10 Great Rebus Novels (John Rebus) (75 page)

But the British Library itself was off-limit to ‘non-readers’. Rebus tried to explain that he was a reader, but apparently what this meant was that he had to be in possession of a reader’s card. With hindsight, he supposed he could have flashed his ID and said he was on the trail of a maniac, but he didn’t. He shook his head, shrugged his shoulders and went instead for a walk around the museum.

The place seemed full almost to bursting with tourists and school parties. He wondered if the children, their imaginations still open, were as thunderstruck as he was by the Ancient Egyptian and Assyrian rooms. Vast stone carvings, huge wooden gates, countless exhibits. But the real throng was around the Rosetta Stone. Rebus had heard of it, of course, but didn’t really know what it was. Now he found out. The stone contained writing in three languages and thus helped scholars to work out for the first time what Egyptian hieroglyphics actually meant.

He was willing to bet they hadn’t solved it overnight, or even over a weekend. Slow, painstaking graft, just like police work, toil as difficult as anything a bricklayer or miner could endure. And in the end it usually still came down to the Lucky Break. How many times had they interviewed the Yorkshire Ripper and let him go? That sort of thing happened more often than the public would ever be allowed to know.

He walked through more rooms, rooms airy and light and containing Greek vases and figurines, then, pushing open a glass double-door, he found himself confronted by the Sculptures of the Parthenon. (For some reason they had stopped advertising them as the Elgin Marbles.) Rebus walked around this large gallery, feeling almost as though he were in some modern-day place of worship. At one end, a gabble of school-kids squatted before some statues, trying to draw them, while their teacher walked around, trying to keep the grudging artists quiet. It was Rhona. Even at this distance he recognised her. Recognised her walk and the slant of her head and the way she held her hands behind her back whenever she was trying to make a point. . . .

Rebus turned away, and found himself face to face with a horse’s head. He could see the veins bulging from the marble neck, the open mouth with its teeth worn away to an indeterminate smoothness. No bite. Would Rhona thank him for walking over and interrupting her class, just to make Smalltalk? No, she would not. But what if she spotted him? If he were to slink away, it would look like the action of a coward. Hell, he was a coward, wasn’t he? Best to face facts and move back towards the doors. She might never spot him, and if she did she was hardly likely to announce the fact. But then he wanted to know about Kenny, didn’t he? Who better to ask than Rhona? There was a simple answer: better to ask
anyone
. He’d ask Samantha. Yes, that’s what he’d do. He’d ask Samantha.

He crept back to the doors and walked briskly towards the exit. Suddenly all the exquisite vases and statues had become ridiculous. What was the point in burying them behind glass for people to glance at in passing? Wasn’t it better to look forward, forget about ancient history? Wouldn’t it be better if he just took Lamb’s ill-meant advice? There were too many ghosts in London. Way too many. Even the reporter Jim Stevens was down here somewhere. Rebus fairly flew across the museum courtyard only pausing when he reached the gates. The guards stared at him strangely, glancing towards his carrier-bag. They’re just books, he wanted to say. But he knew you could hide anything in a book, just about anything. Knew from painful personal experience.

When feeling depressed, be rash. He stuck a hand out into the road and at the first attempt managed to stop an empty black cab. He couldn’t remember the name of the street he wanted, but that didn’t matter.

‘Covent Garden,’ he said to the driver. As the cab did what Rebus assumed was a fairly illegal u-turn, he dipped into his bag to claim the first prize.

He wandered around Covent Garden proper for twenty minutes, enjoying an open-air magic act and a nearby fire-eater before moving off in search of Lisa’s flat. It wasn’t too difficult to find. He surprised himself by recalling a kite shop and another shop which seemed to sell nothing but teapots. Took a left and a right and another right and found himself in her street, standing outside the shoe shop. The shop itself was busy. The clientele, like the serving staff, was very young, probably not yet out of teens. A jazz saxophone played. A tape perhaps, or someone busking in the distance. He looked up at the window to Lisa’s flat, with its bright yellow roller blind. How old was she really? It was hard to tell.

And then, only then, he went to the door and pressed her buzzer. There was noise from the intercom, a crackle of movement. ‘Hello?’

‘It’s me, John.’

‘Hello? I can’t hear you!’

