Still enjoying the show, Rebus began to nod off himself. It was the effect of too much alcohol, too little sleep, and the warm, broody darkness of the theatre. Only the final applause of the audience awoke him. Michael, sweating in his glittery stage suit, took the applause as though addicted to it, coming back for another bow when most of the people were leaving their seats. He had told his brother that he had to get home quickly, that he would not see him after the show, that he would phone him sometime for his reaction.
And John Rebus had slept through much of it.
He felt refreshed, however, and could hear himself accepting the perfumed woman’s offer of a ‘one for the road’ drink at a local bar. They left the theatre arm-in-arm, smiling at something. Rebus felt relaxed, a child again. This woman was treating him like her son, really, and he was happy enough to be coddled. A final drink, and then he’d go home. Just one drink.
Jim Stevens watched them leave the theatre. It was becoming very strange indeed. Rebus seemed to be ignoring his brother now, and he had a woman with him. What did it all mean? One thing it meant was that Gill should be told about it at some opportune moment. Stevens, smiling, added it to his collection of such moments. It had been a good night’s work so far.
So where in the evening had mother-love changed into physical contact? In that pub, perhaps, where her reddened fingers had bitten into his thigh? Outside in the cooling air when he wrapped his arms around her neck in a fumbled attempt at a kiss? Or here in her musty flat, smelling still of her husband, where Rebus and she lie across an old settee and exchange tongues?
No matter. It’s too late to regret anything, and too early. So he slouches after her when she retires to her bedroom. He tumbles into the huge double-bed, springy and covered in thick blankets and quilts. He watches her undress in darkness. The bed feels like one he had as a kid, when a hot-water-bottle was all he had to keep the chill off, and mounds of gritty blankets, puffed-out quilts. Heavy and suffocating, tiring in themselves.
No matter.
Rebus did not enjoy the particulars of her heavy body, and was forced to think of everything in the abstract. His hands on her well-suckled breasts reminded him of late nights with Rhona. Her calves were thick, unlike Gill’s, and her face was worn with too much living. But she was a woman, and she was with him, so he squeezed her into an abstract and tried to make them both happy. But the heaviness of the bedding oppressed him, caging him, making him feel small and trapped and isolated from the world. He fought against it, fought against the memory of Gordon Reeve and he as they sat in solitary, listening to the screams of those around them, but enduring, always enduring, and reunited finally. Having won. Having lost. Lost everything. His heart was pounding to her grunts, now some distance away it seemed. He felt the first wave of that absolute repulsion hit him in the stomach like a truncheon, and his hands slid around the hanging, yielding throat beneath him. The moans were inhuman now, cat- like, keening. His hands pushed a little, the fingers finding their own purchase against skin and sheet. They locked him up and they threw away the key. They pushed him to his death and they poisoned him. He should not have been alive. He should have died back then, back in the rank, animal cells with their power-hoses and their constant questionings. But he had survived. He had survived. And he was coming.
Rebus became aware of the gurgling sounds beneath him just before his head started to fry. He fell over onto the gasping figure and lost consciousness. It was like a switch being flipped.
16
He awoke in a white room. It reminded him very much of the hospital room in which he had awoken after his nervous breakdown all those years ago. There were muffled noises from outside. He sat up, his head throbbing. What had happened? Christ, that woman, that poor woman. He had tried to kill her! Drunk, way too drunk. Merciful God, he had tried to strangle her, hadn’t he? Why in God’s name had he done that? Why?
A doctor pushed open his door.
‘Ah, Mister Rebus. Good, you’re awake. We’re about to move you into one of the wards. How do you feel?’
His pulse was taken.
‘Simple exhaustion, we think. Simple nervous exhaustion. Your friend who called for the ambulance-’
‘My friend?’
‘Yes, she said that you just collapsed. And from what we can gather from your employers, you’ve been working pretty hard on this dreadful murder hunt. Simple exhaustion. What you need is a break.’
‘Where’s my … my friend?’
‘No idea. At home, I expect.’
‘And according to her, I just collapsed?’
‘That’s right.’
Rebus felt immediate relief flooding through him. She had not told them. She had not told them. Then his head began to pulse again. The doctor’s wrists were hairy and scrubbed clean. He slipped a thermometer into Rebus’s mouth, smiling. Did he know what Rebus had been doing prior to the blackout? Or had his friend dressed him before calling the ambulance? He had to contact the woman. He didn’t know where she stayed, not exactly, but the ambulancemen would know, and he could check.
Exhaustion. Rebus did not feel exhausted. He was beginning to feel rested and, though slightly unnerved, quite unworried about life. Had they given him anything while he was asleep?
‘Can I see a newspaper?’ he muttered past the thermometer.
‘I’ll get an orderly to fetch you one. Is there anyone you wish us to contact? Any close relative or friend?’
Rebus thought of Michael.
‘No,’ he said, ‘there’s nobody to contact. All I want is a newspaper.’
‘Fair enough.’ The thermometer was removed, the details noted.
‘How long do you want to keep me in here?’
‘Two or three days. I may want you to see an analyst.’
‘Forget the analyst. I’ll need some books to read.’
‘We’ll see what we can do.’
Rebus settled back then, having decided to let things take their course. He would lie here, resting though he needed no rest, and would let the rest of them worry about the murder case. Sod them all. Sod Anderson. Sod Wallace. Sod Gill Templer.
But then he remembered his hands slipping around that ageing throat, and he shivered. It was as though his mind were not his own. Had he been about to kill that woman? Should he see the analyst after all? The questions made his headache worse. He tried not to think about anything at all, but three figures kept coming back to him: his old friend Gordon Reeve, his new lover Gill Templer, and the woman he had betrayed her for, and nearly strangled. They danced in his head until the dance became blurred. Then he fell asleep.
‘John!’
She walked quickly to his bed, fruit and vitamin-drink in her hands. She had make-up on her face, and was wearing strictly off-duty clothes. She pecked his cheek, and he could smell her French perfume. He could also see down the front of her silk blouse. He felt a little guilty.
‘Hello, D.I. Templer,’ he said. ‘Here,’ lifting one edge of the bedcover, ‘get in.’
She laughed, dragging across a stern-looking chair. Other visitors were entering the ward, their smiles and quiet voices redolent of illness, an illness Rebus did not feel.
‘How are you, John?’
‘Terrible. What have you brought me?’
‘Grapes, bananas, diluting orange. Nothing very imaginative, I’m afraid.’
