Black And Blue by Ian Rankin Page A

saying?’
    ‘I may need to ask a colleague at Causewayside to help.’
    Bible John smiled. ‘My paper’s not short of a bob or two,as long as we get results. How much would your friend want …?’

The Whispering Rain
    Mind me when mischief befalls me from the cruel and the vain
The Bathers,
‘Ave the Leopards’

5
    The Scots language is especially rich in words to do with the weather: ‘dreich’ and ‘smirr’ are only two of them.
    It had taken Rebus an hour to drive to Raintown, but another forty minutes to find Dumbarton Road. He hadn’t been to the station before: Partick cop-shop had relocated in ’93. The old station, the ‘Marine’, he’d been there, but not the new place. Driving in Glasgow could be a nightmare for the uninitiated, a maze of one-way streets and ill-signposted intersections. Rebus twice had to leave his car and call in for instructions, both times queuing outside phone boxes in the rain. Only it wasn’t real rain, it was smirr, a fine spray-mist which drenched you before you knew it. It was blowing in from the west, moisture straight from the Atlantic Ocean. It was all Rebus needed first thing on a dreich Monday morning.
    When he got to the station, he noticed a car in the car park, two figures inside, smoke billowing from an open window, radio playing. Reporters, had to be. They were the graveyard shift. At this point in a story, reporters divvied the hours into shifts, so they could go off and be somewhere else. Whoever was left on recce was on a promise to buzz any breaks in the story to the other journalists pronto.
    When he finally pushed open the station door, there was scattered applause. He walked up to the desk.
    ‘Finally made it, then?’ the Duty Sergeant asked. ‘Thought we were going to have to send out search parties.’
    ‘Where’s CI Ancram?’
    ‘In a meeting. He said for you to go up and wait.’
    So Rebus went upstairs, and found that the CID offices had become a sprawling Murder Room. There were photographs on the walls: Judith Cairns, Ju-Ju, in life and in death. More photos of the locus – Kelvingrove Park, a sheltered spot surrounded by bushes. A work rota had been posted – interview grind mostly, shoe-leather stuff, no big breaks expected but you had to make the effort. Officers clattered at keyboards, maybe using the SCRO computer, or even HOLMES – the major enquiry database. All murder cases – excluding those solved straight off – were put on the Home Office Large Major Enquiry System. There were dedicated teams – detectives and uniforms – who operated the system, typing in data, checking and cross-referencing. Even Rebus – no great fan of new technology – could see the advantages over the old card-index system. He stopped by a computer terminal and watched someone entering a statement. Then, looking up, he saw a face he recognised, walked up to its owner.
    ‘Hiya, Jack, thought you were still in Falkirk?’
    DI Jack Morton turned, his eyes opening wide in disbelief. He rose from his desk, took Rebus’s hand and pumped it.
    ‘I am,’ he said, ‘but they’re short-handed here.’ He looked around the room. ‘Understandably.’
    Rebus looked Jack Morton up and down, couldn’t believe what he saw. Last time they’d met, Jack had been a couple of stone overweight, a heavy smoker with a cough that could crack patrol-car windscreens. Now he’d shed the excess weight, and the perennial ciggie was missing from his mouth. More, his hair was professionally groomed and he was dressed in an expensive-looking suit, polished black shoes, crisp shirt and tie.
    ‘What happened to you?’ Rebus asked.
    Morton smiled, patted his near-flat stomach. ‘Just looked at myself one day and couldn’t understand why the mirror didn’t break. Got off the booze and the cigs, joined a health club.’
    ‘Just like that?’
    ‘Life and death decisions. You can’t afford to hem and haw.’
    ‘You look great.’
    ‘Wish I could say the same,