Knots And Crosses

23

When John Rebus awoke from what had seemed a particularly deep and dream-troubled sleep, he found that he was not in bed. He saw that Michael was standing over him, a wary smile on his face, and that Gill was pacing to and fro, sniffing back tears.

‘What happened?’ said Rebus.

‘Nothing,’ said Michael.

Then Rebus recalled that Michael had hypnotised him.

‘Nothing?’ cried Gill. ‘You call that nothing?’

‘John,’ said Michael, ‘I didn’t realise that you felt that way about the old man and me. I’m sorry we made you feel bad.’ Michael rested his hand on his brother’s shoulder, the brother he had never known.

Gordon, Gordon Reeve. What happened to you? You’re all torn and dirty, whirling around me like grit on a wind-swept street. Like a brother. You’ve got my daughter. Where are you?

‘Oh, Jesus.’ Rebus let his head fall, screwing his eyes shut. Gill’s hand stroked his hair.

It was growing light outside. The birds were back into their untiring routine. Rebus was glad that they were calling him back into the real world. They reminded him that there might be someone out there who was feeling happy. Perhaps lovers awakening in each other’s arms, or a man who was realising that today was a holiday, or an elderly woman thanking God that she was alive to see the first hints of reawakening life.

‘A real dark night of the soul,’ he said, beginning to shake. ‘It’s cold in here. The pilot-light must have blown out.’

Gill blew her nose and folded her arms.

‘No, it’s warm enough in here, John. Listen,’ she spoke slowly, deferentially, ‘we need a physical description of this man. I know that it will have to be a fifteen-year-old description, but it’ll be a start. Then we need to check up on what happened to him after you des … after you left him.’

‘That will be classified, if it exists at all.’

‘And we need to tell the Chief about all of this.’ Gill went on as if Rebus had said nothing. Her eyes were fixed in front of her. ‘We need to find that creep.’

The room seemed very quiet to Rebus, as though a death had occurred, when really it had been a birth of sorts, the birth of his memory. Of Gordon. Of walking out of that cold, merciless cell. Of turning his back …

‘Can you be sure that this Reeve character is your man?’ Michael was pouring more whisky. Rebus shook his head at the proffered glass.

‘Not for me thanks. My head feels all fuzzy. Oh yes, I think we can be pretty certain who’s behind it. The messages, the knots and the crosses. It all makes sense now. It’s been making sense all along. Reeve must think I’m really thick. He’s been sending me clear messages for weeks, and I’ve failed to realise … I’ve let those girls die … All because I couldn’t face the facts … the facts …’

Gill bent down behind him and put her hands on his shoulders. John Rebus shot out of his chair and turned to her. Reeve. No, Gill, Gill. He shook his head in mute apology. Then burst into tears.

Gill looked towards Michael, but Michael had lowered his eyes. She hugged Rebus hard, not allowing him to break away from her again, all the time whispering that it was she, Gill, beside him, and not any ghost from the past. Michael was wondering what he had got himself into. He had never seen John cry before. Again, the guilt flooded him. He would stop it all. He didn’t need it any more. He would lie low and just let his dealer get tired of looking for him, let his clients find new people. He would do it, not for John’s sake but for his own.

We treated him like shit, he thought to himself, it’s true. The old man and me treated him as though he were an intruder.

Later, over coffee, Rebus seemed calm, though Gill’s eyes were still on him, wondering, fearing.

‘We can be sure that this Reeve is off his chump,’ she said.

‘Perhaps,’ said Rebus. ‘One thing is for sure, he’ll be armed. He’ll be ready for anything. The man was a Seaforths regular and a member of the SAS. He’ll be hard as nails.’

‘You were too, John.’

‘That’s why I’m the man to track him down. The Chief must be made to understand that, Gill. I’m back on the case.’

Gill pursed her lips.

‘I’m not sure he’ll go for that,’ she said.

‘Well, sod him then. I’ll find the bastard anyway.’

‘You do that, John,’ said Michael. ‘You do that. Don’t care what any of them say.’

‘Mickey,’ said Rebus, ‘you are absolutely the best brother I could have had. Now, is there any food on the go? I’m starved.’

‘And I’m whacked,’ said Michael, feeling pleased with himself. ‘Do you mind if I lie down for an hour or two here before I drive back?’

‘Not at all, go through to my room, Mickey.’

‘Goodnight, Michael,’ said Gill.

He was smiling as he left them.

Knots and crosses. Noughts and crosses. It was so blatant, really. Reeve must have taken him for a fool, and in a way he had been right. Those endless games they had played, all those tricks and manoeuvres, and their talk about Christianity, those reef knots and Gordian knots. And The Cross. God, how stupid he had been, allowing his memory into tricking him that the past was a cracked and useless vessel, emptying its spirit. How stupid.

‘John, you’re spilling your coffee.’

Gill was bringing in a plateful of cheese on toast from the kitchen. Rebus roused himself awake.

‘Eat this. I’ve been on to HQ We’ve to be there in two hours’ time. They’ve already started running a check on Reeve’s name. We should find him.’

‘I hope so, Gill. Oh God, I hope so.’

They hugged. She suggested that they lie on the couch. They did so, tight in a warming embrace. Rebus couldn’t help wondering whether his dark night had been an exorcism of sorts, whether the past would still haunt him sexually. He hoped not. Certainly, it was neither the time nor the place to try it out.

Gordon, my friend, what did I do to you?

24

Stevens was a patient man. The two policemen had been firm with him. No one could see Detective Sergeant Rebus for the moment. Stevens had returned to the newspaper office, worked on a report for the paper’s three-a.m. print-run, and then had driven back to Rebus’s flat. There were still lights on up there, but also there were two new gorillas by the door of the tenement. Stevens parked across the street and lit another cigarette. It was tying together nicely. The two threads were becoming one. The murders and the drug-pushing were involved in some way, and Rebus was the key by the look of things. What were his brother and he talking about at this hour? A contingency plan perhaps. God, he would have given anything to be a fly on the living-room wall just now. Anything. He knew reporters in Fleet Street who went in for sophisticated surveillance techniques — bugs, high-powered microphones, telephone-taps — and he wondered if it might not be worthwhile to invest in some of that equipment himself.

He formulated new theories in his head, theories with hundreds of permutations. If Edinburgh’s drug-racketeers had gone into the abduction-and-murder business to put the frights on some poor bastards, then things were taking a very grim turn indeed, and he, Jim Stevens, would have to be even more careful in future. Yet Big Podeen had known nothing. Say, then, that a new gang had broken into the game, bringing with it new rules. That would make for a gang-war, Glasgow-style. But things, surely, were not done that way today. Maybe.

In this way, Stevens kept himself awake and alert, scribbling his thoughts into a notebook. His radio was on, and he listened to the half-hourly news reports. A policeman’s daughter was the new victim of Edinburgh’s child-murderer. In the most recent abduction, a man was killed, strangled in the house of the child’s mother. And so on. Stevens went on formulating, went on speculating.

It had not yet been revealed that all the murders were linked to Rebus. The police were not about to make that public, not even to Jim Stevens.

At seven-thirty, Stevens managed to bribe a passing newspaper-boy into bringing him rolls and milk from a nearby shop. He washed the dry, powdery rolls down with the icy milk. The heating was on in his car, but he felt chilled to the marrow. He needed a shower, a shave, and some sleep. Not necessarily in that order. But he was too close to let this go now. He had the tenacity — some would call it madness, fanaticism — of every good reporter. He had watched other hacks arriving in the night and being sent away again. One or two had seen him sitting in his car and had come across for a chat and to sniff out any leads. He had. hidden away his notebook then, feigning disinterest, telling them that he would be going home shortly. Lies, damned lies.

That was part of the business.

And now, finally, they were emerging from the building. A few cameras and microphones were there, of course, but nothing too tasteless, no pushing and shoving and harassing. For one thing, this was a grieving father; for another, he was a policeman. Nobody was about to harass him.

