by Ian Rankin
‘I fainted. In the home of a friend, by all accounts. It’s nothing very serious. I have a few weeks to live.’
Gill’s smile was warm.
‘They say it’s overwork.’ Then she paused. ‘What’s all this “Inspector” stuff?’
Rebus shrugged, then looked sulky. His guilt was mixing with the remembrance of that snub he had been given, that snub which had started the whole ball rolling. He turned into a patient again, weakly slumping against his pillow.
‘I’m a very ill man, Gill. Too ill to answer questions.’
‘Well, in that case I won’t bother to slip you the cigarettes sent by Jack Morton.’
Rebus sat up again.
‘Bless that man. Where are they?’
She brought two packs from her jacket pocket and slipped them beneath the bedclothes. He gripped her hand.
‘I missed you, Gill.’ She smiled, and did not withdraw the hand.
Limitless visiting-time being a prerogative of the police, Gill stayed for two hours, talking about her past, asking him about his own. She had been born on an air-force base in Wiltshire, just after the war. She told Rebus that her father had been an engineer in the RAF.
‘My dad,’ Rebus said, ‘was in the Army during the war. I was conceived while he was on one of his last leaves. He was a stage hypnotist by profession.’ People usually raised an eyebrow at that, but not Gill Templer. ‘He used to work the music-halls and theatres, doing summer stints in Blackpool and Ayr and places like that, so we were always sure of a summer holiday away from Fife.’
She sat with her head cocked to one side, content to be told stories. The ward was quiet once the other visitors had obeyed the leaving-bell. A nurse pushed around a trolley with a huge battered pot of tea on it. Gill was given a cup, the nurse smiling at her in sisterhood.
‘She’s a nice kid, that nurse,’ said Rebus, relaxed. He had been given two pills, one blue and one brown, and they were making him drowsy. ‘She reminds me of a girl I knew when I was in the Paras.’
‘How long were you in the Paras, John?’
‘Six years. No, eight years it was.’
‘What made you leave?’
What made him leave? Rhona had asked him the same question over and over, her curiosity piqued by the feeling that he had something to hide, some monstrous skeleton in his closet.
‘I don’t know really. It’s hard to remember that far back. I was picked for special training and I didn’t like it.’
And this was the truth. He had no use for memories of his training, the reek of fear and mistrust, the screaming, that screaming in his memory. Let me out. The echo of solitary.
‘Well,’ said Gill, ‘if my memory serves me right, I’ve got a case waiting for me back at base-camp.’
‘That reminds me,’ he said, ‘I think I saw your friend last night. The reporter. Stevens, wasn’t it? He was in a pub the same time I was. Strange.’
‘Not so very strange. That’s his kind of hunting-ground. Funny, he’s a bit like you in some ways. Not as sexy though.’ She smiled and pecked his cheek again, rising from the metal chair. ‘I’ll try to drop in again before they let you out, but you know what it’s like. I can’t make any concrete promises, D.S. Rebus.’
Standing, she seemed taller than Rebus had imagined her. Her hair fell forward onto his face for another kiss, full on the lips this time, and he staring at the dark cleft between her breasts. He felt a little tired, so tired. He forced his eyes to remain open while she walked away, her heels clacking on the tiled floor while the nurses floated past like ghosts on their rubber-soled shoes. He pushed himself up so that he could watch her legs retreat. She had nice legs. He had remembered that much. He remembered them gripping his sides, the feet resting on his buttocks. He remembered her hair falling across the pillow like a Turner seascape. He remembered her voice hissing in his ears, that hissing. Oh yes, John, oh, John, yes, yes, yes.
Why did you leave the army?
As she turned over, turning into the woman with the choking cries of his climax.
Why did you?
Oh, oh, oh, oh.
Oh yes, the safety of dreams.
