10 Great Rebus Novels (John Rebus)

by Ian Rankin

  Rebus shrugged. ‘Why not?’

  Out in the concourse, Watkiss was standing by one of the large windows, relishing a cigarette and listening to his solicitor. Then the two men started to walk away.

  ‘Tell you what,’ said Rebus, ‘I’ve changed my mind. Let’s skip Watkiss for the moment.’

  ‘Okay,’ said Flight. ‘You’re the expert after all.’ He saw the sour look on Rebus’s face and laughed. ‘Don’t worry about it,’ he said. ‘I know you’re no expert.’

  ‘That’s very reassuring, George,’ Rebus said without conviction. He stared after Watkiss, thinking: And I’m not the only one leaving court without conviction.

  Flight laughed again, but behind his smile he was still more than a little curious about Rebus’s action in the courtroom, walking out into the court like that to peer up at the public gallery. But if Rebus didn’t want to talk about it, then that was his privilege. Flight could bide his time. ‘So what now?’ he asked.

  Rebus was rubbing his jaw. ‘My dental appointment,’ he said.

  Anthony Morrison, who insisted that they call him Tony, was much younger than Rebus had been anticipating. No more than thirty-five, he had an underdeveloped body, so that his adult head seemed to have outgrown the rest of him. Rebus was aware that he was staring at Morrison with more than common interest. The scrubbed and shiny face, the tufts of bristle on chin and cheekbone where a razor had failed to fulfil its duties, the trimmed hair and keening eyes: in the street, he would have taken Morrison for a sixth-year pupil. Certainly, for a pathologist, albeit a dental pathologist, the man was in stark contrast to Philip Cousins.

  On learning that Rebus was Scottish, Morrison had started on about the debt modern-day pathology owed to the Scots, ‘men like Glaister and Littlejohn and Sir Sydney Smith’ though the latter, Morrison had to admit, had been born in the Antipodes. He then said that his own father had been a Scotsman, a surgeon, and asked if Rebus knew that the earliest British Chair of Forensic Medicine had been founded in Edinburgh. Rebus, swept away by the welter of facts, said that this was news to him.

  Morrison showed them into his office with an enthusiastic bounce to his walk. Once inside, however, the dentist’s demeanour changed from social to professional.

  ‘He’s been busy again,’ he said without preamble, leading them to the wall behind his desk, where several ten by eight colour and black and white photographs had been pinned. They showed precise close-ups of the bite marks left on Jean Cooper’s stomach. Arrows had been drawn in, leading from particular spots on certain photographs out to where pinned notes gave Morrison’s technical summary of his findings.

  ‘I know what to look for now, of course,’ he said, ‘so it didn’t take long to establish that these are probably the same teeth used in the previous attacks. A pattern is also emerging, however, perhaps a disturbing one.’ He went to his desk and returned with more photographs. ‘These are from victim number one. You’ll notice that the indents left by the teeth are less marked. They grow a little more marked by victims two and three. And now –’ he pointed to the current crop of pictures.

  ‘They’ve got even deeper,’ Rebus answered. Morrison beamed at him.

  ‘Quite right.’

  ‘So he’s becoming more violent.’

  ‘If you can term an attack made on someone who’s already dead “violent”, then yes, Inspector Rebus, he’s getting more violent, or perhaps more unstable would be a better way of phrasing it.’ Rebus and Flight exchanged a glance. ‘Apart from the change in the relative depth of the bite marks, there’s little I can add to my previous findings. The teeth are quite likely to be prosthetic –’

  Rebus interrupted. ‘You mean false?’ Morrison nodded. ‘How can you tell?’

  Morrison beamed again. The prodigy who liked to show off in front of his teachers. ‘How can I best explain this to a layman?’ He seemed to consider his own question for a moment. ‘Well, one’s own teeth – your own, for example, Inspector Rebus – and by the way, you should get them seen to – they get a little ragged over time. The cutting edge gets chipped and worn. The edge on false teeth is more likely to be smoother, more rounded. Less of an edge to the front teeth especially, and less chips and cracks.’

  Rebus, lips closed, was running his tongue over his teeth. It was true, they had the serrated feel of a workman’s saw. He hadn’t visited a dentist in ten years or more, had never felt the need. But now Morrison had commented on them. Did they really look so awful?

