Black Book

3

A prayer which went unanswered. Brian Holmes had still not regained consciousness when. Rebus phoned the Infirmary at seven o’clock.

‘Is he in a coma or something, then?’

The voice on the other end of the phone was cold and factual. ‘There will be tests this morning.’

‘What sorts of tests?’

‘Are you part of Mr Holmes’ immediate family?’

‘No, I’m bloody not. I’……police officer? His boss? Just a friend? ‘Never mind.’ He put down the receiver. One of the students put her head around the living-room door.

‘Want some herbal tea?’

‘No thanks.’

‘A bowl of muesli?’

Rebus shook his head. She smiled at him and disappeared. Herbal tea and muesli, great God almighty. What sort of way was that to start the day? The door of the box room opened from within, and Rebus was startled when a teenage girl dressed only in a man’s shirt came out into the daylight, rubbing at her eyes. She smiled at him as she passed, making for the living-room door. She walked on tiptoe, trying not to put too much bare foot on the cold linoleum.

Rebus stared at the living-room door for another ten seconds, then walked over to the box room. Michael was lying naked on the narrow single bed, the bed Rebus had bought secondhand at the weekend. He was rubbing a hand over his chest and staring at the ceiling. The air inside the box room was foetid.

‘What the hell do you think you’re doing?’ Rebus asked.

‘She’s eighteen, John.’

‘That’s not what I meant.’

‘Oh? What did you mean?’

But Rebus wasn’t sure any more. There was just something plain ugly about his brother sharing a box room bed with some student while he slept on the sofa not eight feet away. It was all ugly, all of it. Michael would have to go. Rebus would have to move into a hotel or something. None of it could go on like this much longer. It wasn’t fair on the students.

‘You should come to the pub more often,’ Michael offered. ‘That’s what’s wrong you know.’

‘What?’

‘You just don’t see life, John. It’s time you started to live a little.’ Michael was still smiling when his brother slammed the door on him.

‘I’ve just heard about Brian.’

DC Siobhan Clarke looked in some distress. She had lost all colour from her face except for two dots of red high on her cheeks and the paler red of her lips. Rebus nodded for her to sit down. She pulled a chair over to his desk.

‘What happened?’

‘Somebody hit him over the head.’

‘What with?’

Now that was a good question, the sort of question a detective would ask. It was also a question Rebus had forgotten to ask last night. ‘We don’t know,’ he said. ‘Nor do we have any motive, not yet.’

‘It happened outside the Heartbreak Cafe?’

Rebus nodded. ‘In the car park out back.’

‘He kept saying he was going to take me there for a meal.’

‘Brian always keeps his word. Don’t worry, Siobhan, he’ll be all right.’ She nodded, trying to believe this. ‘I’ll go see him later.’

‘If you like,’ said Rebus, not sure quite what his tone was supposed to mean. She looked at him again.

‘I like,’ she said.

After she’d gone, Rebus read through a message from Chief Inspector Lauderdale. It detailed the initial surveillance plans for the money lending operation. Rebus was asked for questions and ‘useful comments’. He smiled at that phrase, knowing Lauderdale had used it hoping to deter Rebus from his usual basic critique of anything put in front of him. Then someone delivered a hefty package, the package he had been waiting for. He lifted the flaps of the cardboard box and started to pull out bulging files. These were the notes referring to the Central Hotel, its history and final sorry end. He knew he had a morning’s reading ahead of him, so he found Lauderdale’s letter, penned a large OK on it, scrawled his signature beneath, and tossed it into his out tray. Lauderdale wouldn’t believe it, wouldn’t believe Rebus had accepted the surveillance without so much as a murmur. It was bound to perplex the Chief Inspector.

Not a bad start to the working day.

Rebus sat down with the first file from the box and started to read.

He was filling a second page with his own notes when the telephone rang. It was Nell Stapleton.

‘Nell, where are you?’ Rebus continued writing, finishing a sentence. ‘I’m at work. Just thought I’d call and see if you’d found anything.’ He finished the sentence. ‘Such as?’

‘Well, what happened to Brian.’

‘I’m not sure yet. Maybe he’ll tell us when he wakes up. Have yo talked to the hospital?’

‘First thing.’

‘Me too.’ Rebus started writing again. There was a nervous silence on the other end of the line.

‘What about the black book?’

‘Oh, that. Yes, I had a wee read of it.’

