Black Book

22

Edinburgh’s public mortuary was sited on the Cowgate, named for the route cattle would take when being brought into the city to be sold. It was a narrow canyon of a street with few businesses and only passing traffic. Way up above it were much busier streets, South Bridge for instance. They seemed so far from the Cowgate, it might as well have been underground.

Rebus wasn’t sure the area had ever been anything other than a desperate meeting place for Edinburgh’s poorest denizens, who often seemed like cattle themselves, dull-witted from lack of sunlight and grazing on begged handouts from passers-by. The Cowgate was ripe for redevelopment these days, but who would slaughter the cattle?

A fine setting for the understated mortuary where, when he wasn’t teaching at the University, Dr Curt plied his trade.

‘Look on the bright side,’ he told Rebus. ‘The Cowgate’s got a couple of fine pubs.’

‘And a few more you could shave a dead man with.’

Curt chuckled. ‘Colourful, though I’m not sure the image conjured actually means anything.’

‘I bow to your superior knowledge. Now, what have you got on Mr Ringan?’

‘Ah, poor Orphan Eddie.’ Curt liked to find names for all his cadavers. Rebus got the feeling the ‘Orphan’ prefix had been used many a time before. In Eddie Ringan’s case, though, it was accurate. He had no living relations that anyone knew of, and so had been identified by Patrick Calder, and by Siobhan Clarke, since she’d been the one to find the body.

‘Yes, that’s the man I found,’ she had said.

‘Yes, that’s Edward Ringan,’ Pat Calder had said, before being led away by Toni the barman.

Rebus now stood with Curt beside the slab on which what was left of the corpse was being tidied up by an assistant. The assistant was whistling ‘Those Were the Days’ as he scraped miscellany into a bucket of offal. Rebus was reading through a list. He’d been through it three times already, trying to take his mind off the scene around him. Curt was smoking a cigarette. At the age of fifty-five, he’d decided he might as well start, since nothing else had so far managed to kill him. Rebus might have taken a cigarette from him, but they were Player’s untipped, the smoking equivalent of paint stripper.

Maybe because he’d perused the list so often, something clicked at last. ‘You know,’ he said, ‘we never found a suicide note.’

‘They don’t always leave them.’

‘Eddie would have. And he’d have had Elvis singing Heartbreak Hotel on a tape player beside the oven.’

‘Now that’s style,’ Curt said disingenuously.

‘And now,’ Rebus went on, ‘from this list of the contents of his pockets, I see he didn’t have any keys on him.’

‘No keys, eh.’ Curt was enjoying his break too much to bother trying to work it out. He knew Rebus would tell him anyway.

‘So,’ Rebus obliged, ‘how did he get in? Or if he did use his keys to get in, where are they now?’

‘Where indeed.’ The attendant frowned as Curt stubbed his cigarette into the floor.

Rebus knew when he’d lost an audience. He put the list away. ‘So what have you got for me?’

‘Well, the usual tests will have to be carried out, of course.’

‘Of course, but in the meantim…?’

‘In the meantime, a few points of interest.’ Curt turned to the cadaver, forcing Rebus to do the same. There was a cover over the charred face, and the attendant had roughly sewn up the chest and stomach, now empty of their major organs, with thick black thread. The face had been badly burnt, but the rest of the body remained unaffected. The plump flesh was pale and shiny.

‘Well,’ Curt began, ‘the burns were superficial merely. The internal organs were untouched by the blast. That made things easier. I would say he probably asphyxiated through inhalation of North Sea gas.’ He turned to Rebus. ‘That “North Sea” is pure conjecture.’ Then he grinned again, a lopsided grin that meant one side of his mouth stayed closed. ‘There was evidence of alcoholic intake. We’ll have to wait for the test results to determine how much. A lot, I’d guess.’

‘I’ll bet his liver was a treat. He’s been putting the stuff away for years.’

Curt seemed doubtful. He went to another table and returned with the organ itself, which had already been cross-sectioned. ‘It’s actually in pretty good shape. You said he was a spirits drinker?’

