10 Great Rebus Novels (John Rebus) (375 page)

‘Well?’

‘Suspicious death, sir. Up on Salisbury Crags.’

‘How suspicious?’

‘First reports say very.’

The Farmer pinched the bridge of his nose. ‘This is one of those weeks that seem to last a fortnight.’

‘Thing is, sir, from the description, I’d say we have an ID.’

He looked at her, hearing something in her tone. ‘Someone we know?’

Clarke was looking towards Rebus. ‘I’d say so, sir.’

‘This isn’t a parlour game, DC Clarke.’

She cleared her throat. ‘I think it might be Darren Rough.’

‘Start any time you’re ready.’

Jim Stevens’ room was beginning to look messy and lived-in, just the way he liked. But they weren’t in Stevens’ room, they were in Oakes’s, and it looked like its occupant hadn’t spent any time there at all. There were two chairs at a small circular table by the window. The complimentary book of matches still sat folded open in its ashtray. Two magazines of interest to visitors to Edinburgh sat beside it, and lying on top of them was the guests’ comment card, yet to be filled in, or even perused.

Most people, Stevens guessed, even people who’d spent a third of their life enjoying the facilities of a foreign country’s prison service, would do what he’d done in his own room: explore it, try out and touch everything, flick through every piece of literature.

But not Cary Oakes, who now cleared his throat.

‘Aren’t you curious about what Rebus wanted?’

Stevens looked at him. ‘I just want this finished.’

‘Lost the old vigour and vim, eh, Jim?’

‘You have that effect on people.’

‘Tracked down any of my old teenage gang?’ Oakes laughed at the look on Stevens’ face. ‘Thought not. Probably scattered to the four winds by now.’

‘Last time we broke off,’ Stevens said coldly, checking the spools were turning, ‘you were crossing America.’

Oakes nodded. ‘I got to a place called, believe it or not, Opportunity, a ratty little truck-stop on the Washington-Idaho border. That’s where I met the trucker, Fat Boy. I
never learned his real name; I think even the ID he carried was fake.’

‘What name was on the ID?’

Oakes ignored the question. ‘Fat Boy had these notions about a government conspiracy, told me he kept his home booby-trapped whenever he was working long-distance. He said truckers got a real good view of the world – by which he meant the USA; that’s as far as his world stretched – a real good view from behind the wheel of a truck. He knew a trucker would make a damned good President.

‘So that was Fat Boy. My introduction to him. Opportunity, Washington. Lots of names like that in the States. Lots of Fat Boys, too. We got talking about murder. The radio was on, and every other station had news flashes about unlawful killing. He said the word “unlawful” was a misnomer. There was “wrong” killing and “right” killing, and which was which was down to the individual, not the lawmakers.’

‘And what kind did you do?’

Oakes didn’t like his flow being interrupted. ‘I’m talking about Fat Boy, not me.’

‘How long did you travel with him?’ Stevens was trying to keep the chronology right.

‘Three, four days. We headed south to make a delivery, then back up on to 1-90.’

‘What was he carrying?’

‘Electrical goods. He worked for General Electric. Meant he travelled all over. He said that was good, considering his hobby. His hobby was killing people.’ Oakes looked to Stevens. ‘It was supposed to unnerve me, him saying something like that while we’re travelling fifty-five on an interstate. Maybe if it had, that would have been it: he’d have tried skinning me. But I just looked at him, told him that was interesting.’ A laugh. ‘Mild understatement, right? Someone tells you they’re a serial killer and you say “Mm, that’s interesting.”’

‘But you believed him?’

‘After a while, yes. And I thought: all this stuff he’s telling me, no way is he letting me go. Every time we stopped, I thought he was about to whack me.’

‘You were ready for him?’ Stevens was staring at Oakes, trying to gauge how much of the story was true. Did it relate in some way to the relationship between Oakes and the reporter himself?

‘You know the strange part? I just let myself relax into it. Like, if he was going to kill me, OK, that’s what was going to happen. It was as if I didn’t care; I could have died right then, and it would have been poetic justice or something.’

‘Did he kill anyone while you were on the road?’

‘No.’

‘But he convinced you he wasn’t lying?’

‘You think he was lying, Jim?’

‘When they arrested you, did you tell the police about him?’

