Knots And Crosses

7

Organized chaos: that summed up the newspaper office. Organized chaos on the grandest of scales. Stevens rummaged amongst the sheaf of paper in his tray, looking for a needle. Had he perhaps filed it somewhere else? He opened one of the large, heavy drawers of his desk, then shut it quickly, afraid that some of the mess in there might escape. Controlling himself, he took a deep breath and opened it again. He plunged a hand into the jumble of paper inside the drawer, as if something in there would bite. A huge dog-clip, springing loose from one particular file, did bite. It nicked his thumb and he slammed the drawer shut, the cigarette wobbling in his mouth as he cursed the office, the journalistic profession, and trees, begetters of paper. Sod it. He sat back and squeezed his eyes shut as the smoke began to sting. It was eleven in the morning, and already the office was a blue haze, as though everything were happening on the set of a Brigadoon marsh-scene. He grabbed a sheet of typescript, turned it over, and began to scribble with a nub of pencil which he had lifted from a betting shop.

‘X (Mr Big?) delivers to Rebus, M. How does the policeman fit in? Answer — perhaps everywhere, perhaps nowhere.’

He paused, taking the cigarette from his mouth, replacing it with a fresh one, and using the butt to light its successor.

‘Now — anonymous letters. Threats? A code?’

Stevens found it unlikely that John Rebus could not know about his brother’s involvement in the Scottish drug-pushing world, and knowing, the chances were that he was involved in it too, perhaps leading the whole investigation the wrong way to protect his flesh and blood. It would make a cracking good story when it broke, but he knew that he would be treading on eggs from here on in. No one would go out of their way to help him nail a policeman, and if anyone found out what he was up to, he would be in very serious trouble indeed. He needed to do two things: check his life insurance policy, and tell nobody about this.

‘Jim!’

The editor gestured for him to step into the torture chamber. He rose from his seat, as though tearing himself up from something organic, straightened his mauve and pink striped tie, and headed towards a presumed bawling-out.

‘Yes, Tom?’

‘Aren’t you supposed to be at a press conference?’

‘Plenty of time, Tom.’

‘Which photographer are you taking?’

‘Does it matter? I’d be better off taking my bloody instamatic. These young boys don’t know the ropes, Tom. What about Andy Fleming? Can’t I have him?’

‘No chance, Jim. He’s covering the royal tour.’

‘What royal tour?’

Tom Jameson seemed about to rise again from his chair, which would have been an unprecedented move. He only straightened his back and shoulders however, and eyed his ‘star’ crime reporter suspiciously.

‘You are a journalist, Jim, aren’t you? I mean, you’ve not gone into early retirement, or become a recluse? No history of senile dementia in the family?’

‘Listen, Tom, when the Royal Family commits a crime, I’ll be the first on the scene. Otherwise, as far as I’m concerned, they don’t exist. Not outside of my nightmares, anyway.’

Jameson pointedly examined his wristwatch.

‘Okay, okay, I’m going.’

With that, Stevens turned on his heels with amazing speed and left the office, ignoring the cries of his boss at his back, asking which of the available photographers he wanted.

It wouldn’t matter. He had yet to meet a policeman who was photogenic. Then, leaving the building, he remembered who was Liaison Officer on this particular case, and he changed his mind, smiling.

‘ “There are clues everywhere, for those who read between the times.” It’s pure gobbledygook, isn’t it, John?’

Morton was driving the car towards the Haymarket district of the city. It was another afternoon of consistent, wind-driven rain, the rain itself fine and cold, the kind that seeped into bones and marrow. The city had been dull all day, to a point where motorists were using their headlamps at noon. A great day for some outside work.

‘I’m not so sure, Jack. The second part leads on from the first as if there was a logical connection.’

‘Well, let’s hope he sends you some more notes. Maybe that would make things clearer.’

‘Maybe. I’d rather he’d just stop this shit altogether. It’s not very nice knowing that a crank knows where you work and where you live.’

‘Is your phone number in the telephone book?’

‘No, unlisted.’

‘That rules out that idea then. So how does he know your home address?’

‘He or she,’ said Rebus, tucking the notes back into his pocket. ‘How should I know?’

He lit two cigarettes and passed one to Morton, breaking the filter off for him.

‘Ta,’ said Morton, placing the tiny cigarette in the corner of his mouth. The rain was easing. ‘Floods in Glasgow,’ he said, expecting no reply.

Both men were bleary-eyed from lack of sleep, but the case had taken possession of them, so they drove, minds numbed, towards the bleak heart of the inquiry. A portakabin had been set up on waste ground next to the spot where the girl’s body had been found. From there, a door-to-door operation was being co-ordinated. Friends and family were also to be interviewed. Rebus foresaw much tedium in the day ahead.

‘What worries me,’ Morton had said, ‘is that if the two murders are linked, then we’re dealing with someone who probably didn’t know either of the girls. That makes for a bastard of a job.’

Rebus had nodded. There was still the chance, however, either that both girls had known their murderer, or that the murderer had been someone in a position of trust. Otherwise, the girls being nearly twelve-years old and not daft, they would surely have struggled when abducted. Yet no one had come forward to say that they had witnessed any such thing. It was bloody strange.

The rain had stopped by the time they reached the cramped operations-room. The inspector in charge of outdoor operations was there to hand them lists of names and addresses. Rebus rejoiced to be away from the HQ, away from Anderson and his thirst for paperwork results. This was where the work really took place, where the contacts were made, where one slip by a suspect could tip a case one way or the other.

‘Do you mind me asking, sir, who it was that suggested my colleague and me for this particular job?’

The DI, his eyes twinkling, studied Rebus for a second.

‘Yes, I bloody well do mind, Rebus. It doesn’t matter one way or the other, does it? Every single task in this case is as vital and as important as every other. Let’s not forget that.’

‘Yes, sir,’ said Rebus.

‘This must be a bit like working inside a shoebox, sir,’ said Morton examining the cramped interior.

‘Yes, son, I’m in the shoebox, but you lot are the shoes, so get bloody well moving.’

This particular inspector, thought Rebus, pocketing his list, seemed a nice bloke, his tongue just sharp enough for Rebus’s taste.

‘Don’t worry, sir,’ he said now, ‘this won’t take us long.’

He hoped that the inspector noted the irony in his voice.

‘Last one back’s a fairy,’ said Morton.

They were doing this by the rule-book then, yet the case would seem to demand that new rules be drawn up. Anderson was sending them out to look for the usual suspects: family, acquaintances, people with records. Doubtless, back at HQ, groups such as the Paedophile Information Exchange were being investigated. Rebus hoped that there were plenty of crank calls for Anderson to sift through. There usually were: the callers who admitted to the crime, the callers who were psychic and could help by getting in touch with the deceased, the callers who pressed a red-herring to your nose so that you could have a sniff. They were all mastered by past guilt and present fantasies. Perhaps everyone was.

At his first house, Rebus battered on the door and waited. It was opened by a rank old woman, her feet bare, a cardigan comprised of ninety-percent hole to ten-percent wool hanging around her scarp-like shoulders.

‘Whit is it?’

‘Police, madam. It’s about the murder.’

‘Eh? Whitever it is, I dinnae want it. Away ye get afore I ca’ for the coppers.’

‘The murders,’ shouted Rebus. Tm a policeman. I’ve come to ask you a few questions.’

‘Eh?’ She stood back a little to peer at him, and Rebus could swear that he saw the faint glow of a past intelligence in the dulled black of her pupils.

‘Whit murders?’ she said.

