‘Oh my God,’ said the student in disgust. ‘Do you know just how intelligent pigs are, Mr Rebus?’
Rebus looked at the student’s sandwich. ‘A damned sight more intelligent than peanuts,’ he said. Then: ‘Where’s the frying-pan?’
Later, Rebus sat watching TV. He’d nipped over to the Infirmary to visit Brian Holmes. He reckoned it was quicker to walk rather than driving around The Meadows. So he’d walked, letting his head clear. But the visit itself had been depressing. Not a bit of progress.
‘How long can he stay conked out?’
‘It can take a while,’ a nurse had consoled.
‘It’s been a while.’
She touched his arm. ‘Patience, patience.’
Patience! He almost took a taxi to her flat, but dropped the idea. Instead, he walked back to Arden Street, climbed the same old weary stairs, and flopped onto the sofa. He had spent so many evenings deep in thought in this room, but that had been back when the flat was his, only his.
Michael came into the living room, fresh from a shave and a shower. He wore a towel tight around his flat stomach. He was in good shape; Rebus hadn’t noticed before. But Michael saw him noticing now, and patted his stomach.
‘One thing about Peterhead, plenty of exercise.’
‘I suppose you’ve got to get fit in there,’ Rebus drawled, ‘so you can fight back when someone’s after your arse.’
Michael shook off the remark like it was so much water. ‘Oh, there’s plenty of that too. Never interested me.’ Whistling, he went into the box room and started to dress.
‘Going out?’ Rebus called.
‘Why stay in?’
‘Seeing that wee girl again?’
Michael put his head around the door. ‘She’s a consenting adult.’
Rebus got to his feet. ‘She’s a wee girl.’ He walked over to the box room and stared at Michael, forcing him to stop what he was doing.
‘What, John? You want me to stop going out with women? If you don’t like it, tough.’
Rebus thought of all the remarks he could make. This is my fla…I’m your big brothe…you should know bette…He knew Mickey would laugh-quite rightly-at any and all of them. So he thought of something else to say.
‘Fuck you, Mickey.’
Michael Rebus recommenced dressing. ‘I’m sorry I’m such a disappointment, but what’s the alternative? Sit here all night watching you stew or sulk or whatever it is you do inside your head? Thanks but no thanks.’
‘I thought you were going to look for a job.’
Michael Rebus grabbed a book from the bed and, threw it at his brother. ‘I’m looking for a fucking job! What do you think I do all day?
Just give it a rest, will you?’ He picked up his jacket and pushed past Rebus. ‘Don’t wait up for me, eh?’
That was a laugh: Rebus was asleep, and alone in the flat, before the ten o’clock news. But it wasn’t a sound sleep. It was a sleep filled with dreams. He was chasing Patience through some office block, always just losing her. He was eating in a restaurant with a teenage girl while the Rolling Stones entertained unnoticed on the small stage in the corner. He was watching a hotel burn to the ground, wondering if Brian Holmes, still unaccounted for, had gotten out aliv…
And then he was awake and shivering, the room illuminated only by the street-lamp outside, burning through a chink in the curtains. He’d been reading the book Michael had thrown at him. It was about hypnotherapy and still lay in his lap, beneath the blanket someone had thrown over him. There were noises nearby, noises of pleasure. They were coming from the box room. Some therapy, no doubt. Rebus listened to them for what seemed like hours until the light outside grew pale.
5
Andrew McPhail sat beside his bedroom window. Across the road, the children were being lined up two by two outside the school doors. The boys had to hold hands with the girls, the whole thing supervised by two female staff members, looking hardly old enough to be parents, never mind teachers. McPhail sipped cold tea from his mug and watched. He paid very close attention to the children. Any one of the girls might have been Melanie. Except, of course, that Melanie would be older. Not much older, but older. He wasn’t kidding himself. He knew the odds were Melanie wouldn’t be at this school, probably wasn’t even in Edinburgh any more. But he watched all the same, and imagined her down there, her hand touching the cool wet hand of one of the boys. Small delicate fingers, the beginning of fine lines on the palm. One girl was really quite similar: short straight hair curling in towards her ears and the nape of her neck. The height was familiar, too, but the face, what he could see of the face, was nothing like Melanie. Really, nothing like her. And besides, what did it matter to McPhail?
They were marching into the building now, leaving him behind with his cold tea and his memories. He could hear Mrs MacKenzie downstairs, washing dishes and probably chipping and breaking as much crockery as she got clean. Not her fault, her eyesight was failing. Everything about the old woman was failing. The house was bound to be worth a pile of money-money in the bank. And what did he have? Only memories of the way things had been in Canada and before Canada.
A plate crashed onto the kitchen floor. It couldn’t go on like this, really it couldn’t. There’d be nothing left. He didn’t like to think about the budgie in the living-roo…
McPhail drained the strong tea. The caffeine made him slightly giddy, sweat breaking out on his forehead. The playground was empty, the school doors closed. He couldn’t see anything through the building’s few visible windows. There might be a late-arriving straggler, but he didn’t have time to waste. He had work to do. It was good to keep busy. Keeping busy kept you sane.
‘Big Ger,’ Rebus was saying, ‘real name Morris Gerald Cafferty.’ Dutifully, and despite her good memory, DC Siobhan Clarke wrote these words on her notepad. Rebus didn’t mind her taking notes. It was good exercise. When she lowered her head to write, Rebus had a view of the crown of her head, light-brown hair falling forward. She was good looking in a homely sort of way. Indeed, she reminded him a bit of Nell Stapleton.
‘He’s the prime mover, and if we’re offered him we’ll take him. But Operation Moneybags will actually be focusing on David Charles Dougary, known as Davey.’ Again, the words went onto the paper. ‘Dougary rents office space from a dodgy mini-cab service in Gorgie Road.’
‘Not far from the Heartbreak Cafe?’
The question surprised him. ‘No,’ he said, ‘not too far.’
‘And the restaurant owner hinted at a protection pay-off?’ Rebus shook his head. ‘Don’t get carried away, Clarke.’
‘And these men are involved in protection money too, aren’t they?’
‘There’s not much Big Ger Cafferty isn’t involved in: money laundering, prostitution. He’s a big bad bastard, but that isn’t the point. The point is, this operation will concentrate on loan-sharking, period.’
‘All I’m saying is maybe Sergeant Holmes was attacked by mistake instead of the Cafe’s owner.’
‘It’s a possibility,’ said Rebus. And if it’s true, he thought, I’m wasting a lot of time and effort on an old case. But as Nell said, Brian was frightened of something in his black book. And all because he’d started trying to track down the mysterious R. Brothers.
‘But to get back to business, we’ll be setting up a surveillance across the road from the taxi firm.’
‘Round the clock?’
‘We’ll start with working hours. Dougary has a fairly fixed routine by all accounts.’
‘What’s he supposed to be doing in that office?’
‘The way he tells it, everything from basic entrepreneurship to arranging food parcels for the Third World. Don’t get me wrong, Dougary’s clever. He’s lasted longer than most of Big Ger’s “associates”. He’s also a maniac, it’s worth bearing that in mind. We once arrested him after a pub brawl. He’d torn the ear off another man with his teeth. When we got there, Dougary was chomping away. The ear was never recovered.’