Mortal Causes

3

Monday morning saw Rebus back at work and in the Chief Super's office. `Farmer' Watson was pouring coffee for himself and Chief Inspector Frank Lauderdale, Rebus having refused. He was strictly decaf these days, and the Farmer didn't know the meaning of the word.

'A busy Saturday night,' said the Farmer, handing Lauderdale a grubby mug. As inconspicuously as he could, Lauderdale started rubbing marks off the rim with the ball of his thumb. 'Feeling better, by the way, John?’

'Scads better, sir, thank you,' said Rebus, not even close to blushing.

'A grim business under the City Chambers.’

'Yes, sir.’

`So what do we have?’

It was Lauderdale's turn to speak. `Victim was shot seven times with what looks like a nine-millimetre revolver. Ballistics will have a full report for us by day's end. Dr Curt tells us that the head wound actually killed the victim, and it was the last bullet delivered. They wanted him to suffer.’

Lauderdale sipped from the cleaned rim of his mug. A Murder Room had been set up along the hall, and he was in charge. Consequently, he was wearing his best suit. There would be press briefings, maybe a TV appearance or two. Lauderdale looked ready. Rebus would gladly have tipped the mug of coffee down the mauve shirt and paisley pattern tie.

'Your thoughts, John,' said Farmer Watson. `Someone mentioned the words "six-pack".’

`Yes, sir. It's a punishment routine in Northern Ireland, usually carried out by the IRA.’

`I've heard of kneecappings.’

Rebus nodded. 'For minor offences, there's a bullet in each elbow or ankle. For more serious crimes, there's a kneecapping on top. And finally there's the six-pack: both elbows, both knees, both ankles.’

'You know a lot about it.’

`I was in the army, sir. I still take an interest.’

`You were in Ulster?’

Rebus nodded slowly. `In the early days.’

Chief Inspector Lauderdale placed his mug carefully on the desktop. `But they normally wouldn't then kill the person?’

'Not normally.’

The three men sat in silence-for a moment. The Farmer broke the spell. 'An IRA punishment gang? Here?’

Rebus shrugged. `A copycat maybe. Gangs aping what they've seen in the papers or on TV.’

`But using serious guns.’

`Very serious,' said Lauderdale. `Could be a tie-in with these bomb threats.’

The Farmer nodded. `That's the line the media are taking. Maybe our would-be bomber had gone rogue, and they caught up with him.’

`There's something else, sir,' said Rebus. He'd phoned Dr Curt first thing, just to check. 'They did the knees from behind. Maximum damage. You sever the arteries before smashing kneecaps.’

'What's your point?’

'Two points, sir. One, they knew exactly what they were doing. Two, why bother when you're going to kill him anyway? Maybe whoever did it changed his mind at the last minute. Maybe the victim was meant to live. The probable handgun was a revolver. Six shots. Whoever did it must have stopped to reload before putting that final bullet in the head.’

Eyes were avoided as the three men considered this, putting themselves in the victim's place. You've been sixpacked. You think it's over. Then you hear the gun being reloaded…

'Sweet Jesus,' said the Farmer.

'There are too many guns around,' Lauderdale said matter-of-factly. It was true: over the past few years there had been a steady increase in the number of firearms on the street.

`Why Mary King's Close?’ asked the Farmer.

`You're not likely to be disturbed there,' Rebus guessed. `Plus it's virtually soundproof.’

`You could say the same about a lot of places, most of them a long way from the High Street in the middle of the Festival. They were taking a big risk. Why bother?’

Rebus had wondered the same thing. He had no answer to offer.

`And Nemo or Memo?’

It was Lauderdale's turn, another respite from the coffee. 'I've got men on it, sir, checking libraries and phone directories, digging up meanings.’

`You've talked to the teenagers?’

'Yes, sir. They seem genuine enough.’

'And the person who gave them the key?’

'He didn't give it to them, sir, they took it without his knowledge. He's in his seventies and straighter than a plumbline.’

`Some builders I know,' said the Farmer, `could bend even a plumb-line.’

