Cal looked around, as if even here he might be overheard. When he lowered his voice, Rebus had to move close to him to hear what he was saying over the noise of the wind.
‘You know I work for Mr Mackenzie?’
‘You’re his enforcer.’
Brady prickled at that. ‘Sometimes he’s owed money. Happens to a lot of businesses.’
‘Sure.’
‘I make sure his debtors know the risks they’re taking.’
Rebus smiled. ‘A nice way of putting it.’
Brady looked around again. ‘Petrie,’ he said, like this would explain everything.
‘I know,’ Rebus said. ‘Nicky Petrie owed Charmer money, got beaten up in lieu of a final reminder.’
But Brady was shaking his head. ‘It was his sister owed the money.’
‘Ama?’ Brady nodded. ‘So why thump Nicky?’
Brady snorted. ‘She’s a cold, hard bitch. Maybe you haven’t noticed. But she likes her little brother. She loves little Nicky...’
‘So you were sending the message to her?’ Rebus thought about it, remembered something Ama had said to him at the beauty contest: Who do I owe money to? ‘Why didn’t she get the money from her father?’
‘Story is, she wouldn’t ask him for the time of day, and he wouldn’t give it to her if he’d a watch on either arm.’
‘I still don’t know what this has to do with me.’
‘That flat of theirs.’
‘What about it?’
‘She lives there. The blonde you were looking for.’
Rebus stared at Brady. ‘She’s in that flat?’ Brady was nodding. ‘What’s her name?’
‘I think it’s Nicola.’
‘How do you know all this?’
Brady shrugged. ‘They can’t help talking, that little gang.’
Rebus thought of the scene on the boat... the way the drunk had been about to say something until warned off by Ama Petrie...
‘They know about this Nicola?’
‘They all know.’
Which meant they’d all lied to Rebus... including the brother and sister, Nicky and Ama.
‘Is she Nicky’s girlfriend?’
Brady shrugged again.
‘Or Ama’s maybe?’
‘I don’t get involved,’ Brady said, waving his hand as though to cut the discussion dead.
‘How about you, Cal? Still living with Joanna?’
‘Nothing to do with you.’
‘How’s Billy Boy? Don’t you think he’d be better off with his dad?’
‘That’s not what Joanna wants.’
‘Has anyone asked Billy what he wants?’
Brady’s voice rose. ‘He’s just a kid. How’s he supposed to know what’s best for him?’
‘I bet when you were his age you knew what you wanted.’
‘Maybe,’ Brady conceded after a moment’s thought. ‘But I’ll give you odds-on I didn’t get it.’ He laughed. ‘Maybe I’m still not getting it. Know what I think about that?’
‘What?’
‘Just watch.’
And Rebus did watch, as Cal Brady unzipped his fly, took out his penis, and began to urinate off the edge of Radical Road. Standing well back from the performance, it seemed to Rebus that he was pissing on Holyrood and Greenfield and St Leonard’s, pissing in a giant arc over the whole city.
And if Rebus had been able, at that exact moment he might have joined him.
52
Returning to St Leonard’s with Siobhan Clarke after a call-out, Rebus made a detour to the New Town. Clarke knew better than to ask why: he’d tell her in his own good time and not before.
It was late afternoon, and he sat kerbside, indicators flashing, wondering about Nicky Petrie. To pay a visit, or not to pay a visit? Would the girlfriend be there? Would Petrie string together another series of lies and half-truths? Clarke was about to open her mouth to say something when she saw his hands tighten on the steering-wheel.
A woman was coming down the steps from Petrie’s building. Rebus saw for the first time that a taxi was waiting. She stepped into it. He’d caught only a glimpse of her: tall, willowy. A blonde pageboy cut. Black dress and tights beneath a billowing black wool coat. Rebus switched off the indicators, made to follow the cab, started explaining the situation to Clarke.
‘Where do you think she’s going?’
‘Only one way to find out.’
The taxi headed towards Princes Street, crossed it and crawled up The Mound. Through traffic lights at the top and took a right down Victoria Street. Grassmarket was the destination. Nicola paid the driver, got out. She looked around, somewhat uncertainly. Her face was like a mask.
‘Bit heavy on the make-up,’ Clarke commented. Rebus was trying to find a parking space. Finding none, he left the car on a single yellow line. If he got a ticket, it could join the others in the glove compartment.
‘Where did she go?’ he asked, getting out of the car.
‘Down Cowgate, I think,’ Clarke said.
‘Hell does she want down there?’
While Grassmarket itself had been gentrified, the area immediately to the east was still Hostel City: a place the city’s dispossessed could, for the moment, call its own. Things would doubtless be different once the politicians moved in down the road.
They stood on street corners, or sat on the steps of disused churches — baggy-trousered and grim-bearded, with too few teeth, and stooped backs. As Rebus and Clarke rounded the corner, they saw that the woman was walking with exaggerated slowness through a phalanx of admirers, only a smattering of whom bothered asking her for spare change and cigarettes.
‘Likes to show off,’ Clarke said.
‘And not too fussy with it.’
‘Just one thing bothering me, sir...’
But Nicola had turned to acknowledge a wolf-whistle, and as she did so she saw them. She turned again quickly and upped her pace, keeping a tight hold of her zebra-skin shoulder-bag.
‘Not the world’s greatest surveillance,’ Clarke said.
‘She knows us,’ Rebus hissed. They broke into a trot, ran along the pavement below George IV Bridge. She wore flat-heeled shoes, ran well despite the tangle of her long coat. She found a gap in the traffic and darted across the road. Cowgate was horrible: a narrow canyon, with high-sided buildings. When traffic built up, the carbon monoxide had no place to go. The stitches in Rebus’s chest slowed him down.
‘Guthrie Street,’ Clarke said. That was where Nicola was headed. It would bring her up on to Chambers Street, where she could more easily lose her pursuers. But as she turned into the steep wynd, she bumped into someone. The collision sent her spinning. Something fell to the ground, but she kept running. Rebus paused to scoop it up. A short blonde wig.
‘What the hell?’
‘That’s what I was trying to tell you, sir,’ Clarke said. Ahead of them, Nicola was tiring, holding the wall for support as she hauled herself up the incline. Limping, too, an ankle twisted in the collision. Eventually, just as she reached Chambers Street, her hair short and merely fair now rather than blonde, she gave up, stood with her back to the wall, panting noisily. Perspiration was streaking the make-up. Behind the mask, Rebus saw someone he knew only too well.
Not Nicola, Nicky. Nicky Petrie.
Petrie’s words: Straitlaced old town, how else are we going to get our thrills...?
Rebus’s heart was on fire as he stopped in front of him. He could hardly get the words out.
‘It’s story time, Mr Petrie.’ He slapped the wig down on Nicky Petrie’s head. Petrie, with a show of disgust, removed the wig, held it to his face. It was hard to make out now what was sweat and what was tears.