10 Great Rebus Novels (John Rebus) (64 page)

‘All right,’ he said, closing the thesis, ‘very interesting.’

She seemed pleased. ‘And useful?’

He hesitated before replying. ‘Perhaps.’

She wanted more from him than that. ‘But worth letting me have a go on the Wolfman?’

He nodded slowly, ruminatively, and her face lit up. Rebus couldn’t help returning her smile. There was a knock at the door. ‘Come in,’ he called.

It was Flight. He was carrying a tray, swimming with spilt tea. ‘I believe you asked for some refreshment,’ he said. Then he caught sight of Dr Frazer, and Rebus delighted in the stunned look on his face.

‘Christ,’ said Flight, looking from woman to Rebus to woman, before realising that he had somehow to justify his outburst. ‘They told me you were with someone, John, but they didn’t, I mean, I didn’t know . . .’ He tumbled to a halt, mouth still open, and placed the tray on the desk before turning towards her. ‘I’m Inspector George Flight,’ he said, reaching out a hand.

‘Dr Frazer,’ she replied, ‘Lisa Frazer.’

As their hands met, Flight looked towards Rebus from the corner of his eye. Rebus, beginning to feel a little more at home in the metropolis, gave him a slow, cheerful wink.

‘Christ.’

She left him a couple of books to read. One,
The Serial Mind
, was a series of essays by various academics. It included ‘Sealing the Bargain: Modes of Motivation in the Serial Killer’ by Lisa Frazer, University of London. Lisa: nice name. No mention of her doctorate though. The other book was an altogether heavier affair, dense prose linked by charts and graphs and diagrams:
Patterns of Mass Murder
by Gerald Q MacNaughtie.

MacNaughtie? That had to be a joke of some kind. But on the dustjacket Rebus read that Professor MacNaughtie was Canadian by birth and taught at the University of Columbia. Nowhere could he find out what the Q stood for. He spent what was left of the office day working through the books, paying most attention to Lisa Frazer’s essay (which he read twice) and to the chapter in MacNaughtie’s book concentrating on ‘Patterns of Mutilation’. He drank tea and coffee and two cans of fizzy orange, but the taste in his mouth was sour and as he read on he began to feel physically dirty, made grubby by tale after tale of casual horror. When he got up to visit the bathroom at a quarter to five, everyone in the outer office had already quit for the day, but Rebus hardly registered the fact. His mind was elsewhere.

Flight, who had left him to his own devices for most of the afternoon, came into the office at six. ‘Fancy a jar?’ Rebus shook his head. Flight sat down on the edge of the chair. ‘What’s the matter?’

Rebus waved a hand over the books. Flight examined the cover of one. ‘Oh,’ he said, ‘not exactly bedtime reading, I take it?’

‘Not exactly. It’s just . . . evil.’

Flight nodded. ‘Got to keep a perspective though, John, eh? Otherwise they’d go on getting away with it. If it’s so horrible, we all shy away from the truth, then everybody gets away with murder. And worse than murder.’

Rebus looked up. ‘What’s worse than murder?’

‘Lots of things. What about someone who tortures and rapes a six-month old child and films the whole thing so he can show it to similarly minded individuals?’

Rebus’s words were barely audible. ‘You’re kidding.’ But he knew Flight was not.

‘Happened three months ago,’ Flight said. ‘We haven’t caught the bastard, but Scotland Yard have got the video – and a few more besides. Ever seen a thalidomide porn film?’ Rebus shook his head wearily. Flight leaned down so that their heads were nearly touching. ‘Don’t go soft on me, John,’ he said quietly, ‘that’s not going to solve anything. You’re in London now, not the Highlands. The top deck of a midday bus isn’t safe here, never mind a tow-path after dark. Nobody sees any of it. London gives you a thick skin and temporary blindness. You and I can’t afford to be blind. But we can afford the occasional drink. Coming?’

He was on his feet now, rubbing his hands, lecture over. Rebus nodded and rose slowly to his feet. ‘Only a quick one though,’ he said. ‘I’ve got an appointment this evening.’

An appointment reached by way of a packed tube train. He checked his watch: 7.30 pm. Did the rush hour never stop? The compartment smelt of vinegar and stale air, and three not-so-personal stereos battled it out above the roar of speeding and juddering. The faces around Rebus were blank. Temporary blindness: Flight was right. They shut it all out because to acknowledge what they were going through was to realise the monotony, the claustrophobia and the sheer agony of it all. Rebus was depressed. And tired. But he was also a tourist, so it had to be savoured. Thus the tube journey instead of a closeted taxi ride. Besides, he’d been warned about how expensive the black cabs were and he had checked in his A-Z, and found that his destination was only a quarter of an inch from an Underground station.

