Black Book

29

He phoned Gibson’s Brewery, only to be told that ‘Mr Aengus’ was attending an ale competition in Newcastle, due back later tonight. So he called the Inland Revenue and spoke for a while to the inspector in charge of his case. If he was going to confront Tommy Greenwood, he’d need all the ammo he could gathe…bad metaphor considering, but true all the same. He left his car at St Leonard’s while he went for a walk, trying to clear his head. Everything was coming together now. Aengus Gibson had been playing cards with Tam Robertson, and had shot him. Then set fire to the hotel to cover up the murder. It should all be tied up, but Rebus’s brain was posing more questions than answers. Was it likely Aengus carried a gun around with him, even in his wild days? Why didn’t Eck, also present, seek revenge for his brother? Wouldn’t Aengus have had to shut him up somehow? Was it likely that only three of them were involved in the poker game? And who had delivered the gun to Deek Torrance? So many questions.

As he came down onto South Clerk Street, he saw that a van was parked outside Bone’s. A new plate-glass window was being installed in the shop itself, and the van door was open at the back. Rebus walked over to the van and looked in the back. It had been a proper butcher’s van at one time, and nobody had bothered changing it. You climbed a step into the back, where there were counters and cupboards and a small fridge-freezer. The van would have had its usual rounds of the housing schemes in the city, housewives and retired folk queuing for meat rather than travelling to a shop. A man in a white apron came out of Bone’s with an ex-pig hoisted on his shoulder.

‘Excuse me,’ he said, carrying the carcass into the van.

‘You use this for deliveries?’ Rebus asked.

The man nodded. ‘Just to restaurants.’

‘I remember when a butcher’s van used to come by our way,’ Rebus reminisced.

‘Aye, it’s not economic these days, though.’

‘Everything changes,’ said Rebus. The man nodded agreement. Rebus was examining the interior again. To get behind the counter, you climbed into the van, pulled a hinged section of the counter up, and pushed open a narrow little door. Narrow: that’s what the back of the van was.

He remembered Michael’s description of the van he’d been shunted about in. A narrow van with a smell. As the man came out of the van, he disturbed something with his foot. It was a piece of straw. Straw in a butcher’s van? None of the animals carried in here had seen straw for a while.

Rebus looked into the shop. A young assistant was watching the glass being installed.

‘Open for business, sir,’ he informed Rebus cheerily.

‘I was looking for Mr Bone.’

‘He’s not in this afternoon.’

Rebus nodded towards the van. ‘Do you still do runs?’

‘What, house-to-house?’ The young man shook his head. ‘Just general deliveries, bulk stuff.’

Yes, Rebus would agree with that.

He walked back up to St Leonard’s, and caught Siobhan again. ’ forgot to sa…’

‘More work?’

‘Not much more. Pat Calder, you’ll need to bring him in for questioning too. He’ll be back home by now and getting frantic wondering where Eddie’s sloped off to. I’m just sorry I won’t be around for the reunion. I suppose I can always catch it in cour…’

It had been quite a day already, and it wasn’t.yet six o’clock. Back in the flat, the students were cooking a lentil curry while Michael sat in the living room reading another book on hypnotherapy. It had all become very settled in the flat, ver…well, the word that came to mind was homely. It was a strange word to use about a bunch of teenage students, a copper and an ex-con, yet it seemed just about right.

Michael had finished the tablets, and looked the better for it. He was supposed to arrange a check-up, but Rebus was dubious: they’d probably only stick him on more tablets. The scars would heal over naturally. All it took was time. He’d certainly regained his appetite: two helpings of curry.

After the meal they all sat around in the living room, the students, drinking wine, Michael refusing it, Rebus supping beer from a can. There was music, the kind that never went away: the Stones and the Doors, Janis Joplin, very early Pink Floyd. It was one of those evenings. Rebus felt absolutely shattered, and blamed it on the caffeine tablets he’d been taking. Here he’d been worrying about Michael, and all the time he’d been swallowing down his own bad medicine. They’d seen him through the weekend, sleeping little and thinking lots. But yo couldn’t go on like that forever. And what with the music and the beer and the relaxed conversation, he’d almost certainly fall asleep here on the sofa …

‘What was that?’

‘Sounds like somebody smashed a bottle or something.’

The students got up to look out of the window. ‘Can’t see anything.’

‘No, look, there’s glass on the road.’ They turned to Rebus. ‘Someone’s broken your windshield.’

Someone had indeed broken his windshield, as he found when he wandered downstairs and into the street. Other neighbours had gathered at doors and windows to check the scene. But most of them were retreating now. There was a chunk of rock on the passenger seat, surrounded by jewels of shattered glass. Nearby a car was reversing lazily out of its parking spot. It stopped in the road beside him. The passenger side window went down.

‘What happened?’

