by Ian Rankin
‘Oh,’ he said, disappointed, ‘is it part of a trilogy? I just liked the title.’
She turned and gave him a quizzical look, then laughed. Rebus could feel himself going red at the neck. She was making a fool of him. He turned away from her and concentrated on the pattern of the rug, brushing the rough fibres with his hand.
‘Oh dear,’ she said, starting to crawl back. ‘I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to. I’m sorry.’ And she placed a hand on either of his legs, kneeling in front of him, angling her head until his eyes were forced to meet hers. She was smiling apologetically. ‘Sorry,’ she mouthed. He managed a smile which said: ‘that’s okay’. She leaned across him and placed her lips on his, one of her hands sliding up his leg towards the thigh, and then a little higher still.
It was evening before he escaped, though ‘escape’ was perhaps putting it too harshly. The effort of easing himself from beneath Lisa’s sleeping limbs was almost too much. Her body perfume, the sweet smell of her hair, the flawless warmth of her belly, her arms, her behind. She did not waken as he slid from the bed and tugged on his clothes. She did not waken as he wrote her another of his notes, picked up his carrier-bag of books, opened the door, cast a glance back towards the bed and then pulled the door shut after him.
He went to Covent Garden tube station, where he was offered a choice: the queue for the elevator, or the three hundred-odd spiralling stairs. He opted for the stairs. They seemed to go on forever, turning and turning in their gyre. His head became light as he thought of what it must have been like to descend this corkscrew during the war years. White tiled walls like those of public lavatories. Rumble from above. The dull echo of footsteps and voices.
He thought, too, of Edinburgh’s Scott Monument, with its own tightly winding stairwell, much more constricted and unnerving than this. And then he was at the bottom, beating the elevator by a matter of seconds. The tube train was as crowded as he had come to expect. Next to a sign proclaiming ‘Keep your personal stereo personal’, a white youth wearing a green parka with matching teeth shared his musical taste with the rest of the carriage. His eyes had a distant, utterly vacant look and from time to time he swigged from a can of strong lager. Rebus toyed with the notion of saying something, but held back. He was only travelling one stop. If the glowering passengers were content to suffer silently, that was how it should be.
He prised himself out of the train at Holborn, only to squeeze into another compartment, this time on the Central Line. Again, someone was playing a Walkman at some dizzying level, but they were somewhere over towards the far end of the carriage, so all Rebus had to suffer was the Schhch-schch-schch of what he took to be drums. He was becoming a seasoned traveller now, setting his eyes so that they focused on space rather than on his fellow passengers, letting his mind empty for the duration of the journey.
God alone knew how these people could do it every day of their working lives.
He had already rung the doorbell before it struck him that he did not have a pretext for coming here. Think quickly, John.
The door was pulled open. ‘Oh, it’s you.’ She sounded disappointed.
‘Hello, Rhona.’
‘To what do we owe the honour?’ She was standing her ground, just inside the front door, keeping him on the doorstep. She was wearing a hint of make-up and her clothes were not after-work, relaxing-at-home clothes. She was going out somewhere. She was waiting for a gentleman.
‘Nothing special,’ he said. ‘Just thought I’d pop round. We didn’t get much of a chance to talk the other night.’ Would he mention that he had seen her in the British Museum? No, he would not.
Besides, she was shaking her head. ‘Yes we did, it was just that we had nothing to talk about.’ Her voice wasn’t bitter; she was simply stating a fact. Rebus looked at the doorstep.
‘I’ve caught you at a bad time,’ he said. ‘Sorry.’
‘No need to apologise.’
‘Is Sammy in?’
‘She’s out with Kenny.’
Rebus nodded. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘enjoy wherever it is you’re going.’ My God, he actually felt jealous. He couldn’t believe it of himself after all these years. It was the make-up that did it. Rhona had seldom worn make-up. He half-turned to leave, then stopped. ‘I couldn’t use your loo, could I?’
She stared at him, seeking some trick or plan, but he smiled back with his best impersonation of a crippled dog and she relented.
‘Go on then,’ she said. ‘You know where it is.’
He left his carrier at the door, squeezed past her and began to climb the steep stairs. ‘Thanks, Rhona,’ he said.
