Tooth And Nail (26 page)

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.

‘Nonsense, whatever gives you that –’

‘But I love him, Daddy.’ His heart spins once in his chest. ‘And I don’t want anything to happen to him.’

‘What makes you think something’s going to happen to him?’

‘The way he’s been acting lately, like he’s keeping secrets from me. Mum’s noticed it, too. I’m not just dreaming. But she said she thought maybe he was planning an engagement.’ She sees his eyes widen, and shakes her head. ‘I didn’t believe it. I knew it was something else. I thought, I don’t know, I just …’

He notices for the first time that they have an audience. Until now they might have been in a sealed box for all the notice he has taken of their surroundings. Now, though, he sees a bemused desk sergeant, two WPCs clutching paperwork to their bosoms and watching the scene with a kind of maternal glow, two unshaven men slumped in seats against the wall, just waiting.

‘Come on, Sammy,’ he says. ‘Let’s go up to my office.’

They were halfway to the Murder Room before he remembered that it was not, perhaps, the most wholesome environment for a teenage girl. The photos on the walls were only the start of it. A sense of humour was needed on a case like the Wolfman, and that sense of humour had begun to manifest itself in cartoons, jokes and mock-ups of newspaper stories either pinned to the noticeboards or taped onto the sides of computer screens. The language could be choice, too, or someone might be overheard in conversation with someone from forensics.

‘… torn … ripped her right … kitchen knife, they reckon … slit from ear … gouged … anus … nasty bastard … makes some of them seem almost human.’ Stories were swapped of serial killers past, of suicides scraped from railway lines, of police dogs playing ball with a severed head.

No, definitely not the place for his daughter. Besides, there was always the possibility that Lamb might be there.

Instead, he found a vacant interview room. It had been turned into a temporary cupboard while the investigation continued, filled with empty cardboard boxes, unneeded chairs, broken desk-lamps and computer keyboards, a heavy-looking manual typewriter. Eventually, the computers in the Murder Room would be packed back into the cardboard boxes, the files would be tidied away into dusty stacks somewhere.

For now, the room had a musty, barren feel, but it still boasted a lightbulb hanging from the ceiling, a table and two chairs. On the table sat a glass ashtray full of stubs and two plastic coffee cups containing a layer of green and black mould. On the floor lay a crushed cigarette packet. Rebus kicked the packet beneath some of the stacked chairs.

‘It’s not much,’ he said, ‘but it’s home. Sit down. Do you want anything?’

She seemed not to understand the question. ‘Like what?’

‘I don’t know, coffee, tea?’

‘Diet Coke?’

Rebus shook his head.

‘What about Irn-Bru?’

Now he laughed: she was joking with him. He couldn’t bear to see her upset, especially over someone as undeserving as Kenny Watkiss.

‘Sammy,’ he asked, ‘does Kenny have an uncle?’

‘Uncle Tommy?’

Rebus nodded. ‘That’s the one.’

‘What about him?’

‘Well,’ said Rebus, crossing his legs, ‘what do you know about him?’

‘About Kenny’s Uncle Tommy? Not a lot.’

‘What does he do for a living?’

‘I think Kenny said he’s got a stall somewhere, you know, in a market.’

Like Brick Lane market? Did he sell false teeth?

‘Or maybe he just delivers to market stalls, I can’t really remember.’

Delivers stolen goods? Goods given to him by thieves like the one they’d picked up, the one who had pretended to be the Wolfman?

‘Anyway, he’s got a few bob.’

‘How do you know that?’

‘Kenny told me. At least, I think he did. Otherwise how would I know?’

‘Where does Kenny work, Sammy?’