Rebus smiled. He knew those builders too.

`We're talking to everyone,' Lauderdale went on, 'who's been working in Mary King's Close.’

It seemed he had got the Farmer's joke.

`All right, John,' said the Farmer. `You were in the army, what about the tattoo?’

Yes, the tattoo. Rebus had known the conclusion everyone would jump to. From the case notes, they'd spent most of Sunday jumping to it. The Farmer was examining a photograph. It had been taken during Sunday's postmortem examination. The SOCOs on Saturday night had taken photos too, but those hadn't come out nearly as clearly.

The photo showed a tattoo on the victim's right forearm. It was a rough, self-inflicted affair, the kind you sometimes saw on teenagers, usually on the backs of hands. A needle and some blue ink, that's all you needed; that and a measure of luck that the thing wouldn't become infected. Those were all the victim had needed to prick the letters SaS into his skin.

`It's not the Special Air Service,' said Rebus.

`No?’

Rebus shook his head. 'For all sorts of reasons. You'd use a capital A for a start. More likely, if you wanted an SAS tattoo you'd go far the crest, the knife and wings and "Who dares wins", something like that.’

`Unless you didn't know anything about the regiment,' offered Lauderdale.

`Then why sport a tattoo?’

`Do we have any ideas?’ asked the Farmer.

`We're checking,' said Lauderdale.

'And we still don't know who he is?’

'No, sir, we still don't know who he is.’

Farmer Watson sighed. 'Then that'll have to do for now. I know we're stretched just at the minute, with the Festival threat and everything else, but it goes without saying this takes priority. Use all the men you have to. We need to clean this up quickly. Special Branch and the Crime Squad are already taking an interest.’

Ah, thought Rebus, so that was why the Farmer was being a bit more thorough than usual. Normally, he'd just let Lauderdale get on with it. Lauderdale was good at running an office. You just didn't want him out there on the street with you. Watson was shuffling the papers on his desk.

`I see the Can Gang have been at it again:' It was time to move on. Rebus had had dealings in Pilmuir before. He'd seen a good policeman go wrong there. He'd tasted darkness there. The sour feeling returned as he drove past stunted grass verges and broken saplings. Though no tourists ever came here, there was a welcome sign. It comprised somebody's gable end, with white painted letters four feet high: ENJOY YOUR VISIT TO THE GAR-B.

Gar-B was what the kids (for want of a better term) called the Garibaldi estate. It was a mish-mash of early 60s terraced housing and late '60s tower blocks, everything faced with grey harling, with boring swathes of grass separating the estate from the main road. There were a lot of orange plastic traffic cones lying around. They would make goalposts for a quick game of football, or chicanes for the bikers. Last year, some enterprising souls had put them to better use, using them to divert traffic off' the main road and into the Gar-B, where youths lined the slip-road and pelted the cars with rocks and bottles. If the drivers ran from their vehicles, they were allowed to go, while the cars were stripped of anything of value, right down to, tyres, seat-covers and engine parts.

Later in the year, when the road needed digging up, a lot of drivers ignored. the genuine traffic cones and as a result drove into newly dug ditches. By next morning, abandoned vehicles had been stripped to the bone. The Gar-B would have stripped the paint if they could.

You had to admire their ingenuity: Give these kids money and opportunity and they'd be the saviours of the capitalist state. Instead, the state gave them dole and daytime TV. Rebus was watched by a gang of pre-teens as he parked. One of them called out.

`Where's yir swanky car?’

`It's no' him,' said another, kicking the first lazily in the ankle. The two of them were on bicycles and looked like the leaders, being a good year or two older than their cohorts. Rebus waved them over.

'What is it?’

But they came anyway.

'Keep an eye on my car,' he told them. `Anyone touches it, you touch them, okay? There's a couple of quid for you when I get back.’

'Half now,' the first said quickly. The second nodded. Rebus handed over half the money, which they pocketed.

`Naebody'd touch that car anyway, mister,' said the second, producing a chorus of laughter from behind him.

