Ian Rankin - Exit Music

'Siobhan,' he said as she walked into the room, 'always a great delight. Doesn't she look businesslike, Rebus? You've trained her to perfection.'

Rebus closed the door and took up position by the wall, Clarke easing herself on to the chair opposite Cafferty. He gave her a little bow, inclining the great dome of his head but keeping the hands where they were.

'I was wondering when you would pull me in,' he said.

'So you knew it was coming?' Clarke had placed a blank pad of paper on the table and was taking the top off her pen.

'With DI Rebus only days away from the scrapheap?' The gangster glanced in Rebus's direction. 'I knew you'd dream up some pretext for giving me grief.'

'Well, as it happens, we've got slightly more than a pretext-'

'Did you know, Siobhan,' Cafferty broke in, 'that John here sits outside my house of an evening, making sure I'm tucked up in bed?

I'd say that level of protection goes somewhat beyond the call of duty.'

Clarke was trying not to be deflected. She placed her pen on the table, but then had to stop it rolling towards the edge. 'Tell us about Alexander Todorov,' she began.

'Say again?'

'The man you bought a tenner's worth of cognac for last Wednesday night.'

'In the bar of the Caledonian Hotel,' Rebus added.

'What? The Polish guy?'

'Russian, actually,' Clarke corrected him.

Tou live a mile and a half away,' Rebus pressed on. 'Makes me

wonder why you'd need a room.'

'To get away from you, maybe?' Cafferty made show of guessing.

II'Or just because I can afford one.'

'And then you sit in the bar, buying drinks for strangers,' Clarke added.

Cafferty unlinked his hands so he could raise a finger, as if to stress a point. 'Difference between Rebus and me – he'd sit in the bar all night and buy drinks for no bugger.' He gave a cold chuckle.

'This is the sum total of why you've dragged me here – because I bought some poor immigrant a drink?'

'How many “poor immigrants” do you reckon would wander into that bar?' Rebus asked.

Cafferty made show of thinking, closing his sunken eyes and then opening them again. They were like dark little pebbles in his huge pale face. Tou have a fair point,' he admitted. 'But the man was still a stranger to me. What's he gone and done?'

'He's gone and been murdered,' Rebus said, with as much restraint as he could muster. 'And as of right now, you're the last person who saw him alive.'

'Whoa there.' Cafferty looked from one detective to the other.

'The poet guy, the one I saw in the papers?'

'Attacked on King's Stables Road, maybe fifteen or twenty minutes after drinking with you. What was it the pair of you fell out about?'

Cafferty ignored Rebus and concentrated on Clarke. 'Do I need my solicitor here?'

'Not as yet,' she said levelly. Cafferty smiled again.

'Are you not wondering, Siobhan, why I'm asking you and not Rebus? He outranks you, after all.' Now he turned back to Rebus.

'But you're days from the scrapheap, just like I say, while Siobhan here's still on the way up. If the pair of you have got a case on the go, my guess is that Old Man Macrae will have seen sense and put Shiv in charge.'

'Only my friends get to call me Shiv.'

'My apologies, Siobhan.'

'Far as you're concerned, I'm Detective Sergeant Clarke.'

Cafferty whistled through his teeth and slapped one meaty thigh.

Trained her to perfection,' he repeated. 'And rare entertainment with it.'

“What were you doing at the Caledonian Hotel?' Clarke asked, as if he'd never spoken.

'Having a drink.'

'And staying in a room?'

'It can be murder, finding a taxi home.'

'So how did you meet Alexander Todorov?'

'I was in the bar…'

'Alone?'

'But only because I wanted to be – unlike DI Rebus there, I have plenty of friends I can drink and have a laugh with. I'm betting you'd be fun to drink with, too, DS Clarke, so long as misery-guts was elsewhere.'

'And Todorov just happened to sit next to you?' Clarke was guessing.

'I was on a stool at the bar. He was standing, waiting to get served. Barman was crafting a cocktail, so we had a minute or two to talk. I liked him well enough to put his drink on my tab.'

Cafferty offered an exaggerated shrug. 'He slugged it, said thanks, and buggered off.'

'He didn't offer to buy one back?' Rebus asked. He took the poet to be a drinker of the old school; etiquette would have demanded no less.

'Actually he did,' Cafferty admitted. 'I told him I was fine.'

'Here's hoping the CCTV backs you up,' Rebus commented.

For the first time, Cafferty's mask slipped a little, though the unease was momentary at best. 'It will,' he stated.

Rebus just nodded slowly while Clarke suppressed a smile. Good to know they could still rattle Cafferty.

“Victim was beaten without mercy,' Rebus went on. 'If I'd thought about it, I'd've had you in the frame from the word go.'

Tou always did like framing people.' Cafferty turned his gaze on Clarke. So far all she'd added to the top sheet of paper was a sequence of doodles. 'Three, four times a week, he's in that old banger of his, parked on the street outside my house. Some people would cry “harassment” – what do you think, DS Clarke? Should I apply for one of those restraining orders?'

'What did the two of you talk about?'

'Back to the Russian guy again?' Cafferty sounded disappointed.

'Far as I can recollect, he said something about Edinburgh being a cold city. I probably said he was dead right.'

'Maybe he meant the people rather than the climate.'

'And he'd still have been right. I don't mean you, of course, DS Clarke – you're a little ray of sunshine. But those of us who've lived here all our lives, well, we can be on the morose side, wouldn't you agree, DI Rebus? A pal of mine told me once it's because we've

never stopped being invaded – a silent invasion, to be sure, quite a pleasant invasion, and sometimes more a trickle than an onslaught, but it's made us… prickly – some more than most.' Giving a sly glance towards Rebus.

'You've still not explained why you were paying for a room at the hotel,' Rebus stated.

'I thought I had,' Cafferty countered.

'Only if you mistake us for half-wits.'

'I agree, “halfwits” would be stretching it.' Cafferty gave another chuckle. Rebus had slipped his hands into his trouser pockets, the better to curl them into unseen fists. 'Look,' Cafferty went on, seeming suddenly to tire of the game, 'I bought a drink for a stranger, somebody mugged him, end of story.'

'Not until we know the who and the why,' Rebus corrected him.

'What else did you talk about?' Clarke added.

Cafferty rolled his eyes. 'He said Edinburgh was cold, I said yes.

He said Glasgow was warmer, I said maybe. His drink arrived and we both said “cheers”… Come to think of it, he had something with him. What was it? A compact disc, I think.'

Yes, the one Charles Riordan had given him. Two dead men sharing a curry. Rebus clenching and unclenching his hands.

Clenching and unclenching. Cafferty, he realised, stood for everything that had ever gone sour – every bungled chance and botched case, suspects missed and crimes unsolved. The man wasn't just the grit in the oyster, he was the pollutant poisoning everything within reach.

And there's no way I can take him down, is there?

Unless God really was up there, handing Rebus this last slim chance.

'The disc wasn't on the body,' Clarke was saying.

'He took it with him,' Cafferty stated. 'Slipped it into one of his pockets.' He patted his right-hand side.

'Meet any other Russians in the bar that night?' Rebus asked.

'Now you mention it, there were some rum accents – I thought they must be Gaels or something. Soon as they started with the ceilidh songs, I swore I'd be heading for bed.'