Strip Jack (23 page)

Lauderdale spread out his hands, examining the nails. ‘It’s a theory,’ he said, merely.

‘Well, we’ve plenty bloody theories,’ said Watson, slapping one of his own much meatier hands down on the desk. ‘We need something concrete. And let’s not forget friend Glass. We still want to talk to him. About Dean Bridge if nothing else. Meanwhile . . .’ he seemed to be trying to think of some path they might take, of some instructions or inspiration he might give. But he gave up and swigged back his coffee instead. ‘Meanwhile,’ he said at last, while Rebus and Lauderdale waited for the imparted wisdom, ‘let’s be careful out there.’

The old man’s really showing his age now, thought Rebus, as he waited to follow Lauderdale out of the office.
Hill Street Blues
was a long, long time ago. In the corridor, after the door was closed behind them, Lauderdale grasped Rebus’s arm. His voice was an excited hiss.

‘Looks like the Chief Super’s on the way out, doesn’t it? Can’t be long before the high heidyins see what’s going on and pension him off.’ He was trying to control his glee. Yes, Rebus was thinking, one or two very public foul-ups, that’s all it would take. And he wondered . . . he wondered if Lauderdale was capable of engineering a balls-up with this in mind. Someone had tipped off the papers about Operation Creeper. Christ, it seemed such a long time ago. But wasn’t Chris Kemp supposed to be doing some digging into that? He’d have to remember to ask Kemp what he’d found. So much still needed to be done . . .

He was shrugging his arm free of Lauderdale when Watson’s door opened again, and Watson stood there staring at the two of them. Rebus wondered if they looked as guilty and conspiratorial as he himself felt. Then Watson’s eyes settled on him.

‘John,’ he said, ‘telephone call. It’s Mr Jack. He says he’d
be grateful if you’d go and see him. Apparently, there’s something he’d like to talk to you about . . .’

Rebus pressed the bell at the locked gate. The voice over the intercom was Urquhart’s.

‘Yes?’

‘Inspector Rebus to see Mr Jack.’

‘Yes, Inspector, be right with you.’

Rebus peered through the bars. The white Saab was parked outside the house. He shook his head slowly. Some people never learned. A reporter had been sent from one of the line of cars to ask who Rebus was. The other reporters and photographers took shelter in the cars themselves, listening to the radio, reading newspapers. Soup or coffee was poured from flasks. They were here for the duration. And they were bored. As he waited, the wind sliced against Rebus, squeezing through a gap between jacket and shirt collar, trickling down his neck like ice water. He watched Urquhart emerge from the house, apparently trying to sort out the tangle of keys in his hand. The reconnaissance reporter still stood beside Rebus, twitching, readying himself to ask Urquhart his questions.

‘I shouldn’t bother, son,’ advised Rebus.

Urquhart was at the gate now.

‘Mr Urquhart,’ blurted the reporter, ‘anything to add to your previous statement?’

‘No,’ said Urquhart coolly, opening the gate. ‘But I’ll repeat it for you if you like – bugger off!’

And with that, Rebus safely through the gate, he slammed it shut and locked it, giving the bars an extra shake to make sure they were secure. The reporter, smiling sourly, was heading back to one of the cars.

‘You’re under siege,’ Rebus observed.

Urquhart looked like he’d done without sleep for a night or two too many. ‘It’s diabolical,’ he confided as they walked towards the house. ‘Day and night they’re out there. God knows what they think they’re going to get.’

‘A confession?’ Rebus hazarded. He was rewarded with a weak smile.

‘That, Inspector, they’ll never get.’ The smile left his face. ‘But I
am
worried about Gregor . . . what all this is doing to him. He’s . . . well, you’ll see for yourself.’

‘Any idea what this meeting’s all about?’

‘He wouldn’t say. Inspector . . .’ Urquhart had stopped. ‘He’s very fragile. I mean, he might say
any
thing. I just hope you can tell truth from fantasy.’ Then he started to walk again.

‘Are you still diluting his whisky?’ Rebus asked.

Urquhart gave him an appraising look, then nodded. ‘That’s not the answer, Inspector. That’s not what he needs. He needs friends.’

Andrew Macmillan, too, had gone on about friends. Rebus wanted to talk to Jack about Andrew Macmillan. But he wasn’t in a hurry. He had paused beside the Saab, causing Urquhart to pause too.

‘What is it?’

‘You know,’ said Rebus, ‘I’ve always liked Saabs, but I’ve never had the money around to buy one. Do you think Mr Jack would mind if I just sat in the driver’s seat for a minute?’

