distinct lack of nicotine. And he remembered that he was seeing Sammy in six hours’ time, and that her mother would instinctively know what he, John Rebus, had been up to these past few hours. She was cursed with a witch- like ability to see into the soul, and she had seen his occasional bouts of crying at very close quarters indeed. Partly, he supposed, that had been responsible for their break-up.
‘What time is it, John?’
‘Four. Maybe a little after.’
He slid his arm from beneath her and rose to leave the room.
‘Do you want anything to drink?’ he said.
‘What did you have in mind?’
‘Coffee maybe. It’s hardly worth going to sleep now, but if you feel sleepy, don’t mind me.’
‘No, I’ll take a cup of coffee.’
Rebus knew from her voice, from its slurred growliness, that she would be fast asleep by the time he reached the kitchen.
‘Okay,’ he said.
He made himself a cup of dark, sweet coffee and slumped into a chair with it. He turned on the living-room’s small gas fire and began to read one of his books. He was seeing Sammy today, and his mind wandered from the story in front of him, a tale of intrigue which he could not remember having started. Sammy was nearly twelve. She had survived many years of danger, and now, for her, other dangers were imminent. The perverts in watch, the ogling old men, the teenage cock-fighters, would be supplemented by the new urges of boys her age, and boys she already knew as friends would become sudden and forceful hunters. How would she cope with it? If her mother had anything to do with it, she would cope admirably, biting in a clinch and ducking on the ropes. Yes, she would survive without her father’s advice and protection.
The kids were harder these days. He thought back to his own youth. He had been Mickey’s big brother, fighting battles for the two of them, going home to watch his brother coddled by his father. He had pushed himself further into the cushions on the settee, hoping to disappear one day. Then they’d be sorry. Then they’d be sorry …
At seven-thirty he went through to the musky bedroom, which smelt two parts sex to one part animal lair, and kissed Gill awake.
‘It’s time,’ he said. ‘Get up, I’ll run you a bath.’
She smelt good, like a baby on a fireside towel. He admired the shapes of her twisted body as they awoke to the thin, watery sunlight. She had a good body all right. No real stretch-marks. Her legs unscarred. Her hair just tousled enough to be inviting.
‘Thanks.’
She had to be at HQ by ten in order to co-ordinate the next press release. There could be no rest. The case was still growing like a cancer. Rebus filled the bath, wincing at the rim of grime around it. He needed a cleaning- lady. Perhaps he could get Gill to do it.
Which brought him to think of church-going. It was another Sunday, after all, and for weeks he had been promising himself that he would try again, would find another church in the city and would try all over again.
He hated congregational religion. He hated the smiles and the manners of the Sunday-dressed Scottish Protestant, the emphasis on a communion not with God but with your neighbours. He had tried seven churches of varying denominations in Edinburgh, and had found none to be to his liking. He had tried sitting for two hours at home of a Sunday, reading the Bible and saying a prayer, but somehow that did not work either. He was caught; a believer outwith his belief. Was a personal faith good enough for God? Perhaps, but not his personal faith, which seemed to depend upon guilt and his feelings of hypocrisy whenever he sinned, a guilt assuaged only by public show.
‘Is my bath ready, John?’
She re-tousled her hair, naked and confident, her glasses left behind in the bedroom. John Rebus felt his soul to be imperilled. Sod it, he thought, catching her around the hips. Guilt could wait. Guilt could always wait.
He had to mop up the bathroom floor afterwards, empirical evidence that Archimedes’ displacement of water had been proved once again. The bath-water had flowed like milk and honey, and Rebus had nearly drowned.
Still, he felt better now.
‘Lord, I am a poor sinner,’ he whispered, as Gill dressed. She looked stern and efficient when she opened the front-door, almost as if she had been on a twenty-minute official visit.
‘Can we fix a date?’ he suggested.
‘We can,’ she replied, looking through her bag. Rebus was curious to know why women always did that, especially in films and thrillers, after they had been sleeping with a man. Did women suspect their sleeping partners of rifling their purses?
‘But it might be difficult,’ she continued, ‘the case going the way it is. Let’s just promise to keep in touch, okay?’
‘Okay.’
He hoped that she took note of the dismay in his voice, the disappointment of the small boy at having his request denied.
They pecked a final kiss, mouths brittle by now, and then she was gone. Her scent remained, however, and he breathed it in deeply as he prepared for the day ahead. He found a shirt and a pair of trousers that didn’t reek of tobacco, and these he put on slowly, admiring himself in the bathroom mirror, the soles of his feet damp, while he hummed a hymn.
Sometimes it was good to be alive. Sometimes.
11
Jim Stevens poured another three aspirin into his mouth and drank his orange juice. The ignominy of it, being seen in a Leith bar sucking on fruit juice, yet the idea of drinking even a half-pint of the rich, frothing beer made him feel nauseous. He had drunk far too much at that party; too much too quickly, and in too many combinations.
Leith was trying to improve itself. Someone somewhere had decided to give it a bit of a dust and a wash. It boasted French-style cafes and wine bars, studio flats, delicatessen. But it was still Leith, still the old port, an echo of its roaring, bustling past when Bordeaux wines would be unloaded by the gallon and sold on the streets from a horse and cart. If Leith retained nothing else, it would retain a port’s mentality, and a port’s traditional drinking dens.
‘By Christ,’ roared a voice behind him, ‘the man drinks everything in doubles, even his soft drinks!’
A heavy fist, twice the dimensions of his own, landed on Stevens’ back. The swarthy figure landed on a stool beside him. The hand stayed firmly where it was.
‘Hello, Podeen,’ said Stevens. He was starting to sweat in the heavy atmosphere of the saloon, and his heart was pounding: terminal hangover symptoms; he could smell the alcohol squeezing itself out of his pores.
‘Lordy, James me boy, what the hell’s that you’re supping?
Barman, get this man a whisky quick. He’s wasting away on kiddies’ juice!’
With a roar, Podeen took his hand off the reporter’s back just long enough to relieve the pressure, before bringing it back down again in a stinging back-slap. Stevens felt his insides shudder rebelliously.
‘Anything I can do for you today?’ said Podeen, his voice much lower.
Big Podeen had been a sailor for twenty years, with the scars and nicks of a thousand ports on his body. How he made his money these days, Stevens did not wish to know. He did some bouncing for pubs on Lothian Road and dubious drinking-dens around Leith, but that would be the tip of his earnings iceberg. Podeen’s fingers were so encrusted with dirt that he might have carved out the black economy singlehandedly from the rotten, fertile soil beneath him.
‘Not really, Big Man. No, I’m just mulling things over.’
‘Get me a breakfast, will you? Double helpings of everything.’
