after Pattison had defected from the Labour party. The things that Hardy had uttered then had been far less gracious, Lorimer remembered.
‘Over there,’ Hardy said at last when they had marched well up the hill and past the crown-steepled church of Saint Giles. The politician was nodding to a pub on the corner diagonally opposite the crossroads where they now stood waiting for the traffic lights to change.
Deacon Brodie’s Tavern was, thought Lorimer, an interesting choice of pub for the MSP to bring the policeman. He knew most of the story: Brodie had been an Edinburgh worthy back in the eighteenth century, a town councillor and supposedly wealthy cabinet-maker by day but a housebreaker by night. His double life had ended when he’d been caught and he had been condemned to death on the gallows.
The warmth hit them right away as they stepped inside the pub. Almost every table was surrounded by men and women drinking and enjoying a late lunch and the vinegary smell of chips began to waft temptingly around Lorimer’s nostrils.
‘Bet you havenae had anything to eat,’ Hardy asked abruptly. ‘Listen, I’m not like these Edinburgh folk. You’ll have had your tea?’ he said in a high voice that was intended to be a mimicry of an Edinburgh matron that made Lorimer grin despite himself.
‘I could murder a burger and chips,’ he confessed.
‘Well, come on upstairs. There’s a nice warm fire up there too,’ Hardy assured the policeman. Then, ‘Hey, Chloe, hen, can we have a couple of menus for the restaurant?’ he called to a young girl in black who was polishing glasses behind the bar.
‘Sure, Mr Hardy. Here you are,’ she said, picking up a couple of hefty leather-bound menus from a pile at the end of the counter. ‘Be with you shortly,’ she said, smiling.
‘You’re a regular here, then,’ Lorimer said as they headed upstairs past prints of Lord Byron and Robert Burns, poets both, perhaps favourites of the legendary Brodie.
‘Aye, your powers of deduction are just brilliant, Detective Superintendent,’ Hardy laughed as they settled at a table by the window. ‘Wee Chloe works here during the week so she knows all the punters that come in. See that new place across the road?’ he said, pointing at a modern building that stood out against the older, more gracious architecture on either side. ‘Well there used to be one of the ugliest buildings in the city right on that spot, before they knocked it down and built this new hotel. That was where we all worked before they created that money-sponge down at Holyrood. Brodie’s was a dead handy place for members of the Scottish parliament. And I kind of like it. So,’ he shrugged and grinned, ‘I see no reason not to keep on patronising their illustrious establishment.’
Perhaps the man’s patronage was indeed pure altruism, for the upstairs restaurant was completely empty except for themselves; or was he in the habit of coming here for peace and quiet, Lorimer wondered.
‘Deacon Brodie was supposed to have been the inspiration for Robert Louis Stevenson’s Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, wasn’t he?’ the policeman asked.
‘Is that right?’ Hardy shrugged. ‘Not a great reader myself,’ he added.
‘My wife is an English teacher,’ Lorimer told him. ‘And a big Stevenson fan. The book was about a man who had two sides to his personality, one moral and the other evil. Wasn’t Brodie a little bit like that?’
‘Och, Brodie was a pure chancer,’ Hardy replied. ‘Oh, Chloe, right hen,’ he said as the waitress approached. ‘A couple of pints of Stella and two drams of Macallan. That okay with you, Lorimer?’
‘Just the whisky, thanks,’ Lorimer replied.
‘Are you ready to order your food, gentlemen?’ the girl asked politely, taking her little notebook and pen out of a black wraparound apron.
‘Burger and chips twice?’ Hardy asked, looking at the detective who nodded hungrily.
After the girl had gone through the usual rigmarole of sauces and sides, the two men were left alone, the only sound coming from the fire that was crackling and hissing as the rain began to pour down against the windows.
‘You were telling me about Deacon William Brodie,’ Lorimer reminded Hardy.
‘Aye, so I was. Seems he was a terrible gambling man. That’s how he got into the housebreaking game. Lost all his family’s money. They say that Brodie got off by bribing the hangman. Was supposed to have been seen alive and well in Paris.’
‘Must have been a bit of a character to have had a place like this