10 Great Rebus Novels (John Rebus) (317 page)

Cafferty sat down, rolled his neck a few times, loosening it.

‘So?’ he asked.

Rebus nodded for the guards to leave, waited in silence until they’d gone. Then he slipped a quarter-bottle of Bell’s from his pocket.

‘Keep it,’ Cafferty told him. ‘From the look of you, I’d say your need was greater than mine.’

Rebus put the bottle back in his pocket. ‘I’ve brought a message from Newcastle.’

Cafferty folded his arms. ‘Jake Tarawicz?’

Rebus nodded. ‘He wants you to lay off Tommy Telford.’

‘What does he mean?’

‘Come on, Cafferty. That bouncer who got stabbed, the dealer wounded . . . There’s war breaking out.’

Cafferty stared at the detective. ‘Not my doing.’

Rebus snorted, but looking into Cafferty’s eyes, he found himself almost believing.

‘So who was it?’ he asked quietly.

‘How do I know?’

‘Nevertheless, war is breaking out.’

‘That’s as may be. What’s in it for Tarawicz?’

‘He does business with Tommy.’

‘And to protect that, he needs to have
me
warned off by a cop?’ Cafferty was shaking his head. ‘You really buy that?’

‘I don’t know,’ Rebus said.

‘One way to finish this.’ Cafferty paused. ‘Take Telford out of the game.’ He saw the look on Rebus’s face. ‘I don’t mean top him, I mean put him away. That should be
your
job, Strawman.’

‘I only came to deliver a message.’

‘And what’s in it for you? Something in Newcastle?’

‘Maybe.’

‘Are you Tarawicz’s man now?’

‘You know me better than that.’

‘Do I?’ Cafferty sat back in his chair, stretched out his legs. ‘I wonder about that sometimes. I mean, it doesn’t keep me awake at night, but I wonder all the same.’

Rebus leaned on the table. ‘You must have a bit salted away. Why can’t you just be content with that?’

Cafferty laughed. The air felt charged; there might have been only the two of them left in the world. ‘You want me to retire?’

‘A good boxer knows when to stop.’

‘Then neither of us would be much cop in the ring, would we? Got any plans to retire, Strawman?’

Despite himself, Rebus smiled.

‘Thought not. Do I have to say something for you to take back to Tarawicz?’

Rebus shook his head. ‘That wasn’t the deal.’

‘Well, if he does come asking, tell him to get some life insurance, the kind with death benefits.’

Rebus looked at Cafferty. Prison might have softened him, but only physically.

‘I’d be a happy man if someone took Telford out of the game,’ Cafferty went on. ‘Know what I mean, Strawman? It’d be worth a lot to me.’

Rebus stood up. ‘No deal,’ he said. ‘Personally, I’d be happy if you wiped one another out. I’d be jumping for joy at ring-side.’

‘Know what happens at ring-side?’ Cafferty rubbed at his temples. ‘You tend to get spattered with blood.’

‘As long as it’s someone else’s.’

The laughter came from deep within Cafferty’s chest. ‘You’re not a spectator, Strawman. It’s not in your nature.’

‘And you’re some kind of psychologist?’

‘Maybe not,’ said Cafferty. ‘But I know what gets people excited.’

Running through the hospital, stopping nurses to ask directions. Sweat dripping off him, tie hanging loose around his neck. Taking right turns, left turns, looking for signs. Whose fault? He kept asking himself that. A message which failed to reach him. Because he was on a surveillance. Because he wasn’t in radio contact. Because the station didn’t know how important the message was
.

Now running, a stitch in his side. He’d run all the way from the car. Up two flights of stairs, down corridors. The place was quiet. Middle of the night
.

‘
Maternity!
’
he called to a man pushing a trolley. The man pointed to a set of doors. He pushed through them. Three nurses in a glass cubicle. One of them came out
.

‘
Can I help?
’

‘
I’m John Rebus. My wife
. . .’

She gave him a hard look. ‘Third bed along.’ Pointing . . . Third bed along, curtains closed around it. He pulled the curtains open. Rhona lay on her side, face still flushed, hair sticking to her brow. And beside her, nuzzling into her, a tiny perfection with wisps of brown hair and black, unfocused eyes
.

He touched the nose, ran a finger round the curves of an ear. The face twitched. He bent past it to kiss his wife
.

‘
Rhona . . . I’m really sorry. They didn’t get the message to me until ten minutes ago. How did it . . . ? I mean . . . he’s beautiful
.’

