Fleshmarket Alley (2004) (3 page)

Siobhan looked to John Jardine, but he was shaking his head.

“I’d kill him,” he said. “If I ever met him, I’d have to kill him.”

“Careful who you say that to, Mr. Jardine.” Siobhan thought for a moment. “Ishbel knew this? Knew he was out, I mean?”

“Whole town knew. And you know what it’s like: hairdressers are first with the gossip.”

Siobhan nodded slowly. “Well . . . like I said, I’ll make a few phone calls. A photo of Ishbel might help.”

Mrs. Jardine dug in her handbag and brought out a folded sheet of paper. It was a picture blown up on a sheet of eight-and-a-half-by-eleven paper, printed from a computer. Ishbel on a sofa, a drink in her hand, cheeks ruddy with alcohol.

“That’s Susie from the salon next to her,” Alice Jardine said. “John took it at a party we had three weeks ago. It was my birthday.”

Siobhan nodded. Ishbel had changed since she’d last seen her: allowed her hair to grow and dyed it blond. More makeup, too, and a hardening around the eyes, despite the grin. The hint of a double chin developing. The hair was center-parted. It took Siobhan a second to realize who she reminded her of. It was Tracy: the long blond hair, that part, the blue eyeliner.

She looked just like her dead sister.

“Thanks,” she said, placing the photo in her pocket.

Siobhan checked that they were still at the same telephone number. John Jardine nodded. “We moved one street away but didn’t need to change numbers.”

Of course they’d moved. How could they have gone on living in that house, the house where Tracy had taken the overdose? Fifteen, Ishbel had been when she’d found the lifeless body. The sister she doted on, idolized. Her role model.

“I’ll be in touch, then,” Siobhan said, turning and walking away.

2

S
o what were you up to all afternoon?” Siobhan asked, placing the pint of IPA in front of Rebus. As she sat down opposite, he blew some cigarette smoke ceilingwards: his idea of a concession to any nonsmoking companion. They were in the back room of the Oxford Bar, and every table was filled with office workers stopping to refuel before the trek home. Siobhan hadn’t been back in the office long when Rebus’s text message had appeared on her mobile:

fancy a drink i am in the ox

He’d finally mastered the sending and receiving of texts but had yet to work out how to add punctuation.

Or capitals.

“Out at Knoxland,” he said now.

“Col told me there’d been a body found.”

“Homicide,” Rebus stated. He took a gulp from his drink, frowning at Siobhan’s slender, nonalcoholic glass of lime with soda.

“So how come you ended up out there?” she asked.

“Got a call. Someone at HQ had alerted West End to the fact that I’m surplus to requirements at Gayfield Square.”

Siobhan put down her glass. “They didn’t say that?”

“You don’t need a magnifying glass to read between the lines, Shiv.”

Siobhan had long since given up trying to get people to use her full name rather than this shortened form. Likewise, Phyllida Hawes was “Phyl,” and Colin Tibbet “Col.” Apparently, Derek Starr could sometimes be referred to as “Deek,” but she’d never heard it used. Even DCI James Macrae had asked her to call him “Jim,” unless they were in some formal meeting. But John Rebus . . . for as long as she’d known him, he’d been “John”: not Jock or Johnny. It was as if people knew, just by looking at him, that he wasn’t the sort to endure a nickname. Nicknames made you seem friendly, more approachable, more likely to play along. When DCI Macrae said something like “Shiv, have you got a minute?” it meant he had some favor to ask. If this became “Siobhan, my office, please,” then she was no longer in his good books; some misdemeanor had occurred.

“Penny for them,” Rebus said now. He’d already demolished most of the pint she’d just bought him.

She shook her head. “Just wondering about the victim.”

Rebus shrugged. “Asian-looking, or whatever the politically correct term of the week is.” He stubbed out his cigarette. “Could have been Mediterranean or Arabic . . . I didn’t really get that close. Surplus to requirements again.” He shook his cigarette pack. Finding it empty, he crushed it and finished his beer. “Same again?” he said, rising to his feet.

“I’ve hardly started this one.”

“Then put it to one side and have a proper drink. Not got anything else on tonight, have you?”

“Doesn’t mean I’m ready to spend the evening helping you get hammered.” He stood his ground, giving her time to reconsider. “Go on then: gin and tonic.”

Rebus seemed satisfied with this, and headed out of the room. She could hear voices from the bar, greeting his arrival there.

“What’re you doing hiding upstairs?” one of them asked. She couldn’t hear an answer but knew it anyway. The front bar was Rebus’s domain, a place where he could hold court with his fellow drinkers—all of them men. But this part of his life had to remain distinct from any other—Siobhan wasn’t sure why, it was just something he was unwilling to share. The back room was for meetings and “guests.” She sat back and thought of the Jardines, and whether she was really willing to become involved in their search. They belonged to her past, and past cases seldom reappeared so tangibly. It was in the nature of the job that you became involved in people’s lives intimately—more intimately than many of them would like—but for a brief time only. Rebus had let slip to her once that he felt surrounded by ghosts: lapsed friendships and relationships, plus all those victims whose lives had ended before his interest in them had begun.

