Knots And Crosses

‘We lose a few, but they don’t get the publicity. We catch a few, and they do. It’s the same as always, I suppose.’

The room, Rebus was noticing, smelled of toffee-apples, of penny arcades.

Michael was speaking:

‘This is a terrible business about those girls being kidnapped.’

Rebus nodded.

‘Yes,’ he said, ‘yes, it is. But we can’t strictly call it kidnapping, not yet. There hasn’t been a demand note or anything. It’s more likely to be a straightforward case of sexual assault.’

Michael started up from his chair.

‘Straightforward? What’s straightforward about that?’

‘It’s just the terminology we use, Mickey, that’s all.’ Rebus shrugged again and finished his drink.

‘Well, John,’ said Michael, sitting, ‘I mean, we’ve both got daughters, too. You’re so casual about the whole thing. I mean, it’s frightening to think of it.’ He shook his head slowly in the world-wide expression of shared grief, and relief, too, that the horror was someone else’s for the moment. ‘It’s frightening,’ he repeated. ‘And in Edinburgh of all places. I mean, you never think of that sort of thing happening in Edinburgh, do you?’

‘There’s more happening in Edinburgh than anyone knows.’

‘Yes.’ Michael paused. ‘I was across there just last week playing at one of the hotels.’

‘You didn’t tell me.’

It was Michael’s turn to shrug his shoulders.

‘Would you have been interested?’ he said.

‘Maybe not,’ said Rebus, smiling, ‘but I would have come along anyway.’

Michael laughed. It was the laughter of birthdays, of money found in an old pocket.

‘Another whisky, sir?’ he said.

‘I thought you were never going to ask.’

Rebus returned to his study of the room while Michael went to the cabinet.

‘How’s the act going?’ he asked. ‘And I really am interested.’

‘It’s going fine,’ said Michael. ‘In fact, it’s going very well indeed. There’s talk of a television spot, but I’ll believe that when I see it.’

‘Great.’

Another drink reached Rebus’s willing hand.

‘Yes, and I’m working on a new slot. It’s a bit scary though.’ An inch of gold flashed on Michael’s wrist as he tipped the glass to his lips. The watch was expensive: it had no numbers on its face. It seemed to Rebus that the more expensive something was, the less of it there always seemed to be: tiny little hi-fi systems, watches without numbers, the translucent Dior ankle-socks on Michael’s feet.

‘Tell me about it,’ he said, taking his brother’s bait.

‘Well,’ said Michael, sitting forward in his chair, ‘I take members of the audience back into their past lives.’

‘Past lives?’

Rebus was staring at the floor as if admiring the design of the dark and light green carpet.

‘Yes,’ Michael continued, ‘Reincarnation, born again, that sort of thing. Well, I shouldn’t have to spell it out to you, John. After all, you’re the Christian.’

‘Christians don’t believe in past lives, Mickey. Only future ones.’

Michael stared at Rebus, demanding silence.

‘Sorry,’ said Rebus.

‘As I was saying, I tried the act out in public for the first time last week, though I’ve been practising it for a while with my private consultees.’

‘Private consultees?’

‘Yes. They pay me money for private hypnotherapy. I stop them smoking, or make them more confident, or stop them from wetting the bed. Some are convinced that they have past lives, and they ask me to put them under so that they can prove it. Don’t worry though. Financially, it’s all above board. The tax-man gets his cut.’

‘And do you prove it? Do they have past lives?’

Michael rubbed a finger around the rim of his glass, now empty.

‘You’d be surprised,’ he said.

‘Give me an example.’

Rebus was following the lines of the carpet with his eyes. Past lives, he thought to himself. Now there was a thing. There was plenty of life in his past.

‘Well,’ said Michael, ‘remember I told you about my show in Edinburgh last week? Well,’ he leaned further forward in his chair, ‘I got this woman up from the audience. She was a small woman, middle-aged. She’d come in with an office-party. She went under pretty easily, probably because she hadn’t been drinking as heavily as her friends. Once she was under, I told her that we were going to take a trip into her past, way, way back before she was born. I told her to think back to the earliest memory she had …’

Michael’s voice had taken on a professional but easy mellifluence. He spread his hands before him as if playing to an audience. Rebus, nursing his glass, felt himself relax a little. He thought back to a childhood episode, a game of football, one brother pitted against the other. The warm mud of a July shower, and their mother, her sleeves rolled up, stripping them both and putting them, giggling knots of arms and legs, into the bath …

‘… well,’ Michael was saying, ‘she started to speak, and in a voice not quite her own. It was weird, John. I wish you had been there to see it. The audience were silent, and I was feeling all cold and then hot and then cold again, and it had nothing to do with the hotel’s heating-system by the way. I’d done it, you see. I’d taken that woman into a past life. She was a nun. Do you believe that? A nun. And she said that she was alone in her cell. She described the convent and everything, and then she started to recite something in Latin, and some people in the audience actually crossed themselves. I was bloody well petrified. My hair was probably standing on end. I brought her out of it as quickly as I could, and there was a long pause before the crowd started to applaud. Then, maybe out of sheer relief, her friends started to cheer and laugh, and that broke the ice. At the end of the show, I found out that this woman was a staunch Protestant, a Rangers supporter no less, and she swore blind that she knew no Latin at all. Well, somebody inside her did. I’ll tell you that.’

Rebus was smiling.

‘It’s a nice story, Mickey,’ he said.

‘It’s the truth.’ Michael opened his arms wide in supplication. ‘Don’t you believe me?’

‘Maybe.’

Michael shook his head.

‘You must make a pretty bad copper, John. I had around a hundred and fifty witnesses. Iron-clad.’

Rebus could not pull his attention away from the design in the carpet.

‘Plenty of people believe in past lives, John.’

Past lives … Yes, he believed in some things … In God, certainly … But past lives … Without warning, a face screamed up at him from the carpet, trapped in its cell.

He dropped his glass.

‘John? Is anything wrong? Christ, you look as if you’ve seen …’

‘No, no, nothing’s the matter.’ Rebus retrieved the glass and stood up. ‘I just … I’m fine. It’s just that,’ he checked his watch, a watch with numbers, ‘well, I’d better be going. I’m on duty this evening.’

Michael was smiling weakly, glad that his brother was not going to stay, but embarrassed at his relief.

‘We’ll have to meet again soon,’ he said, ‘on neutral territory.’

‘Yes,’ said Rebus, tasting once again the tang of toffee-apples. He felt a little pale, a little shaky, as though he were too far out of his territory. ‘Let’s do that.’

Once or twice or three times a year, at weddings, funerals, or over the telephone at Christmas, they promised themselves this get-together. The mere promise now was a ritual in itself, and so could be safely proffered and just as safely ignored.

‘Let’s do that.’