A Good Hanging and other Stories by Ian Rankin Page A

said, total abstinence. Either the booze goes, Jock, or the pipe does. No contest.’
    And he sucked greedily on the pipe. Then complained when his drink arrived without ‘the wee slice of lemon’. Rebus returned to the bar to fulfil his mission.
    ‘Oh aye,’ said Thomson, ‘remember it like it was yesterday. Only there’s not much to remember, is there?’
    ‘Why do you say that?’
    ‘Two inexperienced laddies go out in a boat. Boat tips. End of story.’
    ‘Was the weather going to be bad that morning?’
    ‘Not particularly. But there was a squall blew up. Blew up and blew out in a matter of minutes. Long enough though.’
    ‘How did the two men seem?’
    ‘How do you mean?’
    ‘Well, were they looking forward to the trip?’
    ‘Don’t know, I never saw them. The younger one, Abbot was it? He phoned to book a boat from me, said they’d be going out early, six or thereabouts. I told him he was daft, but he said there was no need for me to be on the dockside, if I’d just have the boat ready and tell him which one it was. And that’s what I did. By the time I woke up that morning, he was swimming for the shore and his pal was food for the fish.’
    ‘So you never actually saw Mr Ford?’
    ‘No, and I only saw the lad Abbot afterwards, when the ambulance was taking him away.’
    It was fitting into place almost too easily now. And Rebus thought, sometimes these things are only visible with hindsight, from a space of years. ‘I don’t suppose,’ he ventured, ‘you know anyone who worked at the hotel back then?’
    ‘Owner’s moved on,’ said Thomson, ‘who knows where to. It might be that Janice Dryman worked there then. Can’t recall if she did.’
    ‘Where could I find her?’
    Thomson peered at the clock behind the bar. ‘Hang around here ten minutes or so, you’ll bump into her. She usually comes in of an afternoon. Meantime, I’ll have another of these if you’re buying.’
    Thomson pushed his empty glass over to Rebus. Rebus, most definitely, was buying.
     
    Miss Dryman — ‘never married, never really saw the point’ - was in her early fifties. She worked in a gift-shop in town and after her stint finished usually nipped into the Tavern for a soft drink and ‘a bit of gossip’. Rebus asked what she would like to drink.
    ‘Lemonade, please,’ she said, ‘with a drop of whisky in it.’ And she laughed with Jock Thomson, as though this were an old and cherished joke between them. Rebus, not used to playing the part of straight-man, headed yet again for the bar.
    ‘Oh yes,’ she said, her lips poised above the glass. ‘I was working there at the time all right. Chambermaid and general dogsbody, that was me.’
    ‘You wouldn’t see them arrive though?’
    Miss Dryman looked as though she had some secret to impart. ‘Nobody saw them arrive, I know that for a fact. Mrs Dennis who ran the place back then, she said she’d be buggered if she’d wait up half the night for a couple of fishermen. They knew what rooms they were in and their keys were left at reception.’
    ‘What about the front door?’
    ‘Left unlocked, I suppose. The world was a safer place back then.’
    ‘Aye, you’re right there,’ added Jock Thomson, sucking on his sliver of lemon.
    ‘And Mr Abbot and Mr Ford knew this was the arrangement?’
    ‘I suppose so. Otherwise it wouldn’t have worked, would it ?’
    So Abbot knew there’d be nobody around at the hotel, not if he left it late enough before arriving.
    ‘And what about in the morning?’
    ‘Mrs Dennis said they were up and out before she knew anything about it. She was annoyed because she’d already cooked the kippers for their breakfast before she realised.’
    So nobody saw them in the morning either. In fact...
    ‘In fact,’ said Rebus, ‘nobody saw Mr Ford at all. Nobody at the hotel, not you, Mr Thomson, nobody.’ Both drinkers conceded this.
    ‘I saw his stuff though,’ said Miss Dryman.
    ‘What stuff?’
    ‘In his room, his