The Beat Goes On: The Complete Rebus Stories (Rebus Collection) (17 page)

Probably pays his rent promptly, too
.

Well, well. Now there was a thing. Owner-occupier. Not every owner
did
occupy, and not every occupier was an owner. Rebus recalled that Detective Sergeant Hendry of Dunfermline
CID
was a keen bird-watcher. Once or twice, on courses or at conferences, he’d collared Rebus and bored him with tales of the latest sighting of the Duddingston bittern or the Kilconquhar red-head smew. Like all hobbyists, Hendry was keen to have others share his enthusiasm. Like all anti-hobbyists, Rebus would yawn with more irony than was necessary.

Still, it was worth a phone-call.

‘I’ll have to call you back, John,’ said a busy DS Hendry. ‘It’s not the sort of thing I could tell you offhand. Give me your number at home and I’ll ring you tonight. I didn’t know you were interested.’

‘I’m not, believe me.’

But his words went unheeded. ‘I saw siskins and twite earlier in the year.’

‘Really?’ said Rebus. ‘I’ve never been one for country and western music. Siskins and twite, eh? They’ve been around for years.’

By the following morning, he had everything he needed. He arrived as Mrs McKay and her son were eating a late breakfast. The television was on, providing the noise necessary to their lives. Rebus had come accompanied by two other officers, so that there could be no doubting he meant business. Gerry McKay’s jaw dropped again as Rebus began to speak. The tale itself was quickly told. John Brodie’s front door had been examined, the metal letterbox checked for fingerprints. Some good, if oily, prints had been found, and these matched those found on the plastic box Rebus had taken from Gerry McKay. There could be no doubting that Gerry McKay had pushed open John Brodie’s letterbox. If Gerry would accompany the officers to the station.

‘Mum!’ McKay was on his feet, yelling, panicky. ‘Mum, tell them! Tell them!’

Mrs McKay had a face as dark as ketchup. Rebus was glad he had brought the other officers. Her voice trembled when she spoke. ‘It wasn’t Gerry’s idea,’ she said. ‘It was mine. If there’s anyone you want to talk to about it, it should be me. It was my idea. Only, I knew Gerry’d be faster getting in and out of the stairwell. That’s all. He’s got nothing to do with it.’ She paused, her face turning even nastier. ‘Besides, that wee shite deserved all he got. Dirty, evil little runt of a man. You didn’t see the state Alison was in. Such a nice wee girl, wouldn’t say boo to a goose, and to be got into a state like that. I couldn’t let him get away with it, hell. And if it were up to you lot, he’d have gotten off scot-free, wouldn’t he? It’s nothing to do with Gerry.’

‘It’ll be taken into account at the trial,’ Rebus said quietly.

John Brodie looked not to have moved since Rebus had left him. His arms still lay on the top of the bed-cover, and he was still propped up against a pillow.

‘Inspector Rebus,’ he said. ‘Back again.’

‘Back again,’ said Rebus, placing a chair by the bed and seating himself. ‘The doctor says you’re doing fine.’

‘Yes,’ said Brodie.

‘Anything I can get you?’ Brodie shook his head. ‘No? Juice? A bit of fruit maybe? How about something to read? I notice you like girlie mags. I saw one in your flat. I could get you a few of those if you like.’ Rebus winked. ‘Readers’ wives, eh? Amateurs. That’s your style. All those blurry Polaroid shots, heads cut off. That’s what you like, eh, John?’

But John Brodie was saying nothing. He was looking at his arms. Rebus drew the chair closer to the bed. Brodie flinched, but could not move.

‘
Panurus biarmicus
,’ Rebus hissed. Now Brodie looked blankly at him. Rebus repeated the words. Still Brodie looked blank. ‘Go on,’ Rebus chided, ‘take a guess.’

‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’

‘No?’ Rebus was wide-eyed. ‘Curious that. Sounds like the name of a disease, doesn’t it? Maybe you know it better as the bearded tit.’

‘Oh.’ Brodie smiled shyly, and nodded. ‘Yes, the bearded tit.’

Rebus smiled too, but coldly. ‘You didn’t know, you didn’t have a clue. Shall I tell you something about the bearded tit? No, better yet, Mr Brodie, you tell
me
something about it.’ He sat back and folded his arms expectantly.

‘What?’

‘Go on.’

‘Look, what’s all this about?’

‘It’s quite simple, you see.’ Rebus sat forward again. ‘The bearded tit isn’t commonly found in Scotland. I got that from an expert. Not commonly found, that’s what he said. More than that, its habitat – and I’m quoting here – is “extensive and secluded reed-beds”. Do you see what I’m getting at? You’d hardly call Easter Road a reed-bed, would you?’

Brodie raised his head a little, his thin lips very straight and wide. He was thinking, but he wasn’t talking.