  ‘So,’ Morrison continued, ‘for that reason, as well as for several others, I would say the killer has false teeth. But he also has very curious teeth indeed.’

  ‘Oh?’ Rebus tried to speak without showing Morrison any more of his own decaying mouth.

  ‘I’ve already explained this to Inspector Flight,’ Morrison paused so that Flight could nod agreement of this, ‘but briefly, the upper set has a greater biting curve than the lower set. From my measurements, I conclude that the person in possession of these teeth must have quite a strangely shaped face. I did draw some sketches, but I’ve managed to come up with something better. I’m glad you’ve come this afternoon.’ He walked over to a cupboard and opened it. Rebus looked to Flight, who merely shrugged. Morrison was turning towards them again, his right hand supporting a large object covered by an inverted brown-paper bag.

  ‘Behold,’ he said, lifting the bag from the object. ‘I bring you the head of the Wolfman!’

  There was silence in the room, so that the traffic noise from outside became conspicuous. Neither Rebus nor Flight could think of anything immediately to say. Instead, they walked across to meet with the chuckling Morrison, who was regarding his creation with a measure of glee. There was a squeal of suddenly braking tyres outside.

  ‘The Wolfman,’ Morrison repeated. He was holding the cast of a human head, constructed so far as Rebus could ascertain from pale pink plaster. ‘You can ignore the idea from the nose upwards, if you prefer,’ said Morrison. ‘It’s fairly speculative, based on mean measurements taking into account the jaw. But the jaw itself is, I believe, pretty accurate.’

  And a strange jaw it was. The upper teeth jutted out from the mouth, so that the lips over them and the skin below the nose was stretched and bulging. The lower jaw seemed tucked in beneath in what seemed to Rebus a Neanderthal display, to the extent that it almost disappeared. The chin had a narrow, pinched look and the cheekbones were swollen in a line with the nose, but concave as the face extended downwards. It was an extraordinary face, the like of which Rebus could not recall having encountered in the real world. But then this was not the real world, was it? It was a reconstruction, depending upon a measure of averages and guesswork. Flight was staring at it in fascination, as though committing the face to memory. Rebus had the chilling notion that Flight would release a photograph to the papers and charge the first poor soul he came across possessing such a physiognomy.

  ‘Would you call that deformed?’ Rebus asked.

  ‘Heavens, no,’ said Morrison with a laugh. ‘You haven’t seen some of the medical cases I’ve had to deal with. No, this couldn’t be termed deformed.’

  ‘Looks like my idea of Mr Hyde,’ commented Flight.

  Don’t mention Hyde to me, Rebus thought to himself.

  ‘Perhaps,’ said Morrison, laughing again. ‘What about you, Inspector Rebus? What are your thoughts?’

  Rebus examined the cast again. ‘It looks prehistoric.’

  ‘Ah! said Morrison enthusiastically. ‘That was what I thought at first. The jutting upper jaw especially.’

  ‘How do you know that is the upper jaw?’ asked Rebus. ‘Couldn’t it be the other way round?’

  ‘No, I’m pretty sure this is correct. The bites are fairly consistent. Apart from victim three, that is.’

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘Yes, victim three was a strange one. The lower set, that is the smaller set, seemed more extended than the upper set. As you can see from this cast, the killer would have had to make an
extraordinary contortion of his face to produce such a bite.’

  He mimed the bite for them, opening his mouth wide, lifting his head, and pushing out his lower jaw, then making a biting motion, the lower jaw doing most of the work.

  ‘In the other bites, the killer has bitten more like this.’ Again he put on a dumb show, this time drawing his lips back from his upper jaw and biting down sharply so that the upper teeth closed over the lower teeth, the teeth themselves snapping together.

  Rebus shook his head. This wasn’t making things clearer. If anything, he was growing more confused. He nodded towards the cast. ‘You really believe the man we’re looking for looks like this?’

  ‘The man or woman, yes. Of course, I may have exaggerated a little with this cast, but I’m more or less convinced.’

  Rebus had stopped listening after the first sentence. ‘What do you mean, or woman?’ he asked.

