REBUS
You won’t have it.
CAFFERTY
I’ve got everything.
REBUS
You won’t have this.
CAFFERTY
Do you even know what Spotify is you fucking dinosaur?
REBUS
Frampton, ‘Lines on My Face’.
CAFFERTY is typing it into his phone. Music starts.
CAFFERTY
Straight through the surround system. All state of the art. Automatic recording of any noise in here too, just in case you were hoping there’d be no record of that conversation we just had. Fucking digital eh? Things you can do. And you lot still struggle away with audio tapes like it’s 1976.
REBUS
We use audio tapes because you can’t doctor an audio tape without leaving a trace.
CAFFERTY
It’s you that’s been leaving traces though. Eh John? (the music) What the fuck’s this shite?
He stabs at his phone, fast forwarding.
REBUS
Leave it!
CAFFERTY
A last request? Go on then. You want a soundtrack for defeat? I’ll indulge you.
He starts the track again, closer to the end of the song.
CAFFERTY
Winners and losers. What it all comes down to. See, when I was a young man, fighting my way up, this was the prize, the view from the top of Edinburgh. Wankers born to their green acres or banking millions can walk into this. The likes of you and me, we need to fight for it, inch by bloody inch.
REBUS
Aye, you’re a social revolutionary Cafferty.
CAFFERTY
But see when a man like me gets it? Gets it all? Fucking unstoppable. ’Cause I’ve got the millions and I can look any of those soft bastards in the eye and let them see I could punch right through them and it wouldny bother me. I’m terrifying Rebus. I’m ancient power. The original stuff.
REBUS
Original shite.
CAFFERTY
Aw change the record Strawman. We’re done. You’re finished. Admit it.
REBUS
And you really think, the whole purpose of my life was fighting you? Strictly supporting cast. Struggle to remember you most days.
CAFFERTY
Aye you’ve a wheen o’ regrets right enough but no getting me behind bars was the big one. Fucking ironic if I put you there. But I’d rather have your girl on my keyring. That’ll be the real victory, the one that’ll sting you the most.
REBUS
She’ll finish you in five seconds if you call her a girl to her face.
CAFFERTY
We’ll see.
The music’s changed to the next track. It is HEATHER’S song ‘Show Me the Way’.
REBUS
You can turn that up.
CAFFERTY
Turn it off more like. Hate that one.
REBUS
You know it?
CAFFERTY names it.
REBUS
How do you know that one?
CAFFERTY
I’m a complicated man Rebus. You never gave me credit for that.
CAFFERTY has stopped the music.
REBUS
You want another track? ‘Sympathy for the Devil’?
CAFFERTY
Tell me. Admit it, is there anything I could have done to you that would have hurt you worse than this? Turning Siobhan Clarke against you? Making her my snitch?
REBUS
We don’t know what she’s going to decide.
CAFFERTY
Aye we do. She won’t see Mordaunt walk. And she won’t see you go down.
REBUS
No. You hit the bullseye. You win. Only thing worse would be if you’d gone after my daughter.
CAFFERTY
Aye well, I wouldny do that.
REBUS
You’ll bring the smell of blood to my doorstep though. Careless. They’ll get you for that Cafferty.
CAFFERTY
What are we on about now?
REBUS
The boy, up the stairs from me?
CAFFERTY
Now that was a piece of pure cheek. If they knew I was in the building it was.
REBUS
That wasny you?
CAFFERTY
No it wasny me! Fucking amateurs. Come on John. Give me some credit.
REBUS
So who was it?
CAFFERTY
What do you care?
REBUS
There’s a girl I need to find. She’s in trouble.
CAFFERTY
Then she’s likely another lost wee thing John Rebus can’t save.
REBUS seems to slump.
CAFFERTY
(sings, mocking) ‘Regrets, I’ve had a few’. More than a few eh John?
No answer.
CAFFERTY
How is your daughter by the way? See, you’ve still got something as well as that sack of regrets. You’ve still got her.
REBUS
Biggest regret of the lot. All the ways I’ve failed her.
CAFFERTY
I’ve no regrets at all. None. Seriously. Except maybe that. No kids. A waster son that died and didny know me . . .
REBUS
No-one to inherit the royal house of Cafferty.
CAFFERTY
No.
