Tooth And Nail (17 page)

Rebus ate two pies in one pub, standing at the bar with his left foot resting on the polished brass rail. He was biding his time. The plane had landed on schedule, the car had been waiting, the journey into Glasgow had been fast. He arrived in the city centre at twenty minutes past twelve, and would not be called to give his evidence until around three.

Time to kill.

He left the pub and took what he hoped might be a shortcut (though he had no ready destination in mind) down a cobbled lane towards some railway arches, some crumbling warehouse buildings and a rubble-strewn wasteland. There were a lot of people milling about here, and he realised that what he had thought were piles of rubbish lying around on the damp ground were actually articles for sale. He had stumbled upon a flea market, and by the look of the customers it was where the down and outs did their shopping. Dank unclean clothes lay in bundles, thrown down anywhere. Near them stood the vendors, shuffling their feet, saying nothing, one or two stoking up a makeshift fire around which others clustered for warmth. The atmosphere was muted. People might cough and hack and wheeze, but they seldom spoke. A few punks, their resplendent mohicans as out of place as a handful of parrots in a cage of sparrows, milled around, not really looking like they meant to buy anything. The locals regarded them with suspicion. Tourists, the collective look said, just bloody tourists.

Beneath the arches themselves were narrow aisles lined with stalls and trestle tables. The smell in here was worse, but Rebus was curious. No out-of-town hypermarket could have provided such a range of wares: broken spectacles, old wireless sets (with this or that knob missing), lamps, hats, tarnished cutlery, purses and wallets, incomplete sets of dominoes and playing cards. One stall seemed to sell nothing but pieces of used soap, most of them looking as though they had come from public conveniences. Another sold false teeth. An old man, hands shaking almost uncontrollably, had found a bottom set he liked, but could not find a top set to match. Rebus wrinkled his face and turned away. The mohicans had opened a game of Cluedo.

‘Hey, pal,’ they called to the stall-holder, ‘there’s nae weapons here. Where’s the dagger an’ the gun an’ that?’

The man looked at the open box. ‘You could improvise,’ he suggested.

Rebus smiled and moved on. London was different to all this. It felt more congested, things moved too quickly, there seemed pressure and stress everywhere. Driving a car from A to B, shopping for groceries, going out for the evening, all were turned into immensely tiring activities. Londoners appeared to him to be on very short fuses indeed. Here, the people were stoics. They used their humour as a barrier against everything Londoners had to take on the chin. Different worlds. Different civilisations. Glasgow had been the second city of the Empire. It had been the first city of Scotland all through the twentieth century.

‘Got a fag, mister?’

It was one of the punks. Now, up close, Rebus saw she was a girl. He’d assumed the group had been all male. They all looked so similar.

‘No, sorry, I’m trying to give up –’

But she had already started to move away, in search of someone, anyone, who could immediately gratify. He looked at his watch. It was gone two, and it might take him half an hour to get from here to the court. The punks were still arguing about the missing Cluedo pieces.

‘I mean, how can you play a game when there’s bits missing? Know what I mean, pal? Like, where’s Colonel Mustard? An’ the board’s nearly torn in half, by the way. How much d’ye want for it?’

The argumentative punk was tall and immensely thin, his size and shape accentuated by the black he wore from tip to toe. ‘Twa ply o’ reek,’ Rebus’s father would have called him. Was the Wolfman fat or thin? tall or short? young or old? did he have a job? a wife? a husband even? Did someone close to him know the truth, and were they keeping quiet? When would he strike next? And where? Lisa had been unable to answer any of these questions. Maybe Flight was right about psychology. So much of it was guesswork, like a game where some of the pieces are missing and nobody knows the rules. Sometimes you ended up playing a game completely different to the original, a game of your own devising.

That was what Rebus needed: a new set of rules in his game against the Wolfman. Rules which would be to his benefit. The newspaper stories were the start of it, but only if the Wolfman made the next move.

Maybe Cafferty would get off this time, but there’d always be another. The board was always prepared for a fresh start.

Rebus gave his evidence and was out of the court by four. He handed the file on the case back to his driver, a balding middle-aged detective sergeant, and settled into the passenger seat.

‘Let me know what happens,’ he said. The driver nodded.

‘Straight back to the airport, Inspector?’ Funny how a Glaswegian accent could be made to sound so sarcastic. The sergeant had managed somehow to make Rebus feel his inferior. Then again, there was little love lost between east and west coasts. There might have been a wall dividing the two, such was their own abiding cold war. The driver was repeating his question, a little louder now.