So Rebus travelled through the Underground and tried hard not to look out of place, not to gawp at the buskers and the beggars, not to pause in a busy conduit the better to read this or that advertising poster. A tramp actually entered his carriage at one stop and as the doors closed and the train pulled away again he began to rave, but his audience were deaf and dumb as well as blind and they successfully ignored his existence until the next stop where, daunted, he slouched from the carriage onto the platform. As the engine pulled away, Rebus could hear his voice again, coming from the next carriage along. It had been an astonishing performance, not by the tramp but by the passengers. They had closed off their minds, refusing involvement. Would they do the same if they saw a fight taking place? Saw a thick-set man stealing a tourist’s wallet? Yes, they probably would. This wasn’t an environment of good and evil: it was a moral vacuum and that frightened Rebus more than anything else.

But there were compensations of a sort. Every beautiful woman he saw reminded him of Lisa Frazer. Squeezed into one compartment on the Central Line, he found himself pressed against a young blonde girl. Her blouse was undone to the cleft of her breasts, giving the taller Rebus an occasionally breathtaking view of slopes and swells. She glanced up from her paperback and caught him staring. He looked away quickly, but felt her cold gaze focusing on the side of his head.

Every man is a rapist: hadn’t someone said that once?
Traces of salt . . . Bite marks on the . . .
The train slowed into another station: Mile End, his stop. The girl was getting out, too. He lingered on the platform until she was gone, without really knowing why, then headed up towards ground level and a taste of fresh air.

Taste of monoxide, more like. Three lanes of traffic were jammed in either direction, the result of an articulated lorry failing to reverse through the narrow gates of some building. Two exasperated constables were trying to untie this Gordian Knot and for the first time it struck Rebus how silly their tall rounded hats looked. The Scottish-issue flat caps were more sensible. They also made less of a target at football matches.

Rebus wished the constables a silent ‘Good luck’ and made for Gideon Park – not a park but a road – and for number 78, a three-storey house which, according to the front door’s entry system, had been split somehow into four flats. He pressed the second-from-bottom buzzer and waited. The door was opened by a tall skinny teenage girl, her long straight hair dyed black, three earrings in each ear. She smiled and gave him an unexpected hug.

‘Hello, Dad,’ she said.

Samantha Rebus led her father up a narrow staircase to the first-floor flat she shared with her mother. If the change in his daughter was striking, then the change in Rebus’s ex-wife was doubly so. He had never seen her looking so good. There were strands of grey in her hair, but it had been cut fashionably short and there was a healthy suntanned look to her face, a gleam to her eyes. They studied one another without words, then embraced quickly.

‘John.’

‘Rhona.’

She had been reading a book. He looked at its cover:
To the Lighthouse
, Virginia Woolf. ‘Tom Wolfe’s more my style,’ he said. The living-room was small, cramped even, but a lot of clever work with shelves and wall-mirrors gave the impression of space. It was a strange sensation, seeing things he recognised, that chair, a cushion-cover, a lamp, things from his life with Rhona, now transported to this pokey flat. But he praised the interior decoration, the snug feel of the place and then they sat down to drink tea. Rebus had brought gifts: record tokens for Samantha, chocolates for Rhona – received with a knowing, coded look between the two women.

Two women. Samantha was no longer a child. Her figure might retain a child’s suppleness, but her way of moving, her actions, her face were all fully formed and adult.

‘You look good, Rhona.’

She paused, accepting the compliment. ‘Thank you, John,’ she said at last. He noted her inability to say the same of him. Mother and daughter shared another of their secret looks. It was as though their time together had led to a kind of telepathy between them, so that during the course of the evening Rebus was to do most of the talking, nervously filling the many silent gaps in the conversation.

None of it was very important anyway. He spoke of Edinburgh, without going into detail about his work. This wasn’t easy, since work apart he did very little. Rhona asked about mutual friends and he had to admit that he saw none of the old crowd. She talked about her teaching, of property prices in London. (Rebus heard nothing in her tone to suggest that he should pay something towards a bigger place for his kin. After all, it had been her idea to leave him. No real grounds, except, as she’d put it, that she’d loved a man but married a job.) Then Samantha told him about her secretarial course.

‘Secretarial?’ said Rebus, trying to sound enthusiastic. Samantha’s reply was cool.

‘I told you about it in one of my letters.’

