Knots And Crosses

13

The media, sensing that the ‘Edinburgh Strangler’ was not about to vanish in the night, took the story by its horns and created a monster. TV crews moved into some of the better hotel rooms in the city, and the city was happy enough to have them, it being not quite the tourist season yet.

Tom Jameson was as astute an editor as any, and he had a team of four reporters working on the story. He could not help noticing, however, that Jim Stevens was not on his best form. He seemed uninterested — never a good sign in a journalist. Jameson was worried. Stevens was the best he had, a household name. He would speak to him about it soon.

As the case grew along with the interest in it, John Rebus and Gill Templer became confined to communicating by telephone and via the occasional chance meeting in or around HQ. Rebus hardly saw his old station now. He was strictly a murder-case victim himself, and was told to think about nothing else during his waking hours. He thought about everything else: about Gill, about the letters, about his car’s inability to pass its MOT. And all the time he watched Anderson, father of Rhona’s lover, watched him as he grew ever more frantic for a motive, a lead, anything. It was almost a pleasure to watch the man in action.

As to the letters, Rebus had pretty much discounted his wife and daughter. A slight mark on Knot’s last missive had been checked by the forensic boys (for the price of a pint) and had turned out to be blood. Had the man nicked his finger while cutting the twine? It was yet another small mystery. Rebus’s life was full of mysteries, not the least of which was where his ten legitimate daily cigarettes went. He would open his packet of a late afternoon, count the contents, and find that he was supposed to have smoked all ten of his ration already. It was absurd; he could hardly remember smoking one of the alloted ten, never mind all of them. Yet a count of the butts in his ashtray would produce empirical evidence enough to withstand any denials on his part. Bloody strange though. It was as though he were shutting out a part of his waking life.

He was stationed in the HQ’s Incident Room at the moment, while Jack Morton, poor sod, was on door-to-door. From his vantage point he could see how Anderson was running the shambles. It was little wonder the man’s son had turned out to be less than bright. Rebus also had to deal with the many phone-calls — from those of the trying-to-be-helpfuls to those of the psychic-cranks-who-want-to-confess — and with the interviews carried out in the building itself at all hours of the day and night. There were hundreds of these, all to be filed and put into some kind of order of importance. It was a huge task, but there was always the chance that a lead would come from it, so he was not allowed to slack.

In the hectic, sweaty canteen he smoked cigarette number eleven, lying to himself that it was from the next day’s ration, and read the daily paper. They were straining for new, shocked adjectives now, having exhausted their thesauruses. The appalling, mad, evil crimes of The Strangler. This insane, evil, sex-crazed man. (They did not seem to mind that the killer had never sexually assaulted his victims.) Gymslip Maniac! ‘What are our police doing? All the technology in the world cannot replace the reassurance offered by bobbies on the beat. WE NEED THEM NOW.’ That was from James Stevens, our crime correspondent. Rebus remembered the stocky drunk man from the party. He recalled the look on Stevens’ face when he had been told Rebus’s name. That was strange: Everything was bloody strange. Rebus put down the newspaper. Reporters. Again, he wished Gill well in her job. He studied the blurred photograph on the front of the tabloid. It showed a crop-haired, unintelligent child. She was grinning nervously, as though snapped at a moment’s notice. There was a slight, endearing gap between her front teeth. Poor Nicola Turner, aged twelve, a pupil at one of the southside’s comprehensive schools. She had no attachments to either of the other dead girls. There were no visible links between them, and what was more, the killer had moved up a year, choosing a High School kid this time. So there was to be no regularity about his choice of age-groups. The randomness continued unabated. It was driving Anderson nuts.

But Anderson would never admit that the killer had his beloved police force tied in knots. Tied in absolute knots. Yet there had to be clues. There had to be. Rebus drank his coffee and felt his head spin. He was feeling like the detective in a cheap thriller, and wished that he could turn to the last page and stop all his confusion, all the death and the madness and the spinning in his ears.

Back in the Incident Room, he gathered together reports of phone-calls that had come in since he had left for his break. The telephonists were working flat out, and near them a telex-machine was almost constantly printing out some new piece of information thought useful to the case and sent on by other forces throughout the country.

Anderson pushed his way through the noise as if swimming in treacle.

‘A car is what we need, Rebus. A car. I want all the sightings of men driving away with children collated and on my desk in an hour. I want that bastard’s car.’

‘Yes, sir.’

And he was off again, wading through treacle deep enough to drown any normal human being. But not Indestructible Anderson, impervious to any danger. That made him a liability, thought Rebus, sifting through the piles of paper on his desk, which were meant to be in some system of order.

Cars. Anderson wanted cars, and cars he would have. There were swear-on-a-Bible descriptions of a man in a blue Escort, a white Capri, a purple Mini, a yellow BMW, a silver TR7, a converted ambulance, an ice-cream van (the telephone-caller sounding Italian and wishing to remain anonymous), and a great big Rolls-Royce with personalized number plates. Yes, let’s put them all into the computer and have it run a check of every blue Escort, white Capri, and Rolls-Royce in Britain. And with all that information at our fingertips … then what? More door-to-door, more gathering of telephone-calls and interviews, more paperwork and bullshit. Never mind, Anderson would swim through it all, indomitable amidst all the craziness of his personal world, and at the end of it all he would come out looking clean and shiny and untouchable, like an advertisement for washing powder. Three cheers.

Hip hip

Rebus had not enjoyed bullshit during his Army days either, and there had been plenty of it then. But he had been a good soldier, a very good soldier, when finally they had got down to soldiering. But then, in a fit of madness, he had applied to join the Special Air Squadron, and there had been very little bullshit there, and an incredible amount of savagery. They had made him run from the railway station to the camp behind a sergeant in his jeep. They had tortured him with twenty-hour marches, brutal instructors, the works. And when Gordon Reeve and he had made the grade, the SAS had tested them just that little bit further, just that inch too far, confining them, interrogating them, starving them, poisoning them, and all for a little piece of worthless information, a few words that would show they had cracked. Two naked, shivering animals with sacks tied over their heads, lying together to keep warm.

‘I want that list in an hour, Rebus,’ called Anderson, walking past again. He would have his list. He would have his pound of flesh.

Jack Morton arrived back, looking foot-weary and not at all amused with life. He slouched across to Rebus, a sheaf of papers under his arm, a cigarette in the other hand.

‘Look at this,’ he said, lifting his leg. Rebus saw the foot-long gash in the material.

‘What happened to you then?’

‘What do you think? I got chased by a great fucking alsatian, that’s what happened to me. Will I get a penny for this? Will I hell.’

‘You could try claiming for it anyway.’

‘What’s the point? I’d just be made to look stupid.’

Morton dragged a chair across to the table.

‘What are you working on?’ he asked, seating himself with visible relief.

‘Cars. Lots of them.’

‘Fancy a drink later on?’

Rebus looked at his watch, considering.

‘Might do, Jack. Thing is, I’m hoping to make a date for tonight.’

‘With the ravishing Inspector Templer?’

‘How did you know that?’ Rebus was genuinely surprised.

‘Come on, John. You can’t keep that sort of thing a secret — not from policemen. Better watch your step, mind. Rules and regulations, you know.’

‘Yes, I know. Does Anderson know about this?’

‘Has he said anything?’

‘No.’

‘Then he can’t, can he?’

‘You’d make a good policeman, son. You’re wasted in this job.’

‘You’re telling me, dad.’

Rebus busied himself with lighting cigarette number twelve. It was true, you couldn’t keep anything secret in a police station, not from the lower ranks anyway. He hoped Anderson and the Chief wouldn’t find out about it though.

‘Any luck with the door-to-door?’ he asked.

‘What do you think?’

‘Morton, you have an annoying habit of answering a question with another question.’

‘Have I? It must be all this work then, spending my days asking questions, mustn’t it?’

Rebus examined his cigarettes. He found he was smoking number thirteen. This was becoming ridiculous. Where had number twelve gone?

‘I’ll tell you, John, there’s nothing to be had out there, not a sniff of a lead. No one’s seen anything, no one knows anything. It’s almost like a conspiracy.’

‘Maybe that’s what it is then, a conspiracy.’

‘And has it been established that all three murders were the work of a single individual?’

‘Yes.’

The Chief Inspector did not believe in wasting words, especially with the press. He sat like a rock behind the table, his hands clasped before him, Gill Templer on his right. Her glasses — an affectation really, her vision was near-perfect — were in her bag. She never wore them while on duty, unless the occasion demanded it. Why had she worn them to the party? They were like jewellery to her. She found it interesting, too, to gauge different reactions towards her when she was and was not wearing them. When she explained this to her friends, they looked at her askance as if she were joking. Perhaps it all went back to her first true love, who had told her that girls who wore glasses seemed, in his experience, to be the best fucks. That had been fifteen years ago, but she still saw the look on his face, the smile, the glint. She saw, too, her own reaction — shock at his use of the word ‘fuck’. She could smile at that now. These days she swore as much as her male colleagues; again gauging their reaction. Everything was a game to Gill Templer, everything but the job. She had not become an Inspector through luck or looks, but through hard, efficient work and the will to climb as high as they would let her go. And now she sat with her Chief Inspector, who was a token presence at these gatherings. It was Gill who made up the handouts, who briefed the Chief Inspector, who handled the media afterwards, and they all knew it. A Chief Inspector might add weight of seniority to the proceedings, but Gill Templer it was who could give the journalists their ‘extras’, the useful snippets left unsaid.

Nobody knew that better than Jim Stevens. He sat to the back of the room, smoking without removing the cigarette from his mouth once. He took little of the Chief Inspector’s words in. He could wait. Still, he jotted down a sentence or two for future use. He was still a newsman after all. Old habits never died. The photographer, a keen teenager, nervously changing lenses every few minutes, had departed with his roll of film. Stevens looked around for someone he might have a drink with later on. They were all here. All the old boys from the Scottish press, and the English correspondents too. Scottish, English, Greek — it didn’t matter, pressmen always looked like nothing other than pressmen. Their faces were robust, they smoked, their shirts were a day or two old. They did not look well-paid, yet were extremely well-paid, and with more fringe benefits than most. But they worked for their money, worked hard at building up contacts, squeezing into nooks and crannies, stepping on toes. He watched Gill Templer. What would she know about John Rebus? And would she be willing to tell? They were still friends after all, her and him. Still friends.

