Authors: Ian Rankin
It was five o’clock when he got to McShane’s Bar near the bottom of the Royal Mile. McShane’s was a haven for bearded folk fans and their woolly sweaters. Upstairs, there was always music, be it a professional performer or some punter who’d taken the stage to belt out ‘Will Ye Go Lassie Go’ or ‘Both Sides O’ The Tweed’.
Midgie McNair did good business in McShane’s sketching flattering likenesses of acquiescent customers, who paid for the privilege and often bought the drinks as well.
At this early hour, Midgie was downstairs, reading a paperback at a corner table. His sketch-pad sat on the table beside him, along with half a dozen pencils. Rebus placed two pints on the table, then sat down and produced the photos of the Bru-Head Brothers.
‘Not exactly Butch and Sundance, are they?’ said Midgie McNair.
‘Not exactly,’ said Rebus.
John Rebus had once known Cowdenbeath very well indeed, having gone to school there. It was one of those Fife mining communities which had grown from a hamlet in the late nineteenth or early twentieth centuries when coal was in great demand, such demand that the cost of digging it out of the ground hardly entered the equation. But the coalfields of Fife didn’t last long. There was still plenty of coal deep underground, but the thin warped strata were difficult (and therefore costly) to mine. He supposed some opencast mining might still be going on – at one time west central Fife had boasted Europe’s biggest hole in the ground – but the deep pitshafts had all been filled in. In Rebus’s youth there had been three obvious career choices for a fifteen-year-old boy: the pits, Rosyth Dockyard, or the Army. Rebus had chosen the last of these. Nowadays, it was probably the only choice on offer.
Like the towns and villages around it, Cowdenbeath looked and felt depressed: closed down shops and drab chainstore clothes. But he knew that the people were stronger than their situation might suggest. Hardship bred a bitter, quickfire humour and a resilience to all but the most terminal of life’s tragedies. He didn’t like to think about it too deeply, but inside he felt like he really was ‘coming home’. Edinburgh might have been his base for twenty years, but he was a Fifer. ‘Fly Fifers’, some people called them. Rebus was ready to do battle with some very fly people indeed.
Monday night was the quietest of the week for pubs across the land. The pay packets or dole money had disappeared over the course of the weekend. Monday was for staying in. Not that you would know this from the scene that greeted Rebus as he pushed open the door to the Midden. Its name belittled it; its interior was no worse than many a bar in Edinburgh and elsewhere. Basic, yes, with a red linoleum floor spotted black from hundreds of cigarette dowps. The tables and chairs were functional, and though the bar was not large enough space had been found for a pool table and dartboard. A game of darts was in progress when Rebus entered, and one young man marched around the pool table, potting shot after shot as he squinted through the smoke which rose from the cigarette in his mouth. At a corner table three old men, all wearing flat bunnets, were playing a tense game of dominoes, groups of steady drinkers filling the other tables.
So Rebus had no choice but to stand at the bar. There was just room for one more, and he nodded a greeting to the pint drinkers either side of him. A greeting no one bothered to return.
‘Pint of special, please,’ he said to the slick-haired barman.
‘Special, son, right you are.’
Rebus got the feeling this fiftyish bartender would call even the domino players ‘son’. The drink was poured with the proper amount of care, like the ritual it was in this part of the world.
‘Special, son, there you are.’
Rebus paid for the beer. It was the cheapest pint he’d bought in months. He started to think about how easy it would be to commute to work from Fife …
‘Pint of spesh, Dod.’
‘Spesh, son, right you are.’
The pool player stood just behind Rebus, not quite menacingly. He placed his empty glass on the bartop and waited for it to be refilled. Rebus knew the youth was interested, maybe waiting to see whether Rebus would speak. But Rebus didn’t say anything. He just took photocopies of the two drawings out of his jacket pocket and unfolded them. He’d had ten copies of each made up at a newsagent’s on the Royal Mile. The originals were safe in the glove compartment of his car; though how safe his car itself was, parked on the poorly lit street outside, was another matter.
He could feel the drinkers either side of him glance at the drawings, and didn’t doubt that the youth was having a look too. Still nobody said anything.
‘Spesh, son, there you are.’ The pool player picked up the glass, spilling some beer onto the sheets of paper. Rebus turned his head towards him.
‘Sorry about that.’
Rebus had seldom heard a less sincere tone of voice. ‘That’s all right,’ he said, matching the tone. ‘I’ve got plenty more copies.’
