Tooth & Nail

The Chamber of Horrors

`Not a pretty sight.'

Looking around him, Detective Inspector George Flight wondered whether the sergeant had been referring to the body or, to the surrounding area. You could say what you liked about the Wolfman, he wasn't choosy about his turf. This time it was a riverside path. Not that Flight had ever really thought of the Lea as a `river'. It was, a place where supermarket trolleys came to die, a dank stretch of water bordered on one side by marshland and on the other by industrial sites and lo-rise housing. Apparently you could walk the course of the Lea from the Thames to up past Edmonton. The narrow river ran like a mottled black vein from east central London to the most northerly reaches of the capital and beyond. The vast majority of Londoners didn't even know it existed.

George Flight knew about it though. He had been brought up in Tottenham Hale, not far from the Lea. His father had fished on the Navigation section, between Stonebridge and Tottenham Locks. When he was young he had played football on the marshes, smoked illicit cigarettes in the long grass with his gang, fumbled with a blouse or a brassiere on the wasteland just across the river from where, he now stood.

He had walked along this path. It was popular on warm Sunday afternoons. There were riverside pubs where you could stand outside supping a pint and watching the Sunday sailors plying their crafts, but at night, only the drunk, the reckless and the brave would use the quiet and ill-lit path. The drunk, the reckless, the brave and the locals. Jean Cooper was a local. Ever since the separation from her husband, she had lived with her sister in a small, recently-built estate just off the towpath. She worked in an off-licence on Lea Bridge Road, and finished work at seven. The riverside path was a quick route home.

Her body had been found at nine, forty-five by a couple of young lads on their way to one of the pubs. They had run back to Lea Bridge Road and flagged down a passing police car. The operation thereafter had about it a fluid, easy movement. The police doctor arrived, to be met by detectives from, Stoke Newington police station, who, recognising the modus operandi, contacted Flight.

By the time he arrived, the scene was organised but busy. , The body had been identified, questions asked of nearby residents, the sister found. Scene of Crime Officers were in discussion with a couple of people from Forensics. The area around the body had been cordoned off and nobody crossed the tape without first of all donning polythene coveralls for their feet and hair. Two photographers were busy taking flash photographs under portable lighting powered by a nearby generator. And next to the generator stood an operations van, where another photographer was trying to fix his jammed video camera.

`It's these cheap tapes,' he complained. `They look like a bargain when you buy them, but then halfway through you find there's a twist or a snag in them.'

'So don't buy cheap tapes,' Flight had advised.

`Thank you, Sherlock,' had been the cameraman's ill-meant response, before once again cursing the tapes, the seller of the tapes and the seller's market stall, in Brick Lane. He'd only bought the tapes that day.

Meantime, having discussed their plan of attack, the forensic scientists moved in towards the body armed with sticky tape, scissors and a pile of large polythene bags. Then, with extraordinary care, they began to `tape' the body in the hope of lifting hairs and fibres from the clothing. Flight watched them from a distance. The portable lights cast a garish white glow over the scene; so that, standing further back in unlit gloom, Flight felt a bit like someone in a theatre, watching a distant play unfold. By God, you had to have patience for a job like this. Everything had to be done by the book and had to be done in meticulous detail. He hadn't gone near the body yet himself. His chance would come later. Perhaps much later.

The wailing started again. It was coming from a police Ford Sierra parked on Lea Bridge Road. Jean Cooper's sister, being comforted in the back of the car by a WPC, being told to drink the hot sweet `tea,' knowing she would never see her sister alive again. But this was not the worst. Flight knew the worst was still to come, when the sister would formally identify Jean's body in the mortuary.

Jean Cooper had been easy enough to identify. Her handbag lay beside her on the path apparently untouched. In it were letters and house keys with an address tag attached. Flight couldn't help thinking about those house keys. It wasn't very clever to put your address on your keys, was it? A bit late for that now though. A bit late for crime prevention. The crying started again, a long plaintive howl, reaching into the orange glow of the sky above the River Lea and its marshes.

Flight looked towards the body, then retraced the route Jean had taken from Lea Bridge Road. She had walked less than fifty yards before being attacked. Fifty yards from a well-lit and busy main thoroughfare, less than twenty from the back of a row of flats. But this section of path depended for light upon a street lamp which was broken (the council would probably get round to fixing it now) and from whatever illumination was given from the windows of the flats. It was dark enough for the purpose all right. Dark enough for murder most foul.

He couldn't be sure that the Wolfman was responsible, not completely and utterly sure at this early stage. But he could feel it, like a numbing injection in his bones. The terrain was right. The stab wounds reported to him seemed right. And the Wolfman had been quiet for just under three weeks. Three weeks during which the trail had gone stone cold, as cold as a canal path. The Wolfman had taken a risk this time however, striking in late evening instead of at the dead of night. Someone might have seen him. The need for a rapid escape might have led him to leave a clue. Please, God, let him have left a clue. Flight rubbed at his stomach. The worms were gone, consumed by acid. He felt calm, utterly calm, for the first time in days.

`Excuse me.' The voice was muffled, and Flight half-turned to let the diver past him. This diver was followed by another, both of them holding powerful torches. Flight did not envy the police frogmen their job. The river was dark and poisonous, chilled and most probably the consistency of soup. But it had to be searched now. If the killer had dropped something into the Lea by mistake, or had thrown his knife into the river, it had to be recovered as soon as possible. Silt or shifting rubbish might cover it before daybreak. Simply, they couldn't afford the time. And so he had ordered a search just after hearing the news, before he had even left his warm and comfortable home to hurry to the, scene. His wife had patted him on the arm. `Try not to be late.' Both knew the words were meaningless.

He watched the first frogman slip into the water and stared entranced as the water began to glow from the torchlight. The second diver followed the first into the water and disappeared from view. Flight checked the sky. A thick layer of cloud lay still and silent above him. The weather report was for early morning rain. It would dissolve footprints and wash fibres, bloodstains and hair into the hard-packed soil of the path. With any luck, they would complete the initial scene of crime work without the need for plastic tents.

`George!'

