`I thought that was supposed to be my job?’
`I've seen precious little from you, Strawman.’
`I've got something in the pipeline. If it comes off, you'll like it.’
Cafferty's eyes narrowed. `Give me details. Make me believe you.’
But Rebus was shaking his head. `Sometimes, you just have to have faith.’
He paused. `Deal?’
`I must have missed something.’
Rebus spelled it out. `Back off. Leave Telford to me.’
`We've been through this. He hits me and I do nothing, I look like something you'd step around on the pavement.’
`We're talking to him, warning him off.’
`And meantime I'm supposed to trust you to get the job done?’
`We shook hands on it.’
Cafferty snorted. `I've shaken hands with a lot of bastards.’
`And now you've met an exception to the rule.’
`You're an exception to a lot of rules, Strawman.’
Cafferty looked thoughtful. `The casino, the clubs, the arcade… they weren't badly hit?’
`My guess is the sprinklers will have done as much damage as anything.’
Cafferty's jaw hardened. `Makes me look even more of a mug.’
Rebus sat in silence, waiting for him to finish whatever chessgame was being played inside his head.
`Okay,' the gangster said at last, `I'll call off the troops. Maybe it's time to do some recruiting anyway.’
He looked up at Rebus. `Time for some fresh blood.’
Which reminded Rebus of another job he'd been putting off.
Danny Simpson lived at home with his mother in a terraced house in Wester Hailes.
This bleak housing-scheme, designed by sadists who'd never had to live anywhere near it, had a heart which had shrivelled but refused to stop pumping. Rebus had a lot of respect for the place. Tommy Smith had grown up here, practising with socks stuffed into the mouth of his sax, so as not to disturb the neighbours through the thin walls of the high-rise. Tommy Smith was one of the best sax players Rebus had ever heard.
In a sense, Wester Hailes existed outside the real world: it wasn't on a route from anywhere to anywhere. Rebus had never had cause to drive through it he only went there if he had business there. The city bypass flew past it, offering many drivers their only encounter with Wester Hailes. They saw: high-rise blocks, terraces, tracts of unused playing field. They didn't see: people. Not so much concrete jungle as concrete vacuum.
Rebus knocked on Danny Simpson's door. He didn't know what he was going to say to the young man. He just wanted to see him again. He wanted to see him without the blood and the pain. Wanted to see him whole and of a piece.
Wanted to see him.
But Danny Simpson wasn't in, and neither was his mother. A neighbour, lacking her top set of dentures, came out and explained the situation.
The situation took Rebus to the Infirmary, where, in a small, gloomy ward not easily found, Danny Simpson lay in bed, head bandaged, sweating like he'd just played a full ninety minutes. He wasn't conscious. His mother sat beside him, stroking his wrist. A nurse explained to Rebus that a hospice would be the best place for Danny, supposing they could find him a bed.
`What happened?’
`We think infection must have set in. When you lose your resistance… the world's a lethal place.’
She shrugged, looked like she'd been through it all once too often. Danny's mother had seen them talking. Maybe she thought Rebus was a doctor. She got up and came towards him, then just stood there, waiting for him to speak.
`I came to see Danny,' he said.
`Yes?’
`The night he… the night of his accident, I was the one who brought him here. I just wondered how he was doing.’
`See for yourself.’
Her voice was breaking.
Rebus thought: a five-minute walk from here, he'd be in Sammy's room. He'd thought her situation unique, because it was unique to him. Now he saw that within a short radius of Sammy's bed, other parents were crying, and squeezing their children's hands, and asking why.
`I'm really sorry,' he said. `I wish…’
`Me, too,' the woman said. `You know, he's never been a bad laddie. Cheeky, but never bad. His problem was, he was always itching for something new, something to stop him getting bored. We all know where that can lead.’
Rebus nodded, suddenly not wanting to be here, not wanting to hear Danny Simpson's life story. He had enough ghosts to contend with as it was. He squeezed the woman's arm.
`Look,' he said, `I'm sorry, but I have to go.’
She nodded distractedly, wandered off in the direction of her son's bed. Rebus wanted to curse Danny Simpson for the mere possibility that he'd passed on the virus. He realised now that if they'd met on the doorstep, that's the way their conversation would have gone, and maybe Rebus would have gone further.
He wanted to curse him… but he couldn't. It would be every bit as efficacious as cursing the Big Man. A waste of time and breath. So instead he went to Sammy's room, to find that she was back on her own. No other patients, no nursing staff, no Rhona. He kissed her forehead. It tasted salty. Sweat: she needed wiping down. There was a smell he hadn't noticed before. Talcum powder. He sat down, took her warm hands in his.
`How are you doing, Sammy? I keep meaning to bring in some Oasis, see if that would bring you round. Your mum sits here listening to classical. I wonder if you can hear it. I don't even know if you like that sort of stuff. Lots of things we've never got round to talking about.’
He saw something. Stood up to be sure. Movement behind her eyelids.
'Sammy? Sammy?’
He hadn't seen her do that before. Pushed the button beside her bed. Waited for a nurse to come. Pushed it again.
`Come on, come on.’
Eyelids fluttering… then stopping.
'Sammy!' Door opening, nurse coming in.
`What is it?’
Rebus: `I thought I saw… she was moving.’
`Moving?’
`Just her eyes, like she was trying to open them.’
`I'll fetch a doctor.’
`Come on, Sammy, try again. Wakey-wakey, sweetheart.’
Patting her wrists, then her cheeks.
The doctor arrived. He was the same one Rebus had shouted at that first day. Lifted her eyelids, shone a thin torch. into them, pulling it away, checking her pupils.
`If you saw it, I'm sure it was there.’
`Yes, but does it mean anything?’
`Hard to say.’
`Try anyway.’
Eyes boring into the doctor's.
`She's asleep. She has dreams. Sometimes when you dream you experience REM: Rapid Eye Movement.’
`So it could be…’
Rebus sought the word `… involuntary?’
`As I say, it's hard to tell. Latest scans show definite improvement.’ He paused. `Minor improvement, but certainly there.’
Rebus nodding, trembling. The doctor saw it, asked if he needed anything. Rebus shaking his head. The doctor checking his watch, other places to be. The nurse shuffling her feet. Rebus thanked them both and headed out.
HOGAN: You agree to this interview being taped, Dr Colquhoun?
COLQUHOUN: I've no objections.
HOGAN: It's in your interests as well as ours.
COLQUHOUN: I've nothing to hide, Inspector Hogan. (Coughs.)
HOGAN: Fine, sir. Maybe we'll just start then?
COLQUHOUN: Might I ask a question? Just for the record, you want to ask me about Joseph Lintz – nothing else?
HOGAN: What else might there be, sir?
COLQUHOUN: I just wanted to check.
HOGAN: You wish to have a solicitor present?
COLQUHOUN: NO.
HOGAN: Right you are, sir. Well, if I can begin… it's really just a question of your relationship with Professor Joseph Lintz.
COLQUHOUN: Yes.
HOGAN: Only, when we spoke before, you said you didn't know Professor Lintz.
COLQUHOUN: I think I said I didn't know him very well.
HOGAN: Okay, sir. If that's what you said…
COLQUHOUN: It is, to the best of my recollection.
HOGAN: Only, we've had some new information…
COLQUHOUN: Yes?