‘Oh aye?’ The youth took his change from the barman and went back to the pool table, crouching to load coins into the slot. The balls fell with a dull rumble and he started to rack them up, staring at Rebus.
‘You do a bit of drawing, eh?’
Rebus, who had been wiping the drawings with his hand, turned to Dod the barman. ‘Not me, no. Good though, aren’t they?’ He turned the drawings around slowly so Dod could get a better look.
‘Oh aye, no’ bad. I’m no’ an expert, like. The only things anybody around here draws are the pension or the dole.’ There was laughter at this.
‘Or a bowl,’ added one drinker. He made the word sound like ‘bowel’, but Rebus knew what he meant.
‘Or a cigarette,’ somebody else suggested, but the joke was by now history. The barman nodded towards the drawings. ‘Anybody in particular, like?’
Rebus shrugged.
‘Could be brothers, eh?’
Rebus turned to the drinker on his left, who had just spoken. ‘What makes you say that?’
The drinker twitched and turned to stare at the row of optics behind the bar. ‘They look similar.’
Rebus examined the two drawings. As requested, Midgie had aged the brothers five or six years. ‘You could be right.’
‘Or cousins maybe,’ said the drinker on his right.
‘Related, though,’ Rebus mused.
‘I cannae see it myself,’ said Dod the barman.
‘Look a bit closer,’ Rebus advised. He ran his finger over the sheets of paper. ‘Same chins, eyes look the same too. Maybe they
are
brothers.’
‘Who are they, then?’ asked the drinker on his right, a middle-aged man with square unshaven jaw and lively blue eyes.
But Rebus just shrugged again. One of the domino players came to the bar to order a round. He looked like he’d just won a rubber, and clapped his hands together.
‘How’s it going then, James?’ he asked the drinker on Rebus’s right.
‘No’ bad, Matt. Yourself?’
‘Ach, just the same.’ He smiled at Rebus. ‘Havenae seen you in here afore, son.’
Rebus shook his head. ‘I’ve been away.’
‘Oh aye?’ Three pints had appeared on a metal tray.
‘There you go, Matt.’
‘Thanks, Dod.’ Matt handed over a ten-pound note. As he waited for change, he saw the drawings. ‘Butch and Sundance, eh?’ He laughed. Rebus smiled warmly. ‘Or more like Steptoe and Son.’
‘Steptoe and Brother,’ Rebus suggested.
‘Brothers?’ Matt studied the drawings. He was still studying them when he asked, ‘Are you the polis then, son?’
‘Do I look like the polis?’
‘No’ exactly.’
‘No’ fat enough for a start,’ said Dod. ‘Eh, son?’
‘You get skinny polis, though,’ argued James. ‘What about Stecky Jamieson?’
‘Right enough,’ said Dod. ‘Thon bugger could hide behind a lamp post.’
Matt had picked up the tray of drinks. The other domino players at his table called out that they were ‘gasping’. Matt nodded towards the drawings. ‘I’ve seen yon buggers afore,’ he said, before moving off.
Rebus drained his glass and ordered another. The drinker on his left finished and, fixing a bunnet to his head, started to make his goodbyes.
‘Cheerio then, Dod.’
‘Aye, cheerio.’
‘Cheerio, James.’
This went on for minutes. The long cheerio. Rebus folded the drawings and put them in his pocket. He took his time over the second pint. There was some talk of football, extra-marital affairs, the nonexistent job market. Mind you, the amount of affairs that seemed to be going on, Rebus was surprised anyone found the time or energy for a job.
‘You know what this part of Fife’s become?’ offered James. ‘A giant DIY store. You either work in one, or you shop there. That’s about it.’
‘True enough,’ said Dod, though there was little conviction in his voice.
Rebus finished the second pint and went to visit the gents’. The place stank to high heaven, and the graffiti was poor. Nobody came in for a quiet word, not that he’d been expecting it. On his way back from bathroom to bar he stopped at the dominoes game.
‘Matt?’ he asked. ‘Sorry to interrupt. You didn’t say where you thought you’d seen Butch and Sundance.’
‘Maybe just the one o’ them,’ said Matt. The doms had been shuffled and he picked up seven, three in one hand and four in the other. ‘It wasnae here, though. Maybe Lochgelly. For some reason, I think it was Lochgelly.’ He put the dominoes face down on the tabletop and picked out the one he wished to play. The man next to him chapped.
