10 Great Rebus Novels (John Rebus) (80 page)

‘Total secrecy,’ said Cousins. ‘I quite understand. Mum’s the word. Who was it, by the way?’ Flight appeared not to understand. ‘To whom was this threatening letter addressed?’

Flight was about to speak, but Rebus beat him to it. ‘Just someone on the case, as Inspector Flight says.’ He smiled, trying to alleviate the brusqueness of his response. Oh yes, his mind was working now, working in a fever: nobody had told Cousins the letter was threatening, so how did he know it was? Okay, it was simple enough to work out that it wouldn’t exactly have been fan mail, but all the same.

‘Well then,’ said Cousins, choosing not to press for details. ‘And now, gentlemen,’ he scooped up two manila files from the desk and tucked them under his arm, then stood, the joints of his knees cracking with the effort, ‘if you’ll excuse me, Court Eight awaits. Inspector Rebus,’ Cousins held out his free hand, ‘it sounds as though the case may be drawing towards its conclusion. Should we fail to meet again, give my regards to your delightful city.’ He turned to Flight. ‘See you soon, George. Bring Marion round for supper some evening. Give Penny a tinkle and we’ll try to find one night in the calendar when all four of us are free. Goodbye.’

‘Bye, Philip.’

‘Goodbye.’

‘Goodbye.’

‘Oh.’ Cousins had stopped in the doorway. ‘There is just one thing.’ He turned pleading eyes on Flight. ‘You don’t have a spare driver, do you, George? It’s going to be hell getting a taxi at this time of day.’

‘Well,’ Flight thought hard, then had an idea, ‘if you can hang on for a couple of minutes, Philip, I’ve got a couple of men here in the building.’ He turned to Rebus, whose eyes had widened. ‘Lisa won’t mind, will she, John? I mean, if her car drops Philip off at the Old Bailey?’

Rebus could do little but shrug.

‘Excellent!’ said Cousins, clasping his hands together. ‘Thank you so much.’

‘I’ll take you to them,’ Flight said. ‘But first I need to make a phone call.’

Cousins nodded towards the corridor. ‘And I must visit the WC. Be back in a tick.’

They watched him leave. Flight was grinning, shaking his head in wonderment. ‘Do you know,’ he said, ‘he’s been like that ever since I met him? I mean, the sort of ambassadorial air, the aged aristocrat. Ever since I’ve known him.’

‘He’s a gentleman all right,’ said Rebus.

‘But that’s just the thing,’ said Flight. ‘His background is every bit as ordinary as yours or mine.’ He turned to the lab man. ‘All right if I use your phone?’

He did not wait for an answer, but started dialling straight away. ‘Hello?’ he said into the receiver when he was finally connected. ‘Who’s that? Oh, hello, Deakin, is Lamb there? Yes, put him on, will you? Thanks.’ While he was waiting, Flight picked invisible threads from his trousers. The trousers were shiny from too many wearings. Everything about Flight, Rebus noticed, seemed worn: his shirt collar had an edge of grime to it and the collar itself was too tight, constricting the loose flesh of the neck, pinching it into vertical folds. Rebus found himself transfixed by that neck, by the tufts of grey sprouting hair where the razor had failed in its duty. Signs of mortality, as final as a hand around a throat. When Flight got off the phone, Rebus would protest about sending Cousins off with Lisa.
Ambassadorial. Aristocrat
. One of the earlier mass killers had been an aristocrat, too.

‘Hello, Lamb? What have you found on Miss Crawford?’ Flight listened, his eyes on Rebus, ready to communicate anything of interest. ‘Uh-huh, okay. Mm, I see. Yes. Right.’ All the time his eyes told Rebus that everything was checking out, that Jan Crawford was reliable, that she was telling the truth. Then Flight’s eyes widened a little. ‘What’s that again?’ And he listened more intently, moving his eyes from Rebus to study the telephone apparatus itself. ‘Now that is interesting.’

Rebus shifted. What? What was interesting? But Flight had again resorted to monosyllables.

‘Uh-hu. Mmm. Well, never mind. I know. Yes, I’m sure.’ His voice sounded resigned to something. ‘Okay. Thanks for letting me know. Yes. No, we’ll be back in about, I don’t know, maybe another hour. Right, catch you then.’

Flight held the receiver above the telephone, but did not immediately drop it back into its cradle. Instead, he let it hang there.

Rebus could contain his curiosity no longer. ‘What?’ he said. ‘What is it? What’s wrong?’

Flight seemed to come out of his daydream, and put down the receiver. ‘Oh,’ he said, ‘it’s Tommy Watkiss.’

