it and led the way. The night shift consisted of just two men. One was in his forties and had the look—to Rebus’s eyes—of an ex-con. A faded blue tattoo crept out of the neck of his overalls and halfway up his throat. It took Rebus a moment to place it as some sort of snake. The other man was a lot younger, bespectacled and gawky.

“I take it you’re the poet,” Rebus guessed.

“Lord Byron, we call him,” the older man rasped.

“That’s how I recognized him,” the young attendant told Rebus. “I was at a reading he gave just yesterday . . .” He glanced at his watch. “Day before yesterday,” he corrected himself, reminding Rebus that it was past midnight. “He was wearing the exact same clothes.”

“Hard to ID him from his face,” Clarke interrupted, playing devil’s advocate.

The young man nodded agreement. “All the same . . . the hair, that jacket, and the belt . . .”

“So what’s his name?” Rebus asked.

“Todorov. Alexander Todorov. He’s Russian. I’ve got one of his books in the staff room. He signed it for me.”

“That’ll be worth a few quid.” The other attendant sounded suddenly interested.

“Can you fetch it?” Rebus asked. The young man nodded and shuffled past, heading for the corridor. Rebus studied the rows of refrigerated doors. “Which one’s he in?”

“Number three.” The attendant rapped his knuckles against the door in question. There was a label on it, but no name as yet. “I wouldn’t bet on Lord Byron being wrong—he’s got brains.”

“How long has he been here?”

“Couple of months. Real name’s Chris Simpson.”

Clarke had a question of her own. “Any idea how soon the autopsy will get done?”

“Soon as the pathologists get their arses down here.”

Rebus had picked up a copy of the day’s
Evening News
. “Looking bad for Hearts,” the attendant told him. “Pressley’s lost the captaincy and there’s a caretaker coach.”

“Music to DS Clarke’s ears,” Rebus told the man. He held the paper up so she could see the front page. A Sikh teenager had been attacked in Pilrig Park and his hair lopped off.

“Not our patch, thank God,” she said. At the sound of footsteps, all three of them turned, but it was only Chris Simpson returning with the slim hardback book. Rebus took charge of it and turned to the back cover. The poet’s unsmiling face stared back at him. Rebus showed it to Clarke, who shrugged.

“Looks like the same leather jacket,” Rebus commented. “But he’s got some sort of chain round his neck.”

“He was wearing it at the reading,” Simpson confirmed.

“And the guy you brought in tonight?”

“No chain—I had a quick look. Maybe they took it . . . whoever mugged him, I mean.”

“Or maybe it’s not him. How long was Todorov staying in town?”

“He’s here on some sort of scholarship. Hasn’t lived in Russia for a while—calls himself an exile.”

Rebus was turning the pages of the book. It was called
Astapovo Blues
. The poems were in English and called things like “Raskolnikov,” “Leonid,” and “Mind Gulag.” “What does the title mean?” he asked Simpson.

“It’s the place where Tolstoy died.”

The other attendant chuckled. “Told you he had a brain on him.”

Rebus handed the book to Clarke, who flicked to the title page. Todorov had written an inscription, telling “Dear Chris” to “keep the faith, as I have and have not.” “What did he mean?” she asked.

“I said I was trying to be a poet. He told me that meant I already was. I think he’s saying he kept faith with poetry, but not with Russia.” The young man was starting to blush.

“Where was this?” Rebus asked.

“The Scottish Poetry Library—just off the Canongate.”

“Was anyone with him? A wife maybe, or someone from the publisher?”

Simpson told them he couldn’t be sure. “He’s famous, you know. There was talk of the Nobel Prize.”

Clarke had closed the book. “There’s always the Russian consulate,” she suggested. Rebus gave a slow nod. They could hear a car drawing up outside.

“That’ll be at least one of them,” the other attendant said. “Best get the lab ready, Lord Byron.”

Simpson had reached out a hand for his book, but Clarke waved it at him.

“Mind if I hang on to it, Mr. Simpson? Promise I won’t put it on eBay.”

The young man seemed reluctant but was being prodded into action by his colleague. Clarke sealed the deal by slipping the book into her coat pocket. Rebus had turned to face the outer door, which was being hauled open by a puffy-eyed Professor Gates. Only a couple of steps behind him was Dr. Curt—the two pathologists had worked together so frequently that they often seemed to Rebus a single unit. Hard to imagine that outside of work they could ever lead separate, distinguishable lives.