Maybe not good friends, certainly not good friends — though he had tried. And now she and Rebus … Wait until he nailed that bastard, if there was anything there to nail. Of course there was something there to nail. He could sense it. Then her eyes would be opened, truly opened. Then they would see what they would see. He was already preparing the headline. Something to do with ‘Brothers in Law — Brothers in Crime!’ Yes, that had a nice ring to it. The Rebus brothers put behind bars, and all his own work. He turned his attention back to the murder case. But it was all too easy, too easy to sit down and write about police inefficiency, about the conjectured maniac. Still, it was bread and butter for the moment. And there was always Gill Templer to stare at.

‘Gill!’

He caught her as she was getting into her car.

‘Hello, Jim.’ Cold, businesslike.

‘Listen, I just wanted to apologise for my behaviour at the party.’ He was out of breath after a brief jog across the car park, and the words came slowly from his burning chest. ‘I mean, I was a bit pissed. Anyway, sorry.’

But Gill knew him too well, knew that this was merely a prelude to a question or request. Suddenly she felt a little sorry for him, sorry for his fair thick hair which needed a wash, sorry for his short, stocky — she had once thought it powerful — body, for the way he trembled now and again as though cold. But the pity soon wore off. It had been a hard day.

‘Why wait till now to tell me? You could have said something at Sunday’s briefing.’

He shook his head.

‘I didn’t make Sunday’s briefing. I was a bit hungover. You must have noticed I wasn’t there?’

‘Why should I have noticed that? Plenty of other people were there, Jim.’

That cut him, but he let it pass.

‘Well, anyway,’ he said, ‘sorry. Okay?’

‘Fine.’ She made to step into her car.

‘Can I buy you a drink or something? To cement the apology, so to speak.’

‘Sorry, Jim, I’m busy.’

‘Meeting that man Rebus?’

‘Maybe.’

‘Look after yourself, Gill. That one might not be what he seems.’

She straightened up again.

‘I mean,’ said Stevens, ‘just take care, all right?’

He wouldn’t say any more just yet. Having planted a seed of suspicion, he would give it time to grow. Then he would question her closely, and perhaps then she would be willing to tell. He turned away from her and walked, hands in pockets, towards the Sutherland Bar.

14

At Edinburgh’s Main Public Lending Library, a large, unstuffy old building sandwiched between a bookshop and a bank, the tramps were settling down for a day’s snoozing. They came here, as though waiting out fate itself, to see through the few days of absolute poverty before their next amount of state benefit was due. This money they would then spend in a day (perhaps, if stretched, two days) of festivity: wine, women, and songs to an unappreciative public.

The attitudes of the library staff towards these down-and-outs ranged from the immensely intolerant (usually voiced by the older members of staff) to the sadly reflective (the youngest librarians). It was, however, a public library, and as long as the worldly-wise travellers picked up a book at the start of the day there was nothing that could be done about them, unless they became rowdy, in which case a security-man was quickly on the scene.

So they slept in the comfortable seats, sometimes frowned upon by those who could not help wondering if this was what Andrew Carnegie had in mind when he put up the finance for the first public libraries all those years ago. The sleepers did not mind these stares, and they dreamed on, though nobody bothered to inquire what it was they dreamed of, and no one thought them important.

They were not, however, allowed into the children’s section of the library. Indeed, any browsing adult not dragging a child in tow was looked at askance in the children’s section, and especially since the murders of those poor wee girls. The librarians talked about it amongst themselves. Hanging was the answer; they were agreed on that. And indeed, hanging was being discussed again in Parliament, as happens whenever a mass murderer emerges out of the shadows of civilized Britain. The most oft-repeated statement amongst the people of Edinburgh, however, did not concern hanging at all. It was put cogently by one of the librarians: ‘But here, in Edinburgh! It’s unthinkable.’ Mass murderers belonged to the smoky back streets of the South and the Midlands, not to Scotland’s picture-postcard city. Listeners nodded, horrified and sad that this was something they all had to face, each and every Morningside lady in her faded hat of gentility, every thug who roamed the streets of the housing-estates, every lawyer, banker, broker, shop-assistant and vendor of evening newspapers. Vigilante groups had been hastily set up and just as hastily disbanded by the swiftly reacting police. This was not, said the Chief Constable, the answer. Be vigilant by all means, but the law was never to be taken into one’s own hands. He rubbed together his own gloved hands as he spoke, and some newspapermen wondered if his subconscious were not washing its Freudian hands of the whole affair. Jim Stevens’ editor decided to put it thus: LOCK UP YOUR DAUGHTERS! and left it pretty much at that.

Indeed, the daughters were being locked up. Some of them were being kept away from school by their parents, or were under heavy escort all the way there and all the way back home, with an additional check on their welfare at lunch-time. The children’s section of the Main Lending Library had grown deathly quiet of late, so that the librarians there had little to do with their days except talk about hanging and read the lurid speculations in the British press.

The British press had cottoned onto the fact that Edinburgh had a rather less than genteel past. They ran reminders of Deacon Brodie (the inspiration, it was said, behind Stevenson’s Jekyll & Hyde), Burke and Hare, and anything else that came to light in their researches, right down to the ghosts that haunted a suspicious number of the city’s Georgian houses. These tales kept the imaginations of the librarians alive while there was a lull in their duties. They made sure each to buy a different paper, so that they could glean as many pieces of information as possible, but were disillusioned by how often journalists seemed to swap a central story between them, so that an identical piece would appear in two or three different papers. It was as if a conspiracy of writers was at work.

Some children, however, did still come to the library. The vast majority of these were accompanied by mother, father, or minder, but one or two still came alone. This evidence of the foolhardiness of some parents and their offspring further disturbed the faint-hearted librarians, who would ask the children, appalled, where their mothers and fathers were.

Samantha rarely came to the library’s children’s section, preferring older books, but she did so today to get away from her mother. A male librarian came over to her as she pored over the most childish stuff.

‘Are you here on your own, dear?’ he said.

Samantha recognised him. He’d been working here ever since she could remember.

‘My mum’s upstairs,’ she said.

‘I’m glad to hear it. Stick close to her, that’s my advice.’

She nodded, inwardly fuming. Her mother had given her a similar lecture only five minutes before. She wasn’t a child, but no one seemed prepared to accept that. When the librarian went over to talk with another girl, Samantha took out the book she wanted and gave her ticket to the old lady librarian with the dyed hair, whom the children called Mrs Slocum. Then she hurried up the steps to the library’s reference section, where her mother was busy looking for a critical study of George Eliot. George Eliot, her mother had told her, was a woman who had written books of tremendous realism and psychological depth at a time when men were supposed to be the great realists and psychologists, and women were supposed to be for nothing but the housework. That was why she had been forced to call herself ‘George’ to get published.

To counter these attempts at indoctrination, Samantha had brought from the children’s section an illustrated book about a boy who flies away on a giant cat and has adventures in a fantasy land beyond his dreams. That, she hoped, would piss her mother off. In the reference section, a lot of people sat at desks, coughing, their coughs echoing around the hushed hall. Her mother, glasses perched on her nose, looking very much like a schoolteacher, argued with a librarian about some book she had ordered. Samantha walked between the rows of desks, glancing at what people were reading and writing. She wondered why people spent so much time reading books when there were other things to be doing. She wanted to travel round the world. Perhaps then she would be ready to sit in dull rooms poring over these old books. But not until then.

He watched her as she moved up and down the rows of desks. He stood with his face half to her, looking as if he were studying a shelf of books on angling. She wasn’t looking around her though. There was no danger. She was in her own little world, a world of her own design and her own rules. That was fine. All the girls were like that. But this one was with someone. He could see that. He took a book from the shelf and flicked through it. One chapter caught his eye, and turned his thoughts away from Samantha. It was a chapter dealing with fly-knotting. There were lots of designs for knots. Lots of them.

15

Another briefing. Rebus enjoyed the briefings now, for there was always the possibility that Gill would be present, and that afterwards they would be able to go for a cup of coffee together. Last night they had eaten late at a restaurant, but she had been tired and had looked at him strangely, quizzing him a little more even than usual with her eyes, not wearing her spectacles at first, but then slipping them on halfway through the meal.

‘I want to see what I’m eating.’

But he knew she could see well enough. The glasses were a psychological strengthener. They protected her. Perhaps he was just being paranoid. Perhaps she had been tired merely. But he suspected something more, though he could not think what. Had he insulted her in some way? Snubbed her without realising? He was tired himself. They went to their separate flats and lay awake, wanting not to be alone. Then he dreamed the dream of the kiss, and awoke to the usual result, the sweat tainting his forehead, his lips moist. Would he awake to another letter? To another murder?

Now he felt lousy from lack of sleep. But still he enjoyed the briefing, and not just because of Gill. There was the inkling of a lead at long last, and Anderson was anxious to have it substantiated.

‘A pale blue Ford Escort,’ said Anderson. Behind him sat the Chief Superintendent, whose presence seemed to be unnerving the Chief Inspector. ‘A pale blue Ford Escort.’ Anderson wiped his brow. ‘We have reports of such a car being seen in the Haymarket district on the evening when victim number one’s body was found, and we have two sightings of a man and a girl, the girl apparently asleep, in such a car on the night that victim number three went missing.’ Anderson’s eyes came up from the document before him to gaze, it seemed, into the eyes of every officer present. ‘I want this made top priority, or better. I want to know the ownership details of every blue Ford Escort in the Lothians, and I want that information sooner than possible. Now I know you’ve been working flat out as it is, but with a little extra push we can nail chummy before he does any more killing. To this end, Inspector Hartley has drawn up a roster. If your name’s on it, drop what you’re doing and get busy on tracing this car. Any questions?’

Gill Templer was scribbling notes in her tiny note-pad, perhaps concocting a story for the press. Would they want to release this? Probably not, not straight away. They would wait first to see if anything came of the initial search. If nothing did, then the public would be asked to help. Rebus didn’t fancy this at all: gathering ownership details, trekking out to the suburbs, and mass-interviewing the suspects, trying to ‘nose’ whether they were probable or possible suspects, then perhaps a second interview. No, he did not fancy this at all. He fancied accompanying Gill Templer back to his cave and making love to her. Her back was all he could see of her from his present vantage point by the door. He had been last into the room yet again, having stayed at the pub a little longer than anticipated. It had been a prior appointment, lunch (liquid) with Jack Morton. Morton told him about the slow, steady progress of the outdoor inquiry: four-hundred people interviewed, whole families checked and rechecked, the usual cranks and amoral groups examined. And not a jot of actual light had been thrown on the case.

