Rebus - Naughts And Crosses Part 11

'Got your car outside, Jack?'

Still choking, he nodded a reply.

Jesus Christ, Jesus Christ. It was all true then. It was all to do with him. Samantha. All the clues, all the killings had been meant merely as a message to him. Jesus Christ. Help me, oh help me.

His daughter was to be the Strangler's next victim.

Rhona Phillips saw the car parked outside her house, but thought nothing of it. All she wanted was to get out of the rain. She ran to the front door, Samantha following desultorily behind, and keyed open the door.

'It's horrible outside!' she shouted into the living-room. She shook off her raincoat and walked through to where the TV still blared. In his chair, she saw Andy. His hands were tied behind him and his mouth was taped shut with a huge piece of sticking-plaster. The length of twine still dangled from his throat.

Rhona was about to let out the most piercing scream of her life, when a heavy object came down on the back of her head and she staggered forward towards her lover, slumping across his legs as she pa.s.sed out.

'h.e.l.lo, Samantha,' said a voice she recognised, though his face was masked so that she could not see his smile.

Morton's car tore across town, its blue light flas.h.i.+ng, as though it were being followed by all h.e.l.l itself. Rebus tried explaining it all as they drove, but he was too edgy to make much sense, and Jack Morton was too busy avoiding traffic to make much attempt at taking it in. They had called for a.s.sistance: one car to the school in case she were still there, and two cars to the house, with the warning that the Strangler rnight be there. Caution was to be exercised.

The car reached eighty-five along Queensferry Road, made an insane right turn across the oncoming traffic, and reached 103 the bright-as-a-pin housing estate where Rhona, Samantha and Rhona's lover now lived.

'Turn right here,' shouted Rebus over the engine's roar, his mind clinging to hope. As they turned into the street they saw the two police cars already motionless in front of the house, and Rhona's car sitting like a potent symbol of futility in the driveway.

xx They wanted to give him sedatives, but he wouldn't take any of their drugs. They wanted him to go home, but he would not take their advice. How could he go home with Rhona lying somewhere above him in the hospital? with his daughter abducted, his whole life ripped apart like a worn garment being transformed into dusters? He paced the hospital waiting-room. He was fine, he told them, fine. He knew that Gill and Anderson were somewhere along the corridor. Poor Anderson. He watched from the grime of the window as nurses walked by outside, laughing in the rain, their capes blowing about them like something out of an old Dracula movie. How could they laugh? Mist was settling over the trees, and the nurses, still laughing, unaware ~f the world's suffering, faded into that mist as though some Edinburgh of the past had sucked them into its fiction, taking with them all the laughter in the world.

It was nearly dark now, the sun a memory behind the heavy fabric of the clouds. The religiQus painters of old must have known skies like this, must have lived with them each and every day, accepting the bruised colouring of the clouds as a mark of G.o.d's presence, an essence of creation's power. Rebus was no painter. His eyes beheld beauty not in reality but in the printed word. Standing in the waiting-room, he realised that in his life he had accepted secondary experience-the experience of reading someone else's thoughts-over real life. Well, he was face to face with it now all right: he was back in the Paras, he was back in the SAS, his face a sketch-pad of exhaustion, his brain aching, every muscle tensed.

He caught himself beginning to abstract everything again, and slapped the wall with the palms of both hands as though 104 ready to be frisked. Sammy was out there somewhere in the hands of a maniac, and he was composing eulogies, excuses and similes. It wasn't enough.

In the corridor, Gill kept a watch on William Anderson. He, too, had been told to go home. A doctor had examined him for the effects of shock, and had spoken of putting Anderson to bed for the night.

'I'm waiting right here,' Anderson had said with quiet determination. 'If this all has something to do with John Rebus, then I want to stay close to John Rebus. I'm all right, honestly.' But he was not all right. He was dazed and remorseful and a bit confused about everything. 'I can't believe it,' he told Gill. 'I can't believe that this whole thing was merely a prelude to the abduction of Rebus's daughter. It's fantastical. The man must be deranged. Surely John must have an inkling who's responsible?'

Gill Templer was wondering the same thing.

'Why hasn't he told us?' continued Anderson. Then, without warning or any show of ceremony, he became a father again and started to sob very quietly. 'Andy,' he said, 'my Andy.' He put his head in his hands and allowed Gill to put her arm around his crumpled shoulders.

