by Ian Rankin
The survivors of Villefranche had been horrified.
Even more extraordinary to Rebus’s mind, the British had apprehended a couple of German officers involved in the massacre, but had refused to hand them over to the French authorities, returning them to Germany instead, where they lived long and prosperous lives. If Linzstek had been captured then, there would have been none of the present commotion.
Politics: it was all down to politics. Rebus looked up and Kirstin Mede was standing there. She was tall, deftly constructed, and immaculately dressed. She wore make-up the way women usually did only in fashion adverts. Today she was wearing a check two-piece, the skirt just touching her knees, and long gold-coloured earrings. She had already opened her briefcase and was pulling out a sheaf of papers.
‘Latest translations,’ she said.
‘Thanks.’
Rebus looked down at a note he’d made to himself: ‘Corrèze trip necessary??’ Well, the Farmer had said he could have whatever he wanted. He looked up at Kirstin Mede and wondered if the budget would stretch to a tour guide. She was sitting opposite him, putting on half-moon reading glasses.
‘Can I get you a coffee?’ he asked.
‘I’m a bit pushed today. I just wanted you to see these.’ She laid two sheets of paper on his desk so that they faced him. One sheet was the photocopy of a typed report, in German. The second sheet was her translation. Rebus looked at the German.
‘– Der Beginn der Vergeltungsmassnahmen hat ein merkbares Aufatmen hervorgerufen und die Stimmung sehr günstig beeinflusst.’
‘The beginning of reprisals,’ he read, ‘has brought about a marked improvement in morale, with the men now noticeably more relaxed.’
‘It’s supposed to be from Linzstek to his commander,’ she explained.
‘But no signature?’
‘Just the typed name, underlined.’
‘So it doesn’t help us identify Linzstek.’
‘No, but remember what we were talking about? It gives a reason for the assault.’
‘A touch of R&R for the lads?’
Her look froze him. ‘Sorry,’ he said, raising his hands. ‘Far too glib. And you’re right, it’s almost like the Lieutenant is trying to justify the whole thing in print.’
‘For posterity?’
‘Maybe. After all, they’d just started being the losing side.’ He looked at the other papers. ‘Anything else?’
‘Some further reports, nothing too exciting. And some of the eyewitness testimony.’ She looked at him with pale grey eyes. ‘It gets to you after a while, doesn’t it?’
Rebus looked at her and nodded.
The female survivor of the massacre lived in Juillac, and had been questioned recently by local police about the man in charge of the German troops. Her story hadn’t changed from the one she’d told at the trial: she’d seen his face only for a few seconds, and looking down from the attic of a three-storey house. She’d been shown a recent photo of Joseph Lintz, and had shrugged.
‘Maybe,’ she’d said. ‘Yes, maybe.’
Which would, Rebus knew, be turfed out by the Procurator-Fiscal, who knew damned well what any defence lawyer with half a brain would do with it.
‘How’s the case coming?’ Kirstin Mede asked. Maybe she’d seen some look cross his face.
‘Slowly. The problem is all this stuff.’ He waved towards the strewn desk. ‘On the one hand I’ve got all this, and on the other I’ve got a wee old man from the New Town. The two don’t seem to go together.’
‘Have you met him?’
‘Once or twice.’
‘What’s he like?’
What was Joseph Lintz like? He was cultured, a linguist. He’d even been a Professor at the university, back in the early 70s. Only for a year or two. His own explanation: ‘I was filling a vacuum until they could find someone of greater standing’. He’d been Professor of German. He’d lived in Scotland since 1945 or ’46 – he was vague about exact dates, blaming his memory. His early life was vague, too. He said papers had been destroyed. The Allies had had to create a duplicate set for him. There was only Lintz’s word that these new papers were anything but an official record of lies he’d told and which had been believed. Lintz’s story – birth in Alsace; parents and relatives all dead; forced enlistment in the SS. Rebus liked the touch about joining the SS. It was the sort of admission that would make officials decide: he’s been honest about his involvement with that, so he’s probably being honest about the other details. There was no actual record of a Joseph Lintz serving with any SS regiment, but then the SS had destroyed a lot of their own records once they’d seen the way the war was headed. Lintz’s war record was vague, too. He mentioned shell-shock to explain the gaps in his memory. But he was vehement that he had never been called Linzstek and had never served in the Corrèze region of France.
