‘Touch me again, you’re dead.’
‘Tell your friend, if he wants to threaten me, he should do it himself. Nobody’s scared of the message-boy.’
Then he turned and walked away. He was worried though. If they were serious — whoever they were — when he was so far from solving the puzzle, how would they react if he got any closer? He stopped at the door.
‘By the way,’ he said, ‘your fag-end just set fire to that bin.’
Flower turned and saw that the contents of the waste-bin were indeed smouldering. He reached for some liquid to douse the fire.
He’d forgotten that it was whisky, not coffee, in his mug.
Rebus’s phone was ringing as he got home. It was Rico Briggs.
‘I had a word with a friend,’ he told Rebus. Rico never liked to say too much on the phone.
‘And?’
‘Be in the bus station at eleven.’
‘Tonight?’
‘Tonight.’
‘Whereabouts in the bus station?’
‘Just be there. You’ll pay him his share and mine.’
The line went dead.
24
At ten to eleven, Rebus was in the St Andrew’s Square bus station. A few early drunks had assembled for the last bus home. There was a pub in the bus station; it sounded busy. A man sprinted out of it, slipped in a patch of oil, and fell like a sniper’s bullet had got him. He got back to his feet in time to see his bus pull away, and started swearing. There was a gash in the knee of his trousers.
Exhaust fumes lay in heavy strata just above ground level. Rebus tried not to breathe too deeply as he walked up and down the ranks. A few teenagers were asleep on the precarious benches. An old man, looking dazed, crossed the concourse dressed in a duffel coat, pyjamas and slippers. The slippers looked brand new, maybe a Christmas present.
‘Where are you?’ Rebus hissed, stamping his feet. He pushed his hands deeper into his pockets and walked the ranks again.
‘Sit down,’ a voice said.
Rebus looked down at the figure. He’d thought the man was asleep, arms folded, head tucked into the front of his jacket. He was sitting at the last rank. There was a bus there, but with its lights off.
Rebus sat down, and the man looked up at him. He had greasy brown hair which fell over one eye, and he could have done with a shave. There was a small scar, no more than a nick, below his right eye. The eyes were piercing blue with long lashes. When he spoke, Rebus saw there was a tooth missing from the front of his mouth.
‘Money.’
‘You’re Rico’s friend?’
The man nodded. ‘Money,’ he repeated.
Rebus showed him two twenties, then handed them over. ‘He said half for him.’
‘He’ll get half.’ The voice was a lazy west coast drawl. ‘You want to know about Saughton?’
‘A man killed himself with a shotgun. He was fresh out of Saughton.’
‘Which bit?’
‘C Hall.’
The man shook his head. ‘Can’t help you then.’
A driver had come over to the bus, cashbox in hand. He opened the doors and went inside, closing them after him. Lights came on all the way up the bus.
‘What do you mean?’
‘Just what I say. I can’t help.’
The engine started up, spewing fumes. A couple of people had joined the queue and were wondering whether to jump ahead of the two seated down-and-outs.
‘Why not?’
‘Never really knew anyone in C Hall.’ The man stood up, Rebus rising with him. ‘This is my bus.’
‘Wait a minute.’
The man turned to him. The bus doors were opening, the people behind wanting to be in the warm. ‘Ask Gerry Dip.’
‘Gerry Dip?’
‘He was in C Hall, came out a few weeks back.’
‘Where can I find him?’
‘Dipping fish, that’s how he got the name.’ The man climbed on to the platform. ‘I hear he’s working in a chip shop on Easter Road.’
Every chip shop in Scotland was at its busiest after the pubs had emptied. Even the bad ones, the ones with bony fish and rubber batter, had queues. Rebus took one look at the wares on display in the second chip shop he tried, and decided he would go without.
There was a queue almost out the door, but he walked to the front, ignoring the stares. A teenage girl was serving, mouth open in concentration.
‘Salt and sauce?’ she asked the customer.
‘Is Gerry in?’ Rebus asked.
She nodded further along the counter. There was a small man there dipping fish in a bucket of batter before tossing them into the fryer.
‘Gerry?’ Rebus asked. The man shook his head and pointed towards the back of the narrow shop, where a very tall, very skinny young man wearing a white cotton apron was playing the video machine.
It was one of those kick-and-chop games, the enemy bounding into view only long enough to be taken out again by the snarling cartoon hero.
‘Gerry Dip?’ Rebus said.
The player was in his mid-twenties, with cropped black hair and a nose-stud. His bare arms sported tattoos, and there were more on the backs of his hands. On his right wrist was a tattooed watch, the hands of which pointed to twelve. Rebus checked his own watch and saw that Gerry Dip’s was dead-on.
Rebus saw that Dip was watching him in the screen’s reflection. ‘Not many people call me that,’ he said.
‘I’m a friend of a friend, someone you knew in Saughton. He said you could maybe help me. There’d be a drink in it.’
‘How big a drink?’
Rebus had been to a cash machine. He laid a crisp twenty on the console. Maybe it affected Dip’s concentration. A landmine tore the arms and legs off his man. The Game Over message flashed, and a digitised voice said, ‘Feed … Money … Me … Hungry.’
Gerry Dip palmed the note. ‘Let’s retire to my office.’
He led Rebus behind the counter and told the fish batterer he’d swop places in five minutes. Then he pushed open a door and led Rebus into a kitchen-cum-storeroom. Sacks of potatoes waited to be peeled, and two large freezers hummed.
‘I hope you’re not Environmental Health,’ Gerry Dip said, getting a glass of water from the sink and gulping it. ‘Actually, I know what you are, it gets so you can smell it after a while.’
Rebus let the remark go. ‘A man was released from C Hall a couple of weeks back. He stuck a gun into his — ’
‘Wee Shug.’ Dip nodded. ‘I knew him, played cards a few times, talked about telly and the football.’ Dip refilled his glass. ‘You’re up from six in the morning till nine at night, lights-out isn’t till ten. You get to know people. Plus I worked with him in the upholstery workshop. He said he’d come down the chippie and see me — then I read about him in the papers.’
‘Did you know he was ill?’
‘He saw the doctor a lot, never talked about it though. I know he had some medicine: we wanted him to hand it round so we could get a buzz. What was wrong with him?’
‘Cancer.’
‘That why he topped himself?’
‘Could be.’
‘Well, if you want to know about Wee Shug, you should talk to his cell-mate. Now there was a fucking character. Hoity-toity, stayed in his cell even when he didn’t need to.’
Big Jim Flett had mentioned a cell-mate; Rebus saw suddenly why Flett had been relieved at the end of their interview.
‘Gerry, what was Wee Shug in for?’
‘Housebreaking.’
‘You sure about that?’
‘That’s what I heard.’
‘Not rape?’
‘What?’
No, thought Rebus, because rapists are usually kept away from the other prisoners. But the governor had let it slip that Wee Shug shared a cell.
‘He wasn’t inside for rape,’ Gerry Dip said.