Cafferty looked at him. ‘I know you’re going after Barry Hutton. Think you’ll get a result?’
‘It’s been known to happen.’
Cafferty chuckled. ‘Something I know to my cost.’ He started walking again. The only things visible in the flower beds were roses, their branches clipped back, looking brittle and stunted but with the promise of renewal hibernating within. That’s us, Rebus thought, thorns and all. ‘Morag died a year back,’ Cafferty was saying. Morag: his wife.
‘Yes, I heard.’
‘They said I could go to the funeral.’ Cafferty kicked at a stone, sent it flying into a flower bed. ‘I didn’t go. The guys in the Bar-L, they thought that made me hard.’ A wry smile. ‘What do you think?’
‘You were scared.’
‘Maybe I was at that.’ He looked at Rebus again. ‘Bryce Callan isn’t as forgiving as I am, Strawman. You managed to put me away, and you’re still walking around. But now Bryce knows you’re after Barry, he’s got to have you put out of the game.’
‘Then he goes away, too.’
‘He’s not that stupid. Remember: where there’s no body, there’s no crime.’
‘I’ll just disappear?’
Cafferty was nodding. ‘Whether you get your precious result or not.’ He stopped walking. ‘Is that what you want?’
Rebus stopped, looked around as if enjoying the view for the last time. ‘What’s it to you?’
‘Maybe I like having you around.’
‘Why?’
‘Who else cares about me?’ Cafferty chuckled again. In the distance, Rebus could see Cafferty’s car — the grey Jag — the Weasel standing beside it, not quite daring to rest against its paintwork. Shuffling his feet in an effort to defrost them.
‘Speaking of no body, no crime... where’s Rab Hill?’
Cafferty looked at him. ‘Yes, I heard you’d been asking.’
‘It’s Rab that has cancer, not you. He went for tests, came back with the news and told his good friend.’ Rebus paused. ‘You switched X-rays somehow.’
‘NHS,’ Cafferty said. ‘Don’t pay those doctors half what they’re worth.’
‘I’m going to prove it, you know that.’
‘You’re a cop with a vendetta. Not much a poor citizen like me can do about that.’
‘Maybe I could ease up a little,’ Rebus said.
‘In return for...?’
‘Testify against Bryce Callan. You were there in ’79, you know what was going on.’
Cafferty shook his head. ‘That’s not the way to play it.’
Rebus stared at him. ‘Then what is?’
Cafferty ignored the question. ‘It’s a cold place this, isn’t it?’ he said instead. ‘When they bury me, I want it to be somewhere warm.’
‘You’ll be going somewhere warm,’ Rebus told him. ‘Might even be a bit too warm.’
‘And you’re on the side of the angels, eh?’ They were heading for the car now. Rebus stopped; his Saab was parked the other side of the chapel. Cafferty didn’t check; he half waved and kept on walking. ‘Next funeral I go to will probably be yours, Strawman. Anything you want put on your headstone?’
‘How about “Died peacefully in his sleep, aged ninety”?’
Cafferty laughed with the confidence of the immortal.
Rebus turned, retraced his steps. He was out in the open, and his shoulders jerked when he heard a sharp report, but it was only the Weasel slamming shut the door of the Jag. Rebus walked round to the front of the chapel, opened the door and stepped inside. There was an anteroom, a big book of remembrance open on a marble-topped table. A red silk marker kept it open at the day’s date on the previous year: eight names, meaning eight cremations that day, eight grieving families who might or might not turn up to pay their respects. No... that wasn’t right. Not the date of cremation... these were dates of death. He kept the place but started at the back of the book, letting the as-yet-empty sheets slide through his fingers. There’d be names in there eventually. If Cafferty was right, his wouldn’t be among them: he’d just disappear. He didn’t know how he felt about that. Didn’t feel anything really. Today’s date: no names entered as yet. But cars had been pulling away as he’d been arriving, a teenager peering out at him from the back seat of a limousine, black tie knotted awkwardly at the throat.
Yesterday: no names; too soon. Day before that: none. Then it was back to the weekend. Friday: nine names — the cremations had probably taken place yesterday. Rebus looked down the list, neat entries made in black ink by someone with a gift for calligraphy. Fountain pen: thick downstrokes, tapering flicks. Dates of birth, maiden names...
Bingo.
Robert Wallace Hill. Known as Rab.
He’d died the previous Friday. The funeral had probably taken place yesterday, the ashes scattered over the garden of remembrance: the reason Cafferty had come here, paying his respects to the man who’d been his ticket out of jail. Rab, his body riddled with cancer. Rebus saw it all now. Rab, with his release date coming, the cancer a cruel blow. Taking the news back to the Bar-L, confiding in Cafferty, who’d feigned illness, gone for tests himself, arranging the switch of records, some bribe or threat to a doctor. Rab pumped full of painkillers, his release date almost coinciding with Cafferty’s. Doubtless paid welclass="underline" money for a decent send-off, an envelope thick with banknotes finding its way to any family left behind.
Rebus somehow doubted Cafferty would return to the chapel a year down the line. He’d have more important things on his mind. He’d be back in business. And Rab? Well, hadn’t Cafferty said it himself: a time for looking forward, not back. Christmas was on its way. 1999 would bring the Scottish Parliament back to Edinburgh. In the spring, they’d flatten the old brewery, start constructing the glass boxes which would eventually house the MSPs. Glass walls: the theme was openness, accountability. Okay, till then they’d be meeting in a church hall on The Mound, but even so...
Even so. So what?
‘And then you die,’ he muttered to himself, turning to leave the chapel.
He got on his mobile to the mortuary, asked Dougie who’d done the autopsy on Rab Hill. The answer: Curt and Stevenson. He thanked Dougie, punched in Curt’s number. He was thinking of Rab’s body: ashes now. Where there’s no body, there’s no crime. But there’d be the autopsy report, and when it showed up the cancer, Rebus would have evidence enough to have Cafferty re-examined.
‘It was an overdose,’ Curt explained. ‘He’d been a user in prison, got a bit too greedy when he came out.’
‘But when you opened him up, what else did you find?’ Rebus was holding the phone so tightly, his wrist was hurting.
‘Family were against it, John.’
Rebus blinked. ‘A young man... suspicious death.’
‘Some religious thing... church I’d never heard of. Their lawyer put it in writing.’
I’ll bet he did, Rebus thought. ‘There was no autopsy?’
‘We did as much as we could. Chemical tests were clear enough...’
Rebus cut the call, screwed shut his eyes. A few flakes of snow fell on his lashes. He was slow to blink them away.
No body, no evidence. He shivered suddenly, remembering Cafferty’s words: Yes, I heard you’d been asking. Asking about Rab Hill. Cafferty had known... known that Rebus knew. So easy to administer an overdose to a sick man. So easy for someone like Cafferty, someone with so much to lose.
41
The few days running up to Hogmanay were a nightmare. Lorna had sold her story to a tabloid — Model’s Night-Time Romp With Murder Case Cop. Rebus’s name hadn’t been mentioned... not yet.