She brought him into Chinatown, a few streets off Shaftesbury Avenue, where the telephone boxes were shaped like oriental temples, supermarkets sold fifty year-old eggs, gateways were decorated like relics from Hong Kong and the street names were given in Chinese as well as English. There were a few tourists about, but mainly the pedestrianised walkway was filled with scuttling Chinese, their voices shrill. It was a different world, like something you would expect to ? HYPERLINK “http://find.in/”??find in? New York but never dream of finding in England. Yet he could look back along the street and still see the theatres on Shaftesbury Avenue, the red buses chug-chugging, the punks yelling obscenities at the tops of immature voices.
`Here we are,' she said, stopping outside a restaurant on the corner, of the street. She pulled open the door, gesturing for him to precede her into the air-conditioned chill. A waiter was upon them at once, showing them to a dimly-lit booth. A waitress smiled with her eyes as she handed them each a menu. The waiter returned with a wine list, which he placed beside Rebus.?
'Would you like a drink while you are deciding?' Rebus looked to Lisa Frazer for guidance. `Gin and tonic,' she said without hesitation.
`And the same for me,' said Rebus, then regretted it. He wasn't all that keen on gin's chemical smell.
`I'm very excited about this case, Inspector Rebus.'
`Please, call me, John. We're not in the station now.'
She nodded. `I'd like to thank you for giving me the chance to study the files. I think I'm already forming an interesting picture.' She reached into her clutch-purse and produced a collection of a dozen index cards held together with an outsize paper-clip. The cards were covered in lines of tiny neat handwriting. She seemed ready to start reading them. `Shouldn't we at least order first?' Rebus asked. She appeared not to understand, then grinned.
`Sorry,' she said. `It's just that I'm . . .'
'Very excited. Yes, you said.'
`Don't policemen get excited when they find what they think is a clue?''
`Almost never,' said Rebus, appearing to study the menu, `we're born pessimists. We don't get excited until the guilty party has been sentenced and locked up.'
`That's curious.' She held her own menu still closed. The index cards had been relegated to the table-top. `I'd have thought to enjoy police work you would need a level of optimism, otherwise you'd never think you were going to solve the case.'
Still studying the menu, Rebus decided that he'd let her order for both of them. He glanced up at her. `I try not to think about solving or not solving,' he said. `I just get on with the job, step by step.'
The waiter had returned with their drinks.
`You are ready to order?'
`Not really,' said Rebus, `could we have a couple more minutes?'
Lisa Frazer was staring across the table at him. It wasn't a large table. Her right hand rested on the rim of her glass, barely an inch from his left hand. Rebus could sense the presence of her knees almost touching his own under the table. The other tables in the restaurant all seemed larger than this one, and the booths seemed better lit.
`Frazer's a Scottish name,' he said. It was as good a line as any.
`That's right,' she replied. `My great grandfather came from a place called Kirkcaldy.'
Rebus smiled. She had pronounced the word the way it looked. He corrected her, then added, `I was born and brought up not far from there. Five or six miles, to be precise.'
`Really? What a coincidence. I've never been there, but my grandaddy used to tell me it was where Adam Smith was born.'
Rebus nodded. `But don't hold that against it,' he said. `It's still not a bad wee town.' He picked up his glass and swirled it, enjoying the sound of the ice chinking on the glass. Lisa was at last studying her menu. Without looking up, she spoke.
`Why are you here?' The question was sudden, catching Rebus off-balance. Did she mean here in the restaurant, here in London here on this planet?
`I'm here to find answers.' He was pleased with this reply; it seemed to deal with all three possibilities at once. He lifted his glass. `Here's to psychology.'
She raised her own glass, ice rattling like musical chimes. `Here's to taking things one step at a time.' They both drank. She studied her menu again. `Now,' she said, `what shall we have?'
Rebus knew how to use a pair of chopsticks, but perhaps tonight had just been the wrong time to try. He suddenly found himself unable to pick up a noodle or a sliver of duck without the thing sliding out of his grasp and falling back to the table, splashing sauce across the tablecloth. The more it happened, the more frustrated he became and the more frustrated he became, the more it happened. Finally, he asked for a fork.
`My coordination's all gone,' he explained. She smiled in understanding (or was it sympathy?) and poured more tea into his tiny cup. He could see that she was impatient to tell him what she thought she had discovered about the Wolfman. Over a starter of crabmeat soup the talk had been safe, guarded, had been of pasts, and futures, not the, present. Rebus stabbed his fork into an unresisting' slice of meat. `So what have you found?'
She looked at him for confirmation that this was her cue.
When he nodded, she put down her chopsticks, then pushed aside the paper-clip from her index cards and cleared her, throat, not so much reading from the cards, more using them as occasional prompts.
`Well,' she said, `the first thing I found revealing was the evidence of salt on the bodies of the victims. I know some people think it may be sweat, but I'm of the opinion that these are tear stains. A lot can be learned from any killer's interpersonal relationship with his or her victim.' There it was again: his or her. Her. `To me the tear stains indicate feelings of guilt in the attacker, guilt felt, moreover, not in reflection but at the actual time of the attack. This gives the Wolfman a moral dimension, showing that he is being driven almost against his will. There may well
