Authors: Ian Rankin
She was frail-looking and hunch-backed and wore a shawl over her angular shoulders. Her silver hair had been pulled back severely and pinned tight against her head, and her eyes were sunken dots in a parchment face. Rebus couldn’t remember her at all.
‘You must have been three when we were last in Fife. You could talk the hind legs off a donkey, but with such a thick accent, I could hardly make out a word of it. Always wanting to tell a joke or sing a song.’
‘I’ve changed,’ Rebus said.
‘Eh?’ She had dumped herself into a chair beside the fireplace, and craned her head forward. ‘My hearing’s not so good, Jock.’
‘I said, nobody calls me Jock!’ Rebus called. ‘It’s John.’
‘Oh aye, John. Right you are.’ She pulled a travel-rug over her legs. In the fireplace stood an electric fire, the kind with fake coals, fake flames, and, so far as Rebus could tell, fake heat. There was one pale orange bar on, but he couldn’t feel anything.
‘Danny found you, then?’
‘You mean Andy?’
‘He’s a good laddie. Such a shame he got made redundant. Did he come back with you?’
‘No, he’s still in Edinburgh.’ She was resting her head against the back of the chair. Rebus got the impression she was about to drift off to sleep. The walk to the front door and back had probably exhausted her.
‘His parents are nice folk, always so kind to me.’
‘You wanted to see me about something, Auntie Ena?’
‘Eh?’
He crouched down in front of her, resting his hands on the side of the chair. ‘You wanted to see me.’ Well, she could see him … and then she couldn’t, as her eyes glazed over and, mouth wide open, she started to snore.
Rebus stood up and gave a loud sigh. The clock over the mantelpiece had stopped, but he knew he had at least two hours to kill. Talking over the Central Hotel case with Siobhan had made him agitated. He wanted to get back to work on it. And here he was, trapped in this miniature museum. He looked around, wrinkling his nose at a chrome commode in one dark corner. There were photos inside a glass-fronted china cabinet. He went over and examined them. He recognised a picture of his grandparents on his father’s side, but there were no photos of his father. The feud, or whatever it had been, had seen to that.
The Scots never forgot. It was a burden and a gift. The living-room led directly onto a small scullery. Rebus looked in the antique fridge and found a piece of brisket, which he sniffed. There was bread in a large tin in the pantry, and butter in a dish on the draining-board. It took him ten minutes to make the sandwiches, and five minutes to find out which of the many caddies contained the tea.
He found a radio beside the sink and tried to find commentary on a football game, but the batteries were weaker than his tea. So he tiptoed back through to where Auntie Ena was still sleeping and sat down in the chair opposite her. He hadn’t come up here expecting an inheritance, exactly, but he had bargained for more than this. A particularly loud snore brought Auntie Ena wriggling towards consciousness.
‘Eh? Is that you, Jimmy?’
‘It’s John, your nephew.’
‘Gracious, John, did I nod off?’
‘Just forty winks.’
‘Isn’t that terrible of me, with a visitor here and everything.’
‘I’m not a visitor, Auntie Ena, I’m family.’
‘Aye, son, so you are. Now, listen to me. There’s some beef in the fridge. Shall I go and –?’
‘They’re already made.’
‘Eh?’
‘The sandwiches. I’ve made them up.’
‘You have? You always were a bright one. Now what about some tea?’
‘Sit where you are, I’ll make some fresh.’
He made a pot of tea and brought the sandwiches through on a plate, setting them in front of her on a footstool. ‘There we are.’ He was about to hand her one, when she made a grab for his wrists, nearly toppling the plate. He saw that her eyes were shut, and though she looked frail enough her grip was strong. She’d started speaking before Rebus realised she was saying grace.
‘Some hae meat and cannae eat, and some hae nane that want it. But we hae meat and we can eat, so let the Lord be thankit.’
Rebus almost burst out laughing. Almost. But inside, he was touched too. He handed her a smile along with her sandwich, then went to fetch the tea.
The meal revived her, and she seemed to remember why she’d wanted to see him.
