Black Book

‘Come on, then,’ he said to Deek Torrance.

Minus gun and with money in its place, Torrance was more relaxed and loquacious. They sat in the Hawes Inn with their drinks. Torrance ’; was explaining how the guns came into the country.

‘See, it’s easy to buy a gun in France. They even come around the towns in vans and flog them off the back. Stick a catalogue through your door to let you know what they’ll have. I got to meet this French guy, not bad to say he’s French. He’s back and forth over the Channel, some sort of business he’s in. He brings the guns with him, and I buy them. He brings Mace too, if you’re interested.’

‘Why didn’t you say?’ Rebus muttered into his pint. ‘I wouldn’t have needed the gun.’

‘Eh?’ Deek saw he was making a joke and laughed.

‘So what have I got?’ asked Rebus. ‘It was a bit dark out there to see.’

‘Well, they’re all copies. Don’t worry, I file off any identifiers myself. Yours is a Colt 45. It’ll take ten rounds.’

‘Eight millimetre?’

Deek nodded. ‘There are twenty in the box. It’s not the most lethal weapon around. I can get replica Uzis too.’

‘Christ.’ Rebus finished his pint. He suddenly wanted to be out of there.

‘It’s a living,’ said Deek Torrance.

‘Aye, right, a living,’ said Rebus, getting up to go.

23

Next morning Rebus forced himself into the usual routine. He checked to see if there had been any sign of Andrew McPhail. There had not. Maclean hadn’t been too badly hurt by the boiled water, most of which he’d deflected with his arms. Nobody was yet treating McPhail like a dangerous criminal. His description had been issued to bus and train stations, motorway service areas, and the like. If the manpower were available, Rebus knew exactly where he would start looking for him.

A shadow fell over his desk. It was the Little Weed.

‘So,’ Flower said, ‘you lose a DS to a blow on the napper, and a DC to a gas explosion. What’s for an encore?’

Rebus saw that they had an audience. Half the station had been waiting for a confrontation between the two inspectors. Now more detectives than usual seemed interested in the filing cabinets near Rebus’s desk.

‘It’s easier if you do a handstand,’ commented Rebus.

‘What is?’

‘Talking out of your arse.’

There were a few covering coughs from the filing cabinets. ‘I’ve got some throat pastilles if you want them,’ Rebus called. The cabinet doors slid shut. The audience moved away.

‘You think you’re God’s gift, don’t you?’ Flower said. ‘You think you’re all it takes.’

‘I’m better than some.’

‘And a lot worse than others.’

Rebus picked up the previous evening’s arrest sheet and started to read it. ‘If you’re finishe…?’

Flower smiled. ‘Rebus, I thought your kind went out with the dinosaurs.’

‘Aye, but only because they turned you down when you asked them.’

Which made it two-nil as Alister Flower walked off the field. But Rebus knew there’d be another leg to the match, and another after that. He looked again at the arrest sheet, checking he’d seen the name right, then sighed and went down to the cells. A cluster of young constables stood outside cell one, taking turns at the peephole. ‘It’s that guy with the tattoos,’ one of them explained to Rebus.

‘The Pincushion?’

The constable nodded. The Pincushion was tattooed from head to foot, not an inch unblemished. ‘He’s been brought in for questioning.’

Rebus nodded. Whenever they had reason to bring the Pincushion into a station, he always ended up naked.

‘It’s a good name, isn’t it, sir?’

‘What, Pincushion? It’s better than my name for him, I suppose.’

‘What’s that.’

‘Just another prick,’ said Rebus, unlocking cell number two. He closed the door behind him. A young man was sitting on the bunk, unshaven and sorry-eyed.

‘What happened to you, then?’

Andy Steele looked up at him, then away. The city of Edinburgh had not been kind to him during his visit. He ran a handful of fingers through his tousled hair.

‘Did you go see your Auntie Ena?’ he asked.

Rebus nodded. ‘I didn’t see your mum and dad, though.’

‘Ach well, at least I managed that, eh? I managed to track you down and put you in touch with her.’

‘So what have you been up to since?’

Flakes of scalp were being clawed from the surface of Andy Steele’s head. They floated down onto his trousers. ‘Well, I did a bit of sightseeing.’

‘They don’t arrest you for that these days, though.’

Steele sighed and stopped scratching. ‘Depends what sights you see. I told a man in a pub I was a private detective. He said he had a case for me.’

‘Oh aye?’ Rebus’s attention was momentarily drawn to a crude game of noughts and crosses on the cell wall.

‘His wife was cheating him. He told me where he thought I could find her, and he gave me a description. I got ten quid, with more when I reported back.’

‘Go on.’

Andy Steele stared up at the ceiling. He knew he wasn’t making himself look good, but it was a bit late for that anyway. ‘It was a ground floor flat. I watched all evening. I saw the woman, she was there, all right. But no man. So I went round the back to get a better look. Someone must have spotted me and phoned the police.’

‘You told them your story?’

Steele nodded. ‘They even took me back to the bar. He wasn’t there, of course, and nobody knew him. I didn’t even know his name.’

‘But his description of the woman was accurate?’

‘Oh aye.’

‘Probably an ex-wife or some old flame. He wanted to give them a scare, and it was worth ten notes to do it.’

‘Except now the woman’s pressing charges. Not a very good start to my career, is it, Inspector?’

‘Depends,’ said Rebus. ‘Your career as a private dick may not be much cop, but as a peeping-tom your star is definitely in the ascendant.’ Seeing Steele’s misery, Rebus winked. ‘Cheer up, I’ll see what I can do.’

In fact, before he could do anything, Siobhan Clarke was on the telephone from Gorgie to tell him about her meeting with Rory Kintoul.

‘I asked him if he knew anything about his cousin’s heavy betting. He wouldn’t say, but I get the feeling they’re a close-knit family. There were hundreds of photos in the living room: aunties and uncles, brothers and sisters, nieces, cousins, grannie…’

‘I get the idea. Did you mention the broken window?’

‘Oh yes. He was so interested, he had to clamp himself to the chair to stop from jumping out of it. Not a great talker, though. He reckoned it must have been a drunk.’

‘The same drunk who took a knife to his gut?’

‘I didn’t put it quite like that, and neither did he. I don’t know whether it’s relevant or not, but he did say he’d