Stevens watched as Gill and Rebus were allowed to disappear into the back of an idling Rover police-car. He studied their faces. Rebus looked washed-out. That was only to be expected. But, behind that, lay a grimness of look, something about the way his mouth made a straight line. That bothered Stevens a little. It was as if the man were about to enter a war. Bloody hell. And then there was Gill Templer. She looked rough, rougher even than Rebus. Her eyes were red, but here too there was something a little out of the ordinary. Something was not quite as it should be. Any respecting reporter could see that, if he knew what he was looking for. Stevens gnawed at himself. He needed to know more. It was like a drug, his story. He needed bigger and bigger injections of it. He was a bit startled, too, to find himself admitting that the reason he needed these injections was not for the sake of his job, but for his own curiosity. Rebus intrigued him. Gill Templer, of course, interested him.

And Michael Rebus …

Michael Rebus had not appeared from the flat. The circus was leaving now, the Rover turning right out of the quiet Marchmont street, but the gorillas remained. New gorillas. Stevens lit a cigarette. It might be worth a try at that. He walked back to his car and locked it. Then, taking a walk round the block, formed another plan.

‘Excuse me, sir. Do you live here?’.

‘Of course I live here! What’s all this about, eh? I need to get to my bed.’

‘Had a heavy night, sir?’

The bleary-eyed man shook three brown paper-bags at the policeman. The bags each contained six rolls.

‘I’m a baker. Shift-work. Now if you’ll …’

‘And your name, sir?’

Making to pass the man, Stevens had just had time enough to make out a few of the names on the door-buzzer.

‘Laidlaw,’ he said. ‘Jim Laidlaw.’

The policeman checked this against a list of names in his hand.

‘All right, sir. Sorry to have bothered you.’

‘What’s all this about?’

‘You’ll find out soon enough, sir. Good night now.’

There was one more obstacle, and Stevens knew that for all his cunning, if the door was locked then the door was locked, and his game was up. He made a plausible push at the heavy door and felt it give. They had not locked it. His patron saint was smiling on him today.

In the tenement hallway, he ditched the rolls and thought of another ploy. He climbed the two flights of stairs to Rebus’s door. The tenement seemed to smell exclusively of cats’-piss. At Rebus’s door he paused, catching his breath. Partly, he was out of condition, but partly, also, he was excited. He had not felt anything like this on a story for years. It felt good. He decided that he could get away with anything on a day like this. He pushed the doorbell relentlessly.

The door was opened at last by a yawning, puffy-faced Michael Rebus. So at last they were face to face. Stevens flashed a card at Michael. The card identified James Stevens as a member of an Edinburgh snooker club.

‘Detective Inspector Stevens, sir. Sorry to get you out of bed.’ He put the card away. ‘Your brother told us that you’d probably still be asleep, but I thought I’d come up anyway. May I come in? Just a few questions, sir. Won’t keep you too long.’

The two policemen, their feet numb despite thermal socks and the fact that it was the beginning of summer, shuffled one foot and then the other, hoping for a reprieve. The talk was all of the abduction and the fact that a Chief Inspector’s son had been murdered. The main door opened behind them.

‘You lot still here? The wife told me there was bobbies at the door, but I didnae believe her. Yon wis last night though. What’s the matter?’

This was an old man, still in his slippers but with a thick, winter overcoat on. He was half-shaven only, and his bottom false-teeth had been lost or forgotten about. He was attaching a cap to his bald head as he sidled out of the door.

‘Nothing for you to worry about, sir. You’ll be told soon enough, I’m sure.’

‘Oh aye, well then. I’m just away to fetch the paper and the milk. We usually have toast for breakfast, but some bugger’s gone and left about twa dozen new rolls in the lobby. Well, if they’re no’ wanted, they’re aye welcome in my house.’

He chuckled, showing the raw red of his bottom gum.

‘Can I get you twa anything at the shop?’

But the two policemen were staring at one another, alarmed, speechless.

‘Get up there,’ one said, finally, to the other. Then: ‘And your name, sir?’

The old man preened himself; an old trooper.

‘Jock Laidlaw,’ he said, ‘at your service.’

Stevens was drinking, thankfully, the black coffee. The first hot thing he’d had in ages. He was seated in the living-room, his eyes everywhere.

‘I’m glad you woke me,’ Michael Rebus was saying. ‘I’ve got to get back home.’

I’ll bet you have, thought Stevens. I’ll bet you have. Rebus looked altogether more relaxed than he had foreseen. Relaxed, rested, easy with his conscience. Curiouser and curiouser.

‘Just a few questions, Mister Rebus, as I said.’

Michael Rebus sat down, crossing his legs, sipping his own coffee.

‘Yes?’

Stevens produced his notebook.

‘Your brother has had a very great shock.’

‘Yes.’

‘But he’ll be all right you think?’

‘Yes.’

Stevens pretended to write in his book.

‘Did he have a good night, by the way? Did he sleep all right?’

‘Well, none of us got much sleep. I’m not sure John slept at all.’ Michael’s eyebrows were gathering. ‘Look, what is all this?’

‘Just routine, Mister Rebus. You understand. We need all the details from everyone involved if we’re going to crack this case.’

‘But it’s cracked, isn’t it?’

Stevens’ heart jumped.

‘Is it?’ he heard himself say.

‘Well, don’t you know?’

‘Yes, of course, but we have to get all the details — ’

‘From everyone concerned. Yes, so you said. Look, can I see your identification again? Just to be on the safe side.’

There was the sound of a key prodding at the front door.

Christ, thought Stevens, they’re back already.

‘Listen,’ he said through his teeth, ‘we know all about your little drugs-racket. Now tell us who’s behind it or else we’ll put you behind bars for a hundred years, sonny!’

Michael’s face went light-blue, then grey. His mouth seemed ready to drop open with a word, the one word Stevens needed.

But then one of the gorillas was in the room, propelling Stevens out of his chair.

‘I’ve not finished my coffee yet!’ he protested.

‘You’re lucky I don’t break your flaming neck, pal,’ replied the policeman.

Michael Rebus stood up, too, but he was saying nothing.

‘A name!’ cried Stevens. ‘Just give me the name! This’ll be spread right across the front pages, my friend, if you don’t co-operate! Give me the name!’

He kept up his cries all the way down the stairwell. Right down to the last step.

‘All right, I’m going,’ he said eventually, breaking free of the heavy grip on his arm. ‘I’m going. You were a bit slack there, boys, weren’t you? I’ll keep it quiet this time, but next time you better be ready. Okay?’

‘Get to fuck out of here,’ said one gorilla.

Stevens got to fuck. He slid into his car, feeling more frustrated and more curious than ever. God, he’d been close. But what did the hypnotist mean by that? The case was cracked. Was it? If so, he wanted to be there with the first details. He was not used to being so far behind in the game. Usually, games were played by his rules. No, he was not used to this, and he did not like it at all.

He loved it.

But, if the case was cracked, then time was tight. And if you could not get what you wanted from one brother, then go to the other. He thought he knew where John Rebus would be. His intuition ran high today. He felt inspired.

25

‘Well, John, this all seems quite fantastical, but I’m sure it’s a possibility. Certainly, it’s the best lead we’ve got, though I find it hard to conceive of a man with so much hate that he would murder four innocent girls just to give you the clues as to his ultimate victim.’

Chief Superintendent Wallace looked from Rebus to Gill Templer and back again. To Rebus’s left sat Anderson. Wallace’s hands lay like dead fish on his desk, a pen in front of him. The room was large and uncluttered, a self-assured oasis. Here, problems were always solved, decisions were made — always correctly.

‘The problem now is finding him. If we make this thing public, then that might scare him off, endangering your daughter’s life in the process. On the other hand, a public appeal would be by far the quickest way of finding him.’

‘You can’t possibly …!’ It was Gill Templer who, in that quiet room, was on the verge of exploding, but Wallace silenced her with a wave of his hand.

‘I am merely thinking aloud at this stage, Inspector Templer, merely casting stones into a pond.’

Anderson sat like a corpse, his eyes to the floor. He was on leave now officially and in mourning, but he had insisted on keeping in touch with the case and Superintendent Wallace had acquiesced.

‘Of course, John,’ Wallace was saying, ‘it’s impossible for you to remain on the case.’

Rebus rose to his feet.

‘Sit down, John, please.’ The Super’s eyes were hard and honest, the eyes of a real copper, one of the old school. Rebus sat down again. ‘Now I know how you must feel, believe it or believe it not. But there’s too much at stake here. Too much for all of us. You’re far too involved to be of any objective use, and the public would cry out about vigilante tactics. You must see that.’