‘Oh.’ There was another break in the conversation. Rebus wanted to burst out: I read your letters, Sammy! I devour your letters! And I’m sorry I so seldom write back, but you know what a lousy letter-writer I am, how much effort it takes, how little time and energy I have. So many cases to solve, so many people depending on me.

But he said nothing. Of course he said nothing. Instead, they played out this little sham scenario. Polite chit-chat in a tiny living-room off Bow Road. Everything to say. Saying nothing. It was unbearable. Truly unbearable. Rebus moved his hands to his knees, spreading the fingers, ready to rise to his feet in the expected manner of one about to leave. Well, it’s been nice seeing you, but there’s a starched hotel bed waiting for me, and a machine to dispense ice, and another to shine shoes. He started to rise.

And the buzzer sounded. Two short, two long. Samantha fairly flew to the stairs. Rhona smiled.

‘Kenny,’ she explained.

‘Oh?’

‘Samantha’s current gentleman.’

Rebus nodded slowly, the understanding father. Sammy was sixteen. She’d left school. A secretarial course at college. Not a boyfriend, a gentleman. ‘What about you, Rhona?’ he said.

She opened her mouth, forming a reply, when the thump of feet climbing the stairs closed it for her. Samantha’s face was flushed as she led her gentleman by his hand into the room. Instinctively, Rebus stood up.

‘Dad, this is Kenny.’

Kenny was clad in black leather zip-up jacket and black leather trousers, with boots reaching almost to his knees. He squeaked as he moved and in his free hand he carried an upturned crash-helmet, from which poked the fingers of a pair of black leather gloves. Two fingers were prominent, and appeared to be pointing directly at Rebus. Kenny removed his hand from Samantha’s grip and held it out towards her father.

‘Wotcher.’

The voice was abrupt, the tone deep and confident. He had lank black hair, almost parted at centre, some residual acne on cheeks and neck, a day’s growth of stubble. Rebus shook the hot hand with little enthusiasm.

‘Hello, Kenny,’ Rhona said. Then, for Rebus’s benefit: ‘Kenny’s a motorcycle messenger.’

‘Oh,’ said Rebus, taking his seat again.

‘Yeah, that’s right,’ Kenny enthused, ‘down the City.’ He turned to Rhona. ‘Made a fair old packet today, Rhona,’ he said, winking. Rhona smiled warmly. This young gentleman, this lad of eighteen or so (so much older, so much more worldly than Samantha) had obviously charmed his way into mother’s heart as well as daughter’s. He turned now to Rebus with that same winning way. ‘I make a hundred quid on a good day. Course, it used to be better, back at Big Bang. There were a lot of new companies then, all of them trying to show off how much dosh they had. Still, there’s a killing to be made if you’re fast and reliable. A lot of the customers ask for me by name now. That shows I’m getting somewhere.’ He sat down on the sofa beside Samantha and waited, as did they all, for Rebus to say something.

He knew what was expected of him. Kenny had thrown down a gauntlet, and the message was, Just you dare disapprove of me now. What did the kid want? A pat on the ego? Rebus’s permission to deflower his daughter? A few tips on how to avoid speed-traps? Whatever, Rebus wasn’t about to knuckle under.

‘Can’t be good for your lungs,’ he said instead. ‘All those exhaust fumes.’

Kenny seemed perplexed by this turn in the conversation. ‘I keep myself fit,’ he said, sounding slightly piqued. Good, thought Rebus, I can nettle this little bastard. He knew Rhona was warning him to lay off, warning him with her piercing eyes, but Rebus kept his attention on Kenny.

‘Must be a lot of prospects for a lad like you.’

Kenny cheered up immediately. ‘Yeah,’ he said, ‘I might even set up my own fleet. All you need’s –’ He fell silent as he belatedly noticed that use of ‘lad’, as though he were dressed in shorts and school-cap. But it was too late to go back and correct it, way too late. He had to push on, but now it all sounded like pipe-dreams and playground fantasies. This rozzer might be from Jockland, but he was every bit as oily as an East End old-timer. He’d have to watch his step. And what was happening now? This Jock, this rough-looking tosser in the ill-fitting gear, the completely uncoordinated gear, this ‘man at C&A’ type, was reminiscing about a grocery shop from his youth. For a time, Rebus had been the grocer’s ‘message boy’. (He explained that in Scotland ‘messages’ meant ‘groceries’.) He’d run about on a heavy-framed black bicycle, with a metal rectangle in front of the handlebars. The box of groceries would be held in this rectangle and off he would pedal to do his deliveries.