But now they had a car, or at least thought they did. The evidence was tenuous, but it was there, the likeness of a fact, and that was something. Rebus felt a little proud of his own part in the investigation, for it had been his painstaking cross-referencing of sightings which had thrown up this slender link. He wanted to tell Gill all about it, then arrange a rendezvous for later in the week. He wanted to see her again, to see anybody again, for his flat was becoming a prison-cell. He would slouch home of a late evening or early morning, tip onto his bed, and sleep, not bothering these days to tidy or to read or to buy (or even steal) any foodstuffs. He had neither the time nor the energy. Instead, he ate from kebab-houses and chip-shops, early-morning bakeries and chocolate-dispensers. His face was becoming paler than usual, and his stomach groaned as though there were no skin left to distend. He still shaved and put on a tie, as a matter of necessary propriety, but that was about it. Anderson had noticed that his shirts were not as clean as they might have been, but had said nothing so far. For one thing, Rebus was in his good books, begetter of the lead, and for another, anyone could see that in Rebus’s present mood he was likely to take a swing at any detractor.

The meeting was breaking up. There were no questions in anyone’s mind except the obvious one: when do we start cracking up? Rebus hovered just outside the door, waiting for Gill. She came out in the last group, in quiet conversation with Wallace and Anderson. The Superintendent had his arm around her waist playfully, gently ushering her out of the room. Rebus glared at the group, this motley crew of superior officers. He watched Gill’s face, but she did not seem to notice him. Rebus felt himself slide back down the snake on the board, right down to the bottom line again, back into the heap. So this was love. Who was kidding who?

As the group of three walked up the corridor, Rebus stood there like a jilted teenager and cursed and cursed and cursed.

He’d been let down again. Let down.

Don’t let me down, John. Please.

Please Please Please

And a screaming in his memory …

He felt dizzy, his ears ringing with the sea. Staggering a little, he caught hold of the wall, trying to take comfort in its solidity, but it seemed to be throbbing. He breathed hard, thinking back to his days on the rock-strewn beach, recovering from his breakdown. The sea had been in his ears then, too. The floor adjusted itself slowly. People walked by quizzically, but no one stopped to help. Sod them all. And sod Gill Templer too. He could manage on his own. He could manage on his own, God save him. He would be okay. All he needed was a cigarette and some coffee.

But really he needed their pats on the back, their congratulations on a job well done, their acceptance. He needed someone to assure him that it was all going to be all right.

That he would be all right.

That evening, a couple of after-duty drinks under his belt already, he decided to make a night of it. Morton had to go off on some errand, but that was okay, too. Rebus didn’t need company. He walked along Princes Street, breathing in the evening’s promise. He was a free man after all, just as free as any of the kids hanging about outside the hamburger bar. They preened and joked and waited, waiting for what? He knew that: waiting for the time to come when they could go home and sleep into tomorrow. He too was waiting, in his own way. Killing time.

In the Rutherford Arms he met a couple of drinkers whom he knew from evenings like this just after Rhona had left him. He drank with them for an hour, sucking at the beer as though it were mother’s milk. They talked about football, about horse-racing, about their jobs, and the whole scene brought tranquillity to Rebus. It was a normal evening’s conversation, and he embraced it greedily, throwing in his own snippets of news. But enough was as good as a feast, and he walked briskly, drunkenly out of the bar, leaving his friends with promises of another time, edging his way down the street towards Leith.

Jim Stevens, sitting at the bar, watched in the mirror as Michael Rebus left his drink on his table and went to the toilet. A few seconds later, the mystery man followed him inside, having been sitting at another table. It looked as though they were meeting to discuss the next swap-over, both seeming too casual actually to be carrying anything incriminating. Stevens smoked his cigarette, waiting. In less than a minute, Rebus reappeared, coming up to the bar for another drink.

John Rebus, pushing through the pub’s swing-doors, could not believe his eyes. He slapped his brother on the shoulder.

‘Mickey! What are you doing here?’

Michael Rebus nearly died at that moment. His heart leapt high into his throat, causing him to cough.

‘Just having a drink, John.’ But he looked guilty as hell, he was sure of that. ‘You gave me a fright,’ he went on, trying to smile, ‘hitting me like that.’

‘A brotherly slap, that’s all it was. What are you drinking?’

While the brothers were in conversation, the man slipped out of the toilet and walked out of the bar, his eyes never glancing to left or right. Stevens watched him go, but had other things on his mind now. He could not let the policeman see him. He turned away from the bar, as if searching for a face amongst the people at the tables. Now he was sure. The policeman had to be in on it. The whole sequence of actions had been very slick indeed, but now he was sure.

‘So you’re doing a show down here?’ John Rebus, cheered by his previous drinks, now felt that things were going right for a change. He was reunited with his brother for that drink they had always been promising themselves. He ordered whiskies with lager chasers. ‘This is a quarter-gill pub,’ he told Michael. ‘That’s a decent size of a measure.’

Michael smiled, smiled, smiled, as though his life depended upon it. His mind was racing and jumbled. The last thing he needed was another drink. If word of this got out, it would seem too unlikely to his Edinburgh connection, too unlikely. He, Michael, would have his legs broken for this if it ever was to get out. He had been warned. And what was John doing here anyway? He seemed complacent enough, drunk even, but what if it were all a set-up? What if his connection had already been arrested outside? He felt as he had when, as a child, he had stolen money from his father’s wallet, denying the crime for weeks afterwards, his heart heavy with guilt.

Guilty, guilty, guilty.

John Rebus meantime drank on and chatted, unaware of the sudden change of atmosphere, the sudden interest in him. All he cared about was the whisky in front of him and the fact that Michael was about to go off and do a show at a local bingo hall.

‘Mind if I come along?’ he asked. ‘I might as well see how my brother earns his crust.’

‘Sure,’ said Michael. He toyed with the whisky glass. ‘I’d better not drink this, John. I’ve got to keep my mind clear.’

‘Of course you have. Need to let the mysterious sensations flood over you.’ Rebus made an action with his hands as though hypnotising Michael, his eyes wide, smiling.

And Jim Stevens picked up his cigarettes and, his back to them still, left the smoky, noisy public house. If only it had been quieter in there. If only he could have heard what they were saying. Rebus saw him go.

‘I think I know him,’ he told Michael, gesturing towards the door with his head. ‘He’s a reporter on the local rag.’

Michael Rebus tried to smile, smile, smile, but it seemed to him that his world was falling apart.

The Rio Grande Bingo Hall had been a cinema. The front twelve rows of seats had been taken out and bingo boards and stools put in their place, but to the back of these were still many rows of dusty, red seats, and the balcony seating was completely intact. John Rebus said that he preferred to sit upstairs, so that he would not distract Michael. He followed an elderly man and his wife upstairs. The seats looked comfortable, but as he eased himself into the second row, Rebus felt springs jar against his buttocks. He moved around a little, trying to get comfortable, and settled finally for a position where one cheek supported most of his weight.

There seemed a good enough crowd downstairs, but up here in the gloom of the neglected balcony there were only the old couple and himself. Then he heard shoes tapping on the aisle. They paused for a second, before a hefty woman slid into the second row. Rebus was forced to look up, and saw her smiling at him.

‘Mind if I sit here?’ she said. ‘Not waiting for anyone, are you?’

Her look was hopeful. Rebus shook his head, smiling politely. ‘Thought not,’ she said, sitting down beside him. And he smiling. He had never seen Michael smile so much, or so uneasily. Was it so embarrassing for him to meet his elder brother? No, there had to be more to it than that. Michael’s had been the smile of the small-time thief, caught yet again. They needed to talk.

‘I come here a lot to the bingo. But I thought this might be a good laugh, you know. Ever since my husband died,’ meaningful pause, ‘well, it’s not been the same. I like to get out now and again, you know. Everybody does, don’t they? So I thought I’d come along. Don’t know what made me come upstairs. Fate, I suppose.’ Her smile broadened. Rebus smiled back.

She was in her early forties, a little too much make-up and scent, but quite well-preserved. She talked as if she had not spoken to anyone in days, as if it were important for her to establish that she could still speak and be listened to and understood. Rebus felt sorry for her. He saw a little of himself in her; not much, but almost enough.

‘So what are you doing here?’ She was forcing him to speak.

‘Just here for the show, same as you are.’ He didn’t dare say that his brother was the hypnotist. That would have left too many avenues for a response.

‘You like this sort of thing, do you?’

‘I’ve never been before.’

‘Neither have I.’ She smiled again, conspiratorially this time. She had found that they had something in common. Thankfully, the lights were going down — what lighting there was — and a spot had come up on the stage. Someone was introducing the show. The woman opened her handbag and produced a noisy bag of boiled sweets. She offered one to Rebus.

Rebus found himself, to his own surprise, enjoying the show, but not half as much as the woman beside him was. She howled with laughter as one willing participant, his trousers left on the stage, pretended to swim up and down the aisles.

Another guinea-pig was made to believe that he was ravenously hungry. Another that she was a professional striptease artiste at one of her bookings. Another that he was falling asleep.

Still enjoying the show, Rebus began to nod off himself. It was the effect of too much alcohol, too little sleep, and the warm, broody darkness of the theatre. Only the final applause of the audience awoke him. Michael, sweating in his glittery stage suit, took the applause as though addicted to it, coming back for another bow when most of the people were leaving their seats. He had told his brother that he had to get home quickly, that he would not see him after the show, that he would phone him sometime for his reaction.

And John Rebus had slept through much of it.

He felt refreshed, however, and could hear himself accepting the perfumed woman’s offer of a ‘one for the road’ drink at a local bar. They left the theatre arm-in-arm, smiling at something. Rebus felt relaxed, a child again. This woman was treating him like her son, really, and he was happy enough to be coddled. A final drink, and then he’d go home. Just one drink.

Jim Stevens watched them leave the theatre. It was becoming very strange indeed. Rebus seemed to be ignoring his brother now, and he had a woman with him. What did it all mean? One thing it meant was that Gill should be told about it at some opportune moment. Stevens, smiling, added it to his collection of such moments. It had been a good night’s work so far.

So where in the evening had mother-love changed into physical contact? In that pub, perhaps, where her reddened fingers had bitten into his thigh? Outside in the cooling air when he wrapped his arms around her neck in a fumbled attempt at a kiss? Or here in her musty flat, smelling still of her husband, where Rebus and she lie across an old settee and exchange tongues?

