Still harder to forget.
He’d grab an hour’s sleep, then be awake a couple of minutes at most before the knot was in his guts, reminding him of things he’d far rather forget.
Towards the close of the first day, he was in a bar on Lothian Road, and noticed Maisie and Tresa there, having a good time to themselves. They were at a table, and Rebus was at the bar. Pairs of men kept accosting them — to no avail. Then Maisie saw Rebus and got up, weaving towards him.
‘I see the period of mourning’s over,’ Rebus said.
She smiled. ‘Ach, Wee Shug was all right.’
‘Why don’t you tell me about it?’
Her eyes were only half open, heavy-lidded. ‘See,’ she began, ‘it wasn’t him I wanted, it was Tresa.’ She lit a cigarette for herself, using the onyx and gold lighter. ‘He came to see me the day he topped himself, told me what he was going to do. He gave me this lighter. Maybe he was looking for sympathy, or someone to talk him out of it. Daft bastard: he was doing just what I wanted. I wanted Tresa. I love her, really I do.’
Rebus remembered something she’d told him before, about Wee Shug: ‘He deserved what he got.’ He realised now that she hadn’t meant it vindictively; she’d meant he deserved whatever he was paid. She’d stuck him in prison, and he’d still come back to her, telling his story …
‘Was it rape?’ Rebus asked.
She shrugged. ‘Not really.’
He sucked on his cigarette. ‘Did you scream?’
Now she laughed. ‘The neighbours thought I did. They wanted to have heard it, otherwise there’d be no guilt. We Scots need a bit of guilt, don’t we? It gets us through the day.’
Then she planted a kiss on his cheek, and stood back to gaze at him, before making her way back to where Tresa McAnally sat waiting for her.
She was right about the guilt, he thought. But there was more to it — the neighbours hadn’t done anything at the time, and that was typically Edinburgh. People would rather not know, even if there was nothing there — they didn’t want to be told that their body (or their country) was rotten with cancer, but nor did they want to be told that it wasn’t. And in the end they just sat there, zugzwanged, while the likes of Charters and Sir lain Hunter got on with another game entirely.
In the middle of the second day, in the same rancid clothes as the day before, wreathed in a fug of nicotine and whisky, and in possession of a hangover he was trying to drink away, he met Kirstie Kennedy. Maybe it was halfway down Leith Walk, or at the top of Easter Road. She was shorter than him, and wanted to whisper in his ear. She didn’t need to stand on tiptoe to do it — he stooped under the weight of his skull and shoulders.
‘You should get straight,’ she told him. ‘Killing yourself’s no answer.’
He recalled her words later, when more or less seated on a bench in what purported to be a bar on Dalry Road. It had the dimensions and atmosphere of a bonded warehouse. He had just been speaking to the old thin man, the one who liked American history. Rebus had started to give him a history lesson which didn’t have much to do with Hopalong Cassidy, and the man shuffled off to another part of the bar, where Tartan Shoelaces stood protectively close to his erring wife Morag. Rebus had stood them all a couple of drinks when he’d come in.
Some young turks were playing pool, and Rebus tried to concentrate on their game, but found himself yawning noisily.
‘Not keeping you up, are we, pal?’ one of the players snarled.
‘Cut it out,’ the barmaid called to them. ‘He’s polis.’
‘He’s guttered, that’s what he is. Plain mortal.’
And then Kirstie’s words came back to him. You should get straight. Killing yourself’s no answer. Well, it depended what the question was. Get straight … straight, as in even. Someone sat down next to him. He tried turning his head to look at them.
‘Found you at last.’
‘Sammy?’
‘I got a phone call from somebody called Kirstie. She said she was worried.’
‘I’m fine. Nothing wrong with me.’
‘You’re a mess. What’s happened?’
‘The system, that’s what’s happened. You were right, Sammy. And I knew you were right, all the time I was saying you were wrong.’
She smiled at him. ‘Well, you were right, too. I shouldn’t have smuggled that note out for Derwood Charters.’
‘Don’t worry about it. Gerry Dip isn’t talking. We’ll pin him for the credit cards if nothing else. There’ll be no mention of Charters at the trial. You won’t be involved.’
‘But I am involved.’
Rebus shook his head. ‘Just keep your mouth quiet, that’s what everyone else is doing. Nothing’s going to happen.’
‘Is that what this is about?’
Rebus straightened his back. He didn’t like Sammy seeing him like this; that thought had only just struck him.
‘Look,’ he said, ‘whether you can put this behind you or not is down to you and your conscience. That’s what I’m saying.’ He got to his feet. ‘I’m going to clean up.’
He made it to the toilets. He didn’t want the pool players coming in for a ‘Dairy Discussion’, so wedged the door shut with paper towels while he stuck his head under the cold tap. He dried himself off, then was copiously sick into the bowl. Unjamming the door, he walked back into the bar.
‘Feeling better?’ Sammy asked him.
‘Ninety-five per cent to go,’ Rebus told her, taking her hand in his.
Who could he go to?
The Lord Advocate? Hardly: he was probably on pheasant-shooting terms with Hunter. He was the Establishment, and the Establishment would be protected at all costs. The chief constable? But he was retiring, and wouldn’t want anything to tarnish his last few months in office. The media perhaps, Mairie Henderson? It was the story of the year, except there was no proof. It would be the word of an embittered policeman against … well, everybody.
He’d spent time steeping in the bath at home, then showering. Sammy had made him drink a couple of litres of orange juice, and about a packet of ‘Resolve’.
‘I can’t forget what I did,’ she told him quietly.
‘Maybe you got my guilt complex along with my genes,’ he told her.
After Sammy had gone back to Patience’s, Rebus had called Gill Templer. He needed advice, he told her. They arranged to meet at her health club. She had a sauna and massage booked; they could talk in the bar after that.
There was a view from the bar’s first-floor window down on to a quiet New Town street. All around Rebus sat healthy people, tanned and smiling with good teeth and trim confidence. He knew he fitted in like a paedophile in a classroom. He had trashed his bender clothes, just trashed them, and was wearing the gear he’d bought for the trip to Sir Iain’s.
Gill came in and nodded towards him, then went to the bar and bought herself something non-alcoholic. Her skin glowed as she came over to his table. ‘You look rough,’ she said.
‘You should have seen me earlier. You could have sanded doors with me.’
She picked a sliver of orange out of her glass and sucked on it. ‘So what’s the big mystery?’
He told her the whole story. She started to look uncomfortable halfway through, the look changing by degrees to simple bemusement.
‘I’ll take another orange juice, if you’re buying,’ she said when he’d finished.
She needed time to think, so Rebus didn’t hurry the barman. But when he came back to the table, she still didn’t have anything to say.
‘See, Gill, what I need is the nod on a search warrant, so I can go into Gunner’s house and seize the file and the tape. We could get one from a JP — there are enough councillors left to choose from.’