The Beat Goes On

Monstrous Trumpet

John Rebus went down onto his knees.

‘I’m begging you,’ he said, ‘don’t do this to me, please.’

But Chief Inspector Lauderdale just laughed, thinking Rebus was clowning about as per usual. ‘Come on, John,’ he said. ‘It’ll be just like Interpol.’

Rebus got back to his feet. ‘No it won’t,’ he said. ‘It’ll be like a bloody escort service. Besides, I can’t speak French.’

‘Apparently he speaks perfect English, this Monsieur...’ Lauderdale made a show of consulting the letter in front of him on his desk.

‘Don’t say it again, sir, please.’

‘Monsieur Cluzeau.’ Rebus winced. ‘Yes,’ Lauderdale continued, enjoying Rebus’s discomfort, ‘Monsieur Cluzeau. A fine name for a member of the gendarmerie, don’t you think?’

‘It’s a stunt,’ Rebus pleaded. ‘It’s got to be. DC Holmes or one of the other lads...’

But Lauderdale would not budge. ‘It’s been verified by the Chief Super,’ he said. ‘I’m sorry about this, John, but I thought you’d be pleased.’

‘Pleased?’

‘Yes. Pleased. You know, showing a bit of Scots hospitality.’

‘Since when did the CID job description encompass “tourist guide”?’

Lauderdale had had enough of this: Rebus had even stopped calling him ‘sir’. ‘Since, Inspector, I ordered you to do it.’

‘But why me?’

Lauderdale shrugged. ‘Why not you?’ He sighed, opened a drawer of his desk and dropped the letter into it. ‘Look, it’s only a day, two at most. Just do it, eh? Now if you don’t mind, Inspector, I’ve got rather a lot to do.’

But the fight had gone out of Rebus anyway. His voice was calm, resigned. ‘When does he get here?’

Again, there was a pause while that missing ‘sir’ hung motionless in the air between them. Well, thought Lauderdale, the sod deserves this. ‘He’s already here.’

‘What?’

‘I mean, he’s in Edinburgh. The letter took a bit of a time to get here.’

‘You mean it sat in someone’s office for a bit of time.’

‘Well, whatever the delay, he’s here. And he’s coming to the station this afternoon.’

Rebus glanced at his watch. It was eleven-fifty. He groaned.

‘Late afternoon, I’d imagine,’ said Lauderdale, trying to soften the blow now that Rebus was heading for the canvas. This had been a bit of a mess all round. He’d only just received final confirmation himself that Monsieur Cluzeau was on his way. ‘I mean,’ he said, ‘the French like to take a long lunch, don’t they? Notorious for it. So I don’t suppose he’ll be here till after three.’

‘Fine, he can take us as he finds us. What am I supposed to do with him anyway?’

Lauderdale tried to retain his composure: just say it once, damn you! Just once so I know that you recognise me for what I am! He cleared his throat. ‘He wants to see how we work. So show him. As long as he can report back to his own people that we’re courteous, efficient, diligent, scrupulous, and that we always get our man, well, I’ll be happy.’

‘Right you are, sir,’ said Rebus, opening the door, making ready to leave Lauderdale’s newly refurbished office. Lauderdale sat in a daze: he’d said it! Rebus had actually ended a sentence with ‘sir’!

‘That should be easy enough,’ he was saying now. ‘Oh, and I might as well track down Lord Lucan and catch the Loch Ness monster while I’m at it. I’m sure to have a spare five minutes.’

Rebus closed the door after him with such ferocity that Lauderdale feared for the glass-framed paintings on his walls. But glass was more resilient than it looked. And so was John Rebus.

Cluzeau had to be an arse-licker, hell-bent on promotion. What other reason could there be? The story was that he was coming over for the Scotland — France encounter at Murrayfield. Fair enough, Edinburgh filled with Frenchmen once every two years for a weekend in February, well-behaved if boisterous rugby fans whose main pleasure seemed to be dancing in saloon bars with ice-buckets on their heads.

Nothing out of the ordinary there. But imagine a Frenchman who, having decided to take a large chunk of his annual leave so as to coincide with the international season, then has another idea: while in Scotland he’ll invite himself to spend a day with the local police force. His letter to his own chief requesting an introduction so impresses the chief that he writes to the Chief Constable. By now, the damage is done, and the boulder starts to bounce down the hillside — Chief Constable to Chief Super, Chief Super to Super, Super to Chief Inspector — and Chief Inspector to Mr Muggins, aka John Rebus.

Thank you and bonne nuit. Ha! There, he did remember a bit of French after all. Rhona, his wife, had done one of those teach-yourself French courses, all tapes and repeating phrases. It had driven Rebus bonkers, but some of it had stuck. And all of it in preparation for a long weekend in Paris, a weekend which hadn’t come off because Rebus had been drawn into a murder inquiry. Little wonder she’d left him in the end.

Bonne nuit. Bonjour. That was another word. Bonsoir. What about Bon accord? Was that French, too? Bo’ness sounded French. Hadn’t Bonnie Prince Charlie been French? And dear God, what was he going to do with the Frenchman?

There was only one answer: get busy. The busier he was, the less time there would be for small-talk, xenophobia and falling-out. With the brain and the body occupied, there would be less temptation to mention Onion Johnnies, frogs’-legs, the war, French letters, French kissing and French and Saunders. Oh dear God, what had he done to deserve this?

His phone buzzed.

‘Oui?’ said Rebus, smirking now because he remembered how often he’d managed to get away with not calling Lauderdale ‘sir’.

‘Eh?’

‘Just practising, Bob.’

‘You must be bloody psychic then. There’s a French gentleman down here says he’s got an appointment.’

‘What? Already?’ Rebus checked his watch again. It was two minutes past twelve. Christ, like sitting in a dentist’s waiting-room and being called ahead of your turn. Would he really look like Peter Sellers? What if he didn’t speak English?

