Rebus - Naughts And Crosses Part 6

'Oh, John. It doesn't matter. Really, it doesn't.' And a little later: 'Don't you like it that way?'

They lay together afterwards, he guiltily, and cursing the facts of his confusion and the fact that he had run out of cigarettes, she drowsily, caring still, whispering bits and pieces of her life-story to him.

After a while, Rebus forgot to feel guilty: there was nothing, after all, to feel guilty about. He felt merely the distinct lack of nicotine. And he remembered that he was seeing Sammy in six hours' time, and that her mother would instinctively know what he, John Rebus, had been up to these past few hours. She was cursed with a witch-like ability to see into the soul, and she had seen his occasional bouts of crying at very close quarters indeed. Partly, he supposed, that had been responsible for their break-up.

'What time is it, John?'

'Four. Maybe a little after.'

He slid his arm from beneath her and rose to leave the room.

'Do you want anything to drink?' he said.

'What did you have in mind?'

'Coffee maybe. It's hardly worth going to sleep now, but if you feel sleepy, don't mind me.'

'No, I'll take a cup of coffee.'

Rebus knew from her voice, from its slurred growliness, that she would be fast asleep by the time he reached the kitchen.

'Okay,' he said.

He made himself a cup of dark, sweet coffee and slumped into a chair with it. He turned on the living-room's small gas fire and began to read one of his books. He was seeing Sammy today, and his mind wandered from the story in front of him, a tale of intrigue which he could not remember having started. Sammy was nearly twelve. She had survived many years of danger, and now, for her, other dangers were imminent. The perverts in watch, the ogling old men, the teenage c.o.c.k- fighters, would be supplemented by the new urges of boys her 5' age, and boys she already knew as friends would become sudden and forceful hunters. How would she cope with it? If her mother had anything to do with it, she would cope admirably, biting in a clinch and ducking on the ropes. Yes, she would survive without her father's advice and protection.

The kids were harder these days. He thought back to his own youth. He had been Mickey's big brother, fighting battles for the two of them, going home to watch his brother coddled by his father. He had pushed himself further into the cushions on the settee, hoping to disappear one day. Then they'd be sorry. Then they'd be sorry.

At seven-thirty he went through to the musky bedroom, which smelt two parts s.e.x to one part animal lair, and kissed Gill awake.

'It's time,' he said. 'Get up, I'll run you a bath.'

She smelt good, like a baby on a fireside towel. He admired the shapes of her twisted body as they awoke to the thin, watery sunlight. She had a good body all right. No real stretch-marks. Her legs unscarred. Her hair just tousled enough to be inviting She had to be at HQ by ten in order to co-ordinate the nex 'Thanks.'

press release. There could be no rest. The case was still growin like a cancer. Rebus filled the bath, wincing at the rim of around it. He needed a cleaning-lady. Perhaps he could get Gill to do it.

Another unworthy thought, forgive me.

Which brought him to think of church-going. It was another Sunday, after all, and for weeks he had been promising himself that he would try again, would find another church in the city and would try all over again.

He hated congregational religion. He hated the smiles and the manners of the Sunday-dressed Scottish Protestant, the emphasis on a communion not with G.o.d but with your neigh- bours. He had tried seven churches of varying denominations in Edinburgh, and had found none to be to his liking. He had tried sitting for two hours at home of a Sunday, reading the Bible and saying a prayer, but somehow that did not work either. He was caught; a believer outwith his belief. Was a personal faith good enough for G.o.d? Perhaps, but not his personal faith, which seemed to depend upon guilt and his 52 F.

feelings of hypocrisy whenever he sinned, a guilt a.s.suaged only by public show.

'Is my bath ready, John?'

She re-tousled her hair, naked and confident, her gla.s.ses left behind in the bedroom. John Rebus felt his soul to be imperilled. Sod it, he thought, catching her around the hips. Guilt could wait. Guilt could always wait.

He had to mop up the bathroom floor afterwards, the empirical evidence that Archimedes' displacement of water had been proved once again. The bath-water had flowed like milk and honey, and Rebus had nearly drowned.

Still, he felt better now.

'Lord, I am a poor sinner,' he whispered, as Gill dressed. She looked stern and efficient when she opened the front-door, almost as if she had been on a twenty-minute official visit.

'Can we fix a date?' he suggested.

'We can,' she replied, looking through her bag. Rebus was curious to know why women always did that, especially in films and thrillers, after they had been sleeping with a man. Did women suspect their sleeping partners of rifling their purses?

'But it might be difficult,' she continued, 'the case going the way it is. Let's just promise to keep in touch, okay?'

'Okay.'

He hoped that she took note of the dismay in his voice, the disappointment of the small boy at having his request denied.