Flight turned to greet the newcomer. The man was in his mid-fifties, tall with cadaverous features lit up by a wide grin, or as wide as the long and narrow, face would allow. He carried a large black bag in his left hand, and stretched out his right for Flight to shake. By his side walked a handsome woman of Flight's own age. In fact, as far as he could recall she was exactly, one month and a day younger than him. Her name was Isobel Penny, and she was, in a euphemistic phrase, the cadaverous man's `assistant' and `secretary'. That they had been sleeping together these past eight or nine years was something nobody really discussed, though Isobel had told Flight all about it, for no other reason than that they had been in the same class together at school and had kept in touch with one another ever since.

`Hello, Philip,' said Flight, shaking the pathologist's hand.

Philip Cousins was not just a Home Office pathologist: he was by far the best Home Office pathologist, with, a reputation resulting from twenty-five years worth of work, twenty-five years during which, to Flight's knowledge, the man had never once `got it wrong'. Cousins's eye for retail and his sheer bloody doggedness had seen him crack , or help crack, several dozen murder investigations, ranging from stranglings in Streatham to the poisoning of a government official in the West Indies. People who did not know him said that he looked the part, with his dark blue suits and cold, grey features. They could not know about his quick and ready humour, his kindness, or the way he thrilled student doctors at his packed lectures. Flight had attended one of those lectures, something to do with arterial sclerosis and hadn't laughed so much in years.

`I thought you two were in Africa,' he said now, pecking Isobel on the cheek by way of greeting.

Cousins sighed. `We were, but Penny got homesick.' He always called her by her surname. 'She gave him a playful thump on his forearm.

`You liar!' Then she turned her pale blue eyes to Flight. 'It was Philip,' she said. `He couldn't bear to be away from his corpses. The first decent holiday we've had in years and he says he's bored. Can you believe that, George?'

Flight smiled and shook his head. `Well, I'm glad you were able to make it. Looks like another victim of the Wolfman.'

Cousins looked over Flight's shoulder towards where the photographers were still photographing, the crouched scientists still sticky-taping, like so many flies about to settle on the corpse. He had examined the first three Wolfman victims, and that sort of continuity helped in a case. It wasn't just that he would know what to look for, what marks were indicative of the Wolfman; he would also spot anything not in keeping with the other killings, anything that might hint at a change of modus operandi: a different weapon, say, or a new angle of attack. Flight's mental picture of the Wolfman was coming together piece by tiny piece, but Cousins was the man who could show him here those pieces fitted.

`Inspector Flight?'

`Yes?' A man in a tweed jacket was approaching, carrying several cases and trailing a uniformed constable behind' him. He placed the bags on the ground and introduced himself.

`John Rebus.' Flight's face remained blank. `Inspector John Rebus.' The hand shot out, and Flight accepted it, feeling his grip strongly returned.

'Ah yes,' he said. `Just arrived, have you?' He glanced meaningfully towards the bags. `We weren't expecting you until tomorrow, Inspector.!

'Well, I got into King's Cross and heard about . . .' Rebus nodded towards the illuminated towpath. `So I thought I'd come straight over.'

Flight nodded, trying to appear preoccupied. In fact, he was playing for time while he tried to come to grips with the Scotsman's thick accent. One of the forensic scientists had risen from his squatting position and was coming towards the group.

`Hello, Dr Cousins,' he said, before turning to Flight. `We're pretty much finished if Dr Cousins wants to take a look.' Flight turned to Philip Cousins, who nodded gravely.

`Come on, 'Penny.'

Flight was about to follow them, when he remembered the new arrival. He turned back to John Rebus, his eyes immediately drifting down from Rebus's face to his loud and rustic jacket. He looked like something out of Dr Finlay's Casebook. Certainly, he looked out of place on this urban towpath at the dead of night.

`Do you want to take a look?' Flight asked generously. He watched as Rebus nodded without enthusiasm. `Okay, leave your bags where they are then.'

The two men started forward together, Cousins and Isobel a couple of yards in front. Flight pointed towards them. `Dr Philip Cousins,' he said. `You've probably heard of him.' But Rebus shook his head slowly. Flight stared, at him as though Rebus had just failed to pick out the Queen from a row of postage stamps. `Oh,' he said coldly. Then, pointing again. `And that's Isobel Penny, Dr Cousins's assistant.'

Hearing her name, Isobel turned her head back and smiled. She had an attractive face, round and girl-like with a shiny glow to her cheeks. Physically, she was the antithesis of her companion. Though tall, she was well-built—what Rebus's father might have called big boned—and she boasted a healthy complexion to balance Cousins's sickly colour. Rebus couldn't recall ever having seen a really healthy looking pathologist. He put it down to all the time they spent standing under artificial light.

They had reached the body. The first thing Rebus saw was someone aiming a video camera towards him. But the camera moved away again to focus on the corpse. Flight was in conversation with one of the forensics team. Neither looked at the other's face, but concentrated instead on the strips of tape which had been carefully lifted from the corpse and which the scientist now held.

`Yes,' said Flight, `no need to send them to the lab yet. We'll do another taping at the mortuary.' The man nodded and moved away. There was a noise from the river and Rebus turned to watch as a frogman broke the surface, looked around him, and then dived again. He knew a place like this in Edinburgh, a canal running through the west of the city, between parks and breweries and stretches of nothingness. He'd had to investigate a murder there once, the battered body of a tramp found beneath a road bridge, one foot in the canal. The killer had been easy to find another tramp, an argument over a can of cider. The court had settled for manslaughter, but it hadn't been manslaugh?ter. It had been murder. Rebus would never forget that.

'I think we should wrap those hands up right away,' Dr Cousins was saying in a rich Home Counties voice. `I'll have a good look at them at the mortuary.'

`Right you are,' said Flight, going off to fetch some more polythene bags. Rebus watched the pathologist at work. He held a small tape recorder in one hand and talked into it from time to time. Isobel Penny meantime had produced a sketch-pad, and was drawing a picture of the body.

`Poor woman was probably dead before she hit the ground,' Cousins was saying. `Little signs of bruising. Hypostasis seems consistent with the terrain. I'd say she certainly died on this spot.'

By the time Flight returned with some bags, Cousins, watched intermittently by Rebus, had taken readings of the air temperature and of internal, temperature. The path on which they all stood was long and reasonably straight. The killer would have had ample visual warning of any approach. At the same time, there were homes and a main road nearby, so any screams would surely have been heard. Tomorrow there would be house-to-house enquiries. The path near the body was littered with rubbish: rusting drinks cans, crisp packets, sweet wrappers, torn and faded sheets of newsprint. In the river itself floated more rubbish and the red handle of a supermarket shopping-trolley broke the surface. Another diver had appeared, head and shoulders bobbing above the water. Where the main road crossed over the river, a crowd had gathered on the bridge, looking down towards the murder scene. Uniformed officers were doing their best to move the sightseers on, cordoning off as much of the area as they could.