John Rebus, watching darkness descend, thought about his marriage, his daughter. His daughter Sammy.

For those who read between the times What was it he was blocking out? What was it that had been rejected by him all those years ago as he had walked the Fife sh.o.r.eline, having his final fit of the breakdown and shutting out the past as securely as if he had been shutting the door on a Jehovah's Witness? It was not that easy. The unwanted caller had waited his time, deciding to break and enter into Rebus's life again. The foot in the door. The door of perception. What good was his reading doing him now? Or his faith, slender thread that it was? Samantha. Sammy, his daughter. Dear G.o.d, let her be safe. Dear G.o.d, let her live.

John, you must know who it is But he had shaken his head, shaken his tears onto the folds of his trousers. He did not, he did not. It was Knot. It was Cross. Names meant nothing to him any more. Knots and crosses. He had been sent knots and crosses, string and matches and a load 105 of gobbledygook, as Jack Morton had called it. That was all. Dear G.o.d.

He went out into the corridor, and confronted Anderson, who stood before him like a piece of wreckage waiting to be loaded up and shunted away. And the two men came together in a hug, squeezing life into one another; two old enemies realising in a moment that they were on the same side after all. They hugged and they wept, draining themselves of all they had been bottling up, all those years of pounding the beat, having to appear emotionless and unflappable. It was out in the open now: they were human beings, the same as everybody else.

And finally, a.s.sured that Rhona had suffered a fractured skull only, allowed into her room for a moment to watch her breathing oxygen, Rebus had let them take him home. Rhona would live. That was something. Andy Anderson, though, was cold on a slab somewhere while doctors examined his leftovers. Poor b.l.o.o.d.y Anderson. Poor man, poor father, poor copper. It was becoming very personal now, wasn't it? All of a sudden it had become bigger than they had imagined it ever could. It had become a grudge.

They had a description at last, though not a good one. A neighbour had seen the man carry the still form of the girl out to the car. A pale cojoured car, she had told them. A normal looking car. A normal looking man. Not too tall, his face hard. He was hurrying. She didn't get a good look at him.

Anderson would be off the case now, and so would Rebus. Oh, it was big now. The Strangler had entered a home, had murdered there. He had gone way too far over the edge. The newspapermen and the cameras outside the hospital wanted to know all about it. Superintendent Wallace would have organised a press conference. The newspaper-readers, the voyeurs needed to know all about it. It was big news. Edinburgh was the crime capital of Europe. The son of a Chief Inspector murdered and the daughter of a Detective Sergeant abducted, possibly murdered already.

What could he do but sit and wait for another letter? He was better off in his flat, no matter how dark and barren it seemed, no matter how like a cell. Gill promised to visit him later, after the press conference. An unmarked car would be outside his io6 tenement as a matter of course, for who knew how personal the Strangler wanted this to become?

Meantime, unknown to Rebus, his file was being checked back at HQ, his past dusted off and examined. There had to be the Strangler in there somewhere. There had to be.

Of course there had to be. Rebus knew that he alone held the key. But it seemed locked in a drawer to which it itself was the key. He could only rattle that locked away history.

Gill Templer had telephoned Rebus's brother, and though John would hate her for doing so, she had told Michael to come across to Edinburgh at once to be with his brother. He was Rebus's only family after all. He sounded nervous on the phone, nervous but concerned. And now she puzzled over the matter of the acrostic. The Professor had been correct. They were trying to locate him this evening in order to interview him. Again, as a matter of course. But if the Strangler had planned this, then surely he must have been able to get his hands on a list of people whose names would fit the bill, and how would he have done that? A civil servant perhaps? A teacher? Someone working away quietly at a computer-terminal somewhere? There were many possibilities, and they would go through them one by one. First, however, Gill was going to suggest that everyone in Edinburgh called Knott or Cross be interviewed. It was a wild card, but then everything about this case so far had been wild.