One of those days. To improve matters, the rain began again, heavy dollops of stinging water gripping to his neck and face, seeping into his shoes. Just like that day at the old man’s grave … Only yesterday? A lot could happen in twenty-four hours, all of it to him.

By seven o’clock, Rebus had covered six of the fourteen individuals on his list. He walked back to the operations-shoebox, his feet sore, his stomach awash with tea and craving something stronger.

At the boggy waste ground, Jack Morton stood and stared out over the acres of clay, strewn with bricks and detritus: a child’s heaven.

‘What a hellish place to die in.’

‘She didn’t die here, Jack. Remember what forensic said.’

‘Well, you know what I mean.’

Yes, Rebus knew what he meant.

‘By the way,’ said Morton, ‘you’re the fairy.’

‘I’ll drink to that,’ said Rebus.

They drank in some of Edinburgh’s seedier bars, bars the tourist never sees. They tried to shut the case out of their minds, but could not. It was like that with big murder inquiries; they got to you, physically and mentally, consuming you and making you work all the harder. There was a rush of pure adrenalin behind every murder. It kept them going past the point of no return.

‘I’d better be getting back to the flat,’ said Rebus.

‘No, have another.’

Jack Morton weaved towards the bar, his empty glass in his hand.

Rebus, his mind foggy, thought more about his mysterious correspondent. He suspected Rhona, though it could not be said to be her style. He suspected his daughter Sammy, perhaps taking a delayed-action revenge for her father’s dismissal of her from his life. Family and acquaintances were, initially at least, always the chief suspects. But it could be anyone, anyone who knew where he worked and where he lived. Someone in his own force was always a possibility to be feared.

The 10,000 dollar question, as ever, was why?

‘Here we go, two lovely pints of beer, gratis from the management.’

‘I call that very public-spirited,’ said Rebus.

‘Or publican-spirited, eh, John?’ Morton chuckled at his joke, wiping froth from his top lip. He noticed that Rebus wasn’t laughing. ‘A penny for them,’ he said.

‘A serial killer,’ said Rebus. ‘It must be. In which case we’ve not seen the last of our friend’s handiwork.’

Morton put down his glass, suddenly not very thirsty.

‘Those girls went to different schools,’ continued Rebus, ‘lived in different areas of the city, had different tastes, different friends, were of different religions, and were killed by the same murderer in the same way and without noticeable abuse of any kind. We’re dealing with a maniac. He could be anywhere.’

A fight was breaking out at the bar, apparently over a game of dominoes, which had gone very badly wrong. A glass fell to the floor, followed by a hush in the bar. Then everyone seemed to calm down a little. One man was led outside by his supporters in the argument. Another remained slumped against the bar, muttering to a woman beside him.

Morton took a gulp of beer.

‘Thank God we’re off duty,’ he said. Then: ‘Fancy a curry?’

Morton finished the chicken vindaloo and threw his fork down on to the plate.

‘I reckon I ought to have a word with the Health Department boys,’ he said, still chewing. ‘Either that or the Trading Standards. Whatever that was, it wasn’t chicken.’

They were in a small curry-house near Haymarket Station. Purple lighting, red flock wallpaper, a churning wall of sitar-music.

‘You looked as if you were enjoying it,’ said Rebus, finishing his beer.

‘Oh yes, I enjoyed it, but it wasn’t chicken.’

‘Well, there’s nothing to complain about if you enjoyed it.’ Rebus sat slant-wise on his chair, his legs straight out before him, an arm along the chair’s back while he smoked his umpteenth cigarette that day.

Morton leaned unsteadily towards his partner.

‘John, there’s always something to complain about, especially if you think you can get off with not paying the bill by doing so.’

He winked at Rebus, sat back, burped, and reached into his pocket for a cigarette.

‘Garbage,’ he said.

Rebus tried to count the number of cigarettes he himself had smoked that day, but his brain told him that such calculations were not to be attempted.

‘I wonder what our friend the murderer is up to at this exact moment?’ he said.

‘Finishing a curry?’ suggested Morton. ‘Trouble is, John, he could be one of these Joe Normal types, clean on the surface, married with kids, your average suburban hard-working chap, but underneath a nutter, pure and simple.’

‘There’s nothing simple about our man.’

‘True.’

‘But you could well be right. You mean that he’s a sort of Jekyll and Hyde, right?’

‘Exactly.’ Morton flicked ash onto the table-top, already splashed with curry sauce and beer. He was peering at his empty plate as though wondering where all the food had gone. ‘Jekyll and Hyde. You’ve got it in a nutshell. I’ll tell you, John, I’d lock these bastards up for a million years, a million years of solitary in a cell the size of a shoebox. That’s what I’d do.’

Rebus was staring at the flock wallpaper. He thought back to his own days in solitary, days when the SAS were trying to crack him, days of the ultimate testing, of sighs and silence, starvation and filth. No, he wouldn’t want that again. And yet they had not beaten him, not really beaten him. The others had not been so lucky.

Trapped in its cell, the face screaming

Let me out Let me out

Let me out …

‘John? Are you okay there? If you’re going to be sick, the toilet’s behind the kitchen. Listen, when you’re passing, do me a favour and see if you can notice what it is that they’re chopping up and throwing into the pot …’

Rebus walked smartly to the toilet with the over-cautious gait of the tremendously drunk, yet he did not feel drunk, not that drunk. His nostrils filled with the smells of curry, disinfectant, shit. He washed his face. No, he was not going to be sick. It wasn’t too much to drink, for he had felt the same shudder at Michael’s, the same momentary horror. What was happening to him? It was as if his insides were concretizing, slowing him down, allowing the years to catch up on him. It felt a little like the nervous breakdown which he had been awaiting, yet it was no nervous breakdown. It was nothing. It had passed.

‘Can I give you a lift, John?’

‘No thanks, I’ll walk. Clear my head.’

They parted at the door of the restaurant. An office-party, loosened neckties and strong, sickly perfume, made its way towards Haymarket Station. Haymarket was the last station into Edinburgh before the much grander Waverley. Rebus remembered that the premature withdrawal of the penis during intercourse for contraceptive reasons was often referred to as ‘getting off at Haymarket.’ Who said the people in Edinburgh were dour? A smile, a song, and a strangulation. Rebus wiped sweat from his forehead. He felt weak still, and leaned against a lamp-post. He knew vaguely what it was. It was a rejection by his whole being of the past, as though his vital organs were rejecting a donor heart. He had pushed the horror of the training so far to the back of his mind that any echo of it at all was now to be violently fought against. And yet it was in that same confinement that he had found friendship, brotherhood, camaraderie, call it what you like. And he had learned more about himself than human beings ever do. He had learned so much.

His spirit had not been broken. He had come out of the training on top. And then had come the nervous breakdown.

Enough. He began to walk, steadying himself with thoughts of his day off tomorrow. He would spend the day reading and sleeping and readying himself for a party, Cathy Jackson’s party.

And the day after that, Sunday, he would be spending a rare day with his daughter. Then, perhaps, he would find out who was behind the crank letters.

8

The girl woke up with a dry, salty taste in her mouth. She felt sleepy and numb and wondered where she was. She had fallen asleep in his car. She had not felt sleepy before then, before he had given her a piece of his chocolate-bar. Now she was awake, but not in her bedroom at home. This room had pictures on its walls, pictures cut out of colour magazines. Some were photographs of soldiers with fierce expressions on their faces, others were of girls and women. She looked closely at some self-developing photographs grouped together on one wall. There was a picture of her there, asleep on the bed with her arms spread wide. She opened her mouth in a slight gasp.