  Morrison shrugged his shoulders theatrically. ‘Again, this is something I’ve discussed with Inspector Flight. It just seemed to me that, purely on the dental evidence you understand, this head could as easily belong to a woman as to a man. The large upper set of teeth seems to me very male, judging from size and what have you, but the lower set, just as equally, seems very female. A man with a woman’s chin, or a woman with a masculine upper jaw?’ He shrugged again. ‘Take your pick.’

  Rebus looked to Flight, who was shaking his head slowly. ‘No,’ Flight said, ‘it’s a man.’

  Rebus had never considered the possibility that a woman might be behind the killings. It had never entered his head. Until now.

  A woman? Improbable, but why impossible? Flight was dismissing it out of hand, but on what grounds? Rebus had read last night that a growing number of multiple murderers were women. But could a woman have stabbed like that? Could a woman so completely have overwhelmed victims of similar height, similar strength?

  ‘I’d like to get some photographs of this,’ Flight was saying. He had taken the cast from Morrison and was studying it again.

  ‘Of course,’ Morrison said, ‘but remember, it’s only my idea of the look of the killer’s head.’

  ‘We appreciate it, Tony. Thanks for all your work.’

  Morrison shrugged modestly. He had fished for a compliment and had hooked one.

  Rebus could see that Flight was convinced by this whole piece of theatre, the unveiling of the head and so on. To Rebus it was more showmanship than tangible truth, more the stuff of courtroom melodrama. He still felt that to trap the Wolfman they had to get inside his head, not play with plaster mock-ups of it.

  His or her head.

  ‘Would the bite marks be enough to identify the killer?’

  Morrison considered this. Then nodded. ‘I think so, yes. If you can bring me the suspect, I think I can show that he or she is the Wolfman.’

  Rebus persisted, ‘But would it stand up in court?’

  Morrison folded his arms and smiled. ‘I could blind the jury with science.’ His face became serious again. ‘No, on its own I don’t think my evidence would ever be enough to convict. But as part of a larger body of such evidence, we might be in with half a chance.’

  ‘Always supposing the bastard makes it to trial,’ Flight added grimly. ‘Accidents have been known to happen in custody.’

  ‘Always supposing,’ Rebus corrected, ‘we catch him in the first place.’

  ‘That, gentlemen,’ said Morrison, ‘I leave entirely in your capable hands. Suffice to say, I look forward to introducing my friend here to the real thing.’ And he tipped the plaster head backwards and forwards and backwards again, until it seemed to Rebus that the head was mocking them, laughing and rolling its sightless eyes.

  As Morrison showed them out, he rested a hand on Rebus’s forearm. ‘I’m serious about your teeth,’ he said, ‘you should get them seen to. I could look at them myself if you like?’

  When he returned to headquarters Rebus went straight to the wash-room and, in front of a soap-spattered mirror, examined his mouth. What was Morrison talking about? His teeth looked fine. Okay, one of them had a dark line running down it, a crack perhaps, and a few were badly stained from too many cigarettes and too much tea. But they looked strong enough, didn’t they? No need for drills and piercing, grinding implements. No need for a dentist’s chair, sharp needles, and a spitting out of blood.

  Back at his designated desk he doodled on his notebook. Was Morrison just the nervous type, or was he hyperactive? Was he perhaps mad? Or was he merely dealing with the world in his own idiosyncratic way?

  So few serial killers were women. Statistically, it was unlikely. Since when had he believed in statistics? Since he had started to read psychology textbooks, last night in his hotel room after the disastrous visit to Rhona and Samantha. Kenny: what the hell was Kenny doing running around with Tommy Watkiss? His daughter’s ‘gentleman’. A smiling villain? Forget it, John. You don’t control that part of your life any more. He had to smile at this: what part of his life did he control? His work gave his life what meaning it had. He should admit defeat, tell Flight he could be of no help and return to Edinburgh, where he could be sure of his villains and his crimes: drug pedlars, protection racketeers, domestic violence, fraud.

  A murder each month, regular as the moon. It was only a saying, wasn’t it, regular as the moon? He unhooked a calendar from the wall. Portraits of Italy, donated to the station by Gino’s Sandwich Bar. Time of the month. Had there been a full moon around 16th January when Maria Watkiss was found? No, but then they reckoned she might have lain undiscovered for two or three days. Thursday 11th January had been the full moon. The full moon affected the Wolfman in the movies, didn’t it? But they had named the killer Wolfman after Wolf Street, not because he, or she, killed by the light of the full moon. Rebus was more confused than ever. And weren’t women supposedly affected by the moon, something to do with their time of the month?