She was lingering downstairs, waiting to let him out again. He walked across the landing to the bathroom, opened and closed the door loudly, then opened it again very quietly and crept back across the landing to where the telephone sat on a small and quite grotesque confection of brass, green glass and red hanging tassels. There were London phone books piled beneath this table, but Rebus went straight to the smaller ‘Telephone & Addresses’ book on the top of the table. Some of the entries were in Rhona’s writing. Who, he wondered, were Tony, Tim, Ben and Graeme? But most were in Sammy’s grander, more confident script. He flipped to the K section and found what he wanted.
‘KENNY’, printed in capitals with a seven figure number scribbled below the name, the whole enclosed by a loving ellipse. Rebus took pen and notepad from his pocket and copied down the number, then closed the book and tiptoed back to the bathroom, where he flushed the toilet, gave his hands a quick rinse and boldly started downstairs again. Rhona was looking along the street, no doubt anxious that her beau should not arrive and find him here.
‘Bye,’ he said, picking up the carrier, walking past her and setting off in the direction of the main road. He was nearly at the end of her street when a white Ford Escort turned off the main drag and moved slowly past him, driven by a canny-looking man with thin face and thick moustache. Rebus stopped at the corner to watch the man pull up outside Rhona’s building. She had already locked the door and fairly skipped to the car. Rebus turned away before she could kiss or hug the man called Tony, Tim, Ben or Graeme.
In a large pub near the tube station, a barn of a place with walls painted torrid red, Rebus remembered that he had not tried the local brews since coming south. He’d gone for a drink with George Flight, but had stuck to whisky. He looked at the row of pumps, while the barman watched him, a proprietorial hand resting on one pump. Rebus nodded towards this resting hand.
‘Is it any good?’
The man snorted. ‘It’s bloody Fuller’s, mate, of course it’s good.’
‘A pint of that then, please.’
The stuff turned out to have a watery look, like cold tea, but it tasted smooth and malty. The barman was still watching him, so Rebus nodded approval, then took his glass to a distant corner where the public telephone stood. He dialled HQ_ and asked for Flight.
‘He’s left for the day,’ he was told.
‘Well then, put me through to anyone from CID, anyone who’s helpful. I’ve got a telephone number I want tracing.’ There were rules and regulations about this sort of thing, rules at one time ignored but of late enforced. Requests had to be made and were not always granted. Some forces could pull more weight than others when it came to number tracing. He reckoned the Met and the Yard ought to carry more weight than most, but just in case he added: ‘It’s to do with the Wolfman case. It might be a very good lead.’
He was told to repeat the number he wanted tracing. ‘Call back in half an hour,’ said the voice.
He sat at a table and drank his beer. It seemed silly, but it appeared to be going to his head already, with only half a pint missing from the glass. Someone had left a folded, smudged copy of the midday Standard. Rebus tried to concentrate on the sports pages and even had a stab at the concise crossword. Then he made the call and was put through to someone he didn’t know, who passed him on to someone else he didn’t know. A boisterous crowd, looking like
a team of bricklayers, had entered the bar. One of them made for the jukebox, and suddenly Steppenwolf’s Born to be Wild was booming from the walls, while the men urged the unwilling barman to ‘wick it up a bit’.
‘If you’ll just hold a minute, Inspector Rebus, I believe Chief Inspector Laine wants a word.’
‘But, Christ, I don’t want –’ Too late, the voice at the other end had gone. Rebus held the receiver away from him and scowled.
Eventually, Howard Laine came on the line. Rebus pushed a finger into one ear, pressing his other ear hard against the earpiece.
‘Ah, Inspector Rebus. I wanted a quiet word. You’re a hard man to catch. About that business last night.’ Laine’s was the voice of reasoned sanity. ‘You’re about a bollock-hair’s breadth away from an official reprimand, understand? Pull a stunt like that again and I’ll personally see to it that you’re shipped back to Jockland in the boot of a National Express bus. Got that?’
Rebus was silent, listening closely. He could almost hear Cath Farraday sitting in Laine’s office, smirking.
‘I said, have you got that?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘Good.’ A rustling of paper. ‘Now, you want an address I believe?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘It’s a lead, you say?’
