The Beat Goes On

Auld Lang Syne

Places Detective Inspector John Rebus did not want to be at midnight on Hogmanay: number one, the Tron in Edinburgh.

Which was perhaps, Rebus decided, why he found himself at five minutes to midnight pushing his way through the crowds which thronged the area of the Royal Mile outside the Tron Kirk. It was a bitter night, a night filled with the fumes of beer and whisky, of foam licking into the sky as another can was opened, of badly sung songs and arms around necks and stooped, drunken proclamations of undying love, proclamations which would be forgotten by morning.

Rebus had been here before, of course. He had been here the previous Hogmanay, ready to root out the eventual troublemakers, to break up fights and crunch across the shattered glass covering the setts. The best and worst of the Scots came out as another New Year approached: the togetherness, the sharpness, the hugging of life, the inability to know when to stop, so that the hug became a smothering stranglehold. These people were drowning in a sea of sentiment and sham. Flower of Scotland was struck up by a lone voice for the thousandth time, and for the thousandth time a few more voices joined in, all falling away at the end of the first chorus.

‘Gawn yirsel there, big man.’

Rebus looked around him. The usual contingent of uniformed officers was going through the annual ritual of having hands shaken by a public suddenly keen to make friends. It was the WPCs Rebus felt sorry for, as another slobbering kiss slapped into the cheek of a young female officer. The police of Edinburgh knew their duty: they always offered one sacrificial lamb to appease the multitude. There was actually an orderly queue standing in front of the WPC waiting to kiss her. She smiled and blushed. Rebus shivered and turned away. Four minutes to midnight. His nerves were like struck chords. He hated crowds. Hated drunken crowds more. Hated the fact that another year was coming to an end. He began to push through the crowd with a little more force than was necessary.

People Detective Inspector John Rebus would rather not be with at midnight on Hogmanay: number one, detectives from Glasgow CID.

He smiled and nodded towards one of them. The man was standing just inside a bus shelter, removed from the general scrum of the road itself. On top of the shelter, a Mohican in black leather did a tribal dance, a bottle of strong lager gripped in one hand. A police constable shouted for the youth to climb down from the shelter. The punk took no notice. The man in the bus shelter smiled back at John Rebus. He’s not waiting for a bus, Rebus thought to himself, he’s waiting for a bust.

Things Detective Inspector John Rebus would rather not be doing at midnight on Hogmanay: number one, working.

So he found himself working, and as the crowd swept him up again, he thought of Dante’s Inferno. Three minutes to midnight. Three minutes away from hell. The Scots, pagan at their core, had always celebrated New Year rather than Christmas. Back when Rebus was a boy, Christmases were muted. New Year was the time for celebration, for first-footing, black bun, Madeira cake, coal wrapped in silver foil, stovies during the night and steak pie the following afternoon. Ritual after ritual. Now he found himself observing another ritual, another set of procedures. A meeting was about to take place. An exchange would be made: a bag filled with money for a parcel full of dope. A consignment of heroin had entered Scotland via a west coast fishing village. The CID in Glasgow had been tipped off, but failed to intercept the package. The trail had gone cold for several days, until an informant came up with the vital information. The dope was in Edinburgh. It was about to be handed on to an east coast dealer. The dealer was known to Edinburgh CID, but they’d never been able to pin a major possession charge on him. They wanted him badly. So did the west coast CID.

‘It’s to be a joint operation,’ Rebus’s boss had informed him, with no trace of irony on his humourless face. So now here he was, mingling with the crowds, just as another dozen or so undercover officers were doing. The men about to make the exchange did not trust one another. One of them had decided upon the Tron as a public enough place to make the deal. With so many people around, a double-cross was less likely to occur. The Tron at midnight on Hogmanay: a place of delirium and riot. No one would notice a discreet switch of cases, money for dope, dope for money. It was perfect.

Rebus, pushing against the crowd again, saw the money-man for the very first time. He recognised him from photographs. Alan Lyons, ‘Nal’ to his friends. He was twenty-seven years old, drove a Porsche 911 and lived in a detached house on the riverside just outside Haddington. He had been one of Rab Philips’s men until Philips’s demise. Now he was out on his own. He listed his occupation as ‘entrepreneur’. He was sewerage.

Lyons was resting his back against a shop window. He smoked a cigarette and gave the passers-by a look that said he was not in the mood for handshakes and conversation. A glance told Rebus that two of the Glasgow crew were keeping a close watch on Lyons, so he did not linger. His interest now was in the missing link, the man with the package. Where was he? A countdown was being chanted all around him. A few people reckoned the New Year was less than ten seconds away; others, checking their watches, said there was a minute left. By Rebus’s own watch, they were already into the New Year by a good thirty seconds. Then, without warning, the clock chimes rang and a great cheer went up. People were shaking hands, hugging, kissing. Rebus could do nothing but join in.