‘John?’

‘Sorry, Bob, what?’

‘What do you want me to tell him?’

‘Tell him I’ll be right down.’ Right down in the dumps, he thought to himself, letting the receiver drop like a stone.

There was only one person in the large, dingy reception. He wore a biker’s leather jacket and had a spider’s-web tattoo creeping up out of his soiled T-shirt and across his throat. Rebus stopped in his tracks. But then he saw another figure, over to his left against the wall. This man was studying various Wanted and Missing posters. He was tall, thin, and wore an immaculate dark blue suit with a tightly-knotted red silk tie. His shoes looked brand new, as did his haircut.

Their eyes met, forcing Rebus into a smile. He was suddenly aware of his own rumpled chain-store suit, his scuffed brogues, the shirt with a button missing on one cuff.

‘Inspector Rebus?’ The man was coming forward, hand held out.

‘That’s right.’ They shook. He was wearing after-shave too, not too strong but certainly noticeable. He had the bearing of someone much further up the ladder, yet Rebus had been told they were of similar ranks. Having said which, there was no way Rebus was going to say ‘Inspector Cluzeau’ out loud. It would be too... too...

‘For you.’

Rebus saw that he was being handed a plastic carrier-bag. He looked inside. A litre of duty-free malt, a box of chocolates and a small tin of something. He lifted out the chocolates.

‘Escargots,’ Cluzeau explained. ‘But made from chocolate.’

Rebus studied the picture on the box. Yes, chocolates in the shape of snails. And as for the tin...

‘Foie gras. It is a pâté made from fatted goose liver. A local delicacy. You spread it on your toast.’

‘Sounds delicious,’ Rebus said, with just a trace of irony. In fact, he was overwhelmed. None of this stuff looked as though it came cheap, meat paste or no. ‘Thank you.’

The Frenchman shrugged. He had the kind of face which, shaved twice a day, still sported a five o’clock shadow. Hirsute: that was the word. What was that joke again, the one that ended with someone asking ‘Hirsute?’ and the guy replying ‘No, the suit’s mine, but the knickers are hers’? Hairy wrists, too, on one of which sat a thin gold wristwatch. He was tapping this with his finger.

‘I am not too early, I hope.’

‘What?’ It was Rebus’s curse to remember the endings of jokes but never their beginnings. ‘No, no. You’re all right. I was just, er, hold on a second, will you?’

‘Sure.’

Rebus walked over to the reception desk, behind which stood the omnipresent Bob Leach. Bob nodded towards the bag.

‘Not a bad haul,’ he said.

Rebus kept his voice low, but not so low, he hoped, as to arouse Cluzeau’s suspicions. ‘Thing is, Bob, I wasn’t expecting him for a few hours yet. What the hell am I going to do with him? I don’t suppose you’ve got any calls?’

‘Nothing you’d be interested in, John.’ Leach examined the pad in front of him. ‘Couple of car smashes. Couple of break-ins. Oh, and the art gallery.’

‘Art gallery?’

‘I think young Brian’s on that one. Some exhibition down the High Street. One of the pieces seems to have walked.’

Well, it wasn’t too far away, and it was a tourist spot. St Giles. John Knox’s House. Holyrood.

‘The very dab,’ said Rebus. ‘That’ll do us nicely. Give me the address, will you?’

Leach scribbled onto a pad of paper and tore off the sheet, handing it across the counter.

‘Thanks, Bob.’

Leach was nodding towards the bag. Not only omnipresent, thought Rebus, but omniscrounging too. ‘What else did you get apart from the whisky?’

Rebus bent towards him and hissed: ‘Meat paste and snails!’

Bob Leach looked disheartened. ‘Bloody French,’ he said. ‘You’d think he’d bring you something decent.’

Rebus didn’t bother with back-street shortcuts as they drove towards the Royal Mile. He gave Cluzeau the full tour. But the French policeman seemed more interested in Rebus than in the streets of his city.

‘I was here before,’ he explained. ‘Two years ago, for the rugby.’

‘Do they play a lot of rugby down your way then?’

‘Oh yes. It is not so much a game, more a love affair.’

Rebus assumed Cluzeau would be Parisian. He was not. Parisians, he said, were — his phrase — ‘cold fish’. And in any case the city was not representative of the real France. The countryside — that was the real France, and especially the countryside of the south-west. Cluzeau was from Périgueux. He had been born there and now lived and worked there. He was married, with four children. And yes, he carried a family photo in his wallet. The wallet itself he carried inside a black leather pouch, almost like a clutch-purse. The pouch also contained identity documents, passport, chequebook, diary, a small English — French dictionary. No wonder he looked good in a suit: no bulges in the pockets, no wear on the material.

Rebus handed back the photograph.

‘Very nice,’ he said.

‘And you, Inspector?’

So it was Rebus’s turn to tell his tale. Born in Fife. Out of school and into the Army. Paras eventually and from there to the SAS. Breakdown and recovery. Then the police. Wife, now ex-wife, and one daughter living with her mother in London. Cluzeau, Rebus realised, had a canny way of asking questions, making them sound more like statements. So that instead of answering, you were merely acknowledging what he already seemed to know. He’d remember that for future use.

‘And now we are going where?’

‘The High Street. You might know it better as the Royal Mile.’

‘I’ve walked along it, yes. You say separated, not divorced?’

‘That’s right.’

‘Then there is a chance...?’

‘What? Of us getting back together? No, no chance of that.’

This elicited another huge shrug from Cluzeau. ‘It was another man...?’

‘No, just this man.’

‘Ah. In my part of France we have many crimes of passion. And here in Edinburgh?’

Rebus gave a wry grin. ‘Where there’s no passion...’

The Frenchman seemed to make hard work of understanding this.

‘French policemen carry guns, don’t they?’ Rebus asked, filling the silence.

