keeping quiet? When would he strike next? And where? Lisa had been unable to answer any of these questions. Maybe Flight was right about psychology. So much of it was guesswork, like a game where some of the pieces are missing and nobody knows the rules. Sometimes you ended up playing a game completely different to the original, 'a game of your own devising.
That was what Rebus needed: a new set of rules in his game against the Wolfman. Rules which would be to his benefit. The newspaper stories were the start of it, but only if the Wolfman made the next move.
Maybe Cafferty would get off this time, but there'd always be another. The board was always prepared for a fresh start.
Rebus gave his evidence and was out of the court by four. He handed the file on the case back to his driver, a balding middle-aged detective sergeant, and settled into the passen?ger seat.
`Let me know what happens,' he said. The driver nodded.
`Straight back to the airport, Inspector?' Funny how a Glaswegian accent could be made to sound so sarcastic. The sergeant had managed somehow to make Rebus feel his inferior. Then again, there was little love lost between east and west coasts. There might have been a wall dividing the two, such was their own abiding cold war. The driver was repeating his question, a little louder now.
`That's right,' said Rebus, just as loudly. `It's a jet-setting life in the Lothian and Borders Police.'
His head was fairly thrumming by the time he got back to the hotel in Piccadilly. He needed a quiet night, a night alone. He hadn't managed to contact Flight or Lisa, but they could wait until tomorrow. For now, he wanted nothing.
Nothing but silence and stillness, lying on the, bed and staring at the ceiling, his mind nowhere.
It had been one hell of a week, and the week was only halfway through. He took two paracetamol from the bottle he had brought and washed them down with half a glass of tepid tap-water. The water tasted foul. Was it true that London, water had passed through seven sets of kidneys before reaching the drinker? It had an oily quality in his mouth, not the sharp clear taste of the water in Edinburgh. Seven sets of kidneys. He looked at his cases, thinking of the amount of stuff he had brought with him, useless stuff, stuff he would never use. Even the bottle of malt sat more or less untouched.
There was a telephone ringing somewhere. His tele?phone, but he managed to ignore the fact for fully fifteen seconds. He growled and clawed at the wall with his hand, finally finding the receiver and dragging it to his ear. `This had better be good.'
`Where the fuck have you been?' It was Flight's voice, anxious and angry.
`Good evening to you too, George.'
`There's been another killing.'
Rebus sat up and swung his legs off the bed. `When?'
`The body was discovered an hour ago. There's something else.' He paused. `We caught the killer.'
Now Rebus stood up.
`What?'
`We caught him as he was running off.'
Rebus's knees almost failed him, but he locked them. His voice was unnaturally quiet. `Is it him?'
`Could be.'
`Where are you?'
`I'm at HQ We've brought him here. The murder took place in a house off Brick Lane. Not too far from Wolf Street.'
`In a house?' That was a surprise. The other murders had all taken place out of doors. But then, as Lisa had said, the pattern kept changing.'
`Yes,' said Flight. `And that's not all. The killer was found with money on him stolen from the house, and some jewellery and a camera.'
Another break in the pattern. Rebus sat down on the bed again. `I see what you're getting at,' he said. `But the method— ?’
'Similar, to be sure. Philip Cousins is on his way. He was at a dinner somewhere.'
`I'm going to the scene, George. I'll come to see you, afterwards.'
`Fine.' Flight sounded as though he had hoped for this. Rebus was scrabbling for paper and a pen.
`What's the address?'
`110 Copperplate Street.'
Rebus wrote the address on the back of his travel ticket from the trip to Glasgow.
`John?'
`Yes, George?'
`Don't go off again without telling me, okay?'
`Yes, George.' Rebus paused. `Can I go now?'
`Go on then, bugger off. I'll see you here later.'
Rebus put down the telephone and felt an immense weariness take control of him, weighting his legs and arms and head. He took several deep breaths and rose to his feet, then walked to the sink and splashed water on his face, rubbing a wet hand around his neck and throat. He looked up, hardly recognising himself in the wall-mounted
