Black Book

8

By Saturday, Rebus had argued three times with Michael (who was talking about moving out anyway), once with the students (also talking about moving), and once with the receptionist at Patience’s surgery when she wouldn’t put Rebus through. Brian Holmes had opened his eyes briefly, and it was reckoned by the doctors that he was on his way to recovery. None of them, however, hazarded the phrase ‘full recovery’. Still, the news had cheered Siobhan Clarke, and she was in a good mood when she arrived at Rebus’s Arden Street flat. He was waiting for her at street level. She drove a two-year-old cherry-red Renault 5. It looked young and full of life, while Rebus’s car (parked next to it) looked to be in terminal condition. But Rebus’s car had been looking like this for three or four years now and just when he’d determined to get rid of it it always seemed to go into remission. Rebus had the feeling the car could read his mind.

‘Morning, sir,’ said Siobhan Clarke. There was pop music coming from the stereo. She saw Rebus cringe as he got into the passenger seat, and turned the volume down. ‘Bad night?’

‘People always seem to ask me that.’

‘Now why could that be?’

They stopped at a bakery so Rebus could buy some breakfast. There had been nothing in the flat worth the description ‘food’, but then Rebus couldn’t really complain. His contribution to the larder so far had filled a single shopping basket. And most of that had been meat, something the students didn’t touch. He noticed Michael had gone vegetarian too, at least in public.

‘It’s healthier, John,’ he’d told his brother, slapping his stomach. ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’ Rebus had snapped.

Michael had merely shaken his head sadly. ‘Too much caffeine.’

That was another thing, the kitchen cupboards were full of jars of what looked like coffee but turned out to be ‘infusions’ of crushed tree bark and chicory. At the bakery, Rebus bought a polystyrene beaker of coffee and two sausage rolls. The sausage rolls turned out to be a bad mistake, the flakes of pastry breaking off and covering the otherwise pristine car interior-despite Rebus’s best attempts with the paper bag.

‘Sorry about the mess,’ he offered to Siobhan, who was driving with her window conspicuously open. ‘You’re not vegetarian, are you?’ She laughed. ‘You mean you haven’t noticed?’

‘Can’t say I have.’

She nodded towards a. sausage roll. ‘Well, have you heard of mechanically recovered meat?’

‘Don’t,’ warned Rebus. He finished the sausage rolls quickly, and cleared his throat.

‘Anything I should know about between you and Brian?’

The look on her face told him this was not the year’s most successful conversational gambit. ‘Not that I know of.’

‘It’s just that he and Nell wer…well, there’s still a good chance — ’

‘I’m not a monster, sir. And I know the score between Brian and Nell. Brian’s just a nice guy. We get along.’ She glanced away from the windscreen. ‘That’s all there is to it.’ Rebus was about to say something. ‘But if there was more to it than that,’ she went on, ‘I don’t see that it would be any of your business, with respect, sir. Not unless it was interfering with our work, which I wouldn’t let happen. I don’t suppose Brian would either.’

Rebus stayed silent.

‘I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have said that.’

‘What you said was fair enough. The problem was the way you said it. A police officer’s never off duty, and I’m your boss-even on a jaunt like this. Don’t forget that.’

There was more silence in the car, until Siobhan broke it. ‘It’s a nice part of town, Marchmont.’

‘Almost as nice as the New Town.’

She glared at him, her grip on the steering-wheel as determined as any strangler’s.

‘I thought,’ she said slyly, ‘you lived in Oxford Terrace these days, sir.’

‘You thought wrong. Now, what about turning that bloody music off? After all, we’ve got a lot to talk about.’

The ‘lot’, of course, being Morris Gerald Cafferty.

Siobhan Clarke hadn’t brought her notes with her. She didn’t need them. She could recite the salient details from memory, along with a lot of detail that might not be salient but was certainly interesting. Certainly she’d done her homework. Rebus thought how frustrating the job could be. She’d swotted up on Big Ger as background to Operation Moneybags, but Operation Moneybags almost certainly wouldn’t trap Cafferty. And she’d spent a lot of hours on the Kintoul stabbing, which might also turn out to be nothing.

‘And another thing,’ she said. ‘Apparently Cafferty’s got a little diary of sorts, all of it in code. We’ve never been able to crack his code, which means it must be highly personal.’

Yes, Rebus remembered. Whenever they brought Big Ger into custody, the diary would be collected along with his other possessions. Then they’d photocopy the pages of the diary and try to decipher them. They’d never been successful.

‘Rumour has it,’ Siobhan was saying, ‘the diary’s a record of bad debts, debts Cafferty takes care of personally.’

‘A man like that garners a lot of rumours. They help make him larger than life. In life, he’s just another witless gangster.’

‘A code takes wits.’

‘Maybe.’

‘In the file, there’s a recent clipping from the Sun. It’s all about how bodies keep washing up on the coastline.’

Rebus nodded. ‘On the Solway coast, not far from Stranraer.’

‘You think it’s Cafferty’s doing?’

