Resurrection Men (2002) (25 page)

“We’re doing some housework on his case,” Rebus explained. “Just a few loose ends to tidy up . . .”

Kelly was quiet for a moment. Rebus could see Nolan at the far end of the ward, engaging the nurse in conversation.

“Rico drank in the Claymore,” Kelly acknowledged.

“And as the owner, you’d drink there too sometimes?”

“Sometimes.”

Rebus nodded, even though the patient’s eyes were closing again.

“So you’d have met him?” Gray chipped in.

“I knew him.”

“And Fenella, too?” Rebus added.

Kelly opened his eyes again. “Look, I don’t know what it is you think you’re trying to pull . . .”

“Like we said, it’s housekeeping.”

“And what if I told you to take your feather dusters elsewhere?”

“Well, obviously we’d find that highly amusing,” Rebus said.

“About as amusing as a stroke,” Gray added. Kelly looked at him, eyes narrowing.

“I know you, don’t I?”

“We’ve met once or twice.”

“You’re based out at Govan.” Gray nodded. “With all the other bent cops.” Kelly tried his best to smile with both sides of his face.

“I hope you’re not suggesting that my colleague is less than honest,” Rebus said, angling for details.

“They all are,” Kelly said. Then he looked at Rebus and corrected himself. “
You
all are.”

“Were Fenella and you an item before Rico got whacked?” Gray hissed, suddenly tired of the game playing. “That’s all we want to know.”

Kelly considered his answer. “It wasn’t till after. Not that Fenella didn’t spread herself a bit thin back then, but that was because she was with the wrong man.”

“Something she didn’t realize till after Rico was dead?” Rebus asked.

“Doesn’t mean I killed him,” Kelly said confidently.

“Then who did?”

“What do you care? Rico’s just another blip on your clear-up rate.”

Rebus ignored this. “You say Fenella had other men: care to give us some names?”

A doctor was approaching — different one from before. “Excuse me, gentlemen,” he was saying.

“Give us something to work with, Chib,” Rebus demanded.

Kelly had his eyes closed. The doctor was bedside now. “If you’ll just leave us for a few minutes,” he was saying.

“You’re welcome to him,” Gray said. “But take my advice, Doc: don’t strain yourself . . .”

They took the lift back down, stepped outside. Rebus lit a cigarette. Gray stared at it greedily.

“Thanks for putting temptation my way.”

“Funny thing about hospitals,” Rebus said. “I always need to smoke afterwards.”

“Give me one.” Gray held out a hand.

“You’ve stopped.”

“Don’t be a bastard all your life.” Gray flicked his hand towards himself, and Rebus relented, offering both a cigarette and the lighter. Gray inhaled, held the smoke in his lungs, then exhaled noisily. His eyes were screwed shut in ecstasy.

“Christ, that’s good,” he said. Then he examined the tip of the cigarette, let it fall from his fingers and crushed it underfoot.

“You might have nipped it and given it back,” Rebus complained.

Gray was studying his watch. “Suppose we could head back,” he said, meaning back to Edinburgh.

“Or. . . ?”

“Or we could take that tour I was promising you. Bugger is, I can’t drink if I’m driving.”

“Then we’ll stick to Irn-Bru,” Rebus said.

“I suppose we could visit the Claymore, see if anyone remembers any names for us.”

Rebus nodded, but didn’t say anything.

“Waste of time?” Gray asked.

“Could be.”

Gray smiled. “Why is it I get the feeling you know more about this case than you’re letting on?” Rebus concentrated on finishing his cigarette. “That’s why you were so keen at Tulliallan, wasn’t it? Getting to the files before anyone else?”

Rebus nodded slowly. “You were right about that. I didn’t want my name coming up.”

“Yet you still let it happen? In fact, you
made
it happen. You could have kept that page of the report hidden . . . destroyed it even.”

“I didn’t want to be in your debt,” Rebus confided.

“So what is it you know about Rico Lomax?”

“That’s between me and my conscience.”

Gray snorted. “Don’t tell me you’ve still got one of those?”

“Dwindling to the size of my pension.” Rebus flipped his cigarette stub down a grating.

“Dickie Diamond’s old girlfriend really did recognize you, didn’t she?”

“I knew Dickie a bit back then.”

“I know what Jazz is thinking.”

“What?”

“He’s wondering if there could be any connection with that attack at the manse.”

