‘Did anyone remember to put a pair of ear-muffs in the fridge?’ he asked.
‘What?’ Quinn looked genuinely perplexed.
‘He means his ears are burning,’ Siobhan explained.
Quinn laughed. ‘I was just trying to find out a little bit more about you.’ She turned to Siobhan. ‘He won’t tell me anything.’
‘Don’t worry: I know all John’s dirty little secrets...’
As happened on a good night in the Ox, conversations ebbed and flowed, people joining in two discussions at once, bringing them together only for them to splinter again after a few minutes. There were bad jokes and worse puns, Caro Quinn becoming upset because ‘nobody seems to take anything seriously any more’. Someone else agreed that it was a dumbed-down culture, but Rebus whispered what he felt to be the truth into her ear:
‘We’re never more serious than when we seem to be joking...’
And later still, the back room now filled with noisy tables of drinkers, Rebus queued at the bar for more drinks and noticed that both Siobhan and Caro were missing. He frowned at one of the regulars, who angled his head towards the women’s toilet. Rebus nodded and paid for the drinks. He was having one tot of whisky before calling it a night. One tot of Laphroaig and a third... no, fourth cigarette... and that would be him. Soon as Caro came back, he’d ask if she wanted to share a taxi. Voices were rising from the top of the steps which led to the toilets. Not a full-blown fight as yet, but getting there. People were stopping their own conversations the better to appreciate the argument.
‘All I’m saying is, those people need jobs, same as anyone else!’
‘You don’t think the guards in the concentration camps said the same thing?’
‘Christ’s sake, you can’t compare the two!’
‘Why not? They’re both morally abhorrent...’
Rebus left the drinks where they were and started pushing through the throng. Because he’d recognised the voices now: Caro and Siobhan.
‘I’m just trying to say that there’s an economic argument,’ Siobhan was telling the whole bar. ‘Because whether you like it or not, Whitemire’s the only game in town if you happen to live in Banehall!’
Caro Quinn raised her eyes to heaven. ‘I can’t believe I’m hearing this.’
‘You had to hear it some time — not everyone out here in the real world can afford the moral high ground. There are single mums working in Whitemire. How easy is it going to be for them if you get your way?’
Rebus was at the top of the steps. The two women were inches apart, Siobhan slightly taller, Caro Quinn standing on tiptoe the better to lock eyes with her opponent.
‘Whoah there,’ Rebus said, trying for a placatory smile. ‘I think I can hear the drink talking.’
‘Don’t patronise me!’ Quinn growled. Then, to Siobhan: ‘What about Guantanamo Bay? I don’t suppose you see anything wrong with locking people up without the barest human rights?’
‘Listen to yourself, Caro — you’re all over the place! The point I was making was specific to Whitemire...’
Rebus looked at Siobhan and saw the whole working week raging within her; saw the need to let all that pressure out. He guessed the same could be said for Caro. The argument could have come at any time, involved any topic.
He should have seen it sooner; decided to try again.
‘Ladies...’
Now both of them glowered at him.
‘Caro,’ he said, ‘your taxi’s outside.’
The glower became a frown. She was trying to remember making the arrangement. He locked eyes with Siobhan, knew she could see he was lying. He watched as her shoulders relaxed.
‘We can pick this up again another time,’ he continued to cajole Caro. ‘But for tonight, I think we should call it a day...’
Somehow, he managed to manoeuvre Caro down the steps and through the crowd, miming the making of a phone call to Harry, who nodded back: a taxi would be ordered.
‘We’ll see you later, Caro,’ one of the regulars called.
‘Watch out for him,’ another warned her, jabbing Rebus in the chest.
‘Thanks, Gordon,’ Rebus said, slapping the hand away.
Outside, she sank to the pavement, feet by the roadside, head in her hands.
‘You okay?’ Rebus asked.
‘I think I lost it a bit in there.’ She took her hands away from her face, breathed the night air. ‘It’s not that I’m drunk or anything. I just can’t believe anyone could stick up for that place!’ She turned to stare at the door of the pub, as if considering rejoining the fray. ‘I mean... tell me you don’t feel that way.’ Now her eyes were on his. He shook his head.
‘Siobhan likes to play devil’s advocate,’ he explained, crouching down beside her.
It was Caro’s turn to shake her head. ‘That’s not it at all... she really believed what she was saying. She can see Whitemire’s good points.’ She looked at him to fathom his reaction to those words, words he guessed were quoted verbatim from Siobhan’s argument.
‘It’s just that she’s been spending some time in Banehall,’ Rebus continued to explain. ‘Not a lot of jobs going begging out that way...’
‘And that justifies the whole ugly enterprise?’
Rebus shook his head. ‘I’m not sure anything justifies Whitemire,’ he said quietly.
She took his hands in hers and squeezed them. He thought he could see the beginnings of tears in her eyes. They sat in silence like that for a few minutes, groups of revellers passing them on each side of the road, some of them staring, saying nothing. Rebus thought back to a time when he, too, had harboured ideals. They’d been knocked out of him early on: he’d joined the Army at sixteen. Well, not knocked out of him exactly, but replaced with other values, mostly less concrete, less passionate. By now, he was almost inured to the idea. Faced with someone like Mo Dirwan, his first instinct was to look for the con, the hypocrite, the money-making ego. And faced with someone like Caro Quinn...?
Initially, he’d thought her the typical spoilt middle-class conscience. All that affordable liberal suffering — so much more palatable than the real thing. But it took more than that to drive someone out to Whitemire day after day, sneered at by the workforce, unthanked by the inmates. It took a large measure of guts.
He could see, right now, the toll it was taking. She’d leaned her head against his shoulder again. Her eyes were still open, staring at the building across the narrow lane. It was a barber’s shop, complete with red-and-white striped pole. Red and white meaning blood and bandages, Rebus seemed to think, though he couldn’t remember why. And now there was the sound of a diesel engine chugging towards them, the taxi bathing them in its headlights.
‘Here’s the cab,’ Rebus said, helping Caro to her feet.
‘I still don’t remember asking for one,’ she confessed.
‘That’s because you didn’t,’ he said with a smile, holding open the door for her.
She told him ‘coffee’ meant just that: no euphemisms. He nodded, wanting to see her safely indoors. Then he reckoned he would walk all the way home, burn some of the alcohol out of his system.
Ayisha’s bedroom door was closed. They tiptoed past it and into the living room. The kitchen was through another doorway. While Caro filled the kettle, he took a look at her record collection — all vinyl, no CDs. There were albums he hadn’t seen in years: Steppenwolf, Santana, Mahavishnu Orchestra... Caro came back through holding a card.
‘This was on the table,’ she said, handing it to him. It was a thank-you for the rattle. ‘Decaf all right? It’s either that or mint tea...’
‘Decaf ’s fine.’
She made tea for herself, its aroma filling the small square room. ‘I like it at night,’ she said, staring out of the window. ‘Sometimes I work for a few hours...’