10 Great Rebus Novels (John Rebus) (22 page)

‘Stevens, you’re off your bloody head. I’m serious. Go home, get some sleep, eat, have a bath, just get to hell away from me. Okay?’

‘Or you’ll do what exactly? Get your brother’s heavy friend to rough me up a little? Listen, Rebus, the game’s over. I
know
. But I don’t know all of it. You’d be wise to have me as a friend rather than as an enemy. Don’t take me for a monkey. I credit you with more sense than to do that. Don’t let me down.’

Don’t let me down

‘After all, they’ve got your daughter. You need my help. I’ve got friends everywhere. We’ve got to fight this together.’

Rebus, confused, shook his head.

‘I don’t have a bloody clue what you’re talking about, Stevens. Go home, will you?’

Jim Stevens sighed, shaking his own head ruefully. He threw his cigarette onto the pavement and stubbed it out heavily, sending little flares of burning tobacco across the concrete.

‘Well, I’m sorry, John. I really am. Michael’s going to be put behind bars for a very long time on the evidence I have against him.’

‘Evidence? Of what?’

‘His drug-pushing, of course.’

Stevens didn’t see the blow coming. It wouldn’t have helped if he had. It was a vicious, curving swipe, sweeping up from Rebus’s side and catching him very low in the stomach. The reporter coughed out a little puff of wind, then fell to his knees.

‘Liar!’

Stevens coughed and coughed. It was as if he had run a marathon. He gulped in air, staying on his knees, his arms folded in front of his belly.

‘If you say so, John, but it’s the truth anyway.’ He looked up at Rebus. ‘You mean you honestly don’t know anything about it? Nothing at all?’

‘You better have some good proof, Stevens, or I’m going to see you swing.’

Stevens hadn’t expected this, he hadn’t expected this at all.

‘Well,’ he said, ‘this puts a different complexion on everything. Christ, I need a drink. Will you join me? I think we should talk a little now, don’t you? I won’t keep you long, but I think you should know.’

And, of course, thinking back, Rebus realised that he had known, but not consciously. That day, the day of the old man’s death, of visiting the rain-soaked graveyard, of visiting Mickey, he had smelled that toffee-apple smell in the living-room. He knew now what it had been. He had thought of it then, but had been distracted. Jesus Christ. Rebus felt his whole world sinking into the morass of a personal madness. He hoped the breakdown was not far off; he couldn’t keep going on like this for much longer.

Toffee-apples, fairy-tales, Sammy, Sammy, Sammy. Sometimes it was hard to hold onto reality when that reality was overpowering. The shield came to protect you. The shield of the breakdown, of forgetting. Laughter and forgetting.

‘This round’s on me,’ said Rebus, feeling calm again.

Gill Templer knew what she had always known: there was method in the killer’s choice of girls, so he must have had access to their names prior to the abductions. That meant that the four girls had to have something in common, some way that Reeve could have picked them all out. But what? They
had checked up on everything. Certain hobbies the girls did have in common; netball, pop music, books.

Netball. Pop music. Books.

Netball. Pop music. Books.

That meant checking through netball-coaches (all women, so scratch that), record-shop workers and DJs, and bookshop-workers and librarians. Libraries.

Libraries.

Rebus had told stories to Reeve. Samantha used the city’s main lending library. So, occasionally, had the other girls. One of the girls had been seen heading up The Mound towards the library on the day she disappeared.

But Jack Morton had checked the library already. One of the men there had owned a blue Ford Escort. The suspect had been passed over. But had that initial interview been enough? She had to speak to Morton. Then she would conduct a second interview herself. She was about to look for Morton when her telephone rang.

‘Inspector Templer,’ she said to the beige mouthpiece.

‘The kid dies tonight,’ hissed a voice on the other end.

She sat bolt upright in her chair, almost causing it to topple.

‘Listen,’ she said, ‘if you’re a crank . . .’

‘Shut up, bitch. I’m no crank and you know it. I’m the real thing. Listen.’ There was a muffled cry from somewhere, the sob of a young girl. Then the hiss returned. ‘Tell Rebus tough luck. He can’t say I never gave him a chance.’

‘Listen, Reeve, I . . .’

She had not meant to say that, had not meant to let him know. But she had panicked on hearing Samantha’s cry. Now she heard another cry, the banshee cry of the madman who has been discovered. It sent the hairs on her neck climbing up each other. It froze the air around her. It was the cry of Death
itself in one of its many guises. It was a lost soul’s final triumphant scream.