Urquhart looked at a loss for an answer. He ended up making a gesture somewhere between a shrug and a shake of the head. Rebus tried the driver’s door. It was unlocked. He slid into the seat and rested his hands on the steering wheel, leaving the door itself open so Urquhart could stand there and watch.

‘Very comfortable,’ Rebus said.

‘So I believe.’

‘You’ve never driven it yourself then?’

‘No.’

‘Oh.’ Rebus stared out of the windscreen, then at the passenger seat and the floor. ‘Yes, well designed, comfortable. Plenty of room, eh?’ And he turned in his seat, twisting his whole body round to examine the rear seat . . . the rear floor. ‘Heaps of room,’ he commented. ‘Lovely.’

‘Maybe Gregor would let you take her for a spin?’

Rebus looked up keenly. ‘Do you think so? I mean, when this has all blown over, of course.’ He started to get out of the car. Urquhart snorted.

‘Blown over? This sort of thing doesn’t “blow over”, not when you’re an MP. The broth – . . . those allegations in the newspapers, they were bad enough, but now murder? No.’ He shook his head. ‘This won’t just blow over, Inspector. It’s not a raincloud, it’s a mud bath, and mud sticks.’

Rebus closed the door. ‘Nice solid clunk, too, when you shut it, isn’t there? How well did you know Mrs Jack?’

‘Pretty well. I used to see her most days.’

‘But I believe Mr and Mrs Jack led fairly separate lives?’

‘I wouldn’t go that far. They
were
married.’

‘And in love?’

Urquhart thought for a moment. ‘I’d say so, yes.’

‘Despite everything?’ Rebus was walking around the car now, as though deciding whether or not to buy it.

‘I’m not sure I understand.’

‘Oh, you know, different sorts of friends, different lifestyles, separate holidays . . .’

‘Gregor is an MP, Inspector. He can’t always get away at the drop of a hat.’

‘Whereas,’ Rebus said, ‘Mrs Jack was . . . what would you say? Spontaneous? Flighty, maybe even? The sort who’d say, let’s just up and go?’

‘Actually, yes, that’s fairly accurate.’

Rebus nodded and tapped the boot. ‘What about luggage room?’

Urquhart himself actually came forward and opened the boot.

‘Goodness,’ said Rebus, ‘yes, there’s plenty of room. Quite deep, isn’t it?’

It was also immaculately clean. No mud or scuff marks, no crumbs of earth. It looked as though it had never been used. Inside were a small reserve petrol tank, a red warning triangle, and a half-set of golf clubs.

‘He’s keen on golf, isn’t he?’

‘Oh yes.’

Rebus closed the boot shut. ‘I’ve never seen the attraction myself. The ball’s too small and the pitch is too big. Shall we go in?’

Gregor Jack looked like he’d been to hell and back on an LRT bus. He’d probably combed his hair yesterday or the day before, and last changed his clothes then, too. He was shaven, but there were small patches of dark stubble the razor had missed. He didn’t bother rising when Rebus entered the room. He just nodded a greeting and gestured with his glass to a vacant chair, one of the infamous marshmallow chairs. Rebus approached with care.

There was whisky in Jack’s crystal tumbler, and a bottle of the stuff – three quarters empty – on the rug beside him. The room smelt unaired and unpolished. Jack took a gulp of liquid, then used the edge of the glass to scratch at his raw red finger.

‘I want to talk to you, Inspector Rebus.’

Rebus sat down, sinking, sinking . . . ‘Yes, sir?’

‘I want to say a few things about me . . . and maybe about Liz, too, in a roundabout way.’

It was another prepared speech, another well-considered opening. There were just the two of them in the room. Urquhart had said he’d make a pot of coffee. Rebus, still jumpy from his meeting with Watson, had begged for tea. Helen Greig, it seemed, was at home, her mother having been taken ill – ‘again’, as Urquhart put it, before marching off kitchenwards. Faithful women: Helen Greig and Cath Kinnoul. Doggedly faithful. And Elizabeth Jack? Doggie-style faithful maybe . . . Christ, that was a terrible thing to think! And especially of the dead, especially of a woman he’d never met! A woman who liked to be tied to bedposts for a spot of . . .

‘It’s nothing to do with . . . well, I don’t know, maybe it is.’ Jack paused for thought. ‘You see, Inspector, I can’t help feeling that
if
Liz saw those stories about me, and
if
they upset her, then maybe she did something . . . or stayed away . . . and maybe . . .’ He leapt to his feet and wandered over
towards the window, looking out at nothing. ‘What I’m trying to say is, what if I’m responsible?’

