‘I know Cafferty’s going away,’ said Kintoul.
‘And?’
Kintoul shrugged.
‘It’s like this,’ said Rebus. ‘We know just about all there is to know. We just need a little corroboration.’
‘That means testifying?’
Rebus nodded. Eddie Ringan would be testifying too, telling all he knew about the Central Hotel, in return for a good word from the police come his own trial. ‘Mr Kintoul, you’ve got to accept something. You’ve got to accept that you’ve changed, you’re not the same man you were a year or two ago. Why did you do it?’ Rebus asked the way a friend would, just curious.
Kintoul wiped a smear of sauce from his chin. ‘It was a favour. Jim always needed favours.’
‘So you drove the van?’
‘Yes, I did his rounds.’
‘But you were a lab technician!’
Kintoul smiled. ‘And I could earn more on the butcher’s round.’ He shrugged again. ‘Like you say, Inspector, I put family first, especially where money’s concerned.’
‘Go on.’
‘How much do you know?’
‘We know the van was used to dump the bodies.’
‘Nobody ever notices a butcher’s van.’
‘Except a poor constable in north-east Fife. He ended up with concussion.’
‘That was after my time. I was shot of it by then.’ He waited till Rebus nodded agreement, then went on. ‘Only, when I wanted out Cafferty didn’t want me out. He was putting pressure on.’
‘That’s how you got stabbed?’
‘It was that bodyguard of his, Jimmy the Ear. He lost the head. Knifed me as I was getting out of the car. Crazy bastard.’ Kintoul glanced towards the serving-hatch. ‘You know what Cafferty did when I said I wanted to stop driving the van? He offered Jason a job “driving” for him. Jason’s my son.’
Rebus nodded. ‘But why all this fuss? Cafferty could get a hundred guys to drive a van for him.’
‘I thought you knew him, Inspector. Cafferty’s like that. He’s.. particular about his flesh.’
‘He’s off his head,’ commented Rebus. ‘How did you get sucked in in the first place?’
‘I was still driving full-time when Cafferty won half the business from Jimmy. One evening, one of Cafferty’s men turned up all smarmy, told me we’d be taking a run to the coast early next morning. Via some farm in the Borders.’
‘You went to the farm?’ So that’s why there was straw in the van. The colour was seeping from Kintoul’s face like blood from a cut of meat.
‘Oh aye. There was something in the pigsties, tied up in fertiliser bags. Stank to high heaven. I’d been working in a butcher’s long enough to know it had been rotting in that sty for a good few weeks, months, even.’
‘A corpse?’
‘Easy to tell, isn’t it? I threw my guts up. Cafferty’s man said what a waste, I should’ve done it into the trough.’ Kintoul paused. He was still wiping at his chin, though the sauce mark had long ago been erased. ‘Cafferty liked the bodies to be rotten, less chance of them washing ashore in any recognisable state.’
‘Christ.’
‘I haven’t come to the worst part yet.’ In the next room, Kintoul’s wife and son were speaking in undertones. Rebus was in no hurry, and merely watched as Kintoul got up to stare from his back window. There was a patch of garden out there he could call his own. It was small, but it was his. He came back and stood in front of the gas fire, not looking at Rebus.
‘I was there one day when he killed someone,’ he said baldly. Then he screwed shut his eyes. Rebus was trying to control his own breathing. This guy would make a gem of a witness.
‘Killed them how?’ Still not pressing; still the friend.
Kintoul tipped his head back, feeding tears back where they had come from. ‘How? With his bare hands. We’d arrived late. The van had broken down in the middle of nowhere. It was about ten in the morning. Mist all around the farm, like driving into Brigadoon. They were both wearing business suits, that’s what got me. And they were up to their ankles in glaur.’
Rebus frowned, not quite comprehending. ‘They were in the pigsty?’