‘You know,’ he gasped, his voice a mixture of joy and terror, ‘you know, you know, you know. Aren’t you clever? And you’ve got a very sexy voice, too. Maybe I’ll come for you sometime. Was Rebus a good lay? Was he? Tell him that I’ve got his baby, and she dies tonight. Got that? Tonight.’

‘Listen, I . . .’

‘No, no, no. No more from me, Miss Templer. You’ve had nearly long enough to trace this. Bye.’

Click. Brrrr.

Time to trace it. She had been stupid. She should have thought of that first; indeed, she had not thought of it at all. Perhaps Superintendent Wallace had been right. Perhaps it was not only John who was too emotionally involved in the whole affair. She felt tired and old and spent. She felt as if all the case-work was suddenly an impossible burden, all the criminals invincible. Her eyes were irritating her. She thought of putting on her glasses, her personal shield from the world.

She had to find Rebus. Or should she seek out Jack Morton first? John would have to be told of this. They had a little time, but not much. The first guess had to be the right one. Who first? Rebus or Morton? She made the decision: John Rebus.

Unnerved by Stevens’ revelations, Rebus made his way back to his flat. He needed to find out about some things. Mickey could wait. He had drawn too many bad cards in the course of his afternoon’s foot-slogging. He had to get in touch with his old employers, the Army. He had to make them see that a life was at stake, they who prized life so strangely. A lot of phone-calls might be necessary. So be it.

But the first call he made was to the hospital. Rhona was fine. That was a relief. Still, however, she had not been told of
Sammy’s abduction. Rebus swallowed hard. Had she been told of her lover’s death? She had not. Of course not. He arranged for some flowers to be sent to her. He was about to pluck up the courage to telephone the first of a long list of numbers when his own telephone rang. He let it ring for a while, but the caller was not about to let him go.

‘Hello?’

‘John! Thank God. I’ve been looking for you everywhere.’ It was Gill, sounding excited and nervous and yet trying to sound sympathetic, too. Her voice modulated wildly, and Rebus felt his heart – what was left of it for public consumption – go out to her.

‘What is it, Gill? Has anything happened?’

‘I’ve had a call from Reeve.’

Rebus’s heart pounded against the walls of its cell. ‘Tell me,’ he said.

‘Well, he just phoned up and said that he’s got Samantha.’

‘And?’

Gill swallowed hard. ‘And that he’s going to kill her tonight.’ There was a pause at Rebus’s end, strange distant sounds of movement. ‘John? Hello, John?’

Rebus stopped punching the telephone-stool. ‘Yes, I’m here. Jesus Christ. Did he say anything else?’

‘John, you really shouldn’t be on your own you know. I could –’

‘Did he say anything else?’ He was shouting now, his breath short like a runner’s.

‘Well, I . . .’

‘Yes?’

‘I let slip that we know who he is.’

Rebus sucked in his breath, examining his knuckles, noting that he had torn one of them open. He sucked blood, staring from his window. ‘What was his reaction to that?’ he said at last.

‘He went wild.’

‘I’ll bet he did. Jesus, I hope he doesn’t take it out on . . . Oh, Jesus. Why do you suppose he phoned you specifically?’ He had stopped licking his wound, and now turned his attention on his dark fingernails, tearing at them with his teeth, spitting them out across the room.

‘Well, I am Liaison Officer on the case. He may have seen me on the television or read my name in the newspapers.’

‘Or maybe he’s seen us together. He may have been following me during this whole thing.’ He looked from his window as a shabbily-dressed man shuffled his way up the street, stopping to pick up a cigarette-end. Christ, he needed a cigarette. He looked around for an ashtray, source of a few reusable butts.

‘I never thought of that.’

‘How the hell could you? We didn’t know that any of this was to do with me until . . . it was yesterday, wasn’t it? It seems like days ago. But remember, Gill, his notes were delivered by hand in the beginning.’ He lit the remnants of a cigarette, sucking in the stinging smoke. ‘He’s been so close to me, and I didn’t feel a thing, not a tingle. So much for a policeman’s sixth sense.’

‘Speaking of sixth senses, John, I’ve had a hunch.’ Gill was relieved to hear how his voice had become calmer. She felt a little calmer, too, as though they were helping each other to hang on to a crowded lifeboat in a storm-torn sea.

