That evening, Rebus went drinking alone. He’d told the syndicate he had something to do, but might catch up with them later. They were undecided about whether to stay in Edinburgh for a few drinks, or head straight back to Tulliallan. Jazz was thinking of Broughty Ferry, but his car was back at the college. Ward was thinking of treating Phyllida Hawes to a Mexican place near St. Leonard’s. They were still arguing over strategies and alternatives when Rebus slipped away. After three drinks in the Ox, only half listening to the latest batch of jokes, he started feeling hungry. Didn’t know where to eat . . . last thing he wanted was to walk into a restaurant and bump into Ward and Hawes playing footsie under the table. He knew he could cook himself something at home; knew, too, that this wouldn’t happen. All the same, maybe he should be at home. What if Jean rang? Had she got the flowers yet? His mobile was in his pocket, just waiting for her call. In the end, he ordered another drink and the last leftover scotch egg.
“Been there since lunchtime, has it?” he asked Harry the barman.
“I wasn’t on at lunchtime. You want it or not?”
Rebus nodded. “And a packet of nuts.” There were times he wished the Ox did a bit more in the catering line. He remembered the previous owner, Willie Ross, dragging some hapless punter outside after the man had asked to see the menu, pointing up at the Oxford Bar sign and asking: “Does that say ‘Bar’ or ‘Restaurant’?” Rebus doubted the client had become a regular.
The Ox was quiet tonight. Murmurs of conversation from a couple of tables in the lounge, and only Rebus himself in the front bar. When the door creaked open, he didn’t bother turning to look.
“Get you one?” the voice beside him asked. It was Gill Templer. Rebus straightened up.
“My shout,” he said. She was already easing herself onto a bar stool, letting her shoulder bag slump to the floor. “What’ll it be?”
“I’m driving. Better make it a half of Deuchars.” She paused. “On second thought, a gin and tonic.” The TV was playing quietly, and her eyes drifted towards it. One of the Discovery Channel programs favored by Harry.
“What’re you watching?” Gill asked.
“Harry puts this stuff on to scare away the punters,” Rebus explained.
“That’s right,” Harry agreed. “Works with every bugger but this one.” He nodded in Rebus’s direction. Gill offered a tired smile.
“Bad one?” Rebus guessed.
“It’s not every day someone does a runner from the interview room.” She gave him a sly look. “I suppose you’re pleased enough?”
“How?”
“Anything that makes Linford look bad . . .”
“I hope I’m not that petty.”
“No?” She considered this. “Looks like he might be, though. Word’s going around that you and another of the Tulliallan crew had a punch-up in the car park.”
So Linford had been talking.
“Just thought I’d warn you,” she went on, “I think it’s already reached the ears of DCI Tennant.”
“You came looking for me to tell me?”
She shrugged.
“Thanks,” he said.
“I suppose I was also hoping to have a word . . .”
“Look, if it’s about the mug of tea . . .”
“Well, you did give it some welly, John, be honest.”
“If I’d pushed it off the desk with my pinkie, you’d hardly have had reason to send me into purdah.” Rebus paid for her drink, raised his own pint glass to her in a toast.
“Cheers,” she said, taking a long swallow and exhaling noisily.
“Better?” he asked.
“Better,” she confirmed.
He smiled. “And people wonder why we drink.”
“One’ll be enough for me, though — how about you?”
“Would you settle for a ballpark figure?”
“I’d settle for knowing how things are going at Tulliallan.”
“I’ve not made much headway.”
“Is that likely to change?”
“It might.” He paused. “If I take a few risks.”
She looked at him. “You’ll talk to Strathern first, won’t you?”
He nodded, but could see she wasn’t convinced.
“John . . .”
Same tone Siobhan had used earlier in the day. Listen to me . . . trust me . . .
He turned towards Gill. “You could always take a cab,” he told her.
“Meaning what?”
“Meaning you could have another drink.”
She examined her glass. It was already mostly ice. “I could probably manage one more,” she conceded. “It’s my round anyway. What are you having?”
After the third gin and tonic, she confided to him that she had been seeing someone. It had lasted about nine months, then fizzled out.
“You kept that pretty quiet,” he said.
“There’s no way I was ever going to introduce him to you lot.” She was playing with her glass, watching the patterns it made on the bar. Harry had retreated to the other end of the small room. Another regular had arrived, and the two of them were talking football.
“How are things with Jean and you?” Gill asked.
“We had a bit of a misunderstanding,” Rebus admitted.
“Want to talk about it?”
“No.”
“Want me to act as peacemaker?”
He looked at her and shook his head. Jean was Gill’s friend; Gill had introduced them to one another. He didn’t want her feeling awkward about it. “Thanks anyway,” he said. “We’ll sort it out.”
She glanced at her watch. “I better get going.” Slid off the stool and collected her shoulder bag. “This place isn’t so bad,” she decided, studying the bar’s faded decor. “I might grab something to eat. Have you had dinner?”
“Yes,” he lied, feeling that a meal with Gill would be a betrayal of sorts. “I hope you’re not going to drive in that condition,” he called as she made for the door.
