Strip Jack (17 page)

At last, the surface improved, and he was driving on gravel. As he turned a long, high-cambered bend, he found himself suddenly in front of a house. On the grass outside was parked a police Mini Metro. A narrow stream trickled past the front entrance. There was no garden to speak of, just meadow and then forest, and a smell of wet pine in the air. In the distance, beyond the back of the house, the land climbed and climbed. Rebus got out of the car, feeling his nerves jangle back into position. The door of the Metro had already opened, and out stepped a farm labourer in police uniform.

It was like some sort of Guinness challenge: how large a man can you get in the front of a Mini Metro? He was also young, late teens or early twenties. He gave a big rubicund smile.

‘Inspector Rebus? Constable Moffat.’ The hand Rebus shook was as large as a coal shovel but surprisingly smooth, almost delicate. ‘Detective Sergeant Knox was going to be here, but something came up. He sends his apologies and hopes I’ll do instead, this being my neck of the woods, so to speak.’

Rebus, who was rubbing his neck at this point, smiled at the joke. Then he pressed a thumb either side of his spine and straightened up, exhaling noisily. Vertebrae clicked and crunched.

‘Long drive, eh?’ Constable Moffat commented. ‘But you’ve made not bad time. I’ve only been here five minutes myself.’

‘Have you had another look round?’

‘Not yet, no. Thought I’d best wait.’

Rebus nodded. ‘Let’s start with the outside. Big place, isn’t it? I mean, after that road up to it I was expecting something a bit more basic.’

‘Well, the house was here first, that’s the point. Used to have a fine garden, well-kept drive, and that forest was hardly there at all. Before my time, of course. I think the place was built in the 1920s. Part of the Kelman estate. The estate got sold off bit by bit. There used to be estate workers to keep the place in check. Not these days, and this is what happens.’

‘Still, the house looks in good nick.’

‘Oh, aye, but you’ll see there’s a few slates missing, and the gutters could do with patching up.’

Moffat spoke with the confidence of the DIYer. They were circling the house. It was a two-storey affair of solid-looking stone. To Rebus’s mind, it wouldn’t have been out of place on the outskirts of Edinburgh; it was just a bit odd to find it in a clearing in the wilderness. There was a back door, beside which sat a solitary dustbin.

‘Do the bins get emptied around here?’

‘They do if you can get them down to the roadside.’

Rebus lifted the lid. The smell was truly awful. A rotting side of salmon, by the shape of it, and some chicken or duck bones.

‘I’m surprised the animals haven’t been at those,’ Moffat said. ‘The deer or the wildcats . . .’

‘Looks as though it’s been in the bin long enough, doesn’t it?’

‘I wouldn’t say they were last week’s leavings, sir, if that’s what you’re getting at.’

Rebus looked at Moffat. ‘That’s what I’m getting at,’ he agreed. ‘The whole of last week, and for a few days before that, Mrs Jack was away from home. Driving a black BMW. Supposedly staying here.’

‘Well, if she did, nobody I’ve spoken to saw her.’

Rebus held up a door key. ‘Let’s see if the inside of the house tells a different story, eh?’ But first he returned to his car and produced two pairs of clear polythene gloves. He handed one pair to the constable. ‘I’m not even sure these’ll fit you,’ he told him. But they did. ‘Right, try not to touch anything, even though you’re wearing gloves. It might be you could smear or wipe a fingerprint. Remember, this is murder we’re talking about, not joyriding or cattle rustling. Okay?’

‘Yes, sir.’ Moffat sniffed the air. ‘Did you enjoy your chips? I can smell the vinegar from here.’

Rebus slammed shut the car door. ‘Let’s go.’

The house smelt damp. At least, the narrow hallway did. The doors off this hallway were wide open, and Rebus stepped through the first, into a room which stretched from the front of the house to the back. The room had been decorated with comfort in mind. There were three sofas, a couple of armchairs, and beanbags and scatter cushions. There were TV and video, and a hi-fi system sitting on the floor, one of its speakers lying side on. There was also mess.

Mugs, cups and glasses for a start. Rebus sniffed one of the mugs. Wine. Well, the vinegary stuff left in it had once been wine. Empty bottles of burgundy, champagne, armagnac. And stains – on the carpet, on the scatter cushions, and on one wall, where a glass had landed with some force, shattering on impact. Ashtrays overflowed, and there was a small hand-mirror half hidden under one of the floor cushions. Rebus bent down over it. Traces of white powder around its rim. Cocaine. He left it where it was and approached the hi-fi, examining the choice of music. Cassettes, mostly. Fleetwood Mac, Eric Clapton, Simple Minds . . . and opera.
Don Giovanni
and
The Marriage of Figaro
.