17
The editors loved what the Edinburgh Strangler was doing for the circulations of their newspapers. They loved the way his story grew almost organically, as though carefully nurtured. The modus operandi had altered ever so slightly for the killing of Nicola Turner. The Strangler had, it seemed, tied a knot in the cord prior to strangulation. This knot had pressed heavily on the girl’s throat, bruising it. The police did not consider this of much significance. They were too busy checking through the records of blue Ford Escorts to be busy with a slight detail of technique. They were out there checking every blue Escort in the area, questioning every owner, every driver.
Gill Templer had released details of the car to the press, hoping for a huge public response. It came: neighbours reported their neighbours, fathers their sons, wives their husbands, and husbands their wives. There were over two-hundred blue Escorts to investigate, and if nothing came of that, they would be re-investigated, before moving on to other colours of Ford Escort, other makes of light-blue saloon car. It might take months; certainly it would take weeks.
Jack Morton, another xeroxed list folded in his hand, had consulted his doctor about swollen feet. The doctor had told him that he walked too much in cheap, unsupportive shoes. This Morton already knew. He had now interviewed so many suspects that it was all becoming a blur to him. They all looked the same and acted the same: nervous, deferential, innocent. If only the Strangler would make a mistake. There were no clues worth going on. Morton suspected the car to be a false trail. No clues worth going on. He remembered John Rebus’s anonymous letters. There are clues everywhere. Could that be true of this case? Could the clues be too big to notice, or too abstract? Certainly it was a rare – an extraordinarily rare – murder case that did not have some bumper, extravagant clue lying about somewhere just waiting to be picked up. He was damned if he knew where this one was though, and that was why he had visited his doctor – hoping for some sympathy and a few days off. Rebus had landed on his feet again, lucky sod. Morton envied him his illness.
He parked his car on a double-yellow line outside the library and sauntered in. The great front hall reminded him of the days when he had used this library himself, clutching picture-books borrowed from the children’s section. It used to be situated downstairs. He wondered if it still was. His mother would give him the bus-fare, and he would come into town, ostensibly to change his library books, but really so that he could wander the streets for an hour or two, savouring the taste of what it would be like to be grown up and free. He would trail American tourists, taking note of their swaggering self-confidence and their bulging wallets and waistbands. He would watch them as they photographed Greyfriars Bobby’s statue across from the kirkyard. He had stared long and hard at the statue of the small dog, and had felt nothing. He had read of Covenanters, of Deacon Brodie, of public executions on the High Street, wondering what kind of city this was, and what kind of country. He shook his head now, past caring about fantasies, and went to the information desk.
‘Hello, Mister Morton.’
He turned to find a girl, more a young lady really, standing before him, a book clasped to her small chest. He frowned.
‘It’s me, Samantha Rebus.’
His eyes went wide.
‘Goodness, so it is. Well, well. You’ve certainly grown since I last saw you. Mind you, that must have been a year or two back. How are you?’
‘I’m fine, thanks. I’m here with my mother. Are you here on police business?’
‘Something like that, yes.’ Morton could feel her eyes burning into him. God, she had her father’s eyes all right. He had left his mark.
‘How’s dad keeping?’
To tell or not to tell. Why not tell her? Then again, was it his place to tell her?
‘He’s fine, so far as I know,’ he said, knowing this to
be seventy-per-cent truth.
‘I’m just going down to the teenagers’ section. Mum’s in the Reference Room. It’s dead boring in there.’
‘I’ll go with you. That’s just where I was headed.’
She smiled at him, pleased about something that was going on in her adolescent head, and Jack Morton had the thought that she wasn’t at all like her father. She was far too nice and polite.
A fourth girl was missing. The outcome seemed a foregone conclusion. No bookie would have given odds.
‘We need special vigilance,’ stressed Anderson. ‘More officers are being drafted in tonight. Remember,’ the officers present looked hollow-eyed and demoralized, ‘if and when he kills this victim, he will attempt to dispose of the body, and if we can spot him doing that, or if any member of the public can spot him doing that, just once, then we’ve got him.’ Anderson slapped a fist into his open hand. Nobody seemed very cheered. So far the Strangler had dumped three corpses, quite successfully, in different areas of the city: Oxgangs, Haymarket, Colinton. The police could not be everywhere (though these days it seemed to the public that they were), no matter how hard they tried.
