Knots And Crosses

EPILOGUE

They kicked down the door of Ian Knott’s small bungalow, a tiny, quiet suburban house, in full view of his curious neighbours, and found Samantha Rebus there, petrified, tied to a bed, her mouth taped shut, and with pictures of the dead girls for company. Everything became very professional after that, as Samantha was led weeping from the house. The driveway was hidden from the neighbouring bungalow by a tall hedge, and so nobody had seen anything of Reeve’s comings and goings. He was a quiet man, the neighbours said. He had moved into the house seven years ago, at the time when he had started work as a librarian.

Jim Stevens was happy enough with the conclusion of the case. It made for a full week’s stories. But how could he have been so wrong about John Rebus? He couldn’t work that one out at all. Still, his drugs story had been completed too, and Michael Rebus would go to jail. There was no doubt about that.

The London press came in search of their own versions of the truth. Stevens met one journalist in the bar of the Caledonian Hotel. The man was trying to buy Samantha Rebus’s story. He patted his pocket, assuring Jim Stevens that he had his editor’s cheque-book with him. This seemed to Stevens to be part of some larger malaise. It wasn’t just that the media could create reality and then tamper with that creation whenever they liked. There was something beneath the surface of it all, something different to the usual dirt and squalor and mess, something much more ambiguous. He didn’t like it at all, and he didn’t like what it had done to him. He talked with the London journalist about vague concepts such as justice and trust and balance. They talked for hours, drinking whisky and beer, but still the same questions remained. Edinburgh had shown itself to Jim Stevens as never before, cowering beneath the shadow of the Castle Rock in hiding from something. All the tourists saw were shadows from history, while the city itself was something else entirely. He didn’t like it, he didn’t like the job he was doing, and he didn’t like the hours. The London offers were still there. He clutched at the biggest straw and drifted south.