‘Or cousins maybe,’ said the drinker on his right.
‘Related, though,’ Rebus mused.
‘I cannae see it myself,’ said Dod the barman.
‘Look a bit closer,’ Rebus advised. He ran his finger over the sheets of paper. ‘Same chins, eyes look the same too. Maybe they
‘Who are they, then?’ asked the drinker on his right, a middle-aged man with square unshaven jaw and lively blue eyes.
But Rebus just shrugged again. One of the domino players came to the bar to order a round. He looked like he’d just won a rubber, and clapped his hands together.
‘How’s it going then, James?’ he asked the drinker on Rebus’s right. ‘No’ bad, Matt. Yourself?’
‘Ach, just the same.’ He smiled at Rebus. ‘Havenae seen you in here afore, son.’
Rebus shook his head. ‘I’ve been away.’
‘Oh aye?’ Three pints had appeared on a metal tray.
‘There you go, Matt.’
‘Thanks, Dod.’ Matt handed over a ten-pound note. As he waited for change, he saw the drawings. ‘Butch and Sundance, eh?’ He laughed. Rebus smiled warmly. ‘Or more like Steptoe and Son.’
‘Steptoe and Brother,’ Rebus suggested.
‘Brothers?’ Matt studied the drawings. He was still studying them when he asked, ‘Are you the polis then, son?’
‘Do I look like the polis?’
‘No’ exactly.’
‘No’ fat enough for a start,’ said Dod. ‘Eh, son?’
‘You get skinny polis, though,’ argued James. ‘What about Stecky Jamieson?’
‘Right enough,’ said Dod. ‘Thon bugger could hide behind a lamp post.’
Matt had picked up the tray of drinks. The other domino players at his table called out that they were ‘gasping’. Matt nodded towards the drawings. ‘I’ve seen yon buggers afore,’ he said, before moving off.
Rebus drained his glass and ordered another. The drinker on his left finished and, fixing a bunnet to his head, started to make his goodbyes.
‘Cheerio then, Dod.’
‘Aye, cheerio.’
‘Cheerio, James.’
This went on for minutes. The long cheerio. Rebus folded the drawings and put them in his pocket. He took his time over the second pint. There was some talk of football, extra-marital affairs, the nonexistent job market. Mind you, the amount of affairs that seemed to be going on, Rebus was surprised anyone found the time or energy for a job.
‘You know what this part of Fife’s become?’ offered James. ‘A giant DIY store. You either work in one, or you shop there. That’s about it.’
‘True enough,’ said Dod, though there was little conviction in his voice.
Rebus finished the second pint and went to visit the gents’. The place stank to high heaven, and the graffiti was poor. Nobody came in for a quiet word, not that he’d been expecting it. On his way back from bathroom to bar he stopped at the dominoes game.
‘Matt?’ he asked. ‘Sorry to interrupt. You didn’t say where you thought you’d seen Butch and Sundance.’
‘Maybe just the one o’ them,’ said Matt. The doms had been shuffled and he picked up seven, three in one hand and four in the other. ‘It wasnae here, though. Maybe Lochgelly. For some reason, I think it was Lochgelly.’ He put the dominoes face down on the tabletop and picked out the one he wished to play. The man next to him chapped.
‘Bad sign that, Tam, this early on.’
Bad sign indeed. Rebus would have to go to Lochgelly. He returned to the bar and said his own brief cheerio.
‘Or you could draw a fire,’ someone at the bar was saying, poking the embers of that long-dead joke.
The drive from Cowdenbeath to Lochgelly took Rebus through Lumphinnans. His father had always made jokes about Lumphinnans; Rebus wasn’t sure why, and certainly couldn’t recall any of them. When he’d been young, the skies had been full of smoke, every house heated by a coal fire in the sitting room. The chimneys sent up a grey plume into the evening air, but not now. Now, central heating and gas had displaced Old King Coal.
It saddened Rebus, this silence of the lums.
It saddened him, too, that he would have to repeat his performance with the drawings. He’d hoped the Midden would be the start and finish of his quest. Of course, it was always possible Eddie had been setting a false trail in the first place. If so, Rebus would see he got his just desserts, and it wouldn’t be Blue Suede Choux.
He did his act in three pubs nursing three half-pints, with no reaction save the usual bad jokes including the ‘drawing the pension’ line. But in the fourth bar, an understandably understated shack near the railway station, he drew the attention of a keen-eyed old man who had been cadging drinks all round the pub. At the time, Rebus was showing the drawings to a cluster of painters and decorators at the corner of the L-shaped bar. He knew they were decorators because they’d asked him if he needed any work doing. ‘On the fly, like. Cheaper that way.’ Rebus shook his head and showed them the drawings.
The old man pushed his way into the group. He looked up at all the faces around him. ‘All right, lads? Here, I was decorated in the war.’ He cackled at his joke.
‘So you keep telling us, Jock.’
‘Every fuckin’ night.’
‘Without fuckin’ fail.’
‘Sorry, lads,’ Jock apologised. He thrust a short thick finger at one of the drawings. ‘Looks familiar.’
‘Must be a bloody jockey then.’ The decorator winked at Rebus. ‘I’m no’ joking, mister. Jock would recognise a racehorse’s bahookey quicker than a human face.’
‘Ach,’ said Jock dismissively, ‘away tae hell wi’ you.’ And to Rebus: ‘Sure you dinnae owe me a drink fae last wee…?’
Five minutes after Rebus glumly left this last pub, a young man arrived. It had taken him some time, visiting all the bars between the Midden and here, asking whether a man had been in with some drawings. He was annoyed, too, at having to break off his pool practice so early. His screwball needed work. There was a competition on Sunday, and he had every intention of winning the?100 prize. If he didn’t, there’d be trouble. But meantime, he knew he could do someone a favour by trailing this man who claimed not to be a copper. He knew it because he’d made a phone call from the Midden.
‘You’d be doing me a favour,’ the person on the other end of the line had said, when the pool player had finally been put through to him, having had to relate his story to two other people first.
It was useful to be owed a favour, so he’d taken off from the Midden, knowing that the man with the drawings was on his way to Lochgelly. But now here he was at the far end of the town; there were no pubs after this until Lochore. And the man had gone. So the pool player made another call and gave his report. It wasn’t much, he knew, but it had been time-consuming work all the same.
‘I owe you one, Sharky,’ the voice said.
Sharky felt elated as he got back into his rusty Datsun. And with luck, he’d still have time for a few games of pool before closing time.
John Rebus drove back to Edinburgh with just desserts on his mind. And Andrew McPhail, and Michael with his tranquillisers, and Patience, and Operation Moneybags, and many other things besides.
Michael was sound asleep when he arrived at the flat. He checked with the students, who were worried that his brother was maybe on some sort of drugs. He assured them the drugs were prescribed rather than proscribed. Then he telephoned Siobhan Clarke at home.
‘How did it go today?’
‘You had to be there, sir-I could write the book on boredom. Dougary had five visitors all day. He had pizza delivered lunch. Drove home at five-thirty.’
‘Any of the visitors interesting?’
‘I’ll let you see the photographs. Customers, maybe. But they came out with as many limbs as they went in