‘All I see is that without me Reeve will stop at nothing. It’s me he wants.’

‘Exactly. And wouldn’t we be stupid to hand you over to him on a plate? We’ll do everything we can, as much as you could do. Leave it to us.’

‘The Army won’t tell you anything, you know.’

‘They’ll have to.’ Wallace began to toy with his pen, as though it were there for that very purpose. ‘Ultimately, they’ve got the same boss we have. They’ll be made to tell.’

Rebus shook his head.

‘They’re a law unto themselves. The SAS is hardly even a part of the Army. If they don’t want to tell you, then believe me, they won’t tell you a bloody thing.’ Rebus’s hand came down onto the desk. ‘Not a bloody thing.’

‘John.’ Gill’s hand squeezed his shoulder, asking him to be calm. She herself looked like a fury, but she knew when to keep quiet and let looks alone transmit her anger and her displeasure. For Rebus, however, it was actions that counted. He’d been sitting outside reality for way too long.

He rose from his small chair like a pure force, no longer human, and left the room in silence. The Superintendent looked at Gill.

‘He’s off the case, Gill. He must be made to realise that. I believe that you,’ he paused while opening and shutting a drawer, ‘that you and he have an understanding. That, at least, is how we used to phrase it in my day. Perhaps you should make him aware of his position. We’ll get this man, but not with Rebus hanging around intent on revenge.’ Wallace looked towards Anderson, who stared drily at him. ‘We don’t want vigilante tactics,’ he went on. ‘Not in Edinburgh. What would the tourists say?’ Then his face broke into a cold smile. He looked from Anderson to Gill, then rose from his chair. ‘This is all becoming extremely …’

‘Internecine?’ suggested Gill.

‘I was going to say incestuous. What with Chief Inspector Anderson here, his son and Rebus’s wife, yourself and Rebus, Rebus and this man Reeve, Reeve and Rebus’s daughter. I hope the press don’t get wind of this. You’ll be responsible for seeing that they don’t, and for punishing any that do. Am I making myself clear?’

Gill Templer nodded, stifling a sudden yawn.

‘Good.’ The Super nodded across to Anderson. ‘Now see that Chief Inspector Anderson gets home safely will you?’

William Anderson, seated in the back of the car, went through his mental list of informants and friends. He knew a couple of people who might know about the Special Air Service. Certainly, something like the Rebus-Reeve case could not have been hushed up totally, though it might well have been struck from the records. The soldiers would have known about it though. Grapevines existed everywhere, and especially where you would least expect them. He might need to twist a few arms and lay out a few tenners, but he would find the bastard if it was his last action on God’s earth.

Or he would be there when Rebus did.

Rebus had left the HQ by a back entrance, as Stevens had hoped. He followed Rebus as the policeman, looking the worse for wear, stalked away. What was it all about? No matter. As long as he stuck to Rebus, he could be sure of getting his story, and what a story it promised to be. Stevens kept checking behind him, but there seemed to be no tail on Rebus. No police tail, that was. It seemed strange to him that they would allow Rebus to go off on his own when there was no telling what a man would do whose daughter had been abducted. Stevens was hoping for the ultimate plot: he was hoping that Rebus would lead him straight to the big boys behind this new drugs ring. If not one brother, then the other.

Like a brother to me, and I to him. What happened? He knew what was to blame at heart. The method, that was the cause of all of this. The caging and the breaking and then the patching up. The patching up had not been a success, had it? They were both broken men in their own ways. That knowledge wouldn’t stop him from shearing Reeve’s head from its shoulders though. Nothing would stop that. But he had to find the bastard yet, and he had no idea where to start. He could feel the city closing in on him, bringing to bear all of its historical weight, smothering him. Dissent, rationalism, enlightenment: Edinburgh had specialized in all three, and now he too would need these charms. He needed to work on his own, quickly, yet methodically, using ingenuity and every tool at his disposal. Most of all he needed instinct.

After five minutes, he knew he was being followed, and the hair stood up at the back of his neck. It was not the usual police tail. That would not have been so easy to spot. But was it … Could he be so close … At a bus-stop, he stopped and turned suddenly, as though checking to see if a bus was coming. He saw the man dodge into a doorway. It wasn’t Gordon Reeve. It was that bloody reporter.

Rebus listened to his heart slow again, but the adrenaline was already pumping through him, filling him with a desire to run, to take off along this long straight road and run into the strongest head-wind imaginable. But then a bus came trundling round the corner, and he boarded that instead.

From the back window, he saw the reporter jump out of the doorway and desperately flag down a taxi-cab. Rebus had no time to be bothered with the man. He had some thinking to do, thinking about how in the world he could find Reeve. The possibility haunted him: he’ll find me. I don’t need to chase. But somehow that scared him most of all.

Gill Templer could not find Rebus. He had disappeared as though he had been a shadow merely and not a man at all. She telephoned and hunted and asked and did all the things a good copper should do, but she was confronted by the fact of a man who was not only a good copper himself, but had been one of the best in the SAS to boot. He might have been hiding under her feet, under her desk, in her clothes, and she would never have found him. So he stayed hidden.

He stayed hidden, she surmised, because he was on the move, swiftly and methodically moving through the streets and bars of Edinburgh in search of his prey, knowing that when found, the prey would turn hunter once more.

But Gill went on trying, shivering now and then when she thought of her lover’s grim and horrific past, and of the mentality of those who decided that such things were necessary. Poor John. What would she have done? She would have walked right out of that cell and kept on walking, just as he had done. And yet she would have felt guilty, too, just as he had felt guilt, and she would have put it all behind her, scarred invisibly.

Why did the men in her life have to be such complicated, fraught, screwed-up bastards? Did she attract the soiled goods only? It might have been humorous, but then there was Samantha to think about, and that wasn’t funny at all. Where did you start looking if you wanted to find a needle? She remembered Superintendent Wallace’s words: they’ve got the same boss we have. That was a truth well worth contemplating in all its complexity. For if they had the same boss, then perhaps a cover-up could be arranged at this end, now that the ancient and terrible truth had surfaced again. If this got into the papers, all hell would be let loose at every level of the service. Perhaps they would want to co-operate in hushing it up. Perhaps they would want Rebus silenced. My God, what if they should want John Rebus silenced? That would mean silencing Anderson, too, and herself. It would mean bribes or a total wipe-out. She would have to be very careful indeed. One false move now might mean her dismissal from the force, and that would not do at all. Justice had to be seen to be done. There could be no cover-ups. The Boss, whoever or whatever that anonymous term was meant to imply, would not have his or its day. There had to be truth, or the whole thing was a sham, and so were its actors.

And what of her feelings towards John Rebus himself, spotlit on the reddened stage? She hardly knew what to think. The notion still niggled at her that, no matter how absurd it might appear, John was somehow behind this whole thing: no Reeve, the notes sent to himself, jealousy leading him to kill his wife’s lover, his daughter now hidden somewhere — somewhere like that locked room.

It was hardly to be contemplated, which, considering the way the whole thing had gone thus far, was why Gill contemplated it very hard indeed. And rejected it, rejected it for no other reason than that John Rebus had once made love to her, once bared his soul to her, once clasped her hand beneath a hospital blanket. Would a man with something to hide have become involved with a policewoman? No, it seemed wholly unlikely.

So, again, it became a possibility, joining the others. Gill’s head began to pulse. Where the hell was John? And what if Reeve found him before they found Reeve? If John Rebus was a walking beacon to his enemy, then wasn’t it crazy for him to be out there on his own, wherever he was? Of course it was stupid. It had been stupid to let him walk out of the room, out of the building, vanishing like a whisper. Shit. She picked up the telephone again and dialled his flat.

26

John Rebus was moving through the jungle of the city, that jungle the tourists never saw, being too busy snapping away at the ancient golden temples, temples long since gone but still evident as shadows. This jungle closed in on the tourists relentlessly but unseen, a natural force, the force of dissipation and destruction.

Edinburgh’s an easy beat, his colleagues from the west coast would say. Try Partick for a night and tell me that it’s not. But Rebus knew different. He knew that Edinburgh was all appearances, which made the crime less easy to spot, but no less evident. Edinburgh was a schizophrenic city, the place of Jekyll & Hyde sure enough, the city of Deacon Brodie, of fur coats and no knickers (as they said in the west). But it was a small city, too, and that would be to Rebus’s advantage.