‘I was in the east,’ he would say. ‘That’s where the Allies found me, in the east.’
The problem was that there was no convincing explanation as to how Lintz had found himself in the United Kingdom. He said he’d asked if he could go there and start a new life. He didn’t want to return to Alsace, wanted to be as far away from the Germans as possible. He wanted water between him and them. Again, there was no documentation to back this up, and meantime the Holocaust investigators had come up with their own ‘evidence’, which pointed to Lintz’s involvement in the ‘Rat Line’.
‘Have you ever heard of something called the Rat Line?’ Rebus had asked at their first meeting.
‘Of course,’ Joseph Lintz had said. ‘But I never had anything to do with it.’
Lintz: in the drawing-room of his Heriot Row home. An elegant four-storey Georgian edifice. A huge house for a man who’d never married. Rebus had said as much. Lintz had merely shrugged, as was his privilege. Where had the money come from?
‘I’ve worked hard, Inspector.’
Maybe so, but Lintz had purchased the house in the late-1950s on a lecturer’s salary. A colleague from the time had told Rebus everyone in the department suspected Lintz of having a private income. Lintz denied this.
‘Houses were cheaper back then, Inspector. The fashion was for country properties and bungalows.’
Joseph Lintz: barely five foot tall, bespectacled. Parchment hands with liver spots. One wrist sported a prewar Ingersoll watch. Glass-fronted bookcases lining his drawing-room. Charcoal-coloured suits. An elegant way about him, almost feminine: the way he lifted a cup to his lips; the way he flicked specks from his trousers.
‘I don’t blame the Jews,’ he’d said. ‘They’d implicate everyone if they could. They want the whole world feeling guilty. Maybe they’re right.’
‘In what way, sir?’
‘Don’t we all have little secrets, things we’re ashamed of?’ Lintz had smiled. ‘You’re playing their game, and you don’t even know it.’
Rebus had pressed on. ‘The two names are very similar, aren’t they? Lintz, Linzstek.’
‘Naturally, or they’d have absolutely no grounds for their accusations. Think, Inspector: wouldn’t I have changed my name more radically? Do you credit me with a modicum of intelligence?’
‘More than a modicum.’ Framed diplomas on the walls, honorary degrees, photos taken with university chancellors, politicians. When the Farmer had learned a little more about Joseph Lintz, he’d cautioned Rebus to ‘ca’ canny’. Lintz was a patron of the arts – opera, museums, galleries – and a great giver to charities. He was a man with friends. But also a solitary man, someone who was happiest when tending graves in Warriston Cemetery. Dark bags under his eyes, pushing down upon the angular cheeks. Did he sleep well?
‘Like a lamb, Inspector.’ Another smile. ‘Of the sacrificial kind. You know, I don’t blame you, you’re only doing your job.’
‘You seem to have no end of forgiveness, Mr Lintz.’
A careful shrug. ‘Do you know Blake’s words, Inspector? “And through all eternity/ I forgive you, you forgive me.” I’m not so sure
I can forgive the media.’ This last word voiced with a distaste which manifested itself as a twist of facial muscles.
‘Is that why you’ve set your lawyer on them?’
‘“Set” makes me sound like a hunter, Inspector. This is a newspaper, with a team of expensive lawyers at its beck and call. Can an individual hope to win against such odds?’
‘Then why bother trying?’
Lintz thumped both arms of his chair with clenched fists. ‘For the principle, man!’ Such outbursts were rare and short-lived, but Rebus had experienced enough of them to know that Lintz had a temper …
‘Hello?’ Kirstin Mede said, angling her head to catch his gaze.
‘What?’
She smiled. ‘You were miles away.’
‘Just across town,’ he replied.
She pointed to the papers. ‘I’ll leave these here, okay? If you’ve any questions …’
‘Great, thanks.’ Rebus got to his feet.
‘It’s okay, I know my way out.’