‘A party, sir?’

‘Yes, but how recent?’ Rebus got the feeling that this wasn’t all the result of a single evening. A load of bottles looked to have been pushed to one side, making a little oasis of space on the floor, in the midst of which sat a solitary bottle – still upright – and two mugs, one with lipstick on its rim.

‘And how many people, do you reckon?’

‘Half a dozen, sir.’

‘You could be right. A lot of booze for six people.’

‘Maybe they don’t bother clearing up between parties.’

Just what Rebus was thinking. ‘Let’s have a look around.’

Across the hall there was a front room which had probably once been dining room or lounge, but now served as a makeshift bedroom. A mattress took up half the floor space, sleeping bags covering the other half. There were a couple of empty bottles in here, too, but nothing to drink out of. A few art prints had been pinned to the walls. On the mattress sat a pair of shoes, men’s, size nine, into one of which had been stuffed a blue sock.

The only room left was the kitchen. Pride of place seemed to go to a microwave oven, beside which sat empty tins, and packets of something called Microwave Popcorn. The tins had contained lobster bisque and venison stew. The double sink was filled with dishes and grey, speckled water. On a foldaway table sat unopened bottles of lemonade, packs of orange juice, and a bottle of cider. There was a larger pine breakfast table, its surface dotted with soup droppings but free from dishes and other detritus. On the floor around it, however, lay empty crisp packets, a knocked-over ashtray, bread-sticks, cutlery, a plastic apron and some serviettes.

‘Quick way of clearing a table,’ said Moffat.

‘Yes,’ said Rebus. ‘Have you ever seen
The Postman Always Rings Twice
? The later version, with Jack Nicholson?’

Moffat shook his head. ‘I saw him in
The Shining
though.’

‘Not the same thing at all, Constable. Only, there’s a bit in the film where . . . you must have heard about it . . . where
Jack Nicholson and the boss’s wife clear the kitchen table so they can have a spot of you-know-what on it.’

Moffat looked at the table suspiciously. ‘No,’ he said. Clearly, this idea was new to him. ‘What did you say the film was called . . .?’

‘It’s only an idea,’ said Rebus.

Then there was upstairs. A bathroom, the cleanest room in the house. Beside the toilet sat a pile of magazines, but they were old, too old to yield any clue. And two more bedrooms, one a makeshift attempt like the one downstairs, the other altogether more serious, with a newish-looking wooden four-poster, wardrobe, chest of drawers and dressing table. Improbably, above the bed had been mounted the head of a Highland cow. Rebus stared at the stuff on the dressing table: powders, lipsticks, scents and paints. There were clothes in the wardrobe – mostly women’s clothes, but also men’s denims and cords. Gregor Jack could give no description of what clothing his wife had taken with her when she left. He couldn’t even be sure that she’d taken any until he noticed that her small green suitcase was missing.

The green suitcase jutting out from beneath the bed. Rebus pulled it out and opened it. It was empty. So were most of the drawers.

‘We keep a change of clothes up there,’ Jack had told detectives. ‘Enough for emergencies, that’s all.’

Rebus stared at the bed. Its pillows had been fluffed up, and the duvet lay straight and smooth across it. A sign of recent habitation? God knows. This was it, the last room in the house. What had he learned at the end of his hundred-odd-mile drive? He’d learned that Mrs Jack’s suitcase – the one Mr Jack
said
she’d taken with her – was here. Anything else? Nothing. He sat down on the bed. It crackled beneath him. He stood up again and pulled back the duvet. The bed was covered in newspapers, Sunday newspapers, all of them open at the same story.

MP Found in Sex Den Raid.

So she’d been here, and she knew. Knew about the raid,
about Operation Creeper. Unless someone else had been here and planted this stuff . . . No, keep to the obvious. His eye caught something else. He moved aside one of the pillows. Tied to the post behind it was a pair of black tights. Another pair had been tied to the opposite post. Moffat was staring quizzically, but Rebus thought the young man had learned enough for one day. It was an interesting scenario all the same. Tied to her bed and left there. Moffat could have come, looked the house over, and gone, without ever being aware of her presence upstairs. But it wouldn’t work. If you were
really
going to restrain someone, you wouldn’t use tights. Too easy to escape. Tights were for sex-games. For restraint, you’d use something stronger, twine or handcuffs . . . Like the handcuffs in Gregor Jack’s dustbin?