‘Yes, sir.’ Rebus suddenly wondered if this would be worth it. He hoped so. If they found out he was abusing the system like this, they’d have him in the dole office with prospects roughly equivalent to those of a shoeshine boy on a nudist beach.
But Laine gave him the address and, as a bonus, supplied Kenny’s surname.
‘Watkiss,’ said Laine. ‘The address is Pedro Tower, Churchill Estate, E5. I think that’s Hackney.’
‘Thank you, sir,’ said Rebus.
‘Oh by the way,’ said Laine, ‘Inspector Rebus?’
‘Yes, sir?’
‘From what I’ve been told of Churchill Estate, if you’re intending to visit, tell us first. We’ll arrange for an SPG escort. All right?’
‘Bit rough is it then, sir?’
‘Rough doesn’t begin to tell the story, son. We train the SAS in there, pretend it’s a mock-up of Beirut.’
‘Thanks for the advice, sir.’ Rebus wanted to add that he’d been in the SAS and he doubted Pedro Tower could throw anything at him that the SAS HQ in Hereford hadn’t. All the same, it paid to be cautious. The brickies were playing pool, their accents a mix of Irish and Cockney. Born to be Wild had finished. Rebus finished his pint and ordered another.
Kenny Watkiss. So there was a connection and rather a large one at that, between Tommy Watkiss and Samantha’s boyfriend. How was it that in a city of ten million souls, Rebus had suddenly begun to feel an overwhelming sense of claustrophobia? He felt like someone had wrapped a muffler around his mouth and pulled a Balaclava down over his head.
‘I’d be careful, mate,’ said the barman as Rebus took delivery of his second pint. ‘That stuff can kill you.’
‘Not if I kill it first,’ said Rebus, winking as he raised the glass to his lips.
The taxi driver wouldn’t take him as far as the Churchill Estate. ‘I’ll drop you off a couple of streets away and show you where to go, but there’s no way I’m going in there.’
‘Fair enough,’ said Rebus.
So he took the taxi as far as the taxi would take him, then walked the remaining distance. It didn’t look so bad. He’d seen worse on the outskirts of Edinburgh. A lot of dull concrete, nuggets of glass underfoot, boarded windows and spray-painted gang names on every wall. Jeez Posse seemed to be the main gang, though there were other names so fantastically contrived that he could not make them out. Young boys skateboarded through an arena constructed from milk-crates, wooden planks and bricks. You couldn’t muzzle the creative mind. Rebus stopped to watch for a moment; it only took a moment to appreciate that these boys were masters of their craft.
Rebus came to the entrance of one of the estate’s four high-rises. He was busy looking for an identifying mark when something went splat on the pavement beside him. He looked down. It was a sandwich, a salami sandwich by the look of it. He craned his neck to look up at the various levels of the tower block, just in time to catch sight of something large and dark growing larger and darker as it hurtled towards him.
‘Jesus Christ!’ He leapt into the safety of the block’s entrance hall, just as the TV set landed, flattening itself with an explosion of plastic, metal and glass. From their arena, the boys cheered. Rebus moved outside again, but more warily now, and craned his neck. There was no one to be seen. He whistled under his breath. He was impressed, and a little scared. Despite the thunderous sound, nobody seemed curious or interested.
He wondered which television show had so angered the person somewhere above him. ‘Everyone’s a critic,’ he said. And then: ‘FYTP.’
He heard a lift opening. A young woman, greasy dyed-blonde hair, gold stud in her nose and three in each ear, spider-web tattoo across her throat. She wheeled a pushchair out onto the concrete. Seconds earlier she would have been beneath the television.
‘Excuse me,’ said Rebus above the noise of her wailing passenger.
‘Yeah?’
‘Is this Pedro Tower?’
‘Over there,’ she said, pointing a sharpened fingernail towards one of the remaining blocks.
‘Thank you.’
She glanced towards where the television had landed. ‘It’s the kids,’ she said. ‘They break into a flat, and throw a sandwich out of the window. A dog comes to eat it, and they chuck a telly after it. Makes a helluva mess.’ She sounded almost amused. Almost.
‘Lucky I don’t like salami,’ Rebus said.
