Ian Rankin - Set in Darkness

A boot to the chest had enough force to send him on to his backside. He put his hands out behind him, steadying himself, so that he was unprotected when the next blow came. To the face this time, connecting with his chin, cracking his head back. He felt the snap as bones in his neck uttered a complaint.

‘Can’t take a warning,’ a voice said: not Cafferty’s. A thin man, younger. Rebus narrowed his eyes, shielded them with a hand as though peering into the sun.

‘It’s Barry Hutton, isn’t it?’ Rebus asked.

‘Pick him up,’ was the barked response. The third man — Hutton’s man — pulled Rebus to his feet as though he were made of cardboard, held him from behind.

‘Gonny teach you,’ Hutton hissed. Rebus could make out the features now: face tight with anger, mouth downturned, nose pinched. He was wearing black leather driving gloves. A question — absurd under the circumstances — flashed through Rebus’s mind: wonder if they were a Christmas present ?

Hutton hit him with a fist, connecting with Rebus’s left cheek. Rebus rode the blow, but still felt it. As he turned his face, he caught a glimpse of the man pinning him from behind. It wasn’t Mick Lorimer.

‘Lorimer isn’t with you tonight, then?’ Rebus asked. Blood was pooling in his mouth. He swallowed it. ‘Were you there the night he killed Roddy Grieve?’

‘Mick just doesn’t know when to stop,’ Hutton said. ‘I wanted the bastard warned off, not on a slab.’

‘You just can’t get the staff these days.’ He felt the grip around his chest tighten, forcing the breath from his lungs.

‘No, but there always seems to be a smart-arsed cop around when you least need it.’ Another blow, this time bursting Rebus’s nose open. Tears pounded from his eyes. He tried blinking them away. Oh, Jesus Christ, that hurt.

‘Thanks, Uncle Ger,’ Hutton was saying. ‘That’s one I owe you.’

‘What else are partners for?’ Cafferty said. He took a step forward, and now Rebus could see his face clearly. It was dead of any emotion. ‘You wouldn’t have been this careless, Strawman, not five years back.’ He stepped back again.

‘You’re right,’ Rebus said. ‘Maybe after tonight I’ll retire.’

‘You’ll do that all right,’ Hutton said. ‘A nice long rest.’

‘Where’ll you put him?’ Cafferty asked.

‘Plenty of sites we’re working on. A nice big hole and half a ton of concrete.’

Rebus wrestled, but the grip was fierce. He raised a foot, stomped hard, but his captor was wearing steel toecaps. The grip tightened, like a thick metal band, crushing him. He let out a groan.

‘But first, a bit more fun,’ Hutton was saying. He came close, so his face was inches from Rebus’s. Then Rebus felt pain explode behind his eyeballs as Hutton’s knee thudded into his groin. Bile rose in his throat, the whisky seeking the quickest exit route. The grip loosened, fell away, and he dropped to his knees. Mist in front of his eyes, thick as haar, the sea singing in his ears. He wiped his hand across his face, clearing his vision. Fire was spreading out from his groin. Whisky fumes at the back of his throat. When he tried breathing through his nose, huge bubbles of blood expanded and popped. The next blow caught him on the temple. A kick this time, sending him rolling across concrete to end hunched foetus-like on the ground. He knew he should get up, take the fight to them. Nothing to lose. Go down kicking and scratching, punching and spitting. Hutton was crouching in front of him, pulling his head up by the hair.

There were explosions in the distance: the fireworks at the Castle, meaning it was midnight. The sky was lit with coloured blooms, blood-red, aching yellow.

‘You’ll stay hidden a sight longer than twenty years, believe me,’ Hutton was saying. Cafferty was standing just behind him, holding something. Light from the fireworks glinted from it. A knife, blade had to be eight or nine inches. Cafferty was going to do it himself. A determined grip on the handle. This was the moment they’d been coming to, ever since the Weasel’s office. Rebus almost welcomed it: Cafferty rather than the young thug. Hutton had camouflaged his criminality well, the veneer thick and brightly polished. Rebus would take Cafferty every time...

But now the sea was washing over all of it, washing Rebus, cleaning him with its flow of noise, building in his ears to a deafening roar, the shadows and light blurring, becoming one...

Fade to grey.

He woke up.

Frozen, aching, as if he’d spent the night in a sepulchre. His eyes were crusted. He prised them open. Cars all around him. Couldn’t stop shivering, body temperature dangerously low. He rose shakily to his feet, held on to one of the cars for support. Garage forecourt; had to be Seafield Road. He broke the crust of blood in his nostrils, started breathing fast. Get that blood pumping round his body. His shirt and jacket were spattered with blood, but no wounds, no sign that he’d been stabbed or slashed.

What the hell is this ?

It wasn’t light yet. He angled his watch to the nearest street lamp: three thirty. Started patting his pockets, found his mobile and entered the access code. Got the night shift at St Leonard’s.

Is this heaven or hell ?

‘I need a car,’ he said. ‘Seafield Road, the Volvo concession.’

He ran on the spot while he waited, patting himself with aching arms. Still couldn’t stop shivering. The patrol car took ten minutes, two uniforms emerging from it.

‘Christ, look at you,’ one of them said.

Rebus stumbled into the back seat. ‘That heating on full blast?’ he asked.

The uniforms got into the front, closed their doors. ‘What happened to you?’ the passenger asked.

Rebus thought the question over. ‘I’m not sure,’ he said at last.

‘Happy New Year anyway, sir,’ the driver said.

‘Happy New Year,’ the passenger added.

Rebus tried to form the words; couldn’t. Slouched down in the seat instead and concentrated on staying alive.

He took a team back to the compound. The concrete surface was like a skating rink.

‘What’s happened here?’ Siobhan Clarke asked.

‘Wasn’t like this,’ Rebus answered, fighting to keep his balance. The hospital had been reluctant to let him go. But his nose wasn’t broken, and though he might be seeing some blood in his urine, there wasn’t any sign of internal injury or infection. It was one of the nurses who’d made the comment: ‘Lot of blood for a busted nose.’ She was studying his clothes at the time. It had made him think: lacerations and grazes to the face, a cut on the inside of the cheek and a bloody nose. He had spatters of blood all over him. Saw the knife again, Cafferty standing behind Barry Hutton...

And now, standing pretty much where he’d been only ten hours before... nothing except the sheet of ice.

‘It’s been hosed down,’ he said.

‘What?’

‘They hosed away the blood.’

He began to walk back towards the car.

Barry Hutton wasn’t home. His girlfriend hadn’t seen him since the previous evening. His car was parked outside his office block, locked and with the alarm set, no sign of the keys. No sign of Barry Hutton either.

They found Cafferty at the hotel. He was enjoying morning coffee in the lounge. Hutton’s man — now Cafferty’s, if he hadn’t been all along — was reading a paper at a neighbouring table.

‘I’ve just found out what they’re charging come the millennium,’ Cafferty said of the hotel. ‘Shysters, the lot of them. Wrong line of work, you and me.’

Rebus sat down opposite his nemesis. Siobhan Clarke introduced herself, stayed standing.