‘
He’s a she
,’
his wife said, turning away from him
.

Rebus was sitting in his boss’s office. It was nine-fifteen and he had slept for probably forty-five minutes the previous night. There’d been the hospital vigil and Sammy’s operation: something about a blood clot. She was still unconscious, still ‘critical’. He’d called Rhona in London. She’d told him she’d catch the first train she could. He’d given her his mobile number, so she could let him know when she arrived. She’d started to ask . . . her voice had cracked. She’d put down the receiver. He’d tried to find some feeling for her. Richard and Linda Thompson: ‘Withered and Died’.

He’d called Mickey, who said he’d drop by the hospital some time today. And that was it for the family. There were other people he could call, people like Patience, who had been his lover for a time, and Sammy’s landlady until far more recently. But he didn’t. He knew in the morning he’d call the office where Sammy worked. He wrote it in his notebook so he wouldn’t forget. And then he’d called Sammy’s flat and given Ned Farlowe the news.

Farlowe had asked a question nobody else had: ‘How about you? Are you all right?’

Rebus had looked around the hospital corridor. ‘Not exactly.’

‘I’ll be right there.’

So they’d spent a couple of hours in one another’s company, not really saying very much at first. Farlowe smoked, and Rebus helped him empty the pack. He
couldn’t reciprocate with whisky – there was nothing in the bottle – but he’d bought the young man several cups of coffee, since Farlowe had spent nearly all his money on the taxi from Shandon . . .

‘Wakey-wakey, John.’

Rebus’s boss was shaking him gently. Rebus blinked, straightened in his chair.

‘Sorry, sir.’

Chief Superintendent Watson went around the desk and sat down. ‘Hellish sorry to hear about Sammy. I don’t really know what to say, except that she’s in my prayers.’

‘Thank you, sir.’

‘Do you want some coffee?’ The Farmer’s coffee had a reputation throughout the station, but Rebus accepted a mug gladly. ‘How is she anyway?’

‘Still unconscious.’

‘No sign of the car?’

‘Not the last I heard.’

‘Who’s handling it?’

‘Bill Pryde started the ball rolling last night. I don’t know who’s taken it from him.’

‘I’ll find out.’ The Farmer made an internal call, Rebus watching him over the rim of his mug. The Farmer was a big man, imposing behind a desk. His cheeks were a mass of tiny red veins and his thin hair lay across the dome of his head like the lines of a well-furrowed field. There were photos on his desk: grandchildren. The photos had been taken in a garden. There was a swing in the background. One of the children was holding a teddy bear. Rebus felt his throat start to ache, tried to choke it back.

The Farmer put down the receiver. ‘Bill’s still on it,’ he said. ‘Felt if he worked straight through we might get a quicker result.’

‘That’s good of him.’

‘Look, we’ll let you know the minute we get something, but meantime you’ll probably want to go home . . .’

‘No, sir.’

‘Or to the hospital.’

Rebus nodded slowly. Yes, the hospital. But not right this minute. He had to talk to Bill Pryde first.

‘And meantime, I’ll reassign your cases.’ The Farmer started writing. ‘There’s this War Crimes thing, and your liaison on Telford. Are you working on anything else?’

‘Sir, I’d prefer it if you . . . I mean, I want to keep working.’

The Farmer looked at him, then leaned back in his chair, pen balanced between his fingers.

‘Why?’

Rebus shrugged. ‘I want to keep busy.’ Yes, there was that. And he didn’t want anyone else taking his work. It was
his
. He owned it; it owned him.

‘Look, John, you’re going to want some time off, right?’

‘I can handle things, sir.’ His gaze met the Farmer’s. ‘Please.’

Across the hall in the CID room he nodded as everyone came up to say how sorry they were. One person stayed at their desk – Bill Pryde knew Rebus was coming to see him.

‘Morning, Bill.’

Pryde nodded. They’d met in the wee small hours at the Infirmary. Ned Farlowe had been napping in a chair, so they’d stepped into the corridor to talk. Pryde looked tireder now. He had loosened the top button of his dark green shirt. His brown suit looked lived-in.

‘Thanks for sticking with it,’ Rebus said, drawing over a chair. Thinking:
I’d rather have had someone else, someone sharper
. . .

‘No problem.’

‘Any news?’

‘A couple of good eyewitnesses. They were waiting to cross at the lights.’

‘What’s their story?’