He hunted in the hard-man’s drinking dens, in the housing estates where heroin and unemployment were the totem kings, for he knew that somewhere in this anonymity a hard man could hide and could plan and could survive. He was trying to get inside Gordon Reeve’s skin. It was a skin sloughed many times, and Rebus had to admit, finally, that he was further away from his insane, murderous blood-brother than ever before. If he had turned his back on Gordon Reeve, then Reeve was refusing to show himself anyway. Perhaps there would be another note, another teasing clue. Oh, Sammy, Sammy, Sammy. Please God let her live, let her live.

Gordon Reeve had levitated right out of Rebus’s world. He was floating overhead, floating and gloating in his new-found power. It had taken him fifteen years to accomplish his trick, but my God what a trick. Fifteen years within which time he had probably changed his name and appearance, taken on a menial job, researched Rebus’s life. How long had this man been watching him? Watching and hating and scheming? All those times that he had felt his flesh creep for no reason, that the telephone had rung without a voice behind it, that small, easily forgotten accidents had occurred. And Reeve, grinning above him, a little god over Rebus’s destiny. Rebus, shivering, entered a pub for the hell of it and ordered a triple whisky.

‘It’s quarter-gills in here, pal. Are you sure you want a treble?’

‘Sure.’

What the hell. It was all one. If God swirled in his heaven, leaning down to touch his creatures, then it was a curious touch indeed that he gave them. Looking around, Rebus stared into a heart of desperation. Old men sat with their half-pint glasses, staring emptily towards the front door. Were they wondering what was outside? Or were they just scared that whatever was out there would one day force its way in, pushing into their dark corners and cowered glances with the wrath of some Old Testament monster, some behemoth, some flood of destruction? Rebus could not see behind their eyes, just as they could not see behind his. That ability not to share the sufferings of others was all that kept the mass of humanity rolling on, concentrating on the ‘me’, shunning the beggars and their folded arms. Rebus, behind his eyes, was begging now, begging to that strange God of his to allow him to find Reeve, to explain himself to the madman. God did not answer. The TV blared out some banal quiz show.

‘Fight Imperialism, fight Racism.’

A young girl wearing a mock-leather coat and little round glasses stood behind Rebus. He turned to her. She had a collecting tin in one hand and a pile of newspapers in the other.

‘Fight Imperialism, fight Racism.’

‘So you said.’ Even now he could feel the alcohol working on his jaw muscles, freeing them of stiffness. ‘Who are you from?’

‘Workers Revolutionary Party. The only way to smash the Imperialist system is for the workers to unite and smash racism. Racism is the backbone of repression.’

‘Oh? Aren’t you confusing two entirely different arguments there, love?’

She bristled, but was ready to argue. They always were.

‘The two are inextricable. Capitalism was built on slave labour and is maintained by slave labour.’

‘You don’t sound much like a slave, dear. Where did you get that accent? Cheltenham?’

‘My father was a slave to capitalist ideology. He didn’t know what he was doing.’

‘You mean you went to an expensive school?’

She was bristling now all right. Rebus lit a cigarette. He offered her one, but she shook her head. A capitalist product, he supposed, the leaves picked by slaves in South America. She was quite pretty though. Eighteen, nineteen. Funny Victorian shoes on, tight pointed little things. A long, straight black skirt. Black, the colour of dissent. He was all for dissent.

‘You’re a student, I suppose?’

‘That’s right,’ she said, shuffling uncomfortably. She knew a buyer when she saw one. This was not a buyer.

‘Edinburgh University?’

‘Yes.’

‘Studying what?’

‘English and politics.’

‘English? Have you heard of a guy called Eiser? He teaches there.’

She nodded.

‘He’s an old fascist,’ she said. ‘His theory of reading is a piece of right-wing propaganda to pull the wool over the eyes of the proletariat.’

Rebus nodded.

‘What was your party again?’

‘Workers Revolutionary.’

‘But you’re a student, eh? Not a worker, not one of the proletariat either by the sound of you.’ Her face was red, her eyes burning fire. Come the revolution, Rebus would be first against the wall. But he had not yet played his trump card. ‘So really, you’re contravening the Trades Description Act, aren’t you? And what about that tin? Do you have a licence from the proper authority to collect money in that tin?’

The tin was old, its old job-description torn from it. It was a plain, red cylinder, the kind used on poppy-day. But this was no poppy-day.

‘Are you a cop?’

‘Got it in one, love. Have you got a licence? I may have to pull you in otherwise.’

‘Fucking pig!’

Feeling this a fitting exit line, she turned from Rebus and walked to the door. Rebus, chuckling, finished his whisky. Poor girl. She would change. The idealism would vanish once she saw how hypocritical the whole game was, and what luxuries lay outside university. When she left, she’d want it all: the executive job in London, the flat, car, salary, wine-bar. She would chuck it all in for a slice of pie. But she wouldn’t understand that just now. Now was for the reaction against upbringing. That was what university was about. They all thought they could change the world once they got away from their parents. Rebus had thought that too. He had thought to return home from the Army with a row of medals and a list of commendations, just to show them. It had not been that way, though. Chastened, he was about to go when a voice called to him from three or four bar-stools away.

‘It disnae cure anything, dis it, son?’

An aged crone offered him these few pearls of wisdom from her carious mouth. Rebus watched her tongue slopping around in that black cavern.

‘Aye,’ he said, paying the barman, who thanked him with green teeth. Rebus could hear the television, the jingle of the cash-register, the shouted conversations of the old men, but behind it all, behind the cacophony, lay another sound, low and pure but more real to him than any of the others.

It was the sound of Gordon Reeve screaming.

Let me out Let me out

But Rebus did not go dizzy this time, nor did he panic and run for it. He stood up to the sound and allowed it to make its point, let it wash over him until it had had its say. He would never run away from that memory again.

‘Drink never cured anything, son,’ continued his personal witch. ‘Look at me. I wis as guid as anybody once upon a time, but when my husband died I just went tae pieces. D’ye ken whit I mean, son? The drink wis a great comfort tae me then, or so I thocht. But it tricks ye. It plays games wi ye. Ye jist sit aw day daein’ nothing but drinking. And life passes ye by.’

She was right. How could he take the time to sit here guzzling whisky and sentiment when his daughter’s life was balanced so finely? He must be mad; he was losing reality again. He had to hang onto that at the very least. He could pray again, but that only seemed to take him further away from the brute facts, and it was facts that he was chasing now, not dreams. He was chasing the fact that a lunatic from his cupboard of bad dreams had sneaked into this world and carried off his daughter. Did it resemble a fairy tale? All the better: there was bound to be a happy ending.

‘You’re right, love,’ he said. Then, ready to leave, he pointed to her empty glass. ‘Want another of those?’

She stared at him through rheumy eyes, then wagged her chin in a parody of compliance.

‘Another of what the lady’s drinking,’ Rebus said to the green-toothed barman. He handed over some coins. ‘And give her the change.’ Then he left the bar.

‘I need to talk. I think you do, too.’

Stevens was lighting a cigarette, rather melodramatically to Rebus’s mind, directly outside the bar. Beneath the glare of the street-lighting, his skin seemed almost yellow, seemed hardly thick enough to cover his skull.

‘Well, can we talk?’ The reporter put his lighter back in his pocket. His fair hair looked greasy. He had not shaved for a day or so. He looked hungry and cold.

But inside, he felt electric.

‘You’ve led me a merry dance, Mister Rebus. Can I call you John?’

‘Look, Stevens, you know the score here. I’ve got enough on my plate without all this.’

Rebus made to move past the reporter, but Stevens caught his arm.

‘No,’ he said, ‘I don’t know the score, not the final score. I seem to have been ejected from the park at half-time.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘You know exactly who’s behind all this, don’t you? Of course you do, and so do your superiors. Or do they? Have you told them the whole truth and nothing but the truth, John? Have you told them about Michael?’

‘What about him?’

‘Oh, come on.’ Stevens started to shuffle his feet, looking around him at the high blocks of flats, the late-afternoon sky behind them. He chuckled, shivering. Rebus recalled seeing him make that curious shivery motion at the party. ‘Where can we talk?’ said the reporter now. ‘What about in the pub? Or is there someone in there you’d rather I didn’t see?’