‘Your faither and my husband fell out very many years ago. Maybe forty or more years ago. They never exchanged a letter, a Christmas card, or a civil word ever again. Now, don’t you think that’s stupid? And do you know what it was about? It was about the fact that though we invited your faither and mither to our Ishbel’s wedding, we didn’t invite you. We’d decided there would be no children, you see. But then a friend of mine, Peggy Callaghan, brought her son along uninvited, and we could hardly turn him away, since there was no way for him to get back home on his own. When your faither saw this, he argued with Jimmy. A real blazing row. And then your faither stormed out, leaving your mither to follow him. A sweet woman she was. So that’s that.’
She sat back in her chair, breadcrumbs prominent on her lower lip.
‘That was all?’
She nodded. ‘Doesn’t seem like much, does it? Not from this distance. But it was enough. And the both of them were too stubborn ever to make it up.’
‘And you wanted to see me so you could tell me this?’
‘Partly, yes. But also, I wanted to give you something.’ She rose slowly from her chair, using the zimmer-frame for support, and leaned up towards the mantelpiece. Rebus half-rose to help her, but she didn’t need his help. She found the photograph and handed it down to him. He looked at it. In fading black and white, it showed two grinning schoolboys, not exactly dressed to the nines. They had their arms casually slung around one another’s necks, and their faces were close together. Best friends, but more than that: brothers.
‘He kept that, you see. He told me once that he’d thrown out all the photos of your faither. But when we were going through his things, we found that in the bottom of a shoebox. I wanted you to have it, Jock.’
‘It’s not Jock, it’s John,’ said Rebus, his eyes not entirely dry.
‘Of course it is,’ said his Auntie Ena. ‘Of course it is.’
Earlier that afternoon, Michael Rebus had lain along the couch asleep and unaware that he was missing one of his favourite films,
Double Indemnity
, on BBC2. He’d gone to the pub for a lunchtime drink: alone, as it turned out. The students weren’t into it. Instead, they’d gone shopping, or to the launderette, or home for the weekend to see parents and friends. So Michael drank only two lagers topped with lemonade and returned to the flat, where he promptly fell asleep in front of the TV.
He’d been thinking about John recently. He knew he was imposing on his big brother, but didn’t reckon on doing so much longer. He had spoken on the phone to Chrissie. She was still in Kirkcaldy with the kids. She’d wanted nothing to do with him after the bust, and was especially disgusted that his own brother had given evidence against him. But Michael didn’t blame John for that. John had principles. And besides, some of the evidence had worked – deliberately, he was sure – in Michael’s favour.
Now Chrissie was talking to him again. He’d written to her all through his incarceration, then had written from London too; not knowing whether she’d received any of his letters. But she had. She told him that when they spoke. And she didn’t have a boyfriend, and the kids were fine, and did he want to see them some time?
‘I want to see you,’ he’d told her. It sounded right.
He was dreaming about her when the doorbell went. Well … her and Gail the student, if truth be told. He staggered to his feet. The bell was insistent.
It took a second to turn the snib-lock, after which Michael’s world imploded.
With another Hibernian defeat behind her, Siobhan Clarke was quiet on the way home, which suited Rebus. He had some thinking to do, and not about work, for a change. He thought about the job too much as it was, gave himself to it the way he had never given himself to any
person
in his life. Not his ex-wife, not his daughter, not Patience, not Michael.
He’d come into the police prematurely weary and cynical. Then he watched recruits like Holmes and Clarke and saw their best intentions thwarted by the system and the public’s attitude. There were times you’d feel more welcome if you were painting plague markers on people’s doors.
‘A penny for them,’ said Siobhan Clarke.
‘Don’t waste your money.’
‘Why not? Look how much I’ve wasted already today.’
Rebus smiled at that. ‘Aye,’ he said, ‘I keep forgetting, there’s always someone in the world worse off than yourself … Unless you’re a Hibs supporter.’
‘Ha bloody ha.’
Siobhan Clarke reached for the stereo and tried to find a station that didn’t run the day’s classified results.
Full of good intentions, Rebus opened the door of the flat, sensing immediately that nobody was home. Well, it was Saturday night, after all. But they might at least have turned the TV off.
He went into the box room and placed the old photograph on Michael’s unmade bed. The room smelt faintly of perfume, reminding Rebus of Patience. He missed her more than he liked to admit. When they’d first started seeing one another, they’d agreed that they were both too old for anything that could be called ‘love’. They’d also agreed that they were more than ready for lashings of sex. Then, when Rebus had moved in, they’d talked again. It didn’t really mean commitment, they were agreed on that; it was just handier for the moment. Ah, but when Rebus had rented out his own flat …
that
had meant commitment, commitment to sleeping on the sofa should Patience ever kick him out.
