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“What’s going on?”
The face glowered at him, then softened as he was recognized. The detective constable’s name was Pettifer. He’d been only half a year in CID; already he was toughening up nicely.
“Leith’s jam-packed,” Pettifer explained. “Thought we’d use St. Leonard’s for the overflow.”
Rebus looked around. Pinched faces, ill-fitting clothes, bad haircuts… the cream of Edinburgh’s lower depths. Informers, junkies, touts, scammers, housebreakers, muscle, alkies. The station was filling with their mingled scents, their slurred, expletive-strewn protestations. They’d fight anyone, anytime. Where were their lawyers? Nothing to drink? Needing a pish. What was the game? What about human rights? No dignity in this fascist state…
Detectives and uniforms tried for a semblance of order, taking names, details, pointing to a room or a bench where a statement could be taken, everything denied, a muttered complaint made. The younger men had a swagger, not yet ground down by the constant attentions of the law. They smoked, despite the warning signs. Rebus bummed a cigarette from one of them. He wore a checked baseball cap, its rim pointing skywards. Rebus reckoned one gust of Edinburgh wind would have the thing sailing from its owner’s head like a Frisbee.
“No’ done nothing, like,” the youth said, twitching one shoulder. “Just helping out, so they says. Di
“Bobby’s looking for whoever might have supplied the guns,” Rebus told Siobhan. “Rounding up the usual desperadoes.”
“Thought I recognized some faces.”
“Aye, and not from judging any bo
Rebus believed this. He saw families where the children ran wild and would grow up indifferent to anything but the rules of survival in what they saw as a jungle. Neglect was almost in their genes. Cruelty made people cruel. With some of these young men, Rebus had known their fathers and grandfathers, too, criminality in their blood, aging the one and only disincentive to their recidivism. These were basic facts. But there was a problem. By the time Rebus and his like had reason to confront these men, the damage was already done, and in many cases appeared irreversible. So there could be little room for sympathy. Instead, it came down to attrition.
And then there were men like Peacock Johnson. Peacock wasn’t his real name, of course. It was because of the shirts he wore, shirts that could curdle any hangover an onlooker might be harboring. Johnson was lowlife masquerading as high. He made money, and spent it, too. The shirts were often custom-made by a tailor in one of the narrow lanes of the New Town. Johnson sometimes affected a homburg and had grown a thin, black mustache, probably thinking he looked like Kid Creole. His dental work was good-which by itself would have marked him out from his fellow denizens-and he used his smile prodigally. He was a piece of work.
Rebus knew he was in his late thirties but could pass for either ten years older or a decade younger, depending on his mood and outfit. He went everywhere with a runt of a guy named Evil Bob. Bob sported what was almost a uniform: baseball cap, tracksuit top, baggy black jeans and oversized sneakers. Gold rings on his fingers, ID bracelets on both wrists, chains around his neck. He had an oval, spotty face with a mouth that hung open almost permanently, giving him a look of constant bewilderment. Some people said that Evil Bob was Peacock’s brother. If so, Rebus guessed some cruel genetic experiment had taken place. The tall, nearly elegant Johnson and his brutish sidekick.
As for the “evil” in Evil Bob, as far as anyone knew, it was just a name.
As Rebus watched, the two men were being separated. Bob was to follow a CID officer upstairs to where a space was newly available. Johnson was about to accompany DC Pettifer into Interview Room 1. Rebus glanced towards Siobhan, then pushed his way through the scrum.
“Mind if I sit in on this one?” he asked Pettifer. The young man looked flustered. Rebus tried for a reassuring smile.
“Mr. Rebus…” Johnson was holding out his hand. “What a pleasant surprise.”
Rebus ignored him. He didn’t want a pro like Johnson to know just how new Pettifer was to the game. At the same time, he had to persuade the detective constable that no dirty trick was being played, that Rebus wasn’t going to be there as invigilator. All he had was his smile, so he tried it again.
“Fine,” Pettifer said at last. The three men entered the interview room, Rebus holding his index finger up in Siobhan’s direction, hoping she’d know he wanted her to wait for him.
IR1 was small and stuffy and held the body odors of what seemed like its last half a dozen guests. There were windows high up on one wall, but they wouldn’t open. On the small table sat a dual-tape deck. There was a panic button at shoulder height behind it. A video camera was trained on the room from a bracket above the door.
But there’d be no recording today. These interviews were informal, goodwill a priority. Pettifer carried nothing into the room but a couple of sheets of blank paper and a cheap pen. He would have studied the file on Johnson but wasn’t about to brandish it.
“Take a seat, please,” Pettifer said. Johnson brushed the chair’s surface with a bright red handkerchief before lowering himself onto it with showy deliberation.
Pettifer sat down opposite, then realized there was no chair for Rebus. He made to stand up again, but Rebus shook his head.
“I’ll just stand here, if that’s okay,” he said. He was leaning against the wall opposite, legs crossed at the ankles, hands resting in his jacket pockets. He’d found a spot where he was in Pettifer’s line of vision but where Johnson would have to turn to see him.
“You’re sort of like a guest star, Mr. Rebus?” Johnson obliged with a grin.
“VIP treatment for you, Peacock.”
“The Peacock always travels first-class, Mr. Rebus.” Johnson sounded satisfied, resting against the back of the chair, arms folded. His hair was jet-black, slicked back from the brow, curling where it met the nape of his neck. He’d been known to keep a cocktail stick in his mouth, working it like a lollipop. Not today, though. Today he was chewing a piece of gum.
“Mr. Johnson,” Pettifer began, “I assume you know why you’re here?”
“You’re asking all us cats about the shooter. I told the other cop, told anyone who’d listen, the Peacock doesn’t do that sort of thing. Shooting kids, man, that’s pure evil.” He shook his head slowly. “I’d help you if I could, but you’ve got me here under false pretexts.”
“You’ve been in a spot of trouble before over firearms, Mr. Johnson. We just wondered if you might be the sort of man who’d have his ear to the ground. Could be you’ve heard something. Maybe a rumor, someone new in the marketplace…”
Pettifer sounded confident. It could be 90 percent front; inside he could be shivering like the last leaf on autumn’s tree, but he sounded okay, and that was what mattered. Rebus liked what he saw.
“The Peacock isn’t what you’d call a snitch, Your Honor. But in this case, it’s a definite. If I hear something, I come straight to you. No worries on that bulletin board. And for the record, I deal in replica weapons-collectors’ market, respectable gentlemen of industry and suchlike. When the powers above make such trade illegal, you can be sure the Peacock will cease operations.”