Rebus kept his eyes out of focus. It was something you learned. ‘A bottle a day easy.’

‘Well, it doesn’t show from this.’ Curt tossed the liver a few inches into the air. It slapped back down into his palm. He reminded Rebus of a butcher showing off to a potential buyer. ‘There was also a bump to the head and bruising and minor burns to the arms.’

‘Oh?’

‘I’d imagine these are injuries often incurred by chefs in their daily duties. Hot fat spitting, pots and pans everywher…’

‘Maybe,’ said Rebus.

‘And now we come to the section of the programme Hamish has been waiting for.’ Curt nodded towards his assistant, who straightened his back in anticipation. ‘I call him Hamish,’ Curt confided, ‘because he comes from the Hebrides. Hamish here spotted something I didn’t. I’ve been putting off talking about it lest he become encephalitic.’ He looked at Rebus. ‘A little pathologist’s joke.’

‘You’re not so small,’ said Rebus.

‘You need to know, Inspector, that Hamish has a fascination with teeth. Probably because his own as a child were terribly bad and he has memories of long days spent under the dentist’s drill.’ Hamish looked as though this might actually be true. ‘As a result, Hamish always looks in people’s mouths, and this time he saw fit to inform me that there was some damage.’

‘What sort of damage?’

‘Scarring of the tissues lining the throat. Recent damage, too.’

‘Like he’d been singing too loud?’

‘Or screaming. But much more likely that something has been forced down his throat.’

Rebus’s mind boggled. Curt always seemed able to do this to him. He swallowed, feeling how dry his own throat was. ‘What sort of thing?’

Curt shrugged. ‘Hamish suggeste…You understand, this is entirely conjecture-usually your field of expertise. Hamish suggested a pipe of some kind, something solid. I myself would add the possibility of a rubber or plastic tube.’

Rebus coughed. ‘Not anythin…er, organic then?’

‘You mean like a courgette? A banana?’

‘You know damned well what I mean.’

Curt smiled and bowed his head. ‘Of course I do, I’m sorry.’ Then he shrugged. ‘I wouldn’t rule anything out. But if you’re suggesting a penis, it must have been sheathed in sandpaper.’

Behind them, Rebus heard Hamish stifle a laugh.

Rebus telephoned Pat Calder and asked if they might meet. Calder thought it over before agreeing.

‘At the Colonies?’ Rebus asked.

‘Make it the Cafe, I’m heading over there anyway.’

So the Cafe it was. When Rebus arrived, the ‘convalescence’ sign had been replaced with one stating, ‘Due to bereavement, this establishment has ceased trading.’ It was signed Pat Calder.

As Rebus entered, he heard Calder roar, ‘Do fuck off!’ It was not, however, aimed at Rebus but at a young woman in a raincoat.

‘Trouble, Mr Calder?’ Rebus walked into the restaurant. Calder was busy taking the mementoes down off the walls and packing them in newspaper. Rebus noticed three tea chests on the floor between the tables.

‘This bloody reporter wants some blood and grief for her newspaper.’

‘Is that right, miss?’ Rebus gave Mairie Henderson a disapproving but, yes, almost fatherly look. The kind that let her know she should be ashamed.

‘Mr Ringan was a popular figure in the city,’ she told Rebus. ‘I’m sure he’d have wanted our readers to know — ’

Calder interrupted. ‘He’d have wanted them to stuff their faces here, leave a fat cheque, then get the fuck out. Print that!’

‘Quite an epitaph,’ Mairie commented.

Calder looked like he’d brain her with the Elvis clock, the one with the King’s arms replacing the usual clock hands. He thought better of it, and lifted the Elvis mirror (one of several) off the wall instead. He wouldn’t dare smash that: seven years’ bad junk food.

‘I think you’d better go, miss,’ Rebus said calmly.

‘All right, I’m going.’ She slung her bag over her shoulder and stalked past Rebus. She was wearing a skirt today, a short one too. But a good soldier knew when to keep eyes front. He smiled at Pat Calder, whose anguish was all too evident.

