10 Great Rebus Novels (John Rebus)

by Ian Rankin

‘Ah. And that bothers you?’ Rebus nodded.

  ‘Yes, a bit.’

  ‘And that’s what you want to see me about.’

  Rebus managed a weak smile. ‘No, no, nothing like that.’

  ‘So what’s on your mind?’

  ‘I was in Glasgow today, giving evidence. I had a bit of free time and went to a flea market, the sort of place tramps go to do their messages –’

  ‘Messages?’

  ‘Their shopping,’ Rebus explained.

  ‘And?’

  ‘And there was a stall selling false teeth. Odds and sods. Top sets and bottom sets, not necessarily matching.’ He paused to let those final three words sink home. ‘Is there someplace like that in London, George?’

  Flight nodded. ‘Brick Lane for one. There’s a market there every Sunday. The main road sells fruit, veg, clothes. But there are streets off, where they sell anything they’ve got. Bric-a-brac, old rubbish. It makes for an interesting walk, but you wouldn’t buy anything.’

  ‘But you could buy false teeth there?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Flight after a moment’s thought. ‘I don’t doubt it.’

  ‘Then he’s been cleverer than we thought, hasn’t he?’

  ‘You’re saying the bite marks aren’t real?’

  ‘I’m saying they’re not the Wolfman’s teeth. The lower set smaller than the upper? You end up with a pretty strange jaw, as Doctor Morrison showed us, remember?’

  ‘How can I forget? I was going to feed the pictures to the press.’

  ‘Which is probably exactly what the Wolfman wanted. He goes to Brick Lane market, or at least to somewhere like it, and buys any upper and lower set. They don’t match, but that doesn’t matter. And he uses them to make those damned bite marks.’

  Flight seemed dismissive, but Rebus knew the man was hooked. ‘He can’t be that clever.’

  ‘Yes he can,’ persisted Rebus. ‘He’s had everything worked out from the start . . . from before the start! He’s been playing with us like we were clockwork, George.’

  ‘Then we have to wait until Sunday,’ Flight said thoughtfully. ‘Search every stall at every market, find the ones selling false teeth – there can’t be many – and ask.’

  ‘About the person who bought a set of teeth without trying them for size!’ Rebus burst out laughing. It was ridiculous. It was absolutely mad. But he was sure it was true, and he was sure the stall-holder would remember, and would give a description. Surely most of the customers would try for size. It was the best lead they’d had so far, and it might just be the only one they’d need.

  Flight was smiling too, shaking his head at the dark comic reality of it. Rebus held a closed fist in front of him, and Flight brought his open palm to rest beneath it. When Rebus opened his hand, the plastic chattering teeth fell into Flight’s palm.

  ‘Just like clockwork,’ said Rebus. ‘What’s more, we’ve got Lamb to thank.’ He thought about this. ‘But I’d rather he didn’t get to know.’

  Flight nodded. ‘Anything you say, John. Anything you say.’

  Back at his desk, Rebus sat in front of a fresh sheet of paper. The Wolfman had been too clever. Too clever by half. He thought of Lisa, of her notion that the killer might have a criminal record. It was possible. Possible, too, that the Wolfman simply knew how the police worked. So, he might be a policeman. Or work in forensics. Or be a journalist. A civil rights campaigner. Work in the law. Or write bloody scripts for television. He might just have done his reading. There were plenty of case histories in libraries and bookshops, plenty of biographies of murderers, tracing how they were caught. By studying them, you could learn how not to get caught. However hard Rebus tried he just couldn’t whittle away at the list of possibilities. The teeth might be yet another dead end. That was why they had to make the Wolfman come to them.

  He threw down his pen and reached for the telephone, trying Lisa’s number. But the phone just rang and rang and rang. Maybe she’d taken a couple of sleeping pills, or gone for a walk, or was a heavy sleeper.

  ‘You stupid prick.’

  He looked towards the open door. Cath Farraday was standing there, in her favourite position, against the jamb, arms folded. As if to let him know she’d been there for some time.

  ‘You incredibly stupid little man.’

  Rebus pinned a smile to his face. ‘Good evening, Inspector. How can I help you?’