‘Bad sign that, Tam, this early on.’
Bad sign indeed. Rebus would have to go to Lochgelly. He returned to the bar and said his own brief cheerio.
‘Or you could draw a fire,’ someone at the bar was saying, poking the embers of that long-dead joke.
The drive from Cowdenbeath to Lochgelly took Rebus through Lumphinnans. His father had always made jokes about Lumphinnans; Rebus wasn’t sure why, and certainly couldn’t recall any of them. When he’d been young, the skies had been full of smoke, every house heated by a coal fire in the sitting room. The chimneys sent up a grey plume into the evening air, but not now. Now, central heating and gas had displaced Old King Coal.
It saddened Rebus, this silence of the lums.
It saddened him, too, that he would have to repeat his performance with the drawings. He’d hoped the Midden would be the start and finish of his quest. Of course, it was always possible Eddie had been setting a false trail in the first place. If so, Rebus would see he got his just deserts, and it wouldn’t be Blue Suede Choux.
He did his act in three pubs nursing three half-pints, with no reaction save the usual bad jokes including the ‘drawing the pension’ line. But in the fourth bar, an understandably understated shack near the railway station, he drew the attention of a keen-eyed old man who had been cadging drinks all round the pub. At the time, Rebus was showing the drawings to a cluster of painters and decorators at the corner of the L-shaped bar. He knew they were decorators because they’d asked him if he needed any work doing. ‘On the fly, like. Cheaper that way.’ Rebus shook his head and showed them the drawings.
The old man pushed his way into the group. He looked up at all the faces around him. ‘AH right, lads? Here, I was decorated in the war.’ He cackled at his joke.
‘So you keep telling us, Jock.’
‘Every fuckin’ night.’
‘Without fuckin’ fail.’
‘Sorry, lads,’ Jock apologised. He thrust a short thick finger at one of the drawings. ‘Looks familiar.’
‘Must be a bloody jockey then.’ The decorator winked at Rebus. ‘I’m no’ joking, mister. Jock would recognise a racehorse’s bahookey quicker than a human face.’
‘Ach,’ said Jock dismissively, ‘away tae hell wi’ you.’ And to Rebus: ‘Sure you dinnae owe me a drink fae last week …?’
Five minutes after Rebus glumly left this last pub, a young man arrived. It. had taken him some time, visiting all the bars between the Midden and here, asking whether a man had been in with some drawings. He was annoyed, too, at having to break off his pool practice so early. His screwball needed work. There was a competition on Sunday, and he had every intention of winning the £100 prize. If he didn’t, there’d be trouble. But meantime, he knew he could do someone a favour by trailing this man who claimed not to be a copper. He knew it because he’d made a phone call from the Midden.
‘You’d be doing me a favour,’ the person on the other end of the line had said, when the pool player had finally been put through to him, having had to relate his story to two other people first.
It was useful to be owed a favour, so he’d taken off from the Midden, knowing that the man with the drawings was on his way to Lochgelly. But now here he was at the far end of the town; there were no pubs after this until Lochore. And the man had gone. So the pool player made another call and gave his report. It wasn’t much, he knew, but it had been time-consuming work all the same.
‘I owe you one, Sharky,’ the voice said.
Sharky felt elated as he got back into his rusty Datsun. And with luck, he’d still have time for a few games of pool before closing time.
John Rebus drove back to Edinburgh with just desserts on his mind. And Andrew McPhail, and Michael with his tranquillisers, and Patience, and Operation Moneybags, and many other things besides.
Michael was sound asleep when he arrived at the flat. He checked with the students, who were worried that his brother was maybe on some sort of drugs. He assured them the drugs were prescribed rather than proscribed. Then he telephoned Siobhan Clarke at home.
‘How did it go today?’
‘You had to be there, sir – I could write the book on boredom. Dougary had five visitors all day. He had pizza delivered lunch. Drove home at five-thirty.’
‘Any of the visitors interesting?’
‘I’ll let you see the photographs. Customers, maybe. But they came out with as many limbs as they went in with. Will you be joining us tomorrow?’
‘Probably.’
‘Only I thought maybe we could talk about the Central Hotel.’
‘Speaking of which, have you seen Brian?’
‘I popped in after work. He looks great.’ She paused. ‘You sound tired. Have you been working?’
‘Yes.’
‘The Central?’
‘Christ knows. I suppose so.’ Rebus rubbed the back of his neck. The hangover was starting already.