Authors: Ian Rankin
Back at the flat, he called the Infirmary, who told him Michael could come home this afternoon. Rebus arranged to pick him up at four. He then got to work. He drilled the necessary hole in the door, only to find he’d drilled it too high for the girl student, who had to stand on tiptoe even to get close. So he drilled another hole, filled in the first with wood putty, and then fitted the spy-hole. It was a bit askew, but it would work. Fitting the sliding chain was easier, and left him with two tools and a drill-bit unused. He wondered if the DIY store would take them back.
Next he tidied the box room and put Michael’s stuff into the washing machine, after which he shared the macaroni cheese which the students had prepared for lunch. He didn’t quite apologise to them for the past week, but he insisted they use the living room whenever they liked, and he told them also that he was reducing their rent – news they took unsurprisingly well. He didn’t say anything about Michael; he didn’t reckon Michael would want them to know. And he’d already explained away the extra security on the door by citing several recent burglaries in the locality.
He brought Michael and a large bottle of sleeping tablets back from the hospital, having first bribed the students to be out of the flat for the rest of the afternoon and evening. If Michael needed to cry again, he wouldn’t want an audience.
‘Look, our new peephole,’ said Rebus at the door of the flat.
‘That was quick.’
‘Protestant work ethic. Or is it Calvinist guilt? I can never remember.’ Rebus opened the door. ‘Please also note the security chain on the inside.’
‘You can tell it’s a rush job, look where the paint’s all scored.’
‘Don’t push your luck, brother.’
Michael sat in the living room while Rebus made two mugs of tea. The stairwell had seemed full of menace for both brothers, each sensing the other’s disquiet. And even now Rebus didn’t feel completely safe. This was not, however, something he wished to share with Michael.
‘Just the way you like it,’ he said, bringing the tea in. He could see Michael was weepy again, though trying to hide it.
‘Thanks, John.’
The phone rang before Rebus could say anything. It was Siobhan Clarke, checking details of the following morning’s surveillance operation.
Rebus assured her that everything was in hand; all she had to do was turn up and freeze her bum off for a few hours.
‘You’re a great one for motivation, sir,’ was her final comment.
‘So,’ Rebus asked Michael, ‘what do you want to do?’
Michael was shaking a large round pill out of the brown bottle. He put it on his tongue with a wavering hand, and washed it down with tea.
‘A quiet night in would suit me fine,’ he said.
‘A quiet night in it is,’ agreed Rebus.
Operation Moneybags began quietly enough at eight-thirty on Monday morning, thirty minutes before Davey Dougary’s BMW bumped its way into the pot-holed parking lot of the taxi-cab firm. Alister Flower and his team, of course, wouldn’t be starting work till eleven or a little after, but it was best not to think about that, especially if, like Siobhan Clarke, you were already cold and stiff by opening time, and dreading your next visit to the chemical toilet which had been installed, for want of any other facilities, in a broom closet.
She was bored, too. DC Peter Petrie (from St Leonard’s) and Elsa-Beth Jardine from Trading Standards appeared to be nursing post-weekend hangovers and resultant blues. She got the feeling that Jardine and her might actually have a lot to talk about – both were women fighting for recognition in what was perceived as a male profession – but the presence of Petrie ruled out discussion.
Peter Petrie was one of those basically intelligent but not exactly perceptive officers who climbed the ladder by passing the exams (though never with brilliant marks) and not getting in anyone’s way. Petrie was quiet and methodical; she didn’t doubt his competence, it was just that he lacked any spark of inspiration or instinct. And probably, she thought, he was sitting there with his thermos summing her up as an over-talkative smart-arse with a university degree. Well, whatever he was he was no John Rebus.
She had accused her superior of not exactly motivating those who worked for him, but this was a lie. He could draw you into a case, and into his way of thinking about a case, merely by being so narrow-minded about the investigation. He was secretive – and that drew you in. He was tenacious – and that drew you in. Above all, though, he had the air of knowing exactly where he was going. And he wasn’t all that bad looking either. She’d learned a lot about him by sticking close to Brian Holmes, who had been only too willing to chat about past cases and what he knew of his boss’s history.
