After the Stones, he still had half a glass of malt to finish, so put on another album. Bob Dylan’s Desire, and the track ‘Hurricane’, a tale of injustice and wrongful accusation. He knew it happened: sometimes wilfully, sometimes by accident. He’d worked cases where the evidence seemed to be pointing conclusively to an individual, only for someone else to come forward and confess. And in the past — the distant past — maybe one or two criminals had been ‘fitted up’, to get them off the street, or to satisfy the public’s need for a conviction. There were times when you were sure you knew who the culprit was, but were never going to be able to prove it to the Procurator Fiscal’s satisfaction. One or two cops down the years had crossed the line.
He toasted them, catching his reflection in the living-room window. So he raised a toast to himself, too, then picked up the phone and called for a cab.
Destination: pubs.
In the Oxford Bar, he got talking to one of the regulars, happened to mention his trip to Falls.
‘I’d never heard of it before,’ he confided.
‘Oh aye,’ his companion stated, ‘I know Falls. Isn’t that where Wee Billy comes from?’
Wee Billy was another regular. A search confirmed that he wasn’t in the bar as yet, but he walked in twenty minutes later, still wearing his chef’s uniform from a restaurant around the corner. He wiped sweat from his eyes as he squeezed up to the bar.
‘That you done?’ someone asked him.
‘Fag break,’ he said, glancing at his watch. ‘Pint of lager, please, Margaret.’
As the barmaid poured, Rebus asked for a refill and said that both drinks were on him.
‘Cheers, John,’ Billy said, unused to such largesse. ‘How’s tricks?’
‘I was out at Falls yesterday. Is it right you grew up there?’
‘Aye, that’s right. Haven’t been back in years, mind.’
‘You didn’t know the Balfours then?’
Billy shook his head. ‘After my time. I was already in college when they moved back. Thanks, Margaret.’ He lifted the pint. ‘Your health, John.’
Rebus handed the cash over and raised his own pint, watching Billy demolish half the drink in three needy gulps.
‘Jesus, that’s better.’
‘Hard shift?’ Rebus guessed.
‘No more so than usual. You working the Balfour case then?’
‘Along with every other cop in the city.’
‘What did you reckon to Falls?’
‘Not big.’
Billy smiled, reached into his pocket for cigarette papers and tobacco. ‘Expect it’s changed a bit since I lived there.’
‘Were you a Meadowside boy?’
‘How did you know?’ Billy lit his roll-up.
‘A lucky guess.’
‘Mining stock, that’s me. Grandad worked all his days down the pit. Dad started off the same, but they made him redundant.’
‘I grew up in a mining town myself,’ Rebus said.
‘Then you’ll know what it’s like when the pits close. Meadowside was fine until then.’ Billy was staring at the optics, remembering his youth.
‘The place is still there,’ Rebus told him.
‘Oh aye, but not the same... couldn’t be the same. All the mums out scrubbing their steps, getting them whiter than white. Dads cutting the grass. Always popping into the other semis for a gossip or a loan of something.’ He paused, ordered them up a couple of refills. ‘Last I heard, Falls was all yuppies. Anything out of Meadowside’s too dear for the locals to buy. Kids grow up and move away — like I did. Anyone say anything to you about the quarry?’
Rebus shook his head, content to listen.
‘This was maybe two, three years back. There was talk of opening a quarry just outside the village. Plenty of jobs, all that. But suddenly this petition appeared — not that anyone on Meadowside had signed it, or been asked to sign it, come to that. Next thing, the quarry wasn’t coming.’
‘The yuppies?’
‘Or whatever you want to call them. Plenty of clout, see. Maybe Mr Balfour had a hand in it too, for all I know. Falls...’ He shook his head. ‘It’s not the place it was, John.’ He finished his roll-up and stubbed it into the ashtray. Then he thought of something. ‘Here, you like your music, don’t you?’
‘Depends what kind.’
‘Lou Reed. He’s coming to the Playhouse. I’ve two tickets going spare.’
‘I’ll think about it, Billy. Got time for another?’ He nodded towards the dregs in Billy’s glass.
The chef checked his watch again. ‘Got to get back. Maybe next time, eh?’
‘Next time,’ Rebus agreed.
‘And let me know about those tickets.’
Rebus nodded, watched Billy push his way back towards the door and out into the night. Lou Reed: there was a name from the past. ‘Walk on the Wild Side’, one of Rebus’s all-time favourites. And a bass-line played by the same guy who wrote ‘Grandad’ for that Dad’s Army actor. Sometimes there was such a thing as too much information.
‘Another, John?’ the barmaid asked.
He shook his head. ‘I can hear the call of the wild side,’ he said, pushing off from his stool and towards the door.
5
Saturday he went to the football with Siobhan. Easter Road was bathed in sunshine, the players throwing long shadows across the pitch. For a while, Rebus found himself following this shadow-play rather than the game itself: black puppet shapes, not quite human, playing something that wasn’t quite football. The ground was full, as only happened with local derbies and when Glasgow came to town. Today it was Rangers. Siobhan had a season ticket. Rebus was in the seat next to her, thanks to another season-ticket holder who couldn’t make it.
‘Friend of yours?’ Rebus asked her.
‘Bumped into him once or twice in the pub after the match.’
‘Nice guy?’
‘Nice family guy.’ She laughed. ‘When are you going to stop trying to marry me off?’
‘I was only asking,’ he said with a grin. He’d noticed that TV cameras were covering the game. They would concentrate on the players, the spectators a background blur or piece of half-time filler. But it was the fans who really interested Rebus. He wondered what stories they could tell, what lives they’d led. He wasn’t alone: around him other spectators seemed equally interested in the antics of the crowd rather than anything happening on the pitch. But Siobhan, knuckles white as she clenched either end of her supporter’s scarf, brought the same concentration to the game as she did to police work, yelling out advice to the players, arguing each refereeing decision with fans nearby. The man on Rebus’s other side was equally fevered. He was overweight, red-faced and sweating. To Rebus’s eyes, he seemed on the verge of a coronary. He’d mutter to himself, the noise growing in intensity until there was a final defiant hurl of abuse, after which he’d look around, smile sheepishly, and begin the whole process again.
‘Easy... take it easy, son,’ he was now telling one of the players.
‘Anything happening your end of the case?’ Rebus asked Siobhan.
‘Day off, John.’ Her eyes never left the pitch.
‘I know, I was just asking...’
‘Easy now... go on, son, on you go.’ The sweating man was gripping the back of the seat in front of him.
‘We can have a drink after,’ Siobhan said.
‘Try and stop me,’ Rebus told her.
‘That’s it, son, that’s the way!’ The voice growing the way a wave would. Rebus took out another cigarette. The day might be bright, but it wasn’t warm. The wind was whipping in from the North Sea, the gulls overhead working hard to stay airborne.
‘Go on now!’ the man was yelling. ‘Go on! Get right into that fat Hun bastard!’