‘Happy New Year.’

‘Happy New Year, pal.’

‘Best of luck, eh?’

‘Happy New Year.’

‘All the best.’

‘Happy New Year.’

Rebus shook a Masonic hand, and looked up into a face he recognised. He returned the compliment — ‘Happy New Year’ — and the man smiled and moved on, hand already outstretched to another well-wisher, another stranger. But this man had been no stranger to Rebus. Where the hell did he know him from? The crowd had rearranged itself, shielding the man from view. Rebus concentrated on the memory of the face. He had known it younger, less jowly, but with darker eyes. He could hear the voice: a thick Fife accent. The hands were like shovels, miner’s hands. But this man was no miner.

He had his radio with him, but trapped as he was in the midst of noise there was no point trying to contact the others on the surveillance. He wanted to tell them something. He wanted to tell them he was going to follow the mystery man. Always supposing, that was, he could find him again in the crowd.

And then he remembered: Jackie Crawford. Dear God, it was Jackie Crawford!

People Rebus did not want to shake hands with as the old year became the new: number one, Jackie ‘Trigger’ Crawford.

Rebus had put Crawford behind bars four years ago for armed robbery and wounding. The sentence imposed by the judge had been a generous stretch of ten years. Crawford had headed north from court in a well-guarded van. He had not gained the nickname ‘Trigger’ for his quiet and homely outlook on life. The man was a headcase of the first order, gun happy and trigger happy. He’d taken part in a series of bank and building society robberies; short, violent visits to High Streets across the Lowlands. That nobody had been killed owed more to strengthened glass and luck than to Crawford’s philanthropy. He’d been sent away for ten, he was out after four. What was going on? Surely, the man could not be out and walking the streets legally? He had to have broken out, or at the very least cut loose from some day-release scheme. And wasn’t it a coincidence that he should bump into Rebus, that he should be here in the Tron at a time when the police were waiting for some mysterious drug pedaller?

Rebus believed in coincidence, but this was stretching things a bit too far. Jackie Crawford was somewhere in this crowd, somewhere shaking hands with people whom, a scant four years before, he might have been terrorising with a sawn-off shotgun. Rebus had to do something, whether Crawford was the ‘other man’ or not. He began squeezing through the crowd again, this time ignoring proffered hands and greetings. He moved on his toes, craning his head over the heads of the revellers, seeking the square-jawed, wiry-haired head of his prey. He was trying to recall whether there was some tradition in Scotland that ghosts from your past came to haunt you at midnight on Hogmanay. He thought not. Besides, Crawford was no ghost. His hands had been meaty and warm, his thumb pressing speculatively against Rebus’s knuckles. The eyes which had glanced momentarily into Rebus’s eyes had been clear and blue, but uninterested.

Had Crawford recognised his old adversary? Rebus couldn’t be sure. There had been no sign of recognition, no raising of eyebrows or opening of the mouth. Just three mumbled words before moving on to the next hand. Was Crawford drunk? Most probably: few sane and sober individuals visited the Tron on this night of all nights. Good: a drunken Crawford would have been unlikely to recognise him. Yet the voice had been quiet and unslurred, the eyes focussed. Crawford had not seemed drunk, had not acted drunk. Sober as a judge, in fact. This, too, worried Rebus.

But then, everything worried him this evening. He couldn’t afford any slip-ups from the operation’s Edinburgh contingent. It would give too much ammo to the Glasgow faction: there was a certain competitive spirit between the two forces. For ‘competitive spirit’ read ‘loathing’. Each would want to claim any arrest as its victory; and each would blame any foul-up on the other.

This had been explained to him very clearly by Chief Inspector Lauderdale.

‘But surely, sir,’ Rebus had replied, ‘catching these men is what’s most important.’

‘Rubbish, John,’ Lauderdale had replied. ‘What’s important is that we don’t look like arseholes in front of McLeish and his men.’

Which, of course, Rebus had already known: he just liked winding his superior up a little the better to watch him perform. Superintendent Michael McLeish was an outspoken and devout Catholic, and Rebus’s chief did not like Catholics. But Rebus hated bigots, and so he wound up Lauderdale whenever he could and had a name for him behind his back: the Clockwork Orangeman.