‘Stevens, you’re off your bloody head. I’m serious. Go home, get some sleep, eat, have a bath, just get to hell away from me. Okay?’

‘Or you’ll do what exactly? Get your brother’s heavy friend to rough me up a little? Listen, Rebus, the game’s over. I know. But I don’t know all of it. You’d be wise to have me as a friend rather than as an enemy. Don’t take me for a monkey. I credit you with more sense than to do that. Don’t let me down.’

Don’t let me down

‘After all, they’ve got your daughter. You need my help. I’ve got friends everywhere. We’ve got to fight this together.’

Rebus, confused, shook his head.

‘I don’t have a bloody clue what you’re talking about, Stevens. Go home, will you?’

Jim Stevens sighed, shaking his own head ruefully. He threw his cigarette onto the pavement and stubbed it out heavily, sending little flares of burning tobacco across the concrete.

‘Well, I’m sorry, John. I really am. Michael’s going to be put behind bars for a very long time on the evidence I have against him.’

‘Evidence? Of what?’

‘His drug-pushing, of course.’

Stevens didn’t see the blow coming. It wouldn’t have helped if he had. It was a vicious, curving swipe, sweeping up from Rebus’s side and catching him very low in the stomach. The reporter coughed out a little puff of wind, then fell to his knees.

‘Liar!’

Stevens coughed and coughed. It was as if he had run a marathon. He gulped in air, staying on his knees, his arms folded in front of his belly.

‘If you say so, John, but it’s the truth anyway.’ He looked up at Rebus. ‘You mean you honestly don’t know anything about it? Nothing at all?’

‘You better have some good proof, Stevens, or I’m going to see you swing.’

Stevens hadn’t expected this, he hadn’t expected this at all.

‘Well,’ he said, ‘this puts a different complexion on everything. Christ, I need a drink. Will you join me? I think we should talk a little now, don’t you? I won’t keep you long, but I think you should know.’

And, of course, thinking back, Rebus realised that he had known, but not consciously. That day, the day of the old man’s death, of visiting the rain-soaked graveyard, of visiting Mickey, he had smelled that toffee-apple smell in the living-room. He knew now what it had been. He had thought of it then, but had been distracted. Jesus Christ. Rebus felt his whole world sinking into the morass of a personal madness. He hoped the breakdown was not far off; he couldn’t keep going on like this for much longer.

Toffee-apples, fairy-tales, Sammy, Sammy, Sammy. Sometimes it was hard to hold onto reality when that reality was overpowering. The shield came to protect you. The shield of the breakdown, of forgetting. Laughter and forgetting.

‘This round’s on me,’ said Rebus, feeling calm again.

Gill Templer knew what she had always known: there was method in the killer’s choice of girls, so he must have had access to their names prior to the abductions. That meant that the four girls had to have something in common, some way that Reeve could have picked them all out. But what? They had checked up on everything. Certain hobbies the girls did have in common; netball, pop music, books.

Netball. Pop music. Books.

Netball. Pop music. Books.

That meant checking through netball-coaches (all women, so scratch that), record-shop workers and DJs, and bookshop-workers and librarians. Libraries.

Libraries.

Rebus had told stories to Reeve. Samantha used the city’s main lending library. So, occasionally, had the other girls. One of the girls had been seen heading up The Mound towards the library on the day she disappeared.

But Jack Morton had checked the library already. One of the men there had owned a blue Ford Escort. The suspect had been passed over. But had that initial interview been enough? She had to speak to Morton. Then she would conduct a second interview herself. She was about to look for Morton when her telephone rang.

‘Inspector Templer,’ she said to the beige mouthpiece.

‘The kid dies tonight,’ hissed a voice on the other end.

She sat bolt upright in her chair, almost causing it to topple.

‘Listen,’ she said, ‘if you’re a crank …’

‘Shut up, bitch. I’m no crank and you know it. I’m the real thing. Listen.’ There was a muffled cry from somewhere, the sob of a young girl. Then the hiss returned. ‘Tell Rebus tough luck. He can’t say I never gave him a chance.’

‘Listen, Reeve, I …’

She had not meant to say that, had not meant to let him know. But she had panicked on hearing Samantha’s cry. Now she heard another cry, the banshee cry of the madman who has been discovered. It sent the hairs on her neck climbing up each other. It froze the air around her. It was the cry of Death itself in one of its many guises. It was a lost soul’s final triumphant scream.

‘You know,’ he gasped, his voice a mixture of joy and terror, ‘you know, you know, you know. Aren’t you clever? And you’ve got a very sexy voice, too. Maybe I’ll come for you sometime. Was Rebus a good lay? Was he? Tell him that I’ve got his baby, and she dies tonight. Got that? Tonight.’

‘Listen, I …’

‘No, no, no. No more from me, Miss Templer. You’ve had nearly long enough to trace this. Bye.’

Click. Brrrr.

Time to trace it. She had been stupid. She should have thought of that first; indeed, she had not thought of it at all. Perhaps Superintendent Wallace had been right. Perhaps it was not only John who was too emotionally involved in the whole affair. She felt tired and old and spent. She felt as if all the case-work was suddenly an impossible burden, all the criminals invincible. Her eyes were irritating her. She thought of putting on her glasses, her personal shield from the world.

She had to find Rebus. Or should she seek out Jack Morton first? John would have to be told of this. They had a little time, but not much. The first guess had to be the right one. Who first? Rebus or Morton? She made the decision: John Rebus.

Unnerved by Stevens’ revelations, Rebus made his way back to his flat. He needed to find out about some things. Mickey could wait. He had drawn too many bad cards in the course of his afternoon’s foot-slogging. He had to get in touch with his old employers, the Army. He had to make them see that a life was at stake, they who prized life so strangely. A lot of phone-calls might be necessary. So be it.

But the first call he made was to the hospital. Rhona was fine. That was a relief. Still, however, she had not been told of Sammy’s abduction. Rebus swallowed hard. Had she been told of her lover’s death? She had not. Of course not. He arranged for some flowers to be sent to her. He was about to pluck up the courage to telephone the first of a long list of numbers when his own telephone rang. He let it ring for a while, but the caller was not about to let him go.

‘Hello?’

‘John! Thank God. I’ve been looking for you everywhere.’ It was Gill, sounding excited and nervous and yet trying to sound sympathetic, too. Her voice modulated wildly, and Rebus felt his heart — what was left of it for public consumption — go out to her.

‘What is it, Gill? Has anything happened?’

‘I’ve had a call from Reeve.’

Rebus’s heart pounded against the walls of its cell. ‘Tell me,’ he said.

‘Well, he just phoned up and said that he’s got Samantha.’

‘And?’

Gill swallowed hard. ‘And that he’s going to kill her tonight.’ There was a pause at Rebus’s end, strange distant sounds of movement. ‘John? Hello, John?’

Rebus stopped punching the telephone-stool. ‘Yes, I’m here. Jesus Christ. Did he say anything else?’

‘John, you really shouldn’t be on your own you know. I could — ’

‘Did he say anything else?’ He was shouting now, his breath short like a runner’s.

‘Well, I …’

‘Yes?’

‘I let slip that we know who he is.’

Rebus sucked in his breath, examining his knuckles, noting that he had torn one of them open. He sucked blood, staring from his window. ‘What was his reaction to that?’ he said at last.

‘He went wild.’

‘I’ll bet he did. Jesus, I hope he doesn’t take it out on … Oh, Jesus. Why do you suppose he phoned you specifically?’ He had stopped licking his wound, and now turned his attention on his dark fingernails, tearing at them with his teeth, spitting them out across the room.

‘Well, I am Liaison Officer on the case. He may have seen me on the television or read my name in the newspapers.’

‘Or maybe he’s seen us together. He may have been following me during this whole thing.’ He looked from his window as a shabbily-dressed man shuffled his way up the street, stopping to pick up a cigarette-end. Christ, he needed a cigarette. He looked around for an ashtray, source of a few reusable butts.

‘I never thought of that.’

‘How the hell could you? We didn’t know that any of this was to do with me until … it was yesterday, wasn’t it? It seems like days ago. But remember, Gill, his notes were delivered by hand in the beginning.’ He lit the remnants of a cigarette, sucking in the stinging smoke. ‘He’s been so close to me, and I didn’t feel a thing, not a tingle. So much for a policeman’s sixth sense.’