Outside, in the living-room, he heard her movements as he prepared the garotte.

That night, Rebus had one of his nightmarish dreams again. A long, lingering kiss was followed by an ejaculation, both in the dream and in reality. He woke up immediately afterwards and wiped himself down. The breath of the kiss was still around him, hanging to him like an aura. He shook his head clear of it. He needed a woman. Remembering the party to come, he relaxed a little. But his lips were dry. He padded into the kitchen and found a bottle of lemonade. It was flat, but served the purpose. Then he remembered that he was still drunk, and would have a hangover if he wasn’t careful. He poured himself three glassfuls of water and forced them down.

He was pleased to find that the pilot-light was still on. It was like a good omen. When he slipped back into bed, he even remembered to say his prayers. That would surprise the Big Man upstairs. He would note it in his muckle book: Rebus remembered me tonight. May give him a nice day tomorrow.

Amen.

9

Michael Rebus loved his BMW as dearly as he loved life itself, perhaps more so. As he sped down the motorway, the traffic to his left hardly appearing to move at all, he felt that his car was life in a strange, satisfying sort of way. He pointed its nose towards the bright point of the horizon and let it forge towards that future, revving it hard, making no concessions to anyone or anything.

That was the way he liked it; hard, fast luxury, push-button and on-hand. He drummed his fingers on the leather of the steering-wheel, toyed with the radio-cassette, eased his head back onto the padded headrest. He dreamed often of just taking off, leaving wife and children and house, just his car and him. Taking off towards that far point, never stopping except to eat and fill up the car, driving until he died. It seemed like paradise, and so he felt quite safe fantasising about it, knowing that he would never dare put paradise into practice.

When he had first owned a car, he had wakened in the middle of the night, opening his curtains to see if it was still waiting for him outside. Sometimes he would rise at four or five in the morning and take off for a few hours, astonished at the distance he could cover so quickly, glad to be out on the silent roads with only the rabbits and the crows for company, his hand on the horn scaring fluttering clouds of birds into the air. He had never lost that initial love-affair with cars, the manumission of dreams.

People stared at his car now. He would park it in the streets of Kirkcaldy and stand a little distance away, watching people envy that car. The younger men, full of bravado and expectancy, would peer inside, staring at leather and dials as though examining living things at the zoo. The older men, some with their wives in tow, would glance at the machine, sometimes spitting on the road afterwards, knowing that it represented everything they had wanted for themselves and failed to find. Michael Rebus had found his dream, and it was a dream he could watch any time he chose.

In Edinburgh, however, it depended where you parked as to whether your car would attract attention. He had parked on George Street one day, only to find a Rolls-Royce cruising to a stop behind him. He had keyed the ignition again, fuming, near-spitting. He had parked eventually outside a discotheque. He knew that parking an expensive car outside a restaurant or a discotheque would mean that a few people would mistake you for the owner of the particular set-up, and that thought pleased him immensely, erasing the memory of the Rolls-Royce and infusing him with new versions of the dream.

Stopping at traffic-lights, too, could be exciting, except when some half-arsed biker on a big machine roared to a standstill behind him or, even worse, beside him. Some of those bikes were made for initial acceleration. More than once he had been beaten mercilessly in a race from traffic-lights. He tried not to think about those times either.

Today he parked where he had been told to park: in the car park atop Calton Hill. He could see over to Fife from his front window, and from the back he could see Princes Street laid out before him like a toy-set. The hill was quiet; it was not quite the tourist season, and it was cold. He knew that things hotted up at night: car chases, girls and boys hoping for a ride, parties at Queensferry beach. Edinburgh’s gay community would mix with those merely curious or lonely, and a couple, hand-in-hand, would now and again enter the graveyard at the bottom of the hill. When darkness fell, the east end of Princes Street became a territory all of its own, to be passed around, to be shared. But he was not about to share his car with anyone. His dream was a fragile entity.

He watched Fife across the Firth of Forth, looking quite splendid from this distance, until the man’s car slowed and stopped beside him. Michael slid across to his passenger seat and wound down the window, just as the other man was winding down his.

‘Got the stuff?’ he said.

‘Of course,’ said the man. He checked in his mirror. Some people, a family of all things, had just come over the rise. ‘We better wait for a minute.’

They paused, staring blankly at the scenery.

‘No hassles across in Fife?’ asked the man.

‘None.’

‘The word’s going round that your brother was over seeing you. Is that correct?’ The man’s eyes were hard; his whole being was hard. But the car he drove was a heap. Michael felt safe for the moment.

‘Yes, but it was nothing. It was just the anniversary of our dad’s death. That was all.’

‘He doesn’t know anything?’

‘Absolutely not. Do you think I’m thick or something?’

The man’s glance silenced Michael. It was a mystery to him how this one man could invoke such fear in him. He hated these meetings.

‘If anything happens,’ the man was saying, ‘if anything goes wrong, you’ll be in for it. I really mean that. Keep well clear of that bastard in future.’

‘It wasn’t my fault. He just dropped in on me. He didn’t even phone first. What could I do?’

His hands were gripping hard to the steering-wheel, cemented there. The man checked in his mirror again.

‘All clear,’ he said, reaching behind him. A small package slipped through Michael’s window. He took a look inside it, brought an envelope out of his pocket, and reached for the ignition.

‘Be seeing you around, Mister Rebus,’ said the man, opening the envelope.

‘Yes,’ said Michael, thinking: not if I can help it. This work was getting a bit too hairy for him. These people seemed to know everything about his movements. He knew, however, that the fear always evaporated, to be replaced by euphoria when he had rid himself of another load, pocketing a nice profit on the deal. It was that moment when fear turned to euphoria that kept him in the game. It was like the fastest piece of acceleration from traffic-lights that you could experience — ever.

Jim Stevens, watching from the hill’s Victorian folly, a ridiculous, never-completed copy of a Greek temple, saw Michael Rebus leave. That much was old news to him; he was more interested in the Edinburgh connection, a man he could not trace and did not know, a man who had lost him twice before and who could doubtless lose him again. Nobody seemed to know who this mysterious figure was, and nobody particularly wanted to know. He looked like trouble. Stevens, feeling suddenly impotent and old, could do nothing other than jot down the car registration number. He thought that perhaps McGregor Campbell could do something with it, but he was wary of being found out by Rebus. He felt trapped in the middle of something which was proving altogether a knottier problem than he had suspected.

Shivering, he tried to persuade himself that he liked it that way.

10

‘Come in, come in, whoever you are.’

Rebus’s coat, gloves, and bottle of wine were taken from him by complete strangers, and he was plunged into one of those packed, smoky, loud parties where it is easy to smile at people but near impossible to get to know anyone. He moved from the hall into the kitchen, and from there, through a connecting-door, into the living-room itself.

The chairs, table, settee had been pushed back to the walls, and the floor was filled with writhing, whooping couples, the men tieless, their shirts sticking to them.

The party, it appeared, had started earlier than he had anticipated.

He recognized a few faces around and beneath him, stepping over two inspectors as he waded into the room. He could see that the table at the far end had bottles and plastic cups heaped upon it, and it seemed as good a vantage point as any, and safer than some.

Getting to it was the problem however, and he was reminded of some of the assault courses of his Army days.

‘Hi there!’

Cathy Jackson, doing a passable imitation of a rag-doll, reeled into his path for a second before being swept off her feet by the large — the very large — man with whom she was pretending to dance.

