The Beat Goes On: The Complete Rebus Stories (Rebus Collection) (42 page)

Tonight they took in a couple of bars, a bit of a drive in Stevie’s Beamer: he preferred
BMW
s to Porsches, more space for passengers. They ended up at a club, but didn’t stay long. Stevie had a game the next day. He was always very conscientious that way: Perrier and early nights. Stevie dropped Matty off outside his flat, sounding the horn as he roared away. Matty hadn’t spotted the other car, but he heard a door opening, looked across the road and recognised Malibu straight off. Malibu was Mr Mandelson’s driver. He’d eased himself out of the Roller and was holding open the back door while looking over to Matty.

So Matty crossed the street. As he did so, he walked into Malibu’s shadow, cast by the sodium street lamp. At that moment, though he didn’t know what was about to happen, he realised he was lost.

‘Get in, Matty.’

The voice, of course, was Mandelson’s. Matty got into the car and Malibu closed the door after him, then kept guard outside. They weren’t going anywhere.

‘Ever been in a Roller before, Matty?’

‘I don’t think so.’

‘You’d remember if you had. I could have had one years back, but only by buying secondhand. I wanted to wait until I had the cash for a nice new one. That leather smell – you don’t get it with any other car.’ Mandelson lit a cigar. The windows were closed and the
car started filling with sour smoke. ‘Know how I came to afford a brand new Roller, Matty?’

‘Hard work?’ Matty’s mouth was dry. Cars, he thought: Rebus’s, Stevie’s, and now this one. Plus, of course, the one he’d borrowed that night, the one that had brought him to this.

‘Don’t be stupid. My dad worked thirty years in a shop, six days a week and he still couldn’t have made the down-payment. Faith, Matty, that’s the key. You have to believe in yourself, and sometimes you have to trust other people – strangers some of them, or people you don’t like, people it’s hard to trust. That’s the gamble life’s making with you, and if you place your bet, sometimes you get lucky. Except it’s not luck – not entirely. See, there are odds, like in every game, and that’s where judgement comes in. I like to think I’m a good judge of character.’

Only now did Mandelson turn to look at him. There seemed to Matty to be nothing behind the eyes, nothing at all.

‘Yes, sir,’ he said, for want of anything better.

‘That was Stevie dropped you off, eh?’ Matty nodded. ‘Now, your man Stevie, he’s got something else, something we haven’t discussed yet. He’s got a gift. He’s had to work, of course, but the thing was there to begin with. Don’t ask me where it came from or why it should have been given to him in particular – that’s one for the philosophers, and I don’t claim to be a philosopher. What I am is a businessman … and a gambler. Only I don’t bet on nags or dogs or a turn of the cards, I bet on people. I’m betting on you, Matty.’

‘Me?’

Mandelson nodded, barely visible inside the cloud of smoke. ‘I want you to talk to Stevie on my behalf. I want you to get him to do me a favour.’

Matty rubbed his forehead with his fingers. He knew what was coming but didn’t want to hear it.

‘I saw a recent interview,’ Mandelson went on, ‘where he told the reporter he always gave a hundred and ten per cent. All I want is to knock maybe twenty per cent off for next Saturday’s game. You know what I’m saying?’

Next Saturday … An away tie at Kirkcaldy. Stevie expected to run rings around the Raith Rovers defence.

‘He won’t do it,’ Matty said. ‘Come to that, neither will I.’

‘No?’ Mandelson laughed. A hand landed on Matty’s thigh. ‘You fucked up in London, son. They knew you’d end up taking a croupier’s job somewhere else, it’s the only thing you know how to do. So they phoned around, and eventually they phoned
me
. I told them I’d never heard of you. That can change, Matty. Want me to talk to them again?’

‘I’d tell them you lied to them the first time.’

Mandelson shrugged. ‘I can live with that. But what do you think they’ll do to
you
, Matty? They were pretty angry about whatever scheme it was you pulled. I’d say they were furious.’

Matty felt like he was going to heave. He was sweating, his lungs toxic. ‘He won’t do it,’ he said again.