  ‘Well,’ she said, coming into the room, ‘you can start by keeping your gob shut and your brain in gear. You never speak to the press. Never!’ She was rearing over him now, looking ready to butt him in the face. He tried to avoid her eyes, eyes sharp enough to cut a man open, and found himself staring instead at her hair. It, too, looked dangerous.

  ‘Do you understand me?’

  ‘FYTP,’ said Rebus, speaking without thinking.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Loud and clear,’ he said. ‘Yes, loud and clear.’

  She nodded slowly, not seeming completely convinced, then threw a newspaper onto the desk. He hadn’t noticed the paper till now, and glanced towards it. There was a photograph on the front, not large but large enough. It showed him talking to the reporters, Lisa standing nervously by his side. The headline was larger: WOLFMAN CAUGHT? Cath Farraday tapped the photograph.

  ‘Who’s the bimbo?’

  Rebus felt his cheeks growing red. ‘She’s a psychologist. She’s helping on the case.’

  Cath Farraday looked at Rebus as though he were something more than merely stupid, then shook her head and turned to leave. ‘Keep the paper,’ she said. ‘There are plenty more where it came from.’

  She sits with the newspaper in front of her. There are several more piled on the floor. She has the scissors in her hand. One of the reports mentions who the policeman is: Inspector John Rebus. The report calls him an ‘expert’ on serial murders. And another report mentions that standing to his left is a ‘police psychologist, Lisa Frazer’. She cuts around the photograph, then cuts another line, splitting Rebus from Frazer. Time and again she does this, until she has two new neat piles, one of John Rebus, one of Lisa Frazer. She takes one of the photographs of the psychologist and snips off her head. Then, smiling, she sits down to write a letter. A very difficult letter, but that doesn’t matter. She has all the time in the world.

  All the time.

  Churchill

  Rebus woke to his radio-alarm at seven, sat up in bed and rang Lisa. No reply. Maybe something was wrong.

  Over breakfast, he skimmed the newspapers. Two of the quality titles carried bold front page stories recounting the capture of the Wolfman, but they were couched in speculative prose: Police are believed . . . it is thought that . . .; Police may have already captured the evil cut-throat killer. Only the tabloids carried pictures of Rebus at his little press conference. Even they, despite the shouting headlines, were being cagey; probably they didn’t believe it themselves. That didn’t matter. What mattered was that somewhere the Wolfman might be reading about his capture.

  His. There was that word again. Rebus couldn’t help but think of the Wolfman as a man, yet part of him was wary of narrowing the possible identity in this way. There was still nothing to indicate that it could not be a woman. He needed to keep an open mind. And did the sex of the beast really matter? Actually yes, probably it did. What was the use of women waiting hours just so that they could travel home from a pub or party in a mini-cab driven by another woman, if the killer they were so afraid of turned out to be a woman? All over London people were taking protective measures. Housing estates were patrolled by neighbourhood vigilantes. One group had already beaten up a completely innocent stranger who’d wandered onto the estate because he was lost and needed directions. His crime? The estate was white, and the stranger was coloured. Flight had told Rebus how prevalent racism was in London, ‘especially the south-east corner. Go into some of those estates with a tan and you’ll end up being nutted.’ Rebus had encountered it already, thanks to Lamb’s own particular brand of xenophobia
.

  Of course, there wasn’t nearly so much racism in Scotland. There was no need: the Scots had bigotry instead.

  He finished the papers and went to HQ. It was early yet, a little after half past eight. A few of the murder team were busy at their desks, but the smaller offices were empty. The office Rebus had taken over was stuffy, and he opened the windows. The day was mild, a slight breeze wafting in. He could hear the distant sound of a computer printer, of telephones starting to ring. Outside, the traffic flowed in slow motion, a dull rumbling, nothing more. Without realising he was doing it, Rebus rested his head on his arms. This close to the desk, he could smell wood and varnish, mixed with pencil-lead. It reminded him of primary school.

  A knock, echoing somewhere, jarred his sleep. Then a cough, not a necessary cough, a diplomatic cough.

  ‘Excuse me, sir.’

  Rebus lifted his head sharply from the desk. A WPC was standing, her head around the door, looking in at him. He had been sleeping with his mouth open. There was a trail of saliva on the side of his mouth, and a tiny pool of the stuff on the surface of the desk.