‘You see what I’m getting at, don’t you? You told those two constables that you were watching bearded tits from your window. But that’s just not true. It couldn’t possibly be true. You said the name of the first bird that came into your head, and it came into your head because there was a drawing on your living-room wall. I saw it myself. But it’s not you that’s the bird-watcher, John. It’s your landlord and landlady. You rented the place furnished and you haven’t changed anything. It’s their drawings on the wall. They got in touch about the insurance, you see. Wondering whether the fire was accidental. They saw a bit about it in the newspaper. They could appreciate that they hadn’t heard from you, what with you being in hospital and all, but they wanted to sort out the insurance. So I was able to ask them about the birds on the wall.
Their
birds, John, not yours. It was quick thinking of you to come up with the story. It even fooled those two PCs. It might have fooled me. That book about zoom photography, even that had a picture of birds on the front.’ He paused. ‘But you’re a peeper, John, that’s all. That’s what you are, a nasty little voyeur. Miss Hooper was right all the time.’

‘Was it her who—?’

‘You’ll find out soon enough.’

‘It’s all lies, you know. Hearsay, circumstantial. You’ve no proof.’

‘What about the photos?’

‘What photos?’

Rebus sighed. ‘Come on, John. All that gear in your bedroom. Tripod, camera, zoom lenses. Photographing birds, were you? I’d be interested to see the results. Because it wasn’t just binoculars, was it? You took piccies, too. In your wardrobe, are they?’ Rebus checked his watch. ‘With luck I’ll have the search warrant inside the hour. Then I intend to take a good look round your flat, John. I intend taking a
very
good look.’

‘There’s nothing there.’ He was shaking now, his arms moving painfully in their gauze bandages. ‘Nothing. You’ve no right. Someone tried to kill … No right. They tried to kill me.’

Rebus was willing to concede a point. ‘Certainly they tried to scare you. We’ll see what the courts decide.’ He rose to his feet. Brodie was still twittering on. Twit, twit, twit. It would be a while before he’d be able to use a camera again.

‘Do you want to know something else, John?’ Rebus said, unable to resist one of his parting shots. ‘Something about the bearded tit? It’s classified as a
babbler
.’ He smiled a smile of warm sunshine. ‘A babbler!’ he repeated. ‘Looks to me like you’re a bit of a babbler yourself. Well,’ he picked up the chair and pretended to be considering something, ‘at any rate, I’d certainly classify you as a tit.’

He returned that evening to his own tenement and his roaring gas fire. But there was a surprise awaiting him on the doorhandle of his flat. A reminder from Mrs Cochrane downstairs. A reminder that it was his week for washing the stairs and that he hadn’t done it yet and it was nearly the end of the week and when was he going to do it? Rebus sent a roar into the stairwell before slamming shut the door behind him. It was only a moment before other doors started to open, faces peering out, and another Edinburgh tenement conversation began, multi-storeyed, undertone and echoing.

Not Provan

How badly did Detective Inspector John Rebus want to nail Willie Provan? Oh, badly, very badly indeed. Rebus visualised it as a full-scale crucifixion, each nail going in slowly, the way Willie liked to put the boot and the fist slowly, methodically, into the victims of his violence.

Rebus had first encountered Willie Provan five years before, as a schoolkid spiralling out of control. Both parents dead, Willie had been left in the charge of a dotty and near-deaf aunt. He had taken charge of her house, had held wild parties there, parties to which the police were eventually, habitually called by neighbours at the end of their tether.

Entering the house had been like stepping into an amateur production of
Caligula
: naked, under-aged couples so drunk or drugged they could not complete the act which so interested them; emptied tins of solvent, polythene bags encrusted with the dregs of the stuff. A whiff of something animal, something less-than-human in the air. And, in a small back room upstairs, the aunt, locked in and sitting up in her bed, a cold cup of tea and a half-eaten sandwich on the table beside her.

By the time he left school, Willie was already a legend. Four years on the dole had benefited him little. But he had learned cunning, and so far the police had been unable to put him away. He remained a thorn in Rebus’s side. Today, Rebus felt someone might just come along and pluck that thorn out.

He sat in the public gallery and watched the court proceedings. Near him were a few of Willie Provan’s friends, members of his gang. They called themselves the Tiny Alice, or T-Alice. No one knew why. Rebus glanced over towards them. Sleeves rolled up, sporting tattoos and unshaven grins. They were the city’s sons, the product of an Edinburgh upbringing, but they seemed to belong to another culture, another civilisation entirely, reared on Schwarzenegger videos and bummed cigarettes. Rebus shivered, feeling he understood them better than he liked to admit.

The case against Provan was solid and satisfying. On a cup-tie evening several months ago, a football fan had been heading towards the Heart of Midlothian ground. He was late, his train from Fife having been behind time. He was an away supporter and he was on his own in Gorgie.