`From the marks on the legs, dirt, some grazing and bruising,' continued the voice, `I would say the victim fell to the ground or was pushed or lowered to the ground on her front. Only later was she turned over.' Dr Cousins's voice was level, disinterested. Rebus took in a few deep breaths and decided he had postponed the inevitable long enough. He had only come here to show willing, to show that he wasn't in London on a joyride. But now that he was here he supposed he should take a good close look at the body for himself. He turned away from the canal, the frogmen, the sightseers, and all the police officers standing behind the cordon. He turned away from the sight of his baggage standing all alone at the end of the path and gazed down on the corpse.

She was lying on her back, arms by her sides, legs together. Her tights and knickers had been pulled down to knee level, but her skirt was covering her, though he could see it was rucked up at the back. Her bright ski-style jacket was unzipped and her blouse had been ripped open, though her bra was intact. She had long straight black hair and wore large circlet earrings. Her face might have been pretty a few years ago, but life had ravaged it, leaving its marks. The killer had left marks, too. There was blood smeared across the face and matting the hair. The source of the blood was a gaping hole in the woman's throat. But there was also blood lying beneath her, spreading out from under the skirt.

`Turning her over,' said Dr Cousins to his tape recorder. He did so, with Flight's help, and then lifted the woman's hair away from the nape of her neck. `Puncture wound,' he said into his tape recorder, `consistent with larger wound to the throat. An exit wound, I'd say.'

But Rebus wasn't really listening` to the doctor any longer. He was staring in horror at where the woman's skirt was rucked up. There was blood on the body, a lot of blood, staining the small of the back, the buttocks, the tops of the thighs. From the reports in his briefcase, he knew the cause of all this blood, but that didn't make it any easier to face the reality of it, the cold clear horror of it all. He took in more deep breaths. He had never yet vomited at a murder scene and he wasn't about to start now.

`No fuck-ups,' his boss had told him. It was a matter of pride. But Rebus knew now that the purpose of his trip to London was very serious indeed. It wasn't to do with `pride' or `putting up a good show' or `doing his best'. It was to' do with catching a pervert, a horrifically brutal sadist, and doing so before he could strike again. And if it took silver bullets, by God silver bullets there would be.

Rebus was still shaking when, at the operations van, someone handed him a plastic beaker of tea. `Thanks.'

He could always blame his gooseflesh on the cold. Not that it was cold, not really. The cloud cover helped and there was no wind. Of course, London was usually a few degrees warmer than Edinburgh at any time of year and there wasn't the same wind, that bitter and biting wind which whipped across the streets of Edinburgh in summer as well as winter. In fact, if Rebus were asked to describe the weather on this night, the word he would use would be balmy.

He closed his eyes for a moment, not tired, just trying to shut out the sight of jean Cooper's cooling body. But she, seemed etched onto his eyelids in all her grim glory. Rebus had been relieved to note that even Inspector George Flight was not unmoved. His actions, movements and speech had become somehow damped or more muted, as though he were consciously holding back some emotion, the urge to scream or kick out. The divers were coming up from the river, having found nothing. They would look again in the morning, but their voices betrayed a lack of hope. Flight listened to their report and nodded, all the time watched, from behind his beaker of tea, by Rebus.

George Flight was in his late forties, a few years older than Rebus. He wasn't short, yet he had an appearance best described as stocky. There was the hint of a paunch, but 'a much greater hint of muscle. Rebus didn't rate his own chances against him in a clinch. Flight's wiry brown hair was thin at the crown, but thick elsewhere. He was dressed in a leather bomber jacket and denims. Most men in their forties looked stupid in denims, but not Flight. They fitted his attitude and his brisk, businesslike walk.

A long time before, Rebus had graded CID men into three sartorial groups the leather-and-denim brigade, who wanted to look as tough as they felt; the suit-and-tie dapper merchants, who were looking for promotion and respect (not necessarily in that order); and the nondescripts, men who wore anything that came to hand of a morning, their year's fashions usually the result of an hour's shopping in a big-name department store.

Most CID men were nondescripts. Rebus reckoned he himself fell into that group. Yet catching a glimpse of himself in a wing-mirror, he noticed that he had a dapper look. Suit-and-ties never got on with leather-and-denims.

Now Flight was shaking hands with an important looking man, who other than for the handshake, kept his hands in his pockets and listened to Flight with head angled downwards, nodding occasionally as though deep in thought. He wore a suit and a black woollen coat. He couldn't have been more crisply dressed if it had been the middle of the day. Most people were beginning to look fatigued, their clothes' and faces crumpled. There were only two exceptions: this man and Philip Cousins.

The man was shaking hands with Dr Cousins now and even extended a greeting to Dr Cousins's assistant. And then Flight gestured towards the van . . . no, towards Rebus! They were coming towards him. Rebus brought the beaker away from his face, and swapped it from his right to his left hand, just in case a handshake was in the offing.

`This is Inspector Rebus,' Flight said.

`Ah, our man from north of the border,' said the important looking man with a wry, rather superior smile. Rebus returned the smile but looked to Flight.

`Inspector Rebus, this is Chief Inspector Howard Laine.'

`How do you do.' The handshake. Howard Laine it sounded like a street-name.

`So,' said Chief Inspector Laine, `you're here to help us with our little problem?'

`Well,' said Rebus, `I'm not sure what I can do, sir, but rest assured I'll do what I can.'

There was a pause, then Laine smiled but said nothing. The truth hit Rebus like lightning splitting a tree: they couldn't understand him! They were standing there smiling at him, but they couldn't understand his accent. Rebus cleared his throat and tried again.

`Whatever I can do to help, sir.'

Laine smiled again. `Excellent, Inspector, excellent. Well, I'm sure Inspector Flight here will show you the ropes. Settled in all right, have you?'

`Well, actually—'

Flight himself interrupted. `Inspector Rebus came straight here, sir, as soon as he heard about the murder. He's only just arrived in London.'