“Ah, John,” Gates said, proffering a hand as chilled as the room. “The night’s grown bitter. And here’s DS Clarke, too—looking forward, no doubt, to stepping out from the mentor’s shadow.”

Clarke prickled but kept her mouth shut—no point in arguing that, as far as she was concerned, she’d long ago left Rebus’s shadow. Rebus himself offered a smile of support before shaking hands with the ashen-faced Curt. There had been a cancer scare eleven months back, and some of the man’s energy had failed to return, though he’d given up the cigarettes for good.

“How are you, John?” Curt was asking. Rebus felt maybe that should have been
his
question, but he offered a reassuring nod.

“I’m guessing box two,” Gates was saying, turning to his associate. “Deal or no deal?”

“It’s number three actually,” Clarke told him. “We think he may be a Russian poet.”

“Not Todorov?” Curt asked, one eyebrow raised. Clarke showed him the book, and the eyebrow went a little higher.

“Wouldn’t have taken you for a poetry lover, Doc,” Rebus commented.

“Are we in the midst of a diplomatic incident?” Gates snorted. “Should we be checking for poisoned umbrella tips?”

“Looks like he was mugged by a psycho,” Rebus explained. “Unless there’s a poison out there that strips the skin away from your face.”

“Necrotizing fasciitis,” Curt muttered.

“Arising from
Streptococcus pyogenes,
” Gates added. “Not that I think we’ve ever seen it.” To Rebus’s ears, he sounded genuinely disappointed.

Blunt force trauma: the police doctor had been spot on. Rebus sat in his living room, not bothering to switch on any lights, and smoked a cigarette. Having banned nicotine from workplaces and pubs, the government was now looking at banning it from the home, too. Rebus wondered how they’d go about enforcing
that
. A John Hiatt album was on the CD player, volume kept low. The track was called “Lift Up Every Stone.” All his time on the force, he hadn’t done anything else. But Hiatt was using stones to build a wall, while Rebus just peered beneath them at the tiny dark things scuttling around. He wondered if the lyric was a poem, and what the Russian poet would have made of Rebus’s riff on it. They’d tried phoning the consulate, but no one had answered, not even a machine, so they’d decided to call it a night. Siobhan had been dozing off during the autopsy, much to Gates’s irritation. Rebus’s fault: he’d been keeping her late at the office, trying to get her interested in all those cold cases, all the ones still niggling him, hoping that maybe they would keep his memory warm . . .

Rebus had dropped her home and then driven through the silent pre-dawn streets to Marchmont, an eventual parking space, and his second-floor tenement flat. The living room had a bay window, and that was where his chair was. He was promising himself he’d make it as far as the bedroom, but there was a spare duvet behind the sofa just in case. He had a bottle of whisky, too—eighteen-year-old Highland Park, bought the previous weekend and with a couple of good hits left in it. Ciggies and booze and a little night music. At one time, they would have provided enough consolation, but he wondered if they would sustain him once the job was behind him. What else did he have?

A daughter down in England, living with a college lecturer.

An ex-wife who’d moved to Italy.

The pub.

He couldn’t see himself driving cabs or doing precognitions for defense lawyers. Couldn’t see himself “starting afresh” as others had done—retiring to Marbella or Florida or Bulgaria. Some had sunk their pensions into property, letting flats to students—a chief inspector he knew had made a mint that way, but Rebus didn’t want the hassle. He’d be nagging the students all the time about cigarette burns in the carpet or the washing-up not being done.

Sports? None.

Hobbies and pastimes? Just what he was doing right now.

“Bit maudlin tonight, are we, John?” he asked himself out loud. Then gave a little chuckle, knowing he could maudle for Scotland, gold-medal a nap at the Grump Olympics. At least he wasn’t being sewn together again and slid back into drawer number three. He’d gone through a list in his mind—offenders he knew who’d go overboard on a beating. Most were in jail or under sedation on the psycho ward. Gates himself had said it—“There’s a fury here.”

“Or furies plural,” Curt had added.