No matter. It’s too late to regret anything, and too early. So he slouches after her when she retires to her bedroom. He tumbles into the huge double-bed, springy and covered in thick blankets and quilts. He watches her undress in darkness. The bed feels like one he had as a kid, when a hot-water-bottle was all he had to keep the chill off, and mounds of gritty blankets, puffed-out quilts. Heavy and suffocating, tiring in themselves.

No matter.

Rebus did not enjoy the particulars of her heavy body, and was forced to think of everything in the abstract. His hands on her well-suckled breasts reminded him of late nights with Rhona. Her calves were thick, unlike Gill’s, and her face was worn with too much living. But she was a woman, and she was with him, so he squeezed her into an abstract and tried to make them both happy. But the heaviness of the bedding oppressed him, caging him, making him feel small and trapped and isolated from the world. He fought against it, fought against the memory of Gordon Reeve and he as they sat in solitary, listening to the screams of those around them, but enduring, always enduring, and reunited finally. Having won. Having lost. Lost everything. His heart was pounding to her grunts, now some distance away it seemed. He felt the first wave of that absolute repulsion hit him in the stomach like a truncheon, and his hands slid around the hanging, yielding throat beneath him. The moans were inhuman now, cat-like, keening. His hands pushed a little, the fingers finding their own purchase against skin and sheet. They locked him up and they threw away the key. They pushed him to his death and they poisoned him. He should not have been alive. He should have died back then, back in the rank, animal cells with their power-hoses and their constant questionings. But he had survived. He had survived. And he was coming.

He alone, all alone

And the screaming

Screaming

Rebus became aware of the gurgling sounds beneath him just before his head started to fry. He fell over onto the gasping figure and lost consciousness. It was like a switch being flipped.

16

He awoke in a white room. It reminded him very much of the hospital room in which he had awoken after his nervous breakdown all those years ago. There were muffled noises from outside. He sat up, his head throbbing. What had happened? Christ, that woman, that poor woman. He had tried to kill her! Drunk, way too drunk. Merciful God, he had tried to strangle her, hadn’t he? Why in God’s name had he done that^? Why?

A doctor pushed open his door.

‘Ah, Mister Rebus. Good, you’re awake. We’re about to move you into one of the wards. How do you feel?’

His pulse was taken.

‘Simple exhaustion, we think. Simple nervous exhaustion. Your friend who called for the ambulance-’

‘My friend?’

‘Yes, she said that you just collapsed. And from what we can gather from your employers, you’ve been working pretty hard on this dreadful murder hunt. Simple exhaustion. What you need is a break.’

‘Where’s my … my friend?’

‘No idea. At home, I expect.’

‘And according to her, I just collapsed?’

‘That’s right.’

Rebus felt immediate relief flooding through him. She had not told them. She had not told them. Then his head began to pulse again. The doctor’s wrists were hairy and scrubbed clean. He slipped a thermometer into Rebus’s mouth, smiling. Did he know what Rebus had been doing prior to the blackout? Or had his friend dressed him before calling the ambulance? He had to contact the woman. He didn’t know where she stayed, not exactly, but the ambulancemen would know, and he could check.

Exhaustion. Rebus did not feel exhausted. He was beginning to feel rested and, though slightly unnerved, quite unworried about life. Had they given him anything while he was asleep?

‘Can I see a newspaper?’ he muttered past the thermometer.

‘I’ll get an orderly to fetch you one. Is there anyone you wish us to contact? Any close relative or friend?’

Rebus thought of Michael.

‘No,’ he said, ‘there’s nobody to contact. All I want is a newspaper.’

‘Fair enough.’ The thermometer was removed, the details noted.

‘How long do you want to keep me in here?’

‘Two or three days. I may want you to see an analyst.’

‘Forget the analyst. I’ll need some books to read.’

‘We’ll see what we can do.’

Rebus settled back then, having decided to let things take their course. He would lie here, resting though he needed no rest, and would let the rest of them worry about the murder case. Sod them all. Sod Anderson. Sod Wallace. Sod Gill Templer.

But then he remembered his hands slipping around that ageing throat, and he shivered. It was as though his mind were not his own. Had he been about to kill that woman? Should he see the analyst after all? The questions made his headache worse. He tried not to think about anything at all, but three figures kept coming back to him: his old friend Gordon Reeve, his new lover Gill Templer, and the woman he had betrayed her for, and nearly strangled. They danced in his head until the dance became blurred. Then he fell asleep.

‘John!’

She walked quickly to his bed, fruit and vitamin-drink in her hands. She had make-up on her face, and was wearing strictly off-duty clothes. She pecked his cheek, and he could smell her French perfume. He could also see down the front of her silk blouse. He felt a little guilty.

‘Hello, D.I. Templer,’ he said. ‘Here,’ lifting one edge of the bedcover, ‘get in.’

She laughed, dragging across a stern-looking chair. Other visitors were entering the ward, their smiles and quiet voices redolent of illness, an illness Rebus did not feel.

‘How are you, John?’

‘Terrible. What have you brought me?’

‘Grapes, bananas, diluting orange. Nothing very imaginative, I’m afraid.’

Rebus picked a grape from the bunch and popped it into his mouth, setting aside the trashy novel in which he had been painfully involved.

‘I don’t know, Inspector, the things I have to do to get a date with you.’ Rebus shook his head wearily. Gill was smiling, but nervously.

‘We were worried about you, John. What happened?’

‘I fainted. In the home of a friend, by all accounts. It’s nothing very serious. I have a few weeks to live.’

Gill’s smile was warm.

‘They say it’s overwork.’ Then she paused. ‘What’s all this “Inspector” stuff?’

Rebus shrugged, then looked sulky. His guilt was mixing with the remembrance of that snub he had been given, that snub which had started the whole ball rolling. He turned into a patient again, weakly slumping against his pillow.

‘I’m a very ill man, Gill. Too ill to answer questions.’

‘Well, in that case I won’t bother to slip you the cigarettes sent by Jack Morton.’

Rebus sat up again.

‘Bless that man. Where are they?’

She brought two packs from her jacket pocket and slipped them beneath the bedclothes. He gripped her hand.

‘I missed you, Gill.’ She smiled, and did not withdraw the hand.

Limitless visiting-time being a prerogative of the police, Gill stayed for two hours, talking about her past, asking him about his own. She had been born on an air-force base in Wiltshire, just after the war. She told Rebus that her father had been an engineer in the RAF.

‘My dad,’ Rebus said, ‘was in the Army during the war. I was conceived while he was on one of his last leaves. He was a stage hypnotist by profession.’ People usually raised an eyebrow at that, but not Gill Templer. ‘He used to work the music-halls and theatres, doing summer stints in Blackpool and Ayr and places like that, so we were always sure of a summer holiday away from Fife.’

She sat with her head cocked to one side, content to be told stories. The ward was quiet once the other visitors had obeyed the leaving-bell. A nurse pushed around a trolley with a huge battered pot of tea on it. Gill was given a cup, the nurse smiling at her in sisterhood.

‘She’s a nice kid, that nurse,’ said Rebus, relaxed. He had been given two pills, one blue and one brown, and they were making him drowsy. ‘She reminds me of a girl I knew when I was in the Paras.’

‘How long were you in the Paras, John?’

‘Six years. No, eight years it was.’

‘What made you leave?’

What made him leave? Rhona had asked him the same question over and over, her curiosity piqued by the feeling that he had something to hide, some monstrous skeleton in his closet.

‘I don’t know really. It’s hard to remember that far back. I was picked for special training and I didn’t like it.’

And this was the truth. He had no use for memories of his training, the reek of fear and mistrust, the screaming, that screaming in his memory. Let me out. The echo of solitary.

‘Well,’ said Gill, ‘if my memory serves me right, I’ve got a case waiting for me back at base-camp.’

‘That reminds me,’ he said, ‘I think I saw your friend last night. The reporter. Stevens, wasn’t it? He was in a pub the same time I was. Strange.’

‘Not so very strange. That’s his kind of hunting-ground. Funny, he’s a bit like you in some ways. Not as sexy though.’ She smiled and pecked his cheek again, rising from the metal chair. ‘I’ll try to drop in again before they let you out, but you know what it’s like. I can’t make any concrete promises, D.S. Rebus.’

Standing, she seemed taller than Rebus had imagined her. Her hair fell forward onto his face for another kiss, full on the lips this time, and he staring at the dark cleft between her breasts. He felt a little tired, so tired. He forced his eyes to remain open while she walked away, her heels clacking on the tiled floor while the nurses floated past like ghosts on their rubber-soled shoes. He pushed himself up so that he could watch her legs retreat. She had nice legs. He had remembered that much. He remembered them gripping his sides, the feet resting on his buttocks. He remembered her hair falling across the pillow like a Turner seascape. He remembered her voice hissing in his ears, that hissing. Oh yes, John, oh, John, yes, yes, yes.

Why did you leave the army?

As she turned over, turning into the woman with the choking cries of his climax.

Why did you?

Oh, oh, oh, oh.

Oh yes, the safety of dreams.

17

The editors loved what the Edinburgh Strangler was doing for the circulations of their newspapers. They loved the way his story grew almost organically, as though carefully nurtured. The modus operandi had altered ever so slightly for the killing of Nicola Turner. The Strangler had, it seemed, tied a knot in the cord prior to strangulation. This knot had pressed heavily on the girl’s throat, bruising it. The police did not consider this of much significance. They were too busy checking through the records of blue Ford Escorts to be busy with a slight detail of technique. They were out there checking every blue Escort in the area, questioning every owner, every driver.

Gill Templer had released details of the car to the press, hoping for a huge public response. It came: neighbours reported their neighbours, fathers their sons, wives their husbands, and husbands their wives. There were over two-hundred blue Escorts to investigate, and if nothing came of that, they would be re-investigated, before moving on to other colours of Ford Escort, other makes of light-blue saloon car. It might take months; certainly it would take weeks.

Jack Morton, another xeroxed list folded in his hand, had consulted his doctor about swollen feet. The doctor had told him that he walked too much in cheap, unsupportive shoes. This Morton already knew. He had now interviewed so many suspects that it was all becoming a blur to him. They all looked the same and acted the same: nervous, deferential, innocent. If only the Strangler would make a mistake. There were no clues worth going on. Morton suspected the car to be a false trail. No clues worth going on. He remembered John Rebus’s anonymous letters. There are clues everywhere. Could that be true of this case? Could the clues be too big to notice, or too abstract? Certainly it was a rare — an extraordinarily rare — murder case that did not have some bumper, extravagant clue lying about somewhere just waiting to be picked up. He was damned if he knew where this one was though, and that was why he had visited his doctor — hoping for some sympathy and a few days off. Rebus had landed on his feet again, lucky sod. Morton envied him his illness.

