In the Nick of Time Read online

  With the blinds down they watched the massed ranks of Mods, between the Palace and West Piers, many of them on scooters, wearing slim ties, tab-collared shirts, sharp suits, and fur-collared parka jackets, wielding knives, and the Rockers, in studded leather jackets, some of them swinging heavy chains and other implements. The Rockers looked little different to modern-day Hells Angels, apart from the pompadour hairstyles.

  Battle raged, battalions of Brighton police officers in white helmets on foot and on horseback, flailing their batons while being belted with stones and bottles.

  Siobhan Clarke sucked air in through her mouth. “I had no idea,” she said.

  “Oh, it was bad,” Grace told her. “My mum said my dad used to come home regularly with a black eye, bloodied nose, or fat lip.”

  “Tribal,” Potting added. “Just two tribes at war.”

  “Nearest we’d have up north,” Rebus commented, “would be the pitched battles at Celtic-Rangers games.”

  “But this was different,” Grace said. “And I’ll tell you my theory if you like.”

  “Go ahead.”

  Grace leaned forward in his seat. “They were the first generation ever in our country that didn’t have to go and fight a war. They had to get their aggression out on something, including each other.”

  “You still see it on a Saturday night,” Rebus added with a slow nod. “Young men sizing each other up, fueled, and wanting some attention.”

  “Stick around a few hours,” Potting said, making show of checking his watch.

  When the video was over, Rebus told the room that he needed a smoke.

  “I’ll join you,” Grace said.

  “Me, too,” added Potting, pulling his pipe from his pocket.

  Siobhan Clarke shook her head. “You lads run along.” Then she aimed the remote at the DVD player, ready to watch the clips all over again.

  · · ·

  After fish and chips at the Palm Court on Brighton Pier, they headed to Withdean Stadium and entered the pub, where the reunion was in full swing.

  “Retired?” Rebus snorted. “Most of them are younger than me.” He looked around at the hundred or so faces.

  “Full pension after thirty years,” Grace commented.

  “It’s the same in Scotland,” Clarke explained. “But John isn’t having it.”

  “Why not?” Grace sounded genuinely curious.

  Clarke was watching Rebus head to the bar, Potting hot on his heels. “It’s gone beyond being a job to him,” she offered. “If you can understand that.”

  Grace thought for a moment, then nodded. “Completely.”

  By the time they got to the bar, Potting was explaining to Rebus that Harveys was the best local pint.

  “Just so long as it’s not the sherry,” Rebus joked.

  Once they had their drinks, Potting led them over to the retired inspector Jim Hopper, who had attended the badly injured Ollie Starr on that Saturday afternoon in 1964. Hopper was a giant of a man, with a shaven head rising from apparently neckless shoulders, giving him the appearance of an American football player. But his eyes were sympathetic, his demeanor gentle. Potting handed him a drink. He took a sip before speaking.

  “I told Ollie you might be coming to speak to him. He seemed hellish relieved. Ever since that assault, his life’s turned to a bucket of turds.”

  “You’ve kept in touch with him?” Rebus nudged.

  “I have, yes. To tell the truth, I’ve always felt partways responsible. If we’d had more men on the ground that day, or we’d spotted him being chased.” Hopper winced at the memory. “I was with him in the ambulance. He thought he was dying, poured out his whole story to me, as if I was the last friend he’d ever have.”

  “Do you think he’d be able to identify the assailant after all this time?” Clarke asked quietly.

  “No doubt about it. Couldn’t happen now, of course, with CCTV and DNA. Nobody’d get away with it.”

  “It was half a century back,” Rebus reminded Hopper. “You sure his memory’s up to it?”

  A grim smile broke across the retired officer’s face. “You need to see for yourselves.”

  “See what?”

  “Visit him and you’ll find out.”

  “Is he married?” Clarke asked.

  Hopper shook his head. “Far as he’s concerned, his life ended that day. Stabbed in the chest, then the cowards just walked away.”

  There was silence for a moment. They were in a bubble, far from the chatter and gossip around them.

  “Give us his address,” Rebus ordered, breaking the spell.

  · · ·

  Roy Grace had been in some shitholes in his time, and Ollie Starr’s ground-floor flat, on the other side of the wall from the Brighton and Hove refuse tip, was down there with the worst of them. It was dank, with dark mold blotches on one wall of the tiny hall. As they strode through into the sitting room, there were empty beer bottles littering the place, an ashtray overflowing with butts, soiled clothing strewn haphazardly on the floor, and an ancient, fuzzy television screen displaying a football match.

  But none of the detectives looked at the football. All of them stared, with puzzled faces, at the pencil sketches that papered almost every inch of the otherwise bare walls. From each of them an expressionless man stared out. He was the same man in every drawing, Grace realized, but he was aged progressively, from late teens to mid-sixties. At every stage he was portrayed with different hairstyles, with and without beard or moustache. They reminded Roy Grace of police Identi-Kit drawings.

  “Bloody hell,” Rebus muttered, stepping farther into the room. “It’s James King.” He turned to Ollie Starr. “Where did these—?”

  “My memory,” Starr said, flatly.

  “You’ve not seen him?”

  “Not since the day he stuck a knife in me.”

  “The likeness is amazing.”

  “Meaning you’ve got the bastard.” The muscles in Starr’s face seemed to relax a fraction. “Never forgot his face,” he continued. “And I was a student at Hornsey School of Art. Promising future, they said, maybe doing adverts and stuff. Instead of which, I’ve just been drawing him, year after year, hoping one day I’d see him.”

  Siobhan Clarke cleared her throat. “We think the man who attacked you is critically ill in hospital.”

  “Good.”

  “That answers my first question.”

  Starr’s eyes narrowed. “What’s that, then?”