“I’ll see how I feel when I get outside.”
“Think how much worse tomorrow will be if you’re charged with drunk driving!”
She waved a hand and was gone. Rebus stayed for one more. Her perfume lingered. He could smell it on the sleeve of his jacket. He wondered if he should have sent Jean perfume instead of flowers, then realized he didn’t know what kind she liked. Scanning the gantry, he guessed that when pushed he could reel off the names of over two dozen malts, straight from memory.
Two dozen malts, and he’d no idea what perfume Jean Burchill used.
As he pushed open the main door to his tenement, he saw a shadow on the stairwell: someone descending. Maybe one of the neighbors, but Rebus didn’t think so. He looked behind him, but there was no one on the street. Not an ambush then. The feet came into view first, then the legs and body.
“What are you doing here?” Rebus hissed.
“Heard you were looking for me,” the Weasel replied. He was at the bottom of the stairs now. “I wanted a bit of a chat anyway.”
“Did you bring anyone with you?”
The Weasel shook his head. “This isn’t the sort of meeting the boss would approve of.”
Rebus looked around again. He didn’t want the Weasel in his flat. A bar would be okay, but any more drink and his brain would start clouding. “Come on then,” he said, passing the Weasel and making for the back door. He unlocked it and dragged it open. The tenement’s shared garden wasn’t much used. There was a drying green, the grass almost a foot long, surrounded by narrow borders where only the hardiest plants survived. When Rebus and his wife had first moved in, Rhona had replaced the weeds with seedlings. Hard to tell now if any of them still thrived. Wrought-iron railings separated the garden from its neighbors, all the gardens enclosed by a rectangle of tall tenement buildings. There were lights on in most of the windows: kitchens and bedrooms, stair landings. The place was well enough lit for this meeting.
“What’s up?” Rebus asked, fishing for a cig
arette.
The Weasel had stooped to pick up an empty beer can, which he crushed and dropped into his coat pocket. “Aly’s doing okay.”
Rebus nodded. He had almost forgotten the Weasel’s son. “You took my advice?”
“They’ve not let him off the hook yet, but my solicitor says we’re in with a shout.”
“Have they charged him?”
The Weasel nodded. “But only with possession: the spliff he was smoking when they picked him up.”
Rebus nodded. Claverhouse was playing this one cautiously.
“Thing is,” the Weasel said, crouching by the nearest flower border, picking up empty crisp bags and sweet wrappers, “I think my boss might have got wind of it.”
“Of Aly?”
“Not Aly exactly . . . the dope, I was meaning.”
Rebus lit his cigarette. He was thinking about Cafferty’s network of eyes and ears. It only needed the technician from the police lab to tell a colleague back at base, and that colleague to tell a friend . . . There was no way Claverhouse was going to keep the haul under wraps forever. All the same . . .
“That could be in your favor,” Rebus told the Weasel. “Puts pressure on Claverhouse to do something about it.”
“Like charge Aly, you mean?”
Rebus shrugged. “Or hand it over to Customs, so they all end up taking credit . . .”
“And Aly still goes down?” The Weasel had risen to his feet, pockets filled and rustling.
“If he cooperates, he could get a light sentence.”
“Cafferty’s still going to nail him.”
“So maybe you should get your retaliation in first. Give the Drug Squad what they want.”
The Weasel was thoughtful. “Give them Cafferty?”
“Don’t tell me you haven’t been thinking about it.”
“Oh, I’ve thought about it. But Mr. Cafferty’s been very good to me.”
“He’s not family, though, is he? He’s not blood . . .”
“No,” the Weasel said, stretching the single syllable out.
“Can I ask you something?” Rebus flicked ash from the cigarette.
“What?”
“Do you have any idea where Donny Dow is?”
The Weasel shook his head. “I heard he’d been taken in for questioning.”
“He’s done a runner.”
“That was silly of him.”
“It’s why I wanted to talk to you, because now we have to send out search parties, which means talking to all his friends and associates. I’m assuming you’ll cooperate?”
“Naturally.”
Rebus nodded. “Let’s say Cafferty does know about the drugs . . . what do you think he’ll do?”
“Number one, he’ll want to know who brought them up here.” The Weasel paused.
“And number two?”
The Weasel looked at him. “Who said there was a number two?”
“There usually is, when there’s been a number one.”
“Okay. . . number two, he might decide he wanted them for himself.”
Rebus examined the tip of his cigarette. He could hear sounds of tenement life: music, TV voices, plates colliding on the drying rack. Shapes passing a window . . . ordinary people living ordinary lives, all of them thinking they were different from the rest.
“Did Cafferty have anything to do with the Marber murder?” he asked.
“When did I become your snitch?” the Weasel asked.
“I don’t want you for my snitch. I just thought maybe one question . . .”
The small man stooped down again, as though he’d spotted something in the grass, but there was nothing, and he rose again slowly.
“Other people’s shit,” he muttered. It sounded like a mantra. Maybe he meant his son, or even Cafferty: the Weasel cleaning up after them. Then he locked eyes with Rebus. “How am I supposed to know something like that?”