He lay along the sofa now, noticing that he had all but annexed what had been the flat’s main communal space. The students tended to sit around in the kitchen now, talking quietly with the door closed. Rebus didn’t blame them. It was all a mess in here, and all
his
mess. His suitcase lay wide open on the floor beside the window, ties and socks trickling from it. The holdall was tucked behind the sofa. His two suits hung limply from the picture-rail next to the box room, partially blocking out a psychedelic poster which had been making Rebus’s eyes hurt. The place had a feral smell from lack of fresh air. The smell suited it, though. After all, wasn’t this Rebus’s lair?
He picked up the telephone and rang Patience. Her taped voice spoke to him; the message was new.
‘I’m going with Susan and Jenny back to their mother’s. Any messages, leave them after the tone.’
Rebus’s first thought was how stupid Patience had been. The message let any caller –
any
caller – know she wasn’t home. He knew that burglars often telephoned first. They might even go through the phone book more or less at random, finding phones that rang and rang, or answering machines. You had to make your message vague.
He guessed that if she’d gone to her sister’s, she wouldn’t be back until tomorrow night at the earliest, and might even stay over on the Monday.
‘Hi, Patience,’ he said to the machine. ‘It’s me. I’m ready to talk when you are. I … miss you. Bye.’
So, the girls had gone. Maybe now things could get back to normal. No more smouldering Susan, no more gentle Jenny. They weren’t the cause of the rift between Rebus and Patience, but maybe they hadn’t helped. No, they definitely hadn’t helped.
He made himself a cup of ‘coffee substitute’, all the time thinking of wandering down to the late-opening shop at the corner of Marchmont Road. But their coffee was instant and expensive, and besides, maybe this stuff would taste okay.
It tasted awful, and was absolutely caffeine-free, which was probably why he fell asleep during a dreary mid-evening movie on the television.
And awoke to a ringing telephone. Someone had switched the TV off, and perhaps that same person had thrown the blanket over him. It was getting to be a regular thing. He was stiff as he sat up and reached for the receiver. His watch told him it was one-fifteen a.m.
‘Hello?’
‘Is that Inspector Rebus?’
‘Speaking.’ Rebus rubbed at his hair.
‘Inspector, this is PC Hart. I’m in South Queensferry.’
‘Yes?’
‘There’s someone here claims he’s your brother.’
‘Michael?’
‘That’s the name he gave.’
‘What’s up? Is he guttered?’
‘Nothing like that, sir.’
‘What is it then?’
‘Well, sir, we’ve just found him …’
Rebus was very awake now. ‘Found him where?’
‘He was hanging from the Forth Rail Bridge.’
‘What?’ Rebus felt his hand squeezing the telephone receiver to death. ‘
Hanging?
’
‘I don’t mean like that, sir. Sorry if I …’ Rebus’s grip relaxed.
‘No, I mean he was hanging by his feet, sort of suspended, like. Just hanging in mid-air.’
‘We thought it was some sort of joke gone wrong at first. You know, bungee jumper, that kind of thing.’ PC Hart was leading Rebus to a hut on the quayside at South Queensferry. The Firth of Forth was dark and quiet in front of them, but Rebus could make out the rail bridge lowering far above them. ‘But that’s not the story he gave us. Besides, it was clear he hadn’t taken the dive on his own.’
‘How clear?’
‘His hands were tied together, sir. And his mouth had been taped shut.’
‘Christ.’
‘Doctor says he’ll be all right. If they’d tipped him over the side, his legs could’ve come out of the sockets, but the doc reckons they must have lowered him over.’
‘How did they get onto the bridge in the first place?’
‘It’s easy enough, if you’ve a head for heights.’
Rebus, who had no head for heights, had already declined the offer of a visit to the spot where Michael had been found, up on the ochre-coloured iron construction.
‘Looks like they waited till they knew there’d be no trains about. But a boat was going under the bridge, and the skipper thought he saw something, so he radioed in. Otherwise, well, he could have been up there all night.’ Hart shook his head. ‘A cold night, I can’t say I’d fancy it.’