He parked his car on a double-yellow line outside the library and sauntered in. The great front hall reminded him of the days when he had used this library himself, clutching picture-books borrowed from the children’s section. It used to be situated downstairs. He wondered if it still was. His mother would give him the bus-fare, and he would come into town, ostensibly to change his library books, but really so that he could wander the streets for an hour or two, savouring the taste of what it would be like to be grown up and free. He would trail American tourists, taking note of their swaggering self-confidence and their bulging wallets and waistbands. He would watch them as they photographed Greyfriars Bobby’s statue across from the kirkyard. He had stared long and hard at the statue of the small dog, and had felt nothing. He had read of Covenanters, of Deacon Brodie, of public executions on the High Street, wondering what kind of city this was, and what kind of country. He shook his head now, past caring about fantasies, and went to the information desk.

‘Hello, Mister Morton.’

He turned to find a girl, more a young lady really, standing before him, a book clasped to her small chest. He frowned.

‘It’s me, Samantha Rebus.’

His eyes went wide.

‘Goodness, so it is. Well, well. You’ve certainly grown since I last saw you. Mind you, that must have been a year or two back. How are you?’

‘I’m fine, thanks. I’m here with my mother. Are you here on police business?’

‘Something like that, yes.’ Morton could feel her eyes burning into him. God, she had her father’s eyes all right. He had left his mark.

‘How’s dad keeping?’

To tell or not to tell. Why not tell her? Then again, was it his place to tell her?

‘He’s fine, so far as I know,’ he said, knowing this to be seventy-per-cent truth.

‘I’m just going down to the teenagers’ section. Mum’s in the Reference Room. It’s dead boring in there.’

‘I’ll go with you. That’s just where I was headed.’

She smiled at him, pleased about something that was going on in her adolescent head, and Jack Morton had the thought that she wasn’t at all like her father. She was far too nice and polite.

A fourth girl was missing. The outcome seemed a foregone conclusion. No bookie would have given odds.

‘We need special vigilance,’ stressed Anderson. ‘More officers are being drafted in tonight. Remember,’ the officers present looked hollow-eyed and demoralized, ‘if and when he kills this victim, he will attempt to dispose of the body, and if we can spot him doing that, or if any member of the public can spot him doing that, just once, then we’ve got him.’ Anderson slapped a fist into his open hand. Nobody seemed very cheered. So far the Strangler had dumped three corpses, quite successfully, in different areas of the city: Oxgangs, Haymarket, Colinton. The police could not be everywhere (though these days it seemed to the public that they were), no matter how hard they tried.

‘Again,’ continued the Chief Inspector, consulting a file, ‘the recent abduction seems to have little enough in common with the others. The victim’s name is Helen Abbot. Eight years of age, a bit younger than the others you’ll notice, light-brown shoulder-length hair. Last seen with her mother in a Princes Street store. The mother says that the girl simply disappeared. One minute there, the next minute gone, as was the case with the second victim.’

Gill Templer, thinking this over later, found it curious. The girls could not themselves have been abducted actually in the shops. That would have been impossible without screams, without witnesses. One member of the public had come forward to say that a girl resembling Mary Andrews — the second victim — had been seen by him climbing the steps from the National Gallery up towards The Mound. She had been alone, and had seemed happy enough. In which case, Gill mused, the girl had sneaked away from her mother. But why? For some secret rendezvous with someone she had known, someone who had turned out to be her killer? In that case, it seemed likely that all the girls had known their murderer, so they had to have something in common. Different schools, different friends, different ages. What was the common denominator?

She admitted defeat when her head started to hurt. Besides, she had reached John’s street and had other things to think about. He had sent her here to collect some clean clothes for his release, and to see if there were any mail, as well as to check that the central heating was working still. He had given her his key, and as she climbed the stairs, pinching her nose against the pervasive smell of cats, she felt a bond between John Rebus and herself. She wondered if the relationship were about to turn serious. He was a nice man, but a little hung-up, a little secretive. Maybe that was what she liked.

She opened his door, scooped up the few letters lying on the hall-carpet, and made a quick tour of the flat. Standing by the bedroom door, she recalled the passion of that night, the odour of which seemed to cling in the air still.

The pilot-light was lit. He would be surprised to learn that. What a lot of books he had, but then his wife had been an English teacher. She lifted some of them off the floor and arranged them on the empty shelves of the wall-unit. In the kitchen, she made herself some coffee and sat down to drink it black, looking over the mail. One bill, one circular, and one typed letter, posted in Edinburgh and three days ago at that. She stuffed the letters into her bag and went to inspect the wardrobe. Samantha’s room, she noted, was still locked. More memories pushed safely away. Poor John.

Jim Stevens had far too much work to do. The Edinburgh Strangler was proving himself a meaty individual. You couldn’t ignore the bastard, even if you felt you had better things to do. Stevens had a staff of three working with him on the newspaper’s daily reports and features. Child abuse in Britain today was the flavour of tomorrow’s piece. The figures were horrifying enough, but more horrifying yet was the sense of biding time, waiting for the dead girl to turn up. Waiting for the next one to go missing. Edinburgh was a ghost town. Children were kept indoors, those allowed out scuttling through the streets like creatures under chase. Stevens wanted to turn his attentions to the drugs case, the mounting evidence, the police connection. He wanted to, but there simply was not the time. Tom Jameson was on his back every hour of the day, roaming through the office. Where’s that copy, Jim? It’s about time you earned your keep, Jim. When’s the next briefing, Jim? Stevens was burned out by the end of each and every day. He decided that his work on the Rebus case had to stop for the moment. Which was a pity, because with the police at full stretch working on the murders, the field was left wide open for any and all other crimes, including pushing drugs. The Edinburgh Mafia must be having a field-day. He had used the story of the Leith ‘bordello’, hoping for some information in return, but the big boys appeared not to be playing. Well, sod them. His time would come.

When she arrived in the ward, Rebus was reading through a Bible, courtesy of the hospital. When the Sister had found out about his request, she had asked him if he wished to speak to a priest or a minister, but this offer he had declined strenuously. He was quite content — more than content — to flick through some of the better passages in the Old Testament, refreshing his memory of their power and their moral strength. He read the stories of Moses, Samson, and David, before coming to the Book of Job. Here he found a power he could not remember having encountered before:

When an innocent man suddenly dies, God laughs.

God gave the world to the wicked.

He made all the judges blind,

And if God didn’t do it, who did?

If I smile and try to forget my pain,

All my suffering comes back to haunt me;

I know that God does hold me guilty.

Since I am held guilty, why should I bother?

No soap can wash away my sins.

Rebus felt his spine shiver, though the ward itself was oppressively warm, and his throat cried out for water. As he poured some of the tepid liquid into a plastic beaker, he saw Gill coming towards him on quieter heels than previously. She was smiling, bringing what joy there was into the ward with her. A few of the men eyed her appreciatively. Rebus felt glad, all of a sudden, to be leaving this place today. He put the Bible aside and greeted her with a kiss on the nape of her neck.

‘What have you got there?’

He took the parcel from her and found it to contain his change of clothes.

‘Thanks,’ he said. ‘I didn’t think this shirt was clean though.’

‘It wasn’t.’ She laughed and pulled across a chair. ‘Nothing was. I’d to wash and iron all your clothes. They constituted a health hazard.’

‘You’re an angel,’ he said, putting the parcel aside.

‘Speaking of which, what were you reading in the book?’ She tapped the red, fake-leather binding of the Bible.

‘Oh, nothing much. Job, actually. I read it once a long time ago. It seems more frightening now though. The man who begins to doubt, who shouts out against his God, looking for a response, and who gets one. “God gave the world to the wicked,” he says at one point, and “Why should I bother?” at another.’

‘It sounds interesting. But he goes on bothering?’

‘Yes, that’s the incredible thing.’

Tea arrived, the young nurse handing Gill her cup. There was a plate of biscuits for them.

‘I’ve brought you some letters from the flat, and here’s your key.’ She held the small Yale key towards him, but he shook his head.

‘Keep it,’ he said, ‘please. I’ve got a spare one.’

They studied one another.

‘All right,’ Gill said finally. ‘I will. Thanks.’ With that, she handed him the three letters. He sorted through them in a second.

‘He’s started sending them by mail, I see.’ Rebus tore open the latest bulletin. ‘This guy,’ he said, ‘is haunting me. Mister Knot, I call him. My own personal anonymous crank.’

Gill looked interested, as Rebus read through the letter. It was longer than usual.

YOU STILL HAVEN’T GUESSED, HAVE YOU? YOU’VE NO IDEAS. NOT AN IDEA IN YOUR HEAD. AND IT’S ALMOST OVER NOW, ALMOST OVER. DON’T SAY I’VE NOT GIVEN YOU A CHANCE. YOU CAN NEVER SAY THAT. SIGNED

Rebus pulled a small matchstick cross out of the envelope.

‘Ah, Mister Cross today, I see. Well, thank God he’s nearly finished. Getting bored, I suppose.’

‘What is all this, John?’

‘Haven’t I told you about my anonymous letters? It’s not a very exciting story.’

‘How long has this been going on?’ Gill, having studied the letter, was now examining the envelope.

‘Six weeks. Maybe a little longer. Why?’

‘Well, it’s just that this letter was posted on the day Helen Abbot went missing.’

‘Oh?’ Rebus reached for the envelope and looked at its postmark. ‘Edinburgh, Lothian, Fife, Borders,’ it read. A big enough area. He thought again of Michael.

‘I don’t suppose you can remember when you received the other letters?’

‘What are you getting at, Gill?’ He looked up at her, and saw a professional policewoman suddenly staring back at him. ‘For Christ’s sake, Gill. This case is getting to all of us. We’re all beginning to see ghosts.’

‘I’m just curious, that’s all.’ She was reading the letter again. It was not the usual crank’s voice, nor a crank’s style.

That was what worried her. And now that Rebus thought about it, the notes had seemed to appear around the time of each abduction, hadn’t they? Had there been a connection of some kind staring him in the face all this time? He had been very myopic indeed, had been wearing a carthorse’s blinkers. Either that or it was all a monstrous coincidence.

‘It’s just a coincidence, Gill.’

