10 Great Rebus Novels (John Rebus) Read Online Free PDF Page B

environment this in which to track down the odd pervert or killer.
    ‘What exactly are we looking for, Jack?’
    Morton snorted, threw down a slender brown file, looked at Rebus, shrugged his shoulders, and lit a cigarette.
    ‘Garbage,’ he said, picking up another folder, and whether or not it was meant as an answer Rebus was never to know.
    ‘Detective Sergeant Rebus?’
    A young constable, acne on his throat, cleanly-shaven, stood at the open door.
    ‘Yes.’
    ‘Message from the Chief, sir.’
    He handed Rebus a folded piece of blue notepaper.
    ‘Good news?’ asked Morton.
    ‘Oh, the best news, Jack, the very best news. Our boss sends us the following fraternal message: “Any leads from the files?” End of message.’
    ‘Will there be any reply, sir?’ asked the constable.
    Rebus crumpled the note and tossed it into a new aluminium bin.
    ‘Yes, son, there will be,’ he said, ‘but I very much doubt whether you’d want to deliver it.’
    Jack Morton, wiping ash from his tie, laughed.
    It was one of those nights. Jim Stevens, walking home at long last, had not found anything interesting since his conversation with Mac Campbell all of four hours ago. He had told Mac then that he was not about to drop his own investigation into Edinburgh’s burgeoning drugs racket, and that had been the whole truth. It was becoming a private obsession, and though his boss might move him on to a murder case, still he would follow up his old investigation in his free, spare and private time, time found late at night when the presses were rolling, time spent in lower and lower dives further and further out oftown. For he was close, he knew, to a big fish, and yet not close enough to be able to enlist the help of the forces of law and order. He wanted the story to be watertight before he called for the cavalry.
    He knew the dangers, too. The ground he walked upon was always likely to fall away beneath his feet, letting him slip into Leith docks of a dark and silent morning, finding him trussed and gagged in some motorway ditch outside Perth. He didn’t mind all that. It was no more than a passing thought, brought on by tiredness and a need to lift his emotions out of the rather tawdry, unglamorous world of Edinburgh’s dope scene, a scene carried out in the sprawling housing-schemes and after-hours drinking holes more than in the glittery discotheques and chintzy rooms of the New Town.
    What he disliked, really disliked, was that the people ultimately behind it all were so silent and so secretive and so alien to it all. He liked his criminals to be involved, to live the life and stick close to the lifestyle. He liked the Glasgow gangsters of the 1950s and ’60s, who lived in the Gorbals and operated from the Gorbals and loaned illicit money to neighbours, and who would slash those same neighbours eventually, when the need arose. It was like a family affair. Not like this, not at all like this. This was other, and he hated it for that reason.
    His talk with Campbell had been interesting though, interesting for other reasons. Rebus sounded a fishy character. So was his brother. They might be in it together. If the police were involved in all of this, then his task would be all the harder, and all the more satisfying for that.
    Now what he needed was a break, a nice break in the investigation. It couldn’t be far off. He was supposed to have a nose for that sort of thing.

5
    At one-thirty they took a break. There was a small canteen in the building, open even at this ungodly hour. Outside, the majority of the day’s petty crime was being committed, but inside it was warm and cosy, and there was hot food to be had and endless cups of coffee for the vigilant policemen.
    ‘This is a complete shambles,’ said Morton, pouring coffee back from his saucer into the cup. ‘Anderson hasn’t a clue what he’s up to.’
    ‘Give me a cigarette, will you? I’m out.’ Rebus patted his pockets convincingly.
    ‘Christ, John,’ said