True, they could be looking for more than one attacker. The victim had been whacked on the back of the head with enough force to fracture the skull. Hammer, cosh, or baseball bat—or anything else resembling them. Rebus was guessing that this had been the first blow. The victim would have been poleaxed, meaning he posed no threat to his attacker. So why then the prolonged beating to the face? As Gates had speculated, no ordinary mugger would have bothered. They’d have emptied the pockets and fled. A ring had been removed from one finger, and there was a line on the left-hand wrist, indicating that the victim had been wearing a watch. A slight nick on the back of the neck showed that the chain might have been snapped off.

“Nothing left at the scene?” Curt had asked, reaching for the chest cutters.

Rebus had shaken his head.

Say the victim had put up some sort of struggle . . . maybe he’d pushed a button too many. Or could there be a racism angle, his accent giving him away?

“The condemned ate a hearty meal,” Gates had eventually remarked, opening the stomach. “Prawn bhuna, if I’m not mistaken, washed down with lager. And do you detect a whiff of brandy or whisky, Dr. Curt?”

“Unmistakably.”

And so it had progressed, with Siobhan Clarke fighting to stay awake and Rebus seated next to her, watching as the pathologists went about their business.

No grazes on the knuckles or shreds of skin under the fingernails—nothing to suggest that the victim had been able to defend himself. The clothing was chain-store stuff and would be sent to the forensic lab. With the blood washed off, the face more clearly resembled the one on the poetry book. During one of her short naps, Rebus had removed the volume from Siobhan Clarke’s pocket and found a potted biography of Todorov on the flyleaf. Born 1960 in the Zhdanov district of Moscow, former literature lecturer, winner of numerous awards and prizes, author of six poetry collections for adults and one for children.

Seated now in his chair by the window, Rebus tried to think of Indian restaurants near King’s Stables Road. Tomorrow, he would try looking in the phone book.

“No, John,” he told himself, “it’s already tomorrow.”

He’d picked up an
Evening News
at the all-night petrol station, so he could check the headlines again. The Marmion trial was continuing at the Crown Court—pub shooting in Gracemount, one dead, one lucky to be alive. The Sikh teenager had escaped with bumps and bruises, but hair was sacred to his religion, something the attackers must have known or guessed.

And Jack Palance was dead. Rebus didn’t know what he’d been like in real life, but he’d always played tough guys in his films. Rebus poured another Highland Park and raised his glass in a toast.

“Here’s to the hard men,” he said, knocking the drink back in one.

Siobhan Clarke got to the end of the phone book’s listing for restaurants. She’d underlined half a dozen possibles, though really all the Indian restaurants were possible—Edinburgh was a small city and easy to get around. But they would start with the ones closest to the locus and work their way outwards. She had logged on to her laptop and searched the Web for mentions of Todorov—there were thousands of hits. He even featured in Wikipedia. Some of the stuff she found was written in Russian. A few essays came from the USA, where the poet featured on various college syllabuses. There were also reviews of
Astapovo Blues
, so she knew now that the poems were about Russian authors of the past, but also critiques of the current political scene in Todorov’s home country—not that Mother Russia had actually been his home, not for the past decade. He’d been right to term himself an exile, and his views on post-glasnost Russia had earned him a good deal of Politburo anger and derision. In one interview, he’d been asked if he considered himself a dissident. “A constructive dissident,” he had replied.

Clarke took another gulp of lukewarm coffee. This is your case, girl, she told herself. Rebus would soon be gone. She was trying not to think about it too much. All these years they’d worked together, to the point where they could almost read each other’s mind. She knew she would miss him, but knew, too, that she had to start planning for a future without him. Oh, they would meet for drinks and the occasional dinner. She’d share gossip and tidbits with him. Maybe he would nag her about those cold cases, the ones he was trying to dump on her . . .

BBC News 24 was playing on the TV but with the sound turned off. She’d made a couple of calls to check that no one as yet had reported the poet missing. Not much else to be done, so eventually she turned off the TV and computer both, and went through to the bathroom. The lightbulb needed changing, so she undressed in the dark, brushed her teeth, and found she was rinsing the brush under the hot tap instead of the cold. With her bedside light on, a pale pink scarf draped over it, she plumped up the pillows and raised her knees so she could rest
Astapovo Blues
against them. It was only forty-odd pages, but had still cost Chris Simpson a tenner.