10 Great Rebus Novels (John Rebus) (70 page)

‘Hello, love,’ says the woman. ‘Anything you want?’

‘How much for the night?’

‘For you, love, a hundred.’

‘Very well.’ She turns and starts back towards her own street, her own house, so much safer there than out here. The woman follows noisily a yard or two behind, seeming to understand. She does not let the woman catch up until she is at the front door and the key is in the lock. The gallery beckons. Only it doesn’t look like a gallery any more.

It looks like a butcher’s block.

‘Nice place you’ve got, love.’

She puts a finger to her lips. ‘No talking.’ The woman begins to look suspicious, looks as though she’s thinking twice about being here. So she goes to her and grabs at a breast, planting a clumsy, smeared kiss across puffy lips. The prostitute looks startled for a second, then manages a rehearsed smile.

‘Well, you’re certainly not a gentleman,’ she says.

She nods, pleased with this remark. The front door is locked now. And she goes to the door of the gallery, slips the key in, unlocks it.

‘In here, love?’ The woman is removing her coat as she walks across the threshold. The coat is down past her shoulders by the time she sees the room itself. But by then, of course, it’s too late, far too late.

She moves in on her, like a trained worker on a production line. Hand over the mouth, good pressure on the knife and a quick backward arc before the thrust. She has often wondered if they see the knife, or are their eyes closed in terror by then? She imagines them with eyes bulging open, focussing on the knife as, point directed towards them, it swings back and then flies forward towards their face. She can find out, can’t she? All she needs is a strategically placed wall-mirror. Must remember that for next time.

Gurgle, gurgle. The gallery is such a marvellous setting, poised between Apollo and Dionysus. The body slips to the floor. Time for the real work now. Her brain is humming – mummydaddymummydaddy mummydaddymummydaddy – as she crouches to her task.

‘It’s only a game,’ she whispers, her voice a mere tremble at the back of her throat. ‘Only a game.’ She hears the woman’s words again:
certainly not a gentleman
. No, certainly not. Her laughter is harsh and abrupt. Suddenly, she feels it again. No! Not already!
Next time
. The knife twitches. She hasn’t even finished with this one. She can’t possibly do another tonight! It would be madness. Sheer madness. But the craving is there, an absolute and unappeasable hunger. This time with a mirror. She covers her eyes with a bloodstained hand.

‘Stop!’ she cries. ‘Stop it, daddy! Mummy! Make it stop! Please, make it stop!’

But that’s the problem, as she knows only too well. Nobody
can
make it stop, nobody
will
make it stop. On it must go, night after night now. Night after night. No letting up, no pausing for breath.

Night after night after night.

‘You’ve got to be kidding!’

Rebus was too tired to be truly angry, but there was enough exasperation in his voice to worry the caller on the other end of the telephone, delegated to order Rebus to Glasgow.

‘That case isn’t supposed to be heard until the week after next.’

‘They moved it,’ says the voice.

Rebus groaned. He lay back on his hotel bed with the receiver pressed to his ear and checked his watch. Eight thirty. He’d slept soundly last night, waking at seven, dressed quietly so as not to disturb Lisa and had left her a note before making his exit. His nose had led him to the hotel with only a couple of wrong turnings along the way and now he had walked into this telephone call.

‘They brought it forward,’ the voice is saying. ‘It starts today. They need your testimony, Inspector.’

As if Rebus didn’t know. He knows that all he has to do is go into the witness box and say he saw Morris Gerald Cafferty (known in the protection game as ‘Big Ger’) accept one hundred pounds from the landlord of the City Arms pub in Grangemouth. It’s as easy as that, but he needs to be there to say it. The case against Cafferty, boss of a thuggish protection and gaming racket, is not airtight. In fact, it’s got more punctures than a blind dressmaker’s thumb.

He resigns himself to it. Must it be? Yes, it must be. But there was still the problem of logistics.

‘It’s all been taken care of,’ says the voice. ‘We did try phoning you last night, but you were never there. Catch the first available shuttle from Heathrow. We’ll have a car meet you and bring you into Glasgow. The prosecution reckons he’ll call you about half past three, so there’s time enough. With any luck, you can be back in London by tonight.’

‘Gee, thanks,’ says Rebus, voice so thick with irony the words hardly escape into the air.

‘You’re welcome,’ says the voice.

