A Question of Blood

“How much trouble am I in?” Rebus asked, the silence getting to him.

“Depends on Steve Holly. He makes a song and dance, we have to be seen to be doing something about it.”

“Like putting me on suspension?”

“It had crossed my mind.”

“I don’t suppose I could blame you.”

“That’s awfully magnanimous, John. Why did you go to his house?”

“He asked me. I think he liked playing games. That’s all Siobhan was to him. Then I came along. He sat there feeding me drinks, spouting on about his adventures… I think it gave him a buzz.”

“And what did you think you were going to get out of it?”

“I don’t know exactly… I thought it might distract him from Siobhan.”

“She asked you for help?”

“No.”

“No, I’ll bet she didn’t. Siobhan can fight her own battles.”

Rebus nodded.

“So it’s a coincidence?”

“Fairstone was a disaster waiting to happen. It’s a blessing he didn’t take anyone else with him.”

“A blessing?”

“I won’t be losing too much sleep, Gill.”

“No, I suppose that would be too much to ask.”

Rebus straightened his back, held on to the silence, embracing it. Templer flinched. She’d drawn a bead of blood from her finger with the pencil tip.

“Final warning, John,” she said, dropping her hand, unwilling to deal with the injury-that sudden fallibility-in front of him.

“Yes, Gill.”

“Final means final with me.”

“I understand. Want me to fetch a Band-Aid?” His hand reached for the doorknob.

“I want you to leave.”

“If you’re sure there’s nothing -”

“Out!”

Rebus closed the door after him, feeling the muscles in his legs starting to work again. Siobhan was standing not ten feet away, one questioning eyebrow raised. Rebus gave her an awkward thumbs-up, and she shook her head slowly: I don’t know how you get away with it.

He wasn’t sure he knew either.

“Let me buy you a drink,” he said. “Cafeteria coffee all right?”

“That’s pushing the boat out.”

“I’m on a final warning. It’s hardly the winning goal at Hampden.”

“More of a throw-in at Easter Road?”

She managed a smile from him. He felt an aching in his jaw, the feeling of sustained tension that a simple smile could displace.

Downstairs, however, it was chaos. People milled around, the interview rooms all seemed to be full. Rebus recognized faces from Leith CID, meaning Hogan’s team. He grabbed an elbow.

“What’s going on?”

The face glowered at him, then softened as he was recognized. The detective constable’s name was Pettifer. He’d been only half a year in CID; already he was toughening up nicely.

“Leith’s jam-packed,” Pettifer explained. “Thought we’d use St. Leonard’s for the overflow.”

Rebus looked around. Pinched faces, ill-fitting clothes, bad haircuts… the cream of Edinburgh’s lower depths. Informers, junkies, touts, scammers, housebreakers, muscle, alkies. The station was filling with their mingled scents, their slurred, expletive-strewn protestations. They’d fight anyone, anytime. Where were their lawyers? Nothing to drink? Needing a pish. What was the game? What about human rights? No dignity in this fascist state…

Detectives and uniforms tried for a semblance of order, taking names, details, pointing to a room or a bench where a statement could be taken, everything denied, a muttered complaint made. The younger men had a swagger, not yet ground down by the constant attentions of the law. They smoked, despite the warning signs. Rebus bummed a cigarette from one of them. He wore a checked baseball cap, its rim pointing skywards. Rebus reckoned one gust of Edinburgh wind would have the thing sailing from its owner’s head like a Frisbee.

“No’ done nothing, like,” the youth said, twitching one shoulder. “Just helping out, so they says. Dinne want nothing to do with shooters, chief, that’s the gospel. Pass it along, eh?” He winked a snake’s cold eye. “One good turn and all that.” Meaning the rumpled cigarette. Rebus nodded, moved off again.

“Bobby’s looking for whoever might have supplied the guns,” Rebus told Siobhan. “Rounding up the usual desperadoes.”

“Thought I recognized some faces.”

“Aye, and not from judging any bonny baby contests.” Rebus studied the men-they were all men. Easy to see them as mere debris; work hard enough and you might find a smear of sympathy somewhere in your soul. These were men on whom the Fates had decided not to shine, men who’d been brought up to respect greed and fear, men whose whole lives had been tainted from the word go.

Rebus believed this. He saw families where the children ran wild and would grow up indifferent to anything but the rules of survival in what they saw as a jungle. Neglect was almost in their genes. Cruelty made people cruel. With some of these young men, Rebus had known their fathers and grandfathers, too, criminality in their blood, aging the one and only disincentive to their recidivism. These were basic facts. But there was a problem. By the time Rebus and his like had reason to confront these men, the damage was already done, and in many cases appeared irreversible. So there could be little room for sympathy. Instead, it came down to attrition.

And then there were men like Peacock Johnson. Peacock wasn’t his real name, of course. It was because of the shirts he wore, shirts that could curdle any hangover an onlooker might be harboring. Johnson was lowlife masquerading as high. He made money, and spent it, too. The shirts were often custom-made by a tailor in one of the narrow lanes of the New Town. Johnson sometimes affected a homburg and had grown a thin, black mustache, probably thinking he looked like Kid Creole. His dental work was good-which by itself would have marked him out from his fellow denizens-and he used his smile prodigally. He was a piece of work.

Rebus knew he was in his late thirties but could pass for either ten years older or a decade younger, depending on his mood and outfit. He went everywhere with a runt of a guy named Evil Bob. Bob sported what was almost a uniform: baseball cap, tracksuit top, baggy black jeans and oversized sneakers. Gold rings on his fingers, ID bracelets on both wrists, chains around his neck. He had an oval, spotty face with a mouth that hung open almost permanently, giving him a look of constant bewilderment. Some people said that Evil Bob was Peacock’s brother. If so, Rebus guessed some cruel genetic experiment had taken place. The tall, nearly elegant Johnson and his brutish sidekick.

As for the “evil” in Evil Bob, as far as anyone knew, it was just a name.

As Rebus watched, the two men were being separated. Bob was to follow a CID officer upstairs to where a space was newly available. Johnson was about to accompany DC Pettifer into Interview Room 1. Rebus glanced towards Siobhan, then pushed his way through the scrum.

“Mind if I sit in on this one?” he asked Pettifer. The young man looked flustered. Rebus tried for a reassuring smile.

“Mr. Rebus…” Johnson was holding out his hand. “What a pleasant surprise.”

Rebus ignored him. He didn’t want a pro like Johnson to know just how new Pettifer was to the game. At the same time, he had to persuade the detective constable that no dirty trick was being played, that Rebus wasn’t going to be there as invigilator. All he had was his smile, so he tried it again.

“Fine,” Pettifer said at last. The three men entered the interview room, Rebus holding his index finger up in Siobhan’s direction, hoping she’d know he wanted her to wait for him.

IR1 was small and stuffy and held the body odors of what seemed like its last half a dozen guests. There were windows high up on one wall, but they wouldn’t open. On the small table sat a dual-tape deck. There was a panic