Strip Jack

by Ian Rankin

  ‘And suicide abbreviates to Suey?’

  ‘That’s right.’ Jack studied the card again. ‘Sexton, that’s Alice Blake. Sexton Blake, you see. A detective like yourself.’ Jack smiled. ‘Alice works in London, too. Something to do with PR.’

  ‘And what about . . .?’ Rebus was pointing to the last secret name, Mack. Jack’s face changed.

  ‘Oh, that’s . . . Andy Macmillan.’

  ‘And what does Mr Macmillan do these days?’ Mack, Rebus was thinking. As in Mack the Knife, grimly apt . . .

  Jack was aloof. ‘He’s in prison, I believe. Tragic story, tragic.’

  ‘In prison?’ Rebus was keen to pursue the subject, but Jack had other ideas. He pointed to the names on the card.

  ‘Notice anything, Inspector?’

  Yes, Rebus had, though he hadn’t been going to mention it. Now he did. ‘The names are all written by the same person.’

  Jack gave a quick smile. ‘Bravo.’

  ‘Well, Mr Macmillan’s in prison, and Mr Fisher and Miss Blake could hardly have signed, could they, living in London? The story only broke yesterday . . .’

  ‘Ah yes, good point.’

  ‘So who . . .?’

  ‘Cathy. She used to be an expert forger, though you might not think it to look at her. She used to have all our signatures off by heart.’

  ‘But Mr Pond lives in Edinburgh . . . couldn’t he have signed his own?’

  ‘I think he’s in the States on business.’

  ‘And Mr Steele . . .?’ Rebus tapped the ‘Suey’ scrawl.

  ‘Well, Suey’s a hard man to catch, Inspector.’

  ‘Is that so,’ mused Rebus, ‘is that so.’

  There was a knock at the door.

  ‘Come in, Helen.’

  Helen Greig put her head round the door. She was dressed in a raincoat, the belt of which she was tying. ‘I’m just off, Gregor. Ian not back yet?’

  ‘Not yet. Catching up on his sleep, I expect.’

  Rebus was replacing the card on the mantelpiece. He was wondering, too, whether Gregor Jack was surrounded by friends or by something else entirely . . .

  ‘Oh,’ said Helen Greig, ‘and there’s another policeman here. He was at the back door . . .’

  The door opened to its full extent, and Brian Holmes walked into the room. Awkwardly, it seemed to Rebus. It struck him that Holmes was awkward in the presence of Gregor Jack MP.

  ‘Thank you, Helen. See you tomorrow.’

  ‘You’re at Westminster tomorrow, Gregor.’

  ‘God, so I am. Right, see you the day after.’

  Helen Greig left, and Rebus introduced Jack to Brian Holmes. Holmes still seemed unnaturally awkward. What the hell was the matter? It couldn’t just be Jack could it? Then Holmes cleared his throat. He was looking at his superior, avoiding eye contact with the MP altogether.

  ‘Sir, er . . . there’s something maybe you should see. Round the back. In the dustbin. I had some rubbish in my pockets and I thought I’d get rid of it, and I happened to lift the lid off the bin . . .’

  Gregor Jack’s face turned stark white.

  ‘Right,’ said Rebus briskly, ‘lead the way, Brian.’ He made a sweeping motion with his arm. ‘After you, Mr Jack.’

  The back of the house was well lit. Two sturdy black plastic bins sat beside a bushy rhododendron. Each bin had attached inside it a black plastic refuse bag. Holmes lifted the lid off the left-hand bin and held it open so that Rebus could peer inside. He was staring at a flattened cornflake packet and the wrapping from some biscuits.

  ‘Beneath,’ Holmes stated simply. Rebus lifted the cornflake packet. It had been concealing a little treasure chest. Two video cassettes, their casings broken, tape spewing from them . . . a packet of photographs . . . two small gold-coloured vibrators . . . two pairs of flimsy-looking handcuffs . . . and clothing, body-stockings, knickers with zips. Rebus couldn’t help wondering what the hacks would have done if they’d found this lot first . . .