‘Hello,’ managed Rebus, his face twisting into a grimace rather than a smile. He achieved the relative safety of the drinks-table and helped himself to a whisky and a chaser. That would do for starters. Then he watched as Cathy Jackson (for whom he had bathed, polished, scraped, adjusted, and sprayed) pushed her tongue into the cavernous mouth of her dancing-partner. Rebus thought that he was going to be sick. His partner for the evening had done a bunk before the evening had begun! That would teach him to be optimistic. So what did he do now? Leave quietly, or try to pull a few words of introduction out of his hat?

A stocky man, not at all a policeman, came from the kitchen, and, cigarette in mouth, approached the table with a couple of empty glasses in his hand.

‘Bloody hell,’ he said to nobody in particular, rummaging amongst the bottles, ‘this is all a bit fucking grim, isn’t it? Excuse my language.’

‘Yes, it is a bit.’

Rebus thought to himself, well, there it is, I’ve done it now, I’ve spoken to someone. The ice is broken, so I may as well leave while the going’s good.

But he did not leave. He watched as the man weaved his way quite expertly back through the dancers, the drinks as safe as tiny animals in his hands. He watched as another record pounded out of the invisible stereo system, the dancers recommenced their war-dance, and a woman, looking every inch as uncomfortable as he did, squeezed her way into the room and was pointed in the direction of Rebus’s table.

She was about his own age, a little ragged around the edges. She wore a reasonably fashionable dress, he supposed (who was he to talk about fashion? his suit looked downright funereal in the present company), and her hair had been styled recently, perhaps as recently as this afternoon. She wore a secretary’s glasses, but she was no secretary. Rebus could see that much by looking at her, by examining the way she handled herself as she picked her way towards him.

He held a Bloody Mary, newly-prepared, towards her.

‘Is this okay for you?’ he shouted. ‘Have I guessed right or wrong?’

She gulped the drink thankfully, pausing for breath as he refilled the tumbler.

‘Thanks,’ she said. ‘I don’t normally drink, but that was much appreciated.’

Great, Rebus thought to himself, the smile never leaving his eyes, Cathy Jackson’s out of her head (and her morals) on alcohol, and I’m landed with a TT. Oh, but that thought was unworthy of him, and did no justice to his companion. He breathed a quick prayer of contrition.

‘Would you like to dance?’ he asked, for his sins.

‘You’re kidding!’

‘I’m not. What’s wrong?’

Rebus, guilty of a streak of chauvinism, could not believe it. She was a DI. Moreover, she was Press Liaison Officer on the murder case.

‘Oh,’ he said, ‘it’s just that I’m working that case, too.’

‘Listen, John, if it keeps on like this, every policeman and policewoman in Scotland is going to be on the case. Believe me.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘There’s been another abduction. The girl’s mother reported her missing this evening.’

‘Shit. Excuse my language.’

They had danced, drunk, separated, met again, and were now old friends for the evening, it seemed. They stood in the hallway, a little way from the noise and chaos of the dance-floor. A queue for the flat’s only toilet was becoming unruly at the end of the corridor.

Rebus found himself staring past Gill Templer’s glasses, past all that glass and plastic, to the emerald-green eyes beyond. He wanted to tell her that he had never seen eyes as lovely as hers, but was afraid of being accused of cliche. She was sticking to orange juice now, but he had loosened himself up with a few more whiskies, not expecting anything special from the evening.

‘Hello, Gill.’

Rebus recognized the stocky man before them as the person he had spoken with at the drinks-table.

‘Long time no see.’

The man attempted to peck Gill Templer’s cheek, but succeeded only in falling past her and butting the wall.

‘Had a drop too much to drink, Jim?’ said Gill, coolly.

The man shrugged his shoulders. He was looking at Rebus.

‘We all have our crosses to bear, eh?’

A hand was extended towards Rebus.

‘Jim Stevens,’ said the man.

‘Oh, the reporter?’

Rebus accepted the man’s warm, moist hand for a moment.

‘This is Detective Sergeant John Rebus,’ said Gill.

Rebus noticed the quick flushing in Stevens’ face, the startled eyes of a hare. He recovered quickly though, expertly.

‘Pleased to meet you,’ he said. Then, motioning with his head, ‘Gill and I go back a long way, don’t we, Gill?’

‘Not as far as you seem to think, Jim.’

He laughed then, glancing towards Rebus.

‘She’s just shy,’ he said. ‘Another girl murdered, I hear.’

‘Jim has spies everywhere.’

Stevens tapped the side of his blood-red nose, grinning towards Rebus.

‘Everywhere,’ he said, ‘and I get everywhere, too.’

‘Yes, spreads himself a little thin, does our Jim,’ said Gill, her voice sharp as a blade’s edge, her eyes suddenly shrouded in glass and plastic, inviolable.

‘Another press briefing tomorrow, Gill?’ said Stevens, searching through his pockets for his cigarettes, lost long before.

‘Yes.’

The reporter’s hand found Rebus’s shoulder.

‘A long way, me and Gill.’

Then he was gone, his hand held back towards them as he retreated, waving without the necessity of acknowledgement, searching out his cigarettes, filing away John Rebus’s face.

Gill Templer sighed, leaning against the wall where Stevens’ failed kiss had landed.

‘One of the best reporters in Scotland,’ she said, matter-of-factly.

‘And your job is dealing with the likes of him?’

‘He’s not so bad.’

An argument seemed to be starting in the living-room.

‘Well,’ said Rebus, all smiles, ‘shall we phone for the police, or would you rather be taken to a little restaurant I know?’

‘Is that a chat-up line?’

‘Maybe. You tell me. After all, you’re the detective.’

‘Well, whatever it is, Detective Sergeant Rebus, you’re in luck. I’m starving. I’ll get my coat.’

Rebus, feeling pleased with himself, remembered that his own coat was lurking somewhere. He found it in one of the bedrooms, along with his gloves, and — a cracking surprise — his unopened bottle of wine. He pocketed this, seeing it as a divine sign that he would be needing it later.

Gill was in the other bedroom, rummaging through the pile of coats on the bed. Beneath the bedcovers, congress seemed to be taking place, and the whole mess of coats and bedclothes seethed and writhed like some gigantic amoeba. Gill, giggling through it all, found her coat at last and came towards Rebus, who smiled conspiratorially in the doorway.

‘Goodbye, Cathy,’ she shouted back into the room, ‘thanks for the party.’

There was a muffled roar, perhaps an acknowledgement, from beneath the bedclothes. Rebus, his eyes wide, felt his moral fibre crumbling like a dry cheese-biscuit.

In the taxi, they sat a little distance apart.

‘So, do you and this Stevens character go back a long way?’

‘Only in his memory.’ She stared past the driver at the sleek wet road beyond. ‘Jim’s memory can’t be what it was. Seriously, we went out together once, and I do mean once.’ She held up a finger. ‘A Friday night, I think it was. A big mistake, it certainly was.’

Rebus was satisfied with that. He began to feel hungry again.

By the time they reached the restaurant, however, it was closed — even to Rebus — so they stayed in the taxi and Rebus directed the driver towards his flat.

‘I’m a dab hand at bacon sandwiches,’ he said.

‘What a pity,’ she said. ‘I’m a vegetarian.’

‘Good God, you mean you eat no vegetables at all?’

‘Why is it,’ acid seeping into her voice, ‘that carnivores always have to make a joke out of it? It’s the same with men and women’s lib. Why is that?’

‘It’s because we’re afraid of them,’ said Rebus, quite sober now.