The crowd was thinning out as Rebus headed away from the Tron and uphill towards the castle. He was, he knew, moving away from the surveillance and should inform his fellow officers of the fact, but if his hunch was right, he was also following the man behind the whole deal. Suddenly he caught sight of Crawford, who seemed to be moving purposefully out of the crowd, heading onto the pavement and giving a half-turn of his head, knowing he was being followed.

So he had recognised Rebus, and now had seen him hurrying after him. The policeman exhaled noisily and pushed his way through the outer ring of the celebrations. His arms ached, as though he had been swimming against a strong current, but now that he was safely out of the water, he saw that Crawford had vanished. He looked along the row of shops, separated each from the other by narrow, darkened closes. Up those closes were the entrances to flats, courtyards surrounded by university halls of residence, and many steep and worn steps leading from the High Street down to Cockburn Street. Rebus had to choose one of them. If he hesitated, or chose wrongly, Crawford would make good his escape. He ran to the first alley and, glancing down it, listening for footsteps, decided to move on. At the second close, he chose not to waste any more time and ran in, passing dimly-lit doorways festooned with graffiti, dank walls and frozen cobbles. Until, launching himself down a flight of steps into almost absolute darkness, he stumbled. He flailed for a hand-rail to stop him from falling, and found his arm grabbed by a powerful hand, saving him.

Crawford was standing against the side of the alley, on a platform between flights of steps. Rebus sucked in air, trying to calm himself. There was a sound in his ears like the aftermath of an explosion.

‘Thanks,’ he spluttered.

‘You were following me.’ The voice was effortlessly calm.

‘Was I?’ It was a lame retort and Crawford knew it. He chuckled.

‘Yes, Mr Rebus, you were. You must have gotten a bit of a shock.’

Rebus nodded. ‘A bit, yes, after all these years, Jackie.’

‘I’m surprised you recognised me. People tell me I’ve changed.’

‘Not that much.’ Rebus glanced down at his arm, which was still in Crawford’s vice-like grip. The grip relaxed and fell away. ‘Sorry.’

Rebus was surprised at the apology, but tried not to let it show. He was busy covertly studying Crawford’s body, looking for any bulge big enough to be a package or a gun.

‘So what were you doing back there?’ he asked, not particularly interested in the answer, but certainly interested in the time it might buy him.

Crawford seemed amused. ‘Bringing in the New Year, of course. What else would I be doing?’

It was a fair question, but Rebus chose not to answer it. ‘When did you get out?’

‘A month back.’ Crawford could sense Rebus’s suspicion. ‘It’s legit. Honest to God, Sergeant, as He is my witness. I haven’t done a runner or anything.’

‘You ran from me. And it’s Inspector now, by the way.’

Crawford smiled again. ‘Congratulations.’

‘Why did you run?’

‘Was I running?’

‘You know you were.’

‘The reason I was running was because the last person I wanted to see tonight of all nights was you, Inspector Rebus. You spoilt it for me.’

Rebus frowned. He was looking at Trigger Crawford, but felt he was talking to somebody else, someone calmer and less dangerous, someone, well, ordinary. He was confused, but still suspicious. ‘Spoilt what exactly?’

‘My New Year resolution. I came here to make peace with the world.’

It was Rebus’s turn to smile, though not kindly. ‘Make peace, eh?’

‘That’s right.’

‘No more guns? No more armed robberies?’

Crawford was shaking his head slowly. Then he held open his coat. ‘No more shooters, Inspector. That’s a promise. You see, I’ve made my own peace.’

Peace or piece? Rebus couldn’t be sure. He was reaching into his own jacket pocket, from which he produced a police radio. Crawford looked on the level. He even sounded on the level, but facts had to be verified. So he called in and asked for a check to be made on John Crawford, nickname ‘Trigger’. Crawford smiled shyly at the mention of that name. Rebus held onto the radio, waiting for the computer to do its stuff, waiting for the station to respond.

‘It’s been a long time since anyone called me Trigger,’ Crawford said. ‘Quite some time.’

‘How come they released you after four?’

‘A bit less than four, actually,’ corrected Crawford. ‘They released me because I was no longer a threat to society. You’ll find that hard to believe. In fact, you’ll find it impossible to believe. That’s not my fault, it’s yours. You think men like me can never go straight. But we can. You see, something happened to me in prison. I found Jesus Christ.’

Rebus knew the look on his face was a picture, and it caused Crawford to smile again, still shyly. He looked down at the tips of his shoes.

