Resurrection Men

24

It was two in the morning when the phone woke him. He was lying on the living room floor, next to the hi-fi, CD cases and album sleeves spread around him. He crawled on hands and knees to his chair and picked up the receiver.

“Yes?” he croaked.

“John? It’s Bobby.”

Rebus took a moment to realize who Bobby was: Bobby Hogan, Leith CID. He tried focusing on his watch.

“How soon can you get down here?” Hogan was asking.

“Depends where ‘here’ is.” Rebus was doing a stock check: head cloudy but bearable; stomach queasy.

“Look, you can go back to bed if you like.” Hogan starting to sound aggrieved. “I thought maybe I was doing you a favor . . .”

“I’ll know that when you tell me what it is.”

“A floater. Pulled him out of the docks not fifteen minutes ago. And though I haven’t seen him in a while, he looks awfully like our old pal the Diamond Dog . . .”

Rebus stared down at the album sleeves, not really seeing them.

“You still awake, John?”

“I’ll be there in twenty minutes, Bobby.”

“He’ll be on his way to the mortuary by then.”

“Even better. I’ll meet you there.” Rebus paused. “Any chance of this being an accident?”

“At this stage, we’re supposed to be keeping an open mind.”

“You won’t be too bothered if I don’t do the same?”

“I’ll see you at the Dead Center, John . . .”

“Dead Center” was what they called the mortuary. One of the workers there had come up with the phrase, telling everyone that he was proud to work “at the dead center of Edinburgh.” The building was tucked away on the Cowgate, one of the city’s more secretive streets. Few pedestrians ever found themselves there, and the traffic was intent on being elsewhere. Things might change when the parliament opened its new building, less than a ten-minute walk away. More traffic, more tourists. At this time of night, Rebus knew the drive would take him five minutes. He wasn’t sure his blood alcohol level would pass muster, but after a quick shower he made for his car anyway.

He didn’t know what he was thinking or how he was feeling about Dickie Diamond’s death. Hard to say how many enemies had been harboring their festering thoughts, just waiting for the night when they clapped eyes on Diamond again.

He cut across to Nicolson Street and headed for the city center, turning right at Thin’s Bookshop and taking the steep turn down to the Cowgate. A couple of taxis: a few drunks. Dead center, he was thinking. He knew the easiest way into the mortuary this time of night was the staff entrance, so he parked outside, making sure he wasn’t blocking the loading bay. For a long time, they’d had to carry out actual autopsies at one of the city’s hospitals, due to the lack of a decent air-filtering system in the mortuary’s autopsy suite, but that had been remedied now. Rebus walked into the building and saw Hogan in the corridor ahead of him.

“He’s in here,” Hogan said. “Don’t worry, he wasn’t long in the water.” Good news: the body underwent terrible changes after lengthy submersion. The short corridor led directly into the loading area, which itself led directly to the holding area — a wall of little doors, each one opening to reveal a trolley. One trolley was sitting out, a polythene-wrapped body lying on it. Dickie Diamond was still wearing the same clothes. His wet hair was slicked back from his face, and there was some kind of algae stuck to one cheek. His eyes were closed, mouth open. The attendants were readying to take him upstairs in the elevator.

“Who’s doing the cutting?” Rebus asked.

“They’re both on tonight,” Hogan told him. Meaning: Professor Gates and Dr. Curt, the city’s chief pathologists. “It’s been a busy one: drug overdose in Muirhouse, fatal fire in Wester Hailes.”

“And four naturals,” an attendant reminded him. People dying of old age, or in the hospital. Mostly they ended up here.

“Shall we go up?” Hogan asked.

“Why not?” Rebus said.

As they climbed the stairs, Hogan asked about Diamond. “You lot were just interrogating him, weren’t you?”

“Interviewing him, Bobby.”

“As a suspect or a witness?”

“The latter.”

“When did you let him go?”

“This afternoon. How long had he been dead when you fished him out?”

“I’d say about an hour. Question is: did he drown?”

Rebus shrugged. “Do we know if he could swim?”

“No.”

