Tollcross would do her.
They sat in the ice-cream parlour and she ordered the biggest concoction on the menu, plus a giant Coke. The place was quiet: an old couple, smoking and drinking frothy coffee; a harassed mother hissing at her two children who were arguing over bowls of garish ice cream.
Rebus had ordered coffee, Duggan orange juice and some apple pie with cream. Rebus remembered that he used to bring Sammy in here when she was a kid. He looked at the Lord Provost’s daughter and tried to remember she was seventeen.
‘Paul says you want a word.’ Her voice was polite in a way no attitude could hide. Rebus knew that her street diction, her low-class language, had been only recently learned.
‘How long have you been on the Bob Hope, Kirstie?’
‘You mean the Merry?’
Duggan looked at Rebus. ‘Merry Mac, crack,’ he explained.
‘Long enough,’ Kirstie answered.
‘Long enough to be tired of it?’
‘Long enough to know you never get tired of it.’ Her ice cream arrived: three different flavours with chocolate sauce, nuts, tinned peaches and wafers. The sight of it made Rebus’s teeth crackle.
‘Your dad’s been worried,’ he said.
‘So what?’
‘And your mum.’
Her sudden convulsion almost sent a mouthful of ice cream on to the table. ‘My mum died when I was five. What you mean is, “that woman who lives with my dad”.’
‘OK.’
‘Have you met her?’
‘No.’
‘She’s off her trolley, praise the Lord.’
‘So you don’t get on with her. Is that why you ran away?’
‘Does there have to be a reason?’
Rebus shrugged. ‘Only, most teenagers I know who run away, they go a bit further.’
‘You mean London? I didn’t like it. My pals are all up here.’
‘You mean pals like Willie and Dixie?’
She put the spoon back on her plate and started on the Coke. ‘I liked Willie. Dixie was a nutter, you never knew what he’d do next, but Willie was all right.’
‘You heard what they did?’
She nodded.
‘You left that wreath for them on the bridge, didn’t you?’
Another nod. She dipped her finger into the chocolate sauce. She was trying not to care, but there was still a core of sentiment buried in her brain, a precious nugget of guilt.
‘Was it your idea, Kirstie?’ She looked up at him. ‘It was, wasn’t it?’
She got to her feet. ‘I have to go to the toilet.’
Rebus snatched her wrist. ‘Why did you do it, Kirstie? Just for the money? Why did you take the LABarum plans from your father’s office?’
She shook free of his grip. ‘Let me go!’ She stumbled away from the table and ran to the toilets. Rebus sat back and started to light a cigarette.
‘No smoking,’ the waitress told him.
‘Can I get a beer?’
‘We’re not licensed.’
Rebus nicked his cigarette and put it back in the packet. He looked across the table at Paul Duggan.
‘You like her, don’t you?’ Rebus said.
Duggan said nothing. He was making circles in the cream with his spoon.
‘Remember I told you she’d left something in Willie’s bedroom? It was some papers stolen from her father. Do you have any idea why she took them?’
Duggan shook his head slowly but determinedly. ‘She’s … go easy on her, OK?’
‘Or what?’
‘Or she’ll run.’ Duggan paused. ‘Again.’
Eventually the toilet door opened and she walked back to the table, arms hanging in a lazy slouch. Rebus looked into her eyes and saw pupils shrunk to pinheads.
‘That was stupid.’
‘So what?’ she said, starting back into her ice cream. After two mouthfuls, she pushed the plate away.
‘The kidnap,’ Rebus said, ‘the ransom demand — it was all your idea, wasn’t it?’
‘Yes.’
‘To get back at your stepmother?’
‘My dad.’
‘To get back at your dad?’
She nodded. ‘And everything he represents, the old bastard.’ She was much more together now, more confident. She didn’t care what she told him.
‘You know you committed an offence?’ Rebus asked.
‘I’d deny it in court. I’d deny it everywhere. Where’s the proof that it wasn’t just two wee boys with a daft scheme in their heads?’
‘There’s corroboration.’ Rebus glanced towards Duggan.
‘You think Paul would grass on me?’ She leaned into Duggan’s shoulder and stroked his face. ‘He wouldn’t do that.’
‘Not even if I offered him a deal on his slum landlord scam?’
Kirstie shook her head. ‘Paul wouldn’t hurt me. His mum likes me too much.’
‘Well, maybe I don’t need Paul. Maybe all I need is that LABarum document. It links you to Willie.’ He paused. ‘Did you write “Dalgety” on the last page?’ She nodded. ‘Why?’
‘It’s something I heard my dad say on the phone … when I was listening in. Dalgety sounded important, someone he was worried about.’
‘Dalgety’s a person then?’
‘Yes.’
‘Kirstie, why did you steal the LABarum plan?’
Her face creased in a sneer. ‘It’s my dad, don’t you see? If you look closely enough at it, if you read all the small print and between the lines, all you’ll find there is my dad’s face, smiling smugly back at you.’
‘Why is he smug?’
‘Because it’s going to make him a hero. And it’s all crooked. I heard him on the phone, they were talking about how to cover it all up. The whole fucking thing is just a lot of … a lot of … it’s all just so much skit!’
‘I can’t have language like that,’ the waitress warned. ‘There are children in here.’
‘Well, fuck them!’ Kirstie screeched, jumping to her feet. ‘Because they’re all fucked anyway, just like everybody else!’
‘I’ll have to ask you to leave.’
Rebus and Duggan were on their feet too.
‘Come on, Kirstie.’
‘That girl’s on drugs or something, I know it!’
Rebus threw money down on the table. Kirstie Kennedy’s legs had buckled, and Duggan was holding her upright.
‘Let’s get her into the car,’ Rebus said, knowing he should take her straight to St Leonard’s, angry with himself because he knew that’s the last thing he was going to do.
Instead, Duggan gave him directions back to where she was staying. It was a flat in Leith, in the maze of narrow roads behind Great Junction Street.
‘One of yours, is it?’ Rebus asked Duggan. But Duggan was busy stroking Kirstie’s forehead, even though she was asleep.
They walked her up the stairs, one on either side, arms around her back, her arms over their shoulders. Rebus could feel the swell of a small breast, and the thin rib-cage beneath.
‘You did say you wanted to see her,’ Duggan was saying, exculpating himself.
‘And I’ll want to see her again.’ He knew there was more she could tell him, more he needed to hear from her.
He was trying to figure out who or what was responsible for the deaths of Willie and Dixie. This weightless creature he carried? The lads themselves? The police for giving chase? The Lord Provost for agreeing to it all? Maybe even the stepmother for driving Kirstie away? Except that it hadn’t just been the stepmother, it had been some realisation about the Lord Provost himself …
Maybe it was the system, that same system Sammy so passionately attacked. A system that had failed Willie and Dixie as surely as it nurtured people like Sir lain Hunter and Robbie Mathieson. In nature, there had to be balance; as some rose, others fell or were pushed or made the leap for themselves.
Or maybe … just maybe it had been Rebus himself, for crawling from the wreckage still with the need to confront them … standing there in front of them, forcing them to choose. My obsession, he thought. My private morality. Maybe the Farmer was right …
‘Will you stay with her?’ he asked Duggan when they reached the top of the stairs.
Duggan nodded. Rebus knew she’d be all right. She had someone who’d look after her.