Poor Brian. She hoped he was going to be all right. She had thought a lot last night about Brian, but even more about Cafferty and his gang. She hoped she could be of help to Inspector John Rebus. She already had a few ideas about the fire at the Central Hotel …
‘Here comes someone,’ said Petrie. He was squatting behind the tripod and busily adjusting the focus on the camera. He fired off half a dozen shots. ‘Unidentified male. Denim jacket and light-coloured trousers. Approaching the office on foot.’
Siobhan took up her pad and copied down Petrie’s description, noting the time alongside.
‘He’s entering the office … now.’ Petrie turned away from the camera and grinned. ‘This is what I joined the police for: a life of adventure.’ Having said which, he poured more hot chocolate from his thermos into a cup.
‘I can’t use that loo,’ said Elsa-Beth Jardine. ‘I’ll have to go out.’
‘No can do,’ said Petrie, ‘it would attract too much attention, you tripping in and out every time you needed a piss.’
Jardine turned to Siobhan. ‘He’s got a way with words, your colleague.’
‘Oh, he’s a right old romantic. But it’s true enough about going to the toilet.’ The bathroom had flooded during the previous year’s break-in, leaving the floor unsafe. Hence the broom closet.
Jardine flipped over a page of her magazine. ‘Burt Reynolds has seven bathrooms in his home,’ she commented.
‘One for every dwarf,’ muttered Petrie.
Rebus might, in Siobhan’s phrase, have an air of knowing exactly where he was going, but in fact he felt like he was going round in circles. He’d visited a few early-opening pubs (near the offices of the daily newspaper; down towards the docks at Leith), social clubs and betting shops, and had asked his question and left his message in all of them. Deek Torrance was either keeping a low profile, or else he’d left the city. If still around, it was unfeasible that he wouldn’t at some point stagger into a bar and loudly introduce himself and his thirst. Few people, once introduced, could forget Deek Torrance.
He’d also opened communications with hospitals in Edinburgh and Dundee, to see if either of the Robertson brothers had received surgery for a broken right arm, the old injury found on the Central Hotel corpse.
But now it was time to give up and go check out Operation Moneybags. He’d left Michael still asleep this morning, and likely to remain asleep for quite some time if those pills were anything to go by. The students had tiptoed in at a minute past midnight, ‘well kettled’ as one of them termed it, having spent Rebus’s thirty quid on beverages at a local hostelry. They too had been asleep when Rebus had let himself out of the flat. He hardly dared admit to himself that he liked sleeping rough in his own living-room.
The whole weekend seemed like a strange bad dream now. The drive to Aberdeen, Auntie Ena, Michael … then the drive to Perth, the lock-fitting, and too much spare time (even after all that) in which to brood. He wondered how Patience’s weekend had gone. She’d be back later today for sure. He’d try phoning again.
He parked in one of the many side streets off Gorgie Road and locked his car. This was not one of the city’s safest areas. He hoped Siobhan hadn’t worn a green and white scarf to work this morning … He walked down onto Gorgie Road, where buses were spraying the pavement with some of the morning’s rainwater, and was careful not to pause outside the door, careful not to glance across the street at the cab offices. He just pushed the door open and climbed the stairs, then knocked at another door.
Siobhan Clarke herself opened it. ‘Morning, sir.’ She looked cold, though she had wrapped up well enough. ‘Coffee?’
The offer was from her thermos, and Rebus shook his head. Normally during a surveillance, drinks and food could be brought in, but not to
this
surveillance. There wasn’t supposed to be any activity in the building, so it would look more than a mite suspicious if someone suddenly appeared at the door with three beakers of tea and a home-delivery pizza. There wasn’t even a back entrance to the building.
‘How’s it going?’
‘Slow.’ This from Elsa-Beth Jardine, who didn’t look at all comfortable. There was an open magazine on her lap. ‘Thank God I’m relieved at one o’clock.’
‘Think yourself lucky, then,’ commented DC Petrie.
Ah, how Rebus liked to see a happy crew. ‘It’s not supposed to be fun,’ he told them. ‘It’s supposed to be work. If and when we nab Dougary and Co.,
that’s
when the party begins.’ They had nothing to add to this, and neither did Rebus. He walked over to the window and peered out. The window itself was so grimy he doubted anyone could see them through it, and especially not from across the street. But a square had been cleaned off just a little, enough so that any photos would be recognisable.
‘Camera working okay?’
‘So far,’ said Petrie. ‘I don’t really trust these motorised jobs. If the motor goes, you’re buggered. You can’t wind on by hand.’
‘Got enough batteries?’