‘Nothing. Just a rock through the windscreen.’

‘What?’ The passenger turned to his driver. ‘Wait here a second.’ He got out to examine the damage. ‘Who the hell would want to do that?’

‘How many names do you want?’ Rebus reached into the car to pull out the rock, and felt something collide with the back of his head. It didn’t make sense for a moment, but by then he was being dragged away from the car into the road. He heard a car reverse and stop. He tried to resist, clawing at the unyielding tarmac with his fingernails. Jesus, he was going to pass out. His head was trying to close all channels. Each thud of his heart brought intense new pain to his skull. Someone had opened a window and was shouting something, some warning or complaint. He was alone in the middle of the road now. The passenger had run back to the car and slammed the door shut. Rebus pushed himself onto all fours, a baby resisting gravity for the first time. He blinked, trying to see out of cloudy eyes. He saw headlights, and knew what they were going to do.

They were going to drive straight over him.

Sucker punch, and he’d fallen for it. The offer of help from your attacker routine. Older than Arthur’s Seat itself. The car’s engine roared, and the tyres squealed towards him, dragging the body of the car with them. Rebus wondered if he’d get the licence number before he died.

A hand grabbed the neck of his shirt and hauled, pulling him backwards out of the road. The car caught his legs, tossing one shoe up off his foot and into the air. The car didn’t stop, or even slow down, just kept on up the slope to the top of the road, where it took a right and disappeared.

‘Are you okay, John?’

It was Michael. ‘You saved my life there, Mickey.’ Adrenalin was mixing with pain in Rebus’s body, making him feel sick. He threw up undigested lentil curry onto the pavement.

‘Try to stand up,’ said Michael. Rebus tried and failed. ‘My legs hurt,’ he said. ‘Christ, do my legs hurt!’

The X-rays showed no breaks or fractures, not even a bone chipped. ‘Just bad bruising, Inspector,’ said the woman doctor at the Infirmary. ‘You were lucky. A hit like that could have done a lot of damage.’

Rebus nodded. ‘I suppose I should have known,’ he said. ‘I’ve been due a visit here as a patient. Christ knows I’ve been here enough recently as a visitor.’

‘I’ll just fetch you something,’ said the doctor.

‘Wait a second, doctor. Are your labs open in the evening?’ She shook her head. ‘Why do you ask?’

‘Nothing.’

She left the room. Michael came closer. ‘How do you feel?’

‘I don’t know which hurts worse, my head or my left leg.’

‘No great loss to association football.’

Rebus almost smiled, but grimaced instead. Any movement of his face muscles sent electric spurts through his brain. The doctor came back into the room. ‘Here you are,’ she said. This should help.’

Rebus had been expecting painkillers. But she was holding a walking stick.

It was an aluminium walking stick, hollow and therefore lightweight, with a large rubberised grip and adjustable height courtesy of a series of holes in its shaft, into which a locking-pin could be placed. It looked like some strange wind instrument, but Rebus was glad of it as he walked out of the hospital.

Back at the flat, however, one of the solicitous students said he had something better, and came back from his bedroom with a black wooden cane with a silver and bone handle. Rebus tried it. It was a good height for him.

‘I bought it in a junk shop,’ the student said, ‘don’t ask me why.’

‘Looks like it should have a concealed sword,’ said Rebus. He tried twisting and pulling at the handle, but nothing happened. ‘So much for. that.’

The police, who had talked to Rebus at the Infirmary, had also spoken to the students.

‘This constable,’ related the walking-stick owner, whose name Rebus was sure was Ed, ‘I mean, he was looking at us like we were squatters, and he was asking, was Inspector Rebus in here with you? And we were nodding, yes he was. And the constable couldn’t figure it out at all.’ He started laughing. Even Michael smiled. Someone else made a pot of herbal tea.

Great, thought Rebus. Another story that would be doing the rounds: Rebus fills his flat with students, then sits around with them of an evening with wine and beer. At the Infirmary, they’d asked if he’d recognised either of the men. The answer was no. It was a mobile profession, after al…One of the neighbours had caught the car’s number plate. It was a Ford Escort, stolen only an hour or so before from a car park near the Sheraton on Lothian Road. They would find it abandoned quite, soon, probably not far from Marchmont. There wouldn’t be any fingerprints.

‘They must’ve been crazy,’ Michael said on the way home, Rebus having got them a lift in the back of a patrol car. ‘Thinking they could pull a stunt like that.’

‘It wasn’t a stunt, Michael. Somebody’s desperate. That story in yesterday’s paper has really shaken them up.’ After all, wasn’t that exactly what he’d wanted? He’d sought a reaction, and here it was.

From the flat he telephoned an emergency windscreen replacement firm. It would cost the earth, but he needed the car first thing in the morning. He just prayed his leg wouldn’t seize up in the night.