  “Whether you’d want to go ahead with a prosecution after all this time.” She paused. “Against a man with not long to live.”

  “I want to see him,” Starr growled. “I need to see him, face-to-face, the closer the better. He has to be shown what he did. Ruined my life, and the only thing that kept me going was the dream.”

  “What dream?” Grace asked.

  “The dream of you lot coming here, delivering the news.” Starr blinked back a tear. We all have our dreams, eh?” His voice cracked a little. “But a man’s reach should exceed his grasp / Or what’s a heaven for?”

  Grace was moved that the man had read Browning. He lived in a tip, yet clutched at beauty. How different might his life have been if . . . ?

  If.

  He caught John Rebus’s eye, and then Siobhan Clarke’s, and knew they were thinking the same thing—while Potting tried to examine Clarke’s legs without her noticing.

  “We’d need to bring you to Edinburgh quickly,” Rebus was saying. “Could you fly up Monday?”

  “Train might be less hassle,” Starr said. “Give me time to decide whether to spit in his face first or go straight for a punch.”

  · · ·

  Hospitals always made Roy Grace feel uncomfortable. Too many memories of visiting his dying father and, later, his dying mother. Late on Monday afternoon he followed Rebus and Clarke along the corridor of the Royal Infirmary. It looked new, no smells of boiled cabbage or disinfectant. Transport had been awaiting the group at Waverley Station, Clarke m
aking sure the visitors glimpsed the famous castle before they headed to the outskirts of the city. As Rebus pushed open the doors to the ward, Grace glanced back in the direction of Potting and Starr. Neither man showed any emotion.

  “Okay?” Grace checked, receiving two separate nods in reply.

  Rebus, however, had come to a sudden stop, Grace almost colliding with him. The bed in the corner was empty, the table next to it bare.

  “Shit,” Rebus muttered, eyes scanning the room. Plenty of patients, but no sign of the only one that mattered.

  “Can I help?” a nurse asked, her face arranged into a professional smile.

  “James King,” Rebus informed her. “Looks like we’re too late.”

  “Oh dear, yes.”

  “How long ago did he die?”

  The smile was replaced with something more quizzical. “He’s not dead,” she explained. “He went into remission. It happens sometimes, and if I were the religious sort . . .” She shrugged. “Spontaneous and inexplicable, but there you are. Mr. King’s back home in the bosom of his family, happy as the proverbial Larry!”

  TWENTY MINUTES LATER, REBUS KNOCKED on the door of the bungalow on Liberton Brae. Ella King answered, then stared stonily at the small entourage outside.

  “My husband’s changed his mind,” she blurted out. “It was the drugs he was taking. They got him hallucinating.”

  “Fine, then,” Rebus said, holding up his hands as if in surrender. “But could we come in a minute?”

  She didn’t seem at all sure, but Rebus was already barging past her, stalking down the hall toward the living room, Grace and Clarke right behind him. James King was seated in a large armchair, horse-racing on the television. He was dressed in slacks and a polo shirt, a newspaper on his lap and a mug of tea by his side.

  “You’ve heard the news?” he boomed. “They’re calling it a miracle, for want of any better explanation. And has Ella explained about the drugs? I must have been rambling, the time I talked to you.”

  “Is that a fact, sir? Well, is there any chance you could ramble your way to the front door? There’s an old friend of yours waiting to see you.”

  King’s face creased in confusion, but Rebus was gesturing for him to get up, and get up he did, shuffling toward the front door.

  Norman Potting stood on the path outside, hands resting against the handles of Ollie Starr’s wheelchair.

  “James King,” Rebus said, “meet Oliver Starr.”

  “But we’ve never met. I . . . I don’t know him. What’s this all about?”

  “You know me, all right,” Starr snarled, his whole body writhing as if a current were passing through it. “Your bread knife’s still in an evidence locker in Brighton. Did your mum never ask you what happened to it?”

  Grace watched King’s face. It was as if the man had been slapped.

  “What’s going on?” his wife asked, voice trembling.

  “A man did die that day,” Clarke explained. “But not the man your husband attacked. When he saw it reported, he jumped to conclusions.”

  “Is this the man who stabbed you, Mr. Starr?” Grace asked.

  “I’d know him anywhere,” Ollie Starr replied, eyes burning into King’s.

  “You old fool,” Ella King yelped at her husband. “I told you to leave it alone, take it to the grave with you. Why did you have to bring it all up?”

  “James Ronald King,” Grace was intoning, “I have a warrant issued for your arrest. I’m arresting you on suspicion of the attempted murder of Oliver Starr. You do not have to say anything, but it may harm your defense if you do not mention when questioned something which you later rely on in court. Anything you do say may be given in evidence. Is that clear?”

  “I’m in remission,” King gasped. “The rest of my life ahead of me . . .”

  “Had a good life so far, have you?” Starr snarled. “Better than mine, at any rate. All the years I’ve spent in a bloody wheelchair! No wife, no kids!”

  “You can’t do this,” Ella King was pleading. “He’s a very sick man.” Her hand was gripping her husband’s arm.

  Rebus shook his head. “He’s not ill, Mrs. King. We heard it from his own mouth.”

  “But he is sick,” Potting interjected. “Takes a sick mind to shove a knife so deep into someone it breaks their spine.”

  “So far in the past, though,” Ella King persisted. “Everything’s different now.”

  “Not so different,” Rebus replied, looking toward Clarke and Grace. “Besides which, I’d say we got here just in the nick of time.”

  Roy Grace nodded his agreement.

  Different cities, different cultures, different generations, even, but he knew he shared one thing above all else with John Rebus—pleasure in each and every result.

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  ISBN 978-1-4767-8870-8 (ebook)