They’d entered a glass-fronted viewing area. There were a couple of benches for them to sit on. On the other side of the glass, people moved around in surgical gowns and green Wellingtons. There were two stainless-steel slabs, with drainage holes and old-fashioned wooden blocks for the head to rest on. Gates and Curt waved a greeting, Curt gesturing for the two detectives to come join the fun. They shook their heads, pointing to the benches to let him know they were fine where they were. The body bag had been removed, and now Dickie Diamond’s clothes were being discarded, placed in their own plastic bags.

“How did you ID him?” Rebus asked.

“Phone numbers in his pocket. One was for his sister. I recognized him anyway, but she did the formal ID downstairs just before you got here.”

“How was she?”

“She didn’t seem too surprised, to be honest. Maybe she was just in shock.”

“Or maybe she’d been expecting it?”

Hogan looked at him. “Something you want to tell me, John?”

Rebus shook his head. “We reopened the case, went sniffing. Malky, the nephew, told Dickie what was happening. He came haring up here. We picked him up.” He shrugged. “End of story.”

“Not as far as someone was concerned,” Hogan said, peering through the glass as one of the attendants lifted something from the clothing. It was the revolver Diamond had pointed at Rebus. The attendant held it up for them to see.

“Managed to miss that in your search, Bobby,” Rebus said.

Hogan stood up, called out through the glass. “Where was it?”

“Down the back of his underpants,” the attendant called back, voice muffled by the face mask he was wearing.

“Can’t have been too comfortable,” Professor Gates added. “Maybe he’d a bad case of piles and was resorting to threats.”

When Hogan sat down again, Rebus noticed that he had reddened slightly at the neck.

“These things happen, Bobby,” Rebus sought to reassure him. He was wondering now if the gun had been tucked into Diamond’s waistband when he’d been answering their questions in IR1 . . .

With the body stripped of its clothing, the autopsy proper was beginning with the taking of body temperature. Rebus and Hogan knew what the pathologists would be looking for: alcohol levels; signs of injuries; head trauma . . . They would want to know whether Diamond had been alive or dead when he’d entered the water. Alive, and it could have been an accident — too much booze, maybe. Dead, and there was foul play involved. Everything from the state of the eyeballs to the contents of the lungs provided little clues. The body temperature would be used to calculate time of death, though immersion would make any exact calculations problematic.

After twenty minutes as spectator, Rebus said he needed a cigarette. Hogan decided to join him. They went to the staff room and helped themselves to mugs of tea, then walked outside. The night was clear and chilly. An undertaker’s car had arrived to take charge of one of the “naturals.” The driver bowed his head to them in sleepy acknowledgment. At this time of night, in this location, you had a bond of sorts. You were dealing with things most people — those with their heads warm against pillows, dreaming the time away until morning — shied away from.

“Undertaker,” Hogan mused. “You ever thought it a bloody odd word to use in the circumstances? Funeral director, I can understand, but undertaker . . . ?”

“You getting philosophical on me, Bobby?”

“No, I’m just saying . . . ach, forget it.”

Rebus smiled. His own thoughts were of Dickie Diamond. Dickie had gifted them Chib Kelly’s name. They could have accepted his gift, presented the case to Tennant and left it at that. But Gray and Jazz — Jazz in particular — hadn’t been satisfied. Rebus was wondering if they’d decided to press Dickie further. They’d dumped Rebus at Haymarket, but that didn’t mean they hadn’t turned back. In fact, he was a damned good alibi. When last seen, the trio had been heading west out of town, while Dickie was found in the northeast corner of the city. The Wild Bunch had started life looking like an uneasy alliance of insubordinate officers who didn’t like authority and were as likely to ignore an order as carry it out. But now Rebus was wondering if there was something more dangerous, more lethal at work. Gray, Jazz and Ward had been all too ready to help rip off the warehouse consignment. Force would have been necessary, but that hadn’t seemed to bother them. Were they capable of killing Dickie Diamond? Then again, why would they have killed him? Rebus didn’t have an answer for that, not yet.

