Ian Rankin - Black Book

People might leave Wester Hailes, or stay there all their lives, surrounded by roads and industrial estates and empty green spaces. It had never before struck Rebus that it would make a good hiding place. You could walk the streets, or the Kingsknowe golf course, or the roads around Sighthill, and as long as you didn’t look out of place you would be safe. There were places you could sleep without being discovered. And if you were of a mind, there was a school. A school and quite a few play-parks.

This was where, on the second day, he found Andrew McPhail. Never mind watching the bus and railway stations, Rebus had known where to look. He followed McPhail for three-quarters of an hour, at first in the car and then, when McPhail took a pedestrian shortcut, awkwardly on foot. McPhail kept moving, his gait brisk. A man out for a walk, that was all. A bit shabby maybe, but these days with unemployment what it was, you lost the will to shave every morning, didn’t you?

McPhail was careful not to draw attention to himself. He didn’t pause to stare at any children he saw. He just smiled towards them and went on his way. When Rebus had seen enough, he gained quickly and tapped him on the shoulder. He might as well have used a cattle-prod.

‘Jesus, it’s you!’ McPhail’s hand went to his chest. ‘You nearly gave me a heart attack.’

‘That would have saved Alex Maclean a job.’

‘How is he?’

‘Minor burns. He’s up and about and on the warpath.’

‘Christ’s sake! We’re talking about something that happened years ago!’

‘And it’s not going to happen again?’

‘No!’

‘And it was an accident you ended up living across from a primary school?’

‘Yes.’

‘And I was wrong to think I’d find you somewhere near a school or a playgroun…?’

McPhail opened his mouth, then closed it again. He shook his head. ‘No, you weren’t wrong. I still like kids. But I neve…I’d never do anything to them. I won’t even speak to them these days.’ He looked up at Rebus. ‘I’m flying, Inspector.’

Everyone wanted a second chance: Michael, McPhail, even Black Aengus. Sometimes, Rebus could help. ‘Tell you what,’ he said. ‘There are programmes for past offenders. You could go into one of them, not in Edinburgh, somewhere else. You could sign on for social security and look for a job.’ McPhail looked ready to say something. ‘I know it takes money, a wee bit of cash to get you on your feet. But I can help with that too.’

McPhail blinked, one eye staying half closed. ‘Why?’

‘Because I want to. And afterwards, you’ll be left alone, I promise. I won’t tell anyone where you are or what’s happened to you. Is it a deal?’

McPhail thought about it-for two seconds. ‘A deal,’ he said.

‘Fine then.’ Rebus put his hand on McPhail’s shoulder again, drawing him a little closer. ‘There’s just one small thing I’d like you to do for me firs…’

It had been quiet in the social club, and Chick Muir was thinking of heading home when the young chap at the bar asked if he could buy him a drink. Chick readily agreed.

‘I don’t like drinking on my own,’ the young man explained.

‘Who can blame you?’ said Chick agreeably, handing his empty glass to the barman. ‘Not from round here?’

‘Aberdeen,’ said the young man.

‘A long way from home. Is it still like Dallas up there?’

Chick meant the oil-boom, which had actually disappeared almost as quickly as it had begun, except in the mythology of those people not living in Aberdeen.

‘Maybe it is,’ said the young man, ‘but that didn’t stop them sacking me.’

‘Sorry to hear it.’ Chick really was too. He’d been hoping the young man was off the oil rigs with cash to burn. He was planning to tap him for a tenner, but now shrugged away the idea.

‘I’m Andy Steele, by the way.’

‘Chick Muir.’ Chick placed his cigarette in his mouth so he could shake Andy Steele’s hand. The grip was like a rubbish-crusher.

‘The money didn’t bring much luck to Aberdeen, you know,’ Steele was reminiscing. ‘Just a load of sharks and gangsters.’

‘I’ll believe it.’ Muir was already halfway through his drink. He wished he’d been drinking a whisky instead of the half-pint when he’d been asked about another. It didn’t look good exchanging a half-pint for a nip, so he was stuck with a half.

‘That’s mostly why I’m here,’ said Steele.

‘What? Gangsters?’ Muir sounded amused.

‘In a way. I’m visiting a friend, too, but I thought while I was here I might pick up a few bob.’

‘How’s that?’ Chick was beginning to feel uncomfortable, but also distinctly curious.

Steele dropped his voice, though they were alone at the bar. ‘There’s word going around Aberdeen that someone’s out to get a certain individual in Edinburgh.’

The barman had turned on the tape machine behind the bar. The low-ceilinged room was promptly filled with a folk duet. They’d played the club last week, and the barman had made a tape of them. It sounded worse now than it had then.

‘In the name of Auld Nick, turn that down!’ Chick didn’t have a loud voice, but no one could say it lacked authority. The barman turned the sound down a bit, and when Chick still glared at him turned it even lower. ‘What was that?’ he asked Andy Steele. Andy Steele, who had been enjoying his drink, put down the glass and told Chick Muir again. And a little while later, mission accomplished, he bought Chick a final drink and then left.

Chick Muir didn’t touch this fresh half pint. He stared past it at his own reflection in the mirror behind the row of optics. Then he made a few phone calls, again roaring at the barman to ‘turn that shite off!’ The third call he made was to St Leonard’s, where he was informed, a bit too light-heartedly, he thought, that Inspector Rebus had been suspended from duty pending enquiries. He tried Rebus at his flat, but no joy there either. Ach well, it wasn’t so important. What mattered was that he’d talked to the big man. Now the big man owed him, and that was quite enough for the penniless Chick Muir to be going on with.

Andy Steele gave the same performance in a meanly lit pub and a betting shop, and that evening was at Powderhall for the greyhound racing. He recited to himself the description Rebus had given him, and eventually spotted the man tucking into a meal of potato crisps at a window-seat in the bar.

‘Are you Shuggie Oliphant?’ he asked.

‘That’s me,’ said the huge thirtyish man. He was poking a finger into the farthest corner of the crisp-bag in search of salt.

‘Somebody told me you might be interested in a bit of information I’ve got.’

Oliphant still hadn’t looked at him. The bag emptied, he folded it into a thin strip, then tied it in a knot and placed it on the table. There were four other granny knots just like it in a row. ‘You don’t get paid till I do,’ Oliphant informed him, sucking on a greasy finger and smacking his lips.

Andy Steele sat down across from him. ‘That’s okay by me,’ he said.

On Sunday morning Rebus waited at the top of a blustery Calton Hill. He walked around the observatory, as the other Sunday strollers were doing. His leg was definitely improving. People were pointing out distant landmarks. Broken clouds were moving rapidly over a pale blue sky. Nowhere else in the world, he reckoned, had this geography of bumps and valleys and outcrops. The volcanic plug beneath Edinburgh Castle had been the start of it. Too good a place not to build a fortress. And the town had grown around it, grown out as far as Wester Hailes and beyond.

The observatory was an odd building, if functional. The folly, on the other hand, was just that, and served no function at all save as a thing to clamber over and a place to spray paint your name. It was one side of a projected Greek temple (Edinburgh, after all, being ‘the Athens of the north’). The all-too-eccentric brain behind the scheme had run out of money after completion of this first side. And there it stood, a series of pillars on a plinth so tall kids had to stand on each other’s shoulders to climb aboard.