He saw the headlights, and when the car-a Jag-swerved and mounted the pavement his first thought was: drunk driver. But the car braked smoothly, stopping beside him, almost pinning him to the wire fence. The driver got out. He was big. A gust of wind flapped his long, hair, and McPhail saw that one ear was missing.
‘You McPhail?’ he demanded. The back door of the Jag was opening slowly, another man getting out. He wasn’t as big as the driver, but he somehow seemed larger. He was smiling unkindly.
The letter was in McPhail’s pocket. ‘Cafferty?’ he asked, forcing the word from his lungs.
The smiling man blinked lazily in acknowledgement. In McPhail’s other pocket was the broken neck of a whisky bottle he’d found beside an overflowing bottle bank. It wasn’t much of a weapon, but it was all he could afford. Even so, he didn’t rate his chances. His bladder felt painfully full. He reached for the letter.
The driver pinned his arms to his side and swung him around, so he was face to face with Cafferty, who swung a kick into his groin. The butt of a three-section snooker cue slipped expertly from Cafferty’s coat sleeve into his hand. As McPhail doubled over, the cue caught him on the side of the jaw, fracturing it, dislodging teeth. He fell further forwards and was rewarded with the cue on the back of his neck. His whole body went numb. Now the driver was pulling his head up by the hair and Cafferty was forcing his mouth open with the cue, working it past his tongue and into his throat.
‘Hold it there!’ Two of them, a man and a woman, running from across the street and holding open their IDs. ‘Police officers.’
Cafferty lifted both hands away, raising them head high. He had left the cue in McPhail’s mouth. The driver released the battered man, who remained upright on his knees. Shakily, Andrew McPhail started to pull the snooker cue out of his throat. There were sirens close by as a police car approached.
‘It’s nothing, officer,’ Cafferty was saying, ‘a misunderstanding.’
‘Some misunderstanding,’ said the male police officer. His sidekick slipped her hand into McPhail’s pocket. She felt a broken bottle. Wrong pocket. From the other pocket she produced the letter, crumpled now. She handed it to Cafferty.
‘Open this, please, sir,’ she said.
Cafferty stared at it. ‘Is this a set-up?’ But he opened it anyway. Inside was a scrap of paper, which he unfolded. The note was unsigned. He knew who it was from anyway. ‘Rebus!’ he spat. ‘That bastard Rebus!’
A few minutes later, as Cafferty and his driver were being taken away, and the ambulance was arriving for Andrew McPhail, Siobhan picked up the note which Cafferty had dropped. It said simply, ‘I hope they sell your skin for souvenirs.’ She frowned and looked up at the surveillance window, but couldn’t see anyone there.
Had she seen anything, it would have been the outline of a man making the shape of a gun from his fist, lining up the thumb so Cafferty was in its sights, and pulling the imaginary trigger.
Bang!
35
Nobody at St Leonard’s believed Holmes and Siobhan were there that night simply out of an exaggerated sense of duty. The more credible version had them meeting for a clandestine shag and just happening upon the beating. Lucky there was film in the surveillance camera. And didn’t the photos come out well?
With Cafferty in custody, they got the chance to take away his things and have yet another look at the…including the infamous coded diary. Watson and Lauderdale were poring over xeroxed sheets from it when there was a knock at the Chief Super’s door.
‘Come!’ called Watson, John Rebus walked in and looked around admiringly at the sudden floorspace. ‘I see you got your cabinets, sir.’
Lauderdale pulled himself up straight. ‘What the hell are you doing here? You’re suspended from duty.’
‘It’s all right, Frank,’ said Watson, ‘I asked Inspector Rebus to come in.’ He turned the xeroxed pages towards Rebus. ‘Take a look.’
It didn’t take long. The problem with the code in the past was that they hadn’t known what to look for. But now Rebus had a more than fair idea. He stabbed one entry. ‘There,’ he said. ‘3TUB SCS.’
‘Yes?’
‘It means the butcher on South Clerk Street owes three thousand. He’s abbreviated ‘butcher’ and written it backwards.’
Lauderdale looked disbelieving. ‘Are you sure?’
Rebus shrugged. ‘Put the experts at Fettes onto it. They should be able to find at least a few more late-payers.’
‘Thank you, John,’ said Watson. Rebus turned smartly and left the room. Lauderdale stared at his superior.
‘I get the feeling,’ he said, ‘something’s going on here I don’t know about.’
‘Well, Frank,’ said Watson, ‘why should today be different from any other?’
Which, as the saying went, put CI Lauderdale’s gas at a very low peep.
It was Siobhan Clarke who came up with the most important piece of information in the whole case.
It was a case now. Rebus didn’t mind that the machine was in operation without him. Holmes and Clarke reported back to him at the end of each day. The code-breakers had been hard at work, as a result of which detectives were talking to Cafferty’s black book victims. It would only take one or two of them in court, and Cafferty would be going down. So far, though, no one was talking. Rebus had an idea of one person who, given enough persuasion, might.
Then Siobhan mentioned that Cafferty’s company Geronimo Holdings held a seventy-nine per cent share in a large farm in the south-west Borders, not so very far from the coastline where the bodies had been washing up until recently. A party was sent to the farm. They found plenty for the forensic scientists to start working o…especially the pigsties. The sties themselves were clean enough, but there was an enclosed area of storage space above each ramshackle sty. Most of the farm had turned itself over to the latest in high-tech agriculture; but not the sties. It was this which initially alerted the police. Above the pigsties, in the dark enclosures strewn with rank straw, there was a tangible reek of something unwholesome, something putrid. Strips of cloth were found; in one corner there lay a man’s trouser-belt. The area was photographed and picked over for its least congruous particles. Upstairs in the farmhouse, meanwhile, a man who claimed initially to be an agricultural labourer eventually admitted to being Derek Torrance, better known as Deek.
At the same time, Rebus was driving out to Dalkeith, to Duncton Terrace, to be precise. It was early evening, and the Kintoul family was at home. Mother, father and son took up three sides of a fold-down table in the kitchen. The chip-pan was still smouldering and spitting on the greasy gas cooker. The vinyl wallpaper was slick with condensation. Most of the food on the plates was disguised by brown sauce. Rebus could smell vinegar and washing-up liquid. Rory Kintoul excused himself and went with Rebus into the living room. Kitchen and living room were connected by a serving hatch. Rebus wondered if wife and son would be listening at the hatch.
Rebus sat in one fireside chair, Kintoul opposite him.
‘Sorry if it’s a bad time,’ Rebus began. There was a ritual to be followed, after all.
‘What is it, Inspector?’
‘You’ll have heard, Mr Kintoul, we’ve arrested Morris Cafferty. He’ll be going away for quite a while.’ Rebus looked at the photos on the mantelpiece, snapshots of gap-toothed kids, nephews and nieces. He smiled at them. ‘I just thought maybe it was time you got it off your chest.’
He kept silent for a moment, still examining the framed photos. Kintoul said nothing.
‘Only,’ said Rebus, ‘I know you’re a good man. I mean, a good man. You put family first, am I right?’ Kintoul nodded uncertainly. ‘Your wife and son, you’d do anything for them. Same goes for your other family, parents, sisters, brothers, cousin…’ Rebus trailed off.