An arm snaked around his neck, yanked him into a tenement stairwell, and there Willie Provan had kicked and punched him into hospitalisation. For what reason? Rebus could guess. It had nothing to do with football, nothing with football hooliganism. Provan pretended a love of Hearts, but had never, to Rebus’s knowledge, attended a game. Nor could he name more than two or three players in the current team’s line-up.

Nevertheless, Gorgie was his patch, his territory. He had spotted an invader and had summarily executed him, in his own terms. But his luck had run out. A woman had heard some sounds from the stairwell and had opened her door to investigate. Provan saw her and ran off. But she had given the police a good description and had later identified Provan as the attacker. Moreover, a little while after the attack, a constable, off duty and happening to pass Tynecastle Park, had spotted a young man, apparently disorientated. He had approached the man and asked him if he was all right, but at that point some members of T-Alice had appeared from their local pub, directly opposite the Hearts ground and had taken the man inside.

The constable thought little of it, until he heard about the assault and was given a description of the attacker. The description matched that of the disorientated man, and that man turned out to be Willie Provan. With Provan’s previous record, this time he would go down, Rebus was sure of that. So he sat and he watched and he listened.

He watched the jurors, too. They winced, perceptibly as they were told of the injuries to the victim, injuries which still, several months on, kept him in hospital, unable to walk and with respiratory difficulties to boot. To boot. Ha! Rebus let a short-lived smile wrinkle his face. Yes, the jury would convict. But Rebus was most interested in one juror in particular, an intense young man who was taking copious notes, sending intelligent written questions to the judge, studying photographs and diagrams with enthusiasm. The model juror, ready to see that justice was done and all was fair and proper. At one point, the young man looked up and caught Rebus watching him. After that, he gave Rebus some of his attention, but still scribbled his notes and checked and rechecked what he had written.

The other jurors were solemn, looked bored even. Passive spectators at a one-horse race. Guilty. Probably by the end of the day. Rebus would sit it out. The prosecution had finished its case, and the defence case had already begun. The usual stuff when an obviously guilty party pleaded not guilty: trying to catch out prosecution witnesses, instilling mistrust, trying to persuade the jury that things were not as cut and dried as they seemed, that there was probable cause for doubt. Rebus sat back and let it wash over him. Provan would go down.

Then came the iceberg, ripping open the bow of Rebus’s confidence.

The defence counsel had called the off-duty constable, the one who had spotted Provan outside the Hearts ground. The constable was young, with a bad case of post-juvenile acne. He tried to stand to attention as the questions were put to him, but when flustered would raise a hand towards his scarred cheeks. Rebus remembered his own first time on the witness stand. A Glasgow music hall stage could not have been more terrifying.

‘And what time do you say it was when you first saw the accused?’ The defence counsel had a slight Irish brogue, and his eyes were dark from want of sleep. His cheap ballpoint pen had burst, leaving black stains across his hands. Rebus felt a little sorry for him.

‘I’m not sure, sir.’

‘You’re not sure?’ The words came slowly. The inference was: this copper is a bit thick, isn’t he? How can you the jury trust him? For the counsel was staring at the jury as he spoke and this seemed to unnerve the constable further. A hand rubbed against a cheek.

‘Roughly then,’ continued the defence counsel. ‘Roughly what time was it?’

‘Sometime between seven-thirty and eight, sir.’

The counsel nodded, flipping through a sheaf of notes. ‘And what did you say to the accused?’ As the constable was about to reply, the counsel interrupted, still with his face towards the jury. ‘I say “the accused” because there’s no disagreement that the person the constable saw outside the football ground was my client.’ He paused. ‘So constable, what did you say?’

‘“Are you all right?” Something like that.’

Rebus glanced towards where Provan sat in the dock. Provan was looking terribly confident. His clear blue eyes were sparkling and he sat forwards in his chair, keen to catch the dialogue going on before him. For the first time, Rebus felt an uneasy stab: the thorn again, niggling him. What was going on?

‘You asked him if he was all right.’ It was a statement. The counsel paused again. Now the prosecution counsel was frowning: he too was puzzled by this line of questioning. Rebus felt his hands forming into fists.

‘You asked him if he was all right, and he replied? What exactly
did
he reply?’

‘I couldn’t really make it out, sir.’

‘Why was that? Were his words slurred perhaps?’

The constable shrugged. ‘A little, maybe.’

‘A little? Mmm.’ The counsel looked at his notes again. ‘What about the noise from the stadium?’

‘Sir?’

‘You were directly outside the ground. There was a cup-tie being played in front of thousands of spectators. It was noisy, wasn’t it?’

‘Yes, sir,’ agreed the constable.

‘In fact, it was
very
noisy, wasn’t it, Constable Davidson? It was
extraordinarily
noisy. That was why you couldn’t hear my client’s reply. Isn’t that the case?’