'Is that, so?' Laine sounded impressed, but Rebus could see that the man was growing restless. This was smalltalk, and he did not like to think he had time for smalltalk. His eyes sought some escape. `Well, Inspector,' he said, `I'm sure we'll meet again.' And turning to Flight: `I'd better be off, George. Everything under control?' Flight merely nodded. `Good, fine, well . . . ' And with that the Chief Inspector started back towards his car, accompanied, by Flight. Rebus exhaled noisily. He felt completely out of his territory here. He knew when he was not wanted and wondered just whose idea it had been to second him to the Wolfman case. Someone with a warped sense of humour, that was for sure. His boss had passed the letter over to him.

`It seems,' he had said, `you've become an expert on serial killers, John, and they're a bit short on those in the Met just now. They'd like you to go down to London for a few days, see if you can come up with anything, maybe give them a few ideas.'

Rebus had read the letter through in growing disbelief. It referred to a case from a few, years before, the case of a child murderer, a case Rebus had cracked. But that had been personal, not really a serial killer at all.

`I don't know anything, about serial killers,' Rebus had protested to his boss.

`Well then, it seems like you'll be in good company, doesn't it?'

And now look at him, standing on a stretch of ground in north-east London, a cup of unspeakably bad tea nursed in both hands, his stomach churning, nerves buzzing, his bags looking as lonely and out of place as he felt. Here to help solve, the insoluble, our man from north of the border. Whose idea, had it been to bring him here? No police force in the country liked to admit failure; yet by lugging Rebus down here the Met was doing precisely that.

Laine had gone and Flight seemed a little more relaxed. He even found time to smile reassuringly across to Rebus before giving orders to two men who, Rebus knew, would be from a funeral parlour. The men went back to their. vehicle and returned with a large folded piece of plastic. They crossed the cordon and stopped at the body, laying the plastic out beside it. It was a translucent bag, over six feet long with a zip running from head to toe, Dr Cousins was in, close attendance as the two men opened the bag and lifted the body into it, closing the zipper. One photogra?pher had decided to shoot off a few more flash photographs of the spot where the body had lain, while the attendants carried the corpse back through the cordon and up to their vehicle.

Rebus noticed that the crowd of onlookers had disap?peared, and only a few curious souls remained. One of them, a young, man, was carrying a crash helmet and wore a shiny black leather jacket with shinier silver zips. A very tired constable was trying to move him on.

Rebus felt like an onlooker himself and thought of all the TV dramas, and films he'd seen, with detectives swarming over the murder site in minute one (destroying any forensic evidence in the process) and solving the murder by minute fifty-nine or eighty-nine. Laughable, really. Police work was just that work. Relentless, routine, dull, frustrating, and above all time-consuming. He checked his watch. It was exactly 2 am. His hotel was back in central London, tucked somewhere behind Piccadilly Circus. It would take another thirty to forty minutes to get back there, always supposing a spare patrol car was available.

`Coming?'

It was Flight, standing a few yards in front of him.

`Might as well,' said Rebus, knowing exactly what Flight was talking about, or more accurately where he was talking about.

Flight smiled. `I'll give you this, Inspector Rebus, you don't give up.'

`The famous tenacity of the Scots,' said Rebus, quoting from one of Sunday's newspaper rugby reports. Flight actually laughed. It didn't last long, but it made Rebus feel glad that he'd come here tonight. The ice hadn't been broken completely perhaps, but an important chunk had been chipped away from one corner of the berg.

`Come on then. I've got my car. I'll get one of the drivers to put your bags in his boot. The lock's stuck on mine. Somebody tried to crowbar it open a few weeks back.' He glanced towards Rebus, a rare moment of eye contact. `Nowhere is safe these days,' he said. `Nowhere.'

There was already a lot of commotion up at road level. Voices and the slamming shut of car doors. Some officers would stay behind, of course, guarding the site. And a few might be going back to the warmth of the station or — luxury hardly to be imagined! — their own beds. But a few of the cars would be following the funeral van, following it all the way to the mortuary.

Rebus travelled in the front of Flight's own car. Both men spent the journey in desperate pursuit of a conversational opening and as a result said very little until they were near their destination.

`Do we know who she was?' asked Rebus.

`Jean Cooper,' said Flight. `We found ID in her handbag.'

`Any reason for her to be on that path?'

`She was going home from work. She worked in an off-licence nearby. Her sister tells us she finished work at seven.'

'When was the body found?'

`Quarter to ten.'

`That's a fair gap.'

`We've got witnesses who saw her in the Dog and Duck. That's a pub near where she works. She used to go in there for a drink some evenings. The barmaid reckons she left at nine or thereabouts.'

Rebus stared out of the windscreen. The roads were still fairly busy considering the time of night and they passed groups of youthful and raucous pedestrians.

`There's a club in Stokie,' Flight explained. `Very popular, but the buses have stopped by the time it comes out so everyone walks home.'

Rebus nodded, then asked: 'Stokie?'

Flight smiled. `Stoke Newington. You probably passed through it on your way from King's Cross.'

`God knows,' said Rebus. `It all looked the same to me. I think my taxi driver had me down as a tourist. We took so long from King's Cross I think we might have come via the M25.' Rebus waited for Flight to laugh, but all he raised was a sliver of a smile. There was another pause. `Was this Jean Cooper single?' Rebus asked at last.'

`Married.'

`She wasn't wearing a wedding, ring.'

Flight nodded. 'Separated. She lived with her sister. No kids.'

`And she went drinking by herself.'

Flight glanced towards Rebus. `What are you saying?' Rebus shrugged. `Nothing. It's just that if she liked a good time, maybe that's how she met her killer.'

`It's possible.'

`At any rate, whether she knew him or not, the killer could have followed her from the pub.'

`We'll be talking to everybody who was there, don't worry.'

`Either that,' said Rebus, thinking aloud, `or the killer was waiting by the river for anyone who happened along. Somebody might have seen him.'

`We'll be asking around,' said Flight. His voice had taken on a much harder edge.

`Sorry,' said Rebus. `A severe case of teaching my granny to suck eggs.'

Flight turned to him again. They were about to take a left through some hospital gates. `I am not your granny,' he said. `And any comments you have to make are welcome. Maybe eventually you'll come up with something I haven't already thought of.'

`Of course,' said Rebus, `this couldn't have happened in Scotland.'

'Oh?' Flight had a half-sneer on his face. 'Why's that then? Too civilised up there in the frozen north? I remember when you had the worst football hooligans in the world. Maybe you still do, only these days they look like butter wouldn't melt in their underpants.'