‘That’s right,’ said Rebus, just as loudly. ‘It’s a jet-setting life in the Lothian and Borders Police.’

His head was fairly thrumming by the time he got back to the hotel in Piccadilly. He needed a quiet night, a night alone. He hadn’t managed to contact Flight or Lisa, but they could wait until tomorrow. For now, he wanted nothing.

Nothing but silence and stillness, lying on the bed and staring at the ceiling, his mind nowhere.

It had been one hell of a week, and the week was only halfway through. He took two paracetamol from the bottle he had brought and washed them down with half a glass of tepid tap-water. The water tasted foul. Was it true that London water had passed through seven sets of kidneys before reaching the drinker? It had an oily quality in his mouth, not the sharp clear taste of the water in Edinburgh. Seven sets of kidneys. He looked at his cases, thinking of the amount of stuff he had brought with him, useless stuff, stuff he would never use. Even the bottle of malt sat more or less untouched.

There was a telephone ringing somewhere. His telephone, but he managed to ignore the fact for fully fifteen seconds. He growled and clawed at the wall with his hand, finally finding the receiver and dragging it to his ear.

‘This had better be good.’

‘Where the fuck have you been?’ It was Flight’s voice, anxious and angry.

‘Good evening to you too, George.’

‘There’s been another killing.’

Rebus sat up and swung his legs off the bed. ‘When?’

‘The body was discovered an hour ago. There’s something else.’ He paused. ‘We caught the killer.’

Now Rebus stood up.

‘What?’

‘We caught him as he was running off.’

Rebus’s knees almost failed him, but he locked them. His voice was unnaturally quiet. ‘Is it him?’

‘Could be.’

‘Where are you?’

‘I’m at HQ. We’ve brought him here. The murder took place in a house off Brick Lane. Not too far from Wolf Street.’

‘In a house?’ That was a surprise. The other murders had all taken place out of doors. But then, as Lisa had said, the pattern kept changing.

‘Yes,’ said Flight. ‘And that’s not all. The killer was found with money on him stolen from the house, and some jewellery and a camera.’

Another break in the pattern. Rebus sat down on the bed again. ‘I see what you’re getting at,’ he said. ‘But the method – ?’

‘Similar, to be sure. Philip Cousins is on his way. He was at a dinner somewhere.’

‘I’m going to the scene, George. I’ll come to see you afterwards.’

‘Fine.’ Flight sounded as though he had hoped for this. Rebus was scrabbling for paper and a pen.

‘What’s the address?’

‘110 Copperplate Street.’

Rebus wrote the address on the back of his travel ticket from the trip to Glasgow.

‘John?’

‘Yes, George?’

‘Don’t go off again without telling me, okay?’

‘Yes, George.’ Rebus paused. ‘Can I go now?’

‘Go on then, bugger off. I’ll see you here later.’

Rebus put down the telephone and felt an immense weariness take control of him, weighting his legs and arms and head. He took several deep breaths and rose to his feet, then walked to the sink and splashed water on his face, rubbing a wet hand around his neck and throat. He looked up, hardly recognising himself in the wall-mounted mirror, sighed and spread his hands either side of his face, the way he’d seen Roy Scheider do once in a film.

‘It’s showtime.’

Rebus’s taxi driver was full of tales of the Krays, Richardson and Jack the Ripper. With Brick Lane their destination, he was especially vociferous on the subject of ‘Old Jack’.

‘Done his first prossie on Brick Lane. Richardson, though, he was evil. Used to torture people in a scrapyard. You knew when he was electrocuting some poor bastard, ’cos the bulb across the scrapyard gates kept flickering.’ Then a low chuckle. A sideways flick of the head. ‘Krays used to drink in that pub on the corner. My youngest used to drink in there. Got in some terrible punch-ups, so I banned him from going. He works in the City, courier sort of stuff, you know, motorbikes.’

Rebus, who had been slouching in the back seat, now gripped the headrest on the front passenger seat and yanked himself forward.

‘Motorbike messenger?’

‘Yeah, makes a bleeding packet. Twice what I take home a week, I’ll tell you that. He’s just bought himself a flat down in Docklands. Only they call them “riverside apartments” these days. That’s a laugh. I know some of the guys who built them. Every bloody shortcut in the book. Hammering in screws instead of screwing them. Plasterboard so thin you can almost see your neighbours, never mind hear them.’