‘Not on vacation.’

‘I’m glad to hear it.’

‘Yes, we have guns. But it is not like in America. We have respect for guns. They are a way of life in the country. Every Frenchman is a hunter at heart.’

Rebus signalled, and drew in to the roadside. ‘Scotsmen, too,’ he said, opening his door. ‘And right now I’m going to hunt down a sandwich. This cafe does the best boiled ham in Edinburgh.’

Cluzeau looked dubious. ‘The famous Scottish cuisine,’ he murmured, unfastening his seatbelt.

They ate as they drove — ham for Rebus, salami for Cluzeau — and soon enough arrived outside the Heggarty Gallery. In fact, they arrived outside a wools and knitwear shop, which occupied the street-level. The gallery itself was up a winding stairwell, the steps worn and treacherous. They walked in through an unprepossessing door and found themselves in the midst of an argument. Fifteen or so women were crowded around Detective Constable Brian Holmes.

‘You can’t keep us here, you know!’

‘Look, ladies—’

‘Patronising pig.’

‘Look, I need to get names and addresses first.’

‘Well, go on then, what are you waiting for?’

‘Bloody cheek, like we’re criminals or something.’

‘Maybe he wants to strip-search us.’

‘Chance would be a fine thing.’ There was some laughter at this.

Holmes had caught sight of Rebus and the look of relief on his face told Rebus all he needed to know. On a trellis table against one wall stood a couple of dozen wine bottles, mostly empty, and jugs of orange juice and water, mostly still full. Cluzeau lifted a bottle and wrinkled his nose. He sniffed the neck and the nose wrinkled even further.

The poster on the gallery door had announced an exhibition of paintings and sculpture by Serena Davies. The exhibition was entitled ‘Hard Knox’ and today was its opening. By the look of the drinks table, a preview had been taking place. Free wine all round, glasses replenished. And now a squabble, which might be about to turn ugly.

Rebus filled his lungs. ‘Excuse me!’ he cried. The faces turned from Brian Holmes and settled on him. ‘I’m Inspector Rebus. Now, with a bit of luck we’ll have you all out of here in five minutes. Please bear with us until then. I notice there’s still some drink left. If you’ll fill your glasses and maybe have a last look round, by the time you finish you should be able to leave. Now, I just need a word with my colleague.’

Gratefully, Holmes squeezed his way out of the scrum and came towards Rebus.

‘You’ve got thirty seconds to fill me in,’ Rebus said.

Holmes took a couple of deep breaths. ‘A sculpture in bronze, male figure. It was sitting in the middle of one of the rooms. Preview opens. Somebody starts yelling that it’s disappeared. The artist goes up the wall. She won’t let anybody in or out, because if somebody’s nicked it, that somebody’s still in the gallery.’

‘And that’s the state of play? Nobody in or out since it went missing?’

Holmes nodded. ‘Of course, as I tried telling her, they could have high-tailed it before she barricaded everyone else in.’ Holmes was looking at the man who had come to stand beside Rebus. ‘Can we help you, sir?’

‘Oh,’ said Rebus. ‘You haven’t been introduced. This is...’ But no, he still couldn’t make himself say the name. Instead, he nodded towards Holmes. ‘This is Detective Constable Holmes.’ Then, as Cluzeau shook hands with Holmes: ‘The inspector here has come over from France to see how we do things in Edinburgh.’ Rebus turned to Cluzeau. ‘Did you catch what Brian was saying? Only I know his accent’s a bit thick.’

‘I understood perfectly.’ He turned to Holmes. ‘Inspector Rebus forgot to say, but my name is Cluzeau.’ Somehow it didn’t sound so funny when spoken by a native. ‘How big is the statue? Do we know what it looks like?’

‘There’s a picture of it in the catalogue.’ Holmes took the small glossy booklet from his pocket and handed it to Cluzeau. ‘That’s it at the top of the page.’

While Cluzeau studied this, Holmes caught Rebus’s eye, then nodded down to the Frenchman’s pouch.

‘Nice handbag.’

Rebus gave him a warning look, then glanced at the catalogue. His eyes opened wide. ‘Good Christ!’

Cluzeau read from the catalogue. ‘“Monstrous Trumpet. Bronze and multi-media. Sixteen—” what do these marks mean?’

‘Inches.’

‘Thank you. “Sixteen inches. Three thousand five hundred pounds.” C’est cher. It’s expensive.’

‘I’ll say,’ said Rebus. ‘You could buy a car for that.’ Well, he thought, you could certainly buy my car for that.

‘It is an interesting piece, don’t you think?’

‘Interesting?’ Rebus studied the small photograph of the statue called ‘Monstrous Trumpet’. A nude male, his face exaggeratedly spiteful, was sticking out his tongue, except that it wasn’t a tongue, it was a penis. And where that particular organ should have been, there was what looked like a piece of sticking-plaster. Because of the angle of the photo, it was just possible to discern something protruding from the statue’s backside. Rebus guessed it was meant to be a tongue.

‘Yes,’ said Cluzeau, ‘I should very much like to meet the artist.’

‘Doesn’t look as though you’ve got any choice,’ said Holmes, seeming to retreat though in fact he didn’t move. ‘Here she comes.’

She had just come into the room, of that Rebus was certain. If she’d been there before, he’d have noticed her. And even if he hadn’t Cluzeau certainly would have. She was just over six feet tall, dressed in long flowing white skirt, black boots, puffy white blouse and a red satin waistcoat. Her eye make-up was jet black, matching her long straight hair, and her wrists fairly jangled with bangles and bracelets. She addressed Holmes.

‘No sign of it. I’ve had a thorough look.’ She turned towards Rebus and Cluzeau. Holmes started making the introductions.

‘This is Inspector Rebus, and Inspector Cl...’ he stumbled to a halt. Yes, thought Rebus, it’s a problem, isn’t it, Brian? But Cluzeau appeared not to have noticed. He was squeezing Serena Davies’s hand.