  ‘I can explain,’ said Jack brokenly.

  ‘You don’t have to, sir. It’s none of our business.’ Rebus said this in such a way that his meaning was clear: it might not be our business, but you’d better tell us anyway.

  ‘I . . . I panicked. No, not really a panic. It’s just, what with that story about the brothel, and now Liz is off somewhere . . . and I knew you were on your way . . . I just wanted rid of the lot of it.’ He was perspiring. ‘I mean, I know it must look strange, that’s precisely why I wanted rid of it all. Not my stuff, you see, it’s Liz’s. Her friends . . . the parties they have . . . well, I didn’t want you to get the wrong impression.’

  Or the right impression, thought Rebus. He picked up the packet of photographs, which just happened to burst open. ‘Sorry,’ he said, making a show of gathering them up. They were polaroids, taken at a party it was true. Quite a party, by the look of it. And who was this?

  Rebus held the photograph up so that Jack could see it. It showed Gregor Jack having his shirt removed by two women. Everyone’s eyes were red.

  ‘The first and last party I ever went to,’ Jack stated.

  ‘Yes, sir,’ said Rebus.

  ‘Look, Inspector, my wife’s life is her own. What she chooses to get up to . . . well, it’s out of my hands.’ Anger was replacing embarrassment. ‘I might not like it, I might not like her friends, but it’s her choice.’

  ‘Right, sir.’ Rebus threw the photographs back into the bin. ‘Well, maybe your wife’s . . . friends will know where she is, eh? Meantime, I wouldn’t leave that lot in there, not unless you want to see yourself on the front pages again. The bins are the first place some journalists look. It’s not called “getting the dirt” for nothing. And as I say, Mr Jack, it’s none of our business . . . not yet.’

  But it would be soon enough; Rebus felt it in his gut, which tumbled at the thought.

  It would be soon enough.

  Back inside the house, Rebus tried to concentrate on one thing at a time. Not easy, not at all easy. Jack wrote down the names and addresses of a few of his wife’s friends. If not quite high society, they were certainly more than a few rungs above the Horsehair. Then Rebus asked about Liz Jack’s car.

  ‘A black BMW,’ said Jack. ‘The 3-series. My birthday present to her last year.’

  Rebus thought of his own car. ‘Very nice too, sir. And the registration?’ Jack reeled it off. Rebus looked a little surprised, but Jack smiled weakly.

  ‘I’m an accountant by training,’ he explained. ‘I never forget figures.’

  ‘Of course, sir. Well, we’d better be –’

  There was a sound, the sound of the front door opening and closing. Voices in the hall. Had the prodigal wife returned? All three men turned towards the living room door, which now swung open.

  ‘Gregor? Look who I found coming up the drive . . .’

  Ian Urquhart saw that Gregor Jack had visitors. He paused, startled. Behind him, a tired-looking man was shuffling into the room. He was tall and skinny, with lank black hair and round NHS-style spectacles.

  ‘Gregor,’ the man said. He walked up to Gregor Jack and they shook hands. Then Jack placed a hand on the man’s shoulder.

  ‘Meant to look in before now,’ the man was saying, ‘but you know how it is.’ He really did look exhausted, with dark-ringed eyes and a stoop to his posture. His speech and movements were slow. ‘I think I’ve clinched a nice collection of Italian art books . . .’

  He now seemed ready to acknowledge the visitors’ presence. Rebus had been given Urquhart’s hand and was shaking it. The visitor nodded towards Rebus’s right hand.

  ‘You,’ he said, ‘must be Inspector Rebus.’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘How do you know that?’ said Gregor Jack, suitably impressed.

  ‘Scratch marks on the wrist,’ the visitor explained. ‘Vanessa told me an Inspector Rebus had been in, and that Rasputin had made his mark . . . his considerable mark, by the look of things.’

 
‘You must be Mr Steele,’ said Rebus, shaking hands.