Rebus shrugged. “Jazz has an active imagination.”
Don’t give too much away, John,
his brain was telling him. He had to convince Gray he was dirty without giving the man too much ammo. If he incriminated himself at any turn, it was something they — the trio and the High Hiedyins both — could use against him. But Gray’s mind was working away: Rebus could see it in the very way he was standing, head angled, hands in pockets.

“If you
did
have anything to do with the Rico case . . .”

“I’m not saying I did,” Rebus qualified. “I’m saying I knew Dickie Diamond.”

Gray accepted the point. “All the same, doesn’t it strike you as quite a coincidence that we’ve ended up working that exact same case?”

“Except that we haven’t: it’s Rico Lomax we’re investigating, not Dickie Diamond.”

“And there’s no connection between the two?”

“I don’t remember going quite that far,” Rebus said.

Gray looked at him and laughed, shaking his head slowly. “You think the brass have got an inkling and are out to get you?”

“What do
you
think?”

Rebus was pleased and disturbed that Gray’s mind was taking him down this road. Pleased because it deflected Gray’s thoughts from another coincidence: namely, that of him, Jazz and Ward being thrown together into Tulliallan, with Rebus a late and sudden recruit. Disturbed because Rebus himself was wondering about the Lomax case, too, and whether Strathern had some agenda that he was keeping to himself.

“I was talking to a couple of guys who’ve been on our course before,” Gray said. “Know what they told me?”

“What?”

“Tennant always uses the same case. Not an unsolved: a murder that happened in Rosyth a few years back. They got the guy. That’s the case he always uses for his syndicates.”

“But not for us,” Rebus stated.

Gray nodded. “Makes you think, eh? A case both you and I worked . . . what’re the chances?”

“Think we should ask him?”

“I doubt he’d tell us. But it does make you wonder, doesn’t it?” He came up close to Rebus. “How far do you trust me, John?”

“Hard to tell.”

“Should
I
trust
you?
”

“Probably not. Everyone will tell you what an arse I can be.”

Gray smiled for effect, but his eyes remained bright, calculating orbs. “Are you going to tell me what it was you couldn’t tell Jazz?”

“There’s a price attached.”

“And what’s that?”

“I want the tour first.”

Gray seemed to think he was joking, but then he started nodding slowly. “Okay,” he said. “You’ve got a deal.”

They walked back to the car, where someone had attached a parking ticket to Gray’s windshield. He tore it off.

“Merciless bastards!” he growled, looking around for the culprit. There was no one in view. The
DOCTOR ON CALL
badge was still visible on the dashboard. “That’s Glasgow for you, eh?” Gray said, unlocking the car and getting in. “A city full of Prods and Tims, each and every one of them a callous, godless bastard.”

It wasn’t what you’d call the city’s tourist route. Govan, Cardonald, Pollok and Nitshill . . . Dalmarnock, Bridgeton, Dennistoun . . . Possilpark and Milton . . . There was an almost hypnotic sameness to a lot of the streets. Rebus let his eyes drift out of focus. Tenement walls, playgrounds, corner shops. Kids watchful but bored. Now and then Gray would relate some story or incident — no doubt with embellishments collected over the years of telling. He provided thumbnail sketches of villains and heroes, hard men and their women. In Bridgeton, they passed the grounds of Celtic FC: Parkhead to civilians like Rebus; Paradise to the club’s supporters.

“This’ll be the Catholic end of town then,” Rebus commented. He knew that the Rangers stadium — Ibrox — was practically next door to Govan, where Gray was stationed. So he added: “And you’ll be a bluenose?”

“I support Rangers,” Gray agreed. “Have done all my life. Are you a Hearts man?”

“I’m not really anything.”

Gray looked at him. “You must be something.”

“I don’t go to games.”

“What about when you watch on TV?” Rebus just shrugged. “I mean, there’s only two teams playing at any one time . . . you must take
sides?
”

“Not really.”

“Say it was Rangers against Celtic . . .” Gray was growing annoyed. “You’re a Protestant, right?”

“What’s that got to do with it?”

“Well, Christ’s sake, man, you’d be on Rangers’ side, wouldn’t you?”

“I don’t know, they’ve never asked me to play.”

Gray let out a snort of frustration.

“See,” Rebus went on, “I didn’t realize it was meant to be religious warfare . . .”

