‘Still clearing stuff away?’
‘No, it’s a potential buyer. One of the pizza restaurants is looking to expan…’
Whatever it was Pat Calder was hiding, he was doing only a fair job. But Rebus really didn’t have the heart to start digging. There was way too much for him to worry about as it was. Starting with the gun. He’d sat with it in his car last night, his finger on the trigger. Just the way his instructor had taught him back in the Army: firm, but not tense. Like it was an erection, one you wanted to sustain.
He had been thinking too of goodies and baddies. If you thought bad things-dreams of cruelty and lust-that didn’t make you bad. But if your head was full of civilised thoughts and you spent all day as a torture…It came down to the fact that you were judged by your actions in society, not by the inside of your head. So he’d no reason to feel bad about thinking grim and bloody thoughts. Not unless he turned thoughts into deeds. Yet going beyond thought would feel so good. More than that, it would feel right.
He stopped his car at the first church he came to. He hadn’t attended any kind of worship for several months, always managing to make excuses and promises to himself that he’d try harder. It was just that Patience had made Sunday mornings so good.
Someone had been busy with a marker-pen on the wooden signboard in the churchyard, turning ‘Our Lady of Perpetual Help’ into ‘Our Lady of Perpetual Hell’. Not the greatest of omens, but Rebus went inside anyway. He sat in a pew for a while. There weren’t many souls in there with him. He had picked up a prayer book on the way in, and stared long and hard at its unjudgmental black cover, wondering why it made him feel so guilty. Eventually, a woman left the confessional, pulling up her headscarf. Rebus stood up and made himself enter the small box. He sat there in silence for a minute, trying to think what it was you were supposed to say.
‘Forgive me, father, I’m about to sin.’
‘We’ll see about that, son,’ came a gruff Irish voice from the other side of the grille. There was such assurance in the voice, Rebus almost smiled.
Instead he said, ‘I’m not even a Catholic.’
‘I’m sure that’s true. But you’re a Christian?’
‘I suppose so. I used to go to church.’
‘Do you believe?’
‘I can’t not believe.’ He didn’t add how hard he’d tried. ‘Then tell me your problem.’
‘Someone’s been threatening me, my friends and family.’
‘Have you gone to the police?’
‘I am the police.’
‘Ah. And now you’re thinking of taking the law into your own hands, as they say in the films.’
‘How did you know?’
‘You’re not the first bobby I’ve had in this confessional. There are a few Catholics in the police force.’ This time Rebus did smile. ‘So what is it you’re going to do?’
‘I’ve got a gun.’
There was an intake of breath. ‘Now that’s serious. Oh yes, that’s serious. But you must see that if you use a gun, you turn into that which you despise so much. You turn into them.’ The priest managed to hiss this last word.
‘So what?’ Rebus asked.
‘So, ask yourself this. Can you live the rest of your life with the memories and the guilt?’ The voice paused. ‘I know what you Calvinists, think. You think you’re doomed from the start, so why not raise some hell before you get there? But I’m talking about this life, not the next! Do you want to live in Purgatory before you die?’
‘No.’
‘You’d be a bloody eejit to say anything else. Tie that gun to a roc and chuck it in the Forth, that’s where it belongs.’
‘Thank you, father.’
‘You’re more than welcome. And son?’
‘Yes, father?’
‘Come back and talk to me again. I like to know what madness you Prods are thinking. It gives me something to chew on when there’s nothing good on the telly.’
Rebus didn’t spend long at Gorgie Road. They weren’t getting anywhere. The photos taken so far had been developed, and some of the faces identified. Those identified were all small-timers, old cons, or up-and corners. They weren’t so much small fish as spawn in a corner of the pond. It wasn’t as if Flower was having better luck, which was just as well for Rebus. He couldn’t wait for the Little Weed to put in his reimbursement claim. All those rounds of drinks …
He felt revived by his talk with the priest, whose name he now realised he didn’t even know. But then that was part of the deal, wasn’t it? Sinners Anonymous. He might even grant the priest’s wish and go back sometime. And tonight he’d drive out to the coast and get rid of the gun. It had been madness all along. In a sense, buying it had been enough. He’d never have used it, would he?
He parked at St Leonard’s and went inside. There was a package for him at the front desk-the reservations book for the Heartbreak Cafe. Calder had put a note in with it.
‘Well, Elvis ate pizza, didn’t he?’ So it looked like the Heartbreak was about to go Italian.
While he’d been reading the note, the desk officer had been phoning upstairs, keeping his voice low.
‘What’s all that about?’ Rebus asked. He thought he’d overheard the distinct words ‘He’s here’.
‘Nothing, sir,’ said the desk officer. Rebus tried to stare an answer out of him, then turned away, just as the inner doors were pushed open in businesslike fashion by the Uglybug Sisters, Lauderdale and Flower.
‘Can I have your car-keys?’ Lauderdale demanded.
‘What’s going on?’ Rebus looked to Flower, who resembled a preacher at a burning.
‘The keys, please.’ Lauderdale’s hand was so steady, Rebus thought if he walked away and left the two men standing there, it would stay stretched out for hours. He handed over his keys.
‘It’s a pile of junk. If you don’t kick it in the right place, you won’t even get it to start.’ He was following the two men through the doors and into the car park.
‘I don’t want to drive it,’ Lauderdale said. He sounded threatening, but it was Flower’s serene silence that most worried Rebus. Then it hit him: the gun! They knew about the gun. And yes, it was still under his driver’s seat. Where else was he going to hide it-in the flat, where Michael might find it? In his trousers, where it would raise eyebrows? No, he’d left it in the car.
The door of which Lauderdale was now opening. Lauderdale turned towards him, his hand out again. ‘The gun, Inspector Rebus.’ And when Rebus didn’t move: ‘Give me the gun.’
24
He raised the gun and fired it-one, two, three shots. Then lowered it again.
They all took off their ear-protectors. The forensics man had fired the gun into what looked like a simple wooden crate. The bullets would be retrieved from its interior and could then be analysed. The scientist had been holding the gun’s butt with a polythene glove over his hand. He dropped the gun into a polythene bag of its own before slipping off the glove.
‘We’ll let you know as soon as we can,’ he told Chief Superintendent Watson, who nodded the man’s dismissal. After he’d left the room, Watson turned to Lauderdale.
‘Give it to me again, Frank.’
Lauderdale took a deep breath. This was the third time he’d told Watson the story, but he didn’t mind. He didn’t mind at all. ‘Inspector Flower came to me late this morning and told me he’d received information — ’
‘What sort of information?’
‘A phone call.’
‘Anonymous, naturally.’
‘Naturally.’ Lauderdale took another breath. ‘The caller told him the gun that had been used in the Central Hotel shooting five years ago was in Inspector Rebus’s possession. Then he rang off.’
‘And we’re supposed to believe Rebus shot that man five years ago?’
Lauderdale didn’t know. ‘All I know is, there was a gun in Rebus’s car. And he says himself, it’ll have his prints all over it. Whether it’s the same gun or not, we’ll know by the end of play today.’