‘Why the hell would I do that?’

‘Might have scored you some points.’

‘Truth is, I never thought about it.’

‘But he made you think about killing?’

‘He knew what he was talking about. I mean, you can always tell when someone’s making it up, can’t you?’ Oakes beamed a smile. ‘“Can the world really be like this?” I remember asking myself that as I listened to him. And the answer came back: yes, of course. Why should it be any different?’

‘You’re saying Fat Boy made you feel all right about killing?’

‘Am I?’

‘Then what are you saying?’

‘Just telling you my story, Jim. It’s up to you how you read it.’

‘What about in jail, Cary? All that time to yourself, thoughts that you’re thinking . . .?’

‘Jim, you get no time to yourself. There’s always noise, disruption, routine. You sit there trying to think, they send you for psychiatric evaluation.’ Oakes took a final sip of orange juice. ‘But I see what you’re getting at.’ He examined his empty glass. ‘How’s the background check going, by the way? Spoken to anyone at Walla Walla?’ Turned the empty glass in his hand. ‘Take away the juice and the ice, you’re left with a lethal weapon.’ He pretended to smash the glass against the edge of the table, and then laughed a laugh which sent a shiver right along Jim Stevens’ arms.

Climbing back up Salisbury Crags, Rebus kept his hands in his pockets and his thoughts to himself. He knew what the Farmer was thinking. This morning, Darren Rough had been in Rebus’s flat. As far as they knew, Rebus was the last person to have seen him alive.

And Rebus had been his tormentor, his nemesis. The Farmer wouldn’t make anything of it, but others might: Jane Barbour; Rough’s social worker.

Radical Road was a stony footpath which led around the Crags. You could start near the student residences at Pollock Halls and end up at Holyrood. Along the way, you had the city skyline for company, stretching from the south and west to the city centre and beyond. All spires and crenellations. Manfred Mann: ‘Cubist Town’. With Greenfield almost directly below.

‘You picked him up here, didn’t you?’ the Farmer asked as they walked.

Rebus shook his head. ‘St Margaret’s Loch.’ Which lay around a long curve in the rock and down an impossibly steep bank. ‘Tell you what, though,’ he added. ‘Jim Margolies jumped from up there.’ And he pointed with his finger, way up to where the rock-face ended in something akin to a clifftop. People took their dogs for walks across the plateau, not straying too close to the edge. Edinburgh
was prone to sudden, malevolent gusts, any one of which could have you over the side.

The Farmer was breathing hard. ‘You still see a connection between Rough and Jim Margolies?’

‘Now more than ever, sir.’

The body lay a little further along the path, cordoned off by warning tape. A few walkers, wrapped up against the weather, had gathered at the cordon, stretching their necks for a view. A white plastic contraption like a windbreak had been placed around the body, so that only those who needed to see it would. A woman with a black springer spaniel was being interviewed: she’d been the one to find the body. Out walking the dog, a daily ritual which both had looked forward to. From now on, she’d find another route, a long way from Salisbury Crags.

‘Hard to believe they’re putting our Parliament there,’ the Farmer commented, looking down towards Holyrood Road. ‘A real old backwater. Traffic’s going to be a nightmare.’

‘And it’s on our patch.’

‘Not my problem, thank God.’ The Farmer sniffed. ‘I’ll have that gold watch on one hand and a golfing glove on the other.’

They passed through the cordon. The scene-of-crime team was at work, securing the
locus
and ensuring what they liked to call its ‘purity’. This meant Rebus and the Farmer had to don coveralls and overshoes, so they’d leave no trace elements at the scene.

‘The wind up here will probably have scattered them to the four corners anyway,’ Rebus said. But it was a half-hearted grouch: he knew the worth of scene-of-crime work, knew that science and forensics were his friends. A police doctor had declared the victim deceased. Dr Curt was the usual pathologist, but he was in Miami to give a paper at some convention. His superior, Professor Gates, had stepped in, and was examining the body
in situ
. He was a large man with thick brown hair slicked back from
his forehead. He carried a hand-held tape recorder, talking into it as he moved around. He was forced to jostle for space: a photographer and video cameraman both wanted shots of the corpse.

