10 Great Rebus Novels (John Rebus) (65 page)

‘I thought I was rich,’ Rebus said, obviously coming to a punch line. ‘But when I wanted more money, there wasn’t any to be had. I had to wait till I was old enough to get a proper job, but I loved running around on that bike, doing errands and delivering messages to the old folk. Sometimes they’d even give me a tip, a piece of fruit or a jar of jam.’

There was silence in the room. A police siren sped past outside. Rebus sat back and folded his arms, a sentimental smile spread across his face. And then it dawned on Kenny:
Rebus was comparing the two of them!
His eyes widened. Everyone knew it. Rhona knew it. Sam knew it. For tuppence, he’d get up and stick the nut on the copper, Sam’s dad or not. But he held back and the moment passed. Rhona got up to make more tea, and the big bastard got up and said he had to be going.

It had all happened so fast. Kenny was still trying to unravel Rebus’s story and Rebus could see it. The poor half-educated runt was trying to work out just how far Rebus had put him down. Rebus could answer that: as far as was necessary. Rhona hated him for it, of course, and Samantha looked embarrassed. Well to hell with them. He’d done his duty, he’d paid his respects. He wouldn’t bother them any more. Let them live in their cramped flat, visited by this . . . gentleman, this mock adult. Rebus had more important things to do. Books to read. Notes to make. And another busy day ahead. It was ten o’clock. He could be back at his hotel by eleven. An early night, that’s what was needed. Eight hours’ sleep in the last two days. No wonder he was ratty, looking for a fight.

He began to feel a little bit ashamed. Kenny was too easy a target. He’d crushed a tiny fly beneath a tower-block of resentment. Resentment, John, or plain jealousy? That was not a question for a tired man. Not a question for a man like John Rebus. Tomorrow. Tomorrow, he might start getting some answers. He was determined to pay for his keep now that he had been brought to London. Tomorrow, the task began in earnest.

He shook Kenny’s hand again and gave him a man-to-man half-wink before leaving the flat. Rhona offered to see him to the door. They went into the hall, leaving Samantha and Kenny in the living-room, behind a closed door.

‘It’s okay,’ Rebus said quickly. ‘I’ll see myself out.’ He started downstairs, aware that to linger was to invite an argument with Rhona. What was the point? ‘Better go keep an eye on Lothario,’ he called, unable to resist the parting shot.

Outside, he remembered that Rhona liked her lovers young, too. Perhaps she . . . but no, that thought was unworthy of him. ‘Sorry, God,’ he said, turning with a steady stride back towards the Underground.

Something is going wrong.

After the first killing, she had felt horror, remorse, guilt. She had begged forgiveness; she would not kill again.

After a month, a month of not being found, she grew more optimistic, and grew hungry too. So she killed again. This had satisfied for another month, and so it had gone on. But now, only twenty-four hours after the fourth time, she had felt the urge again. An urge more powerful and focused than ever. She would get away with it, too. But it would be dangerous. The police were still hunting. Time had not elapsed. The public was wary. If she killed now, she would break her patternless pattern, and perhaps that would give the police some clue that she could not predict.

There was only one solution. It was wrong; she knew it was wrong. This wasn’t her flat, not really. But she did it anyway. She unlocked the door and entered the gallery. There, tied up on the floor, lay the latest body. She would store this one. Keep it out of sight of the police. Examining it, she realised that now she would have more time with it, more time in which to play. Yes, storage was the answer. This lair was the answer. No fear of being found. After all, this was a private place, not a public place. No fear. She walked around the body, enjoying its silence. Then she raised the camera to her eye.

‘Smile please,’ she says, snapping her way through the film. Then she has an idea. She loads another film cartridge and photographs one of the paintings, a landscape. This is the one she will carve, just as soon as she has finished playing with her new toy. But now she has a record of it, too. A permanent record. She watches the photograph develop but then starts to scratch across the plate, smearing the colours and the focus until the picture becomes a chemical swirl, seemingly without form. God, her mother would have hated that.

‘Bitch,’ she says, turning from the wall filled with paintings. Her face is creased with anger and resentment. She picks up a pair of scissors and goes to her plaything again, kneels in front of it, takes a firm hold of the head and brings the scissors down towards the face until they hover a centimetre away from the nose. ‘Bitch,’ she says again, then carefully snips at the nostrils, her hand shaking. ‘Long nosehairs,’ she wails, ‘are so unbecoming. So unbecoming.’