‘It’s John,’ he said loudly into the door frame, looking around him in embarrassment. But no one was interested. People glanced into the shop window as they passed, eating strange-looking snacks, vegetable-looking things.

‘John?’ As though she had forgotten him already. Then: ‘Oh, John.’ And the buzzer sounded beside him. ‘Door’s open. Come on up.’

The door to her flat was open, too, and he closed it behind him. Lisa was tidying the studio, as she called it. In Edinburgh it wouldn’t have been called a studio. It would have been called a bedsit. He supposed Covent Garden didn’t have such things as bedsits.

‘I’ve been trying to get in touch,’ he said.

‘Me too.’

‘Oh?’

She turned to him, noting the hint of disbelief in his voice. ‘Didn’t they tell you? I must’ve left half a dozen messages with, what was his name, Shepherd?’

‘Lamb?’

‘That’s it.’

Rebus’s hate for Lamb intensified.

‘About an hour ago,’ she went on, ‘I called and they said you’d gone back to Scotland. I was a bit miffed at that. Thought you’d gone without saying goodbye.’

Bastards, thought Rebus. They really did hate his guts, didn’t they?
Our expert from north of the border
.

Lisa had finished making a neat stack from the newspapers lying on the floor and the bed. She had straightened the duvet and the cover on the sofa. And now, a little out of breath, she was standing close to him. He slid his arm around her and pulled her to him.

‘Hello,’ he murmured, kissing her.

‘Hello,’ she said, returning the kiss.

She broke away from his hug and walked into the alcove which served as a kitchen. There was the sound of running tap-water, a kettle filling. ‘I suppose you’ve seen the papers?’ she called.

‘Yes.’

Her head came out of the alcove. ‘A friend called me up to tell me. I couldn’t believe it. My picture on the front page!’

‘Fame at last.’

‘Infamy more like: a “police psychologist” indeed! They might have done their research. One paper even called me Liz Frazier!’ She plugged the kettle in, switched it on, then came back into the room. Rebus was sitting on the arm of the sofa.

‘So,’ she asked, ‘how goes the investigation?’

‘A few interesting developments.’

‘Oh?’ She sat on the edge of the bed. ‘Tell me.’

So he told her about Jan Crawford, and about his false teeth theory. Lisa suggested that Jan Crawford’s memory might be helped by hypnosis. ‘Lost memory’ she called it. But Rebus knew this sort of thing was inadmissible as evidence. Besides, he’d experienced ‘lost memory’ for himself, and shivered now at the memory.

They drank Lapsang Souchong, which he said reminded him of bacon butties, and she put on some music, something soft and classical, and they ended up somehow sitting next to one another on the Indian carpet, their backs against the sofa, shoulders, arms and legs touching. She stroked his hair, the nape of his neck.

‘What happened the other night between us,’ she said, ‘are you sorry?’

‘You mean sorry it happened?’

She nodded.

‘Christ, no,’ said Rebus. ‘Just the opposite.’ He paused. ‘What about you?’

She thought over her answer. ‘It was nice,’ she said, her eyebrows almost meeting as she concentrated on each word.

‘I thought maybe you were avoiding me,’ he said.

‘And I thought you were avoiding me.’

‘I went looking for you this morning at the university.’

She sat back, the better to study his face. ‘Really?’

He nodded.

‘What did they say?’

‘I spoke to some secretary,’ he explained. ‘Glasses on a string around her neck, hair in a sort of a bun.’

‘Millicent. But what did she tell you?’

‘She just said you hadn’t been around much.’

‘What else?’

‘That I might find you in the library, or in Dillon’s.’ He nodded over towards the door, where the carrier-bag stood propped against a wall. ‘She said you liked bookshops. So I went looking there, too.’

She was still studying his face, then she laughed and pecked him on the cheek. ‘Millicent’s a treasure though, isn’t she?’

‘If you say so.’ Why did her laugh have so much relief in it? Stop looking for puzzles, John. Just stop it right now. She was crawling away from him towards the bag.

‘So what did you buy?’

He couldn’t honestly remember, with the exception of the book he’d started reading in the taxi.
Hawksmoor
. Instead, he watched her behind and her legs as she moved away from him. Spectacular ankles. Slim with a prominent hemisphere of bone.

‘Well!’ she said, lifting one of the paperbacks from the bag. ‘Eysenck.’

‘Do you approve?’