‘Did you find whatever Brian was afraid of?’

‘Maybe and maybe not. Don’t worry, Nell, I’m working on it.’

‘That’s good.’ There was genuine relief in her voice. ‘Only, when Brian wakes up, don’t tell him I told you, will you?’

‘Why not? I think it’…it shows you care about him.’

‘Of course I care!’

‘That didn’t stop you chucking him out.’ He wished he hadn’t said it but he had. He could hear her anguish, and imagined her in the University library, trying not to let any of the other staff see her face.

‘John,’ she said at last, ‘you don’t know the whole story. You’ve on heard Brian’s side.’

‘That’s true. Want to tell me yours?’

She thought it over. ‘Not like this, on the telephone. Maybe some other time.’

‘Any time you like, Nell.’

‘I’d better get back to work. Are you going to see Brian today?’

‘Maybe tonight. They’re running tests all morning. What about you?’

‘Oh yes, I’ll drop by. It’s only two minutes away.’

So it was. Rebus thought of Siobhan Clarke. For some reason, didn’t want the two women to meet at Brian’s bedside. ‘What time a you thinking of going?’

‘Lunchtime, I suppose.’

‘One last thing, Nell.’

‘Yes?’

‘Does Brian have any enemies?’

It took her a little while to answer. ‘No.’

Rebus waited to see if she had anything to add. ‘Well, take care, Nell.’

‘You too, John. Bye.’

After he’d put down the receiver, Rebus started back to his note-taking. But after half a sentence he stopped, tapping his pen thoughtfully against his mouth. He stayed that way for a considerable time, then made some phone calls to his contacts (he didn’t like the word ‘grasses’), telling them to keep ears open regarding an assault behind the Heartbreak Cafe.

‘A colleague of mine, which means it’s serious, okay?’

He’d ended up saying ‘colleague’ but had meant to say ‘friend’.

At lunchtime, he walked over to the University and paid his respects at the Department of Pathology. He had called ahead and Dr Curt was ready in his office, wearing a cream-coloured raincoat and humming some piece of classical music which Rebus annoyingly could recognise but not name.

‘Ah, Inspector, what a pleasant surprise.’

Rebus blinked. ‘Really?’

‘Of course. Usually when you’re pestering me, it’s because of some current and pressing case. But toda…’ Curt opened his arms wide. ‘No case! And yet you phone me up and invite me to lunch. It can’t be very busy along at St Leonard’s.’

On the contrary, but Rebus knew the workload was in good hands. Before leaving, he’d loaded enough work onto Siobhan Clarke that she wouldn’t have time for a lunch-break, beyond a sandwich and a drink from the cafeteria. When she’d complained, he’d told her she could take time off later in the afternoon to visit Brian Holmes.

‘How have you settled in there, by the way?’

Rebus shrugged. ‘It doesn’t matter to me where they put me. Where do you want to eat?’

‘I’ve taken the liberty of reserving a table at the University Staff Club.’

‘What, some sort of canteen?’

Curt laughed, shaking his head. He had ushered Rebus out of his office and was locking the door. ‘No,’ said Curt. ‘There is a canteen, of course, but as you’re buying I thought we’d opt for something a little bit more refined.’

‘Then lead on to the refinery.’

The dining-room was on the ground floor, near the main door of the Staff Club on Chambers Street. They’d walked the short walk, talking about nothing in particular when they could hear one another above the traffic noise. Curt always walked as though he were late for some engagement. Well, he was a busy man: a full teaching load, plus the extra duties heaped on him at one time or another by most of the police forces in Scotland, and most onerously by the City of Edinburgh Police.

The dining-room was small but with plenty of space between the tables. Rebus was pleased to see that the prices were reasonable, though the tally was upped when Curt ordered a bottle of wine.

‘My treat,’ he said. But Rebus shook his head.

‘The Chief Constable’s treat,’ he corrected. After all, he had every intention of claiming it as a legitimate expense. The wine arrived before the soup. As the waitress poured, Rebus wondered when would be the right moment to open the real conversation.

‘Slainte!’ said Curt, raising his glass. Then: ‘So what’s this all about? You’re not the kind for lunch with a friend, not unless there’s something you want, and can’t get by buying pints and bridies in some smoky saloon.’

Rebus smiled at this. ‘Do you remember the Central Hotel?’