He found that the Piccadilly Line went to Heathrow, and Piccadilly Circus tube was right outside the hotel. So things started well enough, though the tube ride itself was slow and stifling. At Heathrow, he picked up his ticket and had just enough time for a dash into the Skyshop. He picked up a
Glasgow Herald
, then saw the row of tabloids on another shelf: SECRET LIFE OF GAY WOLFMAN; SICK KILLER ‘NEEDS HELP’ SAY POLICE; CATCH THIS MADMAN.

Cath Farraday had done well. He bought a copy of all three papers as well as the
Herald
and made for the Departure Lounge. Now that his mind was working, he saw all around him people reading the same headlines and the stories below them. But would the Wolfman see the stories? And if so, would he or she make some kind of move? Hell, the whole thing might be about to crack open and here he was heading four hundred miles north. Damn the judicial system, the judges and advocates and solicitors and all. The Cafferty case had probably been brought forward so that it would not interfere with a golf game or a school sports day. Some spoilt child’s involvement with an egg-and-spoon race might be behind this whole breathless journey. Rebus tried to calm down, sucking in gulps of air and releasing them slowly. He didn’t like flying as it was. Never since his days in the SAS, when they had dropped him from a helicopter. Jesus! That was no way to calm yourself.

‘Will passengers for British Airways Super Shuttle flight –’

The voice was cool and precise, triggering a mass movement. People rose to their feet, checked their baggage and made for the gate just mentioned. Which gate? He’d missed the announcement. Was it his flight? Maybe he should phone ahead so they would have the car waiting. He
hated
flying. That was why he had come down by train on Sunday. Sunday? And today was Wednesday. It felt like over a week had passed. In fact, he’d been in London only two full days.

Boarding. Oh, Christ. Where was his ticket? He’d no luggage, nothing to worry about there. The newspapers wriggled beneath his arm, trying to break free and fall in a mess on the floor. He pushed them back together again, squeezing them tightly with his elbow. He had to calm down, had to think about Cafferty, had to get everything straight in his mind, so that the defence could find no chink in his story. Keep to the facts, forget about the Wolfman, forget about Lisa, Rhona, Sammy, Kenny, Tommy Watkiss, George Flight . . . Flight! He hadn’t notified Flight. They would wonder where he was. He’d have to phone when he landed. He should phone now, but then he might miss the shuttle. Forget it. Concentrate on Cafferty. They would have his notes ready for him when he arrived, so he could go through them before he entered the witness box. There were only the two witnesses, weren’t there? The frightened publican, whom they had more or less coerced into giving evidence, and Rebus himself. He had to be strong, confident and believable. He caught sight of himself in a full-length mirror as he made for the Departure Gate. He looked like he’d spent a night on the tiles. The memory of the night made him smile. Everything would be all right. He should phone Lisa, too, just to say . . . what? Thank you, he supposed. Up the ramp now, the narrow doorway in front of him, flanked by smiling steward and stewardess.

‘Good morning, sir.’

‘Good morning.’ He saw they were standing by a stack of complimentary newspapers. Christ, he could have saved himself a few bawbees.

The aisle was narrow too. He had to squeeze past businessmen who were stuffing coats, briefcases and bags into the luggage lockers above their seats. He found his own window seat and fell into it, wrestling with the seatbelt and securing it. Outside, the groundcrew were still working. A plane took off smoothly in the distance, the dull roar perceptible even from here. A plump middle-aged woman sat beside him, spread her newspaper out so that half of it fell onto Rebus’s right leg, and began to read. She had offered no greeting, no acknowledgment of his existence.

FYT, madam, he thought to himself, still staring out of the window. But then she gave a loud ‘tsk’, prompting him to turn towards her. She was staring at him through thick-lensed spectacles, staring and at the same time rapping a finger against the newspaper.

‘Nobody’s safe these days,’ she said, as Rebus examined the news story and saw that it was some fanciful piece about the Wolfman. ‘Nobody. I won’t let my daughter out these nights. A nine o’clock curfew I told her, until they catch him. Even then you can never be sure. I mean, he could be
anybody
.’

Her look told Rebus that he, too, was not beyond suspicion. He smiled reassuringly.

‘I wasn’t going to go,’ she went on, ‘but Frank – that’s my husband – he said it was all booked so I should.’

‘Visiting Glasgow, are you?’