REBUS
Nothing makes you vulnerable like a child does. Maybe that’s the secret of your success. They could never really get to you.
CAFFERTY
Maybe. We’re drinking now eh?
REBUS
Aye.
CAFFERTY
Good.
Gets them both another.
CAFFERTY
You nearly got me Strawman, I can say it now. I did have to scramble to stay ahead of you a few times.
REBUS
Good.
CAFFERTY toasts him.
CAFFERTY
To a fucking good fight and the best man won.
REBUS
Who says it’s over?
CAFFERTY
Ah come on. Maybe I could adopt. What do you think?
REBUS
I’m no sure you’d match the adoption agency profile of the ideal parent.
CAFFERTY
Buy a Chinese one. Na. Fuck that. Needs to look like me.
REBUS
Sam doesny look much like me.
CAFFERTY
Sure she’s yours?
REBUS
Fuck you.
CAFFERTY
She’ll have her mother’s looks. Way it goes eh? DNA. All the mysteries it solves, ’cause you canny tell by looking can you?
REBUS
So maybe there’s a few monster mini Cafferties running around like the wee bastards they are.
CAFFERTY
I’d know.
REBUS
But . . .
CAFFERTY
I’d fucking know!
REBUS
Christ. Sore point?
CAFFERTY
Ach. Alright, since we’re talking. You never got me put away for the heroin dealing you said I was doing.
REBUS
That you were doing.
CAFFERTY
That you never caught anyone for doing. And how many junkie deaths are we talking about?
REBUS
Conscience troubling you?
CAFFERTY
No. Not one bit. But yours is eh? Every death another reason to sook on your wee bottle. All those poor dead junkie wasters, and then there’s all the friends and colleagues, all drowned in the endless sea of John Rebus’s mistakes. Your fault. Every one. That’s what you think, eh Strawman, that’s what you see in the 3 a.m. dark. Regrets. Me? If I’ve killed anyone . . .
REBUS
If!?
CAFFERTY
Casualties of war, every one. Victims of the battle they brought to me. I sleep like a well-fed bairn. Only kind of death I’d ever regret . . . the
kind that didn’t have to happen. That’s why I’d never drink like you. Responsibility of power. You can never lose control. Too dangerous.
REBUS
Sounds like maybe you did then? Just the once.
CAFFERTY
You make mistakes and you learn.
REBUS
What mistakes?
CAFFERTY
One woman. But I learned. Taught me how to behave. You’ve got another woman on the go I hear. Fuck did you pull that off? How’d you find yet another head case who hates herself so much she’ll lie down under a man that regurgitates his own lungs every time he coughs?
REBUS
Trick is to let them go on top.
CAFFERTY
Trick is to buy the best you can afford, someone smart enough no even to need to fake admiration for the size of your wallet. Big money buys you real respect from an intelligent woman.
REBUS
Aye dream on.
CAFFERTY
It’s a weird power relationship you see, men and women. If we’ve got the physical power what does that leave them with? Emotional manipulation. Fucking dangerous weapon to turn on a powerful man, do you not think?
REBUS
You don’t like that?
CAFFERTY
Do you?
REBUS
So what’re you saying?
CAFFERTY
Nothing. Just there’s very little I regret.
REBUS
Except beating up on ‘manipulative’ women?
CAFFERTY
Come on. Worst I’ve ever done is hand out a wee slap to some lassie too cheeky to take a telling.
REBUS
Christ you’re a feminist icon Big Ger.
CAFFERTY
(looking at his watch) She better be back soon. Want to text her Rebus?
REBUS
I tell you, I would like to hear that song again.
CAFFERTY
No.
REBUS
Bad memories?
CAFFERTY
What?
REBUS
Why do you hate it? Has it got anything to do with a woman. One particular woman?
CAFFERTY
Still the fucking detective.
REBUS
Your only regret?
CAFFERTY
Right. We’re done talking about this. Time’s up. I’m calling D.I. Clarke back.
REBUS
Easton property development. Not Weston. Something that begins with an ‘E’. That the name of your company? Easton property?
CAFFERTY
What about it?
REBUS
You built all those big flats down in Newhaven then.
CAFFERTY
Some of them. That company’s sold now. You’ll not get anything digging in that mud. My name wasny ever near the paperwork anyway.