‘A dive of a place on Princes Street. It burnt down six or seven years ago.’

‘Five years ago actually.’

Curt took another sip of wine. ‘There was a smouldering body as I recall. “Crispy batter” we call those.’

‘But when you examined the corpse, he hadn’t died in the fire, had he?’

‘Some new evidence has come to light?’

‘Not exactly. I just wanted to ask what you remember about the case.’

‘Well, let’s see.’ Curt broke off as the soup arrived. He took three or four mouthfuls, then wiped a napkin around his lips. ‘The body was never identified. I know that we tried dental checks, but to no avail. There was no external evidence, of course, but people stupidly believe that a burned body tells no tales. I cut the deceased open and found, as I’d known I would, that the internal organs were in pretty good shape. Cooked on the outside, raw within, like a good French steak.’

A couple at a nearby table were soundlessly chewing their food, and staring hard at their tabletop. Curt seemed either not to notice or not to mind.

‘DNA fingerprinting had been around for four years, but though we got some blood from the heart, we were never given anything to match it against. Of course, the heart was the clincher.’

‘Because of the bullet wound.’

‘Two wounds, Inspector, entrance and exit. That set you lot scurrying back to the scene, didn’t it?’

Rebus nodded. They’d searched the immediate vicinity of the body, then widened the search until a cadet found the bullet. Its calibre was eight millimetre, matching the wound to the heart, but it offered no other clues.

‘You also found,’ said Rebus, ‘that the deceased had suffered a broken arm at some time in the past.’

‘Did I?’

‘But again it didn’t get us any further forward.’

‘Especially,’ said Curt, mopping his bowl with bread, ‘bearing in mind the reputation of the Central. Probably every second person in the place had been in a fight and suffered some breakages.’

Rebus was nodding. ‘Agreed, yet he was never identified. If he’d been a regular, or one of the staff, surely someone would have come forward. But nobody ever did.’

‘Well, it was a long time ago. Are you about to start dusting off some ghosts?’

‘There was nothing ghostly about whoever brained Brian Holmes.’

‘Sergeant Holmes? What happened?’

Rebus was hoping to spend some of the afternoon reading through more of the case-notes. He’d thought it would take half a day; but this had been optimistic from the start. He was now thinking in terms of half a week, including some evening reading in the flat. There was so much stuff. Lengthy reports from the fire department, the council’s building department, news clippings, police reports, interview statement…

But when he got back to St Leonard’s, Lauderdale was waiting. He had received Rebus’s hasty comment on the money-lending surveillance, and now wanted to push things on. Which meant that Rebus was trapped in the Chief Inspector’s office for the best part of two hours, an hour of it head-to-head stuff. For the other hour, they were joined by Detective Inspector Alister Flower, who had worked out of St Leonard’s since its opening day back in September 1989 and bragged continually that when he had shaken hands with the main dignitary at the occasion, they had both turned out to be Masons, with Flower’s being the older clan.

Flower resented the incomers from Great London Road. If there were friction and factions within the station, you could be sure Flower was at the back of them somewhere. If anything united Lauderdale and Rebus it was a dislike of Flower, though Lauderdale was slowly being drawn into the Flower camp.

Rebus, however, had contempt even for the funny way the man spelt his first name. He called him ‘Little Weed’ and thought probably Flower had something to do with the taxman’s sudden enquiries.

In the operation against the money lenders, Flower was to lead the other surveillance team. Typically, in an effort to appease the man, Lauderdale offered him the pick of the surveillances. One would be of a pub where the lenders were said to hang out and take payments. The other would be of what looked like the nominal HQ of the gang, an office attached to a mini-cab firm on Gorgie Road.

‘I’ve okayed the Gorgie surveillance with Divisional HQ West,’ said Lauderdale, as ever efficient behind a desk. Take him out onto the streets, Rebus knew, and he was about as efficient as pepper on a vindaloo.

‘Well,’ said Flower, ‘if it’s okay with Inspector Rebus, I think I’d prefer the watch on the pub. It’s a bit closer to home.’ And Flower smiled.

‘Interesting choice,’ said Rebus, his arms folded, legs stretched out in front of him.

Lauderdale was nodding, his eyes flitting between the two men. ‘Well, that’s settled then. Now, let’s get down to details.’

The same details, in fact, that Rebus and he had gone through in the hour prior to Flower’s arrival. Rebus tried to concentrate but couldn’t. He was desperate to get back to the Central Hotel records. But the more agitated he grew, the slower things moved.