‘A friend of my daughter works as a courier in the City.’

‘Yeah? Maybe I know him. What’s his name?’

‘Kenny.’

‘Kenny?’ He shook his head. Rebus stared at where the silvery hairs on the driver’s neck disappeared into his shirt collar. ‘Nah, I don’t know a Kenny. Kev, yes, and a couple of Chrisses, but not Kenny.’

Rebus sat back again. It struck him that he didn’t know what Kenny’s surname was. ‘Are we nearly there?’ he asked.

‘Two minutes, guv. There’s a lovely shortcut coming up should save us some time. Takes us right past where Richardson used to hang out.’

A crowd of reporters had gathered outside in the narrow street. Housefront, pavement, then road, where the crowd stood, held back by uniformed constables. Did nobody in London possess such a thing as a front garden? Rebus had yet to see a house with a garden, apart from the millionaire blocks in Kensington.

‘John!’ A female voice, escaping from the scrum of newsmen. She pushed her way towards him. He signalled for the line of uniforms to break momentarily, so as to let her through.

‘What are you doing here?’

Lisa looked a little shaken. ‘Heard a newsflash,’ she gasped. ‘Thought I’d come over.’

‘I’m not sure that’s such a good idea, Lisa.’ Rebus was thinking of Jean Cooper’s body. If this were similar …

‘Any comment to make?’ yelled one of the newsmen. Rebus was aware of flashguns, of the bright homing lamps attached to video cameras. Other reporters were shouting now, desperate for a story that would reach the first editions.

‘Come on then,’ said Rebus, pulling Lisa Frazer towards the door of number 110.

Philip Cousins was still dressed in dark suit and tie, suitably funereal. Isobel Penny was in black, too, a full length dress with long, tight sleeves. She did not look funereal. She looked divine. She smiled at Rebus as he entered the cramped living-room, nodding in recognition.

‘Inspector Rebus,’ said Cousins, ‘they said you might drop by.’

‘Never one to miss a good corpse,’ Rebus replied drily. Cousins, stooping over the body, looked up at him.

‘Quite.’

The smell was there, clogging up Rebus’s nostrils and lungs. Some people couldn’t smell it, but he always could. It was strong and salty, rich, clotting, cloying. It smelt like nothing else on earth. And behind it lurked another smell, more bland, like tallow, candle-wax, cold water. The two contrasting smells of life and death. Rebus was willing to bet that Cousins could smell it, but he doubted Isobel Penny could.

A middle-aged woman lay on the floor, an ungainly twist of legs and arms. Her throat had been cut. There were signs of a struggle, ornaments shattered and knocked from their perches, bloody handprints smeared across one wall. Cousins stood up and sighed.

‘Very clumsy,’ he said. He glanced towards Isobel Penny, who was sketching on her notepad. ‘Penny,’ he said, ‘you look quite delightful this evening. Have I told you?’

She smiled again, blushed, but said nothing. Cousins turned to Rebus, ignoring Lisa Frazer’s silent presence. ‘It’s a copycat,’ he said with another sigh, ‘but a copycat of little wit or talent. He’s obviously read the descriptions in the newspapers, which have been detailed but inaccurate. I’d say it was an interrupted burglary. He panicked, went for his knife, and realised that if he made it look like our friend the Wolfman then he might just get away with it.’ He looked down at the corpse again. ‘Not terribly clever. I suppose the vultures have gathered?’

Rebus nodded. ‘When I came in there were about a dozen reporters outside. Probably double that by now. We know what they want to hear, don’t we?’

‘I fear they are going to be disappointed.’ Cousins checked his watch. ‘Not worth going back to dinner. We’ve probably missed the port and cheese. Damned fine table, too. Such a pity.’ He waved his hand in the direction of the body. ‘Anything you’d like to see? Or shall we wrap this one up, as it were?’

Rebus smiled. The humour was as dark as the suit, but any humour was welcome. The smell in the air had been distilled now to that of raw steak and brown sauce. He shook his head. There was nothing more to be done in here. But outside, outside he was about to create an outrage. Flight would hate him for it, in fact everybody would hate him for it. But hate was fine. Hate was an emotion, and without emotion, what else was left? Lisa had already staggered out into the tiny hallway, where a police officer was trying awkwardly to comfort her. As Rebus came out of the room, she shook her head and straightened up.