There was a chunk of rock on the passenger seat, surrounded by jewels of shattered glass. Nearby a car was reversing lazily out of its parking spot. It stopped in the road beside him. The passenger side window went down.
‘What happened?’
‘Nothing. Just a rock through the windscreen.’
‘What?’ The passenger turned to his driver. ‘Wait here a second.’ He got out to examine the damage. ‘Who the hell would want to do that?’
‘How many names do you want?’ Rebus reached into the car to pull out the rock, and felt something collide with the back of his head. It didn’t make sense for a moment, but by then he was being dragged away from the car into the road. He heard a car reverse and stop. He tried to resist, clawing at the unyielding tarmac with his fingernails. Jesus, he was going to pass out. His head was trying to close all channels. Each thud of his heart brought intense new pain to his skull. Someone had opened a window and was shouting something, some warning or complaint. He was alone in the middle of the road now. The passenger had run back to the car and slammed the door shut. Rebus pushed himself onto all fours, a baby resisting gravity for the first time. He blinked, trying to see out of cloudy eyes. He saw headlights, and knew what they were going to do.
They were going to drive straight over him.
Sucker punch, and he’d fallen for it. The offer of help from your attacker routine. Older than Arthur’s Seat itself. The car’s engine roared, and the tyres squealed towards him, dragging the body of the car with them. Rebus wondered if he’d get the licence number before he died.
A hand grabbed the neck of his shirt and hauled, pulling him backwards out of the road. The car caught his legs, tossing one shoe up off his foot and into the air. The car didn’t stop, or even slow down, just kept on up the slope to the top of the road, where it took a right and disappeared.
‘Are you okay, John?’
It was Michael. ‘You saved my life there, Mickey.’ Adrenalin was mixing with pain in Rebus’s body, making him feel sick. He threw up undigested lentil curry onto the pavement.
‘Try to stand up,’ said Michael. Rebus tried and failed. ‘My legs hurt,’ he said. ‘Christ, do my legs hurt!’
The X-rays showed no breaks or fractures, not even a bone chipped. ‘Just bad bruising, Inspector,’ said the woman doctor at the Infirmary. ‘You were lucky. A hit like that could have done a lot of damage.’
Rebus nodded. ‘I suppose I should have known,’ he said. ‘I’ve been due a visit here as a patient. Christ knows I’ve been here enough recently as a visitor.’
‘I’ll just fetch you something,’ said the doctor.
‘Wait a second, doctor. Are your labs open in the evening?’ She shook her head. ‘Why do you ask?’
‘Nothing.’
She left the room. Michael came closer. ‘How do you feel?’
‘I don’t know which hurts worse, my head or my left leg.’
‘No great loss to association football.’
Rebus almost smiled, but grimaced instead. Any movement of his face muscles sent electric spurts through his brain. The doctor came back into the room. ‘Here you are,’ she said. This should help.’
Rebus had been expecting painkillers. But she was holding a walking stick.
It was an aluminium walking stick, hollow and therefore lightweight, with a large rubberised grip and adjustable height courtesy of a series of holes in its shaft, into which a locking-pin could be placed. It looked like some strange wind instrument, but Rebus was glad of it as he walked out of the hospital.
Back at the flat, however, one of the solicitous students said he had something better, and came back from his bedroom with a black wooden cane with a silver and bone handle. Rebus tried it. It was a good height for him.
‘I bought it in a junk shop,’ the student said, ‘don’t ask me why.’
‘Looks like it should have a concealed sword,’ said Rebus. He tried twisting and pulling at the handle, but nothing happened. ‘So much for. that.’
The police, who had talked to Rebus at the Infirmary, had also spoken to the students.
‘This constable,’ related the walking-stick owner, whose name Rebus was sure was Ed, ‘I mean, he was looking at us like we were squatters, and he was asking, was Inspector Rebus in here with you? And we were nodding, yes he was. And the constable couldn’t figure it out at all.’ He started laughing. Even Michael smiled. Someone else made a pot of herbal tea.
Great, thought Rebus. Another story that would be doing the rounds: Rebus fills his flat with students, then sits around with them of an evening with wine and beer. At the Infirmary, they’d asked if he’d recognised either of the men. The answer was no. It was a mobile profession, after al…One of the neighbours had caught the car’s number plate. It was a Ford Escort, stolen only an hour or so before from a car park near the Sheraton on Lothian Road. They would find it abandoned quite, soon, probably not far from Marchmont. There wouldn’t be any fingerprints.
‘They must’ve been crazy,’ Michael said on the way home, Rebus having got them a lift in the back of a patrol car. ‘Thinking they could pull a stunt like that.’
‘It wasn’t a stunt, Michael. Somebody’s desperate. That story in yesterday’s paper has really shaken them up.’ After all, wasn’t that exactly what he’d wanted? He’d sought a reaction, and here it was.
From the flat he telephoned an emergency windscreen replacement firm. It would cost the earth, but he needed the car first thing in the morning. He just prayed his leg wouldn’t seize up in the night.
30
Which of course it did. He was up at five, practising walking across the living room, trying to unstiffen the joints and tendons. He looked at his left leg. A spectacular blood-filled bruise stretched across his calf, wrapping itself around most of the front of the leg too. If the bony front of his leg had taken the impact rather than the fleshy back, there would have been at the very least a clean break. He swallowed two paracetamol-recommended for the pain by the Infirmary doctor-and waited for morning proper to arrive. He’d needed sleep last night, but hadn’t got much. Today he’d be living on his wits. He just hoped those wits would be sharp enough.
At six-thirty he managed the tenement stairs and hobbled to his car, now boasting a windscreen worth more than the rest of it put together. Traffic wasn’t quite heavy yet coming into town, and non-existent heading out, so the drive itself was mercifully shortened. Pressing down on the clutch hurt all the way up into his groin. He took the coast road out to North Berwick, letting the engine labour rather than changing gears too often. Just the other side of the town, he found the house he was looking for. Well, an estate, actually, and not a housing estate. It must have been about thirty or forty acres, with an uninterrupted view across the mouth of the Forth to the dark lump of Bass Rock. Rebus wasn’t much good at architecture; Georgian, he’d guess. It looked like a lot of the houses in Edinburgh’s New Town, with fluted stone columns either side of the doorway and large sash windows, nine panes of glass to each half.
Broderick Gibson had come a long way since those days in his garden shed, pottering with homebrew recipes. Rebus parked outside the front door and rang the bell. The door was opened by Mrs Gibson. Rebus introduced himself.
‘It’s a bit early, Inspector. Is anything wrong?’
‘If I could just speak to your son, please.’
‘He’s eating breakfast. Why don’t you wait in the sitting-room and I’ll bring you — ’
‘It’s all right, mother.’ Aengus Gibson was still chewing and wiping his chin with a cloth napkin. He stood in the dining-room doorway. ‘Come in here, Inspector.’
Rebus smiled at the defeated Mrs Gibson as he passed her. ‘What’s happened to your leg?’ Gibson asked.
‘I thought you might know, sir.’
‘Oh? Why?’ Aengus had seated himself at the table. Rebus had been entertaining an image of silver service- tureens and hot-plates, kedgeree or kippers, Wedgewood plates, and tea poured by a manservant. But all he saw was a plain white plate with greasy sausage and eggs on it. Buttered toast on the side and a mug of coffee. There
