10 Great Rebus Novels (John Rebus) (84 page)

‘Hiding? Gracious, she didn’t mention anything about that.’

Rebus was beginning to suspect that the secretary was a couple of keys short of a typewriter. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘she didn’t know she was in trouble until today.’

The secretary was nodding. ‘Yes, but she only phoned a little over an hour ago.’

Rebus’s face creased into an all-over frown. ‘What?’

‘Yes, she said she was calling from the Old Bailey. She wanted to know if there were any messages for her. She told me she had time to kill before her second appointment.’

Rebus didn’t bother to ask. He dialled quickly, the receiver gripped in his hand like a weapon. ‘I want to talk to George Flight.’

‘Just a minute, please.’ The ch-ch-ch-ch of a re-routing. Then: ‘Murder Room, Detective Sergeant Walsh speaking.’

‘It’s Inspector Rebus here.’

‘Oh yes?’ The voice had become as rudimentary as a chisel.

‘I need to speak to Flight. It’s urgent.’

‘He’s in a meeting.’

‘Then get him out! I told you, this is urgent.’

There was doubt, cynicism in the Sergeant’s voice. Everyone knew that the Scotsman’s ‘urgent’ wasn’t worth its weight in breath. ‘I can leave a message –’

‘Don’t fuck me around, Walsh! Either get him, or put me on to someone with a spare brain they’re not sitting on!’

Ca-click. Brrrrr. The ultimate put-down. The secretary was staring at Rebus in horror. Perhaps psychologists never got angry. Rebus attempted a reassuring smile, but it came out like a clown’s drunken greasepaint. He made a bowing motion before turning to leave, and was watched all the way out to the stairwell by a woman mortified almost to the core of her being.

Rebus’s face was tingling with a newly stoked anger. Lisa Frazer had tricked him, played him like a fool. Christ, the things he’d told her. Thinking she wanted to help with the Wolfman case. Not realising he was merely part of her project. Christ, the things he had said. What had he said? Too much to recall. Had she been taping everything? Or simply jotting things down after he’d left? It didn’t matter. What mattered was that he had seen in her something solid and believable amidst a sea of chaos. And she had been Janus. Using him. Jesus Christ, she had even slept with him. Was that, too, part of the project, part of her little experiment? How could he ever be sure it wasn’t? It had seemed genuine enough, but . . . He had opened his mind to her, as she had opened her body to him. It was not a fair exchange.

‘The bitch!’ he exploded, stopping dead. ‘The lying little bitch!’

Why hadn’t she told him? Why hadn’t she just explained everything? He would have helped her, he would have found time for her. No, he wouldn’t. It was a lie. A research student? A project? He would have shown her the door. Instead he had listened to her, had believed her, had learned from her. Yes, it was true. He had learned a lot from her. About psychology, about the mind of the killer. Had learned from her books. Yes, but that wasn’t the point. The point was that it had all become crass and diluted, now that he knew her for what she was.

‘Bitch.’ But his voice was softer, his throat tightening, as though a hand had slid around it and was slowly applying pressure. He swallowed hard, and began to take deep breaths. Calm down, John. What did it matter? What did any of it matter? It mattered, he answered himself, because he felt something for her. Or had felt something for her. No, still did feel something. Something he thought might have been returned.

‘Who are you trying to kid?’ Look at him, overweight and in his forties. Stuck at Inspector level and going nowhere except, if Flight carried out his promise, down. Divorced. A daughter distraught and mixing with darkness. Someone in London with a kitchen knife and a secret and a knowledge of Lisa. It was all wrong. He’d been clutching at Lisa the way drowning men reached out for a thin snap of straw. Stupid old man.

He stood at the main door to the building, not really sure now. Should he confront her, or let it go, never see her again? Usually he relished confrontation, found it nourishing and exciting. But today, maybe not.

She was at the Old Bailey to interview Malcolm Chambers. He, too, was at this moment being tricked by her mock credentials, by that falsely prefixed ‘Doctor’. Everyone admired Malcolm Chambers. He was smart, he was on the side of the law, and he made pots of money. Rebus had known coppers who were none of these; most could score only one out of three, a few managed two. Chambers would sweep Lisa Frazer off her feet. She would loathe him, until that loathing mingled with awe, and then she’d probably think that she loved him. Well, good luck to her.

