Cafferty’s collection of cars was kept in the vast garage. He had a Bentley and a cherry-red ‘63 T-Bird, neither of which he ever drove. For daily use, there was always the Jag, an XJS-HE. And for weekends there was a dependable Roller which Cafferty had owned for at least fifteen years.
The man opened Rebus’s door for him, and pointed towards the small house. Rebus got out.
‘Vidal Sassoon was booked up then,’ he said.
‘Uh?’ The man turned his head right-side towards Rebus.
‘Never mind.’ He was about to walk away, but paused. ‘Ever been in a fight with a man called Dougary?’
‘Nane i’ your business.’
Rebus shrugged. The big man closed the car door and stood watching Rebus walk away. So there was no chance to check the tax disc or anything else about the Volvo; nothing to do except memorise the number plate.
Rebus pulled open the door to the small house and was greeted by a wave of heat and steam. The whole structure had been gutted, so that a swimming pool and gymnasium could be installed. The pool was kidney- shaped, with a small circular pool off it-a jacuzzi, presumably. Rebus had always hated kidney pools: it was impossible to do laps in them. Not that he was much of a swimmer.
‘Strawman! About bastardin’ time!’
He didn’t see Cafferty at first, though he had no trouble seeing who was standing over him. Cafferty lay on a massage table, head resting on a pile of towels. His back was being kneaded by none other than the Organ Grinder, who just happened to own a Volvo estate. The Organ Grinder sensibly pretended not to know Rebus; and when Cafferty wasn’t looking, Rebus nodded almost imperceptibly his agreement with the pretence.
Cafferty had spun around on his backside and was now easing himself into a standing position. He tested his back and shoulders. ‘That’s magic,’ he said. He removed the towel from around his loins and padded towards Rebus on bare feet.
‘See, Strawman, no concealed weapons.’ His laughter was like an apprentice with a rasp-file.
Rebus looked around. ‘I don’t see the-’
But suddenly there it was, pulling itself massively out of the swimming pool. Rebus hadn’t even noticed it in there, retrieving a bone. Not a plastic bone either. The black beast dropped the bone at Cafferty’s feet, sniffed at Rebus’s legs, then shook itself dry onto him.
‘Good boy, Kaiser,’ said Cafferty. The parking attendant had joined them in the sticky heat. Rebus nodded nowhere in particular.
‘I hope you got planning permission for this.’
‘All above board, Strawman. Come on, you’d better get changed.’
‘Changed for what?’
Laughter again. ‘Don’t worry, you’re not staying to dinner. I’m going for a run, and so are you-if you want to talk to me.’
A run, Jesus! Cafferty turned and walked away towards what looked like a changing cubicle. He slapped the Organ Grinder as he passed him.
‘Magic. Same time next week?’
He was hairily muscular, with a chest a borders farmer would be proud to own. There was flab, of course, but not as much as Rebus would have guessed. There was no doubt: Big Ger had got himself in shape. The backside and upper thighs were pockmarked, but the gut had been tightened. Rebus tried to remember when he’d last seen Cafferty. Probably in cour…
Rebus would have enjoyed a quiet word with the Organ Grinder, but now that the parking attendant gorilla was in spying distance, it just wasn’t feasible. You couldn’t be sure how much the one-eared man could hear.
‘There’s some stuff here, it should fit.’
The ‘stuff ’ consisted of sweatshirt, running shorts, socks and trainer…and a headband. There was no way Rebus was going to wear a headband. But when Cafferty emerged from his cubicle,
What the hell am I doing? he asked himself. He had imagined a lot of things, but not this. Some things might be painful in life, but this, he had no doubt, was going to be torture.
‘Where to?’ he asked when they emerged from the overheated gym into the cool twilit evening. He wasn’t wearing the headband. And he had put the sweatshirt on inside out. The legend across its front had read ‘Kick me if I stop’. He supposed it represented Cafferty’s idea of a joke.
‘Sometimes I run to Duddingston Loch, sometimes up to the top of the Seat. You choose.’ Big Ger was bouncing on the spot.
‘The loch.’
‘Right,’ said Big Ger, and off they set.
Rebus spent the first few minutes checking that his body could take this sort of thing, which was why he was slow to spot the car following them. It was the Jag, driven by the parking attendant at a steady 0–5 mph.
‘Remember the last time you gave evidence against me?’ Big Ger said. As a conversational opening, it had its merits. Rebus merely nodded. They were running side by side, the pavements being all but deserted. He wondered if any undercover officers would be snapping photographs of this. ‘Over in Glasgow, it was.’
‘I remember.’
‘Not guilty, of course.’ Big Ger grinned. He looked like he’d had his teeth seen to as well. Rebus remembered them being greyish-green. Now they were a brilliantly capped white. And his hai…was it thicker? One of those hair-weaves, maybe? ‘Anyway, I heard afterwards you went back down to London and had a bit of a time.’
‘You could say that.’
They ran another minute in silence. The pace wasn’t exactly taxing, but then neither was Rebus in condition. His lungs were already passing him warnings of the red hot and burning varieties.
‘You’re getting thin at the back,’ Cafferty noticed. ‘A hair weave would sort that out.’
It was Rebus’s turn to smile. ‘You know damned fine I got burned.’
‘Aye, and I know who burned you, too.’
Still, Rebus reckoned his own guess about the hair weave had been confirmed.
‘Actually,’ he said, ‘I wanted to talk to you about another fire.’
‘Oh aye?’
‘At the Central.’
‘The Central Hotel?’ Rebus was pleased to notice that the words weren’t coming so easily from Big Ger either now. ‘That’s prehistory.’
‘Not as far as I’m concerned.’
‘But what’s it to do with me?’
‘Two of your men were there that night, playing in a poker game.’ Cafferty shook his head. ‘That can’t be right. I won’t have gamblers working for me. It’s against the Bible.’
‘Everything you do from waking till sleeping is against
‘Please, Strawman, call me Mr Cafferty.’
‘I’ll call you what I like.’
‘And I’ll call you the Strawman.’
The name jarre…every time. It had been at the Glasgow trial, a sheet of notes wrongly glanced at by the prosecution, mistaking Rebus for the only other witness, a pub landlord called Stroman.
‘Now then, Inspector Stroma….’ Oh, Cafferty had laughed at that, laughed from the dock so hard that he was in danger of contempt. His eyes had bored into Rebus like fat woodworm, and he’d mouthed the word one final time the way he’d heard it — Strawman.
‘Like I say,’ Rebus went on, ‘two of your hired heid-the-ba’s. Eck and Tam Robertson.’
They had just passed the Sheep’s Heid pub, Rebus sorely tempted to veer inside, Cafferty knowing it.
‘There’ll be herbal tea when we get back. Watch out there!’ His warning saved Rebus from stepping in a discreet dog turd.
‘Thanks,’ Rebus said grudgingly.
‘I was thinking of the shoes,’ Cafferty replied. ‘Know what “flowers of Edinburgh” are?’