He was leaning over the wall, watching the roadway, when he spotted the parked car. Movement within it. As the driver’s door opened and the interior light came on, he recognized Malky. He looked for Malky’s mother but didn’t see her. Malky was making to cross the road towards Rebus, but stopped at the centerline and stretched his arm, pointing.

“You fucking killed him, ya bastard!”

Hogan was at the wall now, too. “Calm down, Malky,” he called.

“Dickie told me he was going to have a word with you!” Malky shouted hoarsely. His finger moved towards the mortuary building. “Is that what you call ‘a word’? Man comes to talk to you, you do him in!”

“What’s he talking about, John?” Hogan said.

Rebus shook his head. “Maybe Dickie did say he was coming to see me . . .”

“But never got round to it?” Hogan guessed.

“Or didn’t get the chance.”

Hogan patted Rebus’s arm. “I’ll go talk to him,” he said, making for the street, hands held up in front of him. “Easy now, Malky, easy . . . It’s a bad time for you, I know, but let’s not go waking the neighbors, eh?”

For a moment, Rebus had thought he was going to say “waking the dead” . . .

He headed back indoors, depositing his empty mug in the sink in the staff room. As he turned to leave, Dr. Curt came in, no longer wearing his gown and boots.

“Any tea going?” Curt asked.

“Kettle’s not long boiled.”

Curt busied himself with a fresh mug and tea bag. “He was dead when he went in the water,” he began. “Happened around midnight, and the body went in the water not long after. Forensics might be able to tell us more from the clothing.”

“How did he die?”

“Windpipe was crushed.”

Rebus thought back to the interview room, the way Gray’s forearm had slid around Diamond’s throat . . .

“You got a spare cigarette?” Curt was asking now. Rebus opened his pack, and Curt picked one out, tucking it behind his ear. “I’ll have it with my tea. Simple pleasures, eh, John?”

“Where would we be without them?” Rebus said, his mind on the drive he was planning to take . . .

It was nearly dawn when he reached Tulliallan. He saw another detective in front of him, sneaking back in after a night in someone else’s bed. Rebus recognized him, a young detective sergeant from the new City Center force. He’d be here on one of the specialist programs. Rebus drove around the car park, seeking Jazz’s Volvo. There was dew on it, as with the cars on either side, so it had been there awhile. He touched the hood. It was cold; again, same temperature as the cars either side.

He did the same set of checks with Gray’s Lexus, once he’d found it. Nothing to suggest it had been used in the recent past. Then he realized he didn’t know what car Allan Ward drove. He supposed he could look for a dealer badge on the back windshield, something indicating purchase in Dumfries . . . but that would take time, and he was pretty sure it would be a waste of effort. Instead, he headed indoors and along to the bedrooms, walking right past his own door and knocking loudly on Gray’s, four along from him. When there was no answer, he knocked again.

“Who is it?” the voice coughed from within.

“It’s Rebus.”

The door opened a crack, Gray squinting into the light. “Hell’s going on?” he asked. His hair was sticking up. He was dressed in a T-shirt and underpants. The room smelled stuffy.

“Been in bed long, Francis?” Rebus asked.

“What’s it to you?”

“Dickie Diamond’s just been found dead, windpipe crushed.”

Gray didn’t say anything, just blinked a couple of times as if trying to wake from a dream.

“Afterwards, he was dumped in Leith docks, the killer trying to muddy the waters, as it were . . .” Rebus narrowed his eyes. “Coming back to you now, is it, Francis? It was only four or five hours ago.”

“Four or five hours ago I was tucked up in bed,” Gray stated.

“Anyone see you come back?”

“I don’t have to explain anything to you, Rebus.”

“That’s where you’re wrong.” Rebus pointed a finger. “Round up your pals and meet me in the bar. You’ve got a serious amount of convincing to do if you want me off your case.”