He’d head back to the station, say his farewells, pack his bags, and head north. They could get along without him very well. The case was heading nowhere until the Wolfman bit again. Yet they had so much now, knew so much about him, had come so close to opening him up like a soft fat peach. Maybe he’d bite Lisa Frazer. What the hell was she doing at the Old Bailey when she should be in hiding? He needed to speak to Flight. What the hell was Flight up to anyway?

‘Ach, to hell with the lot of you,’ he muttered, plunging his hands into his pockets.

Two students, their voices loudly American, were heading towards him. They seemed excited, the way students always did, discussing this or that concept, ready to change the way the world thought. They wanted to get past, wanted to go into the building. He moved aside for them, but they didn’t so much move past him as
through
him, as though he were insubstantial as exhaust fumes.

‘Like, y’know, I think she likes me, but I’m not sure I’m ready for something like –’

So much for difficult concepts, thought Rebus. Why should students be different from anyone else in the population? Why should they be thinking (and talking), about something other than sex?

‘Yeah,’ said the other one. Rebus wondered how comfortable he felt in his thick white T-shirt and thicker checked lumberjack shirt. The day was sticky. ‘Yeah,’ the American repeated. His accent reminded Rebus of Lisa’s softer Canadian tones.

‘But get this,’ continued his companion, their voices fading as they moved deeper into the building, ‘she
says
her mother hates Americans because one of them near raped her in the war.’

Get this. Where had Rebus heard that expression before? He fumbled in his jacket pocket and found a folded piece of paper. Unfolded it and began to read.

‘GET THIS, I’M NOT HOMOSEXUL, O.K.?’ It was the photocopy of the Wolfman’s letter to Lisa.

Get this
. It did have a transatlantic ring to it, didn’t it? A curious way altogether of starting a letter. Get this. Be warned, watch out. There were several ways of starting a letter so that the reader knew he was to pay particular attention to it. But
get this
?

What did they know, or what did they suspect, about the Wolfman? He knew about police procedure (past offender, copper, both were possible). He was a he, if Jan Crawford were to be believed. He was quite tall, she thought. In the restaurant, Lisa Frazer had added her own ideas: he was conservative; most of the time he not only seemed normal, he was normal; he was, in her phrase, ‘psychologically mature’. And he had posted a letter to Lisa from EC4. EC4, wasn’t that where the Old Bailey was? He recalled his first and only visit to the building. The courtroom, and seeing Kenny Watkiss there. Then meeting Malcolm Chambers. What was it Chambers had said to George Flight?

Royally shafted. Own team. I don’t like. Flight, I don’t like being royally shafted . . . own team . . . get this. Get this, George
.

Jesus Christ! Every ball on the table suddenly fell into a pocket until only the cue ball and the black were left. Every single ball.

‘
Get this, George, I don’t like being royally shafted by my own team
.’

Malcolm Chambers had studied in the USA for a while. Flight had told Rebus that. You tended to pick up mannerisms when you wanted to fit into a new and strange place.
Get this
. Rebus had tried to avoid the temptation in London, but it was strong. Studied in the USA. And now he was with Lisa Frazer. Lisa the student, Lisa the psychologist, Lisa with her photo in the newspapers.
Get this
. Oh, how the Wolfman must hate her. She was a psychologist after all and the psychologists had pronounced him gay, they had insights into what was wrong with him. He didn’t think anything was wrong with him. But something was. Something that was slowly taking him over.

Old Bailey was in EC4. The Wolfman, rattled, had slipped up and posted his letter from EC4.

It was Malcolm Chambers, Malcolm Chambers was the Wolfman. Rebus couldn’t explain it, couldn’t exactly justify it, but he knew it all the same. It was like a dark polluted wave rolling over him, anointing him. Malcolm Chambers. Someone who knew about police procedure, someone above suspicion, someone so clean you had to scratch beneath the skin to find the filth.

Rebus was running. He was running along Gower Street in what he hoped was the right direction for the City. He was running and he was craning his neck to seek out a taxi. There was one ahead of him, at the corner beside the British Museum, but it was picking up a fare. Students or tourists. Japanese. Grins and cameras. Four of them, two men, two young women. Rebus stuck his head into the back of the cab, where two of them were already seated.

‘Out!’ he yelled, jerking a thumb towards the pavement.

‘Oi, mate, what’s your game?’ The driver was so fat he could barely turn in his seat.

‘I said out!’ Rebus grabbed an arm and pulled. Either the young man was surprisingly light, or else Rebus had found hidden strength, for the body fairly flew from its seat, uttering a string of high-pitched comment as it went.

‘And you.’