And then there was the press conference. Held, since it was convenient, in the hospital's administration building. There was standing room only at the back of the hall. Gill Templer's face, human but unsmiling, was becoming well known to the British public, as well known, certainly, as that of any newscaster or reporter. Tonight, however, the Superintendent would be doing the talking. She hoped he would not take long. She wanted to see Rebus. And more urgently, perhaps, she wanted to talk with his brother. Someone had to know about John's past. He had never, apparently, spoken to any of his friends on the force about his Army years. Did the key lie there? Or in his marriage? Gill listened to the Super saying his piece. Cameras clicked and the large hall grew smoky.

And there was Jim Stevens, smiling from the corner of his 107 mouth, as if he knew something. Gill grew nervous. His eyes were on her, though his pen worked away at its notepad. She recalled that disastrous evening they had spent together, and her much less disastrous evening with John Rebus. Why had none of the men in her life ever been uncomplicated? Perhaps because complications interested her. The case was not becoming more complex. It was becoming simpler.

Jim Stevens, half-listening to the police statement, thought of how complex this story was becoming. Rebus and Rebus, drugs and murder, anonymous messages followed by abduction of daughter. He needed to get behind the police's public face on this one, and knew that the best way forward lay with Gill Templer, with a little trading of knowledge. If the drugs and the abduction were linked, as they probably were, then perhaps one or other of the Rebus brothers had not been playing the game according to the set rules. Maybe Gill Templer would know.

He came up behind her as she left the building. She knew it was him, but for once she wanted to speak with him.

'h.e.l.lo, Jim. Can I give you a lift somewhere?'

He decided that she could. She could drop him off at a bar, unless, of course, he could see Rebus for a moment? He could not. They drove.

'This story is becoming more and more bizarre by the second, don't you think?'

She concentrated her eyes on the road, seeming to mull over his question. Really, she was hoping he would open up a little more and that her silence would lead him to believe that she was holding back on him, that there was something there between them to swop.

'Rebus seems to be the main actor th6ugh. Interesting that.'

Gill sensed that he was about to play a card.

'I mean,' he went on, lighting a cigarette, 'don't mind if I smoke, do you?'

'No,' she said slowly, though inside she was jarring with electricity.

'Thanks. I mean, it's interesting because I've got Rebus pencilled into another story I'm working on.'

io8 She pulled the car up at a red light, but her eyes still gazed through the windscreen.

'Would you be interested in hearing about this other story, Gill?'

Would she? Of course she would. But what in return.

'Yes, a very interesting man, Mister Rebus. And his brother.'

'His brother?'

'Yes, you know, Michael Rebus, the hypnotist. An interesting pair of brothers.'

'Oh?'

'Listen, Gill, let's cut the c.r.a.p.'

'I was hoping you would.' She put the car into gear and started off again.

'Are you lot investigating Rebus for anything? That's what I want to know. I mean, do you really know who's behind all this but aren't saying?'

She turned to him now.

'That's not the way it works, Jim.' He snorted.

'It may not be the way you work, Gill, but don't pretend it doesn't happen. I just wondered if you'd heard anything, any rumbles from higher up. Maybe to the effect that someone had made a botch-up in allowing things to come to this.'

Jim Stevens was watching her face very closely indeed, throwing out ideas and vague theories in the hope that one of them would catch her. But she didn't seem to be taking the bait. Very well. Maybe she didn't know anything. That didn't mean his theories were wrong necessarily. It could just mean that things started at a higher plane than that on which Gill Templer and he operated.

'Jim, what is it you think you know about John Rebus. It could be important, you know. We could bring you in if we thought you were withholding. .

Stevens began to make tutting sounds, shaking his head.

'We know that's not on, don't we though? I mean, that is just not on.'

She looked at him again.

'I could make a precedent,' she said.

He stared at her. Yes, maybe she could at that.

'This'll do just here,' he said, pointing out of the window.

109 Some ash fell from his cigarette onto his tie. Gill stopped the car and watched him climb out. He leaned back in before shutting the door.

'A swop can be arranged if you'd like one. You know my phone number.'

Yes, she knew his phone number. He had written it down for her a very long time ago, so long ago that they were on different sides of a wall now, so that she could hardly understand him at all. What did he know about John? About Michael? As she drove off towards Rebus's flat, she hoped that she would find out there.

XXI.