But she was already manoeuvring the pushchair past the fresh debris. ‘If you don’t shut up I’ll fucking kill you!’ she yelled at her child. Rebus walked on unsteady legs towards Pedro Tower.
Why was he here?
It had all seemed to make sense, had seemed logical. But now that he stood in the sour-smelling ground-floor hallway of Pedro Tower he found that he had no reason at all to be here. Rhona had said that Sammy was out with Kenny. The chances of them choosing to spend the evening in Pedro Tower must be slim, mustn’t they?
Even supposing Kenny were here, how would Rebus locate the flat? The locals would sniff an enquiring copper from fifty paces. Questions would go unanswered, knocked doors would stay unopened. Was this what intellectuals called an impasse? He could always wait, of course. Kenny would be sure to return at some point. But wait where? In here? Too conspicuous, too unappealing. Outside? Too cold, too open, too many armchair critics high above him in the now-dark sky.
Which left him where precisely? Yes, this probably was an impasse. He walked from the block, his eyes on the windows above him, and was about to make off in the direction of the skateboarders when a scream split the air from the other side of Pedro Tower. He walked quickly towards the source of the sound and was in time to see the butt-end of a burning argument. The woman – no more than a girl really, seventeen, eighteen – hit the bedenimed man with a good right hand, sending him spinning. Then she stalked off as he, holding one side of his face, tried to hurl obscenities at her while at the same time feeling in his mouth for damaged teeth.
They did not interest Rebus particularly. He was looking past them to a low-built, dimly illuminated building, a prefabricated construction surrounded by grass and dirt. A weathered board, lit by a single bulb, proclaimed it The Fighting Cock. A pub? Here? That was no place for a policeman, no place for a Scots policeman. But what if …? No, it couldn’t be so simple. Sammy and Kenny couldn’t be in there, wouldn’t be in there. His daughter deserved better. Deserved the best.
But then she reckoned Kenny Watkiss was the best. And maybe he was. Rebus stopped dead. Just what the hell was he doing? Okay, so he didn’t like Kenny. And when he had seen Kenny cheering in the Old Bailey, he had put two and two together and come to the conclusion that Kenny was in deep with Tommy Watkiss. But now it turn
ed out the two were related in some way and that would explain the cheer, wouldn’t it?
The psychology books told him that coppers read the worst into every situation. It was true. He didn’t like the fact that Kenny Watkiss was dating his daughter. If Kenny had been heir apparent to the throne, Rebus would still have been suspicious. She was his daughter. He’d hardly seen her since she had entered her teens. In his mind she was still a child, a thing to be cosseted, loved, and protected. But she was a big girl now, with ambition, drive, good looks and a grown-up body. She was grown-up, there was no escaping it, and it scared him. Scared him because she was Sammy, his Sammy. Scared him because he hadn’t been there all these years to warn her, to tell her how to cope, what to do.
Scared because he was getting old.
There, it was out. He was growing old. He had a sixteen-year-old daughter and she was old enough to leave school and get a job, to have sex, to get married. Not old enough to go into pubs, but that wouldn’t stop her. Not old enough for street-wise eighteen-year-olds like Kenny Watkiss. But grown-up all the same; grown-up without him, and now he too was old.
And by God he felt it.
He plunged his left hand deep into his pocket, his right hand still wrapped around the handle of the carrier-bag, and turned from the pub. There was a bus stop near where the taxi had dropped him. He’d go where the bus would take him. The skateboarders were coming along the path in front of him. One of them seemed very proficient, weaving without losing balance. As the boy approached, he suddenly flipped the board up so that it spun in the air in front of him. Both hands neatly grabbed the board by its running-tail and swung the board itself in a backward arc. Too late, Rebus saw the manoeuvre for what it was. He tried to duck but the heavy wooden board hit the side of his head with a sharp crack.
He staggered, dropped to his knees. They were on him immediately, seven or eight of them, hands gouging into his pockets.
‘Fuckin’ split my board, man. Lookatit. Fuckin’ six inch split.’
A training shoe caught Rebus on the chin and sent him flying. He was concentrating on not losing consciousness, so much so that he forgot to fight or to scream or to defend himself. Then a loud voice:
