Let It Bleed

Willie Coyle and Dixie Taylor. Rebus went down to listen for a while. DS Macari and DC Allder were doing the interview.

‘Detective Inspector Rebus enters, twelve-fifteen hours,’ Macari said for the benefit of the tape recorder. ‘So,’ he said to the seated youth, ‘how did they make out, Willie and Dixie? Both on the broo, but you can always supplement the broo, eh?’

Rebus stood against the wall, trying to appear casual. He even smiled towards the car owner, nodded to let him know everything was all right. The car owner was in his late teens, presentable enough, neatly dressed and groomed. He wore a discreet silver-loop earring in his right ear, but no other jewellery, not even a watch.

‘They got along,’ he said. ‘Like, the dole money’s no’ bad, even social security, you can live on it if you’re careful.’

‘And they were careful?’ Macari paused. ‘Mr Duggan nods his head.’ This again for the tape recorder. ‘So why would they pull a stunt like this?’

Duggan shook his head. ‘I wish I knew. I never got an inkling. Willie’d never asked for a loan of the car before. He said he had something to shift.’

‘What sort of thing?’

‘He didn’t say.’

‘But you loaned him the car anyway.’

‘Like I say, Willie’s the careful sort.’

‘And Dixie?’

Duggan gave the hint of a smile. ‘Well, Dixie’s different. He needed looking after.’

‘What? Was he soft in the head like?’

‘No, he was just laid back. He didn’t … it was hard to get him interested.’ He looked up. ‘It’s hard to put into words.’

‘Just try your best, Mr Duggan.’

‘Ever since school, Willie and Dixie had been best pals. They liked the same music, same comics, same games. They understood one another.’

‘And they shared digs ever since they left home?’ Rebus liked Macari’s style. Around the station they called him ‘Toni’, after the character in Oor Wullie. He’d managed to get Duggan relaxed and talkative; he’d forged a relationship. Rebus wasn’t so sure of Allder; Allder was one of Flower’s men.

‘I think so,’ Duggan was saying. ‘They were right close. We had a book at school once. It had two characters like them in it, one daft and the other not.’

‘Of Mice and Men?’ Rebus offered.

‘I thought that was Burns,’ Allder said.

Rebus indicated to Macari that he was leaving.

‘Inspector Rebus leaves room, twelve-thirty hours. So, Mr Duggan, to get back to the car …’

As ever, Rebus timed his exit just wrong. Alister Flower was walking along the corridor towards him, whistling ‘Dixie’.

‘There’s a lad in there,’ Rebus reminded him, ‘has just lost two pals, one of them called Dixie.’

Flower stopped whistling and barked a short, unpleasant laugh. ‘Must’ve been my, you know, subconscious.’

‘You’ve got to be conscious to have one of those,’ Rebus said, moving away. ‘Which sort of disqualifies you.’

Flower wasn’t letting him off so easily. He caught up with Rebus at the double doors. ‘Things’ll be different when I’m Chief Inspector,’ he snarled.

‘Yes, they will,’ Rebus agreed. ‘Because by then they’ll have cured cancer and put a man on Mars.’

Then he pushed through the doors and was gone.

4

He drove out to Stenhouse. It was further out of town than he remembered, and nicer too. Quiet, once you came off Gorgie Road. Two-storey semis with tidy front gardens and swept pavements. Some of the doorsteps looked scrubbed; his mother had got down on her knees with all the other women in their cul-de-sac a couple of times a week to scrub the step with hot soapy water or bleach. A dirty front step reflected badly on the home within.

Rebus was more used to central Edinburgh, tenement city. The little suburbia managed to surprise him. Salt had been put down along the pavements and roads. In summer the neighbours would be out gossiping over fences, but this was winter and they were hibernating.

An Edinburgh winter could be a real stayer, starting early in October and lasting into April. The days were not constant: sometimes it was twilight all day; other times, with fresh snow on the ground, the sun’s glare scoured your eyes. People walked everywhere squinting, either peering into the gloom or protecting themselves from the fierce light.

Today was a twilight day, the sky a dull maroon, threatening a fall. Rebus stuffed his hands into his pockets and felt the small paper bag. He’d found an ironmonger’s on Gorgie Road, and had been directed to a specialist shop where he’d been sold a radiator key. Now he looked around, found the house he was looking for, and walked up to the front door.

‘Afternoon sir,’ said Siobhan Clarke, answering his knock. ‘How are you feeling?’

Rebus pushed his way inside. The house wasn’t much warmer than outside. In the living room, Brian Holmes was flipping through a collection of CDs.

‘Anything?’ Rebus asked.

Holmes stood up. ‘There are a few newspapers with items about the Kennedy case. Probably gave them the idea. No sign she’s ever been here. Pretty unlikely she’d run about with dossers like those two. She’s a Gillespie’s girl; Willie and Dixie were strictly comprehensive.’

‘Looks like a straightforward hoax, sir,’ Clarke agreed.

Rebus was looking around. He turned to Clarke. ‘Say you’re a well brought-up wee lassie, good school, nice lifestyle. Say you want to run away from home and just disappear for a while, maybe for ever. Would you take up with people your own class, or would you head downmarket, where nobody’d know you and nobody’d care?’

‘Down to guys like Willie and Dixie you mean?’

Rebus shrugged. ‘I’m only speculating. If you were to ask me, I’d say she’s done what every runner from Scotland does — gone to London.’

‘God help her,’ Holmes said quietly.

‘So, have you finished looking around?’

‘No, sir.’

‘Then don’t let me stop you. In fact, plug that electric fire in and I might even lend a hand.’

Brian Holmes searched in his pockets for coins for the electric meter, then they got to work.

There were two bedrooms, one tidy, the bed made, the other a mess. The tidy room belonged to Willie Coyle, as a letter from the DSS lying by the bed confirmed. There were books on a bookshelf, most of them brand new. Rebus wondered which bookshop had been losing stock recently. He pulled out something called Trainspotting, and saw that there were some sheets of paper hidden behind the row of books. The sheets were stapled at one corner, professionally word-processed with charts and graphs. They seemed to comprise a business report, a plan of some kind.

Holmes looked over his superior’s shoulder. ‘Don’t tell me Willie was an entrepreneur?’

Rebus shrugged, but rolled the report up and put it in his pocket.

‘In here!’ Siobhan Clarke called. By the time they reached her, she was pulling out her haul from beneath Dixie Taylor’s bed. Three disposable syringes, still in their wrappers, a candle burnt to a nub, and a dessert spoon blackened on its bottom.

‘No sign of any skag,’ she said, standing up and straightening her hair.