‘What about him?’

‘Lamb has just heard that there isn’t going to be a retrial. We don’t know why yet. Maybe the judge didn’t think the charges were worth all the aggro and told the CPS so.’

‘Assault on a woman not worth the
aggro
?’ All thought of Philip Cousins vanished from Rebus’s mind.

Flight shrugged. ‘Retrials are expensive.
Any
trial is expensive. We cocked it up first time round, so we lose a second chance. It happens, John, you know that.’

‘Of course it happens. But the idea of a snake like Watkiss getting away with something like that –’

‘Don’t worry, he can’t keep his nose clean for long. Breaking the law’s in his blood. When he does something naughty, we’ll have him, and I’ll see to it there are no balls-ups, mark my words.’

Rebus sighed. Yes, it happened, you lost a few. More than a few. Incompetence or a soft judge, an unsympathetic jury or a rock-solid witness for the defence. And sometimes maybe the Procurator Fiscal thought a retrial not worth the money. You lost a few. They were like toothache.

‘I bet Chambers is fuming,’ Rebus said.

‘Oh yes,’ said Flight, smiling at the thought, ‘I bet he’s got steam coming out of his bloody shirt-cuffs.’

But one person would be happy at least, Rebus was thinking: Kenny Watkiss. He’d be over the moon.

‘So,’ said Rebus, ‘what about Jan Crawford?’

Flight shrugged again. ‘She seems straight as a die. No previous, no record of mental illness, lives quietly, but the neighbours seem to like her well enough. Like Lamb said, she’s so clean it’s frightening.’

Yes, the squeaky clean ones often were. Frightening to a policeman the way an unknown species might be to a jungle explorer: fear of the new, the different. You got to suspect that everyone had something to hide: the schoolteachers smuggled in porn videos from their holiday in Amsterdam; the solicitors took cocaine on their weekend parties; the happily married MP was sleeping with his secretary; the magistrate had a predilection for underage boys; the librarian kept a real skeleton hidden in the closet; the angelic looking children had set fire to a neighbour’s cat.

And sometimes your suspicions were correct.

And other times they weren’t. Cousins was standing at the door now, ready to leave. Flight laid a hand softly on his arm. Rebus recalled that he’d meant to say something to Flight, but how to phrase it? Would it do to say that Philip Cousins seemed almost too clean, with his surgeon’s cold, manicured hands and his ambassadorial air? Rebus was wondering now,
seriously
wondering.

Since Flight had gone off with Philip Cousins to find Lisa and her protectors, Rebus went back to the lab to hear the result of the first saliva test.

‘Sorry,’ said the white-coated scientist. He looked not yet to be out of his teens. Beneath his lab coat, there lurked a black T-shirt decorated with the name of a heavy metal band. ‘I don’t think we’re going to have much luck. All we’re finding so far is H
₂
0, tap-water. Whoever stuck the envelope down must have used a wet sponge or a pad or one of those old-fashioned roller things. No traces of saliva at all.’

The breath left Rebus’s lungs. ‘What about fingerprints?’

‘Negative so far. All we’ve found are two sets which look like they’re going to match Dr Frazer’s. And we’re not having any better luck with fibres or grease stains. I’d say the writer wore gloves. Nobody here has seen such a clean, speck-free job.’

He knows, Rebus was thinking. He knows everything we might try. So damned smart.

‘Well, thanks anyway,’ he said. The young man raised his eyebrows and spread his palms.

‘I wish we could do more.’

You could start by getting a haircut, son, he thought to himself. You look too much like Kenny Watkiss. He sighed instead. ‘Just do what you can,’ he said. ‘Just do what you can.’

Turning to walk away, Rebus felt a mixture of fresh rage and impotence, sudden savage frustration. The Wolfman was too good. He would stop killing before they could catch him; or he would simply go on killing again and again and again. No one would be safe. And most of all, it seemed, Lisa would not be safe.

Lisa.

She was being blamed by the Wolfman for the story Rebus had invented. It had nothing to do with Lisa. And if the Wolfman should somehow get to her it would be Rebus’s fault, wouldn’t it? Where was Lisa going? Rebus didn’t know. Flight thought it was safer that way. But Rebus couldn’t shake off the idea that the Wolfman might well be a policeman. Might well be
any
policeman. Might be the brawny detective or the thin and silent detective. Lisa had gone off with them thinking them her protection. What if she had walked straight into the clutches of . . .? What if the Wolfman knew exactly . . .? What if Philip Cousins . . .?

A loudspeaker sounded from its recess in the ceiling.

