Black Book

muscle. ‘Don’t get too excited, though.’

‘Your Chief Sub didn’t remember?’

‘Only that it was around August, making it three months after the Central burnt down.’

‘Could mean something or nothing.’

‘I did my best.’

‘Yes, thanks, Mairie.’

‘Hold on, don’t hang up!’ Rebus wasn’t about to. ‘He did tell me something. Apparently some snippet that’s stuck with him.’ She paused. ‘In your own time, Mairie.’

‘This is my time, Inspector.’ She paused again.

‘Are you drawing on a fag?’

‘What if I am?’

‘Since when did you start smoking?’

‘It beats chewing the ends off pencils.’

‘You’ll stunt your growth.’

‘You sound like my dad.’

Well, that brought him back to earth. Here he’d thought they wer…what? Chatting away? Chatting one another up? Aye, in your dreams, John Rebus. Now she’d reminded him of the not insignificant age gap between them.

‘Are you still there, Inspector?’

‘Sorry, my hearing aid slipped out. What did the Chief Sub say?’

‘Remember that story about Aengus Gibson entering the wrong flat?’

‘I remember.’

‘Well, the woman whose flat he broke into was called Mo Johnson.’ Rebus smiled. But then the smile faded. ‘That name almost rings a bell.’

‘He’s a football player.’

‘I know he’s a football player. But a female Mo Johnson, that’s what rings bells.’ But they were faint, too faint.

‘Let me know if you come up with anything.’

‘I will, Mairie. And Mairie?’

‘What?’

‘Don’t stay out too late.’ Rebus terminated the call.

Mo Johnson. He supposed it must be short for Maureen. Where had he come across that name? He knew how he might check. But if Watson found out, it would mean more trouble. Ach, to hell with Watson anyway. He wasn’t much more than slave to a coffee bean. Rebus went to the computer console and punched in the details, bringing up Aengus Gibson’s record. The anecdote was there, but no charges had ever been pressed. The woman was not mentioned by name, and there was no sign of her address. But, since Gibson was involved, CID had taken an interest. You couldn’t always depend on the lower ranks to hush things up properly.

And look who the investigating officer was: DS Jack Morton. Rebus closed the file and got back on the phone. The receiver was still warm.

‘You’re in luck, he got back from the pub five minutes ago.’

‘Away, ya gobshite,’ Rebus heard Morton say as he grabbed at the receiver. ‘Hello?’ Two minutes later, thanks to what was left of Jack Morton’s memory, Rebus had an address for Mo Johnson.

A day of contrasts. From bakery to butchery, from The Colonies to Gorgie Road. And now to the edge of Dean Village. Rebus hadn’t been down this way since the Water of Leith drowning. He had forgotten how beautiful it was. Tucked down a steep hill from Dean Bridge, the Village gave a good impression of rural peace. Yet it was a five- minute walk from the West End and Princes Street.

They were spoiling it, of course. The developers had squeezed their hands around vacant lots and decaying buildings and choked them into submission. The prices asked for the resultant ‘apartments’, prices as steep as Bell’s Brae, boggled Rebus’s mind. Not that Mo Johnson lived in one of the new buildings. No, her flat was a chunk of an older property at the bottom of the brae, with a view of the Water of Leith and Dean Bridge. But she no longer lived there, and the people who did were reluctant to allow Rebus in. They didn’t think they had a new address for her. There had been another owner between her moving out and their moving in. They might still have that owner’s new address, though it would go back a couple of years.

Did they know when Ms Johnson herself moved out?

Four years ago, maybe five.

Which brought Rebus back to the fire at the Central Hotel. Everything he did in this case seemed to bounce straight back to a period five years ago, when something had happened which had changed a lot of people’s lives, and taken away at least one life too. He sat in his car wondering what to do next. He knew what to do, but had been putting it off. If tangling with the Gibsons could earn him minus points, he dreaded to think what he might earn by talking with the only other person he could think of who might be able to help.

Help? That was a laugh. But Rebus wanted to meet him all the same. Christ, Flower would have a field day if he found out. He’d hire tents and food and drink and invite everyone to the biggest party in town. Right up from Lauderdale to the Chief Constable, they’d be blowing fuses that could have run hydro stations.

Yes, the more Rebus thought about it, the more he knew it was the right thing to do. The right thing? He had so few openings left, it was the only thing. And looking on the bright side, if he did get caught, at least the celebration would bankrupt Little Wee…

20

Hetelephoned first, Morris Cafferty not being a man you just dropped in on.

‘Will I need my lawyer?’ Cafferty growled, sounding amused. ‘I’ll answer that for you, Strawman, no I fucking won’t. Because I’ve got something better than a lawyer here, better than a fucking judge in my pocket. I’ve got a dog that’ll rip your oesophagus out if I tell it to lick your chops. Be here at six.’ The phone went dead, leaving Rebus dry-mouthed and persuading himself all over again that this jumped-up bastard didn’t scare him.

What scared him more was the realisation that someone somewhere in the ranks of the Lothian and Borders Police was probably listening in to Cafferty’s telephone conversations. Rebus felt like he was in a corridor with doors locking behind him all the time. He saw a gas chamber in his mind and shivered, changing the picture.

Six o’clock wasn’t very far away. And at least in dentists’ waiting rooms they gave you magazines to pass the time.

Morris Gerald Cafferty lived in a mansion house in the expensive suburb of Duddingston. Duddingston was a ‘suburb’ by dint of having Arthur’s Seat and Salisbury Crags between it and central Edinburgh. Cafferty liked living in Duddingston because it annoyed his neighbours, most of whom were lawyers, doctors and bankers, and also because it wasn’t far from his actual and spiritual birthplace, Craigmillar. Craigmillar was one of the tougher Edinburgh housing schemes. Cafferty grew up there, seeing his first trouble there and in neighbouring Niddrie. He’d led a gang of Craigmillar youths into Niddrie to sort out their rivals. There was a stabbin…with an uprooted iron railing. Police discovered that the teenage Cafferty had already been in trouble at school for ‘accidentally’ jamming a ballpoint pen into the corner of a fellow pupil’s eye.

It was the quiet start to a long career.

The wrought iron gates at the bottom of the driveway opened automatically as Rebus approached. He drove his car along a well-gritted private road with mature trees either side. You caught a glimpse of the house from the main road, nothing more. But Rebus had been here before; to ask questions, to make an arrest. He knew there was another smaller house behind the main house, linked by a covered walkway. This smaller house had been staff quarters in the days when a city merchant might have lived here. The gravel road forked to the front and back of the main house. A man directed Rebus towards the back: the servants’ entrance. The man was very big with a biker helmet haircut, cut high at the fringe but falling over the ears. Where did Cafferty get them, these throwbacks?

The man followed him to the back of the house. Rebus knew where to park. There were three spaces, two vacant and one taken up by a Volvo estate. Rebus thought he recognised the Volvo, though it wasn’t Cafferty’s.