‘That’s right, Inspector. I became a Christian. It wasn’t any kind of blinding light. It took a while. I got bored inside and I started reading books. One day I picked up the Bible and just opened it at random. What I read there seemed to make sense. It was the Good News Bible, written in plain English. I read bits and pieces, just flicked through it. Then I went to one of the Sunday services, mainly because there were a few things I couldn’t understand and I wanted to ask the minister about them. And he helped me a bit. That’s how it started. It changed my life.’

Rebus could think of nothing to say. He thought of himself as a Christian, too, a sceptical Christian, a little like Crawford himself perhaps. Full of questions that needed answering. No, this couldn’t be right. He was nothing like Crawford. Nothing at all like him. Crawford was an animal; his kind never changed. Did they? Just because he had never met a ‘changed man’, did that mean such a thing did not exist? After all, he’d never met the Queen or the Prime Minister either. The radio crackled to life in his hand.

‘Rebus here,’ he said, and then listened.

It was all true. The details from Crawford’s file were being read to him. Model prisoner. Bible class. Recommended for early release. Personal tragedy.

‘Personal tragedy?’ Rebus looked at Crawford.

‘Ach, my son died. He was only in his twenties.’

Rebus, having heard enough, had already switched off the radio. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said. Crawford just shrugged, shrugged shoulders beneath which were tucked no hidden shotguns, and slipped his hands into his pockets, pockets where no pistols lurked. But Rebus held out a hand towards him.

‘Happy New Year,’ he said.

Crawford stared at the hand, then brought out his own right hand. The two men shook warmly, their grips firm.

‘Happy New Year,’ said Crawford. Then he glanced back up the close. ‘Look, Inspector, if it’s all right with you I think I’ll go back up the Tron. It was daft of me to run away in the first place. There are plenty of hands up there I’ve not shaken yet.’

Rebus nodded slowly. He understood now. For Crawford, the New Year was something special, a new start in more ways than one. Not everyone was given that chance.

‘Aye,’ he said. ‘On you go.’

Crawford had climbed three steps before he paused. ‘Incidentally,’ he called, ‘what were you doing at the Tron?’

‘What else would I be doing there on New Year?’ replied Rebus. ‘I was working.’

‘No rest for the wicked, eh?’ said Crawford, climbing the slope back up to the High Street.

Rebus watched until Crawford disappeared into the gloom. He knew he should follow him. After all, he was still working. He was sure now that Crawford had been speaking the truth, that he had nothing to do with the drug deal. Their meeting had been coincidence, nothing more. But who would have believed it? Trigger Crawford a ‘model prisoner’. And they said mankind no longer lived in an age of miracles.

Rebus climbed slowly. There seemed more people than ever on the High Street. He guessed things would be at their busiest around half past midnight, with the streets emptying quickly after that. If the deal was going to go through, it would take place before that time. He recognised one of the Glasgow detectives heading towards him. As he spotted Rebus, the detective half-raised his arms.

‘Where have you been? We thought you’d buggered off home.’

‘Nothing happening then?’

The detective sighed. ‘No, nothing at all. Lyons looks a bit impatient. I don’t think he’s going to give it much longer himself.’

‘I thought your informant was air-tight?’

‘As a rule. Maybe this will be the exception.’ The detective smiled, seemingly used to such disappointments in his life. Rebus had noticed earlier that the young man possessed badly chewed fingernails and even the skin around the nails was torn and raw-looking. A stressed young man. In a few years he would be overweight and then would become heart attack material. Rebus knew that he himself was heart attack material: h.a.m., they called it back at the station. You were lean (meaning fit) or you were ham. Rebus was decidedly the latter.

‘So anyway, where were you?’

‘I bumped into an old friend. Well, to be precise an old adversary. Jackie Crawford.’

‘Jackie Crawford? You mean Trigger Crawford?’ The young detective was rifling through his memory files. ‘Oh yes, I heard he was out.’

‘Did you? Nobody bothered to tell me.’

‘Yes, something about his son dying. Drug overdose. All the fire went out of Crawford after that. Turned into a Bible basher.’

They were walking back towards the crowd. Back towards where Alan Lyons waited for a suitcase full of heroin. Rebus stopped dead in his tracks.

‘Drugs? Did you say his son died from drugs?’

The detective nodded. ‘The big H. It wasn’t too far from my patch. Somewhere in Partick.’

‘Did Crawford’s son live in Glasgow then?’

‘No, he was just visiting. He stayed here in Edinburgh.’ The detective was not as slow as some. He knew what Rebus was thinking. ‘Christ, you don’t mean...?’

