Let It Bleed by Ian Rankin Read Free Book Online Page B

trouble.’
    Rebus looked out of the window. It had started snowing. ‘Weather like this,’ he said, ‘there’s never much trouble in Edinburgh, trust me.’

7
    Hugh McAnally was universally known as Wee Shug. He didn’t know why people called Hugh always ended up nicknamed Shug. There were a lot of things he didn’t know, and never would know. He wished he’d spent his time in jail bettering himself. He supposed he’d bettered himself in some ways: he could use machine tools, and knew how a sofa was put together. But he knew he wasn’t educated, not like his cell-mate. His cell-mate had been really clever, a man of substance. Not like Shug at all; chalk and cheese, if you came down to it. But he’d taught Shug a lot. And he’d been a friend. Surrounded by people, a jail could still be a lonely place without a friend.
    Then again, what difference would it have made if he’d been brainier? None at all really, not a jot.
    But he was going to make a difference to his life this evening.
    It was another grievous night, a wind that was like walking through razor-blades.
    Councillor Tom Gillespie wasn’t expecting many souls to make the trek to his surgery. He’d get a few complaints from the regulars about frozen and burst pipes, maybe a question about the cold weather allowance, and that would be about it. The constituents in his Warrender ward tended to be self-reliant – or easily cowed, depending on your point of view. Depending on your politics. He smiledacross the room towards the extravagance he called a secretary, then studied the art on the classroom walls.
    He always held his surgery in this school, third Thursday of every month during term-time. Between consultations he would catch up on correspondence, dictating letters into a hand-held recorder. The Central Members’ Services Division at the City Chambers typed the letters up. For general political matters, matters relating to his party, there was a separate admin assistant.
    Which was why, as Gillespie’s wife had pointed out on numerous occasions, a private secretary was such an extravagance. But as the councillor had argued (and he was
very
good at argument), if he was going to get ahead of the crowd he needed to be busier than the other councillors, and above all he needed to
seem
to be busier. Short term extravagance, long term gain. You always had to be thinking in the long term.
    He used the same rationale when he resigned his job. As he explained to his wife Audrey, half the district councillors had other jobs beside the council, but this meant they could not concentrate all their energies on council or political business. He needed to seem so busy that he had no time for a day job. Council committee meetings took place during the day, and now he was free to attend them.
    He had other arguments in his favour, too. By working on council business during the day, his evenings and weekends were relatively free. And besides (and here he would smile and squeeze Audrey’s hand), it wasn’t as if they needed the money. Which was just as well, since his district councillor’s basic allowance was
£
4,700.
    Finally, he would tell her, this was the most important time in local government for twenty years. In seven weeks’ time there would be new elections and the change would begin, turning the City of Edinburgh into a single-tierauthority to be called the City of Edinburgh Council. How could he afford not to be at the centre of these changes?
    Audrey, though, had won one condition: his secretary should be an older woman, plain and bomely. Helena Profitt fitted that bill.
    Thinking of it, he never really won an argument with Audrey, not outright. She just snarled and spat and started slamming doors. He didn’t mind. He needed her money. Her money bought him time. If only it could save him the purgatory of these Thursday nights in the near-deserted school.
    His secretary brought her knitting with her, and he could measure how quiet things had been by