She thought this question over, too. ‘Not entirely. Probably not at all, in fact. Genetic inheritance and all that. I’m not sure.’ She lifted out another book, and shrieked. ‘Skinner! The beast of behaviourism! But what made you –?’

He shrugged. ‘I just recognised some names from those books you loaned me, so I thought I’d –’

Another book was lifted high for him to see.
King Ludd
. ‘Have you read the first two?’ she asked.

‘Oh,’ he said, disappointed, ‘is it part of a trilogy? I just liked the title.’

She turned and gave him a quizzical look, then laughed. Rebus could feel himself going red at the neck. She was making a fool of him. He turned away from her and concentrated on the pattern of the rug, brushing the rough fibres with his hand.

‘Oh dear,’ she said, starting to crawl back. ‘I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to. I’m sorry.’ And she placed a hand on either of his legs, kneeling in front of him, angling her head until his eyes were forced to meet hers. She was smiling apologetically. ‘Sorry,’ she mouthed. He managed a smile which said: ‘that’s okay’. She leaned across him and placed her lips on his, one of her hands sliding up his leg towards the thigh, and then a little higher still.

It was evening before he escaped, though ‘escape’ was perhaps putting it too harshly. The effort of easing himself from beneath Lisa’s sleeping limbs was almost too much. Her body perfume, the sweet smell of her hair, the flawless warmth of her belly, her arms, her behind. She did not waken as he slid from the bed and tugged on his clothes. She did not waken as he wrote her another of his notes, picked up his carrier-bag of books, opened the door, cast a glance back towards the bed and then pulled the door shut after him.

He went to Covent Garden tube station, where he was offered a choice: the queue for the elevator, or the three hundred-odd spiralling stairs. He opted for the stairs. They seemed to go on forever, turning and turning in their gyre. His head became light as he thought of what it must have been like to descend this corkscrew during the war years. White tiled walls like those of public lavatories. Rumble from above. The dull echo of footsteps and voices.

He thought, too, of Edinburgh’s Scott Monument, with its own tightly winding stairwell, much more constricted and unnerving than this. And then he was at the bottom, beating the elevator by a matter of seconds. The tube train was as crowded as he had come to expect. Next to a sign proclaiming ‘Keep your personal stereo personal’, a white youth wearing a green parka with matching teeth shared his musical taste with the rest of the carriage. His eyes had a distant, utterly vacant look and from time to time he swigged from a can of strong lager. Rebus toyed with the notion of saying something, but held back. He was only travelling one stop. If the glowering passengers were content to suffer silently, that was how it should be.

He prised himself out of the train at Holborn, only to squeeze into another compartment, this time on the Central Line. Again, someone was playing a Walkman at some dizzying level, but they were somewhere over towards the far end of the carriage, so all Rebus had to suffer was the Schhch-schch-schch of what he took to be drums. He was becoming a seasoned traveller now, setting his eyes so that they focused on space rather than on his fellow passengers, letting his mind empty for the duration of the journey.

God alone knew how these people could do it every day of their working lives.

He had already rung the doorbell before it struck him that he did not have a pretext for coming here. Think quickly, John.

The door was pulled open. ‘Oh, it’s you.’ She sounded disappointed.

‘Hello, Rhona.’

‘To what do we owe the honour?’ She was standing her ground, just inside the front door, keeping him on the doorstep. She was wearing a hint of make-up and her clothes were not after-work, relaxing-at-home clothes. She was going out somewhere. She was waiting for a gentleman.

‘Nothing special,’ he said. ‘Just thought I’d pop round. We didn’t get much of a chance to talk the other night.’ Would he mention that he had seen her in the British Museum? No, he would not.

Besides, she was shaking her head. ‘Yes we did, it was just that we had nothing to talk about.’ Her voice wasn’t bitter; she was simply stating a fact. Rebus looked at the doorstep.

‘I’ve caught you at a bad time,’ he said. ‘Sorry.’

‘No need to apologise.’

‘Is Sammy in?’

‘She’s out with Kenny.’

Rebus nodded. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘enjoy wherever it is you’re going.’ My God, he actually felt jealous. He couldn’t believe it of himself after all these years. It was the make-up that did it. Rhona had seldom worn make-up. He half-turned to leave, then stopped. ‘I couldn’t use your loo, could I?’