THE DEEP POOL

HEART FULL OF HEADSTONES

1.   

The mid-morning Flybe flight from Edinburgh to Southampton banked steeply over Southampton Water. D I John Rebus watched the scene unfold beneath him while in the seat across the aisle from him D S Siobhan Davies pulled herself out of an uneasy sleep, rubbing her eyes and stifling a yawn. 'We here?' she asked of Rebus.

'Not long now, final approach - that's the Isle Of Wight there, and that's their football ground' he replied, pointing out of the window at the retreating green land mass and the spanking new St Mary's Stadium, home to a once proud team, now hopelessly mired in the English second division. 'Should've hung on to Strachan' Rebus thought to himself - 'bampots'

'Seems like quite a - dramatic landing we're experiencing' said Siobhan, betraying her nerves.

'It's because it's a prop plane' Rebus said in what he hoped was a soothing tone - 'you get a more acute sense of movement with propellors'. A fleeting vision of another time, another country, a lost world, flickered propellor-like through Rebus's mind, but he knew how to suppress such moments as quickly as they arose. 

He'd amused Siobhan with his observation though - 'The Expert!' she exclaimed.

'Nope - just been alive too long'    Ten minutes later, waiting for their bags to appear on the carousel, Siobhan turned to Rebus.

'I know I know, if that makes sense, but tell me again what the hell we're doing here?'

Rebus was longingly fingering an unopened pack of cigarettes which was in his inside jacket pocket. 'You're going to see long lost relatives in the New Forest and i'm going to see a man about a missing whisky bottle - you're going to join me tomorrow and tell me what you make of whatever it is i've come across between now and then, and then we're flying back to Auld Reekie having not had wild no-holds barred sex'.

Siobhan cursed herself silently for blushing - when this trip had become common knowledge in the police section house there had been much guffawing from astonished colleagues, some of it without humour, about the two of them going off for a 'dirty weekend'.

That's Brighton you go to for a dirty weekend, not Southampton' Rebus had responded drily - 'Southampton you go to for second rate football or if you're a pensioner that's saved up to be seasick on a cruise liner'.

'So you're going there as part of an official investigation and Siobhan's going along for the ride' was how Ernie 'Hi Ho' Silvers had summed it up to gales of appreciative laughter in the pub.

Rebus had smiled thinly. It certainly was a strange situation to be in, and in a work of fiction you would have thought 'na, too daft'. He grappled his bag from the belt, and as he and Siobhan made their way to the taxi rank to go their separate ways, he felt the the age-old summarising of 'the story so far' taking place in his mind, as he prepared to meet a man who had intrigued him for many a long year - the Scots singer Jackie Leven.

2.

   Yes,a unique turn of events found him in a taxi at Southampton airport, going to the nearby village of Botley. The taxi driver was droning on about Tony Blair, the war in Iraq, and Gordon Brown, the brand new Prime Minister.

'And now the country's being run by a one-eyed geezer from Fife - wherever that is' the guy snorted.

Rebus tapped a cigarette on his knee.

'I'm from Fife myself' he said in a coldly polite tone - 'in fact the man i've come here to see comes from Fife too - there's a lot of us about'.

The taxi driver stole a glance at Rebus, seeing him in a new, somewhat disturbing light.

'No offence guv - i'm sure he'll do a great job - they say 'es got, wassit called, a 'forensic mind', the driver was clearly pleased with himself for coming up with this gem.

'So have I mate' said Rebus, 'and this guy i've come to see, he's so forensic he could cut you in half with a song'.

The taxi was pulling up outside the address Rebus had provided - the driver looked at the old Georgian house - 'hey, this Jackie Leven's house!' he exclaimed - 'is that who you've come to see? He's an all-right  bloke; yeah you're right, 'es Scots an' all; i sometimes take him to the airport - 'es got some stories i can tell ya - 'e once told me abaht being in a taxi in Stockholm wiv Alicia Keys and'...

Rebus stopped the flow with an upheld palm - 'Yep, i know a few of his stories myself - in fact i've come to see him about one story in particular'.

The taxi driver had taken Rebus's cash and was writing a receipt. 'You a musician too mate?' he asked doubtfully.

'No i'm not pal - i'm a policeman, but i've settled a few scores in my time'...

3.

   Standing in front of the black door of Jackie Leven's house, Rebus ran the 'narrative', to use the latest job jargon, through his mind one last time as he gratefully pulled on his cigarette - 'the guy might not like people smoking in his house' he thought to himself - 'musicians, they're either all about smoking or all about not smoking'.   Two weeks earlier, in the male toilet of the Hallion Club, a posh Edinburgh hangout for the literati and attendant moneyed chancers, a most curious murder had taken place. A much loved author of detective fiction,  Alexander McCall Smith had been killed whilst urininating by a single expert blow to the head. 'Poor guy wasn't even a member' Rebus had mused at the time. The killing made less than no sense - Rebus, having been given the case reluctantly by Gill, his superior, had established that McCall Smith had no enemies to speak of, had visited the club on a whim as the guest of a mild mannered old friend and club member.