‘So tell me when the other notes arrived.’

‘I can’t remember.’

She bent over him, her eyes huge behind her glasses. She said calmly, ‘Are you hiding anything from me?’

‘No!’

The whole ward turned to his cry, and he felt his cheeks flush.

‘No,’ he whispered, ‘I’m not hiding anything. At least …’ But how could he be sure? All those years of arrests, of charge-sheets, of forgettings, so many enemies made. But none would torment him like this, surely. Surely.

With pen, paper, and a lot of thought on his part, they went over the arrival of each note: dates, contents, style of delivery. Gill took off her glasses, rubbing between her eyes, sighing.

‘It’s just too big a coincidence, John.’

And he knew that she was right, way down inside him. He knew that nothing was ever what it seemed, that nothing was arbitrary. ‘Gill,’ he said at last, pulling at the bedcover, ‘I’ve got to get out of here.’

In the car she goaded him, spurred him on. Who could it be? What was the connection? Why?

‘What is this?’ he roared at her. ‘Am I a suspect now or something?’

She studied his eyes, trying to pierce them, trying to bite right into the truth behind them. Oh, she was a detective at heart, and a good detective trusts nobody. She gazed at him as though he were a scolded schoolboy, with secrets still to spill, with sins to confess. Confess.

Gill knew that all this was only a hunch, insupportable. Yet she could feel something there, something perhaps behind those burning eyes. Stranger things had happened during her time on the force. Stranger things were always happening. Truth was always stranger than fiction, and nobody was ever wholly innocent. Those guilty looks when you questioned somebody, anybody. Everyone had something to hide. Mostly, though, it was small time, and covered by the intervening years. You would need Thought Police to get at those kinds of crime. But if John … If John Rebus proved to be part of this whole caboodle, then that … That was too absurd to think about.

‘Of course you’re not a suspect, John,’ she said. ‘But it could be important, couldn’t it?’

‘We’ll let Anderson decide,’ he said, falling silent, but shaking.

It was then that Gill had the thought: what if he sent the letters to himself?

18

He felt his arms ache and, looking down, saw that the girl had stopped struggling. There came that point, that sudden, blissful point, when it was useless to go on living, and when the mind and body came to accept that such was the case. That was a beautiful, peaceful moment, the most relaxed moment of one’s life. He had, many years ago, tried to commit suicide, savouring that very moment. But they had done things to him in hospital and in the clinic afterwards. They had given him back the will to live, and now he was repaying them, repaying all of them. He saw this irony in his life and chuckled, peeling the tape from Helen Abbot’s mouth, using the little scissors to snip away her bonds. He brought out a neat little camera from his trouser pocket and took another instant snap of her, a memento mori of sorts. If they ever caught him, they’d kick the shit out of him for this, but they would never be able to brand him a sex-killer. Sex had nothing to do with it; these girls were pawns, fated by their christenings. The next and last one was the one that really mattered, and he would do that one today if possible. He chuckled again. This was a better game than noughts and crosses. He was a winner at both.

19

Chief Inspector William Anderson loved the feel of the chase, the battle between instinct and plodding detection. He liked to feel, too, that he had the support of his Division behind him. Dispenser of orders, of wisdom, of strategies, he was in his element.

He would rather have caught the Strangler already — that went without saying. He was no sadist. The law had to be upheld. All the same, the longer an investigation like this went on, the greater became the feel of nearing the kill, and to relish that extended moment was one of the great perks of responsibility.

The Strangler was making an occasional slip, and that was what mattered to Anderson at this stage. The blue Ford Escort, and now the interesting theory that the killer had been or was still an Army man, suggested by the tying of a knot in the garotte. Snippets like that would culminate eventually in a name, an address, an arrest. And at that moment, Anderson would lead his officers physically as well as spiritually. There would be another interview on the television, another rather flattering photograph in the press (he was quite photogenic). Oh yes, victory would be sweet. Unless, of course, the Strangler vanished in the night as so many before him had done. That possibility was not to be considered; it made his legs turn into paper.

He did not dislike Rebus, not exactly. The man was a reasonable enough copper, a bit loud in his methods perhaps. And he understood that Rebus’s personal life had experienced an upheaval. Indeed, he had been told that Rebus’s ex-wife was the woman with whom his own son was co-habiting. He tried not to think about it. When Andy had slammed the front door on his leaving, he had walked right out of his father’s life. How could anyone these days spend their time writing poetry? It was ludicrous. And then moving in with Rebus’s wife … No, he did not dislike Rebus, but watching Rebus come towards him with that pretty Liaison Officer, Anderson felt his stomach cough, as though his insides suddenly wanted to become his outsides. He leaned back on the edge of a vacant desk. The officer assigned to it had gone off for a break.

‘Nice to have you back, John. Feeling fit?’

Anderson had shot out his hand, and Rebus, stunned, was forced to take it and return the grip. ‘I’m fine, sir,’ he said.

‘Sir,’ interrupted Gill Templer, ‘can we speak to you for a minute? There’s been a new development.’

‘The mere hint of a development, sir,’ corrected Rebus, staring at Gill.

Anderson looked from one to the other.

‘You’d better come into my office then.’

Gill explained the situation as she saw it to Anderson, and he, wise and safe behind his desk, listened, glancing occasionally towards Rebus, who smiled apologetically at him. Sorry to be wasting your time, Rebus’s smile said.

‘Well, Rebus?’ said Anderson when Gill had finished. ‘What do you say to all this? Could someone have a reason for informing you of their plans? I mean, could the Strangler know you?’

Rebus shrugged his shoulders, smiling, smiling, smiling.

Jack Morton, sitting in his car, jotted down some remarks on his report-sheet. Saw suspect. Interviewed same. Casual, helpful. Another dead end, he wanted to say. Another dead fucking end. A parking warden was looking at him, trying to scare him as she neared his car. He sighed, putting down the pen and paper and reaching for his ID. One of those days.

Rhona Phillips wore her raincoat, it being the end of May, and the rain slashing through the skyline as though painted upon an artist’s canvas. She kissed her curly-headed poet-lover goodbye, as he watched afternoon TV, and left the house, feeling for the car-keys in her handbag. She picked Sammy up from school these days, though the school was only a mile and a quarter away. She also went with her to the library at lunchtimes, not allowing her any escape. With that maniac still on the loose, she was taking no chances. She rushed to her car, got in, and slammed shut the door. Edinburgh rain was like a judgement. It soaked into the bones, into the structures of the buildings, into the memories of the tourists. It lingered for days, splashing up from puddles by the roadside, breaking up marriages, chilling, killing, omnipresent. The typical postcard home from an Edinburgh boarding-house: ‘Edinburgh is lovely. The people rather reserved. Saw the Castle yesterday, and the Scott Monument. It’s a very small city, almost a town really. You could fit it inside New York and never notice it. Weather could be better.’

Weather could be better. The art of euphemism. Shitty, shitty rain. It was so typical when she had a free day. Typical, too, that Andy and she should have argued. And now he was sulking in his chair, legs tucked beneath him. One of those days. And she had reports to write out this evening. Thank God the exams had started. The kids seemed more subdued at school these days, the older ones gripped by exam-fever or exam-apathy, and the younger ones seeing their ineluctable future mapped out for them in the faces of their doomed superiors. It was an interesting time of year. Soon the fear would be Sammy’s, called Samantha to her face now that she was so nearly a woman. There were other fears there, too, for a parent. The fear of adolescence, of experiment.

As she reversed the car out of the driveway, he watched her from his Escort. Perfect. He had about fifteen minutes to wait. When her car had disappeared, he drove his car to the front of the house and stopped. He examined the windows of the house. Her man would be in there alone. He left his car and walked to the front door.

Back in the Incident Room after the inconclusive meeting, Rebus could not know that Anderson was arranging to have him put under surveillance. The Incident Room looked like an incident itself. Paper covered every surface, a small computer was crammed into a spare corner, charts and rotas and the rest covered every available inch of wall-space.

‘I’ve got a briefing,’ said Gill. Til see you later. Listen, John, I do think there’s a link. Call it female intuition, call it a detective’s “nose”, call it what you like, but take me seriously. Think it over. Think about possible grudges. Please.’

He nodded, then watched her leave, making for her own office in her own part of the building. Rebus wasn’t sure which desk was his any more. He surveyed the room. It all seemed different somehow, as though a few of the desks had been changed around or put together. A telephone rang on the desk next to him. And though there were officers and telephonists nearby, he picked it up himself, making an attempt to get back into the investigation. He prayed that he was not himself the investigation. He prayed, forgetting what prayer was.

‘Incident Room,’ he said. ‘Detective Sergeant Rebus speaking.’

‘Rebus? What a curious name that is.’ The voice was old but lively, certainly well-educated. ‘Rebus,’ it said again, as though jotting it down onto a piece of paper. Rebus studied the telephone.

‘And your name, sir?’

‘Oh, I’m Michael Eiser, that’s E-I-S-E-R, Professor of English Literature at the University.’

‘Oh, yes, sir?’ Rebus grabbed a pencil and jotted down the name. ‘And what can I do for you, sir?’

‘Well, Mister Rebus, it’s more a case of what I think I can do for you, though of course I may be mistaken.’ Rebus had a picture of the man, if this were not a hoax call: frizzy-haired, bow-tied, wearing crushed tweeds and old shoes, and waving his hands about as he spoke. ‘I’m interested in word-play, you see. In fact I’m writing a book on the subject. It’s called Reading Exercises and Directed Exegetic Responses. Do you see the word-play there? It’s an acrostic. The first letter of each word makes up another word — reader, in this case. It’s a game as old as literature itself. My book, however, concentrates on its manifestation in more recent works. Nabokov and Burgess and the like. Of course, acrostics are a small part of the overall set of ploys used by the author to entertain, direct or persuade his audience.’ Rebus tried to interrupt the man, but it was like trying to interrupt a bull. So he was forced to listen, wondering all the time if it were a crank call, if he should — strictly against procedure — simply put down the telephone. He had more important things to think about. The back of his head ached.

‘… and the point is, Mister Rebus, that I have noticed, quite by chance, a kind of pattern in this murderer’s choice of victims.’

Rebus sat down on the edge of the desk. He clasped the pencil as though trying to crush it.

‘Oh, yes?’ he said.