‘Again,’ continued the Chief Inspector, consulting a file, ‘the recent abduction seems to have little enough in common with the others. The victim’s name is Helen Abbot. Eight years of age, a bit younger than the others you’ll notice, light-brown shoulder-length hair. Last seen with her mother in a Princes Street store. The mother says that the girl simply disappeared. One minute there, the next minute gone, as was the case with the second victim.’
Gill Templer, thinking this over later, found it curious. The girls could not themselves have been abducted actually in the shops. That would have been impossible without screams, without witnesses. One member of the public had come forward to say that a girl resembling Mary Andrews – the second victim – had been seen by him climbing the steps from the National Gallery up towards The Mound. She had been alone, and had seemed happy enough. In which case, Gill mused, the girl had sneaked away from her mother. But why? For some secret rendezvous with someone she had known, someone who had turned out to be her killer? In that case, it seemed likely that all the girls had known their murderer, so they had to have something in common. Different schools, different friends, different ages. What was the common denominator?
She admitted defeat when her head started to hurt. Besides, she had reached John’s street and had other things to think about. He had sent her here to collect some clean clothes for his release, and to see if there were any mail, as well as to check that the central heating was working still. He had given her his key, and as she climbed the stairs, pinching her nose against the pervasive smell of cats, she felt a bond between John Rebus and herself. She wondered if the relationship were about to turn serious. He was a nice man, but a little hung-up, a little secretive. Maybe that was what she liked.
She opened his door, scooped up the few letters lying on the hall-carpet, and made a quick tour of the flat. Standing by the bedroom door, she recalled the passion of that night, the odour of which seemed to cling in the air still.
The pilot-light was lit. He would be surprised to learn that. What a lot of books he had, but then his wife had been an English teacher. She lifted some of them off the floor and arranged them on the empty shelves of the wall-unit. In the kitchen, she made herself some coffee and sat down to drink it black, looking over the mail. One bill, one circular, and one typed letter, posted in Edinburgh and three days ago at that. She stuffed the letters into her bag and went to inspect the wardrobe. Samantha’s room, she noted, was still locked. More memories pushed safely away. Poor John.
Jim Stevens had far too much work to do. The Edinburgh Strangler was proving himself a meaty individual. You couldn’t ignore the bastard, even if you felt you had better things to do. Stevens had a staff of three working with him on the newspaper’s daily reports and features. Child abuse in Britain today was the flavour of tomorrow’s piece. The figures were horrifying enough, but more horrifying yet was the sense of biding time, waiting for the dead girl to turn up. Waiting for the next one to go missing. Edinburgh was a ghost town. Children were kept indoors, those allowed out scuttling through the streets like creatures under chase. Stevens wanted to turn his attentions to the drugs case, the mounting evidence, the police connection. He wanted to, but there simply was not the time. Tom Jameson was on his back every hour of the day, roaming through the office. Where’s that copy, Jim? It’s about time you earned your keep, Jim. When’s the next briefing, Jim? Stevens was burned out by the end of each and every day. He decided that his work on the Rebus case had to stop for the moment. Which was a pity, because with the police at full stretch working on the murders, the field was left wide open for any and all other crimes, including pushing drugs. The Edinburgh Mafia must be having a field-day. He had used the story of the Leith ‘bordello’, hoping for some information in return, but the big boys appeared not to be playing. Well, sod them. His time would come.
When she arrived in the ward, Rebus was reading through a Bible, courtesy of the hospital. When the Sister had found out about his request, she had asked him if he wished to speak to a priest or a minister, but this offer he had declined strenuously. He was quite content – more than content – to flick through some of the better passages in the Old Testament, refreshing his memory of their power and their moral strength. He read the stories of Moses, Samson, and David, before coming to the Book of Job. Here he found a power he could not remember having encountered before:
When an innocent man suddenly dies, God laughs.
