Knots And Crosses

Rebus picked a grape from the bunch and popped it into his mouth, setting aside the trashy novel in which he had been painfully involved.

‘I don’t know, Inspector, the things I have to do to get a date with you.’ Rebus shook his head wearily. Gill was smiling, but nervously.

‘We were worried about you, John. What happened?’

‘I fainted. In the home of a friend, by all accounts. It’s nothing very serious. I have a few weeks to live.’

Gill’s smile was warm.

‘They say it’s overwork.’ Then she paused. ‘What’s all this “Inspector” stuff?’

Rebus shrugged, then looked sulky. His guilt was mixing with the remembrance of that snub he had been given, that snub which had started the whole ball rolling. He turned into a patient again, weakly slumping against his pillow.

‘I’m a very ill man, Gill. Too ill to answer questions.’

‘Well, in that case I won’t bother to slip you the cigarettes sent by Jack Morton.’

Rebus sat up again.

‘Bless that man. Where are they?’

She brought two packs from her jacket pocket and slipped them beneath the bedclothes. He gripped her hand.

‘I missed you, Gill.’ She smiled, and did not withdraw the hand.

Limitless visiting-time being a prerogative of the police, Gill stayed for two hours, talking about her past, asking him about his own. She had been born on an air-force base in Wiltshire, just after the war. She told Rebus that her father had been an engineer in the RAF.

‘My dad,’ Rebus said, ‘was in the Army during the war. I was conceived while he was on one of his last leaves. He was a stage hypnotist by profession.’ People usually raised an eyebrow at that, but not Gill Templer. ‘He used to work the music-halls and theatres, doing summer stints in Blackpool and Ayr and places like that, so we were always sure of a summer holiday away from Fife.’

She sat with her head cocked to one side, content to be told stories. The ward was quiet once the other visitors had obeyed the leaving-bell. A nurse pushed around a trolley with a huge battered pot of tea on it. Gill was given a cup, the nurse smiling at her in sisterhood.

‘She’s a nice kid, that nurse,’ said Rebus, relaxed. He had been given two pills, one blue and one brown, and they were making him drowsy. ‘She reminds me of a girl I knew when I was in the Paras.’

‘How long were you in the Paras, John?’

‘Six years. No, eight years it was.’

‘What made you leave?’

What made him leave? Rhona had asked him the same question over and over, her curiosity piqued by the feeling that he had something to hide, some monstrous skeleton in his closet.

‘I don’t know really. It’s hard to remember that far back. I was picked for special training and I didn’t like it.’

And this was the truth. He had no use for memories of his training, the reek of fear and mistrust, the screaming, that screaming in his memory. Let me out. The echo of solitary.

‘Well,’ said Gill, ‘if my memory serves me right, I’ve got a case waiting for me back at base-camp.’

‘That reminds me,’ he said, ‘I think I saw your friend last night. The reporter. Stevens, wasn’t it? He was in a pub the same time I was. Strange.’

‘Not so very strange. That’s his kind of hunting-ground. Funny, he’s a bit like you in some ways. Not as sexy though.’ She smiled and pecked his cheek again, rising from the metal chair. ‘I’ll try to drop in again before they let you out, but you know what it’s like. I can’t make any concrete promises, D.S. Rebus.’

Standing, she seemed taller than Rebus had imagined her. Her hair fell forward onto his face for another kiss, full on the lips this time, and he staring at the dark cleft between her breasts. He felt a little tired, so tired. He forced his eyes to remain open while she walked away, her heels clacking on the tiled floor while the nurses floated past like ghosts on their rubber-soled shoes. He pushed himself up so that he could watch her legs retreat. She had nice legs. He had remembered that much. He remembered them gripping his sides, the feet resting on his buttocks. He remembered her hair falling across the pillow like a Turner seascape. He remembered her voice hissing in his ears, that hissing. Oh yes, John, oh, John, yes, yes, yes.

Why did you leave the army?

As she turned over, turning into the woman with the choking cries of his climax.

Why did you?

Oh, oh, oh, oh.

Oh yes, the safety of dreams.

17

The editors loved what the Edinburgh Strangler was doing for the circulations of their newspapers. They loved the way his story grew almost organically, as though carefully nurtured. The modus operandi had altered ever so slightly for the killing of Nicola Turner. The Strangler had, it seemed, tied a knot in the cord prior to strangulation. This knot had pressed heavily on the girl’s throat, bruising it. The police did not consider this of much significance. They were too busy checking through the records of blue Ford Escorts to be busy with a slight detail of technique. They were out there checking every blue Escort in the area, questioning every owner, every driver.

Gill Templer had released details of the car to the press, hoping for a huge public response. It came: neighbours reported their neighbours, fathers their sons, wives their husbands, and husbands their wives. There were over two-hundred blue Escorts to investigate, and if nothing came of that, they would be re-investigated, before moving on to other colours of Ford Escort, other makes of light-blue saloon car. It might take months; certainly it would take weeks.

Jack Morton, another xeroxed list folded in his hand, had consulted his doctor about swollen feet. The doctor had told him that he walked too much in cheap, unsupportive shoes. This Morton already knew. He had now interviewed so many suspects that it was all becoming a blur to him. They all looked the same and acted the same: nervous, deferential, innocent. If only the Strangler would make a mistake. There were no clues worth going on. Morton suspected the car to be a false trail. No clues worth going on. He remembered John Rebus’s anonymous letters. There are clues everywhere. Could that be true of this case? Could the clues be too big to notice, or too abstract? Certainly it was a rare — an extraordinarily rare — murder case that did not have some bumper, extravagant clue lying about somewhere just waiting to be picked up. He was damned if he knew where this one was though, and that was why he had visited his doctor — hoping for some sympathy and a few days off. Rebus had landed on his feet again, lucky sod. Morton envied him his illness.

He parked his car on a double-yellow line outside the library and sauntered in. The great front hall reminded him of the days when he had used this library himself, clutching picture-books borrowed from the children’s section. It used to be situated downstairs. He wondered if it still was. His mother would give him the bus-fare, and he would come into town, ostensibly to change his library books, but really so that he could wander the streets for an hour or two, savouring the taste of what it would be like to be grown up and free. He would trail American tourists, taking note of their swaggering self-confidence and their bulging wallets and waistbands. He would watch them as they photographed Greyfriars Bobby’s statue across from the kirkyard. He had stared long and hard at the statue of the small dog, and had felt nothing. He had read of Covenanters, of Deacon Brodie, of public executions on the High Street, wondering what kind of city this was, and what kind of country. He shook his head now, past caring about fantasies, and went to the information desk.

‘Hello, Mister Morton.’

He turned to find a girl, more a young lady really, standing before him, a book clasped to her small chest. He frowned.

‘It’s me, Samantha Rebus.’