Rebus 05 by Ian Rankin

Author:Ian Rankin
Language: en-us
Format: mobi, epub
Published: 2011-04-11T10:53:08+00:00

'Search me.'

'Well, if there was nothing lying in the shop it must have been a sledgehammer. I can't see a kick with a steel toecap doing that sort of damage.'

Now Bone looked at him properly, and recognised him. 'You were here when Rory . . . '

'That's right, Mr Bone. They didn't use a sledgehammer on him though, did they?'

'I don't know what you mean.'

'Pound of beef links, by the way.'

Bone hesitated, then took out the string of sausages and cut a length from it.

'You could be right, of course,' Rebus continued. 'Could have been kids or drunks. Did anyone see anything?'

'I don't know.'

'You didn't report it?'

'Didn't have to. Police phoned me at two this morning to tell me about it.' He sounded disgruntled.

'All part of the service, Mr Bone.'

'That's just over the pound,' Bone said, looking at the weighing scales. He wrapped the sausages in white paper, then in brown, marking the price with a pencil on this outer wrapper. Rebus handed over a five-pound note.

'Insurance will take care of it, I suppose,' he said.

'Bloody hope so, the money they charge.'

Rebus accepted his change, and made sure to catch Bone's eye. 'But I meant the real insurance people, Mr Bone.' An elderly couple were coming into the shop.

'What happened, Mr Bone?' the woman asked, her husband shuffling along behind her.

'Just kids, Mrs Dowie,' said Bone in the voice he used with customers, a voice he hadn't been using with Rebus. He was staring at Rebus, who gave him a wink, picked up his package, and left. Outside, he looked down at the brown paper parcel. It was chill in his hand. He was supposed to be cutting down on meat, wasn't he? Not that there was much meat in sausages anyway. Another passing shopper stopped to examine the boarded-up window, then went into the shop. Jim Bone would do good business today. Everyone would want to know what had happened. Rebus was different; he knew what had happened, though proving it wasn't going to be easy. Siobhan Clarke hadn't managed to talk to the stabbing victim yet. Maybe Rebus should push her along, especially now that she could tell Rory Kintoul all about his cousin's broken window.

Next to his car someone had parked a Land Rover-style 4x4, inside which a huge black dog was ravening to get out. Pedestrians were giving the car a wide berth, and quite right too: the whole vehicle rocked on its axle when the dog lunged at the back window. Rebus noticed that the considerate owner had left the window open an inch. Maybe it was a trap intended for a particularly stupid car thief.

Rebus stopped in front of the open window and unrolled the package of sausages into the car. They fell onto the seat where the dog sniffed them for a nanosecond before starting to dine.

The street was blessedly quiet as Rebus unlocked his own car. 'All part of the service,' he said to himself.

At the station, he telephoned the Heartbreak Cafe,

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