‘Be persuasive, Matty. You’re his friend. Remind him that his tab’s up to three and a half. All he has to do is ease off for one game, and the tab’s history. And Matty, I’ll know if you’ve talked to him or not, so no games, eh? Or you might find yourself with no place left to hide.’

VIII

Rebus searched his flat, but came up with only half a dozen snapshots: two of his ex-wife Rhona, posing with Samantha, their daughter, back when Sammy was seven or eight; two further shots of Sammy in her teens; one showing his father as a young man, kissing the woman who would become Rebus’s mother; and a final photograph, a family grouping, showing uncles, aunts and cousins whose names Rebus didn’t know. There were other photographs, of course – at least, there had been – but not here, not in the flat. He guessed Rhona still kept some, maybe his brother Michael had the others. But they could be anywhere. Rebus hadn’t thought of himself as the kind to spend long nights with the family album, using it as a crutch to memory, always with the fear that remembrance would yield to sentiment.

If I died tonight, he thought, what would I bequeath to the world? Looking around, the answer was: nothing. The thought scared him, and worst of all it made him want a drink, and not just one drink but a dozen.

Instead of which, he drove north back into Fife. It had been overcast all day, and the evening was warm. He didn’t know what he was doing, knew he had precious little to say to either of Damon’s parents, and yet that’s where he ended up. He’d had the destination in mind all along.

Brian Mee answered the door, wearing a smart suit and just finishing knotting his tie.

‘Sorry, Brian,’ Rebus said. ‘Are you off out?’

‘In ten minutes. Come in anyway. Is it Damon?’

Rebus shook his head and saw the tension in Brian’s face turn to relief. Yes, a visit in person wouldn’t be good news, would it? Good news had to be given immediately by telephone, not by a knock at the door. Rebus should have realised; he’d been the bearer of bad news often enough in his time.

‘Sorry, Brian,’ he repeated. They were in the hallway. Janis’s voice came from above, asking who it was.

‘It’s Johnny,’ her husband called back. Then to Rebus, ‘It’s all right to call you that?’

‘Of course. It’s my name, isn’t it?’ He could have added: again, after all this time. He looked at Brian, remembering the way they’d sometimes mistreated him at school: not that ‘Barney’ had seemed to mind, but who could tell for sure? And then that night of the last school dance … Brian had been there for Mitch. Brian had been there; Rebus had not. He’d been too busy losing Janis, and losing consciousness.

She was coming downstairs now. ‘I’ll be back in a sec,’ Brian said, heading up past her.

‘You look terrific,’ Rebus told her. The blue dress was well-chosen, her make-up highlighting all the right features of her busy face. She managed a smile.

‘No news?’

‘Sorry,’ he said again. ‘Just thought I’d see how you are.’

‘Oh, we’re pining away.’ Another smile, tinged by shame this time. ‘It’s a dinner–dance, we bought the tickets months back. It’s for the Jolly Beggars.’

‘Nobody expects you to sit at home every night, Janis.’

‘But all the same …’ Her cheeks grew flushed and her eyes sought his. ‘We’re not going to find him, are we?’

‘Not easily. Our best bet’s that he’ll get in touch.’

‘If he can,’ she said quietly.

‘Come on, Janis.’ He put his hands on her shoulders, like they were strangers and about to dance. ‘You might hear from him tomorrow, or it might take months.’

‘And meantime life goes on, eh?’

‘Something like that.’

She smiled again, blinking back tears. ‘Why don’t you come with us, John?’

Rebus dropped his hands from her shoulders. ‘I haven’t danced in years.’

‘So you’d be rusty.’

‘Thanks, Janis, but not tonight.’

‘Know something? I bet they play the same records we used to dance to at school.’

It was his turn to smile. Brian was coming back downstairs, patting his hair into place.

‘You’d be welcome to join us, Johnny,’ he said.

‘I’ve another appointment, Brian. Maybe next time, eh?’

‘Let’s make that a promise.’

They went out to their cars together. Janis pecked him on the cheek, Brian shook his hand. He watched them drive off then headed to the cemetery.

