Ian Rankin: Let It Bleed

‘Oh, yes,’ Flower said. And then Rebus was in position. In the distance, he could see Flower, and halfway between them Allan Gunner. He was where Rebus had guessed he’d be — at the Left Luggage counter. Rebus stood half-hidden by a billboard advertising industrial space to let. The irony wasn’t lost on him as he watched Gunner hand over the briefcase and accept a ticket. When Gunner headed back the way he’d come, Rebus came from around the advertising hoarding and walked briskly towards Left Luggage, just in time to see the employee place the case on a rack right at the front.

‘Well?’ Flower said.

‘Let him go.’

‘Is it there?’

‘Sweet as a nut, Flower. Sweet as a nut.’

Rico Briggs took some persuading.

Between them, in their many and various ways, Rebus and Flower were expert at the art of persuasion. Well, hadn’t they panicked — persuaded — Gunner into getting rid of the evidence? If he’d had time to think, if it hadn’t been early morning, he might have thought of a better hiding place. Left Luggage was a stop-gap — he just didn’t want the stuff in his house. Rebus had read him just right, and in fact a Left Luggage office wasn’t bad, not as a stop-gap.

Rebus and Flower took turns keeping the office under surveillance. Surveillance was easy in a railway station: there were so many people just hanging around. They didn’t want Gunner coming back and lifting the case without them knowing, though Rebus’s guess was that it would stay there overnight. Gunner would work the day like any other, then go home and think about it, maybe make a few telephone calls — calls he wouldn’t want to make from his own office. With the briefcase and its contents out of the way, he’d feel more confident. He’d want to use that time to think things through.

So the briefcase would be there overnight.

Rebus called Rico and got him to come down to the station. They met in the bar. Rebus had already consumed too much coffee and junk food, and the smell of stale alcohol in the bar almost did for him. The bar smelt the way bars always did at the start of a new day’s business — of the previous day, of accumulation; too much smoke and spilt beer.

‘Pint of lager,’ Rico told the barman. The barman tried not to stare too hard at his customer’s tattooed cheeks. Rico gave them a brisk rub while his drink was poured. When he saw there was a gaming machine in the bar, he walked over to it and fed in some coins. Rebus paid for the drink and carried it over to Rico. He had his cellphone in his free hand. I look like a businessman on the way down, he thought.

Maybe he was, at that.

Rebus explained the situation to Rico while Rico played the machine. When Rico ran out of coins, Rebus gave him more. Then his cellphone beeped.

‘What does he say?’ Flower asked.

‘So far, he says no.’

‘Let me talk to him.’

So Rebus relieved Flower. He let twenty minutes pass, then phoned the bar.

‘Well?’

‘He’s just about cleaned me out of money,’ Flower reported. And in the end it was the gaming machine that was the real persuader. It persuaded Rico to borrow money from Flower — real money — and suddenly Rico owed the policeman twenty pounds.

For the promise of more money, and a clean slate on his debt, Rico said he’d meet them at one in the morning.

Which was only thirteen hours away …

Rebus and Flower spent the rest of the day watching Left Luggage, reading newspapers and magazines purchased from the station stall, eating overpriced sandwiches, drinking weak coffee, and generally learning a lot about the life of a mainline railway station.

The security cameras bothered Rebus, so he paid a visit to ScotRail’s security office and spoke to the staff, on the pretext of alerting them to a gang of pickpockets just up from Newcastle. It was warm in the security chief’s office, and the man was ex-CID, friendly. They traded stories, Rebus asked for a tour. Which was how he saw everything would be all right. The camera trained on Left Luggage was hazy, distant: they’d see anyone going in, but they wouldn’t get a good description. This was very much to Rico’s advantage.

Besides, no one watched after midnight. The camera would record, but that was all.

The station was locked overnight, but still open at one o’clock. There were weird night trains to deal with, freight-haulers, a sleeper bound for London. Rebus thought he’d probably caught something, he kept shivering at his core. He didn’t think it could just be nerves.

True to his word, but ten minutes late, Rico turned up.

‘I brought some balaclavas,’ he said.

‘We won’t need them.’ Rebus explained about the cameras. They’d taken their cars into Cockburn Street, parked them there. They had a quick discussion as they walked down Platform One towards Left Luggage. Rico had checked the office out earlier, and now carried the tools he needed, tiny picklocks which reminded Rebus of dental instruments. Instinctively, his tongue sought the hole, but there was no hole there, Dr Keene had seen to that.

It took Rico a very long minute, but at last they were in.

With the shutters down, the place was in utter darkness, but Rebus had a couple of torches and handed one to Flower.

‘Keep listening at the door, Rico,’ he ordered. Then they went to work.

There wasn’t much luggage to choose from, and the briefcase was just where Rebus knew it would be. Locked, but that didn’t matter. He lifted it up and walked to the door.

‘Here, Rico, see what you can do with this.’

He stood with his torch pointed at the case, while Rico brought out his picklocks. Flower, meantime, was moving luggage around, switching tags.

‘What the hell are you doing?’ Rebus hissed.

‘Maximising confusion.’

‘Well stop it. Put everything back. We don’t want anyone knowing we’ve been in here.’

Rico made a clucking sound with his tongue. They switched the torches off and stood very still in the darkness, listening. Slow footsteps, coming nearer. A whistled pop tune. Rico rested his weight against the door. Someone tried the door, pushing it a couple of times. Then the shutters jumped a quarter-inch and fell back, then jumped again. If someone shone a torch through the crack, they’d see Flower standing not three feet from them like the last dummy in the shop window. The shutters clattered down again. The footsteps moved away.

Rebus started breathing again.

‘I’m glad I thought to wear my brown underwear,’ Rico whispered. Rebus shone the light back down on to the briefcase, and Rico tried the locks. They flipped open against his fingers.

Rebus lifted the lid of the case. Inside was a single fat document file and an audio cassette. Rebus lifted both out and instructed Rico to lock the case again.

‘Is that it?’ Flower said.

It took Rebus half a paragraph to be sure, then he smiled and nodded. He placed the evidence in a carrier-bag, put the case back on its shelf, and wiped it clean with the sleeve of his jacket. Rico was looking around at the other bags and cases.

‘No way,’ Rebus said, coming to wipe the door where Rico had held it shut. ‘And don’t even think of coming back here on your own, understand?’

They relocked the door behind them, and walked up the slope just before the gates were closed for the night.

Rebus couldn’t sleep.

He sat in his chair smoking a cigarette, reading the file the DCC had prepared — maybe ‘crafted’ was a better word. He’d done a good job of making it look so thorough while leaving so much out. He played part of the tape, using headphones so he could turn the volume up. Sir Iain was right about one thing — any lawyer listening to the tape would think that the police officer present hadn’t done very much. Rebus found that his hand was shaking. He hadn’t had a drink all day, and didn’t especially want one now. He was just a bit scared, that was all. He wasn’t sure he had enough, even now … especially now.