‘Bit soon for all this, isn’t it?’

‘You can cook, can you, Inspector? Without Eddie, this place i…it’s nothing.’

‘Looks like the local restaurants can sleep easy, then.’

‘How do you mean?’

‘Remember, Eddie thought the attack on Brian was a warning.’

‘Yes, but what’s tha…’ Calder froze. ‘You think someon…? It was suicide, wasn’t it?’

‘Looked that way, certainly.’

‘You mean you’re not sure?’

‘Did he seem the type who would kill himself?’

Calder’s reply was cold. ‘He was killing himself every day with drink. Maybe it all got too much. Like I said, Inspector, the attack on Brian affected Eddie. Maybe more than we knew.’ He paused, still with the mirror gripped in both hands. ‘You think it was murder?’

‘I didn’t say that, Mr Calder.’

‘Who would do it?’

‘Maybe you were behind with your payments.’

‘What payments?’

‘Protection payments, sir. Don’t tell me it doesn’t go on.’

Calder stared at him unblinking. ‘You forget, I was in charge of finances, and we always paid our bills on time. All of them.’

Rebus took this information in, wondering exactly what it meant. ‘If you think you know who might have wanted Eddie dead, best tell me, all right? Don’t go doing anything rash.’

‘Like what?’

Like buying a gun, Rebus thought, but he said nothing. Calder started to wrap the mirror. ‘This is about all a newspaper’s worth,’ he said.

‘She was only doing her job. You wouldn’t have turned down a good review, would you?’

Calder smiled. ‘We got plenty.’

‘What will you do now?’

‘I haven’t thought about it. I’ll go away, that’s all I know.’

Rebus nodded towards the tea chests. ‘And you’ll keep all that stuff?’

‘I couldn’t throw it away, Inspector. It’s all there is.’

Well, thought Rebus, there’s the bedroom too. But he didn’t say anything. He just watched Pat Calder pack everything away.

Hamish, real name Alasdair McDougall, had more or less been chased from his native Barra by his contemporaries, one of whom tried to drown him during a midnight boat crossing from South Uist after a party. Two minutes in the freezing waters of the Sound of Barra and he’d have been fit for nothing but fish-food, but they’d hauled him back into the boat and explained the whole thing away as an accident. Which is also what it would have been had he actually drowned.

He went to Oban first, then south to Glasgow before crossing to the east coast. Glasgow suited him in some respects, but not in others. Edinburgh suited him better. His parents had always denied to themselves that their son was homosexual, even when he’d stood there in front of them and said it. His father had quoted the Bible at him, the same way he’d been quoting it for seventeen years, a believer’s righteous tremble in his voice. It had once been a powerful and persuasive performance; but now it seemed laughable.

‘Just because it’s in the Bible,’ he’d told his father, ‘doesn’t mean you should take it as gospel.’

But to his father it was and always would be the literal truth. The Bible had been in the old man’s hand as he’d shooed his youngest son out of the door of the croft house. ‘Never dare to blacken our name!’ he’d called. And Alasdair reckoned he’d lived up to this through introducing himself as Dougall and almost never passing on a last name. He had been Dougall to the gay community in Glasgow, and he was Dougall here in Edinburgh. He liked the life he’d made for himself (there was never a dull night), and he’d only been kicked-in twice. He had his clubs and pubs, his bunch of friends and a wider circle of acquaintances. He was even beginning to think of writing to his parents. He would tell them, By the time my boss gets through with a body, believe me there isn’t very much left for Heaven to take.

He thought again of the plump young man who’d been gassed, and he laughed. He should have said something at the time, but hadn’t. Why not? Was it because he still had one foot in the closet? He’d been accused of it before, when he’d refused to wear a pink triangle on his lapel. Certainly, he wasn’t sure he wanted a policeman to know he was gay. And what would Dr Curt do? There was all sorts of homophobia about, an almost medieval fear of AIDS and its transmission. It wasn’t that he couldn’t live without the job, but he liked it well enough. He’d seen plenty of sheep and cattle slaughtered and quartered in his time on the island. This wasn’t so very different.

