Black Book

‘Make her some tea, will you?’ she pleaded.

‘Sorry, hen, I’m only CID. Needs someone a bit more senior to mash a pot of Brooke Bond.’ Rebus had his hands in his pockets, the casually informed observer, distanced from the mayhem into which he walked. He wandered over to the bird cage and peered in. On the sand floor, amidst feathers and husks and droppings, lay a mummified budgie.

‘Away the crow road,’ he muttered to himself, moving out of the living room. He saw the ambulancemen in the kitchen, and followed them. There was a body on the floor, hands and face heavily bandaged. He couldn’t see any blood, though. He nearly skited on wet linoleum, and steadied himself by gripping the edge of the antiquated gas cooker. It was warm to the touch. A police constable stood by the open back door, looking out to right and left. Rebus squeezed past the carers and their patient and joined the PC.

‘Nice day, eh?’

‘What?’

‘I see you’re admiring the weather.’ Rebus showed his ID again. ‘No, not that. Just seeing the way he went.’

Rebus nodded. ‘How do you mean?’

‘The neighbours say he climbed three fences, then ran down a close and away.’ The PC pointed. ‘That close there, just past the line full of washing.’

‘Behind the clothes-pole?’

‘Aye, that must be the one. Three fence…one, two, three. It’s got to be that close over there.’

‘Well done, son, that really gets us a long way.’

The constable stared at him. ‘My Inspector’s a stickler for notes. You’re from St Leonard’s? Not quite your patch is it, sir?’

‘Everywhere’s my patch, son, and everybody’s my constable. Now what happened here?’

‘The gentleman on the floor was attacked. The attacker ran off.’

Rebus nodded. ‘I can tell you the how and the who already.’ The PC looked dubious. ‘The attacker was a man called Alex Maclean, and he almost certainly punched or headbutted Mr McPhail there.’

The constable blinked, then shook his head. ‘That’s Maclean lying there.’ Rebus looked down, and for the first time took in the size of the man, a good forty pounds heavier than McPhail. ‘And he wasn’t punched or butted. He had a pot of boiling water thrown over him.’

Just a little abashed, Rebus listened without comment to the PC’s version of events. McPhail, who had been steering well clear of the house, had at last telephoned to say he’d be popping over for some clothes and things. He’d fobbed Mrs MacKenzie off with some story about working long shifts in a supermarket. He’d arrived, and was in the kitchen chatting to his landlady while she put on the water for her boiled eggs (boiled eggs every Wednesday lunchtime; poached on Thursdays-this was one part of Mrs MacKenzie’s statement she wanted to get absolutely clear). But Maclean had been watching the house, and saw McPhail go in. He opened the unlocked front door and ran into the kitchen. ‘A terrifying sight,’ according to Mrs MacKenzie. ‘I’ll never forget it if I live to be a hundred.’

It was at this point that McPhail lifted the pan and swung it at Maclean, showering him with boiling water. Then he’d opened the back door and fled. Over three fences and through.a close. End of melodrama.

Rebus watched them lift Maclean into the back of the ambulance. They’d be taking him to the Infirmary. Soon everyone Rebus knew in Edinburgh would be lying in the Infirmary. McPhail had been lucky this time. If he knew what was good for him, he would now take Rebus’s advice and flee the city, dodging the police who would be looking for him.

Rebus wondered if McPhail really did know what was good for him. This, after all, was a man who thought little girls were good for him. He wondered this as he sat in heavy lunchtime traffic, slowly oozing towards St Leonard’s. The route he’d taken to Broughton had been so slow, he saw little to lose by sticking to the bigger roads-Leith Street, The Bridges, and Nicolson Street. Something made him stay on this road till he came to the butcher’s shop where Rory Kintoul had ended up, bleeding beneath the meat counter.

He registered only slight surprise at the wooden board which had been placed across the entire front window of the shop. Pinned to the board was a large white sheet of paper with thick felt-pen writing. The sign said simply ‘Business as Usual’. Interesting, thought Rebus, parking his car. He noticed that rain or general wear underfoot had done away with the splashes of blood which had once left a crimson trail along the pavement.

Mr Bone the butcher was slicing corned beef with a manual machine whose circular blade hissed through the meat. He was smaller and thinner than most butchers Rebus had come across, his face all cheekbone and worry line, hair thinning and grey. There was no one else in the front of the shop, though Rebus could hear someone whistling as they worked in the back. Bone noticed that he had a customer.

‘And what’ll it be today, sir?’

Rebus noticed that the display cases just inside the front window were empty, doubtless waiting to be checked for slivers of glass before restocking. He nodded towards the wooden board. ‘When did that happen?’

‘Ach, last night.’ Bone placed the sliced corned beef in an unsullied section of the display case, then skewered the price marker into it. He wiped his hands on his white apron. ‘Kids or drunks.’

‘What was it, a brick?’

‘Search me.’

‘Well, if there was nothing lying in the shop it must have been a sledgehammer. I can’t see a kick with a steel toecap doing that sort of damage.’

Now Bone looked at him properly, and recognised him. ‘You were here when Ror…’

‘That’s right, Mr Bone. They didn’t use a sledgehammer on him though, did they?’

‘I don’t know what you mean.’

‘Pound of beef links, by the way.’

Bone hesitated, then took out the string of sausages and cut a length from it.

‘You could be right, of course,’ Rebus continued. ‘Could have been kids or drunks. Did anyone see anything?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘You didn’t report it?’

‘Didn’t have to. Police phoned me at two this morning to tell me about it.’ He sounded disgruntled.

‘All part of the service, Mr Bone.’

‘That’s just over the pound,’ Bone said, looking at the weighing scales. He wrapped the sausages in white paper, then in brown, marking the price with a pencil on this outer wrapper. Rebus handed over a five-pound note.

‘Insurance will take care of it, I suppose,’ he said.

‘Bloody hope so, the money they charge.’

Rebus accepted his change, and made sure to catch Bone’s eye. ‘But I meant the real insurance people, Mr Bone.’ An elderly couple were coming into the shop.

‘What happened, Mr Bone?’ the woman asked, her husband shuffling along behind her.

‘Just kids, Mrs Dowie,’ said Bone in the voice he used with customers, a voice he hadn’t been using with Rebus. He was staring at Rebus, who gave him a wink, picked up his package, and left. Outside, he looked down at the brown paper parcel. It was chill in his hand. He was supposed to be cutting down on meat, wasn’t he? Not that there was much meat in sausages anyway. Another passing shopper stopped to examine the boarded-up window, then went into the shop. Jim Bone would do good business today. Everyone would want to know what had happened. Rebus was different; he knew what had happened, though proving it wasn’t going to be easy. Siobhan Clarke hadn’t managed to talk to the stabbing victim yet. Maybe Rebus should push her along, especially now that she could tell Rory Kintoul all about his cousin’s broken window.

Next to his car someone had parked a Land Rover-style 4x4, inside which a huge black dog was ravening to get out. Pedestrians were giving the car a wide berth, and quite right too: the whole vehicle rocked on its axle when the dog lunged at the back window. Rebus noticed that the considerate owner had left the window open an inch. Maybe it was a trap intended for a particularly stupid car thief.

Rebus stopped in front of the open window and unrolled the package of sausages into the car. They fell onto the seat where the dog sniffed them for a nanosecond before starting to dine.

The street was blessedly quiet as Rebus unlocked his own car. ‘All part of the service,’ he said to