‘Responsible, sir?’

‘For Liz’s . . . murder. If we’d been together, if we’d been
here
together, it might never have happened. It
wouldn’t
have happened. Do you see what I mean?’

‘No good blaming yourself, sir –’

Jack whirled towards him. ‘But that’s just it, I
do
blame myself.’

‘Why don’t you sit down, Mr Jack –’

‘Gregor, please.’

‘All right . . . Gregor. Now why don’t you sit down and calm down.’

Jack did as he was told. Bereavement affected different people in different ways, the weak becoming strong and the strong becoming weak. Ronald Steele hurled books around, Gregor Jack became . . . pathetic. He was scratching at the finger again. ‘But it’s all so ironic,’ he spat.

‘How’s that?’ Rebus wished the tea would hurry up. Maybe Jack would pull himself together in Urquhart’s presence.

‘That brothel,’ Jack said, fixing Rebus’s eyes with his own. ‘That’s what started it all. And the reason I was there . . .’

Rebus sat forward. ‘Why
were
you there, Gregor?’

Gregor Jack paused, swallowed, seemed to take a breath while he thought about whether to answer or not. Then he answered.

‘To see my sister.’

There was silence in the room, so profound that Rebus could hear his watch ticking. Then the door flew open.

‘Tea,’ said Ian Urquhart, sidling into the room.

Rebus, who had been so eager for Urquhart’s arrival, now couldn’t wait for the man to leave. He rose from the chair and walked to the mantelpiece. The card from The Pack was still there, but it had been joined by over a dozen condolence cards – some from other MPs, some from family and friends, some from the public.

Urquhart seemed to sense the atmosphere in the room. He
left the tray on a table and, without a word, made his exit. The door had barely closed before Rebus said, ‘What do you mean, your sister?’

‘I mean just that. My sister was working in that brothel. Well, I suspected she was, I’d been
told
she was. I thought maybe it was a joke, a sick joke. Maybe a trap, to get me to a brothel. A trap and a trick. I thought long and hard before I went, but I still went. He’d sounded so confident.’

‘Who had?’

‘The caller. I’d been getting these calls . . .’ Ah yes, Rebus had meant to ask about those. ‘By the time I got to the phone, the caller would have hung up. But one night, the caller got me straight away, and he told me: “Your sister’s working in a brothel in the New Town.” He gave me the address, and said if I went around midnight she’d just be starting her . . . shift.’ The words were like some food he didn’t enjoy, but given him at a banquet so that he didn’t dare spit it out, but had to go on chewing, trying hard not to swallow . . . He swallowed. ‘So along I went, and she
was
there. The caller had been telling the truth. I was trying to talk to her when the police came in. But it was a trap, too. The newsmen were there . . .’

Rebus was remembering the woman in the bed, the way she kicked her legs in the air, the way she’d lifted her t-shirt for the photographers to see . . .

‘Why didn’t you say anything at the time, Gregor?’

Jack laughed shrilly. ‘It was bad enough as it was. Would it have been any better if I’d let everyone know my sister’s a tart?’

‘Well then, why tell me now?’

His voice was calm. ‘It looks to me, Inspector, like I’m in deep water. I’m just jettisoning what I don’t need.’

‘You must know then, sir . . . you must have known all along, that someone is setting you up to take a very big fall.’

Jack smiled. ‘Oh yes.’

‘Any idea who? I mean, any enemies?’

The smile again. ‘I’m an MP, Inspector. The wonder is that I have any
friends
.’

‘Ah yes, The Pack. Could one of them . . .?’

‘Inspector, I’ve racked my brain and I’m no nearer finding out.’ He looked up at Rebus. ‘Honest.’

‘You didn’t recognize the caller’s voice?’

‘It was heavily muffled. Gruff. A man probably, but to be honest it could have been a woman.’

‘Okay then, what about your sister? Tell me about her.’

It was soon told. She’d left home young, and never been heard of. Vague rumours of London and marriage had drifted north over the years, but that was all. Then the phone call . . .

‘How could the caller know? How might they have found out?’

‘Now
that’s
a mystery, because I’ve never told anybody about Gail.’

‘But your schoolfriends would know of her?’

‘Slightly, I suppose. I doubt any of them remember her. She was two years below us at school.’

‘You think maybe she came back up here looking for revenge?’

Jack spread his palms. ‘Revenge for what?’

‘Well, jealousy then.’

‘Why didn’t she just get in touch?’