10 Great Rebus Novels (John Rebus) (60 page)

‘The hands and arms show no signs of defence wounding, so the victim had no time in which to defend herself. The possibility exists that she was approached from behind. There is some colouring around the mouth and the victim’s lipstick had been slightly smeared across her right cheek. If she was approached from behind, a possible scenario would be that the attacker’s left hand closed over her mouth to stop her from screaming, thus smearing the lipstick while the attacker stabbed with the right hand. The wound to the throat shows a slight downward angle, which would indicate someone taller than the victim.’

Cousins cleared his throat again. Well, thought Rebus, so far they could strike the mortuary attendant and one of the photographers off the possible list of suspects: everyone else in the room was five feet eight or over.

The pause in proceedings gave the onlookers a chance to shuffle their feet, clear their own throats, and glance at each other, taking note of how pale this or that face was. Rebus was surprised at the pathologist’s ‘scenarios’: that was supposed to be
their
job, not his. All the pathologists Rebus had ever worked with had given the bare facts, leaving the deductions to Rebus himself. But Cousins obviously did not work that way. Perhaps he was a frustrated detective. Rebus still found it hard to believe that people came to pathology through choice.

Tea appeared, carried in three beakers on a plastic tray by Inspector Flight. Cousins and Isobel Penny took a cup each, and Flight himself took the other. There were jealous stares from a few dry-mouthed officers. Rebus was among them.

‘Now,’ said Cousins between sips, ‘I’m going to examine the anal wound.’

It just kept on getting worse. Rebus tried to concentrate on what Cousins was saying, but it wasn’t easy. The same knife had been used to make several stabs to the anus. There were friction marks on the thighs from where the tights had been roughly pulled down. Rebus looked over to Isobel Penny, but, apart from some slight heightening of the colour in her cheeks, she seemed dispassionate. A cool customer and no mistake. But then she’d probably seen worse in her time. No, no, she couldn’t possibly have seen worse than
this
. Could she?

‘The stomach is interesting,’ Cousins was saying. ‘The blouse has been torn away to expose the stomach, and there are two lines of curved indentations in the skin, enough to have bruised and broken the skin, but there is little actual marking of the skin and no blood, from which I would say that this act was perpetrated only
after
the stabbings. After, in fact, the victim was dead. There are a few dried stains on the stomach near these bite marks. Without prejudging, past evidence from three very similar cases showed these stains to be saline in nature – teardrops or perhaps beads of sweat. I’m now going to take a deep body temperature.’

Rebus felt parched. He was hot, and the tiredness was seeping into his bones, lack of sleep giving everything a hallucinatory quality. There were halos around the pathologist, his assistant, and the technician. The walls seemed to be moving, and Rebus dared not concentrate on them for fear that he would lose his balance. He happened to catch Lamb’s eye and the Detective Constable gave him an ugly grin and an uglier wink.

The body was washed now, washed for the first time, freed from a staining of light brown and black, from the pale matt covering of blood. Cousins examined it again, finding nothing new, after which another set of fingerprints was taken. Then came the internal examination.

A deep incision was made down the front of the body. Blood samples were taken and handed to the forensics team, as were samples of urine, stomach contents, liver, body hair (eyebrows included) and tissue. The process used to make Rebus impatient. It was obvious how the victim had died, so why bother with everything else? But he had learned over the years that what you could
see
, the external injuries, often wasn’t as important as what you couldn’t see, the tiny secrets only a microscope or a chemical test could reveal. So he had learned patience and exercised it now, stifling a yawn every half minute or so.

‘Not boring you am I?’ Cousins’s voice was a polite murmur. He looked up from his work and caught Rebus’s eyes, then smiled.

‘Not a bit,’ said Rebus.

‘That’s all right then. I’m sure we’d all rather be at home tucked up in bed than in this place.’ Only the birthmarked technician seemed doubtful as to the truth of this statement. Cousins was reaching a hand into the corpse’s chest. ‘I’ll be out of here as soon as I can.’

It wasn’t the sight of this examination, Rebus decided, that turned men pale. It was the accompanying sound effects. The tearing of flesh, as though a butcher were yanking meat from a flank. The bubbling of liquids and the soft rasping of the cutting tools. If he could somehow block up his ears, maybe everything would be bearable. But on the contrary, his ears seemed extraordinarily sensitive in this room. Next time, he’d bring plugs of cotton wool with him. Next time . . .

