‘The money didn’t bring much luck to Aberdeen, you know,’ Steele was reminiscing. ‘Just a load of sharks and gangsters.’
‘I’ll believe it.’ Muir was already halfway through his drink. He wished he’d been drinking a whisky instead of the half-pint when he’d been asked about another. It didn’t look good exchanging a half-pint for a nip, so he was stuck with a half.
‘That’s mostly why I’m here,’ said Steele.
‘What? Gangsters?’ Muir sounded amused.
‘In a way. I’m visiting a friend, too, but I thought while I was here I might pick up a few bob.’
‘How’s that?’ Chick was beginning to feel uncomfortable, but also distinctly curious.
Steele dropped his voice, though they were alone at the bar. ‘There’s word going around Aberdeen that someone’s out to get a certain individual in Edinburgh.’
The barman had turned on the tape machine behind the bar. The low-ceilinged room was promptly filled with a folk duet. They’d played the club last week, and the barman had made a tape of them. It sounded worse now than it had then.
‘In the name of Auld Nick, turn that down!’ Chick didn’t have a loud voice, but no one could say it lacked authority. The barman turned the sound down a bit, and when Chick still glared at him turned it even lower. ‘What was that?’ he asked Andy Steele. Andy Steele, who had been enjoying his drink, put down the glass and told Chick Muir again. And a little while later, mission accomplished, he bought Chick a final drink and then left.
Chick Muir didn’t touch this fresh half pint. He stared past it at his own reflection in the mirror behind the row of optics. Then he made a few phone calls, again roaring at the barman to ‘turn that shite off!’ The third call he made was to St Leonard’s, where he was informed, a bit too light-heartedly, he thought, that Inspector Rebus had been suspended from duty pending enquiries. He tried Rebus at his flat, but no joy there either. Ach well, it wasn’t so important. What mattered was that he’d talked to the big man. Now the big man owed him, and that was quite enough for the penniless Chick Muir to be going on with.
Andy Steele gave the same performance in a meanly lit pub and a betting shop, and that evening was at Powderhall for the greyhound racing. He recited to himself the description Rebus had given him, and eventually spotted the man tucking into a meal of potato crisps at a window-seat in the bar.
‘Are you Shuggie Oliphant?’ he asked.
‘That’s me,’ said the huge thirtyish man. He was poking a finger into the farthest corner of the crisp-bag in search of salt.
‘Somebody told me you might be interested in a bit of information I’ve got.’
Oliphant still hadn’t looked at him. The bag emptied, he folded it into a thin strip, then tied it in a knot and placed it on the table. There were four other granny knots just like it in a row. ‘You don’t get paid till I do,’ Oliphant informed him, sucking on a greasy finger and smacking his lips.
Andy Steele sat down across from him. ‘That’s okay by me,’ he said.
On Sunday morning Rebus waited at the top of a blustery Calton Hill. He walked around the observatory, as the other Sunday strollers were doing. His leg was definitely improving. People were pointing out distant landmarks. Broken clouds were moving rapidly over a pale blue sky. Nowhere else in the world, he reckoned, had this geography of bumps and valleys and outcrops. The volcanic plug beneath Edinburgh Castle had been the start of it. Too good a place not to build a fortress. And the town had grown around it, grown out as far as Wester Hailes and beyond.
The observatory was an odd building, if functional. The folly, on the other hand, was just that, and served no function at all save as a thing to clamber over and a place to spray paint your name. It was one side of a projected Greek temple (Edinburgh, after all, being ‘the Athens of the north’). The all-too-eccentric brain behind the scheme had run out of money after completion of this first side. And there it stood, a series of pillars on a plinth so tall kids had to stand on each other’s shoulders to climb aboard.
When Rebus looked towards it, he saw a woman there swinging her legs from the plinth and waving towards him. It was Siobhan Clarke. He walked over to her.
‘How long have you been here?’ he called up.
‘Not long. Where’s your stick?’
‘I can manage fine without it.’ This was true, though by ‘fine’ he meant that he could hobble along at a reasonable pace. ‘I see Hibs got a result yesterday.’
‘About time.’
‘No sign of himself?’
But Siobhan pointed to the car park. ‘Here he comes now.’
A Mini Metro had climbed the road to the top of the hill and was squeezing into a space between two shinier larger cars. ‘Give me a hand down,’ said Siobhan.
‘Watch for my leg,’ Rebus complained. But she felt almost weightless as he lifted her down.
‘Thanks,’ she said. Brian Holmes had watched the performance before locking his car and coming towards them.
‘A regular Baryshnikov,’ he commented.
‘Bless you,’ said Rebus.
‘So what’s this all about, sir?’ Siobhan asked. ‘Why the secrecy?’
‘There’s nothing secret,’ Rebus said, starting to walk, ‘about an Inspector wanting to talk with two of his junior colleagues. Trusted junior colleagues.’
Siobhan caught Holmes’ eye. Holmes shook his head: he wants something from us. As if she didn’t know.
They leaned against a railing, enjoying the view, Rebus doing most of the talking. Siobhan and Holmes added occasional questions, mostly rhetorical.
‘So this would be off our own bats?’
‘Of course,’ Rebus answered. ‘Just two keen coppers with a little bit of initiative.’ He had a question of his own. ‘Will the lighting be difficult?’ Holmes shrugged. ‘I’ll ask Jimmy Hutton about that. He’s a professional photographer. Does calendars and that sort of thing.’
‘It’s not going to be wee kittens or a Highland glen,’ replied Rebus. ‘No, sir,’ said Holmes.
‘And you think this’ll work?’ asked Siobhan.
Rebus shrugged. ‘Let’s wait and see.’
‘We haven’t said we’ll do it, sir.’
‘No,’ said Rebus, turning away, ‘but you will.’
34
Off their own initiative then, Holmes and Siobhan decided to spend Monday evening doing a surveillance shift on Operation Moneybags. Without heating, the room they crouched in was cold and damp, and dark enough to attract the odd mouse. Holmes had set the camera up, after taking advice from the calendar man. He’d even borrowed a special lens for the occasion, telephoto and night-sighted. He hadn’t bothered with his Walkman and his Patsy Cline tapes: in the past, there’d always been more than enough to talk about with Siobhan. But tonight she didn’t seem in the mood. She kept gnawing on her top and bottom lips, and got up every now and then to do stretching exercises.
‘Don’t you get stiff?’ she asked him.
‘Not me,’ said Holmes quietly. ‘I’ve been in training for this-years of being a couch potato.’
‘I thought you kept pretty fit.’
He watched her bend forward and lay her arms down the length of one leg. ‘And you must be double-jointed.’
‘Not quite. You should’ve seen me in my teens.’ Holmes’ grin was illuminated by the street light’s diffuse orange glow. ‘Down, Rover,’ said Siobhan. There was a scuttling overhead.
‘A rat,’ said Holmes. ‘Ever cornered one?’ She shook her head. ‘They can jump like a Tummel salmon.’
‘My parents took me to the hydro dam when I was a kid.’
‘At Pitlochry?’ She nodded. ‘So you’ve seen the salmon leaping?’ She nodded again. ‘Well,’ said Holmes, ‘imagine one of those with hair and fangs and a long thick tail.’
‘I’d rather not.’ She watched from the window. ‘Do you think he’ll come.’
‘I don’t know. John Rebus isn’t often wrong.’
‘Is that why everyone hates him?’