At last she rises again and crosses to the opposite wall, lifts an aerosol and shakes it noisily. This wall – she calls it her Dionysian wall – is covered in spray-painted black slogans: DEATH TO ART, KILLING IS AN ART, THE LAW IS AN ARSE, FUCK THE RICH, FEEL THE POOR. She thinks of something else to say, something worth the diminishing space. She sprays with a flourish.

‘This is art,’ she says, glancing over her shoulder towards the Apollonian wall with its framed paintings. ‘This is fucking art. This is fuck art.’ She sees that the doll’s eyes are open and throws herself down to within an inch of those eyes, which suddenly screw themselves shut. Carefully, she uses both hands to prise apart the eyelids. Faces are close now,
so
intimate. The moment is always
so
intimate. Her breath is fast. So is the doll’s. The doll’s mouth struggles against the tape holding it shut. The nostrils flare.

‘Fuck art,’ she hisses to the doll. ‘This is fuck art.’ She has the scissors in her hand again now, and slides one blade into the doll’s left nostril. ‘Long nosehairs, Johnny, are so unbecoming in a man. So unbecoming in a man.’ She pauses, as though listening to something, as though considering this statement. Then she nods. ‘Good point,’ she says, smiling now.

‘Good point.’

The telephone woke Rebus. He could not locate it for a moment, then realised that it was mounted on the wall just to the right of his headboard. He sat up, fumbling with the receiver.

‘Hello?’

‘Inspector Rebus?’ The voice was full of zest. He didn’t recognise it. Took his Longines (his father’s Longines actually) from the bedside table and peered through the badly scratched face to find that it was seven fifteen. ‘Did I wake you up? Sorry. It’s Lisa Frazer.’

Rebus came to life. Or rather his voice did. He still sat slumped and jangling on the edge of the bed, but heard himself say a bright, ‘Hello, Dr Frazer. What can I do for you?’

‘I’ve been studying the notes you gave me on the Wolfman case. Working through most of the night, to be honest. I just couldn’t sleep, I was so excited by them. I’ve made some preliminary observations.’

Rebus touched the bed, feeling its residual warmth. How long since he’d slept with a woman? How long since he’d woken up the following day regretting nothing?

‘I see,’ he said.

Her laughter was like a clear jet of water. ‘Oh, Inspector, I’m sorry, I’ve wakened you. I’ll call back later.’

‘No, no. I’m fine, honestly. A bit startled, but fine. Can we meet and talk about what you’ve found?’

‘Of course.’

‘But I’m a bit tied up today.’ He was trying to sound vulnerable, and thought on the whole that it was probably working. So he played his big card. ‘What about dinner?’

‘That would be nice. Where?’

He rubbed at a shoulder-blade. ‘I don’t know. This is your town, not mine. I’m a tourist, remember.’

She laughed. ‘I’m not exactly a local myself, but I take your point. Well in that case, dinner’s on me.’ She sounded set on this. ‘And I think I know just the place. I’ll come to your hotel. Seven thirty?’

‘I look forward to it.’

What a very pleasant way to start the day, thought Rebus, lying down again and plumping up the pillow. He’d just closed his eyes when the telephone rang again.

‘Yes?’

‘I’m in reception and you’re a lazy git. Come down here so I can put my breakfast on your tab.’

Cli-chick. Brrrr. Rebus slapped the receiver back into its cradle and got out of bed with a growl.

‘What kept you?’

‘I didn’t think they’d appreciate a stark naked guest in the dining-room. You’re early.’

Flight shrugged. ‘Things to do.’ Rebus noticed that Flight didn’t look well. The dark rings around his eyes and his pale colouring were not due simply to lack of sleep. His flesh had a saggy quality, as though magnets on the floor were drawing it down. But then he wasn’t feeling so great himself. He thought he’d probably picked up a bug on the tube. His throat was a little sore and his head throbbed. Could it be true that cities made you sick? In one of the essays Lisa Frazer had given him someone had made that very claim, stating that most serial killers were products of their environment. Rebus couldn’t really comment on that, but he did know that there was more mucus in his nostrils than usual. Had he brought enough handkerchiefs with him?

‘Things to do,’ Flight repeated.

They sat at a table for two. The dining-room was quiet, and the Spanish waitress took their order briskly, the day not yet having had enough time to wear her down.

‘What do you want to do today?’ Flight seemed to be asking this only in order to get the conversation rolling, but Rebus had specific plans for the day and told him so.

