Let It Bleed Read Online Free PDF

owner was downstairs in an interview room. They were telling him that if he was straight with them, they’d forget about the car’s lack of proper insurance. He was telling them story after story, the life and times of Willie Coyle and Dixie Taylor. Rebus went down to listen for a while. DS Macari and DC Allder were doing the interview.
    ‘Detective Inspector Rebus enters, twelve-fifteen hours,’ Macari said for the benefit of the tape recorder. ‘So,’ he said to the seated youth, ‘how did they make out, Willie and Dixie? Both on the broo, but you can always supplement the broo, eh?’
    Rebus stood against the wall, trying to appear casual. He even smiled towards the car owner, nodded to let him know everything was all right. The car owner was in his late teens, presentable enough, neatly dressed and groomed. He wore a discreet silver-loop earring in his right ear, but no other jewellery, not even a watch.
    ‘They got along,’ he said. ‘Like, the dole money’s no’ bad, even social security, you can live on it if you’re careful.’
    ‘And they were careful?’ Macari paused. ‘Mr Duggan nods his head.’ This again for the tape recorder. ‘So why would they pull a stunt like this?’
    Duggan shook his head. ‘I wish I knew. I never got an inkling. Willie’d never asked for a loan of the car before. He said he had something to shift.’
    ‘What sort of thing?’
    ‘He didn’t say.’
    ‘But you loaned him the car anyway.’
    ‘Like I say, Willie’s the careful sort.’
    ‘And Dixie?’
    Duggan gave the hint of a smile. ‘Well, Dixie’s different. He needed looking after.’
    ‘What? Was he soft in the head like?’
    ‘No, he was just laid back. He didn’t … it was hard to get him interested.’ He looked up. ‘It’s hard to put into words.’
    ‘Just try your best, Mr Duggan.’
    ‘Ever since school, Willie and Dixie had been best pals. They liked the same music, same comics, same games. They understood one another.’
    ‘And they shared digs ever since they left home?’
    Rebus liked Macari’s style. Around the station they called him ‘Toni’, after the character in
Oor Wullie
. He’d managed to get Duggan relaxed and talkative; he’d forged a relationship. Rebus wasn’t so sure of Allder; Allder was one of Flower’s men.
    ‘I think so,’ Duggan was saying. ‘They were right close. We had a book at school once. It had two characters like them in it, one daft and the other not.’
    ‘
Of Mice and Men
?’ Rebus offered.
    ‘I thought that was Burns,’ Allder said.
    Rebus indicated to Macari that he was leaving.
    ‘Inspector Rebus leaves room, twelve-thirty hours. So, Mr Duggan, to get back to the car …’
    As ever, Rebus timed his exit just wrong. Alister Flower was walking along the corridor towards him, whistling ‘Dixie’.
    ‘There’s a lad in there,’ Rebus reminded him, ‘has just lost two pals, one of them called Dixie.’
    Flower stopped whistling and barked a short, unpleasant laugh. ‘Must’ve been my, you know, subconscious.’
    ‘You’ve got to be conscious to have one of those,’ Rebus said, moving away. ‘Which sort of disqualifies you.’
    Flower wasn’t letting him off so easily. He caught up with Rebus at the double doors. ‘Things’ll be different when I’m Chief Inspector,’ he snarled.
    ‘Yes, they will,’ Rebus agreed. ‘Because by then they’ll have cured cancer and put a man on Mars.’
    Then he pushed through the doors and was gone.

4
    He drove out to Stenhouse. It was further out of town than he remembered, and nicer too. Quiet, once you came off Gorgie Road. Two-storey semis with tidy front gardens and swept pavements. Some of the doorsteps looked scrubbed; his mother had got down on her knees with all the other women in their cul-de-sac a couple of times a week to scrub the step with hot soapy water or bleach. A dirty front step reflected badly on the home within.
    Rebus was more used to central Edinburgh, tenement city. The