‘Hard to believe.’ She was thoughtful. ‘Or maybe not so hard.’ She walked on.
He caught her up. ‘How did Peter get on with his father?’
‘How do fathers and sons usually get on?’
‘Did they see much of one another?’
‘I didn’t dissuade Peter from visiting Roddy.’
‘That doesn’t exactly answer my question.’
‘It’s the only answer I can give.’
‘How did Peter react when he heard his father was dead?’
She stopped, swung towards him. ‘What is it you’re trying to say?’
‘Funny, I’m wondering what it is you’re trying not to say.’
She folded her arms. ‘Well, that puts us at somewhat of an impasse, wouldn’t you agree?’
‘I’m just asking if they got on, that’s all. Because Peter’s last song about his father is called “The Final Reproof”, and that doesn’t exactly conjure up harmony and good humour.’
They were at the top of the path. Ahead of them stood the rows of caravans, vacant windows awaiting warmer weather, the arrival of bottled gas and released spirits.
‘You spent your holidays here?’ Billie Collins asked, looking around. ‘Poor you.’ She was seeing uniformity and the brutal North Sea, cold facts separated from anecdote.
‘“The Final Reproof”,’ she said to herself. ‘It’s a powerful line, isn’t it?’ She looked at him. ‘I spent years trying to understand the clan, Inspector. Don’t vex yourself. Try something feasible.’
‘Such as?’
‘Conjure up the past and make it work this time.’
‘I might have a round table in my living room,’ he said. ‘That doesn’t necessarily mean I’m Merlin.’
He took the coastal road south to Kirkcaldy. Stopped for lunch in Lundin Links. One of the regulars at the Oxford Bar, his father owned the Old Manor Hotel. Rebus had been promising a visit for a while. He ate East Neuk fish soup followed by the catch of the day: local fish, simply cooked, washed down with mineral water, and tried not to dwell on the past — anyone’s past. Afterwards, George gave him the tour. From the main bar, the scenery was stunning: a golf links with the sea and horizon beyond. In a sudden shaft of sunlight, Bass Rock looked like a nugget of white gold.
‘Do you play?’ George asked.
‘What?’ Rebus still gazing out of the window.
‘Golf.’
Rebus shook his head. ‘Tried it when I was a kid. Hopeless.’ He managed to turn his head away from the view. ‘How can you drink in the Ox with this as the alternative?’
‘I only drink at night, John. And after dark, you can’t see any of this.’
It was a fair point. Darkness could make you forget what was in front of your face. Darkness would swallow the caravan site, the old putting green, and St Rule’s Tower. It would swallow crimes and grieving and remorse. If you gave yourself to the darkness, you might start to make out shapes invisible to others, but without being able to define them: the movement behind a curtain, the shadows in an alleyway.
‘See how Bass Rock is shining?’ George said.
‘Yes.’
‘It’s the sun reflecting off all the bird shit.’ He got up. ‘Sit there and I’ll fetch us some coffee.’
So Rebus sat by the window, the glorious winter’s day set out before him — bird shit and all — while his thoughts churned and churned in the dark. What was waiting for him in Edinburgh? Would Lorna want to see him? When George came back with the coffee, he told Rebus there was a bedroom vacant upstairs.
‘Only you look like you could use a few hours off.’
‘Christ, man, don’t tempt me,’ Rebus said. He took his coffee black.
18
The hospital corridors were all rubber-soled efficiency. Nurses darted in and out of doorways. Doctors consulted clipboards as they made their rounds. No beds here, just waiting rooms, examination rooms, offices. Derek Linford disliked hospitals. He’d watched his mother die in one. His father was still alive, but they didn’t talk much; the occasional phone call. The first time Derek had owned up to voting Tory, his father had disowned him. That was the kind of man he was: headstrong, full of erroneous grievances. His son had sneered at him: ‘How can you be working class? You haven’t worked in twenty years.’ It was true: disability benefit for a mining accident. A limp that would appear at convenient times, but never when he was on his way to meet old pals at the pub. And Derek’s mother, slogging her guts out in a factory until the final illness took her.
Derek Linford had succeeded not in spite of his background but because of it, each rung he climbed another jibe at his father, another way of letting his mother know he was all right. The old man — not so old really; fifty-eight — still lived in the council semi. Linford would drive past it occasionally, slowing to a crawl, not really caring if he was seen. A neighbour might wave, half-recognising the face. Would they pass the news on to his father? I see young Derek was round the other day. He still keeps in touch then...? He wondered how his father would react: with a grunt most likely, turning back to his sports pages, his quick crossword. When Derek was a teenager, doing well in all his subjects, his father would make show of asking him for the answers to crossword clues. He’d rack his brains, get them wrong... It took Derek a while to realise the old man was making them up. Seven letters, umbrella, c something p. Derek would have a go, then his father would sigh and say something like, ‘No, you looper, it’s capulet.’
No such word in the dictionary.
Derek’s mother hadn’t died in this hospital. She’d held his hand, her breathing ragged. She couldn’t speak, but her eyes told him she wasn’t sorry to go. Worn out, like some machine run to death. And like a machine she’d lacked care, lacked maintenance. The old man standing at the foot of the bed, flowers in his arms: carnations picked from a neighbour’s garden. And books he’d brought from the library, books she could no longer read.
Was it any wonder he hated hospitals? Yet in his early days on the force he’d been made to spend long hours in them, waiting for victims and aggressors to be treated, waiting to take statements from patients and staff. Blood and dressings, swollen faces, twisted limbs. He’d watched an ear being stitched, had witnessed grey-white bone protruding from a shattered leg. Crash victims; muggings; rapes.
Was it any wonder?
Finally, he found the family room. It was supposed to be a quiet space for families who were ‘awaiting news of a loved one’, as the receptionist had put it. But as he pushed open the door, he was assailed by the death rattle of vending machines, a cloud of cigarette smoke, and the glare of daytime TV. Two middle-aged women were puffing away. Their eyes fixed on him for a moment, then returned to the chat show.
‘Mrs Ure?’
The women looked up again. ‘You don’t look like a doctor.’
‘I’m not,’ he told the speaker. ‘Are you Mrs Ure?’
‘We’re both Mrs Ure. Sisters-in-law.’
‘Mrs Archie Ure?’
The other woman, who hadn’t spoken yet, stood up. ‘That’s me.’ She saw she was holding a cigarette, stubbed it out.
‘My name’s Detective Inspector Derek Linford. I’d been hoping to have a word with your husband.’
‘Get in the queue,’ the sister-in-law said.
‘I was sorry to hear... Is it serious?’
‘He’s had trouble with his heart before,’ Archie Ure’s wife said. ‘Never stopped him working for what he believed in.’
Linford nodded. He’d done his reading, knew all about Archie Ure. Head of the council’s planning executive, a councillor for more than two decades. He was Old Labour, popular with those who knew him, a thorn in the side of some ‘reformers’. A year or so back he’d written several bitter articles for the Scotsman, had got into trouble with the party as a result. Chastened, he’d applied for an MSP post, the first to do so. He probably hadn’t allowed for the possibility of an upstart like Roddy Grieve beating him for the nomination. He’d worked ceaselessly during the ’79 campaign. Twenty years later, his reward was a runner-up spot for a constituency, and the promise of a place near the top of Labour’s top-up list.