  ‘The very same,’ said Steele. ‘Sorry I wasn’t in when you called. As Gregor here will tell you, I’m a hard man to –’

  ‘Catch,’ interrupted Jack. ‘Yes, Ronnie, I’ve already told the Inspector.’

  ‘No sign of those books then, sir?’ Rebus asked Steele. He shrugged.

  ‘Too hot to handle, Inspector. Do you have any idea how much that lot would fetch? My guess would be a private collector.’

  ‘Stolen to order?’

  ‘Maybe. A fairly broad range though . . .’ Steele seemed to tire quickly of the topic. He turned again to Gregor Jack and held his arms wide open, half shrugging. ‘Gregor, what the hell are they trying to do to you?’

  ‘Obviously,’ said Urquhart, who was helping himself unasked to a drink, ‘someone somewhere is looking for a resignation.’

  ‘But what were you doing there in the first place?’

  Steele had asked the question. He asked it into a silence which lasted for a very long time. Urquhart had poured him a drink, and handed it over, while Gregor Jack seemed to study the four men in the room, as though one of them might have the answer. Rebus noticed that Brian Holmes was studying a painting on one wall, seemingly oblivious to the whole conversation. At last, Jack made an exasperated sound and shook his head.

  ‘I think,’ Rebus said, into the general silence, ‘we’d better be off.’

  ‘Remember to empty your dustbin, sir,’ was his final message to Jack, before he led Holmes down the driveway towards the main road. Holmes agreed to give him a lift into Bonnyrigg, from where Rebus could pick up a ride back into town, but otherwise reached, opened and started the car without comment. As he moved up into second gear, however, Holmes finally said: ‘Nice guy. Do you think maybe he’d give us an invite to one of those parties?’

  ‘Brian,’ Rebus said warningly. Then: ‘Not his parties, parties attended by his wife. It didn’t look like their house in those photos.’

  ‘Really? I didn’t get that good a look. All I saw was my MP being stripped by a couple of eager ladies.’ Holmes gave a sudden chuckle.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Strip Jack Naked,’ he said.

  ‘Pardon?’

  ‘It’s a card game,’ Holmes explained. ‘Strip Jack Naked. You might know it as Beggar My Neighbour.’

  ‘Really?’ Rebus said, trying not to sound interested. But was that precisely what someone was trying to do, strip Jack of his constituency, his clean-cut image, perhaps even his marriage? Were they trying to beggar the man whose nickname also was Beggar?

  Or was Jack not quite as innocent as he seemed? No, hell, be honest: he didn’t seem all that innocent anyway. Fact: he had visited a brothel. Fact: he had tried to get rid of evidence that he himself had attended at least one fairly ‘high-spirited’ party. Fact: his wife hadn’t been in touch. Big deal. Rebus’s money was still on the man. In religion, he might be more Pessimisterian than Presbyterian, but in some things John Rebus still clung to faith.

  Faith and hope. It was charity he usually lacked.

  4

  Tips

  ‘We’ve got to keep this away from the papers,’ said Chief Superintendent Watson. ‘For as long as we can.’

  ‘Right, sir,’ said Lauderdale, while Rebus stayed silent. They were not talking about Gregor Jack, they were discussing a suspect in the Water of Leith drowning. He was in an interview room now with two officers and a tape recorder. He was helping with inquiries. Apparently, he was saying little.

  ‘Could be nothing, after all.’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  There was an afternoon smell of strong mints in the room, and perhaps this was why Chief Inspector Lauderdale sounded and looked more starched than ever. His nose twitched whenever Watson wasn’t looking at him. Rebus all of a sudden felt sorry for his Chief Superintendent, in the way that he felt sorry for the Scotland squad whenever it was facing defeat at the hands of third-world part-timers. There but for the grace of complete inability go I . . .

  ‘Just a bit of bragging, perhaps, overheard in a pub. The man was drunk. You know how it is.’

  ‘Quite so, sir.’

  ‘All the same . . .’