‘Pleased to meet you.’

She looked him up and down without embarrassment, gave a cool smile, and passed to Rebus. ‘Well, thank goodness the grown-ups are here at last.’ Brian Holmes reddened furiously. ‘I hope we didn’t interrupt your lunch, Inspector. Come on, I’ll show you where the piece was.’

And with that she turned and left. Some of the women offered either condolences over her loss, or else praise for what works remained, and Serena Davies gave a weak smile, a smile which said: I’m coping, but don’t ask me how.

Rebus touched Holmes’s shoulder. ‘Get the names and addresses, eh, Brian?’ He made to follow the artist, but couldn’t resist a parting shot. ‘You’ve got your crayons with you, have you?’

‘And my marbles,’ Holmes retorted. By God, thought Rebus, he’s learning fast. But then, he had a good teacher, hadn’t he?

‘Magnificent creature,’ Cluzeau hissed into his ear as they passed through the room. A few of the women glanced towards the Frenchman. I’m making him look too good, Rebus thought. Pity I had to be wearing this old suit today.

The small galleries through which they passed comprised a maze, an artful configuration of angles and doorways which made more of the space than there actually was. As to the works on display, well, Rebus couldn’t be sure, of course, but there seemed an awful lot of violence in them, violence acted out upon a particular part of the masculine anatomy. Even the Frenchman was quiet as they passed red splashes of colour, twisted statues, great dollops of paint. There was one apparent calm centre, an extremely large and detailed drawing of the vulva. Cluzeau paused for a moment.

‘I like this,’ he said. Rebus nodded towards a red circular sticker attached to the wall beside the portrait.

‘Already sold.’

Cluzeau tapped the relevant page of the catalogue. ‘Yes, for one thousand five hundred pounds.’

‘In here!’ the artist’s voice commanded. ‘When you’ve stopped gawping.’ She was in the next room of the gallery, standing by the now empty pedestal. The sign beneath it showed no red blob. No sale. ‘It was right here.’ The room was about fifteen feet by ten, in the corner of the gallery: only one doorway and no windows. Rebus looked up at the ceiling, but saw only strip lighting. No trapdoors.

‘And there were people in here when it happened?’

Serena Davies nodded. ‘Three or four of the guests. Ginny Elyot, Margaret Grieve, Helena Mitchison and I think Lesley Jameson.’

‘Jameson?’ Rebus knew two Jamesons in Edinburgh, one a doctor and the other...

‘Tom Jameson’s daughter,’ the artist concluded.

The other a newspaper editor called Tom Jameson. ‘And who was it raised the alarm?’ Rebus asked.

‘That was Ginny. She came out of the room shouting that the statue had vanished. We all rushed into the room. Sure enough.’ She slapped a hand down on the pedestal.

‘Time, then,’ Rebus mused, ‘for someone to sneak away while everyone else was occupied?’

But the artist shook her mane of hair. ‘I’ve already told you, there’s nobody missing. Everyone who was here is here. In fact, I think there are a couple more bodies now than there were at the time.’

‘Oh?’

‘Moira Fowler was late. As usual. She arrived a couple of minutes after I’d barred the door.’

‘You let her in?’

‘Of course. I wasn’t worried about letting people in.’

‘You said “a couple of bodies”?’

‘That’s right. Maureen Beck was in the loo. Bladder trouble, poor thing. Maybe I should have hung a couple of paintings in there.’

Cluzeau frowned at this. Rebus decided to help him. ‘The toilets being where exactly?’

‘Next flight up. A complete pain really. The gallery shares them with the shop downstairs. Crammed full of cardboard boxes and knitting patterns.’

Rebus nodded. The Frenchman coughed, preparing to speak. ‘So,’ he said, ‘you have to leave the gallery actually to use the... loo?’

Serena Davies nodded. ‘You’re French,’ she stated. Cluzeau gave a little bow. ‘I should have guessed from the pochette. You’d never find a Scotsman carrying one of those.’

Cluzeau seemed prepared for this point. ‘But the sporran serves the same purpose.’

‘I suppose it does,’ the artist admitted, ‘but its primary function is as a signifier.’ She looked to both men. Both men looked puzzled. ‘It’s hairy and it hangs around your groin,’ she explained.

Rebus stayed silent, but pursed his lips. Cluzeau nodded to himself, frowning.

‘Maybe,’ said Rebus, ‘you could explain your exhibition to us, Ms Davies?’

‘Well, it’s a comment on Knox of course.’

‘Knocks?’ asked Cluzeau.

‘John Knox,’ Rebus explained. ‘We passed by his old house a little way back.’

‘John Knox,’ she went on, principally for the Frenchman’s benefit, but perhaps too, she thought, for that of the Scotsman, ‘was a Scottish preacher, a follower of Calvin. He was also a misogynist, hence the title of one of his works — The First Blast of the Trumpet Against the Monstrous Regiment of Women.’

‘He didn’t mean all women,’ Rebus felt obliged to add. Serena Davies straightened her spine like a snake rising up before its kill.

‘But he did,’ she said, ‘by association. And, also by association, these works are a comment on all Scotsmen. And all men.’

Cluzeau could feel an argument beginning. Arguments, to his knowledge, were always counter-productive even when enjoyable. ‘I think I see,’ he said. ‘And your exhibition responds to this man’s work. Yes.’ He tapped the catalogue. ‘“Monstrous Trumpet” is a pun then?’

Serena Davies shrugged, but seemed pacified. ‘You could call it that. I’m saying that Knox talked with one part of his anatomy — not his brain.’

‘And,’ added Rebus, ‘that at the same time he talked out of his arse?’

‘Yes,’ she said.

Cluzeau was chuckling. He was still chuckling when he asked: ‘And who could have reason for stealing your work?’