They pecked a final kiss, mouths brittle by now, and then she was gone. Her scent remained, however, and he breathed it in deeply as he prepared for the day ahead. He found a shirt and a pair of trousers that didn't reek of tobacco, and these he put on slowly, admiring himself in the bathroom mirror, the soles of his feet damp, while he hummed a hymn.

Sometimes it was good to be alive. Sometimes.

XI.

Jim Stevens poured another three aspirin into his mouth and drank his orange juice. The ignominy of it, being seen in a Leith bar sucking on fruit juice, yet the idea of drinking even a 53 half-pint of the rich, frothing beer made him feel nauseous. He had drunk far too much at that party; too much too quickly, and in too many combinations.

Leith was trying to improve itself. Someone somewhere had decided to give it a bit of a dust and a wash. It boasted French-style cafe's and wine bars, studio flats, delicatessen. But it was still Leith, still the old port, an echo of its roaring, bustling past when Bordeaux wines would be unloaded by the gallon and sold on the streets from a horse and cart. If Leith retained nothing else, it would retain a port's mentality, and a port's traditional drinking dens.

'By Christ,' roared a voice behind him, 'the man drinks everything in doubles, even his soft drinks!'

A heavy fist, twice the dimensions of his own, landed on Stevens' back. The swarthy figure landed on a stool beside him. The hand stayed firmly where it was.

'h.e.l.lo, Podeen,' said Stevens. He was starting to sweat in the heavy atmosphere of the saloon, and his heart was pounding: terminal hangover symptoms; he could smell the alcohol squeezing itself out of his pores.

'Lordy, James me boy, what the h.e.l.l's that you're supping? Barman, get this man a whisky quick. He's wasting away on kiddies' juice!'

With a roar, Podeen took his hand off the reporter's back just long enough to relieve the pressure, before bringing it back down again in a stinging back-slap. Stevens felt his insides shudder rebelliously.

'Anything I can do for you today?' said Podeen, his voice much lower.

Big Podeen had been a sailor for twenty years, with the scars and nicks of a thousand ports on his body. How he made his money these days, Stevens did not wish to know. He did some bouncing for pubs on Lothian Road and dubious drinking-dens around Leith, but that would be the tip of his earnings iceberg. Podeen's fingers were so encrusted with dirt that he might have carved out the black economy single-handedly from the rotten, fertile soil beneath him.

'Not really, Big Man. No, I'm just mulling things over.

'Get me a breakfast, will you? Double helpings of every- thing.'

54 The barman, almost saluting Podeen, went off to give the order.

'See,' said Podeen, 'you're not the only man who orders everything in doubles, eh, Jimmy?'

The hand was lifted from Stevens' back again. He grimaced, waiting for the slap, but the arm flopped onto the bar beside him instead. He sighed, audibly.

'Rough night last night was it, Jimmy?'

'I wish I could remember.'

He had fallen asleep in one of the bedrooms, very late in the evening. Then a couple had come in, and they had lifted him into the bathroom, depositing him in the bath. There he had slept for two hours, maybe three. He had awakened with a terrific stiffness in his neck, back, and legs. He had drunk some coffee, but not enough, never enough.

And had walked in the chilled morning air, chatting in a newsagent's shop with some taxi-drivers, sitting in the porter's cubby-hole of one of the big hotels on Princes Street, supping sweet tea and talking football with the bleary night-porter. But he had known he would end up down here, for this was his morning off, and he was back on the drugs case, his own little baby.

'Is there much stuff around at the moment, Big?'

'Oh, now, that depends what you're looking for, Jimmy. Word's out that you're getting to be a bit too nosy in every department. Best if you were sticking to the safe drugs. Keep away from the big stuff.'

'Is this a timely warning or a threat or what?' Stevens wasn't in the mood to be threatened, not when he had a Sunday morning hangover to sort out.

'It's a friendly warning, a warning from a friend.'

'Who's the friend, Big?'

'Me, you silly sod. Don't be so suspicious all the time. Listen, there's a little cannabis around, but that's about it. n.o.body brings the stuff into Leith any more. They land it on the Fife coast, or up by Dundee. Places the Customs men have all but disappeared from. And that's the truth.'

'I know, Big, I know. But there is a delivery going on around here. I've seen it. I don't know what it is. Whether it's big stuff or not. But I've seen a handover. Very recently.'

55 j 'How recent?' 'Yesterday.'

'Where?'

'Calton Hill.'

Big Podeen shook his head.

'Then it's nothing at all to do with anyone or anything I know, Jimmy.'

Stevens knew the Big Man, knew him well. He gave out good information, but it was only what was given to him hy people who wanted Stevens to get to know about something. So the heroin boys would come across, via Big, with information about cannabis dealing. If Stevens took the story up, chances were the cannabis dealers would be caught. And that left the territory and the demand to the heroin boys. It was clever stuff, ploy and counter-ploy. The stakes were high, too. But Stevens was a clever player himself. He knew that there was a tacit under- standing that he was never to aim for the really big players, for that would mean aiming for the city's businessmen and bureaucrats, the t.i.tled landowners, the New Town's Mercedes owners.

And that would never be allowed. So he was fed tidbits enough to keep the presses rolling, the tongues wagging about what a terrible place Edinburgh was becoming. Always a little, never the lot. Stevens understood all that. He had been playing the game so long he hardly knew sometimes what side he was on. In the end, it hardly mattered.

'You don't know about it?'

'Nothing, Jimmy. But I'll nose around. See what's doing. Listen, though, there 5 a new bar opened up by the Mackay showroom. Know the one I mean?'

Stevens nodded.

'Well,' went on Podeen, 'it's a bar at the front, but it's a brothel at the back. There's a wee cracker of a barmaid does her stuff of an afternoon, if you're interested.'

Stevens smiled. So a new boy was trying to move in, and the old boys, Podeen's ultimate employers, didn't like it. And so he, Jim Stevens, was being given enough information to close down the new boy if he liked. There was a nice headline-catcher in it certainly, but it was a one-day wonder.

Why didn't they just telephone the police anonymously? He IF thought he knew the answer to that one, though once it had puzzled him: they were playing the game by its old-fashioned rules, which meant no snitching, no gra.s.sing to the enemy. He was left to play the part of messenger-boy, but a messenger- boy with power built into the system. Just a little power, but more power than lay in doing things along the straight and narrow.

'Thanks, Big. I'll bear that in mind.'

The food arrived then, great piles of curled, shining bacon, two soft, near-transparent eggs, mushrooms, fried bread, beans. Stevens kept his eyes to the bar, suddenly interested in one of the beer-mats, damp still from Sat.u.r.day night.

'I'm going across to my table to eat this, okay, Jimmy?'

Stevens could not believe his good luck.

'Oh, fine, Big Man, fine.'

'Cheers, then.'

And with that he was left alone, only the ghost of a smell remaining. He noticed that the barman was standing opposite him. His hand, shiny with grease, was held out.

'Two pounds sixty,' he said.

Stevens sighed. Put that one down to experience, he thought to himself as he paid, or to the hangover. The party had been worth it, however, for he had met John Rebus. And Rebus was friendly with Gill Templer. It was all becoming just a little confusing. But interesting too. Rebus was certainly interesting, though physically he did not resemble his brother in the slightest. The man had looked honest enough, but how did you tell a bent copper from the outside? It was the inside that was rotten. So, Rebus was seeing Gill Templer. He remembered the night they had spent together, and shuddered. That, surely, had been his nadir.

He lit a cigarette, his second of the day. His head was still dotted, but his stomach felt a little more composed. He might even be getting hungry. Rebus looked a tough nut, but not as tough as he would have been ten years ago. At this moment he was probably in bed with Gill Templer. The b.a.s.t.a.r.d. The lucky b.a.s.t.a.r.d. His stomach turned a tiny somersault of chilled jealousy. The cigarette felt good. It poured life and strength back into him, or seemed to. Yet he knew that it was scooping him out, too, tearing his guts to shreds' of darkened meat. The 57 I.

h.e.l.l with it. He smoked because without cigarettes he couldn't think. And he was thinking now.

'Hey, give me a double here will you?'

The barman came over.

'Orange juice again?'

Stevens looked at him disbelievingly.

'Don't be daft,' he said-'whisky, Grouse if that's what's in the Grouse bottle.'

'We don't play those sorts of game here.'

'I'm glad to hear it.

He drank the whisky and felt better. Then he began to feel worse again. He went to the toilet, but the smell in there made him feel even worse. He held himself over the sink and brought up a few bubbles of liquid, retching loudly but emptily. He had to get off the booze. He had to get off the ciggies. They were killing him, yet they were the only things keeping him alive.

He walked over to Big Podeen's table, sweating, feeling older than his years.

'That was a good breakfast, that was,' said the hulk of a man, his eyes gleaming like a child's.

Stevens sat down beside him.

'What's the word on bent coppers?' he asked.

XII.

'h.e.l.lo, daddy.'

She was eleven, but looked and spoke and smiled older: eleven going on twenty-one. That was what living with Rhona had done to his daughter. He pecked her cheek, thinking back to Gill's leavetaking. There was perfume around her, and a hint of make-up on her eyes.

He could kill Rhona.