Rebus shrugged. ‘The bodies have never been identified. Could be anything. Could be people pushed off the Lame ferry. Could be some connection with Ulster. There are some weird currents between Lame and Stranraer.’ He paused. ‘Could be anything.’

‘Could be Cafferty, in other words.’

‘Could be.’

‘It’s a long way to go to dispose of a body.’

‘Well, he’s not going to shit in his own nest, is he?’

She considered this. ‘There was mention in one of the papers of a van spotted on that coastline, too early in the morning to be delivering anything.’

Rebus nodded. ‘And there was nowhere along the road for it to be delivering to. I read the papers sometimes, Clarke. The Dumfries and Galloway Police have patrols along there now.’

Siobhan drove for a while, gathering her thoughts. ‘He’s just been lucky so far, hasn’t he, sir? I mean, I can understand that he’s a clever villain, and clever villains are harder to catch. But he has to delegate, and usually even though a villain’s clever his underlings are so stupid or lazy they would shit in the nest.’

‘Language, Clarke, language.’ He got a smile from her. ‘Point taken, though.’

‘Reading all about Cafferty’s “associates” I didn’t get an impression of many “O” Grades. They’ve all got names like Slink and Codge and the Radiator.’

Rebus grinned. ‘Radiator McCallum, I remember him. He was supposed to be descended from a family of Highland cannibals. He did research and everything, he was so proud of his ancestors.’

‘He disappeared from the scene, though.’

‘Yes, three or four years ago.’

‘Four and a half, according to the records. I wonder what happened to him.’

Rebus shrugged. ‘He tried to doublecross Big Ger, got scared and ran, off.’

‘Or didn’t get the chance to run off.’

‘That too, of course. Or else he just got fed up, or had another job offer. It’s a very mobile profession, being a thug. Wherever the work is… ’

‘Cafferty certainly gets through the personnel. McCallum’s cousins disappeared from view just before McCallum himself did.’

Rebus frowned. ‘I didn’t know he had any cousins.’

‘Known colloquially as the Bru-head Brothers. Something to do with a penchant for Irn-Bru.’

‘Altogether understandable. What were their real names, though?’ She thought for a moment. ‘Tam and Eck Robertson.’

Rebus nodded. ‘Eck Robertson, yes. I didn’t know about the other one, though. Hang on a minut…’

Tam and Eck Robertson. The R. Brothers. Which would mean that Mork wa…

‘Morris bloody Cafferty!’ Rebus slapped the dashboard. Brian shortened the name and use…for the c. Chris…If Brian Holmes was on to something involving Cafferty and his gang, no wonder he was scared. Something to do with the night the Central Hotel caught fire. Did they start the blaze because the hotel hadn’t been paying its protection dues? What about the body, maybe it’d been some debtor or other. And soon afterwards, Radiator McCallum and his cousins left the scene. Bloody hell.

‘If you’re going to have a seizure,’ said Siobhan, ‘I’m trained in cardiac resuscitation.’

Rebus wasn’t listening. He stared at the road ahead, one fist around the coffee cup, the other pounding his knee. He was thinking of Brian’s note. He hadn’t said for sure that Cafferty was there that night, only that the brothers were. And something about a poker game. He was going to try to find the Robertson brothers; that was his final comment. After which, someone came along and hit him on the head. Maybe it was beginning to come together.

‘I’m not sure I can deal with catatonia though.’

‘What?’

‘Was it something that I said?’

‘Yes, it was.’

‘The Bru-Head Brothers?’

‘The very same. What else can you tell me about them?’

‘Born in Niddrie, petty thieves from the time they left the pram — ’

‘They probably stole the pram, too. Anything else?’

Siobhan knew that she’d hit some nerve. ‘Plenty. Both had long records. Eck liked flashy clothes, Tam always wore jeans and a T-shirt. The funny thing is, though, Tam kept scrupulously clean. He even took his own soap everywhere with him. I thought that was strange.’

‘If I were the gambling kind,’ said Rebus, ‘I’d bet the soap was lemon-scented.’

‘How did you know that?’

‘Instinct. Not mine, someone else’s.’ Rebus frowned. ‘How come I never heard of Tam?’

‘He moved to Dundee when he left school, or rather when he was asked to leave school. He only came back to Edinburgh years later. The records have him down as working for the gang for about six months, maybe even less.’ She waited. ‘Are you going to tell me what this is all about?’

‘It’s all about a hotel fire.’

‘You mean those files on the floor behind your desk?’

‘I mean those files on the floor behind my desk.’

‘I couldn’t help taking a peek.’

‘They might tie in with the attack on Brian.’ She turned to him. ‘Keep your eyes on the road. You concentrate on the driving, and I’ll tell you a story. It might even keep us going till Aberdeen.’

And it did.

‘In ye come, Jock. My, my, I wouldn’t have recognised ye.’

‘I was in shorts the last time you saw me, Auntie Ena.’

The old woman laughed. She used a zimmer frame to walk back through the narrow musty hall and into a small back room. The room was crammed with furniture. There would be a front room, too, another lounge kept for the most special occasions. But Rebus was family, and family were greeted in the back room.

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 hi…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. Wel…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 yoursel…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.