God gave the world to the wicked.
He made all the judges blind,
And if God didn’t do it, who did?
If I smile and try to forget my pain,
All my suffering comes back to haunt me;
I know that God does hold me guilty.
Since I am held guilty, why should I bother?
No soap can wash away my sins.
Rebus felt his spine shiver, though the ward itself was oppressively warm, and his throat cried out for water. As he poured some of the tepid liquid into a plastic beaker, he saw Gill coming towards him on quieter heels than previously. She was smiling, bringing what joy there was into the ward with her. A few of the men eyed her appreciatively. Rebus felt glad, all of a sudden, to be leaving this place today. He put the Bible aside and greeted her with a kiss on the nape of her neck.
‘What have you got there?’
He took the parcel from her and found it to contain his change of clothes.
‘Thanks,’ he said. ‘I didn’t think this shirt was clean though.’
‘It wasn’t.’ She laughed and pulled across a chair. ‘Nothing was. I’d to wash and iron all your clothes. They constituted a health hazard.’
‘You’re an angel,’ he said, putting the parcel aside.
‘Speaking of which, what were you reading in the book?’ She tapped the red, fake-leather binding of the Bible.
‘Oh, nothing much. Job, actually. I read it once a long time ago. It seems more frightening now though. The man who begins to doubt, who shouts out against his God, looking for a response, and who gets one. “God gave the world to the wicked,” he says at one point, and “Why should I bother?” at another.’
‘It sounds interesting. But he goes on bothering?’
‘Yes, that’s the incredible thing.’
Tea arrived, the young nurse handing Gill her cup. There was a plate of biscuits for them.
‘I’ve brought you some letters from the flat, and here’s your key.’ She held the small Yale key towards him, but he shook his head.
‘Keep it,’ he said, ‘please. I’ve got a spare one.’
They studied one another.
‘All right,’ Gill said finally. ‘I will. Thanks.’ With that, she handed him the three letters. He sorted through them in a second.
‘He’s started sending them by mail, I see.’ Rebus tore open the latest bulle
tin. ‘This guy,’ he said, ‘is haunting me. Mister Knot, I call him. My own personal anonymous crank.’
Gill looked interested, as Rebus read through the letter. It was longer than usual.
YOU STILL HAVEN’T GUESSED, HAVE YOU? YOU’VE NO IDEAS. NOT AN IDEA IN YOUR HEAD. AND IT’S ALMOST OVER NOW, ALMOST OVER. DON’T SAY I’VE NOT GIVEN YOU A CHANCE. YOU CAN NEVER SAY THAT. SIGNED
Rebus pulled a small matchstick cross out of the envelope.
‘Ah, Mister Cross today, I see. Well, thank God he’s nearly finished. Getting bored, I suppose.’
‘What is all this, John?’
‘Haven’t I told you about my anonymous letters? It’s not a very exciting story.’
‘How long has this been going on?’ Gill, having studied the letter, was now examining the envelope.
‘Six weeks. Maybe a little longer. Why?’
‘Well, it’s just that this letter was posted on the day Helen Abbot went missing.’
‘Oh?’ Rebus reached for the envelope and looked at its postmark. ‘Edinburgh, Lothian, Fife, Borders,’ it read. A big enough area. He thought again of Michael.
‘I don’t suppose you can remember when you received the other letters?’
‘What are you getting at, Gill?’ He looked up at her, and saw a professional policewoman suddenly staring back at him. ‘For Christ’s sake, Gill. This case is getting to all of us. We’re all beginning to see ghosts.’
‘I’m just curious, that’s all.’ She was reading the letter again. It was not the usual crank’s voice, nor a crank’s style. That was what worried her. And now that Rebus thought about it, the notes had seemed to appear around the time of each abduction, hadn’t they? Had there been a connection of some kind staring him in the face all this time? He had been very myopic indeed, had been wearing a carthorse’s blinkers. Either that or it was all a monstrous coincidence.
‘It’s just a coincidence, Gill.’