REBUS
No you’d have been a bit scary sitting in your best suit eyeballing the ladies and gents of the planning application committee. I heard you were a bit scary altogether, no-one wants to talk about it even now.
CAFFERTY
Talk about what?
REBUS
Maggie Towler.
A beat.
CAFFERTY
What?
REBUS
Thought she could take on the world . . . Till she took on a man she couldny handle.
CAFFERTY
Not following, Strawman.
REBUS
Aye you are. (sees he’s got him) You are eh?
He snatches up CAFFERTY’S phone, keying up the music.
CAFFERTY
Give me that.
REBUS
How have you even heard of this one?
‘Show Me the Way’ is playing again.
CAFFERTY
Switch that off!
REBUS is turning up the volume.
REBUS
Maggie Towler’s favourite song. Was it ‘your tune’ Big Ger? Did you wander along the the Granton seafront to this one, swinging your hands and plotting which foundations to drop the bodies in . . .
CAFFERTY
(snatching for phone, REBUS evading) Give it!
REBUS
CAFFERTY has got the phone. He cuts the music, breathing heavily.
CAFFERTY
I had nothing to do with Maggie Towler after 1999. A year or more before she got herself killed.
REBUS
Interesting turn of phrase.
CAFFERTY
Wasn’t even questioned about her.
REBUS
That was careless of someone. Right enough though, I bet precious few folk knew about that wee romance. Not your usual type was she?
CAFFERTY says nothing.
REBUS
Leaving her taste in men aside I heard she was a nice enough lassie?
CAFFERTY
She was a lying wee hoor.
REBUS
Didn’t see her after 1999 you say?
Nothing from CAFFERTY.
REBUS
About the time she fell pregnant?
CAFFERTY
I’m ringing Clarke. I’ve given her long enough.
REBUS
So all that regret about the Cafferty legacy? A pile of keech eh? You left her high and dry didn’t you? Kicked her to the side and never looked back . . .
CAFFERTY
I’d’ve looked after her!
REBUS
So why didn’t you?
CAFFERTY
Bairn wasn’t mine. Alright?
REBUS
When did you find that out?
CAFFERTY
Doesny matter . . .
REBUS
Aye it does. Last night she was seen she ducked home early. Way I heard it she saw someone she didn’t expect to and it scared her. You had eyes and ears everywhere didn’t you, even then.
CAFFERTY
Give it up Strawman. We’re no talking about this.
REBUS
You caught her taking the back way home didn’t you?
CAFFERTY
I never knew she was pregnant, alright?
REBUS
Canny always be shooting blanks Ger.
CAFFERTY
The bairn was not mine!
REBUS
Is that what she told you? Is that what she said? To your face? You wouldny have liked that would you? So you get the news, she’s back on the town, first night out after having the kid . . . I bet that was the first you knew of the kid eh?
CAFFERTY
You sound like a fucking women’s magazine, you know that?
REBUS
You catch her going home alone, you ask her what she’s playing at? Keeping your daughter from you . . .
CAFFERTY
Chattering on like a cleaning wifie . . .
REBUS
She says, ‘Fuck you, fuck you Big Ger, think I’d ever have settled for the limp excuse for a cock you’ve got?’
CAFFERTY
Oh you better zip it right now!
REBUS
(cutting over him) ‘Fuck you, I was never with you even when you thought I was. Fuck you, it’s no even your kid!’
CAFFERTY lays him out. Walks away. Breathing hard. REBUS picks himself up. Recovers.
REBUS
And that’s what you did. Well no, nothing like that. You choked the life out of her eh? With her own scarf.
CAFFERTY
What do you think’s going to happen now Strawman? Think I’m going to break down and confess?
REBUS
No need for that. DNA evidence will put you in the frame. No doubt.
CAFFERTY
Fuck you talking about?
REBUS
Canny twist a
piece of cloth that tight without losing a wee bit of skin. Teeny tiny bits of Cafferty dust. They couldny get a DNA identification at the time, science wasny good enough. It is now. Good thing they kept the evidence safe eh?
A beat.
CAFFERTY
Aye right.
REBUS
They really did Big Ger. We checked. Yesterday. I was thinking of reopening the case.
CAFFERTY
You’re no even a policeman. Who’s going to listen to you?