possible, but were disillusioned by how often journalists seemed to swap a central story between them, so that an identical piece would appear in two or three different papers. It was as if a conspiracy of writers was at work.
Some children, however, did still come to the library. The vast majority of these were accompanied by mother, father, or minder, but one or two still came alone. This evidence of the foolhardiness of some parents and their offspring further disturbed the faint-hearted librarians, who would ask the children, appalled, where their mothers and fathers were.
Samantha rarely came to the library’s children’s section, preferring older books, but she did so today to get away from her mother. A male librarian came over to her as she pored over the most childish stuff.
‘Are you here on your own, dear?’ he said.
Samantha recognised him. He’d been working here ever since she could remember.
‘My mum’s upstairs,’ she said.
‘I’m glad to hear it. Stick close to her, that’s my advice.’
She nodded, inwardly fuming. Her mother had given her a similar lecture only five minutes before. She wasn’t a child, but no one seemed prepared to accept that. When the librarian went over to talk with another girl, Samantha took out the book she wanted and gave her ticket to the old lady librarian with the dyed hair, whom the children called Mrs Slocum. Then she hurried up the steps to the library’s reference section, where her mother was busy looking for a critical study of George Eliot. George Eliot, her mother had told her, was a woman who had written books of tremendous realism and psychological depth at a time when men were supposed to be the great realists and psychologists, and women were supposed to be for nothing but the housework. That was why she had been forced to call herself ‘George’ to get published.
To counter these attempts at indoctrination, Samantha had brought from the children’s section an illustrated book about a boy who flies away on a giant cat and has adventures in a fantasy land beyond his dreams. That, she hoped, would piss her mother off. In the reference section, a lot of people sat at desks, coughing, their coughs echoing around the hushed hall. Her mother, glasses perched on her nose, looking very much like a schoolteacher, argued with a librarian about some book she had ordered. Samantha walked between the rows of desks, glancing at what people were reading and writing. She wondered why people spent so much time reading books when there were other things to be doing. She wanted to travel round the world. Perhaps then she would be ready to sit in dull rooms poring over these old books. But not until then.
He watched her as she moved up and down the rows of desks. He stood with his face half to her, looking as if he were studying a shelf of books on angling. She wasn’t looking around her though. There was no danger. She was in her own little world, a world of her own design and her own rules. That was fine. All the girls were like that. But this one was with someone. He could see that. He took a book from the shelf and flicked through it. One chapter caught his eye, and turned his thoughts away from Samantha. It was a chapter dealing with fly-knotting. There were lots of designs for knots. Lots of them.
15
Another briefing. Rebus enjoyed the briefings now, for there was always the possibility that Gill would be present, and that afterwards they would be able to go for a cup of coffee together. Last night they had eaten late at a restaurant, but she had been tired and had looked at him strangely, quizzing him a little more even than usual with her eyes, not wearing her spectacles at first, but then slipping them on halfway through the meal.
‘I want to see what I’m eating.’
But he knew she could see well enough. The glasses were a psychological strengthener. They protected her. Perhaps he was just being paranoid. Perhaps she had been tired merely. But he suspected something more, though he could not think what. Had he insulted her in some way? Snubbed her without realising? He was tired himself. They went to their separate flats and lay awake, wanting not to be alone. Then he dreamed the dream of the kiss, and awoke to the usual result, the sweat tainting his forehead, his lips moist. Would he awake to another letter? To another murder?
Now he felt lousy from lack of sleep. But still he enjoyed the briefing, and not just because of Gill. There was the inkling of a lead at long last, and Anderson was anxious to have it substantiated.
‘A pale blue Ford Escort,’ said Anderson. Behind him sat the Chief Superintendent, whose presence seemed to be unnerving the Chief Inspector. ‘A pale blue Ford Escort.’ Anderson wiped his brow. ‘We have reports of such a car being seen in the Haymarket district on the evening when victim number one’s body was found, and we have two sightings of a man and a girl, the girl apparently asleep, in such a car on the night that victim number three went missing.’ Anderson’s eyes came up from the document before him to gaze, it seemed, into the eyes of every officer present. ‘I want this made top priority, or better. I want to know the ownership details of every blue Ford Escort in the Lothians, and I want that information
Gill Templer was scribbling notes in her tiny note-pad, perhaps concocting a story for the press. Would they want to release this? Probably not, not straight away. They would wait first to see if anything came of the initial search. If nothing did, then the public would be asked to help. Rebus didn’t fancy this at all: gathering ownership details, trekking out to the suburbs, and mass-interviewing the suspects, trying to ‘nose’ whether they were probable or possible suspects, then perhaps a second interview. No, he did not fancy this at all. He fancied accompanying Gill Templer back to his cave and making love to her. Her back was all he could see of her from his present vantage point by the door. He had been last into the room yet again, having stayed at the pub a little longer than anticipated. It had been a prior appointment, lunch (liquid) with Jack Morton. Morton told him about the slow, steady progress of the outdoor inquiry: four-hundred people interviewed, whole families checked and rechecked, the usual cranks and amoral groups examined. And not a jot of actual light had been thrown on the case.
But now they had a car, or at least thought they did. The evidence was tenuous, but it was there, the likeness of a fact, and that was something. Rebus felt a little proud of his own part in the investigation, for it had been his painstaking cross-referencing of sightings which had thrown up this slender link. He wanted to tell Gill all about it, then arrange a rendezvous for later in the week. He wanted to see her again, to see anybody again, for his flat was becoming a prison-cell. He would slouch home of a late evening or early morning, tip onto his bed, and sleep, not bothering these days to tidy or to read or to buy (or even steal) any foodstuffs. He had neither the time nor the energy. Instead, he ate from kebab-houses and chip-shops, early-morning bakeries and chocolate- dispensers. His face was becoming paler than usual, and his stomach groaned as though there were no skin left to distend. He still shaved and put on a tie, as a matter of necessary propriety, but that was about it. Anderson had noticed that his shirts were not as clean as they might have been, but had said nothing so far. For one thing, Rebus was in his good books, begetter of the lead, and for another, anyone could see that in Rebus’s present mood he was likely to take a swing at any detractor.
The meeting was breaking up. There were no questions in anyone’s mind except the obvious one: when do we start cracking up? Rebus hovered just outside the door, waiting for Gill. She came out in the last group, in quiet conversation with Wallace and Anderson. The Superintendent had his arm around her waist playfully, gently ushering her out of the room. Rebus glared at the group, this motley crew of superior officers. He watched Gill’s face, but she did not seem to notice him. Rebus felt himself slide back down the snake on the board, right down to the bottom line again, back into the heap. So this was love. Who was kidding who?
As the group of three walked up the corridor, Rebus stood there like a jilted teenager and cursed and cursed and cursed.
He’d been let down again. Let down.
He felt dizzy, his ears ringing with the sea. Staggering a little, he caught hold of the wall, trying to take comfort in its solidity, but it seemed to be throbbing. He breathed hard, thinking back to his days on the rock-strewn