But Rebus was shaking his head. `No, it wouldn't have happened to Jean Cooper, that's all I meant. Our off-licences don't open on Sunday.'

Rebus fell silent and stared fixedly at the windscreen, keeping his thoughts to himself, thoughts which ran along a very simple plane: fuck you, too, pal. Over the years, those four words had become his mantra. Fuck you, too, pal. FYTP. It had taken the Londoner only the length of a twenty-minute car ride to show what he really thought of the Scots.

As Rebus got out of the car, he glanced in through the rear window and saw, for the first time, the contents of the back seat. He opened his mouth to speak, but Flight raised a knowing hand.

`Don't even ask,' he growled, slamming shut the driver's-side door. `And listen, I'm sorry about what I said . . .'

Rebus merely shrugged, but his eyebrows descended in a private and thoughtful frown. After all, there had to be some logical explanation as to why a Detective Inspector would have a huge stuffed teddy bear in the back of his car at the scene of a murder. It was just that Rebus was damned if he could think of one right this second . . .

Mortuaries were places where the dead stopped being people and turned instead into bags of meat, offal, blood and bone. Rebus had never been sick at the scene of a crime, but the first few times he had visited ,a mortuary the contents of his stomach had fairly quickly been rendered up for examination.

The mortuary technician was a gleeful little man with a livid birthmark covering a full quarter of his face. He seemed to know Dr Cousins well enough and had prepared everything for the arrival of the deceased and the usual retinue of police officers. Cousins checked the post-mortem room, while Jean Cooper's sister was taken quietly into an ante-room, there to make the formal identification. It took only a tearful few seconds, after which she was escorted well away from the scene by consoling officers. They would take her home, but Rebus doubted if she would get any sleep. In fact, knowing how long a scrupulous pathologist could take, he was beginning to doubt that any of them would get to bed before morning.

Eventually, the body bag was brought into the post-mortem room and the corpse of Jean Cooper placed on a slab, beneath the hum and glare of powerful strip lighting. The room was antiseptic but antique. Its tiled walls were cracking and there was a stinging aroma of chemicals. Voices were kept muffled, not so much out of respect but from a strange kind of fear. The mortuary, after all, was one vast memento mori, and what was about to happen to Jean Cooper's body would serve to remind each and every one of them that if the body were a temple, then it was possible to loot that temple, scattering its, treasures, revealing its precious secrets.

Unknown

A hand landed gently on Rebus's shoulder, and he turned, startled, towards the man who was standing there. `Man' was by way of simplification. This tall and unsmiling individual had cropped fair hair and the acne-ridden face of an adolescent. He looked about fourteen, but Rebus placed him in his mid-twenties.

`You're the Jock, aren't you?' There was interest in the voice, but little emotion. Rebus said nothing. FYTP. `Yeah, thought so. Cracked the case yet, have you?' The grin accompanying this question was three-quarters sneer and one-quarter scowl. `We don't need any help.'

`Ah,' said George Flight, `I see you've already met DC Lamb. I was just about to introduce you.'

`Delighted,' said Rebus, gazing stonily at the join-the-dots pattern of spots on Lamb's forehead. Lamb! No surname in history, Rebus felt, had ever been less deserved, less accurate. Over by the slab, Dr Cousins cleared his, throat noisily.

`Gentlemen,' he said to the room at large. It was little more than an indication that he was about to start work.

The room fell quiet again. A microphone hung down from the ceiling to within a few feet of the slab. Cousins turned to the technician. `Is this thing on now?' The technician nodded keenly from between arranging a row of clanging metallic instruments along a tray.

Rebus knew all the instruments, had seen them all in action. The cutters and the saws and the drills. Some of them were electrical, some needed a human force to drive them home. The sounds the electrical ones made were horrible, but at least the job was over quickly; the manual tools made similarly revolting sounds that seemed to last forever. Still, there would be an interval before that particular shop of horrors. First of all there was the slow and careful business of removing the clothing and bagging it up for Forensics.

As Rebus and the others watched, the two photographers clicked away, one taking black and white shots and the other colour, recording for posterity each stage of the process. The video cameraman had given up, however, his equipment having jammed irreparably on one of the bargain tapes. Or at least that was the story which kept him away from the mortuary.

Finally, when the corpse was naked, Cousins pointed to a few areas meriting particular close-up shots. Then the Forensics men moved in again, armed with more lengths of sticky tape. Now that the body was unclothed, the same process as was carried out on the tow-path had to be gone through again. Not for nothing were these people known as Sellotape Men.

Cousins wandered over towards the group where Rebus, Flight and Lamb stood.

`I'd kill for a cup of tea, George.'

`I'll see what I can do, Philip. What about Isobel?'

Cousins looked back towards where Isobel Penny stood, making another drawing of the corpse despite the welter of camera shots. `Penny,' he called, `care for a cuppa?' Her eyes opened a little and she nodded enthusiastically.

`Right,' said Flight, moving towards the door. Rebus thought the man seemed more than a little relieved to be leaving, albeit temporarily.

`Nasty little chap,' Cousins commented. Rebus won?dered for a moment if he were talking about George Flight, but Cousins waved a hand towards the corpse. `To do this sort of thing time after time, without motive, out of some need for . . . well, pleasure, I suppose.'

`There's always a motive, sir,' said Rebus. `You just said so yourself. Pleasure, that's his motive. But the way he kills. What he does. There's some other motive there. It's just that we can't see it yet.'

Cousins stared at him. Rebus could see a warm, light in his deep eyes. `Well, Inspector, let us hope somebody spots whatever it is before too long. Four deaths in as many months. The man's as constant as the moon.'

Rebus smiled. `But we all know that werewolves are affected by the moon, don't we?'

Cousins, laughed. It was deep and resonant and sounded extraordinarily out of place in this environment. Lamb wasn't laughing, wasn't even smiling He was following little of this conversation, and the realisation pleased Rebus. But Lamb wasn't going to be left out.

'I reckon he's barking mad. Hee, get it?'

`Well,' said Cousins, as though this joke was too well-worn even to merit acknowledgment, `must press on.' He turned towards the slab. `If you've finished, gentlemen?' The Forensics men nodded in unison. Jewellery removed?' They nodded again. `Good. Then if you are ready, I suggest we begin.'

