REBUS If you put on Sheena Easton I’m going over that balcony rail and I’m taking you with me.
CAFFERTY Stop blackening that woman’s name. Just ’cause you canny appreciate proper music.
REBUS Christ you’re a real fan.
CAFFERTY Always. Named my company after her. One of my companies. One of the many many wee cubby holes for cash you’ve never found yet John. Pick some music. I’ve got anything you like. Pick a soundtrack for your mood.
REBUS You won’t have it.
CAFFERTY I’ve got everything.
REBUS You won’t have this.
CAFFERTY Do you even know what Spotify is you fucking dinosaur?
REBUS Frampton, ‘Lines on My Face’.
CAFFERTY is typing it into his phone. Music starts.
CAFFERTY Straight through the surround system. All state of the art. Automatic recording of any noise in here too, just in case you were hoping there’d be no record of that conversation we just had. Fucking digital eh? Things you can do. And you lot still struggle away with audio tapes like it’s 1976.
REBUS We use audio tapes because you can’t doctor an audio tape without leaving a trace.
CAFFERTY It’s you that’s been leaving traces though. Eh John? (the music) What the fuck’s this shite?
He stabs at his phone, fast forwarding.
REBUS Leave it!
CAFFERTY A last request? Go on then. You want a soundtrack for defeat? I’ll indulge you.
He starts the track again, closer to the end of the song.
CAFFERTY Winners and losers. What it all comes down to. See, when I was a young man, fighting my way up, this was the prize, the view from the top of Edinburgh. Wankers born to their green acres or banking millions can walk into this. The likes of you and me, we need to fight for it, inch by bloody inch.
REBUS Aye, you’re a social revolutionary Cafferty.
CAFFERTY But see when a man like me gets it? Gets it all? Fucking unstoppable. ’Cause I’ve got the millions and I can look any of those soft bastards in the eye and let them see I could punch right through them and it wouldny bother me. I’m terrifying Rebus. I’m ancient power. The original stuff.
REBUS Original shite.
CAFFERTY Aw change the record Strawman. We’re done. You’re finished. Admit it.
REBUS And you really think, the whole purpose of my life was fighting you? Strictly supporting cast. Struggle to remember you most days.
CAFFERTY Aye you’ve a wheen o’ regrets right enough but no getting me behind bars was the big one. Fucking ironic if I put you there. But I’d rather have your girl on my keyring. That’ll be the real victory, the one that’ll sting you the most.
REBUS She’ll finish you in five seconds if you call her a girl to her face.
CAFFERTY We’ll see.
The music’s changed to the next track. It is HEATHER’S song ‘Show Me the Way’.
REBUS You can turn that up.
CAFFERTY Turn it off more like. Hate that one.
REBUS You know it?
CAFFERTY names it.
REBUS How do you know that one?
CAFFERTY I’m a complicated man Rebus. You never gave me credit for that.
CAFFERTY has stopped the music.
REBUS You want another track? ‘Sympathy for the Devil’?
CAFFERTY Tell me. Admit it, is there anything I could have done to you that would have hurt you worse than this? Turning Siobhan Clarke against you? Making her my snitch?
REBUS We don’t know what she’s going to decide.
CAFFERTY Aye we do. She won’t see Mordaunt walk. And she won’t see you go down.
REBUS No. You hit the bullseye. You win. Only thing worse would be if you’d gone after my daughter.
CAFFERTY Aye well, I wouldny do that.
REBUS You’ll bring the smell of blood to my doorstep though. Careless. They’ll get you for that Cafferty.
CAFFERTY What are we on about now?
REBUS The boy, up the stairs from me?
CAFFERTY Now that was a piece of pure cheek. If they knew I was in the building it was.
REBUS That wasny you?
CAFFERTY No it wasny me! Fucking amateurs. Come on John. Give me some credit.
REBUS So who was it?
CAFFERTY What do you care?
REBUS There’s a girl I need to find. She’s in trouble.
CAFFERTY Then she’s likely another lost wee thing John Rebus can’t save.
REBUS seems to slump.
CAFFERTY (sings, mocking) ‘Regrets, I’ve had a few’. More than a few eh John?
No answer.
CAFFERTY How is your daughter by the way? See, you’ve still got something as well as that sack of regrets. You’ve still got her.