It was dark, and the gates were locked, so Rebus sat in his car and smoked a cigarette. He thought about his parents and the rest of his family and remembered stories about Bowhill, stories which seemed inextricable from family history: mining tragedies; a girl found drowned in the River Ore; a holiday car crash which had erased an entire family. Then there was Johnny Thomson, Celtic goalkeeper, injured during an ‘Old Firm’ match. He was in his early twenties when he died, and was buried behind those gates, not far from Rebus’s parents.
Not Dead, But at Rest in the Arms of the Lord
.

The Lord had to be a bodybuilder.

From family he turned to friends and tried recalling a dozen names to put to faces he remembered from schooldays. Other friends: people he’d known in the army, the SAS. All the people he’d dealt with during his career in the police. Villains he’d put away, some who’d slipped through his fingers. People he’d interviewed, suspected, questioned, broken the worst kind of news to. Acquaintances from the Oxford Bar and all the other pubs where he’d ever been a regular. Local shopkeepers. Jesus, the list was endless. All these people who’d played a part in his life, in shaping who he was and how he acted, how he felt about things. All of them, out there somewhere and nowhere, gathered together only inside his head. And chief among them tonight, Brian and Janis.

That night of the school dance … It was true he’d been drunk – elated. He’d felt he could
do
anything,
be
anything. Because he’d come to a decision that day – he wouldn’t join the army, he’d stay in Bowhill with Janis, apply for a job at the dockyard. His dad had told him not to be so stupid – ‘short-sighted’ was the word he’d used. But what did parents know about their children’s desires? So he’d drunk some beer and headed off to the dance, his thoughts only of Janis. Tonight he’d tell her. And Mitch, of course. He’d have to tell Mitch, tell him he’d be heading into the army alone. But Mitch wouldn’t mind, he’d understand, as best friends had to.

But while Rebus had been outside with Janis, his friend Mitch was being cornered by four teenagers who considered themselves his enemies. This was their last chance for revenge, and they’d gone in hard, kicking and punching. Four against one … until Barney had waded in, shrugging off blows, and dragged Mitch to safety. But one kick had done the damage, dislodging a retina. Mitch’s vision stayed fuzzy in that eye for a few days, then disappeared. And where had Rebus been? Out cold on the concrete by the bike sheds.

And why had he never thanked Barney Mee?

He blinked now and sniffed, wondering if he was coming down with a cold. He’d had this idea when he came back to Bowhill that the place would seem beyond redemption, that he’d be able to tell himself it had lost its sense of community, become just another town for him to pass through. Maybe he’d wanted to put it behind him. Well, it hadn’t worked. He got out of the car and looked around. The street was dead. He reached up and hauled himself over the iron railings and walked a circuit of the cemetery for an hour or so, and felt strangely at peace.

IX

‘So what’s the panic, Matty?’

After a home draw with Rangers, Stevie was ready for a night on the town. One–one, and of course he’d scored his team’s only goal. The reporters would be busy filing their copy, saying for the umpteenth time that he was his side’s hero, that without him they were a very ordinary team indeed. Rangers had known that: Stevie’s marker had been out for blood, sliding studs-first into tackles which Stevie had done his damnedest to avoid. He’d come out of the game with a couple of fresh bruises and grazes, a nick on one knee but, to his manager’s all too palpable relief, fit to play again midweek.

‘I said what’s the panic?’

Matty had worried himself sleepless. He knew he had several options. Speak to Stevie, that was one of them. Another was not to speak to him, but tell Mandelson he had. Then it would be down to whether or not Mandelson believed him. Option three: do a runner; only Mandelson was right about that – he was running out of places to hide. With
two
casino bosses out for his blood, how could he ever pick up another croupier’s job?

If he spoke with Stevie, he’d lose a new-found friend. But to stay silent … well, there was very little percentage in it. So here he was in Stevie’s flat, having demanded to see him. In the corner, a TV was replaying a tape of the afternoon’s match. There was no commentary, just the sounds of the terraces and the dug-outs.