‘What’s that?’ Rebus slumped himself into his chair, looking around his barren room, dusty and chaotic. He saw the glass used by Michael, a plate of toast crumbs, two empty cigarette packets, and two coffee cups. He would sell this place soon, no matter how low the price. He would move well away from here. He would.

‘Libraries,’ Gill was saying, staring at her own office, the files and mounds of paperwork, the clutter of months and
years, the electric buzz in the air. ‘The one thing that all the girls, Samantha included, have in common is that they used, if irregularly, the same library, the Central Library. Reeve might have worked there once and been able to find the names he needed to fit his puzzle.’

‘That’s certainly a thought,’ said Rebus, suddenly interested. It was too much of a coincidence, surely – or was it? How better to find out about John Rebus than to get a quiet job for a few months or a few years? How better to trap young girls than by posing as a librarian? Reeve had gone undercover all right, so well-camouflaged as to be invisible.

‘It just so happens,’ Gill continued, ‘that your friend Jack Morton has been to the Central Library already. He checked up on a suspect there who owned a blue Escort. He gave the man a clean bill of health.’

‘Yes, and they gave the Yorkshire Ripper a clean bill of health on more than one occasion, didn’t they? It’s worth rechecking. What was the suspect’s name?’

‘I’ve no idea. I’ve been trying to find Jack Morton, but he’s off somewhere. John, I’ve been worried about you. Where have you been? I’ve been trying to find you.’

‘I call that a waste of police time and effort, Inspector Templer. Get your nose back to the
real
grindstone. Find Jack. Find that name.’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘I’ll be here for a while if you need me. I’ve got a few phone calls of my own to make.’

‘I hear that Rhona is stable . . .’ But Rebus had already put down his receiver. Gill sighed, rubbing at her face, desperate for some rest. She decided to arrange for someone to be sent over to John Rebus’s flat. He could not be left to fester and, perhaps, explode. Then she had to find that name. She had to find Jack Morton.

Rebus made himself some coffee, thought about going out for milk, but decided in the end to have the coffee bitter and black, the taste and the colour of his thoughts. He thought over Gill’s idea. Reeve as a librarian? It seemed improbable, unthinkable, but then everything that had happened to him of late had been unthinkable. Rationality could be a powerful enemy when you were faced with the irrational. Fight fire with fire. Accept that Gordon Reeve might have secured a job in the library; something innocuous yet essential to his plan. And suddenly, for John Rebus as for Gill, it all seemed to fit. ‘For those who read between the times.’ For those who are involved with books between one time (The Cross) and another (the present). My God, was nothing arbitrary in this life? No, nothing at all. Behind the seemingly irrational lay the clear golden path of the design. Behind this world there was another. Reeve was in the library: Rebus felt sure of that. It was five o’clock. He could reach the library just as it was closing. But would Gordon Reeve still be there, or would he have moved on now that he had his final victim?

But Rebus knew that Sammy was not Reeve’s final victim. She was not a ‘victim’ at all. She was merely another device. There could be only one victim: Rebus himself. And for that reason Reeve would still be nearby, still within Rebus’s reach. For Reeve wanted to be found, but slowly, a sort of cat-and-mouse game in reverse. Rebus thought back to the game of cat-and-mouse as played in his schooldays. Sometimes the boy being chased by a girl, or the girl being chased by a boy, would want to be caught, because he or she felt something for the chaser. And so the whole thing became something other than it seemed. That was Reeve’s game. Cat and mouse, and he the mouse with the sting in his tail, the bite in his teeth, and Rebus as soft as milk, as pliant as fur and contentment. There had been no contentment for Gordon Reeve, not for
many years, not since he had been betrayed by one whom he had come to call brother.

Just a kiss

The mouse caught.

The brother I never had

Poor Gordon Reeve, balancing on that slender pipe, the piss trickling down his legs, and everybody laughing at him.

And poor John Rebus, shunned by his father and his brother, a brother who had turned to crime now and who must be punished eventually.

And poor Sammy. She was the one he should be thinking of. Think only of her, John, and everything will turn out all right.

But if this was a serious game, a game of life and death, then he had to remember that it was still a game. Rebus knew now that he had Reeve. But having caught him, what would happen? The roles would switch in some way. He did not yet know all the rules. There was one way and only the one way to learn them. He left the coffee to go cold on his coffee-table, beside all the other waste. There was bitterness enough in his mouth as it was.