Ian Rankin - Fleshmarket Close

‘A sparrow so much as farts on my windscreen, you’ll be licking it off.’

He stood in the doorway of the Portakabin now, smoking a cigarette. Ellen Wylie was typing on a laptop. It had to be a laptop, so they could unplug it at day’s end and take it with them. It was either that or post a night-time guard on the door. No way of hooking up a phone line, so they were using mobiles. DC Charlie Reynolds, known behind his back as ‘Rat-Arse’, was approaching from one of the high-rises. He was in his late forties, almost as broad as he was tall. He’d played rugby at one time, including a stint at national level with the police team. As a result, his face was a mangle of botched repairs, rips and nicks. The haircut wouldn’t have looked out of place on a street urchin circa the 1920s. Reynolds had a reputation as a wind-up merchant, but he wasn’t smiling now.

‘Bloody waste of time,’ he snarled.

‘Nobody’s talking?’ Rebus guessed.

‘It’s the ones that are talking, they’re the problem.’

‘How so?’ Rebus decided to offer Reynolds a cigarette, which the big man accepted without thanks.

‘Don’t speak bloody English, do they? Fifty-seven bloody varieties up there.’ He gestured towards the tower block. ‘And the smell... Christ knows what they’re cooking, but I’ve not noticed many cats in the vicinity.’ Reynolds saw the look on Rebus’s face. ‘Don’t get me wrong, John, I’m not a racist. But you do have to wonder...’

‘About what?’

‘The whole asylum thing. I mean, say you had to leave Scotland, right? You were being tortured or something... You’d make for the nearest safe country, right, ’cos you wouldn’t want to be too far from the old homeland. But this lot...’ He stared up at the tower block, then shook his head. ‘You take my point though, eh?’

‘I suppose I do, Charlie.’

‘Half of them can’t even be arsed to learn the language... just pick up their cash from the government, thank you very much.’ Reynolds concentrated on his cigarette. He smoked with some violence, teeth clamping the filter, mouth drawing hard. ‘Least you can sod off back to Gayfield whenever you like; some of us are stuck out here for the duration.’

‘Wait till I go and get my violin, Charlie,’ Rebus said. Another car was drawing up alongside: Shug Davidson. He’d been to a meeting to fix the budget for the inquiry, and didn’t look thrilled with the result.

‘No interpreters?’ Rebus guessed.

‘Oh, we can have all the interpreters we want,’ Davidson responded. ‘Thing is, we can’t pay them. Our esteemed Assistant Chief Constable says we should ask around, maybe see if the council could provide one or two free of charge.’

‘Along with everything else,’ Reynolds muttered.

‘What’s that?’ Davidson snapped.

‘Nothing, Shug, nothing.’ Reynolds stamped on the remains of his cigarette as if rucking for a ball.

‘Charlie reckons the locals rely a touch too much on handouts,’ Rebus explained.

‘I didn’t say that.’

‘I can mind-read sometimes. Runs in the family, passed down from father to son. My grandad probably gave it to my dad...’ Rebus stubbed out his own cigarette. ‘He was Polish, by the way, my grandad. We’re a bastard nation, Charlie — get used to it.’ Rebus walked over to greet another arrival: Siobhan Clarke. She spent a few moments studying her surroundings.

‘Concrete was such an attractive option in the sixties,’ she commented. ‘And as for the murals...’

Rebus had ceased to notice them: WOGS OUT... PAKIS sneaking a ‘d’ into ‘power’ to make ‘powder’. Rebus wondered how strong a hold the drug-dealers had around here. Maybe another reason for the general disaffection: immigrants probably couldn’t afford drugs, even supposing they wanted them. SCOTLAND FOR THE SCOTS... A venerable piece of graffiti had been altered from JUNKIE SCUM to BLACK SCUM.

‘This looks cosy,’ Siobhan said. ‘Thanks for inviting me.’

‘Did you bring your invitation?’

She held out the packs of cigarettes. Rebus kissed them and slipped them into his pocket. Davidson and Reynolds had disappeared inside the cabin.

‘You going to tell me that story?’ he asked.

‘You going to give me the tour?’

Rebus shrugged. ‘Why not?’ They started walking. There were four main tower blocks in Knoxland, each one eight storeys high, and sited as if at the corners of a square, looking down on to the central, devastated play area. There were open walkways on each level, and every flat had a balcony with a view of the dual carriageway.

‘Plenty of satellite dishes,’ Siobhan observed. Rebus nodded. He’d wondered about these dishes, about the versions of the world they transmitted into each living room and life. Daytimes, the ads would be for accident compensation; at night, they’d be for alcohol. A generation growing up in the belief that life could be controlled by a TV remote.

There were kids circling them now on their bikes. Others were congregating against a wall, sharing a cigarette and something in a lemonade bottle that didn’t look like lemonade. They wore baseball caps and trainers, a fashion beamed down to them from another culture.

‘He’s too old for ye!’ one voice barked out, followed by laughter and the usual pig-like grunting.

‘I’m young but I’m hung, ya hoor!’ the same voice called.

They kept walking. One uniform was stationed either end of the murder scene, showing ebbing patience as locals queried why they couldn’t use the passageway.

‘Jist ’cos some chinky got topped, man...’

‘Wisnae a chinky... towel-head, I heard.’

The voices rising. ‘Hey, man, how come they get past ye and we dinnae? Pure discrimination, by the way...’

Rebus had led Siobhan behind the uniform. Not that there was much to see. The ground was still stained; the place still had about it the faint whiff of urine. Scrawls covering every inch of wall space.

‘Whoever he was, somebody misses him,’ Rebus said quietly, noting a small bundle of flowers marking the spot. Except that they weren’t really flowers, just some strands of wild grass and a few dandelions. Picked from waste ground.

‘Trying to tell us something?’ Siobhan guessed.

Rebus shrugged. ‘Maybe they just couldn’t afford flowers... or didn’t know how to go about buying any.’

‘Are there really that many immigrants in Knoxland?’

Rebus shook his head. ‘Probably not more than sixty or seventy.’

‘Which would be sixty or seventy more than a few years ago.’

‘I hope you’re not turning into Rat-Arse Reynolds.’

‘Just thinking from the locals’ point of view. People don’t like incomers: immigrants, travellers, anyone the least bit different... Even an English accent like mine can get you into trouble.’

‘That’s different. Plenty of good historical reasons for the Scots to hate the English.’

‘And vice versa, obviously.’

They had passed out of the far end of the passage. Here, there was a gathering of lower-rise blocks, four storeys high, along with a few rows of terraced houses.

‘The houses were built for pensioners,’ Rebus explained. ‘Something to do with keeping them within the community.’

‘Nice dream, as Thom Yorke would say.’

That was Knoxland, all right: a nice dream. Plenty more like it elsewhere in the city. Their architects would have been so proud of the scale drawings and cardboard models. Nobody ever set out to design a ghetto, after all.

‘Why Knoxland?’ Siobhan asked eventually. ‘Not named after Knox the Calvinist, surely.’

‘I wouldn’t think so. Knox wanted Scotland to be a new Jerusalem. I doubt Knoxland qualifies.’