‘Yes. I have the names of the victims here in front of me on a piece of paper. Perhaps one would have noticed it sooner, but it was only today that I saw a report in one newspaper which grouped the poor girls together. I usually take The Times, you see, but I quite simply couldn’t find one this morning, so I bought another paper, and there it was. It may be nothing at all, mere coincidence, but then again it may not. I’ll leave that for you chaps to decide. I merely offer it as a proposition.’

Jack Morton, puffing smoke all around him, entered the office and, noticing Rebus, waved. Rebus jerked his head in response. Jack looked worn out. Everyone looked worn out, and here he was, fresh from a period of rest and relaxation, dealing with a lunatic on the telephone.

‘Offer what exactly, Professor Eiser?’

‘Well, don’t you see? In order, the victims’ names were Sandra Adams, Mary Andrews, Nicola Turner, and Helen Abbot.’ Jack slouched towards Rebus’s table. ‘Taken as an acrostic,’ continued the voice, ‘their names make up another name — Samantha. The murderer’s next victim perhaps? Or it may be simple coincidence, a game where no game really exists.’

Rebus slammed down the telephone, was off the desk in a second, and pulled Jack Morton around by his neck-tie. Morton gasped and his cigarette flew from his mouth.

‘Got your car outside, Jack?’

Still choking, he nodded a reply.

Jesus Christ, Jesus Christ. It was all true then. It was all to do with him. Samantha. All the clues, all the killings had been meant merely as a message to him. Jesus Christ. Help me, oh help me.

His daughter was to be the Strangler’s next victim.

Rhona Phillips saw the car parked outside her house, but thought nothing of it. All she wanted was to get out of the rain. She ran to the front door, Samantha following desultorily behind, and keyed open the door.

‘It’s horrible outside!’ she shouted into the living-room. She shook off her raincoat and walked through to where the TV still blared. In his chair, she saw Andy. His hands were tied behind him and his mouth was taped shut with a huge piece of sticking-plaster. The length of twine still dangled from his throat.

Rhona was about to let out the most piercing scream of her life, when a heavy object came down on the back of her head and she staggered forward towards her lover, slumping across his legs as she passed out.

‘Hello, Samantha,’ said a voice she recognised, though his face was masked so that she could not see his smile.

Morton’s car tore across town, its blue light flashing, as though it were being followed by all Hell itself. Rebus tried explaining it all as they drove, but he was too edgy to make much sense, and Jack Morton was too busy avoiding traffic to make much attempt at taking it in. They had called for assistance: one car to the school in case she were still there, and two cars to the house, with the warning that the Strangler might be there. Caution was to be exercised.

The car reached eighty-five along Queensferry Road, made an insane right turn across the oncoming traffic, and reached the bright-as-a-pin housing estate where Rhona, Samantha and Rhona’s lover now lived.

‘Turn right here,’ shouted Rebus over the engine’s roar, his mind clinging to hope. As they turned into the street they saw the two police cars already motionless in front of the house, and Rhona’s car sitting like a potent symbol of futility in the driveway.

20

They wanted to give him sedatives, but he wouldn’t take any of their drugs. They wanted him to go home, but he would not take their advice. How could he go home with Rhona lying somewhere above him in the hospital? With his daughter abducted, his whole life ripped apart like a worn garment being transformed into dusters? He paced the hospital waiting-room. He was fine, he told them, fine. He knew that Gill and Anderson were somewhere along the corridor. Poor Anderson. He watched from the grime of the window as nurses walked by outside, laughing in the rain, their capes blowing about them like something out of an old Dracula movie. How could they laugh? Mist was settling over the trees, and the nurses, still laughing, unaware of the world’s suffering, faded into that mist as though some Edinburgh of the past had sucked them into its fiction, taking with them all the laughter in the world.

It was nearly dark now, the sun a memory behind the heavy fabric of the clouds. The religious painters of old must have known skies like this, must have lived with them each and every day, accepting the bruised colouring of the clouds as a mark of God’s presence, an essence of creation’s power. Rebus was no painter. His eyes beheld beauty not in reality but in the printed word. Standing in the waiting-room, he realised that in his life he had accepted secondary experience — the experience of reading someone else’s thoughts — over real life.

Well, he was face to face with it now all right: he was back in the Paras, he was back in the SAS, his face a sketch-pad of exhaustion, his brain aching, every muscle tensed.

He caught himself beginning to abstract everything again, and slapped the wall with the palms of both hands as though ready to be frisked. Sammy was out there somewhere in the hands of a maniac, and he was composing eulogies, excuses and similes. It wasn’t enough.

In the corridor, Gill kept a watch on William Anderson. He, too, had been told to go home. A doctor had examined him for the effects of shock, and had spoken of putting Anderson to bed for the night.

‘I’m waiting right here,’ Anderson had said with quiet determination. ‘If this all has something to do with John Rebus, then I want to stay close to John Rebus. I’m all right, honestly.’ But he was not all right. He was dazed and remorseful and a bit confused about everything. ‘I can’t believe it,’ he told Gill. ‘I can’t believe that this whole thing was merely a prelude to the abduction of Rebus’s daughter. It’s fantastical. The man must be deranged. Surely John must have an inkling who’s responsible?’

Gill Templer was wondering the same thing.

‘Why hasn’t he told us?’ continued Anderson. Then, without warning or any show of ceremony, he became a father again and started to sob very quietly. ‘Andy,’ he said, ‘my Andy.’ He put his head in his hands and allowed Gill to put her arm around his crumpled shoulders.

John Rebus, watching darkness descend, thought about his marriage, his daughter. His daughter Sammy.

For those who read between the times

What was it he was blocking out? What was it that had been rejected by him all those years ago as he had walked the Fife shoreline, having his final fit of the breakdown and shutting out the past as securely as if he had been shutting the door on a Jehovah’s Witness? It was not that easy. The unwanted caller had waited his time, deciding to break and enter into Rebus’s life again. The foot in the door. The door of perception. What good was his reading doing him now? Or his faith, slender thread that it was? Samantha. Sammy, his daughter. Dear God, let her be safe. Dear God, let her live.

John, you must know who it is

But he had shaken his head, shaken his tears onto the folds of his trousers. He did not, he did not. It was Knot. It was Cross. Names meant nothing to him any more. Knots and crosses. He had been sent knots and crosses, string and matches and a load of gobbledygook, as Jack Morton had called it. That was all. Dear God.

He went out into the corridor, and confronted Anderson, who stood before him like a piece of wreckage waiting to be loaded up and shunted away. And the two men came together in a hug, squeezing life into one another; two old enemies realising in a moment that they were on the same side after all. They hugged and they wept, draining themselves of all they had been bottling up, all those years of pounding the beat, having to appear emotionless and unflappable. It was out in the open now: they were human beings, the same as everybody else.

And finally, assured that Rhona had suffered a fractured skull only, allowed into her room for a moment to watch her breathing oxygen, Rebus had let them take him home. Rhona would live. That was something. Andy Anderson, though, was cold on a slab somewhere while doctors examined his leftovers. Poor bloody Anderson. Poor man, poor father, poor copper. It was becoming very personal now, wasn’t it? All of a sudden it had become bigger than they had imagined it ever could. It had become a grudge.

They had a description at last, though not a good one. A neighbour had seen the man carry the still form of the girl out to the car. A pale coloured car, she had told them. A normal looking car. A normal looking man. Not too tall, his face hard. He was hurrying. She didn’t get a good look at him.

Anderson would be off the case now, and so would Rebus. Oh, it was big now. The Strangler had entered a home, had murdered there. He had gone way too far over the edge. The newspapermen and the cameras outside the hospital wanted to know all about it. Superintendent Wallace would have organised a press conference. The newspaper-readers, the voyeurs, needed to know all about it. It was big news. Edinburgh was the crime capital of Europe. The son of a Chief Inspector murdered and the daughter of a Detective Sergeant abducted, possibly murdered already.

What could he do but sit and wait for another letter? He was better off in his flat, no matter how dark and barren it seemed, no matter how like a cell. Gill promised to visit him later, after the press conference. An unmarked car would be outside his tenement as a matter of course, for who knew how personal the Strangler wanted this to become?

Meantime, unknown to Rebus, his file was being checked back at HQ, his past dusted off and examined. There had to be the Strangler in there somewhere. There had to be.

Of course there had to be. Rebus knew that he alone held the key. But it seemed locked in a drawer to which it itself was the key. He could only rattle that locked away history.

Gill Templer had telephoned Rebus’s brother, and though John would hate her for doing so, she had told Michael to come across to Edinburgh at once to be with his brother. He was Rebus’s only family after all. He sounded nervous on the phone, nervous but concerned. And now she puzzled over the matter of the acrostic. The Professor had been correct. They were trying to locate him this evening in order to interview him. Again, as a matter of course. But if the Strangler had planned this, then surely he must have been able to get his hands on a list of people whose names would fit the bill, and how would he have done that? A civil servant perhaps? A teacher? Someone working away quietly at a computer-terminal somewhere? There were many possibilities, and they would go through them one by one. First, however, Gill was going to suggest that everyone in Edinburgh called Knott or Cross be interviewed. It was a wild card, but then everything about this case so far had been wild.

And then there was the press conference. Held, since it was convenient, in the hospital’s administration building. There was standing room only at the back of the hall. Gill Templer’s face, human but unsmiling, was becoming well known to the British public, as well known, certainly, as that of any newscaster or reporter. Tonight, however, the Superintendent would be doing the talking. She hoped he would not take long. She wanted to see Rebus. And more urgently, perhaps, she wanted to talk with his brother. Someone had to know about John’s past. He had never, apparently, spoken to any of his friends on the force about his Army years. Did the key lie there? Or in his marriage? Gill listened to the Super saying his piece. Cameras clicked and the large hall grew smoky.

And there was Jim Stevens, smiling from the corner of his mouth, as if he knew something. Gill grew nervous. His eyes were on her, though his pen worked away at its notepad. She recalled that disastrous evening they had spent together, and her much less disastrous evening with John Rebus. Why had none of the men in her life ever been uncomplicated? Perhaps because complications interested her. The case was not becoming more complex. It was becoming simpler.

Jim Stevens, half-listening to the police statement, thought of how complex this story was becoming. Rebus and Rebus, drugs and murder, anonymous messages followed by abduction of daughter. He needed to get behind the police’s public face on this one, and knew that the best way forward lay with Gill Templer, with a little trading of knowledge. If the drugs and the abduction were linked, as they probably were, then perhaps one or other of the Rebus brothers had not been playing the game according to the set rules. Maybe Gill Templer would know.

He came up behind her as she left the building. She knew it was him, but for once she wanted to speak with him.