The beginning was never too awful. Measurements, a physical description—five feet and seven inches tall, brown hair, that sort of thing. Fingernail scrapings and clippings were deposited in yet more polythene bags. Rebus made a note to buy shares in whichever company manufactured these bags. He'd seen murder investigations go through hundreds of them.

Slowly but determinedly, things got worse. Swabs were taken from Jean Cooper's vagina, then Cousins got down to some serious work.

'Large puncture wound to the throat. From size of wound, I'd' say the knife itself had been twisted in the wound. A small knife. From the extent of the exit wound I would say the blade was about five inches long, perhaps a little less, and about an inch deep, ending, in a very fine point. The skin surrounding the entry wound shows some bruising, perhaps caused by the hilt-guard or handle. This would seem to indicate that the knife was driven in with a certain amount of force.

`The hands and arms show no signs of defence wound?ing, so the victim had no time in which to defend herself. The possibility exists that she was approached from behind. There is some colouring around the mouth and the victim's lipstick had been slightly smeared across her right cheek. If she was approached from behind, a possible scenario would be that the attacker's left hand closed over her mouth to stop her from screaming, thus smearing the lipstick while the attacker stabbed with the right hand. The wound to the throat shows a slight downward angle, which would indicate someone taller than the victim.'

Cousins cleared his throat again. Well, thought Rebus, so far they could strike the mortuary attendant and one of the photographers off the possible list of suspects: everyone else in the room was five feet eight or over.

The pause in proceedings gave the onlookers a chance to shuffle their feet, clear their own throats, and glance at each other, taking note of how pale this or that face was. Rebus was surprised at the pathologist's `scenarios': that was supposed to be their job, not his. All the pathologists Rebus had ever worked with had given the bare facts, leaving the deductions to Rebus himself.' But Cousins obviously , did not work that way. Perhaps he was a frustrated detective. Rebus still found it hard to believe that people came to pathology through choice.

Tea appeared, carried in three beakers on a plastic tray by Inspector Flight. Cousins and Isobel Penny took a cup each, and Flight himself took the other. There were jealous stares from a few dry-mouthed officers. Rebus was among them.

`Now,' said Cousins between sips, `I'm going to examine the anal wound.'

It just kept on getting worse. Rebus tried to concentrate on what Cousins was saying, but it wasn't easy. The same knife had been used to make several stabs to the anus. There were friction marks on the thighs from where the tights had been roughly pulled down. Rebus looked over to Isobel Penny, but, apart from some slight heightening of the colour in, her cheeks, she seemed dispassionate. A cool customer and no mistake. But then she'd probably seen worse in her time. No, no, she couldn't possibly have seen worse than this. Could she?

`The stomach is interesting,' Cousins was saying. `The blouse has been torn away to expose the stomach, and there are two lines of curved indentations in the skin, enough to have bruised and broken the skin, but there is little actual marking of the skin and no blood, from which I would say that this act was perpetrated only after the stabbings. After, in fact, the victim was dead. There are a few dried stains on the stomach near these bite marks. Without prejudging, past evidence from three. very similar cases showed these stains to be saline in nature—teardrops or perhaps beads of sweat. I'm now going to take a deep body temperature.'

Rebus felt parched. He was hot, and the tiredness was seeping into his bones, lack of sleep giving everything a hallucinatory quality. There were halos around the patholo?gist, his assistant, and the technician. The walls seemed to be moving, and Rebus dared not concentrate on them for fear that he would lose his balance. He happened to catch Lamb's eye and the Detective Constable gave him an ugly grin and an uglier wink.

The body was washed now, washed for the first time, freed from a staining of light brown and black, from the pale matt covering of blood. Cousins examined it again, finding nothing new, after which another set of fingerprints was taken. Then came the internal examination.

A deep incision was made down the front of the body. Blood samples were taken and handed to the forensics team, as were samples of urine, stomach contents, liver, body hair (eyebrows included) and tissue. The process used to make Rebus impatient. It was obvious how the victim had died, so why bother with everything else? But he had learned over the years that what you could see, the external injuries, often wasn't as important as what you couldn't see, the tiny secrets only a microscope or a chemical test could reveal. So he had learned patience and exercised it now, stifling a yawn every half minute or so.

`Not boring you am I?' Cousins's voice was a polite murmur. He looked up from his work and caught Rebus's eyes, then smiled.

`Not a bit,' said Rebus.

`That's all right then. I'm sure we'd all rather be at home tucked up in bed in than in this place.' Only the birthmarked technician seemed doubtful as to the truth of this statement. Cousins was reaching a hand into the corpse's chest. `I'll be out of here as soon as I can.'

It wasn't the sight of this examination, Rebus decided, that turned men pale. It was the accompanying sound effects. The tearing of flesh, as though, a butcher were yanking meat from a flank. The bubbling of liquids and the soft rasping of the cutting tools. If he could somehow block up his ears, maybe everything would be bearable. But on the contrary, his ears seemed extraordinarily sensitive in this room. Next time, he'd bring plugs of cotton wool with him. Next time . . .

The chest and abdominal organs were removed and taken to a clean slab, where a hose was used to wash them clean before Cousins dissected them. The attendant mean?time was called into action, removing the brain with the help of a tiny powered circular-saw. Rebus had his eyes shut now, but the room seemed to swirl. all the same. Not long to go now though. Not long, thank God. But it wasn't just the sounds now, was it? It was the smell too, that unmistakable aroma of raw meat. It clung to the nostrils like perfume, filling the lungs, catching the back of the throat and clinging there, so that eventually it became a tang in the mouth and he found himself actually tasting it. His stomach moved momentarily, but he rubbed it gently, surreptitiously with a hand. Not surreptitiously enough.

'If you're going to throw up,' it was Lamb again, like a succubus over his shoulder, hissing, `go outside.' And then the chuckle, throaty and slow like a stalled engine. Rebus half-turned his head and gave a dangerous smile.'

Soon enough, the whole mess of matter was being put together again, and Rebus knew that by, the time any grieving relatives viewed the mortal remains of Jean Cooper, the body would look quite natural.

As ever, by the end of the autopsy the room had been reduced to silent introspection. Each man and woman present was made of the same stuff as Jean Cooper, and now they stood, momentarily stripped of their, individual personalities. They were all bodies, all animals, all collec?tions of viscera. The only difference between them and Jean Cooper was that their hearts still pumped blood. But one day soon enough each heart would stop, and that would be an end of it, save for the possibility of a visit to this butcher's shop, this abattoir.