It can play havoc with you, Shiv . . .

She’d never forgotten those words;
in vino veritas
and all that. She could hear a mobile phone ringing in the front room. It prompted her to take out her own, checking for messages. But there was no signal, something she’d forgotten about this place. The Oxford Bar was only a minute’s walk from the city-center shops, yet somehow you could never pick up a signal in the back room. The bar was tucked away down a narrow lane, offices and flats above. Thick stone walls, built to survive the centuries. She angled the handset different ways, but the on-screen message remained a defiant “No Signal.” But now Rebus himself was in the doorway, no drinks in his hands. Instead, waving his own mobile at her.

“We’re wanted,” he said.

“Where?”

He ignored her question. “You got your car?”

She nodded.

“Better let you drive, then. Lucky you stuck to the soft stuff, eh?”

She put her jacket back on and picked up her bag. Rebus was purchasing cigarettes and mints from behind the bar. He popped one of the mints into his mouth.

“So is this to be a mystery tour or what?” Siobhan asked.

He shook his head, crunching down with his teeth. “Fleshmarket Alley,” he told her. “Couple of bodies we might be interested in.” He pulled open the door to the outside world. “Only not quite as fresh as the one in Knoxland . . .”

Fleshmarket Alley was a narrow, pedestrian-only lane connecting the High Street to Cockburn Street. The High Street entrance was flanked by a bar and a photographic shop. There were no parking spaces left, so Siobhan turned into Cockburn Street itself, parking outside the arcade. They crossed the road and headed into Fleshmarket Alley. This end, its entrance boasted a bookmaker’s one side, and a shop opposite selling crystals and “dream-catchers”: old and new Edinburgh, Rebus thought to himself. The Cockburn Street end of the alley was open to the elements, while the other half was covered over by five floors of what he assumed to be flats, their unlit windows casting baleful looks on the goings-on below.

There were several doorways in the lane itself. One would lead to the flats, and one, directly opposite, to the bodies. Rebus saw some of the same faces from the crime scene at Knoxland: white-suited SOCOs and police photographers. The doorway was narrow and low, dating back a few hundred years to when the locals had been a great deal shorter. Rebus ducked as he entered, Siobhan right behind him. Lighting, provided by a meager forty-watt bulb in the ceiling, was in the process of being augmented by an arc lamp, as soon as a cable could be found to stretch to the nearest socket.

Rebus had hesitated on the periphery, until one of the SOCOs told him it was all right.

“Bodies’ve been here a while; not much chance of us disturbing any evidence.”

Rebus nodded and approached the tight circle made up of white suits. There was a scuffed concrete floor under their feet. A pickax lay nearby. There was still dust in the air, clinging to the back of Rebus’s throat.

“The concrete was being taken up,” someone was explaining. “Doesn’t look as if it’s been there too long, but they wanted to lower the floor for some reason.”

“What is this place?” Rebus asked, looking around. There were packing cases, shelves filled with more boxes. Old barrels and advertising signs for beers and spirits.

“Belongs to the pub upstairs. They’ve been using it for storage. Cellar’s just through that wall.” A gloved hand pointed to the shelves. Rebus could hear floorboards creaking above them, and muffled sounds from a jukebox or TV set. “Workman starts breaking the stuff up, and here’s what he finds . . .”

Rebus turned and looked down. He was staring at a skull. There were other bones, too, and he didn’t doubt they would make up an entire skeleton, once the rest of the concrete had been removed.

“Might have been here a while,” the scene-of-crime officer offered. “Going to be a sod of a job for somebody.”

Rebus and Siobhan shared a look. In the car, she’d wondered aloud why the call had come to them, and not to Hawes or Tibbet. Rebus raised an eyebrow, indicating that he felt she now had her answer.

“A proper pig of a job,” the SOCO reiterated.

“That’s why we’re here,” Rebus said quietly, gaining a wry smile from Siobhan—more than one meaning to his words. “Where’s the owner of the pickax?”

“Upstairs. He said a snifter might help revive him.” The SOCO twitched his nose, as if only now catching a hint of mint in the stale air.

“Suppose we better have a word with him, then,” Rebus said.

“I thought it was bodies plural?” Siobhan queried.

The SOCO nodded towards a white polyethylene carrier bag lying on the floor, next to the broken-up concrete. One of his colleagues raised the bag a few inches. Siobhan sucked in her breath. There was another skeleton there, hardly any size at all. She let out a hiss.