The mane rippled again. ‘I’ve absolutely no idea.’

‘But you suspect one of your guests,’ Cluzeau continued. ‘Of course you do: you have already stated that there was no one else here. You were among friends, yet one of them is the Janus figure, yes?’

She nodded slowly. ‘Much as I hate to admit it.’

Rebus had taken the catalogue from Cluzeau and seemed to be studying it. But he’d listened to every word. He tapped the missing statue’s photo.

‘Do you work from life?’

‘Mostly, yes, but not for “Monstrous Trumpet”.’

‘It’s a sort of... ideal figure then?’

She smiled at this. ‘Hardly ideal, Inspector. But in that it comes from up here—’ she tapped her head, ‘from an idea rather than from life, yes, I suppose it is.’

‘Does that go for the face, too?’ Rebus persisted. ‘It seems so lifelike.’

She accepted the compliment, studying the photo with him. ‘It’s not any one man’s face,’ she said. ‘At most it’s a composite of men I know.’ Then she shrugged. ‘Maybe.’

Rebus handed the catalogue to Cluzeau. ‘Did you search anyone?’ he asked the artist.

‘I asked them to open their bags. Not very subtle of me, but I was — am — distraught.’

‘And did they?’

‘Oh yes. Pointless really, there were only two or three bags big enough to hide the statue in.’

‘But they were empty?’

She sighed, pinching the bridge of her nose between two fingers. The bracelets were shunted from wrist to elbow. ‘Utterly empty,’ she said. ‘Just as I feel.’

‘Was the piece insured?’

She shook her head again, her forehead lowered. A portrait of dejection, Rebus thought. Lifelike, yet not quite real. He noticed too that, now her eyes were averted, the Frenchman was appraising her. He caught Rebus watching him and raised his eyebrows, then shrugged, then made a gesture with his hands. Yes, thought Rebus, I know what you mean. Only don’t let her catch you thinking what I know you’re thinking.

And, he supposed, what he was thinking too.

‘I think we’d better go through,’ he said. ‘The other women will be getting impatient.’

‘Let them!’ she cried.

‘Actually,’ said Rebus, ‘perhaps you could go ahead of us? Warn them that we may be keeping them a bit longer than we thought.’

She brightened at the news, then sneered. ‘You mean you want me to do your dirty work for you?’

Rebus shrugged innocently. ‘I just wanted a moment to discuss the case with my colleague.’

‘Oh,’ she said. Then nodded: ‘Yes, of course. Discuss away. I’ll tell them they’ve to stay put.’

‘Thank you,’ said Rebus, but she’d already left the room.

Cluzeau whistled silently. ‘What a creature!’

It was meant as praise, of course, and Rebus nodded assent. ‘So what do you think?’

‘Think?’

‘About the theft.’

‘Ah.’ Cluzeau scraped at his chin with his fingers. ‘A crime of passion,’ he said at last and with confidence.

‘How do you work that out?’

Cluzeau gave another of his shrugs. ‘The process of elimination. We eliminate money: there are more expensive pieces here and besides, a common thief would burgle the premises when they were empty, no?’

Rebus nodded, enjoying this, so like his own train of thought was it. ‘Go on.’

‘I do not think this piece is so precious that a collector would have it stolen. It is not insured, so there is no reason for the artist herself to have it stolen. It seems logical that someone invited to the exhibition stole it. So we come to the figure of the Janus. Someone the artist herself knows. Why should such a person — a supposed friend — steal this work?’ He paused before answering his own question. ‘Jealousy. Revenge, et voilà, the crime of passion.’

Rebus applauded silently. ‘Bravo. But there are thirty-odd suspects out there and no sign of the statue.’

‘Ah, I did not say I could solve the crime; all I offer is the “why”.’

‘Then follow me,’ Rebus said, ‘and we’ll encounter the “who” and the “how” together.’

In the main gallery, Serena Davies was in furious conversation with one knot of women. Brian Holmes was trying to take names and addresses from another group. A third group stood, bored and disconsolate, by the drinks table, and a fourth group stood beside a bright red gash of a painting, glancing at it from time to time and talking among themselves.

Most of the women in the room either carried clutch-purses tucked safely under their arms, or else let neat shoulder-bags swing effortlessly by their sides. But there were a few larger bags and these had been left in a group of their own between the drinks table and another smaller table on which sat a small pile of catalogues and a visitors’ book. Rebus walked across to this spot and studied the bags. There was one large straw shopping-bag, apparently containing only a cashmere cardigan and a folded copy of the Guardian. There was one department store plastic carrier-bag, containing an umbrella, a bunch of bananas, a fat paperback and a copy of the Guardian. There was one canvas shopping-bag, containing an empty crisp packet, a copy of the Scotsman and a copy of the Guardian.

All this Rebus could see just by standing over the bags. He reached down and picked up the carrier-bag.

‘Can I ask whose bag this is?’ he said loudly.

‘It’s mine.’

A young woman stepped forward from the drinks table, starting to blush furiously.

‘Follow me, please,’ said Rebus, walking off to the next room along. Cluzeau followed and so, seconds later, did the owner of the bag, her eyes terrified.

‘Just a couple of questions, that’s all,’ Rebus said, trying to put her at ease. The main gallery was hushed; he knew people would be straining to hear the conversation. Brian Holmes was repeating an address to himself as he jotted it down.

Rebus felt a little bit like an executioner, walking up to the bags, picking them up in turn and wandering off with the owner towards the awaiting guillotine. The owner of the carrier-bag was Trish Poole, wife of a psychology lecturer at the university. Rebus had met Dr Poole before, and told her so, trying to help her relax a little. It turned out that a lot of the women present today were either academics in their own right, or else were the wives of academics. This latter group included not only Trish Poole, but also Rebecca Eiser, wife of the distinguished Professor of English Literature. Listening to Trish Poole tell him this, Rebus shivered and could feel his face turn pale. But that had been a long time ago.