‘Speaking of sixth senses, John, I’ve had a hunch.’ Gill was relieved to hear how his voice had become calmer. She felt a little calmer, too, as though they were helping each other to hang on to a crowded lifeboat in a storm-torn sea.

‘What’s that?’ Rebus slumped himself into his chair, looking around his barren room, dusty and chaotic. He saw the glass used by Michael, a plate of toast crumbs, two empty cigarette packets, and two coffee cups. He would sell this place soon, no matter how low the price. He would move well away from here. He would.

‘Libraries,’ Gill was saying, staring at her own office, the files and mounds of paperwork, the clutter of months and years, the electric buzz in the air. ‘The one thing that all the girls, Samantha included, have in common is that they used, if irregularly, the same library, the Central Library. Reeve might have worked there once and been able to find the names he needed to fit his puzzle.’

‘That’s certainly a thought,’ said Rebus, suddenly interested. It was too much of a coincidence, surely — or was it? How better to find out about John Rebus than to get a quiet job for a few months or a few years? How better to trap young girls than by posing as a librarian? Reeve had gone undercover all right, so well-camouflaged as to be invisible.

‘It just so happens,’ Gill continued, ‘that your friend Jack Morton has been to the Central Library already. He checked up on a suspect there who owned a blue Escort. He gave the man a clean bill of health.’

‘Yes, and they gave the Yorkshire Ripper a clean bill of health on more than one occasion, didn’t they? It’s worth rechecking. What was the suspect’s name?’

‘I’ve no idea. I’ve been trying to find Jack Morton, but he’s off somewhere. John, I’ve been worried about you. Where have you been? I’ve been trying to find you.’

‘I call that a waste of police time and effort, Inspector Templer. Get your nose back to the real grindstone. Find Jack. Find that name.’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘I’ll be here for a while if you need me. I’ve got a few phone calls of my own to make.’

‘I hear that Rhona is stable …’ But Rebus had already put down his receiver. Gill sighed, rubbing at her face, desperate for some rest. She decided to arrange for someone to be sent over to John Rebus’s flat. He could not be left to fester and, perhaps, explode. Then she had to find that name. She had to find Jack Morton.

Rebus made himself some coffee, thought about going out for milk, but decided in the end to have the coffee bitter and black, the taste and the colour of his thoughts. He thought over Gill’s idea. Reeve as a librarian? It seemed improbable, unthinkable, but then everything that had happened to him of late had been unthinkable. Rationality could be a powerful enemy when you were faced with the irrational. Fight fire with fire. Accept that Gordon Reeve might have secured a job in the library; something innocuous yet essential to his plan. And suddenly, for John Rebus as for Gill, it all seemed to fit. ‘For those who read between the times.’ For those who are involved with books between one time (The Cross) and another (the present). My God, was nothing arbitrary in this life? No, nothing at all. Behind the seemingly irrational lay the clear golden path of the design. Behind this world there was another. Reeve was in the library: Rebus felt sure of that. It was five o’clock. He could reach the library just as it was closing. But would Gordon Reeve still be there, or would he have moved on now that he had his final victim?

But Rebus knew that Sammy was not Reeve’s final victim. She was not a ‘victim’ at all. She was merely another device. There could be only one victim: Rebus himself. And for that reason Reeve would still be nearby, still within Rebus’s reach. For Reeve wanted to be found, but slowly, a sort of cat-and-mouse game in reverse. Rebus thought back to the game of cat-and-mouse as played in his schooldays. Sometimes the boy being chased by a girl, or the girl being chased by a boy, would want to be caught, because he or she felt something for the chaser. And so the whole thing became something other than it seemed. That was Reeve’s game. Cat and mouse, and he the mouse with the sting in his tail, the bite in his teeth, and Rebus as soft as milk, as pliant as fur and contentment. There had been no contentment for Gordon Reeve, not for many years, not since he had been betrayed by one whom he had come to call brother.

Just a kiss

The mouse caught.

The brother I never had

Poor Gordon Reeve, balancing on that slender pipe, the piss trickling down his legs, and everybody laughing at him.

And poor John Rebus, shunned by his father and his brother, a brother who had turned to crime now and who must be punished eventually.

And poor Sammy. She was the one he should be thinking of. Think only of her, John, and everything will turn out all right.

But if this was a serious game, a game of life and death, then he had to remember that it was still a game. Rebus knew now that he had Reeve. But having caught him, what would happen? The roles would switch in some way. He did not yet know all the rules. There was one way and only the one way to learn them. He left the coffee to go cold on his coffee-table, beside all the other waste. There was bitterness enough in his mouth as it was.

And out there, out in the iron-grey drizzle, there was a game to be finished.

27

From his flat in Marchmont to the library could be a delightful walk, showing the strengths of Edinburgh as a city. He passed through a verdant open area called The Meadows, and on the skyline before him stood the great grey Castle, a flag blowing in the fine rain over its ramparts. He passed the Royal Infirmary, home of discoveries and famous names, part of the University, Greyfriars Kirkyard and the tiny statue of Greyfriars Bobby. How many years had that little dog lain beside its master’s grave? How many years had Gordon Reeve gone to sleep at night with burning thoughts of John Rebus on his mind? He shuddered. Sammy, Sammy, Sammy. He hoped that he would get to know his daughter better. He hoped that he would be able to tell her that she was beautiful, and that she would find great love in her life. Dear God, he hoped she was alive.

Walking along George IV Bridge, which took tourists and others over the city’s Grassmarket, safely away from that area’s tramps and derelicts, latter-day paupers with nowhere to turn, John Rebus’s mind churned a few facts. For one, Reeve would be armed. For another, he might be in disguise. He remembered Sammy talking about the down-and-outs who sat around all day in the library. He could be one of them. He wondered what he would do if and when he met Reeve face to face. What would he say? Questions and theories began to disturb him, frightened him almost as much as did the recognition that Sammy’s fate at the hands of Reeve would be painful and protracted. But she was more important to him than memory: she was the future. And so he stalked towards the Gothic facade of the library with determination, not fear, on his face.

A news vendor outside, his coat wrapped around him like damp tissue-paper, cried out the latest news, not of the Strangler today but of some disaster at sea. News did not last for long. Rebus swerved past the man, eyeing his face carefully. He noticed that his own shoes were letting in water as usual, then he entered the oak swing-doors.

At the main desk a security man flicked through a newspaper. He did not resemble Gordon Reeve, not in any way at all. Rebus breathed deeply, trying to stop himself from shaking.

‘We’re closing, sir,’ said the guard from behind his newspaper.

‘Yes, I’m sure you are.’ The guard did not appear to like the sound of Rebus’s voice; it was a hard, icy voice, used like a weapon. ‘My name’s Rebus. Detective Sergeant Rebus. I’m looking for a man called Reeve who works here. Is he around?’

Rebus hoped that he sounded calm. He did not feel calm. The guard left his newspaper on the chair and came up to face him. He studied Rebus, as though wary of him. Good: Rebus wanted it that way.

‘Can I see your identification?’

Clumsily, his fingers not ready to be delicate, Rebus fished out his ID card. The guard looked at it for some time, glancing up at him.

‘Reeve did you say?’ He handed Rebus’s card back and brought out a list of names attached to a yellow plastic clip-board. ‘Reeve, Reeve, Reeve, Reeve. No, there’s nobody called Reeve works here.’

‘Are you sure? He may not be a librarian. He could be a cleaner or something, anything.’

‘No, everybody’s on my list, from the Director down to the porter. Look, that’s my name there. Simpson. Everybody’s on this list. He’d be on this list if he worked here. You must have made a mistake.’

Staff were beginning to leave the building, calling out their ‘goodnight’s’ and their ‘see you’s’. He might lose Reeve if he didn’t hurry. Always supposing that Reeve still worked here. It was such a slender straw, such a tenuous hope, that Rebus began to panic again.

‘Can I see that list?’ He put out his hand, making his eyes burn with authority. The guard hesitated, then handed over the clip-board. Rebus searched it furiously, looking for anagrams, clues, anything.

He didn’t have to look far.