No, he would keep his secret to himself. He wouldn’t let on that he knew Eddie Ringan. He remembered the evening a week or so back. They went to Dougall’s place and Eddie cooked up a chilli from stuff he found in the cupboards. Hot stuff. It really made you sweat. He wouldn’t stay the night, though, wasn’t that type. There’d been a long kiss before parting, and half-promises of further trysts.

Yes, he knew Eddie, knew him well enough to be sure of one thing. Whoever it was on the slab, it wasn’t the guy who’d shared chilli in Dougall’s bed.

Siobhan Clarke felt unnaturally calm and in control the rest of the day. She’d been given the day off from Operation Moneybags to get over the shock of her experience at the Heartbreak Cafe, but by late afternoon was itching to do something. So she drove out to Rory Kintoul’s house on the half-chance. It was a neat and quite recent council semi in a cul-de-sac. The front garden was the size of a beer-mat but probably more hygienic; she reckoned she could eat her dinner off the trimmed weed-less lawn without fear of food poisoning. She couldn’t even say that of the plates in most police canteens. One gate led her down the path, and another brought her to Kintoul’s front door. It was painted dark blue. Every fourth door in the street was dark blue. The others were plum-red, custard yellow, and battleship grey. Not exactly a riot of colour, but somehow in keeping with the pebbledash and tarmac. Some kids had chalked a complex hopscotch grid on the pavement and were now playing noisily. She’d smiled towards them, but they hadn’t looked up from their game. A dog barked in a back garden a few doors down, but otherwise the street was quiet.

She rang the doorbell and waited. Nobody, it seemed, was home. She thought of the phrase ‘gallus besom’ as she took the liberty of peering in through the front window. A living room stretched to the back of the house. The dog was barking louder now, and through the far window she caught sight of a figure. She opened the garden gate and turned right, running through the close separating Kintoul’s house from its neighbour. This led to the back gardens. Kintoul had left his kitchen door open so as not to make a noise. He had one leg over his neighbour’s fence, and was trying to shush the leashed mongrel.

‘Mr Kintoul!’ Siobhan called. When he looked up, she waved her hand. ‘Sitting on the fence, I see. How about the two of us going inside for a word?’

She wasn’t about to spare him any blushes. As he slouched towards her across the back green, she grinned. ‘Running away from the police, eh? What’ve you got to hide?’

‘Nuthin’.’

‘You should be careful,’ she warned. ‘A stunt like that could open those stitches in your side.’

‘Do you want everyone to hear? Get inside.’ He almost pushed her through the kitchen door. It was exactly the invitation Siobhan wanted.

Rebus got the call at six-fifteen and arranged the meeting for ten. At eight, Patience called him. He knew he wouldn’t sound right to her, would sound like his thoughts were elsewhere (which they were), but he wanted to keep her talking. He was filling the time till ten o’clock and didn’t want any of it left vacant. He might start to think about it otherwise, might change his mind.

Eventually, for want of other topics, he told Patience all about Michael (who was asleep in the box room). At last they were on the same wavelength. Patience suggested counselling, and was amazed no one at the hospital had mentioned the possibility. She would look into it and get back to Rebus. Meantime, he’d have to watch Michael didn’t go into clinical depression. The problem with those drugs was that they not only killed your fears, they could kill your emotions stone dead.

‘He was so lively when he moved in,’ Rebus said. ‘The students are wondering what the hell’s happened to him. I think they’re as worried as I am.’

Michael’s self-proclaimed ‘girlfriend’ had spent time trying to talk to him, coaxing him out to pubs and clubs. But Michael had fought against it, and she hadn’t shown her face for at least a day. One of the male students had approached Rebus in the kitchen and asked, in tones of deepest sympathy, if a bit of ‘blaw’ might help Mickey. Rebus had shaken his head. Christ, it might not be a bad idea, though.