And then they were both running, pushing their way through the crowd, and the detective from Glasgow was shouting into his radio, but there was noise all around him, yelling and cheering and singing, smothering his words. Their progress was becoming slower. It was like moving through water chest-high. Rebus’s legs felt useless and sore and there was a line of sweat trickling down his spine. Crawford’s son had died from heroin, heroin purchased most probably in Edinburgh, and the man behind most of the heroin deals in Edinburgh was waiting somewhere up ahead. Coincidence? He had never really believed in coincidences, not really. They were convenient excuses for shrugging off the unthinkable.

What had Crawford said? Something about coming here tonight to make peace. Well, there were ways and ways of making peace, weren’t there? ‘If any mischief should follow, then thou shalt give life for life.’ That was from Exodus. A dangerous book, the Bible. It could be made to say anything, its meaning in the mind of the beholder.

What was going through Jackie Crawford’s mind? Rebus dreaded to think. There was a commotion up ahead, the crowd forming itself into a tight semi-circle around a shop-front. Rebus squeezed his way to the front.

‘Police,’ he shouted. ‘Let me through, please.’

Grudgingly, the mass of bodies parted just enough for him to make progress. Finally he found himself at the front, staring at the slumped body of Alan Lyons. A long smear ran down the shop window to where he lay and his chest was stained dark red. One of the Glasgow officers was trying unsuccessfully to stem the flow of blood, using his own rolled-up coat, now sopping wet. Other officers were keeping back the crowd. Rebus caught snatches of what they were saying.

‘Looked like he was going to shake hands.’

‘Looked like he was hugging him.’

‘Then the knife...’

‘Pulled out a knife.’

‘Stabbed him twice before we could do anything.’

‘Couldn’t do anything.’

A siren had started nearby, inching closer. There were always ambulances on standby near the Tron on Hogmanay. Beside Lyons, still gripped in his left hand, was the bag containing the money for the deal.

‘Will he be all right?’ Rebus said to nobody in particular, which was just as well since nobody answered. He was remembering back a month to another dealer, another knife... Then he saw Crawford. He was being restrained on the edge of the crowd by two more plainclothes men. One held his arms behind him while the other frisked him for weapons. On the pavement between where Crawford stood and Alan Lyons lay dying or dead there was a fairly ordinary looking knife, small enough to conceal in a sock or a waistband, but enough for the job required. More than an inch of blade was excess. The other detective was beside Rebus.

‘Aw, Christ,’ he said. But Rebus was staring at Crawford and Crawford was staring back, and in that moment they understood one another well enough. ‘I don’t suppose,’ the detective was saying, ‘we’ll be seeing the party with the merchandise. Always supposing he was going to turn up in any event.’

‘I’m not so sure about that,’ answered Rebus, turning his gaze from Crawford. ‘Ask yourself this: how did Crawford know Lyons would be in the High Street tonight?’ The detective did not answer. Behind them, the crowd was pressing closer for a look at the body and then making noises of revulsion before opening another can of lager or half-bottle of vodka. The ambulance was still a good fifty yards away. Rebus nodded towards Crawford.

‘He knows where the stuff is, but he’s probably dumped it somewhere. Somewhere nobody can ever touch it. It was just bait, that’s all. Just bait.’

And as bait it had worked. Hook, line and bloody sinker. Lyons had swallowed it, while Rebus, equally fooled, had swallowed something else. He felt it sticking in his throat like something cancerous, something no amount of coughing would dislodge. He glanced towards the prone body again and smiled involuntarily. A headline had come to mind, one that would never be used.

Someone was being noisily sick somewhere behind him. A bottle shattered against a wall. The loudest voices in the crowd were growing irritable and hard-edged. In fifteen minutes or so, they would cease to be revellers and would be transformed into troublemakers. A woman shrieked from one of the many darkened closes. The look on Jackie Crawford’s face was one of calm and righteous triumph. He offered no resistance to the officers. He had known they were watching Lyons, had known he might kill Lyons but he would never get away. And still he had driven home the knife. What else was he to do with his freedom?’

The night was young and so was the year. Rebus held out his hand towards the detective.

‘Happy New Year,’ he said. ‘And many more of them.’

The young man stared at him blankly. ‘Don’t think you’re blaming us for this,’ he said. ‘This was your fault. You let Crawford go. It’s Edinburgh’s balls-up, not ours.’

Rebus shrugged and let his arm fall to his side. Then he started to walk along the pavement, moving further and further from the scene. The ambulance moved past him. Someone slapped him on the back and offered a hand. From a distance, the young detective was watching him retreat.

‘Away to hell,’ said Rebus quietly, not sure for whom the message was intended.