After Trish Poole had returned for a whispered confab with her group, Rebus tried the canvas bag. This belonged to Margaret Grieve, a writer and, as she said herself, ‘one of Serena’s closest friends’. Rebus didn’t doubt this, and asked if she was married. No, she was not, but she did have a ‘significant other’. She smiled broadly as she said this. Rebus smiled back. She’d been in the room with the statue when it was noticed to be missing? Yes, she had. Not that she’d seen anything. She’d been intent on the paintings. So much so that she couldn’t be sure whether the statue had been in the room when she’d entered, or whether it had already gone. She thought perhaps it had already gone.

Dismissed by Rebus, she returned to her group in front of the red gash and they too began whispering. An elegant older woman came forward from the same group.

‘The last bag is mine,’ she said haughtily, her vowels pure Morningside. Perhaps she’d been Jean Brodie’s elocution mistress; but no, she wasn’t even quite Maggie Smith’s age, though to Rebus there were similarities enough between the two women.

Cluzeau seemed quietly cowed by this grand example of Scottish womanhood. He stood at a distance, giving her vowels the necessary room in which to perform. And, Rebus noticed, he clutched his pouch close to his groin, as though it were a lucky charm. Maybe that’s what sporrans were?

‘I’m Maureen Beck,’ she informed them loudly. There would be no hiding this conversation from the waggling ears.

Maureen Beck told Rebus that she was married to the architect Robert Beck and seemed surprised when this name meant nothing to the policeman. She decided then that she disliked Rebus and turned to Cluzeau, answering to his smiling countenance every time Rebus asked her a question. She was in the loo at the time, yes, and returned to pandemonium. She’d only been out of the room a couple of minutes, and hadn’t seen anyone...

‘Not even Ms Fowler?’ Rebus asked. ‘I believe she was late to arrive?’

‘Yes, but that was a minute or two after I came back in.’

Rebus nodded thoughtfully. There was a teasing piece of ham wedged between two of his back teeth and he pushed it with his tongue. A woman put her head around the partition.

‘Look, Inspector, some of us have got appointments this afternoon. Isn’t there at least a telephone we can use?’

It was a good point. Who was in charge of the gallery itself? The gallery director, it turned out, was a timid little woman who had burrowed into the quietest of the groups. She was only running the place for the real owner, who was on a well-deserved holiday in Paris. (Cluzeau rolled his eyes at this. ‘No one,’ he said with a shudder, ‘deserves such torture.’) There was a cramped office, and in it an old Bakelite telephone. If the women could leave twenty pence for each call. A line started to form outside the office. (‘Ah, how you love queuing!’) Mrs Beck, meantime, had returned to her group. Rebus followed her, and was introduced to Ginny Elyot, who had raised the alarm, and to Moira Fowler the latecomer.

Ginny Elyot kept patting her short auburn hair as though searching it for misplaced artworks. A nervous habit, Rebus reasoned. Cluzeau quickly became the centre of attention, with even the distant and unpunctual Moira becoming involved in the interrogation. Rebus sidled away and touched Brian Holmes’s arm.

‘That’s all the addresses noted, sir.’

‘Well done, Brian. Look, slip upstairs, will you? Give the loo a recce.’

‘What am I looking for exactly — suspiciously shaped bundles of four-ply?’

Rebus actually laughed. ‘We should be so lucky. But yes, you never know what you might find. And check any windows, too. There might be a drainpipe.’

‘Okay.’

As Holmes left, a small hand touched Rebus’s arm. A girl in her late-teens, eyes gleaming behind studious spectacles, jerked her head towards the gallery’s first partitioned room. Rebus followed her. She was so small, and spoke so quietly, he actually had to grasp hands to knees and bend forward to listen.

‘I want the story.’

‘Pardon?’

‘I want the story for my dad’s paper.’

Rebus looked at her. His voice too was a dramatic whisper. ‘You’re Lesley Jameson?’

She nodded.

‘I see. Well, as far as I’m concerned the story’s yours. But we haven’t got a story yet.’

She looked around her, then dropped her voice even lower. ‘You’ve seen her.’

‘Who?’

‘Serena, of course. She’s ravishing, isn’t she?’ Rebus tried to look non-committal. ‘She’s terribly attractive to men.’ This time he attempted a Gallic shrug. He wondered if it looked as stupid as it felt. Her voice died away almost completely, reducing Rebus to lip-reading. ‘She has loads of men after her. Including Margaret’s.’

‘Ah,’ said Rebus, ‘right.’ He nodded, too. So Margaret Grieve’s boyfriend was...

The lips made more movements: ‘He’s Serena’s lover.’

Yes, well, now things began to make more sense. Maybe the Frenchman was right: a crime of passion. The one thing missing thus far had been the passion itself; but no longer. And it was curious, when he came to think of it, how Margaret Grieve had said she couldn’t recall whether the statue had been in the room or not. It wasn’t the sort of thing you could miss, was it? Not for a bunch of samey paintings of pink bulges and grey curving masses. The newspapers in her bag would have concealed the statue quite nicely, too. There was just one problem.

Cluzeau’s head appeared around the partition. ‘Ah! Here you are. I’m sorry if I interrupt—’

But Lesley Jameson was already making for the main room. Cluzeau watched her go, then turned to Rebus.

‘Charming women.’ He sighed. ‘But all of them either married or else with lovers. And one of them, of course, is the thief.’

‘Oh?’ Rebus sounded surprised. ‘You mean one of the women you’ve just been talking with?’

‘Of course.’ Now he, too, lowered his voice. ‘The statue left the gallery in a bag. You could not simply hide it under your dress, could you? But I don’t think a plastic bag would have been strong enough for this task. So, we have a choice between Madame Beck and Mademoiselle Grieve.’

‘Grieve’s boyfriend has been carrying on with our artist.’