Gill looked at him, but he was watching from his window as the city’s late-night drunks rolled their way up and down the obstacle-strewn hazard of Lothian Road, seeking alcohol, women, happiness. It was a never-ending search for some of them, staggering in and out of clubs and pubs and take-aways, gnawing on the packaged bones of existence. Lothian Road was Edinburgh’s dustbin. It was also home to the Sheraton Hotel and the Usher Hall. Rebus had visited the Usher Hall once, sitting with Rhona and the other smug souls listening to Mozart’s Requiem Mass. It was typical of Edinburgh to have a crumb of culture sited amidst the fast-food shops. A requiem mass and a bag of chips.

‘So how is the old Press Liaison these days?’

They were seated in his rapidly tidied living-room. His pride and joy, a Nakamichi tape-deck, was tastefully broadcasting one of his collection of late-night-listening jazz tapes; Stan Getz or Coleman Hawkins.

He had rustled up a round of tuna fish and tomato sandwiches, Gill having admitted that she ate fish occasionally. The bottle of wine was open, and he had prepared a pot of freshly ground coffee (a treat usually reserved for Sunday breakfasts). He now sat across from his guest, watching her eat. He thought with a small start that this was his first female guest since Rhona had left him, but then recalled, very vaguely, a couple of other one-nighters.

‘Press Liaison is fine. It’s not really a complete waste of time, you know. It serves a useful purpose in this day and age.’

‘Oh, I’m not knocking it.’

She looked at him, trying to gauge how serious he was being.

‘Well,’ she went on, ‘it’s just that I know a lot of our colleagues who think that a job like mine is a complete waste of time and manpower. Believe me, in a case like this one it’s absolutely crucial that we keep the media on our side, and that we let them have the information that we want made public when it needs to be made public. It saves a lot of hassle.’

‘Hear, hear.’

‘Be serious, you rat.’

Rebus laughed.

‘I’m never anything other than serious. A one-hundred percent policeman’s policeman, that’s me.’

Gill Templer stared at him again. She had a real inspector’s eyes: they worked into your conscience, sniffing out guilt and guile and drive, seeking give.

‘And being a Liaison Officer,’ said Rebus, ‘means that you have to … liaise with the press quite closely, — right?’

‘I know what you’re getting at, Sergeant Rebus, and as your superior, I’m telling you to stop it.’

‘Ma’am!’ Rebus gave her a short salute.

He came back from the kitchen with another pot of coffee.

‘Wasn’t that a dreadful party?’ said Gill.

‘It was the finest party I have ever attended,’ said Rebus. ‘After all, without it, I might never have met you.’

She roared with laughter this time, her mouth filled with a paste of tuna and bread and tomato.

‘You’re a nutter,’ she cried, ‘you really are.’

Rebus raised his eyebrows, smiling. Had he lost his touch? He had not. It was miraculous.

Later, she needed to go to the bathroom. Rebus was changing a tape, and realising how limited his musical tastes were. Who were these groups that she kept referring to?

‘It’s in the hall,’ he said. ‘On the left.’

When she returned, more jazz was playing, the music at times almost too low to be heard, and Rebus was back in his chair.

‘What’s that room across from the bathroom, John?’

‘Well,’ he said, pouring coffee, ‘it used to be my daughter’s, but now it’s just full of junk. I never use it.’

‘When did your wife and you split up?’

‘Not as long ago as we should have. I mean that seriously.’

‘How old is your daughter?’ She sounded maternal now, domestic; no longer the acid single woman or the professional.

‘Nearly twelve,’ he said. ‘Nearly twelve.’

‘It’s a difficult age.’

‘Aren’t they all.’

When the wine was finished and the coffee was down to its last half-cup, one or the other of them suggested bed. They exchanged sheepish smiles and ritual promises about not promising anything, and, the contract agreed and signed without words, went to the bedroom.

It all started well enough. They were mature, had played this game before too often to let the little fumblings and apologies get to them. Rebus was impressed by her agility and invention, and hoped that she was being impressed by his. She arched her spine to meet him, seeking the ultimate and unobtainable ingress.

‘John,’ pushing at him now.

‘What is it?’

‘Nothing. I’m just going to turn over, okay?’

He knelt up, and she turned her back to him, sliding her knees down the bed, clawing at the smooth wall with her fingertips, waiting. Rebus, in the slight pause, looked around at the room, the pale blue light shading his books, the edges of the mattress.

‘Oh, a futon,’ she had said, pulling her clothes off quickly. He had smiled in the silence.

He was losing it.

‘Come on, John. Come on.’

He bent towards her, resting his face on her back. He had talked about books with Gordon Reeve when they had been captured. Talked endlessly, it seemed, reading to him from his memory. In close confinement, torture a closed door away. But they had endured. It was a mark of the training.

‘John, oh, John.’

Gill raised herself up and turned her head towards his, seeking a kiss. Gill, Gordon Reeve, seeking something from him, something he couldn’t give. Despite the training, despite the years of practice, the years of work and persistence.

‘John?’

But he was elsewhere now, back inside the training camp, back trudging across a muddy field, the Boss screaming at him to speed up, back in that cell, watching a cockroach pace the begrimed floor, back in the helicopter, a bag over his head, the spray of the sea salty in his ears …

‘John?’

She turned round now, awkwardly, concerned. She saw the tears about to start from his eyes. She held his head to her.

‘Oh, John. It doesn’t matter. Really, it doesn’t.’

And a little later: ‘Don’t you like it that way?’

They lay together afterwards, he guiltily, and cursing the facts of his confusion and the fact that he had run out of cigarettes, she drowsily, caring still, whispering bits and pieces of her life-story to him.

After a while, Rebus forgot to feel guilty: there was nothing, after all, to feel guilty about. He felt merely the distinct lack of nicotine. And he remembered that he was seeing Sammy in six hours’ time, and that her mother would instinctively know what he, John Rebus, had been up to these past few hours. She was cursed with a witch-like ability to see into the soul, and she had seen his occasional bouts of crying at very close quarters indeed. Partly, he supposed, that had been responsible for their break-up.

‘What time is it, John?’

‘Four. Maybe a little after.’

He slid his arm from beneath her and rose to leave the room.

‘Do you want anything to drink?’ he said.

‘What did you have in mind?’

‘Coffee maybe. It’s hardly worth going to sleep now, but if you feel sleepy, don’t mind me.’

‘No, I’ll take a cup of coffee.’

Rebus knew from her voice, from its slurred growliness, that she would be fast asleep by the time he reached the kitchen.

‘Okay,’ he said.

He made himself a cup of dark, sweet coffee and slumped into a chair with it. He turned on the living-room’s small gas fire and began to read one of his books. He was seeing Sammy today, and his mind wandered from the story in front of him, a tale of intrigue which he could not remember having started. Sammy was nearly twelve. She had survived many years of danger, and now, for her, other dangers were imminent. The perverts in watch, the ogling old men, the teenage cock-fighters, would be supplemented by the new urges of boys her age, and boys she already knew as friends would become sudden and forceful hunters. How would she cope with it? If her mother had anything to do with it, she would cope admirably, biting in a clinch and ducking on the ropes. Yes, she would survive without her father’s advice and protection.

The kids were harder these days. He thought back to his own youth. He had been Mickey’s big brother, fighting battles for the two of them, going home to watch his brother coddled by his father. He had pushed himself further into the cushions on the settee, hoping to disappear one day. Then they’d be sorry. Then they’d be sorry …

At seven-thirty he went through to the musky bedroom, which smelt two parts sex to one part animal lair, and kissed Gill awake.

‘It’s time,’ he said. ‘Get up, I’ll run you a bath.’

She smelt good, like a baby on a fireside towel. He admired the shapes of her twisted body as they awoke to the thin, watery sunlight. She had a good body all right. No real stretch-marks. Her legs unscarred. Her hair just tousled enough to be inviting.

