Cafferty shook his head. 'The ferry to Skye, that was enough for me.'
'There's a bridge these days.'
Cafferty scowled. 'Wherever they find romance, they replace it.'
Privately, Rebus didn't disagree, but he was damned if Cafferty was going to know that. 'The bridge is a lot handier,' he said instead.
Cafferty's scowl looked even more pained. But it wasn't that... he was in real pain. He bent forward, hand going to his stomach. Put down his drink and fumbled in his pocket for some tablets. He was wearing a dark woollen blazer with a black polo neck beneath. He shook two tablets out, washed them down with water poured into an empty glass.
'You okay?' Rebus asked, trying not to sound too concerned.
Cafferty caught his breath at last, patted Rebus's forearm as though reassuring a friend.
'Bit of indigestion, that's all.' He picked up his drink again. 'We're all on the way out, eh, Strawman? Barry could have gone the way of his uncle, but instead he's a businessman. And you... I'll bet most of your CID colleagues are younger, collegeeducated. The old ways don't work any more, that's what they'll tell you.' He opened his arms. 'If I'm a liar, let me hear it.'
Rebus stared at him, then looked down. 'You're not a liar.'
Cafferty seemed pleased to have found common ground. 'You can't be too far off retirement.'
'I've a few years in me yet.'
Cafferty raised his hands in surrender. 'The phrase more's the pity never entered my mind.'
And this time when he laughed, Rebus almost joined in. Another round of whiskies was ordered. This time, Cafferty added a vodka and fresh, which he took over to Rab. When he came back, Rebus asked again about the bodyguard.
'Only, the way he looks tonight, I'm not sure he'd be much use to you.'
'He'd do fine in a clinch, don't you worry.'
'I'm not worried. I'm just thinking this may be the best chance I ever get to take a pop at you.'
'Take a pop at me? Christ, man, state I'm in, if you sneezed I'd be in a thousand pieces on the floor. Now-come on, have another.'
Rebus shook his head. 'I've got work to do.'
'At this hour?' Cafferty's voice had risen so much, other drinkers were looking at him. Not that he was paying them any heed. 'No crows to scare off this time of night. Strawman.' He laughed again. 'Not too many of these old howffs left, eh? It's all theme pubs now. Do you remember the Castle o' Cloves?'
Rebus shook his head.
'Best pub there was. I drank there often. And now... well, down it came. They built a DIY store where it stood. Just up the road from your cop shop.'
Rebus nodded. 'I know the spot.'
'All changing,' Cafferty said. 'Maybe you'd be better out of the game, after all.' He lifted the glass to his lips. 'Just a thought, mind.' He finished the drink.
Rebus took a deep breath. 'Ah-choo!' Making show of sneezing across Cafferty's chest, then studying his handiwork. His eyes met Cafferty's. If looks were weapons, they'd have cleared the pub. 'You lied to me,' Rebus said quietly, walking away from the bar as the guitarist finally got his instrument in tune.
'You'll go to your grave a gobshite!' Cafferty yelled, brushing flecks of saliva from his polo neck. His voice stilled the music for a moment. 'Hear me, Strawman? I'll be dancing on your bastard coffin!'
Rebus let the door close behind him, inhaled the street's smoke-free air. Noises off: more kids heading home. He rested his head against a wall, a cold compress for his burning thoughts.
I'll be dancing on your coffin.
Strange words to come from a dying man. Rebus walked: down Nicolson Street to the Bridges, and from there down into the Cowgate. He stopped near the mortuary, smoked a cigarette. He still had his bag with him: rolls and sausage. He felt like he'd never be hungry again. His stomach was too full of bile. He sat on a wall.
I'll be dancing on your coffin.
A jig it would be, unrestrained and awkward, but a jig all the same.
Back up Infirmary Street. Back along to the Royal Oak. He kept back from the windows this time. No music: just a man's voice.
How slow ye move, ye heavy hours, The joyless day how dreary. It wasna sae ye glinted by, When I was wi' my dearie...
Cafferty again; another of Burns' songs. His voice full of pain and pleasure, pulsing with life. And Rab, seated by the piano, eyes almost closed, breathing laboured. Two men fresh minted from the Bar-L. One dying in full voice; the other wasted on freedom.
It was wrong. It was very, very wrong.
Rebus felt it in his own doomed heart.
Part Three
Beyond This Mist
Yet frost under sunlight can sparkle like hope even while muscles cramp, and the freezing damp can whisper 'let the bottle rest for once. There are warm mysteries beyond this mist.'
Angus Calder, 'Love Poem'
Jerry walked into the dole office frozen and soaked. There hadn't been any shaving foam left in the can, so he'd had to use ordinary soap, and then his last razor was in the bath, where Jayne had blunted it shaving her legs. Cue the morning's first argument. He'd nicked himself a couple of times; one of the spots wouldn't stop bleeding. And now his face was stinging from the sudden sleet, and of course as soon as he got in through the dole office door, didn't the cloud break and the sun come out?
It was a cruel city, this.
And then it turned out, after he'd waited half an hour, that his appointment wasn't at the dole office at all, but with the DSS, which was another half-hour's walk. He almost gave up and headed home, but something stopped him. Home: was that what it was? How come these days it felt like a prison, a place where his gaoler wife could nag and grind him down?
So he made for the DSS office, and they told him he was an hour late, and he started explaining but nobody was listening.
'Take a seat. I'll see what we can do.'
So he sat down with the wheezing masses, next to an old guy with a blood-curdling cough who spat on the floor when he'd finished. Jerry moved seats. The sun had dried out his jacket, but his shirt beneath was still damp, and he was shivering. Maybe he was coming down with something. Three-quarters of an hour he sat there. Other people came and went. Twice he went up to the desk, where the same woman said they were trying to find him 'a slot'. Her mouth looked like a slot, thin and disapproving. He sat back down.
Where else was there for him to go? He thought of working in an office like Nic's, nice and warm and with coffee on tap, watching the short skirts swish past his desk, one of them leaning over the photocopier. Christ, wouldn't that be heaven? Nic was probably heading off to lunch now, out to some swank place with crisp white tablecloths. Business lunches and business drinks and deals done with a handshake. Anybody could do a job like that. But then not everybody married the boss's cousin.
Nic had phoned him last night, started given him a roasting for bottling out, running off into the night like that, but making a joke of it in the end. Jerry had caught an inkling of something: Nic was afraid of him. And then it had struck him why: Jerry could tell the cops, spill the beans. Nic had to keep him sweet, that was why he turned the episode into a joke, ended with the words, 'I forgive you. After all, we go back a long way, eh? The two of us against the world.'