But Rebus was insistent. ‘Sorry, I’m a bit …’ He waved his hands around his head.
‘As I said, it gets to you after a while.’
As they walked back through the CID office, Rebus could feel eyes following them. Bill Pryde came up, preening, wanting to be introduced. He had curly fair hair and thick blond eyelashes, his nose large and freckled, mouth small and topped with a ginger moustache – a fashion accessory he could well afford to lose.
‘A pleasure,’ he said, taking Kirstin Mede’s hand. Then, to Rebus: ‘Makes me wish we’d swopped.’
Pryde was working on the Mr Taystee case: an ice-cream man found dead in his van. Engine left running in a lockup, looking initially like suicide.
Rebus steered Kirstin Mede past Pryde, kept them moving. He wanted to ask her out. He knew she wasn’t married, but thought there might be a boyfriend in the frame. Rebus was thinking: what would she like to eat – French or Italian? She spoke both those languages. Maybe stick to something neutral: Indian or Chinese. Maybe she was vegetarian. Maybe she didn’t like restaurants. A drink then? But Rebus didn’t drink these days.
‘… So what do you think?’
Rebus started. Kirstin Mede had asked him something.
‘Sorry?’
She laughed, realising he hadn’t been listening. He began to apologise, but she shook it off. ‘I know,’ she said, ‘you’re a bit …’ And she waved her hands around her head. He smiled. They’d stopped walking. They were facing one another. Her briefcase was tucked under one arm. It was the moment to ask her for a date, any kind of date – let her choose.
‘What’s that?’ she said suddenly. It was a shriek, Rebus had heard it, too. It had come from behind the door nearest them, the door to the women’s toilets. They heard it again. This time it was followed by some words they understood.
‘Help me, somebody!’
Rebus pushed open the door and ran in. A WPC was pushing at a cubicle door, trying to force it with her shoulder. From behind the door, Rebus could hear choking noises.
‘What is it?’ he said.
‘Picked her up twenty minutes ago, she said she needed the loo.’ The policewoman’s cheeks wore a flush of anger and embarrassment.
Rebus grabbed the top of the door and hauled himself up, peering over and down on to a figure seated on the pan. The woman there was young, heavily made-up. She sat with her back against the cistern, so that she was staring up at him, but glassily. And her hands were busy. They were busy pulling a streamer of toilet-paper from the roll, stuffing it into her mouth.
‘She’s gagging,’ Rebus said, sliding back down. ‘Stand back’. He shouldered the door, tried again. Stood back and hit the lock with the heel of his shoe. The door flew open, catching the seated woman on the knees. He pushed his way in. Her face was turning purple.
‘Grab her hands,’ he told the WPC. Then he started pulling the stream of white paper from her mouth, feeling like nothing so much as a cheap stage-show magician. There seemed to be half a roll in there, and as Rebus caught the WPC’s eye, both of them let out a near-involuntary laugh. The woman had stopped struggling. Her hair was mousy-brown, lank and greasy. She wore a black skiing jacket and a tight black skirt. Her bare legs were mottled pink, bruising at one knee where the door had connected. Her bright red lipstick was coming off on Rebus’s fingers. She had been crying, was crying still. Rebus, feeling guilty about the sudden laughter, crouched down so that he could look into her makeup-streaked eyes. She blinked, then held his gaze, coughing as the last of the paper was extracted.
‘She’s foreign,’ the policewoman was explaining. ‘Doesn’t seem to speak English.’
‘So how come she told you she needed the toilet?’
‘There are ways, aren’t there?’
‘Where did you find her?’
‘Down the Pleasance, brazen as you like.’
‘That’s a new patch on me.’
‘Me, too.’
‘Nobody with her?’
‘Not that I saw.’
Rebus took the woman’s hands. He was still crouching in front of her, aware of her knees brushing his chest.
‘Are you all right?’ She just blinked. He made his face show polite concern. ‘Okay now?’