‘Thanks.’

She had to be at HQ by ten in order to co-ordinate the next press release. There could be no rest. The case was still growing like a cancer. Rebus filled the bath, wincing at the rim of grime around it. He needed a cleaning-lady. Perhaps he could get Gill to do it.

Another unworthy thought, forgive me.

Which brought him to think of church-going. It was another Sunday, after all, and for weeks he had been promising himself that he would try again, would find another church in the city and would try all over again.

He hated congregational religion. He hated the smiles and the manners of the Sunday-dressed Scottish Protestant, the emphasis on a communion not with God but with your neighbours. He had tried seven churches of varying denominations in Edinburgh, and had found none to be to his liking. He had tried sitting for two hours at home of a Sunday, reading the Bible and saying a prayer, but somehow that did not work either. He was caught; a believer outwith his belief. Was a personal faith good enough for God? Perhaps, but not his personal faith, which seemed to depend upon guilt and his feelings of hypocrisy whenever he sinned, a guilt assuaged only by public show.

‘Is my bath ready, John?’

She re-tousled her hair, naked and confident, her glasses left behind in the bedroom. John Rebus felt his soul to be imperilled. Sod it, he thought, catching her around the hips. Guilt could wait. Guilt could always wait.

He had to mop up the bathroom floor afterwards, empirical evidence that Archimedes’ displacement of water had been proved once again. The bath-water had flowed like milk and honey, and Rebus had nearly drowned.

Still, he felt better now.

‘Lord, I am a poor sinner,’ he whispered, as Gill dressed. She looked stern and efficient when she opened the front-door, almost as if she had been on a twenty-minute official visit.

‘Can we fix a date?’ he suggested.

‘We can,’ she replied, looking through her bag. Rebus was curious to know why women always did that, especially in films and thrillers, after they had been sleeping with a man. Did women suspect their sleeping partners of rifling their purses?

‘But it might be difficult,’ she continued, ‘the case going the way it is. Let’s just promise to keep in touch, okay?’

‘Okay.’

He hoped that she took note of the dismay in his voice, the disappointment of the small boy at having his request denied.

They pecked a final kiss, mouths brittle by now, and then she was gone. Her scent remained, however, and he breathed it in deeply as he prepared for the day ahead. He found a shirt and a pair of trousers that didn’t reek of tobacco, and these he put on slowly, admiring himself in the bathroom mirror, the soles of his feet damp, while he hummed a hymn.

Sometimes it was good to be alive. Sometimes.

11

Jim Stevens poured another three aspirin into his mouth and drank his orange juice. The ignominy of it, being seen in a Leith bar sucking on fruit juice, yet the idea of drinking even a half-pint of the rich, frothing beer made him feel nauseous. He had drunk far too much at that party; too much too quickly, and in too many combinations.

Leith was trying to improve itself. Someone somewhere had decided to give it a bit of a dust and a wash. It boasted French-style cafes and wine bars, studio flats, delicatessen. But it was still Leith, still the old port, an echo of its roaring, bustling past when Bordeaux wines would be unloaded by the gallon and sold on the streets from a horse and cart. If Leith retained nothing else, it would retain a port’s mentality, and a port’s traditional drinking dens.

‘By Christ,’ roared a voice behind him, ‘the man drinks everything in doubles, even his soft drinks!’

A heavy fist, twice the dimensions of his own, landed on Stevens’ back. The swarthy figure landed on a stool beside him. The hand stayed firmly where it was.

‘Hello, Podeen,’ said Stevens. He was starting to sweat in the heavy atmosphere of the saloon, and his heart was pounding: terminal hangover symptoms; he could smell the alcohol squeezing itself out of his pores.

‘Lordy, James me boy, what the hell’s that you’re supping?

Barman, get this man a whisky quick. He’s wasting away on kiddies’ juice!’

With a roar, Podeen took his hand off the reporter’s back just long enough to relieve the pressure, before bringing it back down again in a stinging back-slap. Stevens felt his insides shudder rebelliously.

‘Anything I can do for you today?’ said Podeen, his voice much lower.

Big Podeen had been a sailor for twenty years, with the scars and nicks of a thousand ports on his body. How he made his money these days, Stevens did not wish to know. He did some bouncing for pubs on Lothian Road and dubious drinking-dens around Leith, but that would be the tip of his earnings iceberg. Podeen’s fingers were so encrusted with dirt that he might have carved out the black economy singlehandedly from the rotten, fertile soil beneath him.

‘Not really, Big Man. No, I’m just mulling things over.’

‘Get me a breakfast, will you? Double helpings of everything.’

The barman, almost saluting, went off to give the order.

‘See,’ said Podeen, ‘you’re not the only man who orders everything in doubles, eh, Jimmy?’

The hand was lifted from Stevens’ back again. He grimaced, waiting for the slap, but the arm flopped onto the bar beside him instead. He sighed, audibly.

‘Rough night last night was it, Jimmy?’

‘I wish I could remember.’

He had fallen asleep in one of the bedrooms, very late in the evening. Then a couple had come in, and they had lifted him into the bathroom, depositing him in the bath. There he had slept for two hours, maybe three. He had awakened with a terrific stiffness in his neck, back, and legs. He had drunk some coffee, but not enough, never enough.

And had walked in the chilled morning air, chatting in a newsagent’s shop with some taxi-drivers, sitting in the porter’s cubby-hole of one of the big hotels on Princes Street, supping sweet tea and talking football with the bleary nightporter. But he had known he would end up down here, for this was his morning off, and he was back on the drugs case, his own little baby.

‘Is there much stuff around at the moment, Big?’

‘Oh, now, that depends what you’re looking for, Jimmy. Word’s out that you’re getting to be a bit too nosy in every department. Best if you were sticking to the safe drugs. Keep away from the big stuff.’

‘Is this a timely warning or a threat or what?’ Stevens wasn’t in the mood to be threatened, not when he had a Sunday morning hangover to sort out.

‘It’s a friendly warning, a warning from a friend.’

‘Who’s the friend, Big?’

‘Me, you silly sod. Don’t be so suspicious all the time. Listen, there’s a little cannabis around, but that’s about it. Nobody brings the stuff into Leith any more. They land it on the Fife coast, or up by Dundee. Places the Customs men have all but disappeared from. And that’s the truth.’

‘I know, Big, I know. But there is a delivery going on around here. I’ve seen it. I don’t know what it is. Whether it’s big stuff or not. But I’ve seen a handover. Very recently.’

‘How recent?’

‘Yesterday.’

‘Where?’

‘Calton Hill.’

Big Podeen shook his head.

‘Then it’s nothing at all to do with anyone or anything I know, Jimmy.’

Stevens knew the Big Man, knew him well. He gave out good information, but it was only what was given to him by people who wanted Stevens to get to know about something.

So the heroin boys would come across, via Big, with information about cannabis dealing. If Stevens took the story up, chances were the cannabis dealers would be caught. And that left the territory and the demand to the heroin boys. It was clever stuff, ploy and counter-ploy. The stakes were high, too. But Stevens was a clever player himself. He knew that there was a tacit understanding that he was never to aim for the really big players, for that would mean aiming for the city’s businessmen and bureaucrats, the titled landowners, the New Town’s Mercedes owners.

And that would never be allowed. So he was fed tidbits, enough to keep the presses rolling, the tongues wagging about what a terrible place Edinburgh was becoming. Always a little, never the lot. Stevens understood all that. He had been playing the game so long he hardly knew sometimes what side he was on. In the end, it hardly mattered.