Cousins removed his rubber gloves and washed his hands thoroughly, accepted from the attendant a proffered sheaf of paper towels. `That's about it then, gentlemen, until Penny can type up the notes. Murdered between nine o'clock and nine-thirty I'd guess. Same modus operandi as our so-called Wolfman. I think I've just examined his fourth victim. I'll get in Anthony Morrison tomorrow, let him have a look at the teeth marks. See what he says.'

Since everyone seemed' to know except Rebus, Rebus asked, `Who's Anthony Morrison?'

Flight was first to answer. `A dentist.'

`A, dental pathologist,' corrected Cousins. `And quite a good one. He's got details of the other three murders. His analyses of the bite marks have been quite useful.' Cousins turned to Flight for confirmation of this, but Flight's eyes were directed towards his shoes, as if to say I wouldn't go that far.

`Well,' said Cousins, seeming to take the silent hint, `at any rate, you know my findings. It's down to your lab chaps now. There's precious little there . . . ' Cousins nodded back towards the scooped-out husk of the corpse, `to help with your investigation. That being so, I think I'll go home to bed.'

Flight seemed to realise that Cousins was displeased with him. `Thank you, Philip.' And the detective lifted a hand to rest it against the pathologist's arm. Cousins looked at the hand, then at Flight, and smiled.

The performance at an end, the audience began to shuffle out into the cold, still darkness of an emerging day. By Rebus's watch, it was, four thirty. He felt completely exhausted, could happily have lain down on the lawn in front of the main building and taken a nap, but Flight was walking towards him, carrying his bags.

`Come on,' he said. `I'll give you a lift.'

In his fragile state, Rebus felt this to be the nicest, kindest thing anyone had said to him in weeks. 'Are you sure you have room?' he said. `I mean, with the teddy bear and all.'

Flight paused. `Or if you'd prefer to walk, Inspector?'

Rebus threw up his hands in surrender, then, when the door was unlocked, slipped into the passenger seat of Flight's red Sierra. The seat seemed to wrap itself around him.

`Here,' said Flight, handing a hip flask to Rebus. Rebus unscrewed the top of the flask and sniffed. `It won't kill you,' Flight called. This was probably true. The aroma was of whisky. Not great whisky, not a smoky island malt, but a decent enough proprietary brand. Well, it would help keep him awake perhaps until they reached the hotel. Rebus toasted the windscreen and let the liquid trickle into his mouth.

Flight got behind the steering-wheel and started the car, then, as the car idled, accepted the flask from Rebus and drank from it greedily.

`How far to the hotel from here?' Rebus asked.

`About twenty minutes at this time of night,' said Flight, screwing tight the stopper and replacing the flask in his pocket. `That's if we stop for red lights.'

`You have my permission to run every red light you see.'

Flight laughed tiredly. Both men were wondering how to turn the conversation around to the autopsy.

`Best leave it until morning, eh?'' said Rebus, speaking for them both. Flight merely nodded and moved off, waving to Cousins and Isobel Penny, who were about to get into their car. Rebus stared out of his side window to where DC Lamb, stood beside his own car, a flash little sports model.

Typical, thought Rebus. Just typical. Lamb stared back at him, and then gave that three-quarters sneer again.

FYTP, Rebus mentally intoned. FYTP. Then he turned in his seat to examine the teddy bear behind him. Flight was resolutely refusing to take the hint, and Rebus, though curious, wasn't about to jeopardise whatever relationship he might be able to strike up with this man by asking the obvious question. Some things were always best left until morning.

The whisky had cleared his nostrils, lungs and throat. He breathed deeply, seeing in his mind the little mortuary attendant, that livid birthmark, and Isobel Penny, sketching like any amateur artist. She might have been in front of a museum exhibit for all the emotion she had shown.' He wondered what her secret was, the secret of her absolute calmness, but thought he probably knew in any case. Her job had become merely that: a job. Maybe one day Rebus would feel the same way. But he hoped not.

If anything, Flight and Rebus said less during the drive to the hotel than they had done on the way to the mortuary. The whisky was working on Rebus's empty stomach and the interior of the car was oppressively hot. He tried opening his window a quarter of an inch, but the blast of chill air only made things worse.'

The autopsy was being played out again before him. The cutting tools, the lifting of organs out of the body, the incisions and inspections, Cousins' face peering at spongy tissue from no more than an inch away. One twitch and his face would have been smothered in . . . Isobel Penny watching all, recording all, the slice from throat to pubis . . . London sped past him. Flight, true, to his word, was cruising through some red lights and slowing merely for others. There were still cars on the streets. The city never slept. Nightclubs, parties, drifters, the homeless. Sleepless dog-walkers, all night bakeries and beigel shops. Some spelt 'beigel' and some spelt `bagel'. What the hell was a beigel? Wasn't that what they were always eating in Woody Allen films?

Samples from her eyebrows, for Christ's sake. What use were samples from her eyebrows? They should be concentrating on the attacker, not the victim. Those teeth marks. What was the dentist's name again? Not a dentist, a dental pathologist. Morrison. Yes, that was it. Morrison, like the street in Edinburgh, Morrison Street, not too far from the brewery canal, where the swans lived, a single pair of swans. What happened when they died? Did the brewery replace them? So damned hot in this shiny red car. Rebus could feel his insides wanting to become his outsides. The knife twisted in the throat. A small knife. He could almost visualise it. Something like a kitchen, knife. Sharp, sour taste in his mouth.

`Nearly there,' said Flight. `Just along Shaftesbury Avenue. That's Soho on the right. By God we've cleaned that den up this past few years. You wouldn't believe it. You know, I've been thinking, where the body was found, it's not so far from where the Krays used to live. Somewhere on Lea Bridge Road. I was just a young copper when they were on the go.'

`Please . . .' said Rebus.

`They did somebody in Stokie. Jack McVitie, I think it was. Jack the Hat, they called him.'

`Can you stop here?' Rebus blurted out. Flight looked at him.

`What's up?

`I need some air. I'll walk the rest of the way. Just stop the car, please.'

Flight began to protest, but pulled over to the kerb. Stepping out of, the car, Rebus immediately felt better. There was cold sweat on his forehead, neck and back. He breathed deeply. Flight deposited his bags on the pavement.

`Thanks again,' said Rebus. `Sorry about this. Just point me in the general direction.'