“I’m not saying Cafferty did this himself. It would be one of his men, someone he’d hired . . . probably through you, so as to distance himself from it. Cafferty’s always been good at letting other people take the fall.”
The Weasel seemed to be considering this. “Is that what those two cops were doing there the other day? Asking questions about Marber?” He watched as Rebus nodded. “The boss wouldn’t say what it was about.”
“I thought he trusted you,” Rebus said.
The Weasel paused again. “I know he knew Marber,” he said at last, his voice dropping to a level where the slightest gust of wind would erase it. “I don’t think he liked him much.”
“I hear he stopped buying paintings from Marber. Is that because he found out Marber had been cheating?”
“I don’t know.”
“Do you think it’s possible?”
“It’s possible,” the Weasel conceded.
“Tell me . . .” Rebus’s own voice dropped further still. “Would Cafferty organize a hit without your knowledge?”
“You’re asking me to incriminate myself.”
“This is just between the two of us.”
The Weasel folded his arms. The rubbish in his pockets crackled and clicked. “We’re not as close as we once were,” he confided, ruefully.
“A hit like this one, who would he have gone to?”
The Weasel shook his head. “I’m not a rat.”
“Rats are clever creatures,” Rebus said. “They know when to leave a sinking ship.”
“Cafferty isn’t sinking,” the Weasel said with a sad smile.
“That’s what they said about the Titanic,” Rebus replied.
There wasn’t much more to be said. They went back into the stairwell, the Weasel heading for the front door and Rebus for the stairs. He wasn’t inside his flat two minutes when there was a knock at the door. He was in the bathroom, running a bath. He did not want the Weasel in here. This was where he could try shutting it all out and pretend he was like everyone else. Another knock, and this time he walked to the door.
“Yes?” he called.
“DI Rebus? You’re under arrest.”
Put his face to the peephole, then unlocked the door. Claverhouse was standing there, sporting a smile as thin and sharp as a surgeon’s blade. “Going to invite me in?” he said.
“Wasn’t thinking of it.”
“Not entertaining, are you?” Claverhouse craned his neck to look down the hallway.
“I’m just about to get in the bath.”
“Good idea. I’d do the same, under the circumstances.”
“What are you talking about?”
“I’m talking about the fact that you’ve just spent a good fifteen minutes being contaminated by Cafferty’s right-hand man. Does he often make house calls? You’re not busy counting out a payoff in there, are you, John?”
Rebus took two steps forward, backing Claverhouse against the banister. It was a two-story drop to the ground.
“What do you want, Claverhouse?”
The feigned humor had vanished from Claverhouse’s face. He wasn’t scared of Rebus; he was just angry.
“We’ve been trying to nail Cafferty,” he spat, “in case you’ve forgotten. Now word’s starting to leak out about the shipment, and Weasel’s got a nasty little lawyer chewing at my balls. So we’re on surveillance, and what do we find? Weasel himself paying you a visit.” He stabbed a finger into Rebus’s chest. “And how’s that going to look in my report, Detective Inspector?”
“Fuck you, Claverhouse.” But at least Rebus knew where Ormiston was now: he was tailing the Weasel.
“Fuck me?” Claverhouse was shaking his head. “You’ve got it all wrong, Rebus. It’s you the boys in Barlinnie will be telling to bend over. Because if I can tie you to Cafferty and his operation, so help me I’ll send you so far down, they’ll need a bulldozer to find you.”
“Consider me warned,” Rebus said.
“It’s all starting to unravel for friend Cafferty,” Claverhouse hissed. “Make sure you know whose side you’re on.”
/>
Rebus thought of the Weasel’s words: Cafferty isn’t sinking. And the smile that had accompanied his words . . . why had the Weasel looked sad? He took a step back, giving Claverhouse room. Claverhouse saw it as a weakening.
“John . . . ,” reverting to Rebus’s first name, “whatever it is you’re hiding, you need to come clean.”
“Thanks for your concern.” Rebus saw Claverhouse for what he was: a chip-on-the-shoulder careerist who had ideas he couldn’t follow through on. Nailing Cafferty — or at the very least inserting a mole into Cafferty’s operation — would, in his own eyes, be the making of him, and he couldn’t see past it. It was consuming him. Rebus was almost sympathetic: hadn’t he been there himself?
Claverhouse was shaking his head at Rebus’s stubbornness. “I see the Weasel was driving himself tonight. That because Donny Dow did a runner?”
“You know about Dow?”
Claverhouse nodded. “Maybe I know more than you think, John.”
“Maybe you do at that,” Rebus agreed, trying to loosen him up. “Such as what, exactly . . . ?”
But Claverhouse wasn’t falling for it. “I was talking to DCS Templer this evening. She was very interested to find out about Donny Dow’s chauffeuring duties.” He paused. “But you knew all the time, didn’t you?”
“Did I?”
“You didn’t manage to sound very surprised when I told you. Thinking back, you didn’t sound surprised at all . . . so how come she didn’t know? Keeping stuff to yourself again, John . . . maybe you just wanted to protect your pal the Weasel.”