  ‘Yes,’ he said, still muzzy. ‘What is it?’

  A sympathetic smile. They weren’t all like Lamb, he had to remember that. On a case like this, you became a team, came to feel as close to the others as you would to your best friend. Closer than that even, sometimes.

  ‘Someone to see you, sir. Well, she wants to speak to someone about the murders, and you’re about the only one here.’

  Rebus looked at his watch. Eight forty-five. He hadn’t been asleep long then. Good. He felt he could confide in this WPC. ‘How do I look?’ he asked.

  ‘Well,’ she said, ‘one side of your face is red from where you’ve been lying on it, but otherwise you’ll do.’ Then the smile again. A good deed in a naughty world.

  ‘Thanks,’ he said. ‘Okay, send her in, please.’

  ‘Right you are.’ The head disappeared, but only momentarily. ‘Can I get you a coffee or something?’

  ‘Coffee would hit the spot,’ said Rebus. ‘Thanks.’

  ‘Milk? Sugar?’

  ‘Just milk.’

  The head disappeared. The door closed. Rebus tried to look busy: it wasn’t difficult. There was a mound of fresh paperwork to be gone through. Lab reports and the like. Results (negative) from door-to-door on the Jean Cooper murder from the interviews with everyone who’d been in the pub with her that Sunday night. He picked up the first sheet and held it in front of him. There was a knock on the door, so soft that he only just caught it.

  ‘Come in,’ he called.

  The door opened slowly. A woman was standing there, looking around her as though her timidity might be about to turn to fright. She was in her late twenties, with closely cropped brown hair, but other than that she defied description. She was more a collection of ‘nots’ than anything else: not tall, but not exactly short; not slim, but by no means overweight, and her face lacked anything approaching a personality.

  ‘Hello,’ Rebus said, half-rising to his feet. He indicated a chair on the other side of the desk, and watched as, with breathtaking slowness, she closed the door, testing it afterwards to make sure it was going to stay shut. Only then did she turn to look at him – or at least towards him, for she had a way of focusing just to the side of his face, so that her eyes never met his.

  ‘Hello,’ she said. She seemed ready to stand throughout proceedings. Rebus, who had seated himself again, gestured once more with his hand.

  ‘Please. Sit down.’

  At last, she poised herself above the chair and lowered herself into it. Rebus had the feeling that he was the boss at some job interview, and that she wanted the job so much she’d worked herself into a good and proper state about it.

  ‘You wanted to speak to someone,’ he said, in what he hoped were soft and sympathetic tones.

  ‘Yes,’ she said.

  Well, it was a start. ‘My name is Inspector Rebus. And yours is . . .?’

  ‘Jan Crawford.’

  ‘Okay, Jan. Now, how can I help you?’

  She swallowed, gazing at the window behind Rebus’s left ear. ‘It’s the killings,’ she said. ‘They call him the Wolfman.’

  Rebus was undecided. Maybe she was a crank, but she didn’t seem like one. She just seemed jumpy. Perhaps she had good reason.

  ‘That’s right,’ he cajoled. ‘The papers call him that.’

  ‘Yes, they do.’ She had become suddenly excitable, the words spilling from her. ‘And they said last night on the radio, this morning in the paper . . .’ She pulled a newspaper clipping from her bag. It was the photograph of Rebus and Lisa Frazer. ‘This is you, isn’t it?’

  Rebus nodded.

  ‘Then you’ll know. I mean, you must. The paper says he’s done it again, they’re saying you’ve caught him, or maybe you’ve caught him, nobody’s sure.’ She paused, breathing heavily. All the time her eyes were on the window. Rebus kept his mouth shut, letting her calm down. Her eyes were filling, becoming glossy with tears. As she spoke, one droplet squirmed out from the corner of an eye and crept down towards her lips, her chin. ‘Nobody’s sure whether you’ve caught him, but I could be sure. At least, I think I can be sure. I didn’t get, I mean, I’ve been scared so long now, and I haven’t said anything. I didn’t want anybody to know, my mum and dad to know. I just wanted to shut it out, but that’s stupid, isn’t it?, when he could do it again if he’s not caught. So I decided to, I mean, maybe I can . . .’ She made to stand up, thought better of it, and squeezed her hands together instead.

  ‘Can what, Miss Crawford?’

