‘We must stop meeting like this,’ he said.
But she wasn’t paying him any attention. Instead, she yelled ‘NOW!’ and snaked to her right, bringing her hand out of her pocket. She already had one half of the handcuffs clamped around her wrist, and now attached the other firmly around the top rail. Two of her companions did likewise, and started yelling protests at the tops of their voices. Two others were hauled back before they could complete the process. The cuffs were snapped shut on themselves.
‘Who’s got the keys?’ an oil-worker was yelling.
‘We left them on the mainland!’
‘Christ.’ The oilman turned to a colleague. ‘Go fetch the oxy-acetylene.’ He turned to braid-hair. ‘Don’t worry, the sparks may burn, but we’ll have you out of there in a jiffy.’
She ignored him, kept on chanting with the others. Rebus smiled: you had to admire it. Trojan horse with knobs on.
The torch arrived. Rebus couldn’t believe they were really going to do it. He turned to Lumsden.
‘Don’t say a word,’ the policeman warned. ‘Remember what I said about frontier justice. We’re well out of it.’
The torch was lit, a little flare of its own. There was a helicopter overhead. Rebus had half a mind — maybe more than half — to throw the torch over the side.
‘Christ, it’s the telly!’
They all looked up. The helicopter was hovering low, a video camera pointed straight at them.
‘Fucking TV news.’
Oh great, Rebus thought. That’s just spot on. Really low-key, John. National television news. Maybe he should just send Ancram a postcard...
19
Back in Aberdeen, he thought he could still feel the deck moving beneath him. Lumsden had headed off home, carrying with him a promise from Rebus that he’d be packed and off the following morning.
Rebus hadn’t mentioned he might be back.
It was early evening, cool but bright, the streets busy with last shoppers trudging home and Saturday night revellers starting early. He walked down to Burke’s Club. A different bouncer again, so no grief there. Rebus paid his money like a good boy, waded through the music until he reached the bar. The place hadn’t been open long, only a few punters in, looking like they’d be moving on if things didn’t start happening. Rebus bought an overpriced short loaded with ice, gave the place a once-over in the mirror. No sign of Eve and Stanley. No sign of any obvious dealers. But Willie Ford was right about that: what did dealers look like? Leave aside the junkies and they looked much like anyone else. Their trade was in eye contact, in a shared knowledge with the person whose eyes they were meeting. A cross between a transaction and a chat-up.
Rebus imagined Michelle Strachan dancing in here, beginning the last movements of her life. As he sloshed the ice around his glass, he decided to walk a route from the club to Duthie Park. It might not be the route she took, and he doubted it would throw up anything like a clue, but he wanted to do it, same as he’d driven down to Leith to pay his respects to Angie Riddell’s patch. He started off down South College Street, saw from his map that if he kept to this route he’d be walking a main thoroughfare alongside the Dee. Lots of traffic: he decided Michelle would have cut through Ferryhill, so did likewise. Here the streets were narrower and quieter; big houses, leafy. A comfortable middle-class enclave. A couple of corner shops were still doing business — milk, ice-lollies, evening papers. He could hear children playing in back gardens. Michelle and Johnny Bible had walked down here at two a.m. It would have been deserted. If they’d been making any noise, it would have been noted behind the net curtains. But no one had reported anything. Michelle couldn’t have been drunk. Drunk, her student friends said, she got loud. Maybe she was a bit merry; just enough to have lost her survival instinct. And Johnny Bible... he’d been quiet, sober, his smile failing to betray his thoughts.
Rebus turned on to Polmuir Road. Michelle’s digs were halfway down. But Johnny Bible had persuaded her to keep walking down to the park. How had he managed it? Rebus shook his head, trying to clear it of jumble. Maybe her digs were strict, she couldn’t invite him in. She liked it there, didn’t want to be kicked out for an infraction of the rules. Or maybe Johnny had commented on the nice mild night, how he didn’t want it to end, he liked her so much. Couldn’t they just walk down to the park and back? Maybe walk through the park, just the two of them. Wouldn’t that be perfect?
Did Johnny Bible know Duthie Park?
Rebus could hear something approximating music, then silence, then applause. Yes: the protest concert. The Dancing Pigs and friends. Rebus went into the park, passed a children’s play area. Michelle and her beau had come this way. Her body had been found near here, not far from the Winter Gardens and the tea-room... There was a huge open space at the heart of the park, and a stage had been erected. Several hundred kids comprised the audience. Bootleggers had spread out their merchandise on the grass, alongside tarot readers, hairbraiders, and herbalists. Rebus forced a smile: it was the Ingliston concert in miniature. People were passing through the crowd, rattling collecting tins. The banner which had adorned the roof of the Conference Centre — DON’T KILL OUR OCEANS! — was now flapping atop the stage. Even the inflatable whale was there. A girl in her mid-teens approached Rebus.
‘Souvenir T-shirts? Programmes?’
Rebus shook his head, then changed his mind. ‘Give me a programme.’
‘Three pounds.’
It was a stapled Xerox with a colour cover. The paper was recycled, and so was the text. Rebus flicked through it. Right at the back there was a list of Thank Yous. His eye caught a name a third of the way down: Mitch, ‘with love and gratitude’. Allan Mitchison had played his part organising the gig, and here was his reward — and memorial.
‘I’ll see if I can do better,’ Rebus said, rolling the programme into his pocket.
He made for the area behind the stage, which had been cordoned off by means of arranging lorries and vans into a semi-circle, inside which the bands and their entourages moved like zoo exhibits. His warrant card got him where he wanted to be, as well as a few dirty looks.
‘You in charge?’ he asked the overweight man in front of him. The man was in his fifties, Jerry Garcia with red hair and a kilt, sweat showing through a stained white vest. Beads of perspiration dripped from his overhanging brow.
‘Nobody’s in charge,’ he told Rebus.
‘But you helped organise —’
‘Look, what’s your problem, man? The concert’s licensed, the last thing we need is grief.’
‘I’m not giving any. I just have a question about the organisation.’
‘What about it?’
‘Allan Mitchison — Mitch.’
‘Yes?’
‘Did you know him?’
‘No.’
‘I hear he was responsible for getting the Dancing Pigs to play.’
The man thought about it, nodded. ‘Mitch, right. I don’t know him, I mean, I’ve seen him around.’
‘Anyone I could ask about him?’
‘Why, man, what’s he done?’
‘He’s dead.’
‘Bad number.’ He shrugged. ‘Wish I could help.’
Rebus made his way back to front-of-stage. The sound system was the usual travesty, and the band didn’t sound nearly as good as on their studio album. Notch one up for the producer. The music stopped suddenly, the momentary silence sweeter than any tune. The singer stepped up to the mike.