Cluzeau digested this. But he too knew there was a problem. ‘She did not leave the gallery. She was shut in with the others.’ Rebus nodded. ‘So there has to have been an accomplice. I think I’d better have another word with Lesley Jameson.’

But Brian Holmes had appeared. He exhaled noisily. ‘Thank Christ for that,’ he said. ‘For a minute there I thought you’d buggered off and left me.’

Rebus grinned. ‘That might not have been such a bad idea. How was the loo?’

‘Well, I didn’t find any solid evidence,’ Holmes replied with a straight face. ‘No skeins of wool tied to the plumbing and hanging out of the windows for a burglar to shimmy down.’

‘But there is a window?’

‘A small one in the cubicle itself. I stood on the seat and had a squint out. A two-storey drop to a sort of back yard, nothing in it but a rusting Renault Five and a skip full of cardboard boxes.’

‘Go down and take a look at that skip.’

‘I thought you might say that.’

‘And take a look at the Renault,’ ordered Cluzeau, his face set. ‘I cannot believe a French car would rust. Perhaps you are mistaken and it is a Mini Cooper, no?’

Holmes, who prided himself on knowing a bit about cars, was ready to argue, then saw the smile spread across the Frenchman’s face. He smiled, too.

‘Just as well you’ve got a sense of humour,’ he said. ‘You’ll need it after the match on Saturday.’

‘And you will need your Scottish stoicism.’

‘Save it for the half-time entertainment, eh?’ said Rebus, but with good enough humour. ‘The sooner we get this wrapped up, the more time we’ll have left for sightseeing.’

Cluzeau seemed about to argue, but Rebus held up a hand. ‘Believe me,’ he said, ‘you’ll want to see these sights. Only the locals know the very best pubs in Edinburgh.’

Holmes went to investigate the skip and Rebus spoke in whispers with Lesley Jameson — when he wasn’t fending off demands from the detainees. What had seemed to most of them something unusual and thrilling at first, a story to be repeated across the dining-table, had now become merely tiresome. Though they had asked to make phone calls, Rebus couldn’t help overhearing some of those conversations. They weren’t warning of a late arrival or cancelling an appointment: they were spreading the news.

‘Look, Inspector, I’m really tired of being kept here.’

Rebus turned from Lesley Jameson to the talker. His voice lacked emotion. ‘You’re not being kept here.’

‘What?’

‘Who said you were? Only Ms Davies as I understand. You’re free to leave whenever you want.’

There was hesitation at this. To leave and taste freedom again? Or to stay, so as not to miss anything? Muttered dialogues took place and eventually one or two of the guests did leave. They simply walked out, closing the door behind them.

‘Does that mean we can go?’

Rebus nodded. Another woman left, then another, then a couple.

‘I hope you’re not thinking of kicking me out,’ Lesley Jameson warned. She wanted desperately to be a journalist, and to do it the hard way, sans nepotism. Rebus shook his head.

‘Just keep talking,’ he said.

Cluzeau was in conversation with Serena Davies. When Rebus approached them, she was studying the Frenchman’s strong-looking hands. Rebus waved his own nail-bitten paw around the gallery.

‘Do you,’ he asked, ‘have any trouble getting people to pose for all these paintings?’

She shook her head. ‘No, not really. It’s funny you should ask, Monsieur Cluzeau was just saying—’

‘Yes, I’ll bet he was. But Monsieur Cluzeau—’ testing the words, not finding them risible any more, ‘has a wife and family.’

Serena Davies laughed; a deep growl which seemed to run all the way up and down the Frenchman’s spine. At last, she let go his hand. ‘I thought we were talking about modelling, Inspector.’

‘We were,’ said Rebus drily, ‘but I’m not sure Mrs Cluzeau would see it like that...’

‘Inspector...?’ It was Maureen Beck. ‘Everyone seems to be leaving. Do I take it we’re free to go?’

Rebus was suddenly businesslike. ‘No,’ he said. ‘I’d like you to stay behind a little longer.’ He glanced towards the group — Ginny Elyot, Moira Fowler, Margaret Grieve — ‘all of you, please. This won’t take long.’

‘That’s what my husband says,’ commented Moira Fowler, raising a glass of water to her lips. She placed a tablet on her tongue and washed it down.

Rebus looked to Lesley Jameson, then winked. ‘Fasten your seatbelt,’ he told her. ‘It’s going to be a bumpy ride.’

The gallery was now fast emptying and Holmes, having battled against the tide on the stairwell, entered the room on unsteady legs, his eyes seeking out Rebus.

‘Jeez!’ he cried. ‘I thought you’d decided to bugger off after all. What’s up? Where’s everyone going?’

‘Anything in the skip?’ But Holmes shrugged: nothing. ‘I’ve sent everyone home,’ Rebus explained.

‘Everyone except us,’ Maureen Beck said sniffily.

‘Well,’ said Rebus, facing the four women, ‘that’s because nobody but you knows anything about the statue.’

The women themselves said nothing at this, but Cluzeau gave a small gasp — perhaps to save them the trouble. Serena Davies, however, had replaced her growl with a lump of ice.

‘You mean one of them stole my work?’

Rebus shook his head. ‘No, that’s not what I mean. One person couldn’t have done it. There had to be an accomplice.’ He nodded towards Moira Fowler. ‘Ms Fowler, why don’t you take DC Holmes down to your car? He can carry the statue back upstairs.’

‘Moira!’ Another change of tone, this time from ice to fire. For a second, Rebus thought Serena Davies might be about to make a lunge at the thief. Perhaps Moira Fowler thought so too, for she moved without further prompting towards the door.

‘Okay,’ she said, ‘if you like.’

Holmes watched her pass him on her way to the stairwell.

‘Go on then, Brian,’ ordered Rebus. Holmes seemed undecided. He knew he was going to miss the story. What’s more, he didn’t fancy lugging the bloody thing up a flight of stairs.

