Half a mile further on, Rebus told the driver they were taking a detour. Headed for Marchmont and stopped outside Rebus’s flat. He went inside, unlocked the door. Extracted a bulging folder from a drawer in the living room. Opened it, decided he’d take a few of the cuttings with him. Back downstairs and into the cab.
When they got to Bruntsfield, Rebus said to take a right, then another. They were in a dimly lit suburban street of large, detached houses, most of them hidden behind shrubbery and fencing. The windows were darkened or shuttered, the occupants safely asleep. But lights burned in one of them, and that was where Rebus told the driver to drop him. The gate opened noisily. Rebus found the doorbell and rang it. There was no response. He took a few steps back and peered at the upstairs windows. They were lit but curtained. There were larger windows at ground level, either side of the porch, but both had their wooden shutters firmly closed. Rebus thought he could hear music coming from somewhere. He peered through the letterbox, but saw no movement, and realised that the music was coming from behind the house. There was a gravel driveway to one side and he headed up it, security lights tripping as he passed them. The music was coming from the garden. It was dark, except for a strange reddish glow. Rebus saw a structure in the middle of the lawn, wooden decking leading to it from the glass conservatory. Steam was rising from the structure. And music, too, something classical. Rebus walked forward towards the jacuzzi.
That was what it was: a jacuzzi, open to the Scottish elements. And in it sat Morris Gerald Cafferty, known as ‘Big Ger’. He was wedged into one corner, arms stretched along the rim of the moulded tub. Jets of water streamed out from either side of him. Rebus looked around, but Cafferty was alone. There was some sort of light in the water, a coloured filter casting a red glow over everything. Cafferty’s head was tipped back, eyes closed, a look on his face of concentration rather than relaxation.
And then he opened his eyes, and was staring directly at Rebus. The pupils were small and dark, the face overfed. Cafferty’s short grey hair stuck damply to his skull. The upper half of his chest, visible above the surface of the water, was covered in a mat of darker, curled hair. He didn’t seem surprised to see someone standing in front of him, even at this time of night.
‘Have you brought your trunks?’ he asked. ‘Not that I’m wearing any...’ He glanced down at himself.
‘I heard you’d moved house,’ Rebus said.
Cafferty turned to a control panel by his left hand and pressed a button. The music faded. ‘CD player,’ he explained. ‘The speakers are inside.’ He rapped the tub with his knuckles. Pressing another button, the motor ceased, and the water became still.
‘Light show, too,’ Rebus commented.
‘Any colour you like.’ Cafferty jabbed a further button, changing the water from red to green, and from green to blue, then ice-white and back to red.
‘Red suits you,’ Rebus stated.
‘The Mephistopheles look?’ Cafferty chuckled. ‘I love it out here, this time of night. Hear the wind in the trees, Rebus? They’ve been here longer than any of us, those trees. Same with these houses. And they’ll still be here when we’ve gone.’
‘I think you’ve been in there too long, Cafferty. Your brain’s getting all wrinkled.’
‘I’m getting old, Rebus, that’s all... And so are you.’
‘Too old to bother with a bodyguard? Reckon you’ve buried all your enemies?’
‘Joe knocks off at nine, but he’s never too far away.’ A two-beat pause. ‘Are you, Joe?’
‘No, Mr Cafferty.’
Rebus turned to where the bodyguard was standing. He was bare-footed, dressed hurriedly in underpants and a T-shirt.
‘Joe sleeps in the room above the garage,’ Cafferty explained. ‘Off you go now, Joe. I’m sure I’m safe with the Inspector.’
Joe glowered at Rebus, then padded back across the lawn.
‘It’s a nice area this,’ Cafferty was saying conversationally. ‘Not much in the way of crime...’
‘I’m sure you’re doing your best to change that.’
‘I’m out of the game, Rebus, same as you’ll be pretty soon.’
‘Oh aye?’ Rebus held up the clippings he’d brought from home. Photos of Cafferty from the tabloids. They’d all been taken in the past year; all showed him with known villains from as far afield as Manchester, Birmingham, London.
‘Are you stalking me or something?’ Cafferty said.
‘Maybe I am.’
‘I don’t know whether to be flattered...’ Cafferty stood up. ‘Hand me that robe, will you?’
Rebus was glad to. Cafferty climbed over the edge of the tub on to a wooden step, wrapping himself in the white cotton gown and sliding his feet into a pair of flip-flops. ‘Help me put the cover on,’ Cafferty said. ‘Then we’ll go indoors and you’ll tell me whatever the hell it is you want from me.’
Again, Rebus obliged.
At one time, Big Ger Cafferty had run practically every criminal aspect of Edinburgh, from drugs and saunas to business scams. Since his last stretch of jail-time, however, he’d kept his head down. Not that Rebus believed the crap about retirement: people like Cafferty didn’t ever jack it in. To Rebus’s mind, Cafferty had just grown wilier with age — and wiser to the ways police might go about investigating him.
He was around sixty now, and had known most of the well-known gangsters from the 1960s on. There were stories that he’d worked with the Krays and Richardson in London, as well as some of the better-known Glasgow villains. Past inquiries had tried linking him to drug gangs in Holland and the sex-slavers of Eastern Europe. Very little had ever stuck. Sometimes it was down to a lack of either resources or evidence compelling enough to persuade the Procurator Fiscal into a prosecution. Sometimes it was because witnesses vanished from the face of the earth.
Following Cafferty into the conservatory, and from there to the limestone-floored kitchen, Rebus stared at the broad back and shoulders, wondering not for the first time how many executions the man had ordered, how many lives he’d wrecked.
‘Tea, or something stronger?’ Cafferty said, shuffling across the floor in his flip-flops.
‘Tea’s fine.’
‘Christ, it must be serious...’ Cafferty smiled a little smile to himself as he switched the kettle on and dropped three tea bags into the pot. ‘I suppose I better put some clothes on,’ he said. ‘Come on, I’ll show you the drawing room.’
It was one of the rooms at the front, with a large bay window and a dominating marble fireplace. An assortment of canvases hung from the picture rails. Rebus didn’t know much about art, but the frames looked expensive. Cafferty had headed upstairs, giving Rebus the opportunity to browse, but there was precious little to attract his attention: no books or hi-fi, no desk... not even any ornaments on the mantelpiece. Just a sofa and chairs, a huge Oriental rug, and the exhibits. It wasn’t a room for living in. Maybe Cafferty held meetings there, impressing with his collection. Rebus placed his fingers against the marble, hoping against hope that it would prove fake.
‘Here you go,’ Cafferty said, carrying two mugs into the room. Rebus took one from him.
‘Milk, no sugar,’ Cafferty informed him. Rebus nodded. ‘What are you smiling at?’
Rebus nodded towards the corner of the ceiling above the door, where a small white box was emitting a blinking red light. ‘You’ve got a burglar alarm,’ he explained.
‘So?’
‘So... that’s funny.’
‘You think nobody’d break in here? It’s not like there’s a big sign on the wall saying who I am...’
‘I suppose not,’ Rebus said, trying to be agreeable.
Cafferty was dressed in grey jogging bottoms and a V-neck sweater. He seemed tanned and relaxed; Rebus wondered if there was a sunbed somewhere on the premises. ‘Sit down,’ Cafferty said.