At least now Rebus knew that she’d known. So why hadn’t she got in touch with her husband? There was no telephone at the lodge.

‘Where’s the nearest call-box?’ he asked Moffat, who still seemed interested in the tights.

‘About a mile and a half away, on the road outside Cragstone Farm.’

Rebus checked his watch. It was four o’clock. ‘Okay, I’d like to take a look at it, then we’ll call it a day. But I want this place gone over for fingerprints. Christ knows, there should be enough of them. Then we need to check and double check the shops, petrol stations, pubs, hotels. Say, within a twenty-mile radius.’

Moffat looked doubtful. ‘That’s an awful lot of places.’

Rebus ignored him. ‘A black BMW. I think some more handouts are being printed today. There’s a photo of Mrs Jack, and the car description and registration. If she was up this way – and she
was – some
body must have seen her.’

‘Well . . . folk keep to themselves, you know.’

‘Yes, but they’re not blind, are they? And if we’re lucky, they won’t be suffering from amnesia either. Come on, sooner we look at that phone-box, the sooner I can get to my digs.’

Actually, Rebus’s original plan had been to sleep in the car and claim the price of a B&B, pocketing the money. But the weather looked uninviting, and the thought of spending a night cramped in his car like a half-shut knife . . . So, on the way to the phone-box, he signalled to a stop outside a roadside cottage advertising bed & breakfast and knocked on the door. The elderly woman seemed suspicious at first, but finally agreed that she had a vacancy. Rebus told her he’d be back in an hour, giving her time to ‘air’ the room. Then he returned to his car and followed Moffat’s careful driving all the way to Cragstone Farm.

It wasn’t much of a farm actually. A short track led from the main road to a cluster of buildings: house, byre, some sheds and a barn. The phone-box was by the side of the main road, fifty yards along from the farm and on the other side of the road, next to a lay-by big enough to allow them to park their two cars. It was one of the original red boxes.

‘They daren’t change it,’ said Moffat. ‘Mrs Corbie up at the farm would have a fit.’ Rebus didn’t understand this at first, but then he opened the door to the phone-box – and he understood. For one thing, it had a carpet – a good carpet, too, a thick-piled offcut. There was a smell of air freshener, and a posy of field flowers had been placed in a small glass jar on the shelf beside the apparatus.

‘It’s better kept than my flat,’ Rebus said. ‘When can I move in?’

‘It’s Mrs Corbie,’ Moffat said with a grin. ‘She reckons a dirty phone-box would reflect badly on her, seeing her house is closest. She’s been keeping it spick and span since God knows when.’

A pity though. Rebus had been hoping for something, some hint or clue. But supposing there had been anything, it must certainly have been tidied away . . .

‘I’d like to talk to Mrs Corbie.’

‘It’s a Tuesday,’ said Moffat. ‘She’s at her sister’s on a Tuesday.’ Rebus pointed back along the road to where a car was braking hard, signalling to pull into the farm’s driveway. ‘What about him?’

Moffat looked, then smiled coldly. ‘Her son, Alec. A bit of a tearaway. He won’t tell us anything.’

‘Gets into trouble, does he?’

‘Speeding mostly. He’s one of the local boy racers. Can’t say I blame him. There’s not much to occupy the teenagers round here.’

‘You can’t be much more than a teenager yourself, Constable.
You
didn’t get into trouble.’

‘I had the Church, sir. Believe me, the fear of God is something to reckon with . . .’

Rebus’s landlady, Mrs Wilkie, was something to reckon with, too. It started when he was changing in his bedroom. It was a nice bedroom, a bit overdone on the frills and finery, but with a comfortable bed and a twelve-inch black and white television. Mrs Wilkie had shown him the kitchen, and told him he should feel free to make himself tea and coffee whenever he felt like it. Then she had shown him the bathroom, and told him the water was hot if he felt like a bath. Then she had led him back to the kitchen and told him that he could make himself a cup of tea or coffee whenever he felt like it.

Rebus didn’t have the heart to tell her he’d heard it all before. She was tiny, with a tiny voice. Between his first visit and his second, she had dressed in her best B&B-keeper’s clothes and tied some pearls around her neck. He reckoned her to be in her late seventies. She was a widow, her husband Andrew having died in 1982, and she did the B&B ‘as much for the company as the money’. She always seemed to get nice guests, interesting people like the German jam-buyer who had stayed for a few nights last autumn . . .