She relented, smiling in embarrassment. She was probably ten or fifteen years younger than her husband, with lustrous waves of black hair framing her face and neck. Her make-up had been applied liberally, but with great care, turning her eyes dark and her mouth crimson. ‘I am sorry,’ she told Rebus.
‘Don’t be, it’s nice to feel wanted. Will Mo be back soon?’
‘I’m not sure. He had to go to Rutherglen. There has been some trouble recently.’
‘Oh?’
‘Nothing serious, we hope, just gangs of young men fighting each other.’ She shrugged. ‘I’m sure the Asians are just as much to blame as the others.’
‘So what’s Mo doing there?’
‘Attending a residents’ meeting.’
‘You know where it’s being held?’
‘I have the address.’ She motioned indoors, Rebus nodding to let her know she should retrieve it. She left no hint of perfume in her wake. He stood just inside the doorway, sheltering from the rain. It was still a fine, persistent drizzle. There was a word in Scots for it — ‘smirr’. He wondered if other cultures had similar vocabularies. When she returned and handed him the slip of paper, their fingers brushed and Rebus felt a momentary spark.
‘Static,’ she explained, nodding towards the hall carpet. ‘I keep telling Mo we need to change it to all-wool.’
Rebus nodded and thanked her, jogging back to his car. He checked in his A to Z for the address she’d given him. It looked like a fifteen-minute drive, most of it south on the Dalmarnock Road. Parkhead wasn’t far away, but Celtic weren’t at home today, meaning less chance of finding his route closed or diverted. The rain, however, had forced shoppers and travellers into their vehicles. Ignoring his map for a few minutes, he found that he’d managed to take yet another wrong turn and was heading for Cambuslang. Pulling over, prepared to wait until he could execute a U-turn, he was startled when the back doors were yanked open and two men fell in.
‘Good on ye,’ one of them said. He smelled of beer and cigarettes. His hair was a mess of soaked curls, which he shook free of raindrops much as a dog would.
‘What the hell is this?’ Rebus asked, voice rising. He’d turned in his seat, the better to let both men examine the expression on his face.
‘You no’ our minicab?’ the other man said. His nose was like a strawberry, breath soured and teeth blackened by dark rum.
‘Bloody right I’m not!’ Rebus shouted.
‘Sorry, pal, sorry... genuine misunderstanding.’
‘Aye, no offence meant,’ his companion added. Rebus looked out of the passenger-side window, saw the pub they’d just raced from. Breeze blocks and a solid door — no windows. They were preparing to exit the car.
‘Not headed to Wardlawhill by any chance, gents?’ Rebus asked, voice suddenly calmer.
‘We’d usually hike it, but wi’ the rain an’ that...’
Rebus nodded. ‘Tell you what, then... how about I drop you at the community centre there?’
The men looked at one another, then at him. ‘And how much do you plan to charge?’
Rebus waved the mistrust aside. ‘Just playing the Good Samaritan.’
‘You going to try and convert us or something?’ The first man’s eyes had narrowed to slits.
Rebus laughed. ‘Don’t worry, I don’t want to “show you the way” or anything.’ He paused. ‘In fact, quite the opposite.’
‘Eh?’
‘I want you to show me.’
By the end of the short twisty drive through the housing scheme, the three were on first-name terms, Rebus asking if neither of his passengers had thought to attend the residents’ meeting.
‘Best keep your head down, that’s always been my philosophy,’ he was told.
The rain had eased by the time they arrived outside the single-storey building. Like the pub, it, too, seemed to have no windows on first appraisal. However, it was just that they were tucked away high on the front elevation, almost at the eaves. Rebus shook hands with his guides.
‘Getting you in here’s one thing...’ they offered with a laugh. Rebus nodded and smiled. He, too, had been wondering if he’d ever find the motorway back to Edinburgh. Neither passenger had asked why a visitor might be interested in the residents’ meeting. Rebus put this down to that philosophy of life again: keeping your head down. If you didn’t ask questions, no one could accuse you of sticking your nose in where it wasn’t wanted. In some ways it was sound advice, but he’d never lived like that and never would.
There were figures huddled around the building’s main entrance doors. Having waved goodbye to his passengers, Rebus parked as close to those doors as he could, worrying that the meeting had already broken up, meaning he’d missed Mo Dirwan. But as he approached, he saw he’d been wrong. A middle-aged white man in a suit, tie and black coat was holding a leaflet out to him. The man’s head was shaven, gleaming with droplets of rainwater. His face looked pale and doughy, the neck composed of rolls of fat.
‘BNP,’ he said in what sounded to Rebus like a London accent. ‘Let’s make Britain’s streets safe again.’ The front of the leaflet showed a photo of an elderly woman, looking terrified as a blur of coloured youths charged towards her.
‘All pictures posed by models?’ Rebus guessed, mashing the dampened leaflet in his fist. The other men on the scene, keeping in the background but flanking the man in the suit, were considerably younger and scruffier, wearing what had almost become rabble chic: trainers, jogging bottoms and windcheaters, baseball caps low on their foreheads. Their jackets were zipped tight, so that the bottom half of each face disappeared into the collar. It meant they were harder to identify from photographs.
‘All we want is fair rights for British people.’ The word ‘British’ almost came out as a bark. ‘Britain for the British — you tell me what’s wrong with that.’
Rebus dropped the leaflet and kicked it aside. ‘I get the feeling your definition might be a bit narrower than most.’
‘You won’t know unless you give us a try.’ The man’s lower jaw jutted forward. Christ, Rebus thought, and this is him trying to be nice... It was like watching a gorilla’s first attempt at flower-arranging. From inside, he could hear a mixture of handclaps and boos.
‘Sounds lively,’ Rebus said, pulling open the doors.
There was a reception area, with another set of double doors leading to the main hall. There was no stage as such, but someone had provided a PA system, meaning that whoever held the microphone should have the advantage. But some in the audience had other ideas. Men were standing up, trying to shout down opponents, fingers stabbing the air. Women were on their feet, too, screaming with equal gusto. There were rows of chairs, most of them full. Rebus saw that these chairs faced a trestle table at which sat five glum-looking figures. He guessed this table comprised a mix of local worthies. Mo Dirwan was not among them, but Rebus saw him nevertheless. He was standing up in the front row, flapping his arms as if trying to emulate flight, but actually gesturing for the audience to settle. His hand was still bandaged, the pink sticking plaster still covering his chin.
One of the worthies, however, had had enough. He flung some paperwork into a satchel, slung it over his shoulder, and marched towards the exit. More booing erupted. Rebus couldn’t tell if this was because he was chickening out, or because he’d been forced to withdraw.
‘You’re a wanker, McCluskey,’ someone called out. This failed to clarify things for Rebus. But now others were following their leader. A small, plump woman at the table held the mike, but her innate good manners and reasonable tone of voice were never going to restore order. Rebus saw that the audience comprised a melting-pot: it wasn’t white faces on one side of the room, coloureds on the other. The age range was mixed, too. One woman had brought her baby-stroller with her. Another was waving her walking-cane wildly in the air, causing those in the vicinity to duck. Half a dozen uniformed police officers had been trying to melt into the background, but now one of them was on his walkie-talkie, almost certainly summoning reinforcements. Some kids had decided that the uniforms should be the focus of their own complaints. The two groups stood only eight or ten feet apart, and that gap was closing with each moment that passed.