Ian Rankin - Black and Blue

The shower stopped. ‘Puppy Love’ segued into ‘What Made Milwaukee Famous’. Rebus liked a man with catholic tastes. Jack emerged, wrapped in his robe and doing prize-fighter impressions.

‘Back to Edinburgh tomorrow?’

‘First thing,’ Rebus agreed.

‘To face the music.’

Rebus didn’t say he might well be facing the music long before that. But when the sandwiches arrived, he found he’d lost his appetite. Thirsty though: four cups of coffee. He needed to stay awake. Long night coming, no moon in the sky.

Darkness on the short drive in, thin rain falling. Rebus felt jolted by coffee, loose wires sparking where his nerves should be. One-fifteen in the morning: he’d rung Burke’s, the bar-side payphone, asked a punter what time the place shut.

‘Party’s nearly finished, ya radge!’ Phone slammed home. Background music: ‘Albatross’, so it was moon-dance time. Two or three slows, your last chance to grab a breakfast partner. Desperate times on the dance floor; as desperate in your forties as in your teens.

Albatross.

Rebus tried the radio — vacuous pop, pounding disco, telephone chat. Then jazz. Jazz was OK. Jazz was fine, even on Radio Two. He parked near Burke’s, watched a dumb-show as two bouncers took on three farm-boys whose girlfriends were trying to pull them away.

‘Listen to the ladies,’ Rebus muttered. ‘You’ve proved yourselves for tonight.’

The fight dissolved into pointed fingers and swearing, the bouncers, arms not touching their sides, waddling back inside. A final kick at the doors, saliva hitting the porthole-styled windows, then hauled away and up the road. Opening curtain on another north-east weekend. Rebus got out and locked the car, breathed the city air. Shouts and sirens up on Union Street. He crossed the road and headed for Burke’s.

The doors were locked. He kicked at them, but nobody answered: probably thinking the farm-boys were back. Rebus kept kicking. Someone poked a head round the interior doors, saw he didn’t look like a punter, shouted something back into the club. Now a bouncer came out, jangling a chain of keys. He looked like he wanted to go to bed, day’s work done. The door rattled, and he opened it an inch.

‘What?’ he growled.

‘I’ve an appointment with Mr Fuller.’

The bouncer stared at him, pulled the door wide. The lights were on in the main bar, staff emptying ashtrays and wiping down tables, collecting an enormous number of glasses. With the lights up, the interior looked as bleak as any moorland vista. Two men who looked like DJs — ponytails, black sleeveless T-shirts — sat smoking at the bar, sinking bottles of beer. Rebus turned to the bouncer.

‘Mr Stemmons around?’

‘I thought your appointment was with Mr Fuller.’

Rebus nodded. ‘Just wondered if Mr Stemmons was available.’ Talk to him first — the sane member of the cast; businessman, therefore a listener.

‘He might be upstairs.’ They went back into the foyer, climbed to where Stemmons and Fuller had their offices. The bouncer opened a door. ‘In you go.’

In Rebus went, ducking too late. The hand hit his neck like a side of beef, flooring him. Fingers sought his throat, probing for the carotid artery, applying pressure. No brain damage, Rebus thought, as the edges of his vision darkened. Please, God, let there be no damage...

He woke up drowning.

Sucking foam and water in through his nose, his mouth. Fizzing taste — not water, beer. He shook his head wildly, opened his eyes. Lager trickled down his throat. He tried coughing it out. Someone was standing behind him, holding the now-empty bottle, chuckling. Rebus tried turning and found his arms were on fire. Literally. He could smell whisky, see a shattered bottle on the floor. His arms had been doused in the stuff and set alight. He cried out, wriggled. A bar towel flapped at the flames and they died. The smouldering towel fell with a slap on to the floor. Laughter echoing around the walls.

The place reeked of alcohol. It was a cellar. Bare lightbulbs and aluminium kegs, boxes of bottles and glasses. Half a dozen brick pillars supporting the ceiling. They hadn’t tied Rebus to one of these. Instead, he hung suspended from a hook, the rope fraying his wrists, arms readying to pop from sockets. Rebus shifted more weight on to his feet. The figure from behind tossed the beer-bottle into a crate and came round to stand in front of him. Slick black hair with a kiss-curl at the front, and a large hooked nose in the centre of a face lush with corruption. A diamond glinted in one of the teeth. Dark suit, white T-shirt. Rebus took a wild guess — Judd Fuller — but reckoned the time for introductions was past.

‘Sorry I don’t have Tony El’s ingenuity with power tools,’ Fuller said. ‘But I do what I can.’

‘From where I’m standing, you’re doing fine.’

‘Thanks.’

Rebus looked around. They were alone in the cellar, and nobody’d thought to tie his legs together. He could kick Fuller in the balls and...

The punch came low, hitting him just above the groin. It would have doubled him up, if his arms had been free. As it was, he instinctively raised his knees, lifting his feet off the floor. His shoulder-joints told him this was not the brightest move.

Fuller was walking away, flexing the fingers of his right hand. ‘So, cop,’ he said, his back to Rebus, ‘how do you like it so far?’

‘I’m ready for a break if you are.’

‘Only break you’re going to get is your goddamn neck.’ Fuller turned to him, grinned, then picked up another beer-bottle, smacked it open against a wall and gulped half the contents.

The smell of the alcohol was overpowering, and the few mouthfuls Rebus had swallowed seemed already to be having an effect. His eyes stung; so did his hands where the flames had licked them. His wrists were already blistering.

‘We have a nice club here,’ Fuller was saying. ‘Everybody has fun. You can ask around, it’s a popular spot. What gives you the right to spoil the party?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘You made Erik upset the night you talked to him.’

‘Does he know about this?’

‘He’ll never get to know about this. Erik’s happier not knowing. He has an ulcer, you know. He worries .’

‘Can’t think why that is.’ Rebus stared at Fuller. If you caught his face in the right kind of shadow, he resembled a young Leonard Cohen, the Travolta comparison way off.

‘You’re a nuisance, that’s all you are, an itch that needs to be scratched.’

‘You don’t get it, Judd. You’re not in America. You can’t just hide a body here and hope nobody stumbles across it.’

‘Why not?’ Fuller opened his arms wide. ‘Boats head out of Aberdeen all the time. Weight you down and tip you into the North Sea. Know how hungry the fish are out there?’

‘I know it’s over fished — do you want some trawler netting me?’

‘Option two,’ Fuller said, raising two fingers, ‘the mountains. Let the fucking sheep find you, nibble you clean to the bone. Plenty of options, don’t think we haven’t used them before.’ He paused. ‘Why did you come here tonight? What did you ever hope you were going to do?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘When Eve phoned... she couldn’t hide it, it was in her voice — I knew she was shitting me, setting me up. But I have to admit, I was expecting something a little more challenging.’

‘Sorry to disappoint you.’

‘I’m glad it’s you, though, I’ve been wanting to see you again.’

‘Well, here I am.’

‘What did Eve tell you?’

‘Eve? She didn’t tell me anything.’

A roundhouse kick took time: Rebus did what he could, turned sideways on to it, caught it in the ribs. Fuller followed up with a punch to the face, his hand moving so slowly Rebus could see the scar on its back — a long ugly welt. A tooth split in half, one of his root-canal jobs. Rebus spat the tooth and some blood at Fuller, who backed off a little, impressed at the damage.