Rebus looked around again. He didn’t think Cary Oakes was in town. A place this size, where everyone knew everyone, it was hard to hide. He’d already had a couple of people come up and say hello, like they’d seen him just the other day, rather than a dozen or more years ago. And Janice had been stopped by half a dozen people — neighbours or the plain curious — and asked about Damon. It was hard to escape him: every wall, lamp-post and window seemed to have his picture stuck to it.
‘I was here a few years back,’ he told Janice. ‘Hutchy’s betting shop.’
‘You were after Tommy Greenwood?’
He nodded. ‘And I bumped into Cranny.’ Their old nickname for Heather Cranston.
‘She’s still around. So’s her son.’
Rebus sought the name. ‘Shug?’
‘That’s it,’ Janice said. ‘If you’re lucky, you might see Heather tonight.’
‘Oh?’
‘She often comes to the karaoke.’
Rebus asked Janice if they could turn back. ‘I want to see the cemetery,’ he explained. And backtracking, he might have added, as he’d learned in the army, was a good way to find if you were being followed. So they headed back through Bowhill, and up the cemetery brae. He was thinking of all the stories buried in the graveyard: mining tragedies; a girl found drowned in the Ore; a holiday car crash which had wiped out a family. Then there was Johnny Thomson, Celtic goalkeeper, fatally injured during an Old Firm derby, only in his twenties when he died.
Rebus’s mother had been cremated, but his father had insisted on a ‘proper burial’. His headstone was over by the end wall. Loving husband to... and father of... And at the bottom, the words Not Dead, But at Rest in the Arms of the Lord. But as they approached, Rebus saw that something was wrong.
‘Oh, John,’ Janice gasped.
White paint had been poured down the headstone, covering most of the lettering.
‘Bloody kids,’ Janice said.
Rebus saw tracks of paint on the grass, but no sign of the empty tin.
‘This wasn’t kids,’ he said. Too much of a coincidence.
‘Who then?’
He touched his finger to the headstone: the paint was still viscous. Oakes had been in town. Janice was squeezing his arm.
‘I’m so sorry.’
‘It’s only a bit of stone,’ he said quietly. ‘It can be fixed.’
They drank tea in the living room. Rebus had tried Oakes’s hotel — Stevens’ room, the bar, no one was there.
‘We’ve had phone calls,’ Janice told him.
‘Cranks?’ he guessed.
She nodded. ‘Telling us Damon’s dead, or we killed him. Thing is, the callers... their voices sound local.’
‘Probably are local then.’
She offered him a cigarette. ‘It’s pretty sick, isn’t it?’
Rebus, looking around, nodded his agreement.
They were still sitting in the living room when Brian came back from the pub.
‘I’ll just take a shower,’ he said.
Janice explained that he always did this. ‘Clothes in the washing basket, and a good wash. I think it’s the cigarette smoke.’
‘He doesn’t like it?’
‘Hates it,’ she said. ‘Maybe that’s why I started.’ The front door was opened again. It was Janice’s mum. ‘I’ll fetch a cup,’ Janice said, getting to her feet.
Mrs Playfair nodded a greeting towards Rebus and sat down opposite him.
‘You haven’t found him yet?’
‘Not for want of trying, Mrs Playfair.’
‘Ach, I’m sure you’re doing your best, son. He’s our only grandchild, you know.’
Rebus nodded.
‘A good laddie, wouldn’t harm a fly. I can’t believe he’d get into trouble.’
‘What makes you think he’s in trouble?’
‘He wouldn’t do this to us otherwise.’ She was studying him. ‘So what happened to you, son?’
‘How do you mean?’ Wondering if she’d read his thoughts.
‘I don’t know... the way your life’s gone. Are you happy enough?’
‘I never really think about it.’
‘Why not?’
He shrugged his shoulders. ‘I like looking into people’s lives. That’s what detective work is.’
‘The army didn’t work out?’
‘No,’ he said simply.
‘Sometimes things don’t work out,’ she said, as Janice came back into the room. She watched her daughter pour the tea. ‘A lot of marriages break up round here.’
‘Do you think Damon and Helen would have made a go of it?’
She took a long time thinking about it, accepted the cup from Janice. ‘They’re young, who knows?’
‘What odds would you give them?’
‘You’re talking to Damon’s gran, John,’ Janice said. ‘No girl in the world’s good enough for Damon, eh, Mum?’ She smiled to let him know she was half-joking. Then, to her mother again: ‘Johnny’s had a shock.’ Describing the vandalised grave. Brian came in rubbing his hair. He’d changed his clothes. Janice repeated the story for him.
‘Wee bastards,’ Brian said. ‘It’s happened before. They push the stones over, break them.’
‘I’ll fetch you a mug,’ Janice said, making to get up again.
‘I’m fine,’ Brian said, waving her back. He looked towards Rebus. ‘Probably don’t feel like eating out then? Only we were going to treat you.’
After a moment’s thought, Rebus said, ‘I’d like to get out. But I should be paying.’
‘You can pay next time,’ Brian said.
‘Judging on past history,’ Rebus said, ‘that’ll be roughly thirty years from now.’
Rebus drank nothing but mineral water with his curry. Brian was on the beers, and Janice managed two large glasses of white wine. Mr and Mrs Playfair had been invited, but had declined.
‘We’ll let you young things get on with it,’ Mrs Playfair had said.
From time to time, when Janice wasn’t looking, Brian would glance in her direction. Rebus thought he was worried: worried his wife was going to leave him, and wondering what he was doing wrong. His life was falling apart, and he was on the lookout for clues as to why.
Rebus considered himself something of an expert on break-ups. He knew sometimes a perspective could shift, one partner could start wanting things that seemed outwith their reach as long as they stayed married. It hadn’t been that way with his own marriage. There, it had been down to the fact that he never should have married in the first place. When work had begun to consume him, there hadn’t been much left to sustain Rhona.
‘Penny for them,’ Janice said at one point, tearing apart a nan bread.
‘I’m wondering about getting the headstone clean.’
Brian said he knew a man who could do it: worked for the council, took graffiti off walls.
‘I’ll send you the money,’ Rebus told him. Brian nodded.
After the meal, he drove them back to Cardenden. The karaoke night was held in a back room at the Railway Tavern. The equipment sat on a stage, but the singers stayed on the dancefloor, eyes on the TV monitor with its syrupy videos and the words appearing along the bottom of the screen. Sheets came round, printed with all the songs. You wrote your choice on a slip of paper and handed it to the compère. A skinhead got up and did ‘My Way’. A middle-aged woman had a go at ‘You to Me are Everything’. Janice said she always took ‘Baker Street’. Brian switched between ‘Satisfaction’ and ‘Space Oddity’, depending on his mood.
‘So most people sing the same song every week?’ Rebus asked.
‘That guy getting up just now,’ she said, nodding towards the corner of the room, where people were shifting their seats to allow someone out, ‘he always chooses REM.’
‘So he’s probably pretty good at it by now?’