But Patience was against it. ‘Mix the stuff he’s on with cannabis and God knows what sort of reaction you’d get: paranoia or a complete downer would be my guess.’

She was anti-drugs anyway, and not just the proscribed kinds. She knew that the easy way out for doctors was to fill out a form for the pharmacy. Valium, moggies, whatever it took. People all over Scotland, and especially the people who needed most help, were eating tablets like they were nourishment. And the doctors pointed to their workloads and said, What else can we do?

‘Want me to come over?’ she was asking now. It was a big step. Yes, Rebus wanted her to come over, but it was nearly nine.

‘No, but I appreciate the thought.’

‘Well, try not to leave him too long on his own. He’s sleeping to escape something he needs to confront.’

‘Bye, Patience.’ Rebus put down the phone and made ready to leave the flat.

Why had he chosen the waterfront at North Queensferry for the meeting? Well, wasn’t it obvious? He stood near the same but they’d taken Michael to, and he got cold. He’d arrived early, and Deek naturally was late. Rebus didn’t really mind. It gave him time to stare up at the rail bridge, wondering how it would feel to be lowered over the side at the dead of night. Screaming dumbly into your gag as they took the bag from your face. Looking all the way down. That’s where Rebus was now, though he was at sea level. He was looking all the way down.

‘Cold though, eh?’ Deek Torrance rubbed his hands together.

‘Thanks for setting me up the other night.’

‘Eh?’

‘ “Sailor for trade or rent”.’

‘Oh aye, that.’ Torrance grinned. ’ “King of the Road”. That’s not the way it goes, thoug…’

‘You’ve got it?’

Deek patted his coat pocket. He was jittery, with good cause. It wasn’t every day you sold an illegal firearm to a policeman.

‘Let’s see it, then.’

‘What? Out here?’

Rebus looked around. ‘There’s nobody here.’

Deek bit his lip, then resigned himself to lifting the handgun out of his pocket and placing it in John Rebus’s palm.

The thing was a lifeless weight, but comfortable to hold. Rebus placed it in his own capacious pocket. ‘Ammo?’

The bullets shook in their box like a baby’s toy. Rebus pocketed them too, then reached into the back pocket of his trousers for the cash. ‘Want to count it?’

Deek shook his head, then nodded across the road. ‘I’ll buy you a drink though, if you like.’

A drink sounded good to Rebus. ‘I’ll just get rid of this first.’ He unlocked his car and slipped the gun and ammo underneath the driver’s seat. He noticed he was trembling and a little dizzy as he stood back up. A drink would be good. He was hungry, too, but the thought of food made him want to boak. He looked again at the bridge. ‘Come on, then,’ he said to Deek Torrance.

Minus gun and with money in its place, Torrance was more relaxed and loquacious. They sat in the Hawes Inn with their drinks. Torrance ’; was explaining how the guns came into the country.

‘See, it’s easy to buy a gun in France. They even come around the towns in vans and flog them off the back. Stick a catalogue through your door to let you know what they’ll have. I got to meet this French guy, not bad to say he’s French. He’s back and forth over the Channel, some sort of business he’s in. He brings the guns with him, and I buy them. He brings Mace too, if you’re interested.’

‘Why didn’t you say?’ Rebus muttered into his pint. ‘I wouldn’t have needed the gun.’

‘Eh?’ Deek saw he was making a joke and laughed.

‘So what have I got?’ asked Rebus. ‘It was a bit dark out there to see.’

‘Well, they’re all copies. Don’t worry, I file off any identifiers myself. Yours is a Colt 45. It’ll take ten rounds.’

‘Eight millimetre?’

Deek nodded. ‘There are twenty in the box. It’s not the most lethal weapon around. I can get replica Uzis too.’

‘Christ.’ Rebus finished his pint. He suddenly wanted to be out of there.

‘It’s a living,’ said Deek Torrance.

‘Aye, right, a living,’ said Rebus, getting up to go.