Rebus went to the bar and waited. The place smelled of stale beer and cigarettes. There were a few glasses dotted around, left there by drinkers who’d stayed put after the place had closed. Most of the chairs had been stacked on tables. Rebus lifted one down and made himself comfortable. He was asking himself what the hell he was doing here. It wasn’t that he was afraid of what Dickie Diamond might have told anyone. It was more that he just didn’t care anymore. Everything seemed to be falling apart, and the subtle undercover work hadn’t accomplished anything, perhaps because subtlety had never been his strong point. Rather, he was going to shake things up, see how the trio reacted. What did he have to lose? That was a question he wasn’t about to answer.

Five minutes later, the three men walked in. Gray had made some attempt to flatten his hair against his skull. Jazz looked wide awake and had dressed with his usual care. Allan Ward, wearing only a baggy T-shirt and gym shorts, was yawning and rubbing his face. He’d slipped sneakers on his feet, but no socks.

“Has Francis filled you in?” Rebus asked as they sat in a row across the table from him.

“Dickie Diamond’s been found dead,” Jazz answered. “And you seem to think Francis had a hand in it.”

“Maybe more of a forearm than a hand. Dickie’s windpipe was crushed. Same sort of maneuver Francis pulled in IR1.”

“When did all this happen?” Jazz asked.

“Pathologist thinks around midnight.”

Jazz looked to Gray. “We were back here by then, weren’t we?”

Gray shrugged.

“You left me around eight,” Rebus said. “Doesn’t take four hours to drive from Haymarket to here.”

“We didn’t come straight back,” Ward explained, still rubbing his face with both hands. “We stopped for something to eat and a few drinks.”

“Where?” Rebus asked coldly.

“John,” Jazz said quietly, “none of us went near Dickie Diamond.”

“Where?” Rebus repeated.

Jazz sighed. “That road out of town . . . the one we were on after we left you. We stopped for a curry. After all, we had things to talk about, didn’t we?” Now all three men looked at Rebus.

“We did,” Gray agreed.

“What was the restaurant called?” Rebus asked.

Jazz tried to laugh. “Give me a break, John . . .”

“And afterwards? Where did you drink?”

“Couple of pubs on that same road,” Ward stated. “Too good an opportunity, with Jazz driving . . .”

“Names?” Rebus said.

“Get stuffed,” Gray said. He leaned back and folded his arms. “We don’t need this paranoia of yours. Is it because you’re in the huff? We’d given you the hump, left you standing there? So now you try pulling this . . . ?”

“Francis has a point, John,” Jazz said.

“If you went trawling Leith for Dickie Diamond, someone will have spotted you,” Rebus pressed on.

Jazz shrugged. “Fine,” he said. “But no one’s going to come forward, because we were never there.”

“We’ll see.”

“Yes,” Jazz said, nodding his head without his eyes ever leaving Rebus’s, “we will. But meantime, any chance we can go get some sleep now? Something tells me tomorrow’s going to be a day and a half . . .”

Ward was already on his feet. “Paranoia,” he said, echoing Gray. Rebus doubted he knew what the word meant.

Gray stood up without saying anything. His eyes burned into Rebus. Jazz was the last to leave.

“I know you did it,” Rebus told him.

Jazz seemed about to say something, but shook his head instead, as if to acknowledge that no words were going to change Rebus’s mind.

“You need to admit it while there’s still time,” Rebus went on.

“Time for what?” Jazz asked, genuinely curious.

“For resurrection,” Rebus answered quietly. But Jazz just winked at him before turning to go.

Rebus sat for a few more minutes before returning to his room, making sure the door was locked behind him. He was aware of the proximity of the three men, three men he’d just accused of murder and accessory to murder. He thought of placing his chair against the door. He thought of heading out to the car park and driving home. In truth, he wasn’t sure they’d killed Dickie; he was only sure that they were capable of it. It all depended how much they knew and how much they suspected — about Rebus’s involvement with Dickie, how it had led to Rico Lomax’s murder and a burning caravan. But he’d wanted the trio shaken, and reckoned he’d succeeded — in spades. He considered who else might have have wanted Dickie dead. There was one name, but thinking of it took him right back to the Rico Lomax case.

The name of Morris Gerald Cafferty . . .