She nodded slightly. ‘Okay,’ she said, her voice husky. Rebus felt her fingers. They were cold. He was thinking: junkie? A lot of the working girls were. But he’d never come across one who couldn’t speak English. Then he turned her hands, saw her wrists. Recent zigzag scar tissue. She didn’t resist as he pushed up one sleeve of her jacket. The arm was a mass of similar inflictions.
‘She’s a cutter.’
The woman was talking now, babbling incoherently. Kirstin Mede, who had been standing back from proceedings, stepped forward. Rebus looked to her.
‘It’s not anything I understand … not quite. Eastern European.’
‘Try her with something.’
So Mede asked a question in French, repeating it in three or four other languages. The woman seemed to understand what they were trying to do.
‘There’s probably someone at the uni who could help,’ Mede said.
Rebus started to stand up. The woman grabbed him by the knees, pulled him to her so that he nearly lost his balance. Her grip was tight, her face resting against his legs. She was still crying and babbling.
‘I think she likes you, sir,’ the policewoman said. They wrested her hands free, and Rebus stepped back, but she was after him at once, throwing herself forwards, like she was begging, her voice rising. There was an audience now, half a dozen officers in the doorway. Every time Rebus moved, she came after him on all fours. Rebus looked to where his exit was blocked by bodies. The cheap magician had become straight man in a comedy routine. The WPC grabbed her, pulled her back on to her feet, one arm twisted behind her back.
‘Come on,’ she said through gritted teeth. ‘Back to the cell. Show’s over, folks.’
There was scattered applause as the prisoner was marched away. She looked back once, seeking Rebus, her eyes pleading. For what, he did not know. He turned towards Kirstin Mede instead.
‘Fancy a curry some time?’
She looked at him like he was mad.
‘Two things: one, she’s a Bosnian Muslim. Two, she wants to see you again.’
Rebus stared at the man from the Slavic Studies department, who’d come here at Kirstin Mede’s request. They were talking in the corridor at St Leonard’s.
‘Bosnian?’
Dr Colquhoun nodded. He was short and almost spherical, with long black hair which was swept back either side of a bald dome. His puffy face was pockmarked, his brown suit worn and stained. He wore suede Hush Puppies – same colour as the suit. This, Rebus couldn’t help feeling, was how dons were supposed to look. Colquhoun was a mass of nervous twitches, and had yet to make eye contact with Rebus.
‘I’m not an expert on Bosnia,’ he went on, ‘but she says she’s from Sarajevo.’
‘Does sh
e say how she ended up in Edinburgh?’
‘I didn’t ask.’
‘Would you mind asking her now?’ Rebus gestured back along the corridor. The two men walked together, Colquhoun’s eyes on the floor.
‘Sarajevo was hit hard in the war,’ he said. ‘She’s twenty-two, by the way, she told me that.’
She’d looked older. Maybe she was; maybe she was lying. But as the door to the Interview Room opened and Rebus saw her again, he was struck by how unformed her face was, and he revised her age downwards. She stood up abruptly as he came in, looked like she might rush forward to him, but he held up a hand in warning, and pointed to the chair. She sat down again, hands cradling the mug of sweetened black tea. She never took her eyes off him.
‘She’s a big fan,’ the WPC said. The policewoman – same one as the toilet incident – was called Ellen Sharpe. She was sitting on the room’s other chair. There wasn’t much space in the Interview Room: a table and two chairs just about filled it. On the table were twin video recorders and a twin cassette-machine. The video camera pointed down from one wall. Rebus gestured for Sharpe to give her seat to Colquhoun.
‘Did she give you a name?’ he asked the academic.
‘She told me Candice,’ Colquhoun said.
‘You don’t believe her?’
‘It’s not exactly ethnic, Inspector.’ Candice said something. ‘She’s calling you her protector.’
‘And what am I protecting her from?’
The dialogue between Colquhoun and Candice was gruff, guttural.
‘She says firstly you protected her from herself. And now she says you have to continue.’
‘Continue protecting her?’
‘She says you own her now.’
Rebus looked at the academic, whose eyes were on Candice’s arms. She had removed her skiing jacket. Underneath she wore a ribbed, short-sleeved shirt through which her small breasts were visible. She had folded her bare arms, but the scratches and slashes were all too apparent.