‘Two back-up sets. They’re not going to be a problem.’
Rebus nodded. He knew Petrie’s reputation as a solid detective who might climb a little higher up the ladder yet. ‘How about the phone?’
‘It’s connected, sir,’ said Siobhan Clarke.
Usually, there would be radio contact between any stake-out and headquarters, but not for Moneybags. The problem was the cab company. The cabs and their home base were equipped with two-way radios, so it was possible that communications from Moneybags to HQ could actually be picked up across the road. There was the added complication, too, that the cab radios might interfere with Moneybags’ transmissions.
To avoid these potential disasters, a telephone line had been installed early on Sunday morning. The telephone apparatus sat on the floor near the door. So far it had been used twice: once by Jardine to make a hairdresser’s appointment; and once by Petrie to make a bet after he’d checked the day’s horse-racing tips in his tabloid. Siobhan intended using it this afternoon to check on Brian’s condition. But now Rebus was actually using it to phone St Leonard’s.
‘Any messages for me?’ He waited. ‘Oh? That’s interesting. Anything else?
What?
Why the hell didn’t you tell me that first?’ He slammed the phone down. ‘Brian’s awake,’ he said. ‘He’s sitting up in bed eating chicken soup and watching daytime TV.’
‘Either of which could give him a relapse,’ said Siobhan. She was wondering what the other message had been.
‘Hello, Brian.’
‘Hello, sir.’ Holmes had been listening to a personal hi-fi. He switched it off and slipped the headphones down around his neck. ‘Patsy Cline,’ he said. ‘I’ve been listening to a lot of her since Nell booted me out.’
‘Where did the tape come from?’
‘My aunt brought it in, bless her. She knows what I like. It was waiting for me when I woke up.’
Rebus had a sudden thought. They played music to coma victims, didn’t they? Maybe they’d been playing Patsy Cline to Holmes. No wonder he’d been a long time waking up.
‘I’m finding it hard to take in, though,’ Holmes went on. ‘I mean, whole days of my life, just gone like that. I wouldn’t mind, I mean I like a good sleep. Only I can’t remember a bloody thing I dreamt about.’
Rebus sat down by the bedside. The chair was already in place. ‘Been having visitors?’
‘Just the one. Nell looked in.’
‘That’s nice.’
‘She spent the whole time crying. My face isn’t horribly scarred and no one’s telling me?’
‘Looks as ugly as ever. What about amnesia?’
Holmes smiled. ‘Oh no, I remember the whole thing, not that it’ll help.’
Holmes really did look fine. It was like the doctors said, the brain shuts all systems down, thinks what damage has been done, effects repairs, and then you wake up. Policeman heal thyself.
‘So?’
‘So,’ said Holmes, ‘I’d spent the evening in the Heartbreak Cafe. I can even tell you what I ate.’
‘Whatever it was, I’ll bet you finished with Blue Suede Choux.’
Holmes shook his head. ‘They’d none left. Like Eddie said, it’s the fastest mover since the King himself.’
‘So what happened after you ate?’
‘The usual, I sat at the bar drinking and chatting, wondering if any gorgeous young ladies were going to slip onto the stool beside mine and ask if I came there often. I talked with Pat for a while. He was on bar duty that night.’ Holmes paused. ‘I should explain, Pat is –’
‘Eddie’s business partner, and maybe a
sleeping
partner too.’
‘Now now, no homophobia.’
‘Some of my best friends know gays,’ Rebus said. ‘You’ve mentioned Calder in the past. I can also tell you he doesn’t drive.’
‘That’s right, Eddie does.’
‘Even when he’s shit-faced.’
Holmes shrugged. ‘I’ve never made it my business.’
‘You will when he knocks some poor old lady down.’
Holmes smiled. ‘That car of his might look like a hotrod, but it’s in terrible shape. It barely does forty on the open road. Besides, Eddie’s the most, if you will,
pedestrian
driver I know. He’s so slow I’ve seen him overtaken by a skateboard – and that was being carried under somebody’s arm at the time.’
‘So it was just you and Calder at the bar?’
‘Until Eddie joined us, after he’d finished cooking. I mean, there were other people in the place, but no obvious villains.’
‘Pray continue.’
‘Well, I went to go home. Someone must have been waiting behind the dustbins. Next thing I knew there was a draught up my kilt. I opened my eyes and saw these two nurses washing my tadger.’