Rebus shook his head slowly: the patter here was probably sharper than most of the stand-ups on the Fringe. The two boys could have been brothers. More than that, they could have been brothers in the 1930s. They were dressed in cheap modern style, but had shorn heads and wide ears and sallow faces with dark-ringed eyes. You saw them staring out from old photographs wearing boots too big for them and scowls too old. They didn't just seem older than the other kids; they seemed older than Rebus himself.

When he turned his back, he imagined them in sepia.

He wandered towards the community centre. He'd to pass dome lock-up garages and one of the three twelve-storey blocks of flats. The community centre itself was no more than a hall, small and tired looking with boarded windows and the usual indecipherable graffiti. Surrounded by concrete, it had a low flat roof, asphalt black, on which lay four teenagers smoking cigarettes. Their chests were naked, their t-shirts tied around their waists. There was so much broken glass up there, they could have doubled as fakirs in a magic show. One of them had a pile of sheets of paper, and was folding them into paper planes which he released from the roof. Judging by the number of planes littering the grass, it had been a busy morning at the control tower.

Paint had peeled in long strips from the centre's doors, and one layer of the plywood beneath had been punctured by a foot or a fist. But the doors were locked fast by means of not one but two padlocks. Two more youths sat on the ground, backs against the doors, legs stretched in front of them and crossed at the ankles, for all the world like security guards on a break. Their trainers were in bad repair, their denims patched and torn and patched again. Maybe it was just the fashion. One wore a black t-shirt, the other an unbuttoned denim jacket with no shirt beneath.

'It's shut,' the denim jacket said.

`When does it open?’

'The night. No polis allowed though.’

Rebus smiled. 'I don't think I know you. What's your name?’

The smile back at him was a parody. Black t-shirt grunted an undeveloped laugh. Rebus noticed flecks of white scale in the youth's hair. Neither youth was about to say anything. The teenagers on the roof were standing now, ready to leap in should anything develop.

`Hard men,' said Rebus. He turned and started to walk away. Denim jacket got to his feet and came after him.

'What's up, Mr Polisman?’

Rebus didn't bother looking at the youth, but he stopped walking. `Why should anything be up?’

One of the paper planes, aimed or not, hit him on the leg. He picked it up. On the roof, they were laughing quietly.

`Why should anything be up?’ he repeated.

`Behave. You're not our usual plod.’

'A change is as good as a rest.’

`Arrest? What for?’

Rebus smiled again. He turned to the youth. The face was just leaving acne behind it, and would be good looking for a few more years before it started to decline. Poor diet and alcohol would be its undoing if drugs or fights weren't. The hair was fair and curly, like a child's hair, but not thick. There was a quick intelligence to the eyes, but the eyes themselves were narrow. The intelligence would be narrow too, focusing only on the main chance, the next deal. There was quick anger in those eyes too, and something further back that Rebus didn't like to think about.

'With an act like yours,' he said, 'you should be on the Fringe.’

`I fuckn hate the Festival.’

'Join the club. What's your name, son?’

'You like names, don't you?’

'I can find out.’

The youth slipped his hands into his tight jeans pockets. 'You don't want to.’

`No?’

A slow shake of the head. `Believe me, you really don't want to.’

The youth turned, heading back to his friends. `Or next time,' he said, `your car might not be there at all.’

Sure enough, as Rebus approached he saw that his car was sinking into the ground. It looked like maybe it was taking cover. But it was only the tyres. They'd been generous; they'd only slashed two of them. He looked around him. There was no sign of the pre-teen gang, though they might be watching from the safe distance of a tower-block window.

He leaned against the car and unfolded the paper plane. It was the flyer for a Fringe show, and a blurb on the back explains that the theatre group in question were uprooting from the city centre in order to play the Garibaldi Community Centre for one night.

`You know not what you do,' Rebus said to himself.

Some young mothers were crossing the football pitch. A crying baby was being shaken on its buggy springs. A toddler was being dragged screaming by the arm, his legs frozen in protest so that they scraped the ground. Both baby and toddler were being brought back into the Gar-b. But not without a fight.

Rebus didn't blame them for resisting.