  May Jessop had died on Monday 5th February, four days before another full moon. Shelley Richards had died on Wednesday 28th February, nowhere near a full moon. Morrison had said her case was unusual, the bites had seemed different. And then Jean Cooper had died on the night of Sunday 18th March, two days before the vernal equinox.

  He threw the calendar onto the desk. There was no pattern, no neat mathematical solution. Who was he trying to kid? This wasn’t the movies. The hero didn’t stumble upon the answer. There were no shortcuts. Maybe Flight was right. It was all plodding routine and forensic evidence. Psychology was no shortcut, barking at the moon was no shortcut. He couldn’t know when the Wolfman would strike again. He knew so little.

  Flight wandered exhaustedly into the room and fell onto a chair, causing it to creak in protest.

  ‘I finally got through to Cath,’ he said. ‘I put your idea to her, and she’s giving it some thought.’

  ‘That’s big of her.’

  Flight gave him a warning look and Rebus raised his hands in apology. Flight nodded towards the calendar. ‘What are you up to?’

  ‘I don’t know, nothing much. I thought there might be some pattern to the dates when the Wolfman struck.’

  ‘You mean like the stages of the moon, the equinox, that sort of thing?’ Flight was smiling. Rebus nodded slowly. ‘Hell, John, I’ve been through all that and more.’ He went to a particular manila folder and tossed it towards Rebus. ‘Take a look: I’ve tried number patterns, distance between murder sites, possible means of transport – the Wolfman’s pretty mobile, you know, I think he must have a car. I’ve tried linking the victims, checking which school they went to, which libraries they used, whether they liked sports or discos or classical bloody music. Know what? They don’t have anything in common, not a single thing linking the four of them save the fact that they were women.’

  Rebus flicked through the file. It was an impressive amount of slogging, all to no end save that of clarification. Flight hadn’t climbed the ladder to his present rank by a fluke, or by keeping in with his superiors, or by signifyi
ng greatness. He had got there by sheer hard work.

  ‘Point taken,’ said Rebus. Then, because this didn’t seem quite enough: ‘I’m impressed. Have you shown this lot to anyone else?’

  Flight shook his head. ‘It’s guesswork, John. Straw-clutching. That’s all. It would just confuse the issue. Besides, do you remember the story of the boy who cried wolf? One day, there really was a wolf there, but by then no one believed him because he’d given them so much crap before.’

  Rebus smiled. ‘Still, it’s a lot of work.’

  ‘What did you expect?’ Flight asked. ‘A chimpanzee in a whistle? I’m a good copper, John. I may be no expert, but I’d never claim to be.’

  Rebus was about to remonstrate, then frowned. ‘What’s a whistle?’ he said.

  Flight threw back his head and laughed. ‘A suit, you plonker. Whistle and flute, suit. Rhyming slang. God sakes, John, we’re going to have to educate you. Tell you what, why don’t we go out for a meal ourselves tonight? I know a good Greek restaurant in Walthamstow.’ Flight paused, a gleam in his eye. ‘I know it’s good,’ he said, ‘’cos I’ve seen a lot of bubbles coming out of it.’ His smile was inviting. Rebus thought quickly. Bubbles? Was the food gassy? Did they serve champagne? Rhyming slang. Bubbles.

  ‘Bubble and squeak,’ he said. Then a pause. ‘Greeks, right?’

  ‘Right!’ said Flight. ‘You’re catching on fast. So what about it? Or Indian, Thai, Italian, you decide.’

  But Rebus was shaking his head. ‘Sorry, George, prior engagement.’

  Flight pulled his head back. ‘No,’ he said, ‘you’re seeing her, aren’t you? That bloody psychiatrist. I forgot you told me at breakfast. You bloody Jocks, you don’t waste any time, do you? Coming down here, stealing our women.’ Flight sounded in good humour, but Rebus thought he detected something a little deeper down, a genuine sadness that the two of them couldn’t get together for a meal.

  ‘Tomorrow night, eh, George?’

  ‘Yeah,’ said Flight. ‘Tomorrow night sounds fine. One word of advice though?’