Read Online Fleshmarket Alley (2004) by Ian Rankin - Free Book Online Page A

so that Mrs. Prentice could sit in it, once she’d divested herself of her coat. Siobhan got up, too. “One last thing, Susie,” she said.
    “What?”
    Siobhan walked over to the alcove, Susie following her. Siobhan lowered her voice when she spoke. “The Jardines tell me Donald Cruikshank’s out of prison.”
    Susie’s face hardened.
    “Have you seen him?” Siobhan asked.
    “Once or twice . . . piece of scum that he is.”
    “Have you spoken to him?”
    “As if I would! Council gave him a place of his own—can you credit it? His mum and dad wouldn’t have anything to do with him.”
    “Did Ishbel mention him at all?”
    “Just that she felt the same as me. You think that’s what drove her out?”
    “Do you?”
    “ He’s the one we should be running out of town,” Susie hissed.
    Siobhan nodded her agreement. “Well,” she said, slinging her bag onto her shoulder, “remember to give me a call if anything else comes to you.”
    “Sure,” Susie said. She studied Siobhan’s hair. “Can’t do something with that for you, can I?”
    Involuntarily, Siobhan’s right hand went to her head. “What’s wrong with it?”
    “I don’t know . . . It just . . . it makes you look older than you probably are.”
    “Maybe that’s the look I’m aiming for,” Siobhan replied defensively, making her way to the door.
    “Wee perm and a touch-up?” Angie was asking her client as Siobhan stepped outside. She stood for a moment, wondering what next. She’d meant to ask Susie about Ishbel’s ex-boyfriend, the one she was still friends with. But she didn’t want to go back in and decided it could wait. There was a newsagent’s open. She thought about chocolate, but decided to look into the pub instead. It would give her something to tell Rebus; maybe even score her some points if it turned out to be one of the few bars in Scotland not to count him as a onetime customer.
    She pushed open the black wooden door and was confronted by pockmarked red linoleum and matching wallpaper. A design mag would call it “kitsch” and enthuse over its revival of seventies style . . . but this was the real, unreconstructed thing. There were horse brasses on the walls and framed cartoons showing dogs urinating, bloke-style, against a wall. Horse racing on the TV and a haze of cigarette smoke between her and the bar. Three men stared up from their dominoes game. One of them got up and walked behind the bar.
    “What can I get you, love?”
    “Lime juice and soda,” she said, resting on a bar stool. There was a Glasgow Rangers scarf draped over the dartboard, a pool table alongside with ripped and patched felt. And nothing to justify the knife and fork on the motorway exit sign.
    “Eighty-five pence,” the barman said, placing the drink in front of her. At this point, she knew she had only one gambit— Does Ishbel Jardine ever come in? —and couldn’t see what she’d gain from it. For one thing, the bar would be alerted to the fact that she was a cop. For another, she doubted these men would add anything to her sum knowledge, even if they had known Ishbel. She raised the glass to her lips, and knew there was too much cordial in it. The drink was sickly sweet, and not gassy enough.
    “All right?” the barman said. It was challenge more than query.
    “Fine,” she replied.
    Satisfied, he came back out from behind the bar and resumed his game. There was a pot of small change on the table, ten- and twenty-pence pieces. The men he was playing with looked like pensioners. They slapped each domino down with exaggerated force, tapped three times if they couldn’t go. Already, they’d lost interest in her. She looked around for a ladies’ loo, spotted it to the left of the dartboard, and headed inside. Now they’d think she’d only come in for a pee, the soft drink conscience money. The toilet was clean, though the mirror above the sink had gone, pen-written graffiti replacing it.
    Sean’s a shag
    The buns on Kenny