2
‘So what were you up to all afternoon?’ Siobhan asked, placing the pint of IPA in front of Rebus. As she sat down opposite, he blew some cigarette smoke ceilingwards: his idea of a concession to any non-smoking companion. They were in the back room of the Oxford Bar, and every table was filled with office workers stopping to refuel before the trek home. Siobhan hadn’t been back in the office long when Rebus’s text message had appeared on her mobile:
fancy a drink i am in the ox
He’d finally mastered the sending and receiving of texts, but had yet to work out how to add punctuation.
Or capitals.
‘Out at Knoxland,’ he said now.
‘Col told me there’d been a body found.’
‘Homicide,’ Rebus stated. He took a gulp from his drink, frowning at Siobhan’s slender non-alcoholic glass of lime with soda.
‘So how come you ended up out there?’ she asked.
‘Got a call. Someone at HQ had alerted West End to the fact that I’m surplus to requirements at Gayfield Square.’
Siobhan put down her glass. ‘They didn’t say that?’
‘You don’t need a magnifying glass to read between the lines, Shiv.’
Siobhan had long since given up trying to get people to use her full name rather than this shortened form. Likewise, Phyllida Hawes was ‘Phyl’, and Colin Tibbet ‘Col’. Apparently, Derek Starr could sometimes be referred to as ‘Deek’, but she’d never heard it used. Even DCI James Macrae had asked her to call him ‘Jim’, unless they were in some formal meeting. But John Rebus... for as long as she’d known him, he’d been ‘John’: not Jock or Johnny. It was as if people knew, just by looking at him, that he wasn’t the sort to endure a nickname. Nicknames made you seem friendly, more approachable, more likely to play along. When DCI Macrae said something like, ‘Shiv, have you got a minute?’ it meant he had some favour to ask. If this became, ‘Siobhan, my office, please’, then she was no longer in his good books; some misdemeanour had occurred.
‘Penny for them,’ Rebus said now. He’d already demolished most of the pint she’d just bought him.
She shook her head. ‘Just wondering about the victim.’
Rebus shrugged. ‘Asian-looking, or whatever the politically correct term of the week is.’ He stubbed out his cigarette. ‘Could have been Mediterranean or Arabic... I didn’t really get that close. Surplus to requirements again.’ He shook his cigarette packet. Finding it empty, he crushed it and finished his beer. ‘Same again?’ he said, rising to his feet.
‘I’ve hardly started this one.’
‘Then put it to one side and have a proper drink. Not got anything else on tonight, have you?’
‘Doesn’t mean I’m ready to spend the evening helping you get hammered.’ He stood his ground, giving her time to reconsider. ‘Go on then: gin and tonic.’
Rebus seemed satisfied with this, and headed out of the room. She could hear voices from the bar, greeting his arrival there.
‘What’re you doing hiding upstairs?’ one of them asked. She couldn’t hear an answer, but knew it anyway. The front bar was Rebus’s domain, a place where he could hold court with his fellow drinkers — all of them men. But this part of his life had to remain distinct from any other — Siobhan wasn’t sure why, it was just something he was unwilling to share. The back room was for meetings and ‘guests’. She sat back and thought of the Jardines, and whether she was really willing to become involved in their search. They belonged to her past, and past cases seldom reappeared so tangibly. It was in the nature of the job that you became involved in people’s lives intimately — more intimately than many of them would like — but for a brief time only. Rebus had let slip to her once that he felt surrounded by ghosts: lapsed friendships and relationships, plus all those victims whose lives had ended before his interest in them had begun.
It can play havoc with you, Shiv...
She’d never forgotten those words; in vino veritas and all that. She could hear a mobile phone ringing in the front room. It prompted her to take out her own, checking for messages. But there was no signal, something she’d forgotten about this place. The Oxford Bar was only a minute’s walk from the city-centre shops, yet somehow you could never pick up a signal in the back room. The bar was tucked away down a narrow lane, offices and flats above. Thick stone walls, built to survive the centuries. She angled the handset different ways, but the on-screen message remained a defiant ‘No Signal’. But now Rebus himself was in the doorway, no drinks in his hands. Instead, waving his own mobile at her.
‘We’re wanted,’ he said.
‘Where?’
He ignored her question. ‘You got your car?’
She nodded.
‘Better let you drive then. Lucky you stuck to the soft stuff, eh?’
She put her jacket back on and picked up her bag. Rebus was purchasing cigarettes and mints from behind the bar. He popped one of the mints into his mouth.
‘So is this to be a mystery tour or what?’ Siobhan asked.
He shook his head, crunching down with his teeth. ‘Fleshmarket Close,’ he told her. ‘Couple of bodies we might be interested in.’ He pulled open the door to the outside world. ‘Only not quite as fresh as the one in Knoxland...’
Fleshmarket Close was a narrow, pedestrian-only lane connecting the High Street to Cockburn Street. The High Street entrance was flanked by a bar and a photographic shop. There were no parking spaces left, so Siobhan turned into Cockburn Street itself, parking outside the arcade. They crossed the road and headed into Fleshmarket Close. This end, its entrance boasted a bookmaker’s one side, and a shop opposite selling crystals and ‘dream-catchers’: old and new Edinburgh, Rebus thought to himself. The Cockburn Street end of the close was open to the elements, while the other half was covered over by five floors of what he assumed to be flats, their unlit windows casting baleful looks on the goings-on below.
There were several doorways in the lane itself. One would lead to the flats, and one, directly opposite, to the bodies. Rebus saw some of the same faces from the crime scene at Knoxland: white-suited SOCOs and police photographers. The doorway was narrow and low, dating back a few hundred years to when the locals had been a great deal shorter. Rebus ducked as he entered, Siobhan right behind him. Lighting, provided by a meagre forty-watt bulb in the ceiling, was in the process of being augmented by an arc lamp, as soon as a cable could be found to stretch to the nearest socket.
Rebus hesitated on the periphery, until one of the SOCOs told him it was all right.
‘Bodies’ve been here a while; not much chance of us disturbing any evidence.’
Rebus nodded and approached the tight circle made up of white suits. There was a scuffed concrete floor under their feet. A pickaxe lay nearby. There was still dust in the air, clinging to the back of Rebus’s throat.
‘The concrete was being taken up,’ someone was explaining. ‘Doesn’t look as if it’s been there too long, but they wanted to lower the floor for some reason.’
‘What is this place?’ Rebus asked, looking around. There were packing cases, shelves filled with more boxes. Old barrels and advertising signs for beers and spirits.
‘Belongs to the pub upstairs. They’ve been using it for storage. Cellar’s just through that wall.’ A gloved hand pointed to the shelves. Rebus could hear floorboards creaking above them, and muffled sounds from a jukebox or TV set. ‘Workman starts breaking the stuff up, and here’s what he finds...’
Rebus turned and looked down. He was staring at a skull. There were other bones, too, and he didn’t doubt they would make up an entire skeleton, once the rest of the concrete had been removed.