It therefore seemed to follow that the killing was unlikely to have been premeditated, but the clinical nature of the execution spoke of a classic 'hit'. And there was one seriously enigmatic clue to contemplate: in the urinal stall which McCall Smith had been using, bobbing like a sinking raft in a grisly mixture of blood and urine, was a precisely folded piece of paper, like the pages you get from wee red notebooks on sale in newsagents' shops. Rebus had gingerly retieved the sodden sheet and opened it on the spot. Inside was written a single stanza of poetry:

'Time ticks away at the centre of my pride
Emptying its glen of cattle, crops, and song,
Till its deserted headlands are alone
Familiar with the green uncaring tide'
(Sydney Goodsir Smith).

A Scottish poet, Rebus had been told later, and he sensed a great rusty chain rattling across the seabed of men's affairs, the killer holding the other end, challenging him to take hold and catch him if he could.

'My first literary murder' Rebus had grimaced later in the Oxford bar, starting a fresh pint of heavy in the company of his long-time colleague Ernie 'Hi Ho' Silvers.. Two days later, Ernie had called him at home, sounding not himself. at all..

'You know that bit of poem that was in the deid guy's lavvie?' he began with his customary eloquence.

'What about it?'

'You won't believe this, but i was speaking to an old colleague from the probabtion service - she's left mony a year ago, but we still stay in touch.'

'Go on'. 'Well, her brother is that singer you like and that I canna stand, thon Jackie Leven? She was down visiting him in Hampshire at the weekend and he told her about something that happened in his local pub.'

'And what was that?'

'This Leven guy makes his own whisky - it's called Leven's Lament' - 'Aye, i know it, it's an Islay blend' Rebus cut across him, the iodine zing of this particular water of life reverberating pleasantly in his memory. Silvers continued; 'Well, he gave the landlord of his local a bottle of this Leven's Lament as a present some time back, which the guy duly went and drank, and then he put the empty bottle in a locked glass display case.in the pub. There it stayed minding its own business till this past weekend, when some bastard managed to open the case and half-inch the empty whisky bottle'.
Ernie - this is actually really interesting as a story, but does it have an end?'
'Oh yeah, it has an end all right: Leven's telling his sister Wendy, my old mate, aboot this, laughing, saying it was probably one of his more crazy fans, mentioned a local guy called Phil Oates, and then he said, also, whoever nicked the bottle left a verse by a poet that he knew of in its place. I says to Wendy, that's funny, because we're working on a case here where a killer left a verse of poetry too. Wendy says, what's your verse? As it happened, and don't laugh, i'd remembered it by heart because it reminded me of my auld crofter grand-dad. I told her the verse and she just gave me this look and said 'the verse the bottle burglar left is the very next verse in that poem.'

'John, mate, can that just be a coincidence or whit?' Ernie was slightly breathless now.

Rebus was standing in his front room, a whisky and cigarette in one hand, the phone in the other, frozen like a statue.

'Ernie - you couldn't possibly have made this up - could you?'

'As you rightly say, i couldn't have made it up, and more to the point i didn't - it's just fuckin insane is it not?'

'Do you know what this second verse is Ernie?' 'I've got it right here in front of me - i'm being a professional here. I'm goin' tae RECITE it!' Ernie was enjoying himself now and his coarse warble came down the line as Rebus began to move in his blood again.

'What gave this land to gradual decay?
The rocky field where plovers made their nest
Now undisturbed had once the soil to raise
A happy people, but from day to day..'

Rebus said 'I canna get my head round that till i see the two verses together Ernie'.

Ernie replied 'Wendy, Leven's sister says we should think about this as well - there's another two verses of this bloody poem'.   

When Rebus had hung up, he filled his whisky glass and went over to his CD collection. Ernie was right - he really liked the music of Jackie Leven, a fellow Fifer whose life story sounded improbable but was most likely true. What to play by him in this weird moment that might in some way help? His hand alighted on an obscure album called 'The Wanderer' and he selected a track called 'The Keys To The Forest'. After a while the guy sang:

'And though i lie in ghostly latrines
My hand in another man's piss'...

Rebus had stopped the record abruptly and felt his mind shifting madly. Siobhan had told him that morning about a trip she was making to Hampshire to visit relatives from a side of her family with whom she'd entirely lost touch until recently. He suddenly knew he was going with her, so that Jackie Leven could 'help him with his enquiries.'

'This is going to be different' he'd thought to himself.   

Now the black door was opening, and a new but familiar face was making eye contact with him. Jackie Leven was bigger and older than he had been expecting, but already Rebus could feel a warmth of heart coming from the man which made him relax out of his long-accustomed tension.

'You here about the whisky bottle?' the big man twinkled.

Rebus smiled - 'Aye, but let's not forget the poetry'....

(TO BE CONTINUED)

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