The Black Book Read Free Page B

better amenities and equipment – but not enough. Rebus was still trying to come to terms with his new workplace. Everything was so tidy, he could never find anything, as a result of which he was always keen to get out of the office and onto the street.
    Which was why he ended up at a butcher’s shop on South Clerk Street, staring down at a stabbed man.
    The man had already been tended to by a local doctor, who’d been standing in line waiting for some pork chops and gammon steaks when the man staggered into the shop. The wound had been dressed initially with a clean butcher’s apron, and now everyone was waiting for a stretcher to be unloaded from the ambulance outside.
    A constable was filling Rebus in.
    ‘I was only just up the road, so he couldn’t have been here more than five minutes when somebody told me, and I came straight here. That’s when I radioed in.’
    Rebus had picked up the constable’s radio message in his car, and had decided to stop by. He kind of wished he hadn’t. There was blood smeared across the floor, colouring the sawdust which lay there. Why some butchers still scattered sawdust on their floors he couldn’t say. There was also a palm-shaped daub of blood on the white-tiled wall, and another less conclusive splash of the stuff below this.
    The wounded man had also left a trail of gleaming drips outside, all the way along and halfway up Lutton Place (insultingly close to St Leonard’s), where they suddenly stopped kerbside.
    The man’s name was Rory Kintoul, and he had been stabbed in the abdomen. This much they knew. They didn’t know much more, because Rory Kintoul was refusing to speak about the incident. This was not an attitude shared by those who had been in the butcher’s at the time. They were outside now, passing on news of the excitement to the crowd who had stopped to gawp through the shop window. It reminded Rebus of Saturday afternoon in the St James Centre, when pockets of men would gather outside the TV rental shops, hoping to catch the football scores.
    Rebus crouched over Kintoul, just a little intimidatingly.
    ‘And where do you live, Mr Kintoul?’
    But the man was not about to answer. A voice came from the other side of the glass display case.
    ‘Duncton Terrace.’ The speaker was wearing a bloodied butcher’s apron and cleaning a heavy knife on a towel. ‘That’s in Dalkeith.’
    Rebus looked at the butcher. ‘And you are …?’
    ‘Jim Bone. This is my shop.’
    ‘And you know Mr Kintoul?’
    Kintoul had turned his head awkwardly, seeking the butcher’s face, as if trying to influence his answer. But, slouched as he was against the display case, he would have required demonic possession to effect such a move.
    ‘I ought to,’ said the butcher. ‘He’s my cousin.’
    Rebus was about to say something, but at that moment the stretcher was trolleyed in by two ambulancemen, one of whom almost skited on the slippery floor. It was as they positioned the stretcher in front of Kintoul that Rebus saw something which would stay with him. There were two signs in the display cabinet, one pinned into a side of corned beef, the other into a slab of red sirloin.
    Cold Cuts, one said. The other stated simply, Fleshing. A large fresh patch of blood was left on the floor as they lifted the butcher’s cousin. Cold Cuts and Fleshing. Rebus shivered and made for the door.
    On the Friday after work, Rebus decided on a massage. He had promised Patience he’d be in by eight, and it was only six now. Besides, a brutal pummelling always seemed to set him up for the weekend.
    But first he wandered into the Broadsword for a pint of the local brew. They didn’t come more local than Gibson’s Dark, a heavy beer made only six hundred yards away at the Gibson Brewery. A brewery, a pub and a massage parlour: Rebus reckoned if you threw in a good Indian restaurant and a corner shop open till midnight he could live happily here for ever and a day.
    Not that he didn’t like living