Black Book

Rebus kept his eyes out of focus. It was something you learned. ‘A bottle a day easy.’

‘Well, it doesn’t show from this.’ Curt tossed the liver a few inches into the air. It slapped back down into his palm. He reminded Rebus of a butcher showing off to a potential buyer. ‘There was also a bump to the head and bruising and minor burns to the arms.’

‘Oh?’

‘I’d imagine these are injuries often incurred by chefs in their daily duties. Hot fat spitting, pots and pans everywher…’

‘Maybe,’ said Rebus.

‘And now we come to the section of the programme Hamish has been waiting for.’ Curt nodded towards his assistant, who straightened his back in anticipation. ‘I call him Hamish,’ Curt confided, ‘because he comes from the Hebrides. Hamish here spotted something I didn’t. I’ve been putting off talking about it lest he become encephalitic.’ He looked at Rebus. ‘A little pathologist’s joke.’

‘You’re not so small,’ said Rebus.

‘You need to know, Inspector, that Hamish has a fascination with teeth. Probably because his own as a child were terribly bad and he has memories of long days spent under the dentist’s drill.’ Hamish looked as though this might actually be true. ‘As a result, Hamish always looks in people’s mouths, and this time he saw fit to inform me that there was some damage.’

‘What sort of damage?’

‘Scarring of the tissues lining the throat. Recent damage, too.’

‘Like he’d been singing too loud?’

‘Or screaming. But much more likely that something has been forced down his throat.’

Rebus’s mind boggled. Curt always seemed able to do this to him. He swallowed, feeling how dry his own throat was. ‘What sort of thing?’

Curt shrugged. ‘Hamish suggeste…You understand, this is entirely conjecture-usually your field of expertise. Hamish suggested a pipe of some kind, something solid. I myself would add the possibility of a rubber or plastic tube.’

Rebus coughed. ‘Not anythin…er, organic then?’

‘You mean like a courgette? A banana?’

‘You know damned well what I mean.’

Curt smiled and bowed his head. ‘Of course I do, I’m sorry.’ Then he shrugged. ‘I wouldn’t rule anything out. But if you’re suggesting a penis, it must have been sheathed in sandpaper.’

Behind them, Rebus heard Hamish stifle a laugh.

Rebus telephoned Pat Calder and asked if they might meet. Calder thought it over before agreeing.

‘At the Colonies?’ Rebus asked.

‘Make it the Cafe, I’m heading over there anyway.’

So the Cafe it was. When Rebus arrived, the ‘convalescence’ sign had been replaced with one stating, ‘Due to bereavement, this establishment has ceased trading.’ It was signed Pat Calder.

As Rebus entered, he heard Calder roar, ‘Do fuck off!’ It was not, however, aimed at Rebus but at a young woman in a raincoat.

‘Trouble, Mr Calder?’ Rebus walked into the restaurant. Calder was busy taking the mementoes down off the walls and packing them in newspaper. Rebus noticed three tea chests on the floor between the tables.

‘This bloody reporter wants some blood and grief for her newspaper.’

‘Is that right, miss?’ Rebus gave Mairie Henderson a disapproving but, yes, almost fatherly look. The kind that let her know she should be ashamed.

‘Mr Ringan was a popular figure in the city,’ she told Rebus. ‘I’m sure he’d have wanted our readers to know — ’

Calder interrupted. ‘He’d have wanted them to stuff their faces here, leave a fat cheque, then get the fuck out. Print that!’

‘Quite an epitaph,’ Mairie commented.

Calder looked like he’d brain her with the Elvis clock, the one with the King’s arms replacing the usual clock hands. He thought better of it, and lifted the Elvis mirror (one of several) off the wall instead. He wouldn’t dare smash that: seven years’ bad junk food.

‘I think you’d better go, miss,’ Rebus said calmly.

‘All right, I’m going.’ She slung her bag over her shoulder and stalked past Rebus. She was wearing a skirt today, a short one too. But a good soldier knew when to keep eyes front. He smiled at Pat Calder, whose anguish was all too evident.

‘Bit soon for all this, isn’t it?’

‘You can cook, can you, Inspector? Without Eddie, this place i…it’s nothing.’

‘Looks like the local restaurants can sleep easy, then.’

‘How do you mean?’

‘Remember, Eddie thought the attack on Brian was a warning.’

‘Yes, but what’s tha…’ Calder froze. ‘You think someon…? It was suicide, wasn’t it?’

‘Looked that way, certainly.’

‘You mean you’re not sure?’

‘Did he seem the type who would kill himself?’

Calder’s reply was cold. ‘He was killing himself every day with drink. Maybe it all got too much. Like I said, Inspector, the attack on Brian affected Eddie. Maybe more than we knew.’ He paused, still with the mirror gripped in both hands. ‘You think it was murder?’

‘I didn’t say that, Mr Calder.’

‘Who would do it?’

‘Maybe you were behind with your payments.’

‘What payments?’

‘Protection payments, sir. Don’t tell me it doesn’t go on.’

Calder stared at him unblinking. ‘You forget, I was in charge of finances, and we always paid our bills on time. All of them.’

Rebus took this information in, wondering exactly what it meant. ‘If you think you know who might have wanted Eddie dead, best tell me, all right? Don’t go doing anything rash.’

‘Like what?’

Like buying a gun, Rebus thought, but he said nothing. Calder started to wrap the mirror. ‘This is about all a newspaper’s worth,’ he said.

‘She was only doing her job. You wouldn’t have turned down a good review, would you?’

Calder smiled. ‘We got plenty.’

‘What will you do now?’

‘I haven’t thought about it. I’ll go away, that’s all I know.’

Rebus nodded towards the tea chests. ‘And you’ll keep all that stuff?’

‘I couldn’t throw it away, Inspector. It’s all there is.’

Well, thought Rebus, there’s the bedroom too. But he didn’t say anything. He just watched Pat Calder pack everything away.

Hamish, real name Alasdair McDougall, had more or less been chased from his native Barra by his contemporaries, one of whom tried to drown him during a midnight boat crossing from South Uist after a party. Two minutes in the freezing waters of the Sound of Barra and he’d have been fit for nothing but fish-food, but they’d hauled him back into the boat and explained the whole thing away as an accident. Which is also what it would have been had he actually drowned.

He went to Oban first, then south to Glasgow before crossing to the east coast. Glasgow suited him in some respects, but not in others. Edinburgh suited him better. His parents had always denied to themselves that their son was homosexual, even when he’d stood there in front of them and said it. His father had quoted the Bible at him, the same way he’d been quoting it for seventeen years, a believer’s righteous tremble in his voice. It had once been a powerful and persuasive performance; but now it seemed laughable.

‘Just because it’s in the Bible,’ he’d told his father, ‘doesn’t mean you should take it as gospel.’