“It was the only thing we had on hand,” the SOCO apologized. He meant the carrier bag. Rebus, too, was staring down at the tiny remains.

“Mother and baby?” he guessed.

“I’d leave that sort of speculation to the professionals,” a new voice stated. Rebus turned and found himself shaking hands with the pathologist, Dr. Curt. “Christ, John, are you still around? I heard they were putting you out to pasture.”

“You’re very much my role model, Doc. When you go, I go.”

“And the rejoicing shall be long and heartfelt. Good evening to you, Siobhan.” Curt tipped his head forward slightly. If he’d been wearing a hat, Rebus didn’t doubt he’d have removed it in a lady’s presence. He seemed to belong to another age, with his immaculate dark suit and polished brogues, the stiff shirt and striped tie, this last probably denoting membership of some venerable Edinburgh institution. His hair was gray, but this only served to make him appear even more distinguished. It was combed back from the forehead, not a strand out of place. He peered at the skeletons.

“The Prof will have a field day,” he muttered. “He does like these little puzzles.” He straightened up, examining his surroundings. “And his history, too.”

“You think they’ve been here a while then?” Siobhan made the mistake of asking. Curt’s eyes twinkled.

“Certainly they were here before the concrete was laid . . . but probably not too long before. People don’t tend to pour fresh concrete over bodies without good reason.”

“Yes, of course.” Siobhan’s blushes would have been spared had not the arc lamp suddenly lit the scene blazingly, casting huge shadows up the walls and across the low ceiling.

“That’s better,” the SOCO said.

Siobhan looked to Rebus and saw that he was rubbing his cheeks, as if she needed telling that her own face had reddened.

“I should probably get the Prof down here,” Curt was saying to himself. “I think he’d want to see them
in situ
. . .” He reached into an inside pocket for his mobile. “Pity to disturb the old boy when he’s heading out to the opera, but duty calls, does it not?” He winked at Rebus, who responded with a smile.

“Absolutely, Doc.”

The Prof was Professor Sandy Gates, Curt’s colleague and immediate boss. Both men worked at the university, teaching pathology, but were constantly on call to attend scenes of crime.

“You heard we had a stabbing in Knoxland?” Rebus asked, as Curt pushed the buttons on his phone.

“I heard,” Curt replied. “We’ll probably take a look at him tomorrow morning. Not sure yet that our clients here demand any such urgency.” He looked again at the adult skeleton. The infant had been re-covered, not by a bag this time but by Siobhan’s own jacket, which she’d placed over the remains with the utmost care.

“Wish you hadn’t done that,” Curt muttered, holding the phone to his ear. “Means we have to hang on to your coat so we can match it against any fibers we find.”

Rebus couldn’t stand to watch Siobhan start blushing again. Instead, he gestured towards the door. As they made their exit, Curt could be heard talking to Professor Gates.

“Are you all gussied up in tails and cummerbund, Sandy? Because if you’re not—and even if you are—I think I may have an alternative entertainment for you
ce soir
. . .”

Instead of heading up the lane, towards the pub, Siobhan started heading down.

“Where you off to?” Rebus asked.

“I’ve got a windbreaker in the car,” she explained. By the time she returned, Rebus had lit a cigarette.

“Good to see you with some color in your cheeks,” he told her.

“Gosh, did you think that up all by yourself?” She made an exasperated sound and leaned against the wall next to him, arms folded. “I just wish he wasn’t so . . .”

“What?” Rebus was examining the glowing tip of his cigarette.

“I don’t know . . .” She looked around, as if for inspiration. Revelers were on the street, weaving their way to the next hostelry. Tourists were photographing one another outside Starbucks, with the climb to the Castle as backdrop. Old and new, Rebus thought again.

“It just seems like a game to him,” Siobhan said at last. “That’s not what I mean exactly, but it’ll have to do.”

“He’s one of the most serious men I know,” Rebus told her. “It’s a way of dealing with it, that’s all. We all do it in our different ways, don’t we?”

“Do we?” She looked at him. “I suppose your way involves quantities of nicotine and alcohol?”

“It never does to mess with a winning combination.”

“Even if it’s a killing combination?”

“Remember the story of that old king? Took a little bit of poison every day to make himself immune?” Rebus blew smoke into the bruise-colored evening sky. “Think about it. And while you’re thinking, I’ll be buying a workman a drink . . . and maybe having one myself.” He pushed open the door to the bar, let it swing shut after him. Siobhan stood there for a few moments longer before joining him.

“Didn’t that king end up being killed anyway?” she asked, as they moved through the bar’s interior.

The place was called The Warlock, and it looked geared to foot-weary tourists. One wall was covered in a mural which told the story of Major Weir, who, back in the seventeenth century, had confessed to witchcraft, identifying his own sister as accomplice. The pair had been executed on Calton Hill.

“Nice,” was Siobhan’s only comment.