‘You won’t see it standing up. You’ve got to lie down.’
She didn’t believe him, but she lay down anyway. What did it matter if her dress got mucky: it was already split at the back. Her face was inches from his.
‘What am I supposed to be looking at?’ she asked.
‘Up there,’ he said, pointing.
And she looked. The sky wasn’t black, that was the first strange thing. It was dark, certainly, but streaked with seams of white stars and clouds. And the moon seemed huge and orange rather than yellow.
‘Isn’t it amazing?’ Barney Mee said. ‘Every time I look at it, I can’t help saying that.’
She turned to him. ‘You’re amazing,’ she said.
He smiled at the compliment. ‘What are you going to do?’
‘You mean when I leave?’ She shrugged. ‘Don’t know. Look for a job, I suppose.’
‘You should go to college.’
She looked at him more closely. ‘Why?’
‘You’d make a good teacher.’
She laughed out loud, but only for a second. ‘What makes you say that?’
‘I watch you in class. You’d be good, I know you would. Kids would listen to you.’ He was looking at her now. ‘I know I would,’ he said.
Mitch cleared some blood from the back of his throat. ‘Where’s Johnny?’ he asked.
Janice shrugged. Mitch eased his hand away from his eye. ‘I’m fucking blind,’ he said. ‘And it hurts.’ He bent over and began to cry. ‘It hurts inside my head.’
Janice and Barney got up, helped him to his feet. They got one of the teachers to drive him to hospital. By the time Johnny Rebus came round, the show was over. He didn’t even notice Janice dancing with Barney Mee. He just wanted a lift to the hospital.
‘There’s something I need to tell him.’
Eventually Mitch’s parents came, and gave Johnny a lift to Kirkcaldy.
‘What in God’s name happened?’ Mitch’s mum asked.
‘I don’t know. I wasn’t there.’
She turned to look at him. ‘Weren’t there?’ He shook his head, ashamed. ‘Then how did you get that bruise...?’
His cheekbone, all the way down to his chin: a long purple trail. And he couldn’t tell anyone how he’d come by it.
They had a long wait at the hospital. X-rays were mentioned. Cracked ribs.
‘When I find whoever did this...’ Mitch’s dad said, balling his fists.
And then later, the bad news: a retina had been dislodged, maybe even worse. Mitch would lose the sight in one eye.
And by the time Johnny was allowed in to see him — with warnings not to stay too long, not to wear him out — Mitch had heard the news and was in tears.
‘Christ, Johnny. Blind in one eye, how about that?’
There was a gauze patch over the eye in question.
‘Long John fucking Silver and no mistake.’ One of the patients on the ward coughed at the swear-word. ‘And you can fuck off too!’ Mitch yelled at him.
‘Jesus, Mitch,’ Johnny whispered. Mitch grabbed his wrist, squeezed it hard.
‘It’s you now. For both of us.’
Johnny licked his lips. ‘How do you mean?’
‘They won’t take me, not blind in one eye. I’m sorry, pal. You know I am.’
Johnny was shaking, trying to think his way out. ‘Right,’ he said, nodding. It was all he could say, and he kept repeating it.
‘You’ll come back and see us, though, eh?’ Mitch was saying. ‘Tell me all about it. That’s what I’d like... as if I was there with you.’
‘Right, right.’
‘You’re going to have to live it for me, Johnny.’
‘Sure, right.’
A smile from Mitch. ‘Thanks, pal.’
‘Least I can do,’ said Johnny.
So he’d joined up. Janice hadn’t seemed to mind. Mitch had waved him off at the station. And that was that. He sent Mitch and Janice letters; received none in return. By the time of his first leave, Mitch was nowhere to be found, and Janice was on holiday with her parents. Later, he found out Mitch had run off somewhere, no one seemed to know why or where. Johnny had half an idea: those letters, the visits home — reminders of the life Mitch could now never have...
Then his brother Mickey wrote to him, told him Janice had said to tell him she was going out with Barney Mee. And Johnny hadn’t gone home after that for a while, had found other places to be when he was on leave, writing lies home so his father and brother wouldn’t suspect, coming to think of the army as his home now... the only place he could be understood.
Drifting further in his mind from Cardenden and the friends he’d once had, and the dreams he’d once thought were within his reach...
45
It was dark and Cary Oakes was hungry and the game still wasn’t over.
In prison, he’d been given lots of good advice about evading capture, all of it from men who’d been caught. He knew he needed to change his appearance: easily achieved with a visit to a charity shop. A new outfit of jacket, shirt and trousers for less than £20, topped off with a flat tweed cap. After all, he couldn’t suddenly make his hair grow. When he saw his likeness in the newspaper, he made further adjustments, shaving himself scrupulously in a public convenience. He found a few stray carrier bags and filled them with rubbish. Examining himself in a shop window, he saw an unemployed man, a little bitter but still with enough money to buy the shopping.
He found the places where the down-and-outs spent their days: drop-in centres in the Grassmarket; the bench beside the toilets at the Tron Kirk; the foot of The Mound. These were safe places for him. People shared a can and a cigarette and didn’t ask questions he couldn’t make up answers to.
He was shivery and achy, made soft from his stay in the hotel. The windswept night on the hills had skimmed off some of his strength. It hadn’t played the way he’d wanted it to. Archibald was still alive. Two spirits needed cleansing from his life: both were still to be dealt with.
And Rebus... Rebus had turned out to be something more than the ‘wild operator’ described by Jim Stevens. The way the reporter had talked, Oakes had expected Rebus to turn up naked to do battle. But Rebus had brought a whole goddamned army with him. Oakes had escaped by dint of good fortune and the weather. Or because the gods wanted his mission to succeed.
He knew things now would be difficult. In the centre of the city, he could remain anonymous, but further out there’d be more danger of discovery. The suburbs of Edinburgh remained places where strangers did not go undetected for long. It was as if people sat with their chairs at their windows in a constant state of alert. Yet one such suburb was his ultimate destination, as it had been all along.
He could have taken a bus, but in the end he walked. It took him well over an hour. He passed Alan Archibald’s bungalow: 1930s styling with a bow window and white harled walls. There was no sign of life within. Archibald was in a hospital bed, and — according to one newspaper — under police guard. For the moment, Oakes had scratched him from his plans. Maybe the old bastard would die in hospital anyway. No, he was heading uphill and along another winding road into East Craigs. He’d been here just twice before, knowing people would get suspicious if he suddenly started frequenting the area. Two trips, one at night, one in the daytime. Both times he’d taken taxis from the foot of Leith Walk, making sure he was dropped off a few streets from his destination, not wanting the cabbies to know. In the dead of night, he’d walked right up to the walls of the building and touched trembling fingers to the stonework, trying to feel for a single life-force within.
He knew he was in there.
Couldn’t stop shaking.
Knew he was in there, because he’d called to ask, identifying himself as the son of a friend. Asked if he could keep his call a secret: he wanted his visit to be a surprise.