The chest and abdominal organs were removed and taken to a clean slab, where a hose was used to wash them clean before Cousins dissected them. The attendant meantime was called into action, removing the brain with the help of a tiny powered circular-saw. Rebus had his eyes shut now, but the room seemed to swirl all the same. Not long to go now though. Not long, thank God. But it wasn’t just the sounds now, was it? It was the smell too, that unmistakable aroma of raw meat. It clung to the nostrils like perfume, filling the lungs, catching the back of the throat and clinging there, so that eventually it became a tang in the mouth and he found himself actually tasting it. His stomach moved momentarily, but he rubbed it gently, surreptitiously with a hand. Not surreptitiously enough.

‘If you’re going to throw up,’ it was Lamb again, like a succubus over his shoulder, hissing, ‘go outside.’ And then the chuckle, throaty and slow like a stalled engine. Rebus half-turned his head and gave a dangerous smile.

Soon enough, the whole mess of matter was being put together again, and Rebus knew that by the time any grieving relatives viewed the mortal remains of Jean Cooper, the body would look quite natural.

As ever, by the end of the autopsy the room had been reduced to silent introspection. Each man and woman present was made of the same stuff as Jean Cooper, and now they stood, momentarily stripped of their individual personalities. They were all bodies, all animals, all collections of viscera. The only difference between them and Jean Cooper was that their hearts still pumped blood. But one day soon enough each heart would stop, and that would be an end of it, save for the possibility of a visit to this butcher’s shop, this abattoir.

Cousins removed his rubber gloves and washed his hands thoroughly, accepted from the attendant a proffered sheaf of paper towels. ‘That’s about it then, gentlemen, until Penny can type up the notes. Murdered between nine o’clock and nine-thirty I’d guess. Same
modus operandi
as our so-called Wolfman. I think I’ve just examined his fourth victim. I’ll get in Anthony Morrison tomorrow, let him have a look at the teeth marks. See what he says.’

Since everyone seemed to know except Rebus, Rebus asked, ‘Who’s Anthony Morrison?’

Flight was first to answer. ‘A dentist.’

‘A dental pathologist,’ corrected Cousins. ‘And quite a good one. He’s got details of the other three murders. His analyses of the bite marks have been quite useful.’ Cousins turned to Flight for confirmation of this, but Flight’s eyes were directed towards his shoes, as if to say
I wouldn’t go that far
.

‘Well,’ said Cousins, seeming to take the silent hint, ‘at any rate, you know my findings. It’s down to your lab chaps now. There’s precious little there . . .’ Cousins nodded back towards the scooped-out husk of the corpse, ‘to help with your investigation. That being so, I think I’ll go home to bed.’

Flight seemed to realise that Cousins was displeased with him. ‘Thank you, Philip.’ And the detective lifted a hand to rest it against the pathologist’s arm. Cousins looked at the hand, then at Flight, and smiled.

The performance at an end, the audience began to shuffle out into the cold, still darkness of an emerging day. By Rebus’s watch, it was four thirty. He felt completely exhausted, could happily have lain down on the lawn in front of the main building and taken a nap, but Flight was walking towards him, carrying his bags.

‘Come on,’ he said. ‘I’ll give you a lift.’

In his fragile state, Rebus felt this to be the nicest, kindest thing anyone had said to him in weeks. ‘Are you sure you have room?’ he said. ‘I mean, with the teddy bear and all.’

Flight paused. ‘Or if you’d prefer to walk, Inspector?’

Rebus threw up his hands in surrender, then, when the door was unlocked, slipped into the passenger seat of Flight’s red Sierra. The seat seemed to wrap itself around him.

‘Here,’ said Flight, handing a hip flask to Rebus. Rebus unscrewed the top of the flask and sniffed. ‘It won’t kill you,’ Flight called. This was probably true. The aroma was of whisky. Not great whisky, not a smoky island malt, but a decent enough proprietary brand. Well, it would help keep him awake perhaps until they reached the hotel. Rebus toasted the windscreen and let the liquid trickle into his mouth.

Flight got behind the steering-wheel and started the car, then, as the car idled, accepted the flask from Rebus and drank from it greedily.

‘How far to the hotel from here?’ Rebus asked.