John Rebus read a few pages from his Good News Bible, but put it down when he realised that he was taking none of it in. He prayed instead, s.c.r.e.w.i.n.g up his eyes into tiny fists. Then he walked around the flat, touching things. This he had done before that first breakdown. He was not afraid now though. Let it come if it would, let everything come. He had no resilience left. He was pa.s.sive to the will of his malevolent creator.

There was a ring at the door. He did not answer. They would go away, and he would be alone again with his grief, his impotent anger, arid his undusted possessions. The bell rang again, more persistently this time. Cursing, he went to the door and pulled it open. Michael was standing there.

'John,' he said, 'I came as soon as I could.'

'Mickey, what are you doing here?' He ushered his brother into the flat.

'Somebody phoned me. She told me all about it. Terrible news, John. Just terrible.' He placed a hand on Rebus's shoulder. Rebus, tingling, realised how long it had been since he had felt the touch of a human being, a sympathetic, brotherly touch. 'I was confronted by two gorillas outside. They seem to have you under close watch here.'

'Procedure,' said Rebus.

Procedure maybe, but Michael knew how guilty he must have looked when they had pounced on him. He had wondered at the phone-call, wondered about the possibility of a trap. So 110 he had listened to the local radio news. There had been an abduction, a killing. It was true. So he had driven over, into this lion's den, knowing that he should stay well away from his brother, knowing that they would kill him if they found out, and wondering whether the~abduction could have anything to do with his own situation. Was this a warning to both brothers? He could not say. But when those two gorillas had approached him in the shadows of the tenement stairs, he had thought the game ali over. Firstly, they had been gangsters, out to get him. Then, they had been police officers, about to arrest him. But no, they were 'procedure'.

'You say it was a woman who called you? Did you catch her name? No, never mind, I know who it was anyway.'

They sat in the living-room. Michael, removing his sheep- skin jacket, brought a bottle of whisky out of one of the pockets.

'Would this help?' he said.

'It won't do any harm.'

Rebus went to fetch gla.s.ses from the kitchen, while Michael inspected the living-room.

'This is a nice place,' he called.

'Well, it's a bit big for my needs,' said Rebus. A choking sound came from the kitchen. Michael walked through to discover his big brother leaning into the sink, weeping grimly but quietly.

'John,' said Michael, hugging Rebus, 'it's okay. It's going to be okay.' He felt guilt well up inside him.

Rebus was fumbling for a handkerchief and, having found it, gave his nose a good blow and wiped his eyes.

'That's easy for you to say,' he sniffed, trying out a smile, a heathen.'

They drank half of the whisky, sitting back in their chairs, silently contemplating the shadowy ceiling above. Rebus's eyes were red-rimmed, and his eye-lashes stung. He sniffed occasionally, rubbing at his nose with the back of his hand. To Michael, it was like being boys again, but with the roles reversed for a moment. Not that they had been that close, but sentiment would always win over reality. Certainly he remembered John fighting one or two of his playground battles for him. Guilt welled up again. He s.h.i.+vered slightly. He had to get III out of this game, but perhaps already he was in too deep, and if he had brought John unknowingly into the game too. . . That did not bear thinking about. He had to see the Man, had to explain things to him. But how? He had no telephone number or address. It was always the Man who called him, never the other way round. It was farcical now that he thought about it. Like a nightmare.

'Did you enjoy the show the other night?'

Rebus forced himself to think back to it, to the perfumed and lonely woman, to his fingers around her throat, the scene which had signalled the beginning of his end.

'Yes, it was interesting.' He had fallen asleep had he not? Never mind.

Silence again, the broken sounds of traffic outside, a few shouts from distant drunks.

'They say it's someone with a grudge against me,' he said finally.

'Oh? And is it?'

'I don't know. It looks like it.'

'But surely you would know?'

Rebus shook his head.

'That's the trouble, Mickey. I can't remember.'

Michael sat up in his chair.

'You can't remember what exactly?'

'Something. I don't know. Just something. If I knew what, I would remember, wouldn't I? But there's a gap. I know there is. I know that there's something I should remember.'

'Something from your past?' Michael was keening now. Perhaps this had nothing at all to do with himself. Perhaps it was all to do with something else, someone else. He grew hopeful.

'From the past, yes. But I can't remember.' Rebus rubbed his forehead as though it were a crystal ball. Michael was fumbling in his pocket.