‘I haven’t a clue,’ said Rebus.
Nor did he. Dinner was over, the actor playing Scrooge was flat out on the mezzanine floor, and Rebus was as far away from solving the crime as ever. Thankfully, a bar had been opened up, and he spent most of his time perched on a high stool, pretending to read the background notes while taking sips of beer. Jean had hooked up with Miss Havisham, while Aitchison’s wife was slumped in one of the armchairs, drawing on a cigarette. The MSP himself was playing ringmaster, and had twice confronted Rebus, calling for him to reveal himself as the villain.
‘Innocent, m’lud,’ was all Rebus had said.
‘We think it’s Magwitch,’ Jean said, suddenly breathless by Rebus’s side, her bonnet at a jaunty angle. ‘He and Scrooge knew one another in prison.’
‘I didn’t know Scrooge served time,’ Rebus said.
‘That’s because you’re not asking questions.’
‘I don’t need to; I’ve got you to tell me. That’s what makes a good detective.’
He watched her march away. Four of the diners had encircled the poor man playing Magwitch. Rebus had harboured suspicions, too… but now he was thinking of jail time, and how it affected those serving it. It gave them a certain look, a look they brought back into the world on their release. The same look he’d seen in Santa’s eyes.
And here was Santa now, coming back down the stairs, his sack slung over one shoulder. Crossing the mezzanine floor as if seeking someone out. Then finding them: Scully Aitchison. Rebus rose from his stool and wandered over.
‘Have you been good this year?’ Santa was asking Aitchison.
‘No worse than anyone else,’ the MSP smirked.
‘Sure about that?’ Santa’s eyes narrowed.
‘I wouldn’t lie to Father Christmas.’
‘What about this plan of yours, the offender register?’
Aitchison blinked a couple of times. ‘What about it?’
Santa held a piece of paper aloft, his voice rising. ‘Your own nephew’s serving time for fraud. Managed to keep that quiet, haven’t you?’
Aitchison stared at the letter. ‘Where in hell…? How…?’
The journalist stepped forward. ‘Mind if I take a look?’
Santa handed over the letter, then pulled off his hat and beard. Started heading for the stairs down. Rebus blocked his way.
‘Time to hand out the presents,’ he said quietly. Joey looked at him and understood immediately, slid the sack from his shoulder. Rebus took it. ‘Now on you go.’
‘You’re not arresting me?’
‘Who’d feed Dancer and Prancer?’ Rebus asked.
His stomach full of steak and wine, a bottle of malt in the capacious pocket of his costume, Joey smiled his way back towards the outside world.
Death Is Not The End – AN INSPECTOR REBUS STORY
One
Is loss redeemed by memory? Or does memory merely swell the sense of loss, becoming the enemy? The language of loss is the language of memory: remembrance, memorial, memento. People leave our lives all the time: some we met only briefly, others we’d known since birth. They leave us memories – which become skewed through time – and little more.
The silent dance continued. Couples writhed and shuffled, threw back their heads or ran hands through their hair, eyes darting around the dance floor, seeking out future partners maybe, or past loves to make jealous. The TV monitor gave a greasy look to everything.
No sound, just pictures, the tape cutting from dance floor to main bar to second bar to toilet hallway, then entrance foyer, exterior front and exterior back. Exterior back was a puddled alley, full of rubbish bins and a Merc belonging to the club’s owner. Rebus had heard about the alley: a punter had been knifed there the previous summer. Mr Merc had complained about the bloody smear on his passenger-side window. The victim had lived.
The club was called Gaitanos, nobody knew why. The owner just said it sounded American and a bit jazzy. The larger part of the clientele had decided on the nickname ‘Guisers’, and that was what you heard in the pubs on a Friday and Saturday night – ‘Going down Guisers later?’ The young men would be dressed smart-casual, the women scented from heaven and all stations south. They left the pubs around ten or half past – that’s when it would be starting to get lively at Guisers.
Rebus was seated in a small uncomfortable chair which itself sat in a stuffy dimly lit room. The other chair was filled by an audio-visual technician, armed with two remotes. His occasional belches – of which he seemed blissfully ignorant – bespoke a recent snack of spring onion crisps and Irn-Bru.
‘I’m really only interested in the main bar, foyer and out front,’ Rebus said.
‘I could edit them down to another tape, but we’d lose definition. The recording’s duff enough as it is.’ The technician scratched inside the sagging armpit of his black T-shirt.
Rebus leaned forward a little, pointing at the screen. ‘Coming up now.’ They waited. The view jumped from back alley to dance floor. ‘Any second.’ Another cut: main bar, punters queuing three deep. The technician didn’t need to be told, and froze the picture. It wasn’t so much black and white as sepia, the colour of dead photographs. Interior light, the audio-visual wizard had explained. He was adjusting the tracking now, and moving the action along one frame at a time. Rebus moved in on the screen, bending so one knee rested on the floor. His finger was touching a face. He took out the assortment of photos from his pocket and held them against the screen.
‘It’s him,’ he said. ‘I was pretty sure before. You can’t go in a bit closer?’
‘For now, this is as good as it gets. I can work on it later, stick it on the computer. The problem is the source material, to wit: one shitty security video.’
Rebus sat back on his chair. ‘All right,’ he said. ‘Let’s run forward at half-speed.’
The camera stayed with the main bar for another fifteen seconds, then switched to the second bar and all points on the compass. When it returned to the main bar, the crush of drinkers seemed not to have moved. Unbidden, the technician froze the tape again.
‘He’s not there,’ Rebus said. Again he approached the screen, touched it with his finger. ‘He should be there.’
‘Next to the sex goddess.’ The technician belched again.
Yes. Spun silver hair, almost like a cloud of candy-floss, dark eyes and lips. While those around her were either intent on catching the eyes of the bar staff or on the dance floor, she was looking off to one side. There were no shoulders to her dress.
‘Let’s check the foyer,’ Rebus said.
Twenty seconds there showed a steady stream entering the club, but no one leaving. Exterior front showed a queue awaiting admittance by the brace of bouncers, and a few passers-by.
‘In the toilet maybe,’ the technician suggested. But Rebus had studied the tape a dozen times already, and though he watched just once more he knew he wouldn’t see the young man again, not at the bar, not on the dance floor, and not back around the table where his mates were waiting – with increasing disbelief and impatience – for him to get his round in.
The young man’s name was Damon Mee and, according to the timer running at the bottom right-hand corner of the screen, he had vanished from the world sometime between 11.44 and 11.45 p.m. on Friday 22 April.
‘Where is this place anyway? I don’t recognise it.’
‘Kirkcaldy,’ Rebus said.
The technician looked at him. ‘How come it ended up here?’
Good question, Rebus thought, but not one he was about to answer. ‘Go back to that bar shot,’ he said. ‘Take it nice and slow again.’
The technician aimed his right-hand remote. ‘Yes, sir, Mr DeMille,’ he said.
April meant still not quite spring in Edinburgh. A few sunny days to be sure, buds getting twitchy, wondering if winter had been paid the ransom. But there was snow still hanging in a sky the colour of chicken bones. Office talk: how Rangers were going to retain the championship; why Hearts and Hibs would never win it – was it finally time for the two local sides to become friends, form one team which might – might – stand half a chance? As someone said, their rivalry was part and parcel of the city’s make-up. Hard to imagine Rangers and Celtic thinking of marriage in the same way, or even of a quick poke on the back stairs.