The plan itself was simple. The money lenders worked out of the Firth Pub in Tollcross. They picked up business there, and generally hung around waiting for debtors to come and pay the weekly dues. The money was taken at some point to the office in Gorgie. This office also was used as a drop-off point by debtors, and here the leading visible player could be found.

The men working out of the Firth were bit-parts. They collected cash, and maybe even used some verbal persuasion when payment was late. But when it came to the crunch, everyone paid dues to Davey Dougary. Davey turned up every morning at the office as prompt as any businessman, parking his BMW 635CSi beside the battered mini-cabs. On the way from car to office, if the weather was warm he would slip his jacket off and roll up his shirt-sleeves. Yes, Trading Standards had been watching Davey for quite some time.

There would be Trading Standards officers involved in both surveillances. The police were really only there to enforce the law; it was a Trading Standards operation in name. The name they had chosen was Moneybags. Another interesting choice, thought Rebus, so original. Keeping surveillance in the pub would mean sitting around reading newspapers, circling the names of horses on the betting sheet, playing pool or the jukebox or dominoes. Oh yes, and drinking beer; after all, they didn’t want to stand out in the crowd.

Keeping surveillance on the office meant sitting in the window of a disused first floor room in the tenement block across the road. The place was without charm, toilet facilities, or heating. (The bathroom fittings had been stolen during a break-in earlier in the year, down to the very toilet-pan.) A happy prospect, especially for Holmes and Clarke who would bear the burden of the surveillance, always supposing Holmes recovered in time. He thought of his two junior officers spending long days huddling for warmth in a double sleeping-bag. Hell’s bells. Thank God Dougary didn’t work nights. And thank God there’d be some Trading Standards bodies around too.

Still, the thought of nabbing Davey Dougary warmed Rebus’s heart. Dougary was bad the way a rotten apple was. There was no repairing the damage, though the surface might seem untainted. Of course, Dougary was one of Big Ger Cafferty’s ‘lieutenants’. Cafferty had even turned up once at the office, captured on film. Much good would it do; he’d have a thousand good reasons for that visit. There’d be no pinning him in court. They might get Dougary, but Cafferty was a long way off, so far ahead of them they looked like they were pushing their heap of a car while he cruised in fifth gear.

‘So,’ Lauderdale was saying. ‘We can start with this as of next Monday, yes?’

Rebus awoke from his reverie. It was clear that much had been discussed in his spiritual absence. He wondered if he’d agreed to any of it. (His silence had no doubt been received as tacit consent.)

‘I’ve no problem with that,’ said Flower.

Rebus moved again in his seat, knowing that escape was close now. ‘I’ll probably need someone to fill in for DS Holmes.’

‘Ah yes, how is he doing?’

‘I haven’t heard today, sir,’ Rebus admitted. ‘I’ll call before I clock off.’

‘Well, let me know.’

‘We’re putting together a collection,’ Flower said.

‘For Christ’s sake, he’s no’ deid yet!’

Flower took the explosion without flinching. ‘Well, all the same.’

‘It’s a nice gesture,’ Lauderdale said. Flower shrugged his shoulders modestly. Lauderdale opened his wallet and dug out a reluctant fiver, which he handed to Flower.

Hey, big spender, thought Rebus. Even Flower looked startled. ‘Five quid,’ he said, unnecessarily.

Lauderdale didn’t want any thanks. He just wanted Flower to take the money. His wallet had disappeared back into its cave. Flower stuck the note in his shirt pocket and rose from his chair. Rebus stood too, not looking forward to being in the corridor alone with Flower. But Lauderdale stopped him.

‘A word, John.’

Flower sniffed as he left, probably thinking Rebus was to receive a dressing down for his outburst. In fact, this wasn’t what Lauderdale had in mind.

‘I was passing your desk earlier. I see you’ve got the files on the Central Hotel fire. Old news, surely?’ Rebus said nothing. ‘Anything I should know about?’

‘No, sir,’ said Rebus, rising and making for the door. He reckoned Flower would be on his way by now. ‘Nothing you should know about. Just some reading of mine. You could call it a history project.’

‘Archaeology, more like.’

True enough: old bones and hieroglyphs; trying to make the dead come to life.

‘The past is important, sir,’ said Rebus, taking his leave.