Kintoul nodded. ‘There’s a fenced run. Cafferty was in there with this man. There were other people watching through the fence.’ He swallowed. ‘I swear Cafferty looked like he was enjoying it. There with the mud lapping at him, and the pigs squealing in their boxes wondering what the hell was happening, and all the silent onlookers.’ Kintoul tried to shake the memory away, probably a daily event.
‘They were fighting?’
‘The other man looked like he’d been roughed up beforehand. Nobody’d call it a fair fight. And eventually, after Cafferty’d beaten the living shite out of him, he grabbed him by the neck and forced him down into the muck. He stood on the man’s back, balancing there, and holding the face down with his hands. He looked like it was nothing new. Then the man stopped strugglin…’
Rebus and Kintoul were silent, blood pounding through them, both trying to cope with the vision of an early morning pigst…‘Afterwards,’ said Kintoul, his voice lower than ever, ‘he beamed at us like it was his coronation.’
Then, in complete grimacing silence, he started to weep.
Rebus was visiting the Infirmary so often he was considering taking out a season ticket. But he hadn’t expected to see Flower there.
‘Checking in? The psychiatric section’s down the hall.’
‘Ha ha,’ said Flower.
‘What are you doing here anyway?’
‘I could ask you the same question.’
‘I live here, what about you?’
‘I came to ask some questions.’
‘Of Andrew McPhail?’ Flower nodded. ‘Did nobody tell you his jaw’s wired shut?’ Flower twitched, producing a good wide grin from Rebus. ‘How come it’s your business anyway?’
‘It involves Cafferty,’ Flower said.
‘Oh aye, so it does, I’d forgotten.’
‘Looks like we’ve got him this time.’
‘Looks like it. But you never know with Cafferty.’ Rebus stared unblinking at Flower as he spoke. ‘The reason he’s lasted so long is he’s clever. He’s clever, and he’s got the best lawyers. Plus he’s got people scared of him, and he’s got people in his pocke…maybe even a copper or three.’
Flower had stared out the gaze; now he blinked. ‘You think I was in Cafferty’s pocket?’
Rebus had been pondering this. He had Cafferty marked down for the attack on Michael and the scam with the gun. As for the clumsy hit-and-run attempt, that was so amateurish, he guessed at Broderick Gibson for its architect. Quite simply, Cafferty would have used better men.
He’d been silent long enough, so he shook his head. ‘I don’t think you’re that smart. Cafferty likes smart people. But I do think you had a word with the Inland Revenue about me.’
‘I don’t know what, you’re talking about.’
Rebus grinned. ‘I do like a cliche.’ Then he walked on down the hall.
Andrew McPhail was easy to find. You just looked for the broken face. He was wired up like somebody’s first attempt at a junction box. Rebus thought he could see where they’d used two wires where one would have sufficed. But then he was no doctor. McPhail had his eyes closed.
‘Hello there,’ said Rebus. The eyes opened. There was anger there, but Rebus could cope with it. He held up a hand. ‘No,’ he said, ‘don’t bother to thank me.’ Then he smiled. ‘It’s all set up for when they let you out. Up north for rehabilitation, maybe a job, and bracing coastal walks. Man, I envy you.’ He looked around the ward. Every bed had a body in it. The nurses looked like they could use a holiday or at the very least a gin and lime with some dry-roast peanuts.
‘I said I’d leave you alone,’ Rebus went on, ‘and I keep my word. But a piece of advice.’ He rested his hands on the edge of the bed and leaned towards McPhail. ‘Cafferty’s the biggest villain in town. You’re probably the only bugger in Edinburgh who didn’t know that. Now his men know a guy called McPhail set their boss up. So don’t ever think of coming back, will you?’ McPhail still glared at him. ‘Good,’ said Rebus. He straightened up, turned, and walked away, then paused and turned. ‘Oh,’ he said, ‘and I meant to say something.’ He returned to the bed and stood at its foot, where charts showed McPhail’s temperature and medicaments. Rebus waited till McPhail’s wet eyes were on his, then he smiled sympathetically again.