‘You don’t know about it?’

‘Nothing, Jimmy. But I’ll nose around. See what’s doing. Listen, though, there’s a new bar opened up by the Mackay showroom. Know the one I mean?’

Stevens nodded.

‘Well,’ went on Podeen, ‘it’s a bar at the front, but it’s a brothel at the back. There’s a wee cracker of a barmaid does her stuff of an afternoon, if you’re interested.’

Stevens smiled. So a new boy was trying to move in, and the old boys, Podeen’s ultimate employers, didn’t like it. And so he, Jim Stevens, was being given enough information to close down the new boy if he liked. There was a nice headline-catcher in it certainly, but it was a one-day wonder.

Why didn’t they just telephone the police anonymously? He thought he knew the answer to that one, though once it had puzzled him: they were playing the game by its old-fashioned rules, which meant no snitching, no grassing to the enemy. He was left to play the part of messenger-boy, but a messenger-boy with power built into the system. Just a little power, but more power than lay in doing things along the straight and narrow.

‘Thanks, Big. I’ll bear that in mind.’

The food arrived then, great piles of curled, shining bacon, two soft, near-transparent eggs, mushrooms, fried bread, beans. Stevens kept his eyes to the bar, suddenly interested in one of the beer-mats, damp still from Saturday night.

‘I’m going across to my table to eat this, okay, Jimmy?’

Stevens could not believe his good luck.

‘Oh, fine, Big Man, fine.’

‘Cheers, then.’

And with that he was left alone, only the ghost of a smell remaining. He noticed that the barman was standing opposite him. His hand, shiny with grease, was held out.

‘Two pounds sixty,’ he said.

Stevens sighed. Put that one down to experience, he thought to himself as he paid, or to the hangover. The party had been worth it, however, for he had met John Rebus. And Rebus was friendly with Gill Templer. It was all becoming just a little confusing. But interesting too. Rebus was certainly interesting, though physically he did not resemble his brother in the slightest. The man had looked honest enough, but how did you tell a bent copper from the outside? It was the inside that was rotten. So, Rebus was seeing Gill Templer. He remembered the night they had spent together, and shuddered. That, surely, had been his nadir.

He lit a cigarette, his second of the day. His head was still clotted, but his stomach felt a little more composed. He might even be getting hungry. Rebus looked a tough nut, but not as tough as he would have been ten years ago. At this moment he was probably in bed with Gill Templer. The bastard. The lucky bastard. His stomach turned a tiny somersault of chilled jealousy. The cigarette felt good. It poured life and strength back into him, or seemed to. Yet he knew that it was scooping him out, too, tearing his guts to shreds of darkened meat. The hell with it. He smoked because without cigarettes he couldn’t think. And he was thinking now.

‘Hey, give me a double here will you?’

The barman came over.

‘Orange juice again?’

Stevens looked at him disbelievingly.

‘Don’t be daft,’ he said — ‘whisky, Grouse if that’s what’s in the Grouse bottle.’

‘We don’t play those sorts of game here.’

‘I’m glad to hear it.’

He drank the whisky and felt better. Then he began to feel worse again. He went to the toilet, but the smell in there made him feel even worse. He held himself over the sink and brought up a few bubbles of liquid, retching loudly but emptily. He had to get off the booze. He had to get off the ciggies. They were killing him, yet they were the only things keeping him alive.

He walked over to Big Podeen’s table, sweating, feeling older than his years.

‘That was a good breakfast, that was,’ said the hulk of a man, his eyes gleaming like a child’s.

Stevens sat down beside him.

‘What’s the word on bent coppers?’ he asked.

12

‘Hello, daddy.’

She was eleven, but looked and spoke and smiled older: eleven going on twenty-one. That was what living with Rhona had done to his daughter. He pecked her cheek, thinking back to Gill’s leavetaking. There was perfume around her, and a hint of make-up on her eyes.

He could kill Rhona.

‘Hello, Sammy,’ he said.

‘Mummy says that I’m to be called Samantha now that I’m growing up so quickly, but I suppose it’s all right for you to call me Sammy.’

‘Oh, well, mummy knows best, Samantha.’

He cast a look towards the retreating figure of his wife, her body pressed, pushed and prodded into a shape attainable only with the aid of some super-strong girdle. She was not, he was relieved to find, wearing as well as their occasional telephone conversations would have had him believe. She stepped into her car now, never looking back. It was a small and expensive model, but had a sizeable dent in one side. Rebus blessed that dent.

He recalled that, making love, he had gloried in her body, in the soft flesh — the padding, as she had called it — of her thighs and her back. Today she had looked at him with cold eyes, filled with a cloud of unknowing, and had seen in his eyes the gleam of sexual satisfaction. Then she had turned on her heels. So it was true: she could still see into his heart. Ah, but she had failed to see into his soul. She had missed that most vital organ completely.

‘What do you want to do then?’

They were standing at the entrance to Princes Street Gardens, adjacent to the tourist haunts of Edinburgh. A few people wandered past the closed shops of a Princes Street Sunday, while others sat on benches in the gardens, feeding crumbs to the pigeons and the Canadian squirrels or else reading the heavy-printed Sunday papers. The Castle reared above them, its flag flying briskly in the all-too-typical breeze. The Gothic missile of the Scott Monument pointed religious believers in the right direction, but few of the tourists who snapped it with their expensive Japanese cameras seemed at all interested in the structure’s symbolic connotations, never mind its reality, just so long as they had some snaps of it to show off to their friends back home. These tourists spent so much time photographing things that they never actually saw anything, unlike the young people milling around, who were too busy enjoying life to be bothered capturing false impressions of it.

‘What do you want to do then?’

The tourist side of his capital city. They were never interested in the housing-estates around this central husk. They never ventured into Pilton or Niddrie or Oxgangs to make an arrest in a piss-drenched tenement; they were not moved by Leith’s pushers and junkies, the deft-handed corruption of the city gents, the petty thefts of a society pushed so far into materialism that stealing was the only answer to what they thought of as their needs. And they were almost certainly unaware (they were not, after all, here to read local newspapers and watch local TV) of Edinburgh’s newest media star, the child murderer the police could not catch, the murderer who was leading the forces of law and order a merry dance without a clue or a lead or a cat in hell’s chance of finding him until he slipped up. He pitied Gill her job. He pitied himself. He pitied the city, right down to its crooks and bandits; its whores and gamblers, its perpetual losers and winners.

‘So what do you want to do?’

His daughter shrugged her shoulders.

‘I don’t know. Walk maybe? Go for a pizza? See a film?’

They walked.

John Rebus had met Rhona Phillips just after joining the police. He had suffered a nervous breakdown just prior to his joining the force (why did you leave the Army, John?) and had recuperated in a fishing-village on the Fife coast, though he had never told Michael of his presence in Fife during that time.

On his first holiday from police-work, his first proper holiday in years, the others having been spent on courses or working towards examinations, Rebus had returned to that fishing-village, and there had met Rhona. She was a schoolteacher, already with a brutally short and unhappy marriage behind her. In John Rebus she saw a strong and able husband, someone who would not flinch in a fight; someone she could care for, too, however, since his strength failed to conceal an inner fragility. She saw that he was haunted still by his years in the Army, and especially by his time in ‘special services’. He would awake crying some nights, and sometimes would weep as he made love, weeping silently, the tears falling hard and slow on her breasts. He would not speak about it much, and she had never pushed him. She was aware that he had lost a friend during his training days. She understood that much, and he appealed to the child in her and to the mother. He seemed perfect. Too, too perfect.