The girl followed obligingly and Rebus hurled himself into the cab, slamming shut the door.

‘Drive!’ he yelled.

‘I’m not moving till I –’

Rebus shoved his ID against the window separating the back seats of the taxi from the front.

‘Inspector Rebus!’ he called. ‘This is an emergency. I need to get to the Old Bailey. Break every traffic law you like, I’ll sort it out later. But get your fucking skates on!’

The driver responded by switching his headlights on full beam before setting out into the traffic.

‘Use your horn!’ Rebus called. The driver did so. A surprising number of cars eased out of his way. Rebus was on the edge of his seat, gripping it with both hands to stop himself being thrown about. ‘How long will it take?’

‘This time of day? Ten or fifteen minutes. What’s the matter, guv? Can’t they start without you?’

Rebus smiled sourly. That was just the problem. Without him, the Wolfman could start whenever he liked. ‘I need to use your radio,’ he said. The driver slid his window further open.

‘Be my guest,’ he said, pulling the small microphone up towards Rebus. He’d worked on the cabs for twenty-odd years, but he’d never had a fare like this.

In fact, he was so excited, they were halfway there before he remembered to switch on the meter.

Rebus had told Flight as much as he could, trying not to sound hysterical. Flight sounded dubious about the whole thing, but agreed to send men to the Old Bailey. Rebus didn’t blame George Flight for being wary. Hard to justify arresting a pillar of society on the strength of a gut feeling. Rebus remembered what else Lisa Frazer had said about serial killers: that they were products of their environments; that their ambitions had been thwarted, leading them to kill members of the social group above them. Well, that certainly wasn’t true in Malcolm Chambers’s case, was it? And what had she said about the Wolfman? His attacks were ‘non-confrontational’, so perhaps he was like that in his working life. Hah! So much for theory. But now Rebus began to doubt his own instincts. Jesus, what if he
was
wrong? What if the theory was right? He was going to look more than a little psychologically disturbed himself.

Then he recalled something George Flight had said. You could build up as neat a picture as you liked of the killer, but it wouldn’t give you a name and address. Psychology was all well and good, but you couldn’t beat a good old-fashioned hunch.

‘Nearly there, guv.’

Rebus tried to keep his breathing regular. Be calm, John, be calm. However, there were no police cars waiting by the entrance to the Old Bailey. No sirens and armed officers, just people milling around, people finishing work for the day, people sharing a joke. Rebus left the cab driver unpaid and untipped – ‘I’ll settle later’ – and pushed open the heavy glass door. Behind more bulletproof glass stood two security personnel. Rebus stuck his ID in front of their noses. One of them pointed towards the two vertical glass cylinders by which people were admitted to the building one at a time. Rebus went to one cylinder and waited. Nothing happened. Then he remembered, pushed the heel of his hand against the button and the cylinder door opened. He walked in, and waited for what seemed an eternity while the door slid shut behind him, before the door in front slid just as slowly open.

Another guard stood beside the metal detection equipment. Rebus, still holding open his ID, walked quickly past until he found himself behind the bulletproof glass of the reception area.

‘Can I help?’ said one of the security men.

‘Malcolm Chambers,’ said Rebus. ‘He’s a barrister. I need to see him urgently.’

‘Mr Chambers? Hold on, I’ll just check.’

‘I don’t want him to know I’m here,’ Rebus warned. ‘I just want to know where I can find him.’

‘Just one moment.’ The guard moved off, consulting with one of his companions, then slowly going through a sheet of paper attached to a clipboard. Rebus’s heart was pounding. He felt like he was about to explode. He couldn’t just stand here. He had to
do
something. Patience, John. Less haste, more speed, as his father had always said. But what the hell did that mean anyway? Surely haste was a kind of speed?

The guard was coming back.

‘Yes, Inspector. Mr Chambers has a young lady with him at present. I’m told they’re sitting together upstairs.’

Upstairs meant the concourse outside the courtrooms. Rebus flew up the imposing flight of steps two at a time. Marble. There was a lot of marble around him. And wood. And glass. The windows seemed huge. Bewigged counsels came down a spiral staircase, deep in conversation. A frayed-looking woman smoked a cheap cigarette as she waited for someone. It was a quiet pandemonium. People were moving past Rebus, moving in the opposite direction from him. Juries, finished for the day. Solicitors and guilty-looking clients. The woman rose to greet her son. The son’s solicitor had a bored, drawn look. The concourse was emptying rapidly, the stairs taking people down to more glass cylinders and to the outside world.