25
‘Well, John, this all seems quite fantastical, but I’m sure it’s a possibility. Certainly, it’s the best lead we’ve got, though I find it hard to conceive of a man with so much hate that he would murder four innocent girls just to give you the clues as to his ultimate victim.’
Chief Superintendent Wallace looked from Rebus to Gill Templer and back again. To Rebus’s left sat Anderson. Wallace’s hands lay like dead fish on his desk, a pen in front of him. The room was large and uncluttered, a self-assured oasis. Here, problems were always solved, decisions were made — always correctly.
‘The problem now is finding him. If we make this thing public, then that might scare him off, endangering your daughter’s life in the process. On the other hand, a public appeal would be by far the quickest way of finding him.’
‘You can’t possibly …!’ It was Gill Templer who, in that quiet room, was on the verge of exploding, but Wallace silenced her with a wave of his hand.
‘I am merely thinking aloud at this stage, Inspector Templer, merely casting stones into a pond.’
Anderson sat like a corpse, his eyes to the floor. He was on leave now officially and in mourning, but he had insisted on keeping in touch with the case and Superintendent Wallace had acquiesced.
‘Of course, John,’ Wallace was saying, ‘it’s impossible for you to remain on the case.’
Rebus rose to his feet.
‘Sit down, John, please.’ The Super’s eyes were hard and honest, the eyes of a real copper, one of the old school. Rebus sat down again. ‘Now I know how you must feel, believe it or believe it not. But there’s too much at stake here. Too much for all of us. You’re far too involved to be of any objective use, and the public would cry out about vigilante tactics. You must see that.’
‘All I see is that without me Reeve will stop at nothing. It’s me he wants.’
‘Exactly. And wouldn’t we be stupid to hand you over to him on a plate? We’ll do everything we can, as much as you could do. Leave it to us.’
‘The Army won’t tell you anything, you know.’
‘They’ll have to.’ Wallace began to toy with his pen, as though it were there for that very purpose. ‘Ultimately, they’ve got the same boss we have. They’ll be made to tell.’
Rebus shook his head.
‘They’re a law unto themselves. The SAS is hardly even a part of the Army. If they don’t want to tell you, then believe me, they won’t tell you a bloody thing.’ Rebus’s hand came down onto the desk. ‘Not a bloody thing.’
‘John.’ Gill’s hand squeezed his shoulder, asking him to be calm. She herself looked like a fury, but she knew when to keep quiet and let looks alone transmit her anger and her displeasure. For Rebus, however, it was actions that counted. He’d been sitting outside reality for way too long.
He rose from his small chair like a pure force, no longer human, and left the room in silence. The Superintendent looked at Gill.
‘He’s off the case, Gill. He must be made to realise that. I believe that you,’ he paused while opening and shutting a drawer, ‘that you and he have an understanding. That, at least, is how we used to phrase it in my day. Perhaps you should make him aware of his position. We’ll get this man, but not with Rebus hanging around intent on revenge.’ Wallace looked towards Anderson, who stared drily at him. ‘We don’t want vigilante tactics,’ he went on. ‘Not in Edinburgh. What would the tourists say?’ Then his face broke into a cold smile. He looked from Anderson to Gill, then rose from his chair. ‘This is all becoming extremely …’
‘Internecine?’ suggested Gill.
‘I was going to say incestuous. What with Chief Inspector Anderson here, his son and Rebus’s wife, yourself and Rebus, Rebus and this man Reeve, Reeve and Rebus’s daughter. I hope the press don’t get wind of this. You’ll be responsible for seeing that they don’t, and for punishing any that do. Am I making myself clear?’
Gill Templer nodded, stifling a sudden yawn.
‘Good.’ The Super nodded across to Anderson. ‘Now see that Chief Inspector Anderson gets home safely will you?’
William Anderson, seated in the back of the car, went through his mental list of informants and friends. He knew a couple of people who might know about the Special Air Service. Certainly, something like the Rebus-Reeve case could not have been hushed up totally, though it might well have been struck from the records. The soldiers would have known about it though. Grapevines existed everywhere, and especially where you would least expect them. He might need to twist a few arms and lay out a few tenners, but he would find the bastard if it was his last action on God’s earth.
Or he would be there when Rebus did.
Rebus had left the HQ by a back entrance, as Stevens had hoped. He followed Rebus as the policeman, looking the worse for wear, stalked away. What was it all about? No matter. As long as he stuck to Rebus, he could be sure of getting his story, and what a story it promised to be. Stevens kept checking behind him, but there seemed to be no tail on Rebus. No police tail, that was. It seemed strange to him that they would allow Rebus to go off on his own when there was no telling what a man would do whose daughter had been abducted. Stevens was hoping for the ultimate plot: he was hoping that Rebus would lead him straight to the big boys behind this new drugs ring. If not one brother, then the other.
Like a brother to me, and I to him. What happened? He knew what was to blame at heart. The method, that was the cause of all of this. The caging and the breaking and then the patching up. The patching up had not been a success, had it? They were both broken men in their own ways. That knowledge wouldn’t stop him from shearing Reeve’s head from its shoulders though. Nothing would stop that. But he had to find the bastard yet, and he had no idea where to start. He could feel the city closing in on him, bringing to bear all of its historical weight, smothering him. Dissent, rationalism, enlightenment: Edinburgh had specialized in all three, and now he too would need these charms. He needed to work on his own, quickly, yet methodically, using ingenuity and every tool at his disposal. Most of all he needed instinct.
After five minutes, he knew he was being followed, and the hair stood up at the back of his neck. It was not the usual police tail. That would not have been so easy to spot. But was it … Could he be so close … At a bus-stop, he stopped and turned suddenly, as though checking to see if a bus was coming. He saw the man dodge into a doorway. It wasn’t Gordon Reeve. It was that bloody reporter.
Rebus listened to his heart slow again, but the adrenaline was already pumping through him, filling him with a desire to run, to take off along this long straight road and run into the strongest head-wind imaginable. But then a bus came trundling round the corner, and he boarded that instead.
From the back window, he saw the reporter jump out of the doorway and desperately flag down a taxi-cab. Rebus had no time to be bothered with the man. He had some thinking to do, thinking about how in the world he could find Reeve. The possibility haunted him: he’ll find me. I don’t need to chase. But somehow that scared him most of all.
Gill Templer could not find Rebus. He had disappeared as though he had been a shadow merely and not a man at all. She telephoned and hunted and asked and did all the things a good copper should do, but she was confronted by the fact of a man who was not only a good copper himself, but had been one of the best in the SAS to boot. He might have been hiding under her feet, under her desk, in her clothes, and she would never have found him. So he stayed hidden.
He stayed hidden, she surmised, because he was on the move, swiftly and methodically moving through the streets and bars of Edinburgh in search of his prey, knowing that when found, the prey would turn hunter once more.
But Gill went on trying, shivering now and then when she thought of her lover’s grim and horrific past, and of the mentality of those who decided that such things were necessary. Poor John. What would she have done? She would have walked right out of that cell and kept on walking, just as he had done. And yet she would have felt guilty, too, just as he had felt guilt, and she would have put it all behind her, scarred invisibly.