‘Ian Knott,’ he whispered to himself. Ian Knott. Gordian knot. Reef knot. Gordian reef. It’s just like my name. He wondered if Gordon Reeve could smell him. He could smell Reeve. He was as close as a short walk, perhaps a flight of stairs. That was all.

‘Where does Ian Knott work?’

‘Mister Knott? He works part-time in the children’s section. Nicest man you could hope to meet. Why? What’s he done?’

‘Is he in today?’

‘I think so. I think he comes in for two hours at the end of the afternoon. Look, what’s this all about?’

‘The children’s section, you said? That’s downstairs, isn’t it?’

‘That’s right.’ The guard was really flustered now. He knew trouble when he saw it. ‘I’ll just phone down and let him …’

Rebus leaned across the desk so that his nose touched that of the guard. ‘You’ll do nothing, understand? If you buzz down to him, I’ll come back up and kick that telephone so far up your arse that you really will be able to make internal calls. Do you get my drift?’

The guard started to nod slowly and carefully, but Rebus had already turned his back on him and was heading for the gleaming stairwell.

The library smelled of used books, of damp, of brass and polish. In Rebus’s nostrils it was the smell of confrontation, a smell that would remain with him. Walking down the stairs, down into the heart of the library, it became the smell of a hosing down in the middle of the night, of wrenching a gun away from its owner, of lonely marches overland, of wash-houses, of that whole nightmare. He could smell colours and sounds and sensations. There was a word for that feeling, but he could not remember it for the moment.

He counted the steps down, using the exercise to calm himself. Twelve stairs, then around a corner, then twelve more. And he found himself at a glass door with a small painting on it: a teddy bear and a skipping-rope. The bear was laughing at something. To Rebus, it was smiling at him. Not a pleasant smile, but a gloating one. Come in, come in, whoever you are. He studied the room’s interior. There was nobody about, not a soul. Quietly, he pushed open the door. No children, no librarians. But he could hear someone placing books on a shelf. The sound came from a partition behind the lending-desk. Rebus tiptoed over to the desk and pressed a little bell there.

From behind the partition, humming, brushing invisible dust from his hands, came an older, chubbier, smiling Gordon Reeve. He look a bit like a teddy bear himself. Rebus’s hands were gripping the edge of the desk.

Gordon Reeve stopped humming when he saw Rebus, but the smile still played games with his face, making him seem innocent, normal, safe.

‘Good to see you, John,’ he said. ‘So you’ve tracked me down at last, you old devil. How are you?’ He was holding out a hand for Rebus to shake. But John Rebus knew that if he lifted his fingers from the edge of the desk, he would crumple to the floor.

He remembered Gordon Reeve now, recalled every detail of their time together. He remembered the man’s gestures and his jibes and his thoughts. Blood brothers they had been, enduring together, able to read the other’s mind almost. Blood brothers they would be again. Rebus could see it in the mad, clear eyes of his smiling tormentor. He felt the sea rushing through him, stinging his ears. This was it then. This was — what had been expected of him.

‘I want Samantha,’ he enunciated. ‘I want her alive and I want her now. Then we can settle this any way you like. Where is she, Gordon?’

‘Do you know how long it is since anyone called me that? I’ve been Ian Knott for so long I can hardly bring myself to think of me as a “Gordon Reeve”.’ He smiled, looking behind Rebus’s back. ‘Where’s the cavalry, John? Don’t tell me you’ve come along here on your own? That’s against procedure, isn’t it?’

Rebus knew better than to tell him the truth. ‘They’re outside, don’t worry. I’ve come in here to talk, but I’ve got plenty of friends outside. You’re finished, Gordon. Now tell me where she is.’

But Gordon Reeve only shook his head, chuckling. ‘Come on, John. It wouldn’t be your style to bring anyone with you. You forget that I know you.’ He looked tired suddenly. ‘I know you so well.’ His disguise was slipping away, piece by careful piece. ‘No, you’re alone all right. All alone. Just like I was, remember?’

‘Where is she?’

‘Not telling.’

There could be no doubt that the man was insane; perhaps he always had been. He looked the way he had looked on the days just before the bad days in their cell, on the edge of an abyss, an abyss created in his own mind. But fearful all the same, for the very reason that it was outwith any physical control. He was, smiling, surrounded by colourful posters, glossy drawings and picture-books, the most dangerous-looking man Rebus had met in his entire life.

‘Why?’

Reeve looked at him as though he could not have asked a more infantile question. He shook his head, smiling still, the whore’s smile, the cool, professional smile of the killer.

‘You know why,’ he said. ‘Because of everything. Because you left me in the lurch, just as surely as if we had been in the hands of the enemy. You deserted, John. You deserted me. You know what the sentence is for that, don’t you? You know what the sentence is for desertion?’

Reeve’s voice had become hysterical. He chuckled again, trying to calm himself. Rebus steadied himself for violence, pumping adrenaline through his body, knotting his fists and his muscles.

‘I know your brother.’

‘What?’

‘Your brother Michael, I know him. Did you know that he’s a drugs pusher? Well, more of a middle-man really. Anyway, he’s up to his neck in trouble, John. I’ve been his supplier for a while. Long enough to find out about you. Michael was very keen to reassure me that he wasn’t a plant, a police informer. He was keen to spill the beans about you, John, so that we’d believe him. He always thought of the set-up as a “we”, but it was just little me. Wasn’t that clever of me? I’ve already fixed your brother. His head’s in a noose, isn’t it? You could call it a contingency plan.’

He had John Rebus’s brother, and he had his daughter. There was only one more person he wanted, and Rebus had walked straight into this trap. He needed time to think.

‘How long have you been planning all this?’

‘I’m not sure.’ He laughed, growing in confidence. ‘Ever since you deserted, I suppose. Michael was the easiest part, really. He wanted easy money. It was simple enough to persuade him that drugs were the answer. He’s in it up to his neck, your brother.’ The last word was spat out at Rebus as though it were venom. ‘Through him I found out a little more about you, John. And that made everything easier in its turn.’ Reeve shrugged his shoulders. ‘So you see, if you turn me in, I’ll turn him in.’

‘It won’t work. I want you too badly.’

‘So you’ll let your brother rot in jail? Fair enough. Either way, I win. Can’t you see that?’

Yes, Rebus could see it, but dimly, as though it were a difficult equation in a hot classroom.

‘What happened to you anyway?’ he asked now, unsure why he was playing for time. He had come charging in here without a self-protective thought or a plan in his head. And now he was stuck, awaiting Reeve’s move, which must surely come. ‘I mean, what happened after I … deserted?’

‘Oh, they cracked me quite quickly after that.’ Reeve was nonchalant. He could afford to be. ‘I was out on my ear. They put me into a hospital for a while, then let me go. I heard that you’d gone ga-ga. That cheered me up a little. But then I heard a rumour that you’d joined the police force. Well, I couldn’t stand the thought of you having a cosy life of it. Not after what we’d been through and what you’d done.’ His face began to jerk a little. His hands rested on the desk, and Rebus could smell the vinegary sweat coming from him. He spoke as though drifting off to sleep, but with each word Rebus knew that he was becoming more dangerous still, and yet he could not make himself move, not yet.

‘It took you long enough to get to me.’

‘It was worth the wait.’ Reeve rubbed at his cheek. ‘Sometimes I thought I might die before it was all finished, but I think I always knew that I wouldn’t.’ He smiled. ‘Come on, John, I’ve got something to show you.’

‘Sammy?’

‘Don’t be fucking stupid.’ The smile disappeared again, only for a second. ‘Do you think I’d keep her here? No, but I’ve got something else that will interest you. Come on.’

He led Rebus behind the partition. Rebus, his nerves jangling, studied Reeve’s back, the muscles covered in a layer of easy living. A librarian. A children’s librarian. And Edinburgh’s own mass murderer.

Behind the partition were shelves and shelves of books, some piled haphazardly, others in neat rows, their spines matching.

‘These are all waiting to be reshelved,’ said Reeve, waving a custodial hand around him. ‘It was you that got me interested in books, John. Do you remember?’

‘Yes, I told you stories.’ Rebus had started to think about Michael. Without him, Reeve might never have been found, might never have been suspected even. And now he would go to jail. Poor Mickey.

‘Now where did I put it? I know it’s here somewhere. I put it aside to show you, if you ever found me. God knows, it’s taken you long enough. You’ve not been very bright, have you, John?’