The constable shrugged again, not sure where any of this was leading, happy enough to agree with the defence. ‘Yes, sir,’ he said.

‘In fact, as you approached my client, you may remember that there was a sudden upsurge in the noise from the ground.’

The constable nodded, seeming to remember. ‘That’s right, yes. I think a goal had just been scored.’

‘Indeed, a goal had been scored. Just after you had first spotted my client, as you were walking towards him. A goal was scored, the noise was terrific. You shouted your question to my client, and he replied, but his words were drowned out by the noise from the ground. His friends saw him from the Goatfell public house and came to his aid, leading him inside. The noise was still very great, even then. They were shouting to you to let you know they would take care of him. Isn’t that right?’

Now, the counsel turned to the constable, fixing him with his dark eyes.

‘Yes, sir.’

The counsel nodded, seeming satisfied. Willie Provan, too, looked satisfied. Rebus’s nerves were jangling. He was reminded of a song lyric:
there’s something happening here, but you don’t know what it is
. Something was most definitely happening here, and Rebus didn’t like it. The defence counsel spoke again.

‘Do you know what the score was that night?’

‘No, sir.’

‘It was on
e
–nil. The home team won by a single goal, the single goal you heard from outside the ground. A single goal scored—’ picking up the notes for effect, turning again to face the jury, ‘in the fifteenth minute of the game, a game that kicked off … when? Do you happen to recall?’

The constable knew now, knew where this was leading. His voice when he spoke had lost a little of its life. ‘It was a seven-thirty kick-off.’

‘That’s right, it was. So you see, Police Constable Davidson, it was seven forty-five when you saw my client outside the ground. I don’t think you would contest that now, would you? And yet we heard Mrs McClintock say that it was twenty to eight when she heard a noise on her stairwell and went to her door. She was quite specific because she looked at her clock before she went to the door. Her call to the police was timed at seven forty-two, just two minutes later.’

Rebus didn’t need to hear any more, tried to shut his ears to it. The tenement where the assault had taken place was over a mile from Tynecastle Park and the Goatfell pub. To have been where he was when the constable had approached him, Provan would have had to run, in effect, a four-minute mile. Rebus doubted he was capable of it, doubted everything now. But looking at Provan he could
see
the little prick was guilty. He was as guilty as hell and he was about to get away scot bloody free. Rebus’s knuckles were white, his teeth were gritted. Provan looked up at him and smiled. The thorn was in Rebus’s side again, working away relentlessly, bleeding the policeman to death.

It couldn’t be true. It just couldn’t. The trial wasn’t over yet. Things had been strung out over the afternoon, the prosecution clearly flustered and playing for time, wondering what tactic to try next, what question to ask. He had lasted the afternoon and court had been adjourned after the summings up. It was all to do with time, as the defence counsel contended. The prosecution tried to negate the time factor and rely instead on the one and only witness. He asked: can we be certain a goal had been scored at that precise moment when PC Davidson approached the accused? Is it not better to trust the identification of the witness, Mrs McClintock, who had actually disturbed the attacker in the course of the assault? And so on. But Rebus knew the case was doomed. There was too much doubt now, way too much. Not guilty, or maybe that Scots get-out clause of ‘not proven’, whatever. If only the victim had caught a glimpse of Provan, if only. If, if, if. The jury would assemble again tomorrow at ten-thirty, retire to their room and emerge before lunch with a decision which would make Provan a free man. Rebus shook his head.

He was sitting in his car, not up to driving. Just sitting there, the key in the ignition, trying to think things through. But going around in circles, no clear direction, his mind filled with Provan’s smile, a smile he would happily tear from that face. Illegal thoughts coursed through his head, ways of fixing Provan, ways of putting him inside. But no: it had to be clean, it had to be
right
. Justification was only part of the process; justice demanded more.

At last, he gave an audible growl, the sound of a caged animal, and turned the ignition, starting the car, heading nowhere in particular. At home he would only brood. A pub might be an idea. There were a few pubs, their clientele almost silent, where a man might drink in solitude and quiet. A kind of a wake for The Law. Damn it, no, he knew where he was headed. Tried not to know, but knew all the same. He was driving towards Gorgie, driving deep into Willie Provan’s territory, into the gangland ruled by Tiny Alice. He was heading into the Wild West End of Edinburgh.

The streets were narrow, tenements rising on either side. A cold October wind was blowing, forcing people to angle their walk into the wind, giving them the jack-knife look of a Lowry painting. They were all coming home from work. It was dark, the headlamps of cars and buses like torches in a cave. Gorgie always seemed dark. Even on a summer’s day it seemed dark. It had something to do with the narrowness of the streets and the height of the tenements; they seemed like trees in the Amazon, blocking out the light to the pallid vegetation beneath.