Ian Rankin - Mortal Causes

'Strawman.’

'Hello, Cafferty.’

They sat down at opposite sides of the plastic table, the legs of which had been bolted to the floor. Otherwise, there was little to show that they were in Barlinnie jail, a prison with a tough reputation from way back, but one which had striven to remake itself. The Visiting Room was clean and white, a few public safety posters decorating its walls. There was a flimsy aluminium ashtray, but also a No Smoking sign. The tabletop bore a few burn marks around its rim from cigarettes resting there too long.

'They made you come then, Strawman?’

Cafferty seemed amused by Rebus's appearance. He knew, too, that as long as he kept using his nickname for Rebus, Rebus would be needled.

'I'm sorry about your son.’

Cafferty was no longer amused. 'Is it true they tortured him?’

'Sort of.’

'Sort of?’ Cafferty's voice rose. 'There's no halfway house with torture!'

'You'd know all about that.’

Cafferty's eyes blazed. His breathing was shallow and noisy. He got to his feet.

'I can't complain about this place. You get a lot of freedom these days: I've found you can buy freedom, same as you can buy anything else.’

He stopped beside the warder. 'Isn't that right, Mr Petrie?’

Wisely, Petrie said nothing.

'Wait for me outside,' Cafferty ordered. Rebus watched Petrie leave. Cafferty looked at him and grinned a humourless grin.

'Cosy,' he said, 'just the two of us.’

He started to rub his stomach.

'What do you want, Caferty?’

'Stomach's started giving me gyp. What's my point, Strawman? My point's this.’

He was standing over Rebus, and now leant down, his hands pressing Rebus's shoulders. 'I want the bastard found.’

Rebus found himself staring at Cafferty's bared teeth. 'See, I can't have people fucking with my family, it's bad for my reputation. Nobody gets away with something like that… it'd be bad for business.’

'Nice to see the paternal instinct's so song.’

Cafferty ignored this. 'My men are out there hunting, understood? And they'll be keeping an eye on you. I want a result, Strawman.’

Rebus shrugged off Cafferty's pressure and got to his feet. 'You think we're going to sit on our hands because the victim was your son?’

'You better not… that's what I'm saying. Revenge, Strawman, I'll have it one way or the other. I'll have it on somebody.’

'Not on me,' Rebus said quietly. He held Cafferty's stare, till Cafferty opened his arms wide and shrugged, then went to his chair and sat down. Rebus stayed standing.

'I need to ask you a few questions,' he said.

'Fire away.’

'Did you keep in touch with your son?’

Cafferty shook his head. 'I kept in touch with his mum. She's a good woman, too good for me, always was. I send her money for Billy, at least I did while he was growing up. I still send something from time to time.’

'By what means?’

'Someone I can trust.’

'Did Billy know who his father was?’

'Absolutely not. His mum wasn't exactly proud of me.’

He started rubbing his stomach again.

'You should take something for that,' Rebus said. 'So, could anyone have got to him as a way of getting at you?’

Cafferty nodded. 'I've thought about it, Strawman. I've thought a lot about it.’

Now he shook his head. 'I can't see it. I mean, it was my first thought, but nobody knew, nobody except his mum and me.’

'And the intermediary.’

'He didn't have anything to do with it. I've had people ask him.’

The way Cafferty said this sent a shiver through Rebus.

'Two more things,' he said. 'The word Nemo, mean anything?’

Cafferty shook his head. But Rebus knew that by tonight villains across the east of Scotland would be on the watch for the name. Maybe Cafferty's men would get to the killer first. Rebus had seen the body. He didn't much care who got the killer, so long as someone did. He guessed this was Cafferty's thinking too.

'Second thing,' he said, 'the letters SaS on a tattoo.’

Cafferty shook his head again, but more slowly this time. There was something there, some recognition.

'What is it, Cafferty?’

But Cafferty wasn't saying.

'What about gangs, was he in any gangs?’

'He wasn't the type.’

'He had the Red Hand of Ulster on his bedroom wall.’

'I've got a Pirelli calendar on mine, doesn't mean I use their tyres.’

Rebus walked towards the door. 'Not much fun being a victim, is it?’

Cafferty jumped to his feet. 'Remember,' he said, 'I'll be watching.’

'Cafferty, if one of your goons so much as asks me the time of day, I'll throw him in a cell.’

'You threw me in a cell,' Strawman. Where did it get you?’

Unable to bear Cafferty's smile, the smile of a man who had drowned people in pigshit and shot them in cold blood, a cold devious manipulator, a man without morals or remorse, unable finally to bear any of this, Rebus left the room.

The prison officer, Petrie, was standing outside, shuffling his feet. His eyes couldn't meet Rebus's.

'You're an absolute disgrace,' Rebus told him, walking away.

While he was in Glasgow, Rebus could have talked to the boy's mother, only the boy's mother was in Edinburgh giving an official ID to the top half of her dead son's face. Dr Curt would be sure she never saw the bottom half. As he'd said to Rebus, if Billy had been a ventriloquist's dummy, he'd never have worked again.

'You're a sick man, doctor,' John Rebus had said.

He drove back to Edinburgh weary and trembling. Cafferty had that effect on him. He'd never thought he'd have to see the man again, at least not until both of them were of pensionable age. Cafferty had sent him a postcard the day he'd arrived in Barlinnie. But Siobhan Clarke had intercepted it and asked if he wanted to see it.

'Tear it up,' Rebus had told her. He still didn't know what the message had been..

Siobhan Clarke was still in the Murder Room when he got back.

'You're working hard,' he told her.

'It's a wonderful thing, overtime. Besides, we're a bit short of hands.’

'You've heard then?’

'Yes, congratulations.’

'What?’

'SCS, it's like a lateral promotion, isn't it?’

'It's only temporary, like a run of good games to Hibs. Where's Brian?’

'Out at Cunningham's digs, talking to Murdock and Millie again.’

'Was Mrs Cunningham up to questioning?’

'Just barely.’

'Who talked to her?’

'I did, the Chief Inspector's idea.’

'Then for once Lauderdale's had a good idea. Did you ask her about religion?’

'You mean all that Orange stuff in Billy's room? Yes, I asked. She just shrugged like it was nothing special.’

'It is nothing special. There are hundreds of people with the same flag, the same music-tapes. Christ, I've seen them.’

And this was the truth. He'd seen them at close quarters, not just as a kid, hearing the Sash sung by drunks on their way home, but more recently. He'd been visiting his brother in Fife, just over a month ago, the weekend before July 12th. There'd been an Orange march in Cowdenbeath. The pub they were in seemed to be hosting a crowd of the marchers in the dance hall upstairs. Sounds of drums, especially the huge drum they called the lambeg, and flutes and penny whistles, bad choruses repeated time and again. They'd gone upstairs to investigate, just as the thing was winding down. God Save the Queen was being destroyed on a dozen cheap flutes.

And some of the kids singing along, sweaty brows and shirts open, some of them had their arms raised, hands straight out in front of them. A Nazi-style salute.

'Nothing else?’

he asked. Clarke shook her head. 'She didn't know about the tattoo?’

'She thinks he must have done it in the last year or so.’