Pryde considered his reply. He knew he was dealing with a father as well as a cop. ‘She was crossing the road. Looked like she was heading down Minto Street, maybe making for the bus stop.’

Rebus shook his head. ‘She was walking, Bill. Going to a friend’s in Gilmour Road.’

She’d said as much over the pizza, apologising that she couldn’t stay longer. Just one more coffee at the end of the meal . . . one more coffee and she wouldn’t have been there at that moment. Or if she’d accepted his offer of a lift . . . When you thought about life, you thought of it as chunks of time, but really all it was was a series of connected moments, any one of which could change you completely.

‘The car was heading south out of town,’ Pryde went on. ‘Looks like he ran a red light. Motorist sitting behind him seemed to think so.’

‘Reckon he was drunk?’

Pryde nodded. ‘Way he was driving. I mean, could be he just lost control, but in that case why didn’t he stop?’

‘Description?’

Pryde shook his head. ‘We’ve got a dark car, a bit sporty. Nobody caught the licence plate.’

‘It’s a busy enough street, must’ve been other cars around.’

‘A couple of people have called in.’ Pryde flicked through his notes. ‘Nothing helpful, but I’m going to interview them, see if I can jog a memory or two.’

‘Could the car have been nicked? Maybe that’s why he was in a hurry.’

‘I can check.’

‘I’ll help you.’

Pryde considered this. ‘You sure?’

‘Try and stop me, Bill.’

‘No skid marks,’ Pryde said, ‘no sign that he tried braking, either before or after.’

They were standing at the junction of Minto Street and Newington Road. The cross-streets were Salisbury Place and Salisbury Road. Cars, vans and buses queued at the traffic lights as pedestrians crossed the road.

It could have been any one of you, Rebus thought. Any one of them could have taken Sammy’s place . . .

‘She was about here,’ Pryde went on, pointing to a spot where, just past the lights, a bus lane started. The carriageway was wide, a four-lane road. She hadn’t crossed at the lights. She’d been lazy, carrying on down Minto Street a few strides, then crossing in a diagonal. When she’d been a child, they’d taught her about crossing the road. Green Cross Code, all of that. Drummed it into her. Rebus looked around. At the top of Minto Street were some private houses and Bed & Breakfasts. On one corner stood a bank, on another a branch of Remnant Kings, with a takeaway next door.

‘The takeaway would have been open,’ Rebus said, pointing. On the third corner stood a Spar. ‘That place, too. Where did you say she was?’

‘The bus lane.’ She’d crossed three lanes, been only a yard or two from safety. ‘Witnesses say she was nearly at the kerb when he hit her. I think he was drunk, lost it for a second.’ Pryde nodded towards the bank. There were two phone boxes in front of it. ‘Witness called from there.’ The wall behind the phone boxes had a poster glued to it. Grinning maniac behind a steering-wheel, and some writing: ‘So many pedestrians, so little time’. A computer game . . .

‘It would have been so easy to avoid her,’ Rebus said quietly.

‘Sure you’re okay? There’s a café up the road.’

‘I’m fine, Bill.’ He looked around, took a deep breath. ‘Looks like offices behind the Spar, doubtful anyone would have been there. But there are flats above Remnant Kings and the bank.’

‘Want to talk to them?’

‘And the Spar and the kebab shop. You take the B&Bs and the houses, meet back here in half an hour.’

Rebus talked to everyone he could find. In the Spar, there was a new shift on, but he got home phone numbers from the manager and called up the workers from the previous night. They hadn’t seen or heard anything. First they’d known had been the flashing lights of the ambulance. The kebab shop was closed, but when Rebus banged on the door a woman came through from the back, wiping her hands on a tea-towel. He pressed his warrant card to the glass door, and she let him in. The shop had been busy last night. She didn’t see the accident – she called it that, ‘the accident’. And that’s what it was: the word really hadn’t sunk in until she said it. Elvis Costello: ‘Accidents Will Happen’. Was the next line really ‘It’s only hit and run’?

‘No,’ the woman said, ‘the first thing that caught my attention was the crowd. I mean, only three or four people, but I could see they were standing around something. And then the ambulance came. Will she be all right?’

The look in her eyes was one Rebus had encountered before. It almost wanted the victim dead, because then there was a story to be told.

‘She’s in hospital,’ he said, unable to look at the woman any longer.

‘Yes, but the paper said she’s in a coma.’

‘What paper?’