‘About twenty minutes at this time of night,’ said Flight, screwing tight the stopper and replacing the flask in his pocket. ‘That’s if we stop for red lights.’

‘You have my permission to run every red light you see.’

Flight laughed tiredly. Both men were wondering how to turn the conversation around to the autopsy.

‘Best leave it until morning, eh?’ said Rebus, speaking for them both. Flight merely nodded and moved off, waving to Cousins and Isobel Penny, who were about to get into their car. Rebus stared out of his side window to where DC Lamb stood beside his own car, a flash little sports model. Typical, thought Rebus. Just typical. Lamb stared back at him, and then gave that three-quarters sneer again.

FYTP, Rebus mentally intoned. FYTP. Then he turned in his seat to examine the teddy bear behind him. Flight was resolutely refusing to take the hint, and Rebus, though curious, wasn’t about to jeopardise whatever relationship he might be able to strike up with this man by asking the obvious question. Some things were always best left until morning.

The whisky had cleared his nostrils, lungs and throat. He breathed deeply, seeing in his mind the little mortuary attendant, that livid birthmark, and Isobel Penny, sketching like any amateur artist. She might have been in front of a museum exhibit for all the emotion she had shown. He wondered what her secret was, the secret of her absolute calmness, but thought he probably knew in any case. Her job had become merely that: a job. Maybe one day Rebus would feel the same way. But he hoped not.

If anything, Flight and Rebus said less during the drive to the hotel than they had done on the way to the mortuary. The whisky was working on Rebus’s empty stomach and the interior of the car was oppressively hot. He tried opening his window a quarter of an inch, but the blast of chill air only made things worse.

The autopsy was being played out again before him. The cutting tools, the lifting of organs out of the body, the incisions and inspections, Cousins’s face peering at spongy tissue from no more than an inch away. One twitch and his face would have been smothered in . . . Isobel Penny watching all, recording all, the slice from throat to pubis . . . London sped past him. Flight, true to his word, was cruising through some red lights and slowing merely for others. There were still cars on the streets. The city never slept. Nightclubs, parties, drifters, the homeless. Sleepless dog-walkers, all night bakeries and beigel shops. Some spelt ‘beigel’ and some spelt ‘bagel’. What the hell was a beigel? Wasn’t that what they were always eating in Woody Allen films?

Samples from her eyebrows, for Christ’s sake. What use were samples from her eyebrows? They should be concentrating on the attacker, not the victim. Those teeth marks. What was the dentist’s name again? Not a dentist, a dental
pathologist
. Morrison. Yes, that was it. Morrison, like the street in Edinburgh, Morrison Street, not too far from the brewery canal, where the swans lived, a single pair of swans. What happened when they died? Did the brewery replace them? So damned hot in this shiny red car. Rebus could feel his insides wanting to become his outsides. The knife twisted in the throat. A small knife. He could almost visualise it. Something like a kitchen knife. Sharp, sour taste in his mouth.

‘Nearly there,’ said Flight. ‘Just along Shaftesbury Avenue. That’s Soho on the right. By God, we’ve cleaned that den up this past few years. You wouldn’t believe it. You know, I’ve been thinking, where the body was found, it’s not so far from where the Krays used to live. Somewhere on Lea Bridge Road. I was just a young copper when they were on the go.’

‘Please . . .’ said Rebus.

‘They did somebody in Stokie. Jack McVitie, I think it was. Jack the Hat, they called him.’

‘Can you stop here?’ Rebus blurted out. Flight looked at him.

‘What’s up?’

‘I need some air. I’ll walk the rest of the way. Just stop the car, please.’

Flight began to protest, but pulled over to the kerb. Stepping out of the car, Rebus immediately felt better. There was cold sweat on his forehead, neck and back. He breathed deeply. Flight deposited his bags on the pavement.

‘Thanks again,’ said Rebus. ‘Sorry about this. Just point me in the general direction.’

‘Just off the Circus,’ Flight said.

Rebus nodded. ‘I hope there’s a night porter.’ Yes, he was feeling much better.

‘It’s a quarter to five,’ said Flight. ‘You’ll probably catch the day shift coming on.’ He laughed, but the laugh died quickly and he gave Rebus a serious nod of his head. ‘You made your point tonight, John. Okay?’

Rebus nodded back.
John
. Another chip from the iceberg, or just good management?