‘First off I’d quite like to see Maria Watkiss’s man, Tommy.’ Flight smiled at this and looked down at the table. ‘Just to satisfy my own curiosity,’ Rebus continued. ‘And I’d like to talk to the dental pathologist, Dr Morrison.’

‘Well, I know where to find both of them,’ said Flight. ‘Go on.’

‘That’s about it. I’m seeing Dr Frazer this evening –’ Flight looked up at this news, his eyes widening in appreciation ‘– to go over her findings on the killer’s profile.’

‘Uh huh.’ Flight sounded unconvinced.

‘I’ve been reading those books she lent me. I think there may be something in it, George.’ Rebus used the Christian name carefully, but Flight seemed to have no objections.

The coffee had arrived. Flight poured and drank a cup of it, then smacked his lips. ‘I don’t,’ he said.

‘Don’t what?’

‘Don’t think there’s anything in all this psychology stuff. It’s too much like guesswork and not enough like science. I like something tangible. A dental pathologist, now that’s tangible. That’s something you can get –’

‘Your teeth into?’ Rebus smiled. ‘The pun’s bad enough, but I don’t agree anyway. When was the last time a pathologist gave you a precise time of death? They always hedge their bets.’

‘But they deal in
facts
, in physical evidence, not in mumbo-jumbo.’

Rebus sat back. He was thinking of the character in a Dickens book he’d read a long time ago, a schoolteacher who wanted facts and nothing but. ‘Come on, George,’ he said, ‘this is the twentieth century.’

‘That’s right,’ said Flight. ‘And we don’t believe in soothsayers any more.’ He looked up again. ‘Or do we?’

Rebus paused to pour some coffee. He felt his cheeks tingling. Probably, they were turning red. Arguments did that to him; even casual disagreements like this were sometimes enough. He was careful to make his next utterance in a soft, reasonable voice.

‘So what are you saying?’

‘I’m saying policework is plodding, John.’ (Still on first name terms, thought Rebus: that’s good.) ‘And shortcuts seldom work. I’m saying don’t let your Hampton do your thinking for you.’ Rebus thought about protesting, but realised he wasn’t exactly sure what Flight meant. Flight smiled.

‘Rhyming slang,’ he explained. ‘Hampton Wick, prick. Or maybe it’s dick. Anyway, I’m just warning you not to let a good looking woman interfere with your professional judgment.’

Rebus was still about to protest, but saw that there was little point. Having voiced his thoughts, Flight seemed content. What’s more, maybe he was right. Did Rebus want to see Lisa Frazer because of the case, or because she was Lisa Frazer? Still, he felt the need to defend her.

‘Listen,’ he said, ‘like I say, I’ve been reading the books she gave me and there are some good things in them.’ Flight looked unconvinced, goading Rebus into ploughing on. And as he fell for it, beginning to speak, he saw that Flight had played the same trick on him as he himself had played on the motorcycle messenger last night. Too late: he had to defend Lisa Frazer, and himself, even though everything he now said sounded stupid and half-baked to his own ears, never mind to Flight’s.

‘What we’re dealing with is a man who hates women.’ Flight looked at him in amazement, as though this were too obvious to need saying. ‘
Or
,’ Rebus went on quickly, ‘who has to take out his revenge on women because he’s too weak, too scared to take it out on a man.’ Flight admitted this possibility with a twitch of the head. ‘A lot of so-called serial killers,’ continued Rebus, his hand unconsciously grasping the butter-knife, ‘are very conservative – small c – very ambitious, but thwarted. They feel rejected from the class immediately above them, and they target this group.’

‘What? A prostitute, a shop assistant, an office worker? You’re saying they’re the same social group? You’re saying the Wolfman’s social group is lower than a tart’s? Leave off, John.’

‘It’s just a general rule,’ Rebus persisted, wishing he’d never started this conversation. He twisted the knife in his hand. ‘Mind you, one of the earliest serial killers was a French nobleman.’ His voice fell away. Flight was looking impatient. ‘All I’m saying is what’s in those books. Some of it may make sense, it’s just that we don’t have enough on the Wolfman yet to allow us to see what sense it’s all making.’

Flight finished another cup of coffee. ‘Go on,’ he said, without enthusiasm. ‘What else do the books say?’

‘Some serial killers crave publicity,’ said Rebus. He paused, thinking of the killer who had taunted him five years ago, who had led them all a merry chase. ‘If the Wolfman gets in touch with us, we’ve a better chance of catching him.’