Ian Rankin - A Question of Blood

Maybe a boyfriend was the answer, keep away the prowlers. But then, a dog would do just as well. Thing about a dog was…

Thing about a dog was, she didn’t want one. Didn’t want a boyfriend either. She’d had to stop seeing Eric Bain for a while, when he’d started talking about taking their friendship “to the next stage.” She missed him: he would arrive late in the evening, sharing pizza and gossip, listening to music, maybe playing a computer game on his laptop. Soon she’d try inviting him around again, see how it went. Soon, but not yet.

Martin Fairstone was dead. Everyone knew it. She wondered who would know if he wasn’t. The girlfriend maybe. Close friends or family; he had to be staying with someone, making money to keep himself together. Maybe this Peacock Johnson would know. Rebus said the guy was a magnet for local info. She didn’t feel sleepy, could be a drive would do her good. Ambient on the car hi-fi. She picked up her phone, called the Leith cop shop, knowing the Port Edgar case was financed to the hilt, meaning there’d be bodies on the night shift, keen to top up their bank accounts. She got through to one, asked for some details.

“Peacock Johnson… I don’t know his first name, not sure anybody else does. He was interviewed earlier today at St. Leonard’s.”

“What is it you need, DS Clarke?”

“For the moment, just his address,” Siobhan said.

Rebus had taken a taxi-easier than driving. Even then, opening the passenger door had required a hard squeeze of his thumb on the latch, and his thumb was still burning. His pockets bulged with change. Small change was hard for him to deal with. He was using notes for every possible transaction, filling his pockets with the residual coins.

His conversation with Dr. Curt was still echoing in the back of his mind. A murder inquiry was all he needed right now, especially with himself as prime suspect. Siobhan had asked him about Peacock Johnson, but he’d managed to keep his answers vague. Johnson: the reason he was standing here, ringing the doorbell. The reason he’d gone back to Fairstone’s house that night, too…

The door was opened to him, bathing him in light.

“Ah, it’s you, John. Good man, come in.”

A mid-terraced house, newly built, off Alnwickhill Road. Andy Callis lived there on his own, his wife dead a year, cancer snatching her too young. A framed wedding photo hung in the hall. Callis a good twenty pounds lighter, Mary radiant, haloed by light, flowers in her hair. Rebus had been at the graveside, Callis placing a posy on the coffin. Rebus had accepted the role of pallbearer, one of six, including Andy himself, keeping his eyes on the posy as the coffin was lowered into the earth.

A year back. Andy seeming to be getting over it, but then this…

“How are you doing, Andy?” Rebus asked. The electric heater was on in the living room. Leather chair and matching footstool facing the TV. The room tidy, fresh-smelling. The garden outside well-tended, its borders free of weeds. Another picture above the mantelpiece: Mary’s portrait, done in a studio. Same smile as in the wedding photo, but a few lines around the eyes, the face fuller. A woman growing into maturity.

“I’m fine, John.” Callis settled into his chair, moving like an old man. He was early forties, hair not yet gray. The chair creaked as it adjusted itself to him.

“Help yourself to a drink, you know where it is.”

“I might have a nip.”

“Not driving?”

“Taxi brought me.” Rebus went to the liquor cabinet, raised a bottle, watched Callis shake his head. “Still on those tablets?”

“Not supposed to mix them with drink.”

“Me too.” Rebus poured himself a double.

“Is it cold in here?” Callis was asking. Rebus shook his head. “What’s with the gloves, then?”

“I hurt my hands. That’s why I’m on tablets.” He lifted the glass. “And other nonprescribed painkillers.” He brought his drink over to the sofa, made himself comfortable. The TV was playing silently, some sort of game show. “What’s on?”

“Christ knows.”

“So I’m not interrupting?”

“You’re fine.” Callis paused, keeping his eyes on the screen. “Unless you’ve come here to try pushing me again.”

Rebus shook his head. “I’m past that, Andy. Though I’m bound to admit, we’re stretched to the limit.”

“That school thing?” From the corner of his eye, he watched Rebus nod. “Terrible thing to happen.”

“I’m supposed to be working out why he did it.”

“What’s the point? Give people… the opportunity, it’s going to happen.”

Rebus reflected on the pause after “people.” Callis had been about to say “guns” but had swallowed the word. And he’d called it “that school thing”… “thing” rather than “shooting.”

Not out of the woods yet, then.

“You still seeing the shrink?” Rebus asked.

Callis snorted. “Fat lot of good.”

She wasn’t really a shrink, of course. It wasn’t lying on the sofa and talking about your mother. But Rebus and Callis had turned it into this joke. Joking made it easier to talk about.

“Apparently there are worse cases than me,” Callis said. “Guys who can’t so much as pick up a pen or a bottle of sauce. Everything they see reminds them…” His voice faded.

Rebus finished the sentence in his head: of guns. Everything reminded them of guns.

“Bloody odd when you think about it,” Callis went on. “I mean, we’re supposed to be scared of them, isn’t that the whole point? But then someone like me reacts, and suddenly it’s a problem.”

“It’s a problem when it affects the rest of your life, Andy. Having any trouble pouring sauce onto your chips?”

Callis patted his stomach. “Not so you’d notice.”

Rebus smiled, leaned back against the sofa, whiskey glass resting on the arm. He wondered if Andy knew about the tic in his left eye or the slight catch in his voice. It had been nearly three months since he’d taken sick leave from the force. Up until then, he’d been a patrol officer, but with specialist training in firearms. Lothian and Borders had only a handful of such men. They couldn’t just be replaced. Edinburgh had only the one Armed Response Vehicle.

“What does your doctor say?”

“John, doesn’t matter what he says. The force isn’t going to let me back in without a battery of tests.”

“You’re scared you might fail?”

Callis stared at him. “I’m scared I might pass.”

They sat in silence after that, watching the TV. It looked to Rebus like one of those survival programs: strangers cooped up together, whittled down each week.

“So tell me what’s been happening,” Callis said.

“Well…” Rebus considered his options. “Not much really.”

“Apart from the school thing?”

“Apart from that, yes. The guys keep asking for you.”

Callis nodded. “The odd face pops round now and then.”

Rebus leaned forward, elbows on knees. “You’re not coming back, then?”

A tired smile from Callis. “You know I’m not. They’ll call it stress or something. Put on disability…”

“How many years is it, Andy?”

“Since I joined?” Callis’s lips puckered in thought. “Fifteen… fifteen and a half.”

“One incident in all that time, and you’re ready to call it a day? Not even really an ‘incident’…”

“John, look at me, will you? Notice anything? The way the hands tremble?” He raised a hand for Rebus to see. “And this vein that seems to keep pulsing in my eyelid…” Raised the same hand to his eye for effect. “It’s not me that’s calling time, it’s my body. All these warning signs, you saying I just ignore them? Know how many calls we had last year? Not far short of three hundred. We drew weapons three times more often than in the previous year.”