`Just off the Circus,' Flight said.

Rebus nodded. 'I hope there's a night porter.' Yes, he was feeling much better.

`It's a quarter to five,' said Flight. `You'll probably catch the day shift coming on.' He laughed, but the laugh died quickly and he gave Rebus a serious nod of his head. `You made your point tonight, John. Okay?'

Rebus nodded back. John. Another chip from the iceberg, or just good management?

`Thanks,' he said. They shook hands. `Are we still on for a meeting at ten?'

`Let's make it eleven, eh? I'll have someone pick you up from your hotel.'

Rebus nodded and picked up his bags. Then bent down again towards the car's back window. `Good night, teddy,' he said.

`Watch you don't get lost!' Flight called to him from the car. Then the car moved off, making a screeching u-turn before roaring back the way they had come. Rebus looked around him. Shaftesbury Avenue. The buildings seemed about to swamp him. Theatres. Shops. Litter: the debris from a Sunday night out. A dull roar preceded the arrival, from one of the misty side streets, of a dustcart. The men were dressed in orange overalls. They paid no attention to Rebus as he trudged past them. How long was this street? It seemed to follow a vast curve, longer than he had expected.

Bloody London. Then he spotted Eros atop his fountain, but there was something wrong. The Circus was no longer a Circus. Eros had been paved in, so that traffic had to sweep past it rather than around it. Why the hell, had anyone decided to do that? A car was slowing behind him, coming parallel with him. White car with an orange stripe: a police car. The officer in the passenger seat had wound down his window and now called out to him.

`Excuse me, sir, do you mind telling me where you're going?'

`What?' The question stunned Rebus, stopped him in his tracks. The car had stopped too and both driver and passenger were emerging.

`Are those your bags, sir?'

Rebus felt it rise within him, a shining hard steel pole of anger. Then he happened to catch sight of himself in the window of the patrol car. A quarter to five on the streets of London. A dishevelled, unshaven man, a man obviously without sleep, carrying a suitcase, a bag and a briefcase. A briefcase? Who the hell would be carrying a briefcase around at this time of the morning? Rebus put down his luggage and rubbed at the bridge of his nose with one hand. And before he knew what was happening, his shoulders began moving, his body convulsing with laughter. The two uniformed officers were looking at one another. Rebus sniffed back the laughter and reached into his inside pocket. One of the officers stepped back a pace.

`Take it easy, son,' Rebus said. He produced his ID. `I'm on your side.' The less cagey officer, the passenger, took the ID from Rebus, examined it, then handed it back.

`You're a long way off your, patch, sir.'

`You don't have to tell me that,' said Rebus. `What's your name, son?'

The constable was wary now. `Bennett, sir. Joey Bennett. I mean, Joseph Bennett'

'All right, Joey. Would you like to do me a favour?' The constable nodded. `Do you know the Prince Royal Hotel?'

`Yes, sir.' Bennett began to point with his left hand 'It's about fifty yards—'

`All right,' Rebus interrupted, `Just show me, will you?'

The young man said nothing. `Will you do that, Constable Bennett?'

`Yes, sir.'

Rebus nodded. Yes, he could handle London. He could take it on and win. `Right,' he said, moving off towards the Prince Royal. `Oh,' he said, turning back and taking in both men with his glance, `and bring my bags, will you?' Rebus had his back to them again, but he could almost hear the sound of two jaws dropping open. `Or,' he called back, `shall I just inform . Chief Inspector Laine that two of his officers harassed me on my first night as his guest in this fine city?'

Rebus kept on walking, hearing the two officers pick up his luggage and hurry after him. They were arguing as to whether or not they should leave the patrol car unlocked. He was smiling, despite everything. A small victory, a bit of a cheat, but what the hell. This was London, after all. This was Shaftesbury Avenue. And that was showbiz.

Home at last, she had a good wash, and after that she felt a little better. She had brought in a black bin-liner from the boot of her car. It contained the clothes she had been wearing, cheap flimsy things. Tomorrow evening she would tidy the back garden and light a bonfire.

She wasn't crying any more. She had calmed down. She always calmed down afterwards. From a polythene shopping bag she removed another polythene bag, from which she removed the bloodied knife. The kitchen sink was full of boiling, soapy water. The polythene bags went into the bin-liner with the clothes, the knife went into the sink. She washed it carefully, emptying and refilling the washing bowl, all the time humming to herself. It wasn't a recognisable song, nor even really a tune. But it calmed her, it soothed her, the way her mother's hummed lullabies always had.

There, all done. It was hard work, and she was pleased to be finished with it. Concentration was the key. A lapse in concentration, and you could make a slip, then fail to spot that slip. She rinsed the sink three times, sluicing away every last speckle of blood, and left the knife to dry on the draining-board. Then she walked out into the hallway and paused at one of the doors while she found the key.

This was her secret room, her picture gallery. Inside, one wall was all but covered by oil and watercolour paintings. Three of these paintings were damaged beyond repair. A pity, since all three had been favourites. Her favourite now was a small countryside stream. Simple, pale colours and a naive style. The stream was in the foreground and beside it sat, a man and a boy, or it could have been a man and a girl. It was hard to tell, that was the problem with the naive style. It was not as though she could even ask the artist, for the artist had been dead for years.

She tried not to look at the other wall, the wall directly opposite. It was a horrid wall. She didn't like what she could see there from the corner of one eye. She decided that what she liked about her favourite painting was its size. It was about ten inches by eight, excluding the rather Baroque gilt frame (which did not suit it at all her mother had never had much taste in frames). These petite dimensions, added to the washed colours, gave the whole a subtlety and a lack of vision, a humility, a gentleness, which pleased her. Of course, it depicted no great truth, this painting. In fact, it was a monstrous lie, the absolute opposite of the facts. There had been no stream, no touching scene of father and child. There had been, only horror. That was why Velazquez was her favourite painter: shadowplay, rich shades of black, skulls and suspicion . . . the dark, heart exposed.

`The dark heart.' She nodded to herself. She had seen things, felt things, which few were ever privileged to witness. This was her life. This was her existence. And the painting began to mock her, the stream turning into a cruel turquoise grin.

Calmly, humming to herself again she picked up a pair of scissors from a nearby chair and began to slash at the painting with regular vertical strokes, then horizontal strokes, then vertical again, tearing and tearing its heart out until the scene disappeared forever.