‘Hello, Jim. Can I give you a lift somewhere?’

He decided that she could. She could drop him off at a bar, unless, of course, he could see Rebus for a moment? He could not. They drove.

‘This story is becoming more and more bizarre by the second, don’t you think?’

She concentrated her eyes on the road, seeming to mull over his question. Really, she was hoping he would open up a little more and that her silence would lead him to believe that she was holding back on him, that there was something there between them to swop.

‘Rebus seems to be the main actor though. Interesting that.’

Gill sensed that he was about to play a card.

‘I mean,’ he went on, lighting a cigarette, ‘don’t mind if I smoke, do you?’

‘No,’ she said slowly, though inside she was jarring with electricity.

‘Thanks. I mean, it’s interesting because I’ve got Rebus pencilled into another story I’m working on.’

She pulled the car up at a red light, but her eyes still gazed through the windscreen.

‘Would you be interested in hearing about this other story, Gill?’

Would she? Of course she would. But what in return …

‘Yes, a very interesting man, Mister Rebus. And his brother.’

‘His brother?’

‘Yes, you know, Michael Rebus, the hypnotist. An interesting pair of brothers.’

‘Oh?’

‘Listen, Gill, let’s cut the crap.’

‘I was hoping you would.’ She put the car into gear and started off again.

‘Are you lot investigating Rebus for anything? That’s what I want to know. I mean, do you really know who’s behind all this but aren’t saying?’

She turned to him now.

‘That’s not the way it works, Jim.’

He snorted.

‘It may not be the way you work, Gill, but don’t pretend it doesn’t happen. I just wondered if you’d heard anything, any rumbles from higher up. Maybe to the effect that someone had made a botch-up in allowing things to come to this.’

Jim Stevens was watching her face very closely indeed, throwing out ideas and vague theories in the hope that one of them would catch her. But she didn’t seem to be taking the bait. Very well. Maybe she didn’t know anything. That didn’t mean his theories were wrong necessarily. It could just mean that things started at a higher plane than that on which Gill Templer and he operated.

‘Jim, what is it you think you know about John Rebus? It could be important, you know. We could bring you in if we thought you were withholding …’

Stevens began to make tutting sounds, shaking his head.

‘We know that’s not on, don’t we though? I mean, that is just not on.’

She looked at him again.

‘I could make a precedent,’ she said.

He stared at her. Yes, maybe she could at that.

‘This’ll do just here,’ he said, pointing out of the window. Some ash fell from his cigarette onto his tie. Gill stopped the car and watched him climb out. He leaned back in before shutting the door.

‘A swop can be arranged if you’d like one. You know my phone number.’

Yes, she knew his phone number. He had written it down for her a very long time ago, so long ago that they were on different sides of a wall now, so that she could hardly understand him at all. What did he know about John? About Michael? As she drove off towards Rebus’s flat, she hoped that she would find out there.

21

John Rebus read a few pages from his Good News Bible, but put it down when he realised that he was taking none of it in. He prayed instead, screwing up his eyes into tiny fists. Then he walked around the flat, touching things. This he had done before that first breakdown. He was not afraid now though. Let it come if it would, let everything come. He had no resilience left. He was passive to the will of his malevolent creator.

There was a ring at the door. He did not answer. They would go away, and he would be alone again with his grief, his impotent anger, and his undusted possessions. The bell rang again, more persistently this time. Cursing, he went to the door and pulled it open. Michael was standing there.

‘John,’ he said, ‘I came as soon as I could.’

‘Mickey, what are you doing here?’ He ushered his brother into the flat.

‘Somebody phoned me. She told me all about it. Terrible news, John. Just terrible.’ He placed a hand on Rebus’s shoulder. Rebus, tingling, realised how long it had been since he had felt the touch of a human being, a sympathetic, brotherly touch. ‘I was confronted by two gorillas outside. They seem to have you under close watch here.’

‘Procedure,’ said Rebus.

Procedure maybe, but Michael knew how guilty he must have looked when they had pounced on him. He had wondered at the phone-call, wondered about the possibility of a trap. So he had listened to the local radio news. There had been an abduction, a killing. It was true. So he had driven over, into this lion’s den, knowing that he should stay well away from his brother, knowing that they would kill him if they found out, and wondering whether the abduction could have anything to do with his own situation. Was this a warning to both brothers? He could not say. But when those two gorillas had approached him in the shadows of the tenement stairs, he had thought the game all over. Firstly, they had been gangsters, out to get him. Then, they had been police officers, about to arrest him. But no, they were ‘procedure’.

‘You say it was a woman who called you? Did you catch her name? No, never mind, I know who it was anyway.’

They sat in the living-room. Michael, removing his sheepskin jacket, brought a bottle of whisky out of one of the pockets.

‘Would this help?’ he said.

‘It won’t do any harm.’

Rebus went to fetch glasses from the kitchen, while Michael inspected the living-room.

‘This is a nice place,’ he called.

‘Well, it’s a bit big for my needs,’ said Rebus. A choking sound came from the kitchen. Michael walked through to discover his big brother leaning into the sink, weeping grimly but quietly.

‘John,’ said Michael, hugging Rebus, ‘it’s okay. It’s going to be okay.’ He felt guilt well up inside him.

Rebus was fumbling for a handkerchief and, having found it, gave his nose a good blow and wiped his eyes.

‘That’s easy for you to say,’ he sniffed, trying out a smile, ‘you’re a heathen.’

They drank half of the whisky, sitting back in their chairs, silently contemplating the shadowy ceiling above. Rebus’s eyes were red-rimmed, and his eye-lashes stung. He sniffed occasionally, rubbing at his nose with the back of his hand. To Michael, it was like being boys again, but with the roles reversed for a moment. Not that they had been that close, but sentiment would always win over reality. Certainly he remembered John fighting one or two of his playground battles for him. Guilt welled up again. He shivered slightly. He had to get out of this game, but perhaps already he was in too deep, and if he had brought John unknowingly into the game too … That did not bear thinking about. He had to see the Man, had to explain things to him. But how? He had no telephone number or address. It was always the Man who called him, never the other way round. It was farcical now that he thought about it. Like a nightmare.

‘Did you enjoy the show the other night?’

Rebus forced himself to think back to it, to the perfumed and lonely woman, to his fingers around her throat, the scene which had signalled the beginning of his end.

‘Yes, it was interesting.’ He had fallen asleep had he not? Never mind.

Silence again, the broken sounds of traffic outside, a few shouts from distant drunks.

‘They say it’s someone with a grudge against me,’ he said finally.

‘Oh? And is it?’

‘I don’t know. It looks like it.’

‘But surely you would know?’

Rebus shook his head.

‘That’s the trouble, Mickey. I can’t remember.’

Michael sat up in his chair.

‘You can’t remember what exactly?’

‘Something. I don’t know. Just something. If I knew what, I would remember, wouldn’t I? But there’s a gap. I know there is. I know that there’s something I should remember.’

‘Something from your past?’ Michael was keening now. Perhaps this had nothing at all to do with himself. Perhaps it was all to do with something else, someone else. He grew hopeful.

‘From the past, yes. But I can’t remember.’ Rebus rubbed his forehead as though it were a crystal ball. Michael was fumbling in his pocket.

‘I can help you to remember, John.’

‘How?’

‘Like this.’ Michael was holding, between thumb and forefinger, a silver coin. ‘You remember what I told you, John. I take my patients back into past lives every day. It should be easy enough to take you back into your real past.’

It was John Rebus’s turn to sit up. He shook away the whisky fumes.

‘Come on then,’ he said. ‘What do I do?’ But inside part of him was saying: you don’t want this, you don’t want to know.

He wanted to know.

Michael came over to his chair.

‘Lie back in the chair. Get comfortable. Don’t touch any more of that whisky. But remember, not everyone is susceptible to hypnotism. Don’t force yourself. Don’t try too hard. If it’s going to come, it’ll come whether you will it or not. Just relax, John, relax.’

The doorbell rang.

‘Ignore it,’ said Rebus, but Michael had already left the room. There were voices in the hall, and when Michael reappeared he was followed into the room by Gill.

‘The telephone caller, it seems,’ said Michael.

‘How are you, John?’ Her face was angled into a portrait of concern.

‘Fine, Gill. Listen, this is my brother Michael. The hypnotist. He’s going to put me under — that’s what you called it, wasn’t it, Mickey? — to remove whatever block there might be in my memory. Maybe you should be ready to take some notes or something.’

Gill looked from one brother to the other, feeling a little out of things. An interesting pair of brothers. That’s what Jim Stevens had said. She had been working for sixteen hours, and now this. But she smiled and shrugged her shoulders.

‘Can a girl get a drink first?’

It was John Rebus’s turn to smile. ‘Help yourself,’ he said. ‘There’s whisky or whisky and water or water. Come on, Mickey. Let’s get on with this. Sammy’s out there somewhere. There might still be time.’

Michael spread his legs a little, leaning down over Rebus. He seemed to be about to consume his brother, his eyes close to Rebus’s eyes, his mouth working in a mirror-image. That’s what it looked like to Gill, pouring whisky into a tumbler. Michael held up the coin, trying to find the angle of the room’s single low-wattage bulb. Finally, the glint was reflected in John’s retina, the pupils expanding and contracting. Michael felt sure that his brother would be amenable. He certainly hoped so.

‘Listen carefully, John. Listen to my voice. Watch the coin, John. Watch it shine and spin. See it spinning. Can you see it spinning, John? Now relax, just listen to me. And watch the spin, watch it glow.’

For a moment it seemed that Rebus would not go under. Perhaps it was the familial tie that was making him immune to the voice, to its suggestive power. But then Michael saw the eyes change a little, imperceptibly to the uninitiated. But he was initiated. His father had taught him well. His brother was in the limbo world now, caught in the coin’s light, transported to wherever Michael wanted him to go. Under his power. As ever, Michael felt a little shiver run through him: this was power, power total and irreducible. He could do anything with his patients, anything.

‘Michael,’ whispered Gill, ‘ask him why he left the Army.’

Michael swallowed, lining his throat with saliva. Yes, that was a good question. One he had wanted to ask John himself.

‘John?’ he said. ‘John? Why did you leave the Army, John? What happened, John? Why did you leave the Army? Tell us.’

And slowly, as though learning to use words strange or unknown to him, Rebus began to tell his story. Gill rushed to her bag for a pen and a notepad. Michael sipped his whisky.

They listened.