Black And Blue Read Online Free PDF Page A

be open: midnight licences. Instead, he drove back to the station. It was less than a mile away. Maclay and Bain looked like they’d just got in, but they’d already heard the news.
    ‘Murder?’
    ‘Something like it,’ Rebus said. ‘He was tied to a chair with a plastic bag over his head, mouth taped shut. Maybe he was pushed, maybe he jumped or fell. Whoever was with him left in a rush – forgot to take their carry-out.’
    ‘Junkies? Dossers?’
    Rebus shook his head. ‘New jeans by the look of them, and new Nikes on his feet. Wallet with plenty of cash, bank card and credit card.’
    ‘So we’ve got a name?’
    Rebus nodded. ‘Allan Mitchison, address off Morrison Street.’ He shook a set of keys. ‘Anybody want to tag along?’
    Bain went with Rebus, leaving Maclay to ‘hold the fort’ – aphrase overused at Fort Apache. Bain said he didn’t make a good passenger, so Rebus let him drive. DS ‘Dod’ Bain had a rep; it had followed him from Dundee to Falkirk and from there to Edinburgh. Dundee and Falkirk weren’t exactly spa towns either. He sported a nick in the skin beneath his right eye, souvenir of a knife attack. Every so often, his finger strayed to the spot; it wasn’t something he was conscious of. At five-eleven he was a couple of inches shorter than Rebus, maybe ten pounds lighter. He used to box middleweight amateur, southpaw, leaving him one ear which hung lower than the other and a nose which covered half his face. His shorn hair was salt-and-pepper. Married, three sons. Rebus hadn’t seen much at Craigmillar to justify Bain’s hardman rep; he was a regular soldier, a form-filler and by-the-book investigator. Rebus had just dispatched one nemesis – DI Alister Flower, promoted to some Borders outpost, chasing sheep-shaggers and tractor racers – and wasn’t looking to fill the vacancy.
    Allan Mitchison’s flat was in a designer block in what wanted to be called ‘the Financial District’. Scrapland off Lothian Road had been transformed into a conference centre and ‘apartments’. A new hotel was in the offing, and an insurance company had grafted its new headquarters on to the Caledonian Hotel. There was room for more expansion, more road-building.
    ‘Desperate,’ Bain said, parking the car.
    Rebus tried to remember the way the area had looked before. He only had to think back a year or two, but found the process difficult nonetheless. Was it just a big hole in the ground, or had they knocked things down? They were half a mile, maybe less, from Torphichen cop-shop; Rebus thought he knew this whole hunting-ground. But now he found that he didn’t know it at all.
    There were half a dozen keys on the chain. One of them opened the main door. In the well-lit lobby there was a whole wall of letter-boxes. They found the name Mitchison – flat312. Rebus used another key to open the box and remove the mail. There was some junk – ‘Open Now! You Could Have Scooped Life’s Jackpot!’ – and a credit-card statement. He opened the statement. Aberdeen HMV, an Edinburgh sports shop – £56.50, the Nikes – and a curry house, also in Aberdeen. A gap of just under two weeks, then the curry house again.
    They took the narrow lift to the third floor, Bain shadow-boxing the full-length mirror, and found flat 12. Rebus unlocked the door, saw that an alarm panel was flashing on the wall in the small hallway, and used another key to disable it. Bain found the light-switch and closed the door. The flat smelled of paint and plaster, carpets and varnish – new, uninhabited. There wasn’t a stick of furniture in the place, just a telephone on the floor beside an unrolled sleeping-bag.
    ‘The simple life,’ Bain said.
    The kitchen was fully equipped – washing machine, cooker, dishwasher, fridge – but the seal was still across the door of the washer-drier and the fridge contained only its instruction manual, a spare lightbulb, and a set of risers. There was a swing-bin in the cupboard