Ian Rankin - A Good Hanging and other stories

‘Must have been the voice. I don’t think they met. Maybe they did. The man was interested in a specific car.’

‘A red Jaguar?’

‘Yeah, convertible. Nice cars. The Irishman even knew where there was one. It seemed a cinch, that’s what Brian kept saying. A cinch.’

‘He didn’t think it would be hard to steal?’

‘Five seconds’ work, that’s what he kept saying. I thought it sounded too easy. I told him so.’ He bent over in his chair, grabbing at his knees and sinking his head between them. ‘Ach, Brian, what the hell have you done?’

Rebus tried to comfort the young man as best he could with brandy and tea. He drank a mug of tea himself, wandering through the flat, his mind thrumming. Was he blowing things up out of all proportion? Maybe. He’d made mistakes before, not so much errors of judgment as errors of jumping the gun. But there was something about all of this... Something.

‘Do you have a photo of Brian?’ he asked as he was leaving. ‘A recent one would be best.’ Jim Cant handed him a holiday snap.

‘We went to Crete last summer,’ he explained. ‘It was magic.’ Then, holding the door open for Rebus: ‘Don’t I have to identify him or something?’

Rebus thought of the scrapings which were all that remained of what may or may not have been Brian Cant. He shook his head. ‘I’ll let you know,’ he said. ‘If we need you, we’ll let you know.’

The next day was Sunday, day of rest. Rebus rested in his car, parked fifty yards or so along the road from the gates to West Lodge. He put his radio on, folded his arms and sank down into the driver’s seat. This was more like it. The Hollywood private eye on a stakeout. Only in the movies, a stakeout could be whittled away to a few minutes’ footage. Here, it was measured in a slow ticking of seconds... minutes... quarter hours.

Eventually, the gates opened and a figure hurried out, fairly trotting along the pavement as though released from bondage. Jacqueline Dean was wearing a denim jacket, short black skirt and thick black tights. A beret sat awkwardly on her cropped dark hair and she pressed the palm of her hand to it from time to time to stop it sliding off altogether. Rebus locked his car before following her. He kept to the other side of the road, wary not so much from fear that she might spot him but because C13 might have put a tail on her, too.

She stopped at the local newsagent’s first and came out heavy-laden with Sunday papers. Rebus, making to cross the road, a Sunday-morning stroller, studied her face. What was the expression he’d thought of the first time he’d seen her? Yes, moping. There was still something of that in her liquid eyes, the dark shadows beneath. She was making for the corner shop now. Doubtless she would appear with rolls or bacon or butter or milk. All the things Rebus seemed to find himself short of on a Sunday, no matter how hard he planned.

He felt in his jacket pockets, but found nothing of comfort there, just the photograph of Brian Cant. The window of the corner shop, untouched by the blast, contained a dozen or so personal ads, felt-tipped onto plain white postcards. He glanced at these, and past them, through the window itself to where Jacqueline was making her purchases. Milk and rolls: elementary, my dear Conan Doyle. Waiting for her change, she half-turned her head towards the window. Rebus concentrated on the postcards. ‘Candy, Masseuse’ vied for attention with ‘Pram and carrycot for sale’, ‘Babysitting considered’, and ‘Lada, seldom used’. Rebus was smiling, almost despite himself, when the door of the shop tinkled open.

‘Jacqueline?’ he said. She turned towards him. He was holding open his ID. ‘Mind if I have a word, Miss Dean?’

Major Dean was pouring himself a glass of Irish whiskey when the drawing-room door opened.

‘Mind if I come in?’ Rebus’s words were directed not at Dean but at Matthews, who was seated in a chair by the window, one leg crossed over the other, hands gripping the arm-rests. He looked like a nervous businessman on an airplane, trying not to let his neighbour see his fear.

‘Inspector Rebus,’ he said tonelessly. ‘I thought I could feel my scalp tingle.’

Rebus was already in the room. He closed the door behind him. Dean gestured with the decanter, but Rebus shook his head.

‘How did you get in?’ Matthews asked.

‘Miss Dean was good enough to escort me through the gate. You’ve changed the guard detail again. She told them I was a friend of the family.’

Matthews nodded. ‘And are you, Inspector? Are you a friend of the family?’

‘That depends on what you mean by friendship.’

Dean had seated himself on the edge of his chair, steadying the glass with both hands. He didn’t seem quite the figure he had been on the day of the explosion. A reaction, Rebus didn’t doubt. There had been a quiet euphoria on the day; now came the aftershock.

‘Where’s Jacqui?’ Dean asked, having paused with the glass to his lips.

‘Upstairs,’ Rebus explained. ‘I thought it would be better if she didn’t hear this.’

Matthews’ fingers plucked at the arm-rests. ‘How much does she know?’

‘Not much. Not yet. Maybe she’ll work it out for herself.’

‘So, Inspector, we come to the reason why you’re here.’

‘I’m here,’ Rebus began, ‘as part of a murder inquiry. I thought that’s why you were here, too, Mr Matthews. Maybe I’m wrong. Maybe you’re here to cover up rather than bring to light.’

Matthews’ smile was momentary. But he said nothing.

‘I didn’t go looking for the culprits,’ Rebus went on. ‘As you said, Mr Matthews, that was your department. But I did wonder who the victim was. The accidental victim, as I thought. A young car thief called Brian Cant, that would be my guess. He stole cars to order. A client asked him for a red open-top Jag, even told him where he might find one. The client told him about Major Dean. Very specifically about Major Dean, right down to the fact that every day he’d nip into the wine-shop on the main street.’ Rebus turned to Dean. ‘A bottle of Irish a day, is it, sir?’

Dean merely shrugged and drained his glass.

‘Anyway, that’s what your daughter told me. So all Brian Cant had to do was wait near the wine-shop. You’d get out of your car, leave it running, and while you were in the shop he could drive the car away. Only it bothered me that the client - Cant’s brother tells me he spoke with an Irish accent - knew so much, making it easy for Cant. What was stopping this person from stealing the car himself?’

‘And the answer came to you?’ Matthews suggested, his voice thick with irony.

Rebus chose to avoid his tone. He was still watching Dean. ‘Not straight away, not even then. But when I came to the house, I couldn’t help noticing that Miss Dean seemed a bit strange. Like she was waiting for a phone call from someone and that someone had let her down. It’s easy to be specific now, but at the time it just struck me as odd. I asked her about it this morning and she admitted it’s because she’s been jilted. A man she’d been seeing, and seeing regularly, had suddenly stopped calling. I asked her about him, but she couldn’t be very helpful. They never went to his flat, for example. He drove a flashy car and had plenty of money, but she was vague about what he did for a living.’

Rebus took a photograph from his pocket and tossed it into Dean’s lap. Dean froze, as though it were some hair-trigger grenade.

‘I showed her a photograph of Brian Cant. Yes, that was the name of her boyfriend - Brian Cant. So you see, it was small wonder she hadn’t heard from him.’

Matthews rose from the chair and stood before the window itself, but nothing he saw there seemed to please him, so he turned back into the room. Dean had found the courage to lift the photograph from his leg and place it on the floor. He got up too, and made for the decanter.