He was not. He should never have married. They lived happily enough, she teaching English in Edinburgh until Samantha was born. Then, however, niggling fights and power-plays had turned into sourer, unabated periods of resentment and suspicion. Was she seeing another man, a teacher at her school? Was he seeing another woman when he claimed to be involved in his numerous double-shifts? Was she taking drugs without his knowledge? Was he taking bribes without hers? In fact, the answer to all of these suspicions was no, but that did not seem to be what was at stake in any case. Rather, something larger was looming, yet neither could perceive the inevitability of it until too late, and they would cuddle up and make things right between them over and over again, as though in some morality-tale or soap-opera. There was, they agreed, the child to think of.

The child, Samantha, had become the young woman, and Rebus felt his eyes straying appreciatively and guiltily (yet again) over her as they walked through the gardens, around the Castle, and up towards the ABC cinema on Lothian Road. She was not beautiful, for only women could be that, but she was growing towards beauty with a confident inevitability which was breathtaking in itself, and horrifying. He was, after all, her father. There had to be some feelings there. It went with the territory.

‘Do you want me to tell you about Mummy’s new boy-friend?’

‘You know damn well I do.’

She giggled; still something of the girl left in her then, and yet even a giggle seemed different in her now, seemed more controlled, more womanly.

‘He’s a poet, supposedly, but really he hasn’t had a book out or anything yet. His poems are crap, too, but Mummy won’t tell him that. She thinks the sun shines out of his you-know-where.’

Was all this ‘adult’ talk supposed to impress him? He supposed so.

‘How old is he?’ Rebus asked, flinching at his suddenly revealed vanity.

‘I don’t know. Twenty maybe.’

He stopped flinching and started to reel. Twenty. She was cradle-snatching now. My God. What effect was all this having on Sammy? On Samantha, the pretend adult? He dreaded to think, but he was no psychoanalyst; that was Rhona’s department, or once had been.

‘Honest though, Dad, he’s an awful poet. I’ve done better stuff than his in my essays at school. I go to the big school after the summer. It’ll be funny to go to the school where Mum works.’

‘Yes, won’t it.’ Rebus had found something niggling him. A poet, aged twenty. ‘What’s this boy’s name?’ he asked.

‘Andrew,’ she said, ‘Andrew Anderson. Doesn’t that sound funny? He’s nice really, but he’s a bit weird.’

Rebus cursed under his breath: Anderson’s son, the dreaded Anderson’s itinerant poet son was shacked up with Rebus’s wife. What an irony! He didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. Laughter seemed marginally more appropriate.

‘What are you laughing at, Daddy?’

‘Nothing, Samantha. I’m just happy, that’s all. What were you saying?’

‘I was saying that Mum met him at the library. We go there a lot. Mum likes the literature books, but I like books about romances and adventures. I can never understand the books Mum reads. Did you read the same books as her when you were … before you …?’

‘Yes, yes we did. But I could never understand them either, so don’t worry about it. I’m glad that you read a lot. What’s this library like?’

‘It’s really big, but a lot of tramps go there to sleep and spend a lot of time. They get a book and sit down and just fall asleep. They smell awful!’

‘Well, you don’t need to go near them, do you? Best to let them keep themselves to themselves.’

‘Yes, Daddy.’ Her tone was slightly reproachful, warning him that he was giving fatherly advice and that such advice was unnecessary.

‘Fancy seeing a film then, do you?’

The cinema, however, was not open, so they went to an ice-cream parlour at Tollcross. Rebus watched Samantha scoop five colours of ice-cream from a Knickerbocker Glory. She was still at the stick-insect stage, eating without putting on an ounce of weight. Rebus was conscious of his sagging waistband, a stomach pampered and allowed to roam as it pleased. He sipped cappuccino (without sugar) and watched from the corner of his eye as a group of boys at another table looked towards his daughter and him, whispering and sniggering. They pushed back their hair and smoked their cigarettes as though sucking on life itself. He would have arrested them for self-afflicted growth-stunting had Sammy not been there.

their cigarettes. He did not smoke when with Sammy: she did not like him smoking. Her mother also, once upon a time, had screamed at him to stop, and had hidden his cigarettes and lighter, so that he had made secret little nests of cigarettes and matches all around the house. He had smoked on regardless, laughing in victory when he sauntered into the room with another lit cigarette between his lips, Rhona screeching at him to put the bloody thing out, chasing him around the furniture, her hands flapping to knock the incendiary from his mouth.

Those had been happy times, times of loving conflict.

‘How’s school?’

‘It’s okay. Are you involved in the murder case?’

‘Yes.’ God, he could murder for a cigarette, could tear a young male head from its body.

‘Will you catch him?’

‘Yes.’

‘What does he do to the girls, Daddy?’ Her eyes, trying to seem casual, examined the near-empty ice-cream glass very scrupulously.

‘He doesn’t do anything to them.’

‘Just murders them?’ Her lips were pale. Suddenly she was very much his child, his daughter, very much in need of protection. Rebus wanted to put his arms around her, to comfort her, to tell her that the big bad world was out there, not in here, that she was safe.

‘That’s right,’ he said instead.

‘I’m glad that’s all he does.’

The boys were whistling now, trying to attract her attention. Rebus felt his face growing red. On another day, any day other than this, he would march up to them and ram the law into their chilled little faces. But he was off-duty. He was enjoying an afternoon out with his daughter, the freakish result of a single grunted climax, that climax which had seen a lucky sperm, crawling through the ooze, make it all the way to the winning-post. Doubtless Rhona would already be reaching over for her book of the day, her literature. She would prise the still, spent body of her lover from her without a word being passed between them. Was her mind on her books all the time? Perhaps. And he, the lover, would feel deflated and empty, a vacant space, but suddenly as if no form of transference had taken place. That was her victory.

And then he would scream at her with a kiss. The scream of longing, of his solitary.

Let me out. Let me out …

‘Come on, let’s get out of here.’

‘Okay.’

And as they passed the table of hankering boys, their faces full of barely restrained lust, jabbering like monkeys, Samantha smiled at one of them. She smiled at one of them.

Rebus, sucking in fresh air, wondered what his world was coming to. He wondered whether his reason for believing in another reality behind this one might not be because the everyday was so frightening and so very sad. If this were all there was, then life was the sorriest invention of all time. He could kill those boys, and he wanted to smother his daughter, to protect her from that which she wanted — and would get. He realised that he had nothing to say to her, and that those boys did; that he had nothing in common with her save blood, while they had everything in common with her. The skies were dark as Wagnerian opera, dark as a murderer’s thoughts. Darkening like similes, while John Rebus’s world fell apart.

‘It’s time,’ she said, by his side yet so much bigger than him, so much more full of life. ‘It’s time.’

And indeed it was.

‘We better hurry,’ said Rebus, ‘it’s going to rain.’

He felt tired, and recalled that he had not slept, that he had been involved in strenuous labour throughout the short night. He took a taxi back to the flat — sod the expense — and crawled up the winding stairs to his front door. The smell of cats was overpowering. Inside his door, a letter, unstamped, awaited him. He swore out loud. The bastard was everywhere, everywhere and yet invisible. He ripped open the letter and read.

YOU’RE GETTING NOWHERE. NOWHERE. ARE YOU? SIGNED

But there was no signature, not in writing anyway. But inside the envelope, like some child’s plaything, lay the piece of knotted twine.

‘Why are you doing this, Mister Knot?’ said Rebus, fingering the twine. ‘And just what are you doing?’

Inside, the flat was like a fridge: the pilot-light had blown out again.