‘And that’s a bad thing?’
She gave a loud sigh, which rumbled like static down the line. ‘Look, all I’m trying to say... We don’t just work together, do we? There’s more to us than that — we’re... pals.’
Rebus smiled to himself, smiled at the pause before ‘pals’. Had she considered ‘mates’, discarding it because of its other, more awkward meaning?
‘And as a pal,’ he said, ‘you don’t want to see me make a bad decision?’
Siobhan was silent for a moment, long enough for Rebus to drain the mug. ‘Why are you so interested in her anyway?’ she asked.
‘Maybe because she is different.’
‘You mean because she holds to a set of woolly ideals?’
‘You don’t know her well enough to be able to say that.’
‘I think I know the type.’
Rebus closed his eyes, rubbed the bridge of his nose, thinking: that’s pretty much what I’d have said before this case came along. ‘We’re back on thin ice, Shiv. Why don’t you get some sleep? I’ll call you in the morning.’
‘You think I’m going to change my mind, don’t you?’
‘That’s up to you.’
‘I can assure you I’m not.’
‘Your prerogative. We’ll talk tomorrow.’
She paused so long, Rebus feared she’d already drifted off. But then: ‘What’s that you’re listening to?’
‘Dick Gaughan.’
‘He sounds angry about something.’
‘That’s just his style.’ Rebus had taken out the slip of paper with the torch’s details.
‘A Scottish trait maybe?’
‘Maybe.’
‘Good night, then, John.’
‘Before you go... if you didn’t phone to apologise, then why exactly did you phone?’
‘I didn’t want us falling out.’
‘And are we falling out?’
‘I hope not.’
‘So you weren’t just checking that I was safely tucked up on my lonesome?’
‘I’m going to ignore that.’
‘Night, Shiv. Sleep tight.’
He put down the receiver, rested his head against the back of the chair and closed his eyes again.
Not mates... just pals.
Days six and seven
Saturday/Sunday
20
Saturday morning the first thing he did was call Siobhan’s number. When her machine picked up, he left a brief message — ‘This is John, keeping that promise from last night... talk to you soon’ — then tried her mobile, and was forced to leave one there, too.
After breakfast, he dug in the hall cupboard, and in the boxes beneath his bed, and emerged with dust and cobwebs clinging to him, clasping packets of photographs to his chest. He knew he didn’t have many family snaps — his ex-wife had taken most of them with her. But he did retain a few photos she hadn’t felt able to claim right to — members of his family, his mother and father, uncles and aunts. Again, there weren’t many of these. He reckoned either his brother had the majority, or they’d been lost over time. Years back, his daughter Sammy would want to play with them, staring at them for long periods, running fingers over their ribbed edges, touching sepia faces, studio poses. She would ask who people were, and Rebus would turn the photo over, hoping to find clues pencilled on the back, then offering a shrug.
His grandfather — his father’s father — had arrived in Scotland from Poland. Rebus didn’t know why he’d emigrated. It had been before the rise of fascism, so he could only guess that it had been for economic reasons. He’d been a young man, and single, marrying a woman from Fife a year later or thereabouts. Rebus was sketchy on that whole period of his family’s history. He didn’t think he’d ever really asked his father. If he had, then his father either hadn’t wanted to answer or simply didn’t know. There could have been things his grandfather hadn’t wanted to remember, far less share and discuss.
Rebus held a photo now. He thought it was his grandfather: a middle-aged man, thinning black hair combed close to the skull, a wry smile on his face. He was dressed in Sunday best. It was a studio shot, showing a painted background of hayfield and bright sky. On the back was printed the photographer’s address in Dunfermline. Rebus turned the photo over again. He was searching for something of himself in his grandfather — the way the facial muscles worked, or the posture when at rest. But the man was a stranger to him. His whole family history was a collection of questions asked too late: photos with no names attached, no hint of year or provenance. Blurry, smiling mouths, the pinched faces of workers and their families. Rebus considered his own remaining family: daughter Sammy; brother Michael. He phoned them infrequently, usually after one drink too many. Maybe he’d call both of them later on, making sure he hadn’t been drinking first.
‘I don’t know anything about you,’ he said to the man in the photograph. ‘I can’t even be a hundred per cent sure that you are who I think you are...’ He wondered if he had any relatives in Poland. There could be whole villages of them, a clan of cousins who would speak no English but be pleased to see him all the same. Maybe Rebus’s grandfather hadn’t been the only one to leave. The family might well have spread to America and Canada, or east to Australia. Some could have ended up assassinated by the Nazis, or aiding that self-same cause. Untold histories, criss-crossing with Rebus’s own life...
He thought again of the refugees and asylum-seekers, the economic migrants. The mistrust and resentment they brought with them, the way tribes feared anything new, anything from outside the camp’s tight confines. Maybe that explained Siobhan’s reaction to Caro Quinn, Caro not part of the gang. Multiply that mistrust and you got a situation like Knoxland.
Rebus didn’t blame Knoxland itself: the estate was a symptom rather than anything else. He realised he wasn’t going to glean anything from these old photographs, representing as they did his own lack of roots. Besides, he had a trip to take.
Glasgow had never been his favourite place. It seemed all teeming concrete and high-rise. He got lost there, and always had trouble finding landmarks to navigate by. There were areas of the city which felt as if they could swallow up Edinburgh wholesale. The people were different, too; he couldn’t say what it was exactly — accent or mind-set. But the place made him uncomfortable.
Even with an A to Z, he managed to take an apparent wrong turning almost as soon as he left the motorway. He’d come off too soon, and found himself not far from Barlinnie prison, working his way slowly towards the centre of the city, through a sludge of Saturday shopping traffic. It didn’t help that the fine mist had developed into rain, blurring street names and road signs. Mo Dirwan had said that Glasgow was the murder capital of Europe; Rebus wondered if the traffic system might have something to do with it.
Dirwan lived in Calton, between the Necropolis and Glasgow Green. It was a pleasant enough area, with plenty of green spaces and mature trees. Rebus found the house, but there was nowhere to park nearby. He did a circuit, and eventually ended up jogging the hundred yards from the car to the front door. It was a solidly built red-stone semi, with a small front garden. The door was new: glazed with leaded diamonds of frosted glass. Rebus rang the bell and waited, only to find that Mo wasn’t home. His wife, however, knew who Rebus was and tried to pull him inside.
‘I really just wanted to check he’s okay,’ Rebus argued.
‘You must wait for him. If he finds out I pushed you away...’
Rebus glanced down at the grip she had on his arm. ‘Doesn’t look like you’re doing much pushing.’