It was easy to forget that the man was insane, that he had killed four girls in a game and had another at his mercy. It was so easy.

‘No,’ said Rebus, ‘I’ve not been very bright.’

He could feel himself tightening. The very air around him seemed to be getting thinner. Something was about to happen. He could feel it. And to stop it from happening, all he had to do was punch Reeve in the kidneys, chop him behind the neck, restrain him and bundle him out of here.

So why didn’t he do just that? He did not know himself. All he knew was that whatever would happen would happen, and that it had been set out like the plan of a building or a game of noughts and crosses many years before. Reeve had started the game. That left Rebus in a no-win situation. But he could not leave it unfinished. There had to be this rummaging in the shelves, this find.

‘Ah, here it is. It’s a book I’ve been reading …’

But, John Rebus realised, if Reeve had been reading it, then why was it so well hidden?

‘Crime and Punishment. You told me the story, do you remember?’

‘Yes, I remember. I told it to you more than once.’

‘That’s right, John, you did.’

The book was a quality leather edition, quite old. It did not seem like a library copy. Reeve handled it as though he were handling money or diamonds. It was as though he had owned nothing so precious in all his life.

‘There’s one illustration in here that I want you to see, John. Do you recall what I said about old Raskolnikov?’

‘You said he should have shot the lot of them …’

Rebus caught the under-meaning a second too late. He had misread this clue as he had misread so many of Reeve’s clues. Meantime, Gordon Reeve, his eyes shining, had opened the book and brought out a small snub-nosed revolver from its hollowed-out interior. The gun was being raised to meet Rebus’s chest when he sprang forward and butted Reeve on the nose. Planning was one thing, but sometimes dirty inspiration was needed. Blood and mucus came crashing from the suddenly broken bones. Reeve gasped, and Rebus’s hand pushed the gun-arm away from him. Reeve was screaming now, a scream from the past, from so many living nightmares. It set Rebus off balance, plunging him back into his act of betrayal. He could see the guards, the open door, and he with his back to the screams of the trapped man. The scene before him blurred, and was replaced by an explosion.

The soft thump in his shoulder turned quickly to a spreading numbness and then to an intense pain, seeming to fill his entire body. He clutched at his jacket, feeling blood soak through the padding, through the lightweight material. Jesus Christ, so that was what it was like to be shot. He felt as though he would be sick, would faint clean away, but then he felt an onrush of something, coming up from his soul. It was the blinding force of anger. He was not about to lose this one. He saw Reeve wiping the mess from his face, trying to stop his eyes from watering, the gun still wavering before him. Rebus picked up a heavy-looking book and swiped at Reeve’s hand, sending the gun flying into a pile of books.

And then Reeve was gone, staggering through the shelves, pulling them down after him. Rebus ran back to the desk and telephoned for help, his eyes wary for. Gordon Reeve’s return. There was silence in the room. He sat down on the floor.

Suddenly the door opened and William Anderson came through it, dressed in black like some cliched avenging angel. Rebus smiled.

‘How the hell did you find me?’

‘I’ve been following you for quite a while.’ Anderson bent down to examine Rebus’s arm. ‘I heard the shot. I take it you’ve found our man?’

‘He’s still in here somewhere, unarmed. The gun’s back there.’

Anderson tied a handkerchief around Rebus’s shoulder.

‘You need an ambulance, John.’ But Rebus was already rising to his feet.

‘Not yet. Let’s get this finished. How come I didn’t spot you trailing me?’

Anderson allowed himself a smile. ‘It takes a very good copper to know when I’m trailing them, and you’re not very good, John. You’re just good.’

They went behind the partition and began to move carefully further and further into the shelves. Rebus had picked up the gun. He pushed it deep into his pocket. There was no sign of Gordon Reeve.

‘Look.’ Anderson was pointing to a half open door at the very back of the stacks. They moved towards it, slowly still, and Rebus pushed it open. He confronted a steep iron stairwell, badly lit. It seemed to twist down into the foundations of the library. There was nowhere to go but down.

‘I’ve heard about this, I think,’ whispered Anderson, his whispers echoing around the deep shaft as they descended. ‘The library was built on the site of the old Sheriff Court, and the cells which used to be beneath the courthouse are still there. The library stores old books in them. A whole maze of cells and passageways, leading right under the city.’

Smooth plaster walls gave way to ancient brickwork as they descended. Rebus could smell fungus, an old bitter smell left over from a previous age.

‘He could be anywhere then.’

Anderson shrugged his shoulders. They had reached the bottom of the stairs, and found themselves in a wide passageway, clear of books. But off this passageway were alcoves — the old cells presumably — in which were stacked rows of books. There seemed no order, no pattern. They were just old books.

‘He could probably get out of here,’ whispered Anderson. ‘I think there are exits to places like the present-day court-house and Saint Giles Cathedral.’

Rebus was in awe. Here was a piece of old Edinburgh, intact and undefiled. ‘It’s incredible,’ he said. ‘I never knew about this.’

‘There’s more. Underneath the City Chambers there are supposed to be whole streets of the old city which the builders just built right on top of. Whole streets, shops, houses, roads. Hundreds of years old.’ Anderson shook his head, realising, as was Rebus, that you could not trust your own knowledge: you could walk right over a reality without necessarily encroaching on it.

They worked their way along the passage, thankful for the dim electric lighting on the ceiling, checking each and every cell with no success.

‘Who is he then?’ Anderson whispered.

‘He’s an old friend of mine,’ said Rebus, feeling a little dizzy. It seemed to him that there was very little oxygen down here. He was sweating profusely. He knew that it had to do with the loss of blood, and that he shouldn’t be here at all, yet he needed to be here. He remembered that there were things he should have done. He should have found out Reeve’s address from the guard and sent a police car round in case Sammy were there. Too late now.

‘There he is!’

Anderson had spotted him, way ahead of them in such shadow that Rebus could not make out a shape until Reeve started to run. Anderson ran after him, with Rebus, swallowing hard, trying to keep up.

‘Watch him, he’s dangerous.’ Rebus felt his words fall away from him. He had not the strength to shout. Suddenly everything was going wrong. Ahead, he saw Anderson catch up with Reeve, and saw Reeve lash out with a near-perfect roundhouse kick, learned all those years ago and not forgotten. Anderson’s head swivelled to one side as the kick landed, and he fell against the wall. Rebus had slumped to his knees, panting hard, his eyes hardly able to focus. Sleep, he needed sleep. The cold, uneven ground felt comfortable to him, as comfortable as the best bed he could want. He wavered, ready to fall. Reeve seemed to be walking towards him, while Anderson slid down the wall. Reeve seemed massive now, still in shadow, growing larger with each step until he consumed Rebus, and Rebus could see him grinning from ear to ear.

‘Now you,’ Reeve roared. ‘Now for you.’ Rebus knew that somewhere above them traffic was probably moving effortlessly across George IV Bridge, people were probably walking smartly home to an evening of television and family comfort, while he knelt at the feet of this nightmare, a poor forked animal at the end of the chase. It would do him no good to scream, no good to fight against it. He saw a blur of Gordon Reeve bend down in front of him, its face pushed awkwardly to one side. Rebus remembered that he had broken Reeve’s nose quite successfully.

So did Reeve. He stood back and swung a heaving kick at John Rebus’s chin. Rebus managed to move slightly, something still working away inside him, and the blow caught him on the cheek, sending him sideways. Lying in a half-protective foetal position he heard Reeve laugh, and watched the hands as they closed around his throat. He thought of the woman and his own hands around her neck. This was justice then. So be it. And then he thought of Sammy, of Gill, of Anderson and Anderson’s murdered son, of those little girls, all dead. No, he could not let Gordon Reeve win. It wouldn’t be right. It wouldn’t be fair. He felt his tongue and eyes bulging, straining. He slipped his hand into his pocket, as Gordon Reeve whispered to him: ‘You’re glad it’s all over, aren’t you, John? You’re actually relieved.’

And then another explosion filled the passage, hurting Rebus’s ears. The recoil from the gunshot tingled through his hand and his arm, and he caught the sweet smell again, something like the smell of toffee-apples. Reeve, startled, froze for a second, then folded like paper, falling across Rebus, smothering him. Rebus, unable to move, decided it was safe to go to sleep now …