Ian Rankin - Beggars Banquet

Ach. He got up and opened the bookcase again. He would replace them. Let time deal with them; he could not. But in placing his hand back down behind the line of books, he brushed against something else, not paper but stiff card. He hadn’t noticed it before because it seemed stuck to the wall. He peeled it carefully away and brought it into the light. It was a photograph, black and white, ten inches by eight and mounted on card. A man and woman on an esplanade, arm in arm, posing for the photographer. The man looked a little pensive, trying to smile but not sure he actually wanted to be caught like this. The woman seemed to wrap both her arms round one of his, restraining him; and she was laughing, thrilled by this moment, thrilled to be with him.

The man was Sir Walter. A Sir Walter twenty years older than the schoolboy of the love letters, mid thirties perhaps. And the woman? Rebus stared long and hard at the woman. Put the photograph down and paced the study, touching things, peering through the shutters. He was thinking and not thinking. He had seen the woman before somewhere… but where? She was not Lady Scott, of that he was certain. But he’d seen her recently, seen that face… that face.

And then he knew. Oh yes, he knew.

He telephoned the Castellain, half listening as the story was given to him. Taken ill suddenly… poorly… decided to go home… airport… flying to London and catching a connection tonight… Was there a problem? Well, of course there was a problem, but no one at the hotel could help with it, not now. The blackmail over, Rebus himself had inadvertently caused the blackmailer to flee. He had gone to the hotel hoping – such a slim hope – for help, not realising that one of the Grebe Tours party was his quarry. Once again, he had sacrificed his queen too early in the game.

He telephoned Edinburgh Airport, only to be told that the flight had already taken off. He asked to be rerouted to Security, and asked them for the name of the security chief at Heathrow. He was calling Heathrow when Watson appeared in the hall.

‘Making quite a few calls, aren’t you, John? Not personal, I hope.’

Rebus ignored his superior as his call was connected. ‘Mr Masterson in Security, please,’ he said. And then: ‘Yes, it is urgent. I’ll hold.’ He turned to Watson at last. ‘Oh, it’s personal all right, sir. But it’s nothing to do with me. I’ll tell you all about it in a minute. Then we can decide what to tell Lady Scott. Actually, seeing as you’re a friend of the family and all, you can tell her. That’d be best, wouldn’t it, sir? There are some things only your friends can tell you, after all, aren’t there?’

He was through to Heathrow Security, and turned away from Watson the better to talk with Masters on. The superintendent stood there, dimly aware that Rebus was going to force him to tell Margaret something she would probably rather not hear. He wondered if she would ever again have time for the person who would tell her… And he cursed John Rebus, who was so good at digging yet never seemed to soil his own hands. It was a gift, a terrible, destructive gift. Watson, a staunch believer in the Christian God, doubted Rebus’s gift had come down from on high. No, not from on high.

The phone call was ending. Rebus put down the receiver and nodded towards Sir Walter’s study.

‘If you’ll step into the office, sir,’ he said, ‘there’s something I’d like to show you…’

Shaw Berkely was arrested at Heathrow, and, despite protestations regarding his health and cries for consular aid, was escorted back to Edinburgh, where Rebus was waiting, brisk and definitive, in Interview Room A of Great London Road Police Station.

Berkely’s mother had died two months before. She had never told him the truth about his birth, spinning instead some story about his father being dead. But in sorting through his mother’s papers, Shaw discovered the truth – several truths, in fact. His mother had been in love with Walter Scott, had become pregnant by him, but had been, as she herself put it in her journal, ‘discarded’ in favour of the ‘better marriage’ provided by Margaret Winton-Addams.

Shaw’s mother accepted some money from Scott and fled to the United States, where she had a younger sister. Shaw grew up believing his father dead. The revelation not only that he was alive, but that he had prospered in society after having caused Shaw’s mother misery and torment, led to a son’s rage. But it was impotent rage, Shaw thought, until he came across the love letters. His mother must at some point have stolen them from Scott, or at least had come out of the relationship in possession of them. Shaw decided on a teasing revenge, knowing Scott would deduce that any blackmailer in possession of the letters was probably also well informed about his affair and the bastard son.

He used the tour party as an elaborate cover (and also, he admitted, because it was a cheap travel option). He brought with him to Britain not only the letters, but also the series of typed notes. The irony was that he had been to Edinburgh before, had studied there for three months as part of some exchange with his American college. He knew now why his mother, though proud of the scholarship, had been against his going. For three months he had lived in his father’s city, yet hadn’t known it.

He sent the notes from London – the travel party’s base for much of its stay in England. The exchange – letters for cash – had gone ahead in the Café Royal, the bar having been a haunt of his student days. But he had known his final note, delivered by hand, would tempt Sir Walter, would lead him to the top of the Scott Monument. No, he said, he hadn’t just wanted Sir Walter to see him, to see the son he had never known. Shaw had much of the money on him, stuffed into a money belt around his waist. The intention had been to release wads of money, Sir Walter’s money, down on to Princes Street Gardens.

‘I didn’t mean for him to die… I just wanted him to know how I felt about him… I don’t know. But Jesus’ – he grinned – ‘I still wish I’d let fly with all that loot.’

Rebus shuddered to think of the ramifications. Stampede in Princes Street! Hundreds dead in lunchtime spree! Biggest scoor-oot ever! No, best not to think about it. Instead, he made for the Café Royal himself. It was late morning, the day after Berkely’s arrest. The pub was quiet as yet, but Rebus was surprised to see Dr Jameson standing at the bar, fortifying himself with what looked suspiciously like a double whisky. Remembering how he had left the doctor in the lurch regarding Sir Walter’s body, Rebus grinned broadly and offered a healthy slap on the back.

‘Morning, Doc, fancy seeing you in here.’ Rebus leaned his elbows on the bar. ‘We mustn’t be keeping you busy enough.’ He paused. There was a twinkle in his eye as he spoke. ‘Here, let me get you a stiff one…’ And he laughed so hard even the waiters from the Oyster Bar came to investigate. But all they saw was a tall, well-built man leaning against a much smaller, more timid man, and saying as he raised his glass: ‘Here’s to mortality, to old mortality!’

So all in all it was just another day in the Café Royal.

It is, of course, by no means unusual to find a solicitor in a police station.

We’re called there at all hours of the day and night, sometimes by clients, sometimes by the police themselves. There is something about those stations, something unwholesome, and it leaves its mark on you. Put me in a room full of lawyers, and I’ll tell you which ones spend a lot of time in police cells and interview rooms, and hanging around corridors and empty offices, fingers tapping impatiently against briefcases. Those laywers have a tired, drawn look. They look like morticians. They lose colour and smile less than they used to. And they look nervous and cynical at the same time, their eyes flitting over you as if you’d been accused of something.