“Fuck off, John.” Gray concentrated on his driving.

Rebus laughed. “At least I know now how to wind you up.”

“Just don’t wind the mechanism too tight,” Gray cautioned. He saw a sign for the M8. “Time to head back yet, or do you want to stop somewhere?”

“Let’s go back into town and find a pub.”

“Finding a pub should present no major difficulties,” Gray said, indicating right.

They ended up in the Horseshoe Bar. It was central and crowded with people who took their drinking seriously, the kind of place where no one looked askance at a tea-stained shirt, so long as the wearer had about him the price of his drink. Rebus knew immediately that it would be a place of rules and rituals, a place where regulars would know from the moment they walked through the door that their drink of preference was already being poured for them. It had gone twelve, and the fixed-price lunch of soup, pie and beans, and ice cream was doing a roaring trade. Rebus noticed that a drink was included in the price.

They each opted for pie and beans — no starters or dessert. There was a corner table just emptying, so they claimed it. Two pints of IPA: as Gray had argued, they could manage one pint apiece, surely.

“Cheers,” Rebus said. “And thanks for the tour.”

“Were you impressed?”

“I saw places I’d never been before. Glasgow’s a maze.”

“Jungle would be a better description.”

“You like working here, though.”

“I can’t imaging living anywhere else.”

“Not even when you retire?”

“Not really.” Gray took a mouthful of beer.

“You’ll be on full pension, I suppose.”

“Not long now.”

“I’ve thought about retiring,” Rebus confessed, “but I’m not sure what I’d do with myself.”

“They’ll turf you out one day.”

Rebus nodded. “I suppose they will.” He paused. “That’s why I’ve been thinking of supplementing my pension.”

Gray knew they were at long last coming to the point. “And how will you do that?”

“Not on my own.” Rebus looked around, as though someone in the noisy bar might be listening in. “Could be I’ll need some help.”

“Help to do what?”

“Knock off a couple of hundred grand’s worth of drugs.” There, it was out. The single, mad bloody scheme he could think of . . . something to snare the trio and maybe even maneuver them away from Rico Lomax . . .

Gray stared at him, then burst out laughing. Rebus’s face didn’t change. “Jesus, you’re serious,” Gray eventually said.

“I think it can be done.”

“You must have put your arse on backwards this morning, John: you’re supposed to be one of the good guys.”

“I’m one of the Wild Bunch, too.”

The smile had left Gray’s face by degrees. He stayed quiet, sipped at his drink. Their food arrived, and Rebus squirted brown sauce onto his piecrust.

“Christ, John,” Gray said. Rebus didn’t answer. He wanted to give Gray time. After he’d demolished half the pie, he put down his fork.

“You remember I got called out of class?” Gray nodded, not about to interrupt. “There were these two SDEA men downstairs. They took me back into Edinburgh. There was something they wanted to show me: a drug bust. They’ve got it tucked away in a warehouse. Thing is, they’re the only ones who know about it.”

Gray’s eyes narrowed. “How do you mean?”

“They haven’t told Customs. Or anyone else, for that matter.”

“That doesn’t make sense.”

“They’re trying to use it as leverage. There’s someone they want to get to.”

“Big Ger Cafferty?”

It was Rebus’s turn to nod. “They’re not going to get him, but they haven’t quite realized it yet. And meantime, the dope is just sitting there.”

“But protected?”

“I assume so. I don’t know what security’s like.”

Gray grew thoughtful. “They showed you this stuff?”

“A chemist was grading it at the time.”

“Why did they show it to you?”

“Because they wanted to do a trade. I was the intermediary.” Rebus paused. “I don’t really want to get into it . . .”

“But if someone lifts the consignment, it has to be you. Who else have they shown it to?”

“I don’t know.” Rebus paused. “But I don’t think I’d be their number one suspect.”

“Why not?”

“Because word is, Cafferty knows about it too.”

“So he might make a bid to get to it first?”

“Which is why we’d have to act fast.”

Gray held up a hand, trying to stem Rebus’s enthusiasm. “Don’t go saying ‘we.’ ”

Rebus bowed his head in a show of repentance. “The beauty of it is, they’ll lift Cafferty for it. Especially if he finds himself with a kilo or so planted on him . . .”

Gray’s eyes widened. “You’ve got it all figured out.”

“Not all of it. But enough to be going on with. Are you in?”