‘Not exactly visiting. My son lives there. He’s an accountant in the oil industry. He paid for my ticket, so I could see how he’s getting on. I worry about him, what with being so far away and everything. I mean, it’s a rough place Glasgow, isn’t it? You read about it in the papers. Anything could happen up there.’

Yes, thought Rebus, his smile fixed, so unlike London. There was a sound like an electronic doorbell, and the Fasten Seatbelts sign came on, next to where the No Smoking sign was already lit. Jesus, Rebus could kill for a cigarette. Was he in Smoking or No Smoking? He couldn’t make out, and couldn’t remember which he’d plumped for at the ticket desk. Was smoking allowed on airplanes these days anyway? If God had meant man to smoke at 20,000 feet, wouldn’t he have given us all longer necks? The woman next to him looked to have no neck at all. Pity the poor serial killer who tried cutting his way through
that
throat.

That was a terrible thing to think, God, please forgive me
. As penance, he began to concentrate on the woman’s conversation, right up until take-off, when even she was forced to stop talking for a moment or two. Rebus, taking advantage of the situation, tucked his newspapers into the pocket on the back of the seat in front of him, leaned his head against the back of his own seat, and promptly fell asleep.

George Flight tried Rebus’s hotel again from the Old Bailey, only to be told that Rebus had ‘left in a hurry’ earlier in the morning after asking how best to get to Heathrow.

‘Looks like he’s done a runner,’ DC Lamb commented. ‘Frightened off by our consummate professionalism, I shouldn’t wonder.’

‘Leave off, Lamb,’ growled Flight. ‘Mind you, it is a bit mysterious. Why would he leave without saying anything?’

‘Because he’s a Jock, with all due respect, sir. He was probably worried you were going to drop a bill into his lap.’

Flight smiled obligingly, but his thoughts were elsewhere. Last night Rebus had been seeing that psychologist, Dr Frazer, and now he was in a hurry to leave London. What had happened? Flight’s nose twitched. He liked a good honest mystery.

He was in court to have a quiet word with Malcolm Chambers. Chambers was prosecuting counsel in a case involving one of Flight’s snouts. The snout had been incredibly stupid, had been caught red-handed. Flight had told the man there was little he could do, but he would do what he could. The snout had given him a lot of very useful tips in the past year, helping put a few fairly nasty individuals behind bars. Flight guessed he owed the man a helping hand. So he would talk to Chambers, not to influence the prosecutor – that was unthinkable, naturally – but to fill in some details on the snout’s useful contribution to police work and to society, a contribution which would come to a sad end should Chambers push for the maximum sentence.

Et cetera.

Dirty job, but someone had to do it and besides, Flight was proud of his network of informers. The idea of that network suddenly splintering was . . . well, best not to consider it. He wasn’t looking forward to going to Chambers, begging bowl in hand. Especially not after the farce involving Tommy Watkiss. Watkiss was back out on the street, probably telling the story in pubs up and down the East End to a laughing chorus of hangers-on. All about how the arresting constable had said, ‘Hello, Tommy, what’s going on here?’ Flight doubted Chambers would ever forget it, or let Flight forget it. What the hell, best get the begging over and done with.

‘Hello there.’ It was a female voice, close behind him. He turned to face the cat-like eyes and bright red lips of Cath Farraday.

‘Hello, Cath, what are you doing here?’

She explained that she was at the Old Bailey to meet with the influential crime reporter from one of the more upmarket dailies.

‘He’s halfway through covering a fraud case,’ she explained, ‘and never strays too far from the courtroom.’

Flight nodded, feeling awkward in her presence. From the corner of his eye he could see that Lamb was enjoying his discomfort, so he tried to be brave and steeled himself to meet the full force of her gaze.

‘I saw the pieces you placed in today’s press,’ he said.

She folded her arms. ‘I can’t say I’m optimistic about their chances of success.’

‘Do the reporters know we’re spinning them a yarn?’

‘One or two were a bit suspicious, but they’ve got a lot of hungry readers out there starving for want of another Wolfman story.’ She unfolded her arms and reached into her shoulder-bag. ‘Ergo, they’ve got a lot of hungry editors, too. I think they’ll take any tidbit we throw them.’ She had brought a pack of cigarettes from her bag, and, without offering them out, lit one, dropped the pack back into her bag and snapped the bag shut.