‘Vite!’ cried Rebus, another word of French suddenly coming back to him. Holmes moved on tired legs towards the door. Up the stairs, down the stairs, up the stairs. It would, he couldn’t help thinking, make good training for the Scottish pack.

Serena Davies had put her hand to her brow. Clank-a-clank-clank went the bracelets. ‘I can’t believe it of Moira. Such treachery.’

‘Hah!’ This from Ginny Elyot, her eyes burning. ‘Treachery? You’re a good one to speak. Getting Jim to “model” for you. Neither of you telling her about it. What the hell do you think she thought when she found out?’

Jim being, as Rebus knew from Lesley, Moira Fowler’s husband. He kept his eyes on Ginny.

‘And you, too, Ms Elyot. How did you feel when you found out about... David, is it?’

She nodded. Her hand went towards her hair again, but she caught herself, and gripped one hand in the other. ‘Yes, David,’ she said quietly. ‘That statue’s got David’s eyes, his hair.’ She wasn’t looking at Rebus. He didn’t feel she was even replying to his question.

She was remembering.

‘And Gerry’s nose and jawline. I’d recognise them anywhere.’ This from Margaret Grieve, she of the significant other. ‘But Gerry can’t keep secrets, not from me.’

Maureen Beck, who had been nodding throughout, never taking her moist eyes off the artist, was next. Her husband too, Robert, the architect, had modelled for Serena Davies. On the quiet, of course. It had to be on the quiet: no knowing what passions might be aroused otherwise. Even in a city like Edinburgh, even in women as seemingly self-possessed and cool-headed as these. Perhaps it had all been very innocent. Perhaps.

‘He’s got Robert’s figure,’ Maureen Beck was saying. ‘Down to the scar on his chest from that riding accident.’

A crime of passion, just as Cluzeau had predicted. And after Rebus telling him that there was no such thing as passion in the city. But there was; and there were secrets too. Locked within these paintings, fine so long as they were abstract, so long as they weren’t modelled from life. But for all that ‘Monstrous Trumpet’ was, in Serena Davies’s words, a ‘composite’, its creation still cut deep. For each of the four women, there was something recognisable there, something modelled from life, from husband or lover. Something which burned and humiliated.

Unable to stand the thought of public display, of visitors walking into the gallery and saying ‘Good God, doesn’t that statue look like...?’ Unable to face the thought of this, and of the ridicule (the detailed penis, the tongue, and that sticking-plaster) they had come together with a plan. A clumsy, almost unworkable plan, but the only plan they had.

The statue had gone into Margaret Grieve’s roomy bag, at which point Ginny Elyot had raised the alarm — hysterically so, attracting all the guests towards that one room, unaware as they pressed forwards that they were passing Margaret Grieve discreetly moving the other way. The bag had been passed to Maureen Beck, who had then slipped upstairs to the toilet. She had opened the window and dropped the statue down into the skip, from where Moira Fowler had retrieved it, carrying it out to her own car. Beck had returned, to find Serena Davies stopping people from leaving; a minute or two later, Moira Fowler had arrived.

She now walked in, followed by a red-faced Holmes, the statue cradled in his arms. Serena Davies, however, appeared not to notice. She had her eyes trained on the parquet floor and, again, she was being studied by Cluzeau. ‘What a creature,’ he had said of her. What a creature indeed. The four thieves would certainly be in accord in calling her ‘creature’.

Who knows, thought Rebus, they might even be in bon accord.

The artist was neither temperamental nor stupid enough to insist on pressing charges and she bent to Rebus’s suggestion that the piece be withdrawn from the show. The pressure thereafter was on Lesley Jameson not to release the story to her father’s paper. Female solidarity won in the end, but it was a narrow victory.

Not much female solidarity elsewhere, thought Rebus. He made up a few mock headlines, the sort that would have pleased Dr Curt. Feminist Artist’s Roll Models; Serena’s Harem of Husbands; The Anti-Knox Knocking Shop. All as he sat squeezed into a corner of the Sutherland Bar. Somewhere along the route, Cluzeau — now insisting that Rebus call him Jean-Pierre — had found half a dozen French fans, in town for the rugby and already in their cups. Then a couple of the Scottish fans had tagged along too and now there were about a dozen of them, standing at the bar and singing French rugby songs. Any minute now someone would tip an ice-bucket onto their heads. He prayed it wouldn’t be Brian Holmes, who, shirt-tail out and tie hanging loose, was singing as lustily as anyone, despite the language barrier — or even, perhaps, because of it.

Childish, of course. But then that was men for you. Simple pleasures and simple crimes. Male revenge was simple almost to the point of being infantile: you went up to the bastard and you stuck your fist into his face or kneed him in the nuts. But the revenge of the female. Ah, that was recondite stuff. He wondered if it was finished now, or would Serena Davies face more plots, plots more subtle, or better executed, or more savage? He didn’t really want to think about it. Didn’t want to think about the hate in the four women’s voices, or the gleam in their eyes. He drank to forget. That was why men joined the Foreign Legion too, wasn’t it? To forget. Or was it?

He was buggered if he could remember. But something else niggled too. The women had laid claim to a lover’s jawline, a husband’s figure. But whose, he couldn’t help wondering, was the penis?

Someone was tugging at his arm, pulling him up. The glasses flew from the table and suddenly he was being hugged by Jean-Pierre.

‘John, my friend, John, tell me who this man Peter Zealous is that everyone is talking to me about?’

‘It’s Sellers,’ Rebus corrected. To tell or not to tell? He opened his mouth. There was the machine-gun sound of things spilling onto the bar behind him. Small, solid things. Next thing he knew, it was dark and his head was very cold and very wet.

‘I’ll get you for this, Brian,’ he said, removing the ice-bucket from his head. ‘So help me I will.’