‘Telephone call for Inspector Rebus at reception. Telephone call for Inspector Rebus.’

Rebus walked quickly down the rest of the corridor and through the swing-door at the end. He didn’t know if Flight was still in the building, didn’t care. His mind was filling with horrors: Wolfman, Lisa, Rhona, Sammy. Little Sammy, his daughter. She’d seen enough terror in her life. He’d been responsible before. He didn’t want her to be hurt ever again.

The receptionist lifted the receiver as he approached, holding it out to him. As he grabbed it, she pressed a button on the dial, connecting him to the caller.

‘Hello?’ he said, breathlessly.

‘Daddy?’ Oh Christ, it
was
Sammy.

‘Sammy?’ Nearly yelling now. ‘What is it? What’s wrong?’

‘Oh, Daddy.’ She was crying. The memory flashed in front of him, scalding his vision. Phone calls. Screams.

‘What is it, Sammy? Tell me!’

‘It’s,’ a sniff, ‘it’s Kenny.’

‘Kenny?’ He furrowed his brow. ‘What’s wrong with him? Has he been in a crash?’

‘Oh no, Daddy. He’s just . . . just
disappeared
.’

‘Where are you, Sammy?’

‘I’m in a call-box.’

‘Okay, I’m going to give you the address of a police station. Meet me there. If you have to get a taxi, that’s fine. I’ll pay for it when you arrive. Understand?’

‘Daddy.’ She sniffed back tears. ‘You’ve got to find him. I’m worried. Please find him, Daddy. Please.
Please!
’

By the time George Flight reached reception, Rebus had already left. The receptionist explained as best she could, while Flight rubbed his jaw, encountering stubble. He had argued with Lisa Frazer, but by Christ she’d been stubborn. Attractively stubborn, he had to admit. She’d told him she didn’t mind bodyguards but that the idea of a ‘safe location’ was out of the question. She had, she said, an appointment at the Old Bailey, a couple of appointments actually, interviews she was doing in connection with some research.

‘It’s taken me weeks to set them up,’ she said, ‘there’s no way I’m going to blow them out now!’

‘But my dear,’ Philip Cousins had drawled, ‘that’s just where we’re headed.’ He was, Flight knew, keen for a close to proceedings, glancing at his watch impatiently. And it seemed that Lisa and Cousins knew one another from the murder at Copperplate Street, that they had things in common, things they wanted to talk about. That they were keen to be going.

So Flight made a decision. What did it matter after all if she did visit the Bailey? There were few better protected spots in the whole city. It was several hours yet until the first of her interviews, but that didn’t really bother her. She did not, she said, mind hanging around in the ‘courthouse’. In fact, she rather enjoyed the idea. The two officers could accompany her, wait for her, then drive her on to whatever safe location Flight had in mind. This, at any rate, was Lisa Frazer’s argument, an argument defended by Philip Cousins who could see ‘no flaw in the reasoning, m’lud’. So, to smiles on their part and a shrug on Flight’s, the course of action was decided. Flight watched the Ford Granada roll away from him – the two officers in the front, Philip and Lisa Frazer in the back. Safe as houses, he was thinking. Safe as bloody houses.

And now Rebus had buggered off. Oh well, he’d catch up with him no doubt. He didn’t regret bringing Rebus down here, not a bit. But he knew it had been
his
decision, not one entirely endorsed by the upper echelons. Any balls-ups and it would be Flight’s pension on the block. He knew that only too well, as did everyone else. Which was why he’d stuck so close to Rebus in the first few days, just to be sure of the man.

Was he sure of the man? It was a question he would rather not answer, even now, even to himself. Rebus was like the spring in a trap, likely to jump no matter what landed on the bait. He was also a Scot, and Flight had never trusted the Scots, not since the day they’d voted to stay part of the Union . . .

‘Daddy!’

And she runs into his arms. He hugs her to him, aware that he does not have to bend too far to accomplish this. Yes, she’s grown, and yet she seems more childlike than ever. He kisses the top of her head, smells her clean hair. She is trembling. He can feel the vibrations darting through her chest and arms.

‘Sshh,’ he says. ‘Ssshhh, pet, ssshhh.’

She pulls back and almost smiles, sniffs, then says, ‘You always used to call me that. Your pet. Mum never called me pet. Only you.’

He smiles back and strokes her hair. ‘Yes,’ he says, ‘your mum told me off for that. She said a pet was a possession and that you weren’t a possession.’ He is remembering now. ‘She had some funny ideas, your mum.’

‘She still does.’ Then she remembers why she is here. The tears well up anew in her eyes.

‘I know you don’t like him,’ she says.