DS George Silvers came over. He nodded a greeting to his Chief Superintendent, but took it further, so that it turned into something more akin to a ceremonial bow. That was typical of Silvers, whose station nickname was ‘Hi-Ho’. He was in his late thirties, always smartly dressed and coiffed, always on the eye for promotion without the necessary concomitant of hard work. His black hair and deep-set eyes gave him the look of football pundit Alan Hansen.

‘We think we’ve got the murder weapon, sir. A rock with some blood and hair on it.’ He pointed up the path. ‘Forty yards or so that way.’

‘Who found it?’

‘A dog, sir.’ One eye twitching. ‘Licked most of the blood off before we could get to it.’

Professor Gates looked up from his work. ‘So if the lab gets a match,’ he said, ‘and tells you the victim had a lovely shiny coat, you’ll know what the problem is.’

He laughed, and Rebus laughed with him. It was like that at the
locus
, everyone pretending nothing was out of the ordinary, erecting barriers to separate them from the glaring fact that
everything
was out of the ordinary.

‘I’m told you might manage an informal ID,’ Gates said. Rebus nodded, took a deep breath and stepped forward. The body was lying where it had fallen, the back of the skull smashed open and caked with blood. The face rested against the jagged path, one leg bent at the knee, the other straight. One arm was trapped beneath the body, the other stretching so the fingers could claw at the cold earth. Rebus could tell from the clothes, but crouched down to study what could be seen of the face. Gates lifted it a little to help. Light had died behind the eyes; the
three-day growth of beard would need to be shaved by the undertaker. Rebus nodded.

‘Darren Rough,’ he said, his voice growing thick.

Having taken a break from recording, Jim Stevens sat naked on the edge of his bed, discarded clothes strewn around him, two empty miniatures of whisky on his bedside cabinet. The empty glass was clutched in one hand, and he stared at it and through it, focusing on things the world couldn’t see . . .

I invite you to examine more closely your duty and the obligations of your earthly service because that is something which all of us are only dimly aware of, and we scarcely
. . .

One of Rough’s shoes had come off at some point, about halfway between the spot where his body had fallen and where the rock had been found. One early theory: someone had thumped him hard. He’d stumbled, staggered on, trying to get away from his attacker. His shoe had come off and been discarded. Finally, he’d fallen to the ground, where he’d died from the earlier blows. A barking dog approaching had alerted the attacker to the need to flee.

Another theory: after being hit, Rough had died instantly. His attacker had then dragged him along the path, the shoe coming free. Maybe intending to set things up so it looked like Rough had jumped or fallen from the Crags. But the dog-walker had come along, scaring off the killer.

‘What was he doing up there anyway?’ someone back at the station asked.

‘I think he liked it there,’ Rebus said. He was now officially the St Leonard’s expert on Darren Rough. ‘It was like a sanctuary, somewhere he felt safe. And he could look down on Greenfield from there, see what was happening.’

‘So someone followed him? Sneaked up on him?’

‘Or persuaded him to go there.’

‘Why?’

‘To make it look like suicide. Maybe they read about Jim Margolies in the paper.’

‘It’s a thought . . .’

There were plenty of thoughts, plenty of theories. One
thought was: good riddance to the bastard. A week ago, it would have been Rebus’s view, too.

The murder room was being prepared, computers moved from other parts of the building into the room set aside for such work. The Farmer had put Chief Inspector Gill Templer in charge. Rebus had been her lover for a time, so long ago now it might have been in some past life. Her hair was a dark-streaked feather-cut. Her eyes were emerald green. She moved confidently across the room, checking preparations.

‘Good luck,’ Rebus told her.

‘I want you on the team,’ she said.

Rebus thought he could understand. She was circling the wagons, and it was better to have him in the ring shooting out, than outside shooting in.

‘And I want a report on my desk: everything you can tell me about you and the deceased.’

Rebus nodded, got to work on one of the computers.
Everything you can tell me:
Rebus liked her wording, it gave him an escape clause – not everything he
knew
necessarily, but all he felt able to divulge. He looked across to where Siobhan Clarke was compiling a wall-mounted duty roster. She saw him and made a T sign with her hands. He nodded, and five minutes later she was back with two scalding beakers.

‘Here you go.’

‘Thanks,’ he said. She was looking over his shoulder at the screen.