Ian Rankin: Black Book

The wounded man had also left a trail of gleaming drips outside, all the way along and halfway up Lutton Place (insultingly close to St Leonard’s), where they suddenly stopped kerbside.

The man’s name was Rory Kintoul, and he had been stabbed in the abdomen. This much they knew. They didn’t know much more, because Rory Kintoul was refusing to speak about the incident. This was not an attitude shared by those who had been in the butcher’s at the time. They were outside now, passing on news of the excitement to the crowd who had stopped to gawp through the shop window. It reminded Rebus of Saturday afternoon in the St James Centre, when pockets of men would gather outside the TV rental shops, hoping to catch the football scores.

Rebus crouched over Kintoul, just a little intimidatingly.

‘And where do you live, Mr Kintoul?’

But the man was not about to answer. A voice came from the other side of the glass display case.

‘Duncton Terrace.’ The speaker was wearing a bloodied butcher’s apron and cleaning a heavy knife on a towel. ‘That’s in Dalkeith.’ Rebus looked at the butcher. ‘And you ar…?’

‘Jim Bone. This is my shop.’

‘And you know Mr Kintoul?’

Kintoul had turned his head awkwardly, seeking the butcher’s face as if trying to influence his answer. But, slouched as he was against the display case, he would have required demonic possession to effect such a move.

‘I ought to,’ said the butcher. ‘He’s my cousin.’

Rebus was about to say something, but at that moment the stretcher was trolleyed in by two ambulancemen, one of whom almost skited on the slippery floor. It was as they positioned the stretcher in front of Kintoul that Rebus saw something which would stay with him. There were two signs in the display cabinet, one pinned into a side of corned beef, the other into a slab of red sirloin.

Cold Cuts, one said. The other stated simply, Fleshing.. A large fresh patch of blood was left on the floor as they lifted the butcher’s cousin. Cold Cuts and Fleshing. Rebus shivered and made for the door.

On the Friday after work, Rebus decided on a massage. He had promised Patience he’d be in by eight, and it was only six now. Besides, a brutal pummelling always seemed to set him up for the weekend.

But first he wandered into the Broadsword for a pint of the local brew. They didn’t come more local than Gibson’s Dark, a heavy beer made only six hundred yards away at the Gibson Brewery. A brewery, a pub and a massage parlour: Rebus reckoned if you threw in a good Indian restaurant and a corner shop open till midnight he could live happily here for ever and a day.

Not that he didn’t like living with Patience in her Oxford Terrace garden flat. It represented the other side of the tracks, so to speak. Certainly, it seemed a world away from this disreputable corner of Edinburgh, one of many such corners. Rebus wondered why he was so drawn to them.

The air outside was filled with the yeasty smell of beer-making, vying with the even stronger aromas from the city’s other much larger breweries. The Broadsword was a popular watering hole, and like most of Edinburgh’s popular pubs, it boasted a mixed clientele: students and low lifes with the occasional businessman. The bar had few pretensions; all it had in its favour were good beer and a good cellar. The weekend had already started, and Rebus was squeezed in at the bar, next to a man whose immense alsatian dog was sleeping on the floor behind the barstools. It took up the standing room of at least two adult men, but nobody was asking it to shift. Further along the bar, someone was drinking with one hand and keeping another proprietorial hand on a coatstand which Rebus assumed they’d just bought at one of the nearby secondhand shops. Everyone at the bar was drinking the same dark brew.

Though there were half a dozen pubs within a five-minute walk of here, only the Broadsword stocked draught Gibson’s, the other pubs being tied to one or other of the big breweries. Rebus started to wonder, as the beer slipped down, what effect it would have on his metabolism once the Organ Grinder got to work. He decided against a refill, and instead made for 0-Gee’s, which was what the Organ Grinder had called his shop. Rebus liked the name; it made the same sound customers made once the Grinder himself got to work-‘Oh Jeez!’ But they were always careful not to say anything out loud. The Organ Grinder didn’t like to hear blasphemy on the massage table. It upset him, and nobody wanted to be in the hands of an upset Organ Grinder. Nobody wanted to be his monkey.

‘ So, there he was sitting with the Bible in his lap, waiting for his six-thirty appointment. The Bible was the only reading matter on the premises, courtesy of the Organ Grinder himself. Rebus had read it before, but didn’t mind reading it again.

Then the front door burst open.

‘Where’s the girls, eh?’ This new client was not only misinformed, but also considerably drunk. There was no way the Grinder would handle drunks.

‘Wrong place, pal.’ Rebus was about to make mention of a couple of nearby parlours which would be certain to offer the necessary Thai assisted sauna and rub-down, but the man stopped him with a thick pointed finger.

‘John bloody Rebus, you son of a shite-breeks!’

Rebus frowned, trying to place the face. His mind flipped through two decades of mug shots. The man saw Rebus’s confusion, and spread his hands wide. ‘Deek Torrance, you don’t remember?’

Rebus shook his head. Torrance was walking determinedly forward. Rebus clenched his fists, ready. for anything.

‘We went through parachute training together,’ said Torrance. ‘Christ, you must remember!’

And suddenly Rebus did remember. He remembered everything, the whole black comedy of his past.

They drank in the Broadsword, swopping stories. Deek hadn’t lasted the Parachute Regiment. After a year he’d had enough, and not too lon’ after that he’d bought his way out of the Army altogether.

‘Too restless, John, that was my problem. What was yours?’

Rebus shook his head and drank some more beer. ‘My problem, Deck? You couldn’t put a name to it.’ But a name had been put to it, first by Mickey’s sudden appearance, and now by Deek Torrance. Ghosts, both of them, but Rebus didn’t want to be their Scrooge. He bought another round.

‘You always said you were going to try for the SAS,’ Torrance said. Rebus shrugged. ‘It didn’t work out.’

The bar was busier than ever, and at one point Torrance was jostled by a young man trying to manoeuvre a double bass through the melee. ‘Could you no’ leave that outside?’

‘Not around here.’

Torrance turned back to Rebus. ‘Did you see thon?’

Rebus merely smiled. He felt good after the massage. ‘No one brings anything small into a bar around here.’ He watched Deek Torrance grunt. Yes, he remembered him now, all right. He’d gotten fatter and balder, his face was roughened and much fleshier than it had been. He didn’t even sound the same, not exactly. But there was that one characteristic: the Torrance grunt. A man of few words, Deek Torrance had been. Not now, though, now he had plenty to say.

‘So what do you do, Deek?’

Torrance grinned. ‘Seeing you’re a copper I better not say.’ Rebus bided his time. Torrance was drunk to the point of slavering. Sure enough, he couldn’t resist. ‘I’m in buying and selling, mostly selling.’

‘And what do you sell?’

Torrance leaned closer. ‘Am I talking to the polis or an old pal?’

‘A pal,’ said Rebus. ‘Strictly off-duty. So what do you sell?’

Torrance grunted. ‘Anything you like, John. I’m sort of like Jenners department stor…only I can get things they can’t.’