‘You were here a couple of days back,’ the second kid said.
‘Seeing my old pal Tommy.’ Rebus lifted his foot and gave the door of the lock-up a kick. ‘You know Tommy’s dad was sleeping here until recently?’ The kids stared at him without answering. Rebus brought a twenty-pound note from his pocket and held it up, taking a step closer to the obvious leader. The note was snatched and trousered. ‘You knew it was his dad?’ he asked again.
‘Aye.’
‘You spoke to him?’
‘He got us to fetch stuff from the shop,’ the second kid said.
‘That was good of you, Tommy must have been pleased.’ Rebus paused. ‘Any idea why his dad left?’ He watched them shake their heads. ‘And he’s not been back since?’
‘We’d know,’ the leader stated.
‘I don’t doubt that.’ He almost asked why they weren’t in school, but it would have been a stupid question. Either they’d given up on education or education had given up on them. ‘Tommy been around today?’ More head-shakes. ‘Did he seem to get on okay with his dad?’ The head-shakes switched to shrugs. Neither boy looked especially warm, despite their thick black hoodies. Their bony fingers had turned a raw-looking pink. Their denims were cheap and ill-fitting, their trainers well worn. Heads shorn sides and back, left longer at the front. There were hundreds if not thousands just like them spread across the city. Rebus nodded towards the graffiti on every available surface.
‘Which tags are yours?’ But they weren’t about to answer that. ‘Twenty doesn’t buy much around here, does it?’
‘Your car’s not been touched,’ the leader corrected him.
‘There is that, I suppose.’
He watched them turn and pedal back the way they’d come, then returned to the Saab, unlocking it and getting in. He sat for a moment, then turned the ignition, got the heater working, and started driving around the streets. It didn’t take him long before he passed a hatchback with racing stripes and a modified exhaust. It was idling kerbside, making a racket. Rebus’s two young friends had stopped alongside, next to the open window on the driver’s side, while an exchange of some kind took place. A few streets further on, a different bicycle had stopped in front of one of the terraced houses, the occupier opening his door just wide enough for another transaction.
‘Home deliveries,’ Rebus said to himself. Well, why not? In his CID days he’d known school-age children used as couriers, but never as young as these. These were kids who should have been at home with their games consoles and loving parents. At one time Cafferty had controlled most of the trade in the city, but he’d never used kids, not as far as Rebus knew. But then this was a different world, a less furtive culture. You could hardly walk down a pavement these days without catching a whiff of blaw. Bedrooms and attics were being turned into hothouses for growing the stuff. One such property had gone up in flames a while back and neighbours had been warned to keep their windows shut if they didn’t want to feel the effects. Users and dealers had stopped fearing law and order because law and order had stopped being overly bothered about a bit of weed or a few pills or wraps of powder.
When his phone buzzed, he saw that the incoming call was from Alan Fleck. He let it ring without answering. Fleck tried again a minute later, but Rebus still wasn’t in the mood. Instead he drove the relatively short distance to Tynecastle cop shop. He had to double-park, but that was okay, he wasn’t planning on getting out of the car. The place had the same soul-crushing air that it had always had. Inside, however, with Fleck and his ilk running the show, the staff had acted like princes and soldiers in some grand fiefdom. Rebus had been treated like a valued emissary, gifted bottles of malt and promises of bills waived in some of the best of the city’s restaurants.
‘Just give them my name,’ Fleck would say with a wink or a tap of the nose. He would pat Rebus’s chest or arm, and at some point Rebus would realise a wad of banknotes had been added to that day’s wardrobe.
He’d never said no, rationalising that to do so would be to give offence. He was reminded of a sign that used to be widespread in business premises: Please do not ask for credit as a refusal often offends. And besides, Fleck was a good cop, wasn’t he, the kind that got results? Loved by those who served under him, admired by those higher up the tree. Rebus had once, after a drink too many, wondered aloud why he stayed stuck at sergeant.
‘I keep turning them down when they offer,’ Fleck had answered. ‘Nothing beats where I am now, John, nothing. You and your CID pals, I wouldn’t swap with you if you offered me a diamond mine.’
Was it because he enjoyed being close to the front line? Rebus had often thought about that. He reckoned now that it had more to do with the strings that could be pulled and the power he wielded. When Alan Fleck walked down the street, everyone knew him, or else they wanted to know him. What he said and did mattered. And when some graffiti had gone up not too many streets from the police station stating in metre-high capital letters that SGT ALAN FLECK = BASTARD, Fleck had insisted on being photographed next to it. He’d then had the photo copied, framed and wrapped as Christmas gifts for every person, cop and non-cop, who worked at Tynecastle. There had been one for Rebus, too, though he wasn’t sure now what he’d done with it.
And yes, he’d granted Fleck and his crew a few favours along the way, of course he had. Because to say no was to become an outsider, and maybe even the enemy, no longer trusted, no longer part of that seemingly charmed circle.
Whisky and cigarettes, dinners and bungs — Rebus guessed people had sold themselves for less. And better Alan Fleck than the likes of Big Ger Cafferty. Fleck had always framed it as if it were a question of us and them, two teams in polarised competition.
‘But you have to watch out for the goalposts, John,’ he’d said. ‘Those sleekit damned things have a way of shifting, and they can do it in the blink of an eye.’
The initiation ceremonies had maybe been challenging and demeaning, but that was often the way with institutions. Rebus remembered plenty of attempted humiliations from his days as an army recruit. The name-calling, the sabotaging of equipment, the cruel practical jokes, all of it could be construed as character-building, couldn’t it? Besides, those days were definitely numbered. Everyone now was a potential whistleblower, everyone had a phone to help gather evidence. If the Courant and its brethren had been around during Rebus’s heyday... well, he shuddered to think. But actually he would bet that whatever the scale of misbehaviour pointed out to them, the general public even now would be accepting, just so long as the police continued to stand firm between them and the bogeyman.
When a dog, out for a walk with its owner, paused to sniff and cock a leg against a lamppost, he remembered Brillo was waiting at home for him. He put the Saab into gear, and had just started moving when a uniform emerged from the police station. He didn’t recognise the face that held up a phone to take a photograph of vehicle and driver.
He only knew his presence had been noted.
Clarke was ten minutes early at the Oxford Bar, but Leckie was already waiting in the back room. He rose to his feet, ready to go fetch her a drink, but she waved the offer away, arriving at the table a couple of minutes later with a gin and tonic. The bar was busier than she’d hoped, but there was still a decent distance between their table and the others. Moreover, everyone seemed too interested in their own conversations to be bothered to eavesdrop. Nevertheless, she had requested that the TV be switched on. The owner, Kirsty, did the honours with the remote. Foreign football, the commentary not obtrusive but helping mask anything being discussed at the tables. Clarke nodded to let Kirsty know the volume was fine.