  ‘Identify him,’ she said, her voice almost a whisper now. She searched in the sleeve of her blouse, found a tissue, and blew her nose. The tear dripped onto one knee. ‘Identify him,’ she repeated, ‘if he’s here, if you’ve caught him.’

  Rebus was staring hard at her now, and at last his eyes found hers. Her brown eyes, covered with a film of liquid. He’d seen cranks before, plenty of them. Maybe she was, and maybe she wasn’t.

  ‘What do you mean, Jan?’

  She sniffed again, turned her eyes to the window, swallowed. ‘He almost got me,’ she said. ‘I was the first, before all the others. He almost got me. I was almost the first.’

  And then she lifted her head. At first Rebus couldn’t understand why. But then he saw. Under her right ear, running in a crescent shape towards her white throat, there was a dark pink scar, no more than an inch long.

  The kind of scar you made with a knife.

  The first intended kill of the Wolfman.

  ‘What do you think?’

  They faced one another across the desk. Four inches of fresh paperwork had appeared in the in-tray, threatening to overbalance the pile and send it slewing down across the floor. Rebus was eating a cheese and onion sandwich from Gino’s. Comfort food. One of the nice things about being a bachelor was that you could eat, without fear of regrets, onions, Branston pickle, huge sausage, egg and tomato sauce sandwiches, curried beans on toast and all the other delicacies favoured by the male.

  ‘What do you think then?’

  Flight sipped from a can of cola, giving slight closed-mouth burps between times. He had listened to Rebus’s story and had met with Jan Crawford. She had now been taken to an interview room to be fed tea and sympathy by a WPC while a detective took her statement. Flight and Rebus both hoped she would not have to deal with Lamb.

  ‘Well?’

  Flight rubbed a knuckle against his right eye. ‘I don’t know, John. This case has gone ga-ga. You’re off telling porkies to the press, your picture’s all over the front pages, we’ve got our first – maybe not our last – copycat killing, then you come up with some idea of flea markets and false teeth. And now this.’ He opened his arms wide, pleading for help to put his world back into some semblance of order. ‘It’s all a bit much.’

  Rebus bit into the sandwich, chewing slowly. ‘But it fits the pattern, doesn’t it? From what I’ve read about
serial killers, the first attempt is often botched. They’re not quite ready, they haven’t planned well enough. Somebody screams, they panic. He didn’t have his technique honed. He didn’t go for the mouth, so she was able to scream. Then he found that human skin and muscle is tougher than it looks. He’d probably seen too many horror films, thought it was like cutting through butter. So he scraped her, but not enough to do serious damage. Maybe the knife wasn’t sharp enough, who knows. The point is, he got scared and he ran.’

  Flight merely shrugged. ‘And she didn’t come forward,’ he said. ‘That’s what bothers me.’

  ‘She’s come forward now. Tell me this, George. How many rape victims do we actually see? I heard tell somebody reckons it’s less than one in three. Jan Crawford is a timid little woman, scared half to death. All she wanted to do was forget about it, but she couldn’t. Her conscience wouldn’t let her. Her conscience brought her to us.’

  ‘I still don’t like it, John. Don’t ask me why.’

  Rebus finished the sandwich and made a show of wiping his hands together. ‘Your copper’s instinct?’ he suggested, just a little sarcastically.

  ‘Maybe,’ said Flight, appearing to miss, or at least to ignore, Rebus’s tone. ‘There’s just something about her.’

  ‘Trust me. I’ve talked to her. I’ve been through it all with her. And, George, I believe her. I think it was him. Twelfth of December last year. That was his first time.’

  ‘Maybe not,’ said Flight. ‘Maybe there are others who haven’t come forward.’

  ‘Maybe. What matters is, one did.’

  ‘I still don’t see what good this does us.’ Flight picked up a sheet of paper from the desk and read the scribbled details. ‘“He was about six feet tall, white, and I think he had brown hair. He was running away with his back to me, so I couldn’t see his face.’” Flight put down the paper. ‘That narrows things down nicely, doesn’t it?’

  Yes, Rebus wanted to say, it does. Because now I think I’m dealing with a man, and before this I wasn’t sure. But he kept that particular thought to himself. He’d given George Flight enough grief in the past few days.