  All the same, they had a man in the interview room, a man who had told anyone who’d listen in a packed Leith pub that he had dumped that body under Dean Bridge.

  ‘It wis me! Eh? How ’bout that, eh? Me! Me! I did it. She deserved worse. They all do.’

  And more of the same, all of it reported to the police by a fearful barmaid, nineteen next month and this was her first bar job.

  Deserved worse, she did . . . they all do . . . Only when the police had come into the pub, he’d quietened down, gone all sulky in a corner, standing there with head bent under the weight of a cigarette. The pint glass seemed heavy, too, so that his wrist sagged beneath it, beer dripping down on to his shoes and the wooden floor.

  ‘Now then, sir, what’s all this you’ve been telling these people, eh? Mind telling us about it? Down at the station, eh? We’ve got seats down there. You can have a seat while you tell us all about it . . .’

  He was sitting, but he wasn’t telling. No name, no address, nobody in the pub seemed to know anything about him. Rebus had taken a look at him, as had most of the CID and uniformed men in the building, but the face meant nothing. A sad, weak example of the species. In his late thirties, his hair was already grey and thin, the face lined, bristly with stubble, and the knuckles had grazes and scabs on them.

  ‘How did you get them then? Been in a fight? Hit her a few times before you chucked her in?’

  Nothing. He looked scared, but he was resilient. Their chances of keeping him in were, to put it mildly, not good. He didn’t need a solicitor; he knew he just had to keep his mouth shut.

  ‘Been in trouble before, eh? You know the score, don’t you? That’s why you’re keeping quiet. Much good will it do you, pal. Much good.’

  Indeed. The pathologist, Dr Curt, was now being harried. They needed to know: accident, suicide, or murder? They desperately needed to know. But before any news arrived, the man began to talk.

  ‘I was drunk,’ he told them, ‘didn’t know what I was saying. I don’t know what made me say it.’ This was the story he stuck to, repeating it and refining it. They pressed for his name and address. ‘I was drunk,’ he said. ‘That’s all there is to it. I’m sober now, and I’d like to go. I’m sorry I said what I did. Can I go now?’

  Nobody at the pub had been keen to press charges, not once the offending body was removed from the premises. Unpaid bouncers, thought Rebus, that’s all we are. Was the man going to walk? Were they going to lose him? Not without a fight.

  ‘We need a name and address before we can let you go.’

  ‘I was drunk. Can I go now, please?’

  ‘Your name!’

  ‘Please, can I go?’

  Curt still wasn’t ready to pronounce. An hour or two. Some results he was waiting for . . .

  ‘Just give us a name, eh? Stop pissing about.’

  ‘My name’s William Glass. I live at 48 Semple Street in Granton.’

  There was silence, then sighs. ‘Check that, will you?’ one officer asked the other. Then: ‘Now that wasn’t so painful, was it, Mr Glass?’

  The other officer grinned, then had to explain why. ‘Painful . . . Glass . . . pane of glass, see?’

  ‘Just do that check, eh?’ said his colleague, rubbing at a headache which, these days, never seemed to leave him.

  ‘They’ve let him go,’ Holmes informed Rebus.

  ‘About time. A wild haggis chase and no mistake.’

  Holmes came into the office and made himself comfortable on the spare chair.

  ‘Don’t stand on ceremony,’ said Rebus from his desk, ‘just because I’m the senior officer. Why not take a seat, Sergeant?’

  ‘Thank you, sir,’ said Holmes from the chair. ‘I don’t mind if I do. He gave his address as Semple Street, Granton.’ />
  ‘Off Granton Road?’

  ‘That’s the one.’ Holmes looked around. ‘It’s like an oven in here. Can’t you open a window?’

  ‘Jammed shut, and the heating’s –’

  ‘I know, either on full blast or nothing. This place . . .’ Holmes shook his head.

  ‘Nothing a bit of maintenance wouldn’t fix.’

  ‘Funny,’ said Holmes, ‘I’ve never seen you as the sentimental sort . . .’

  ‘Sentimental?’

  ‘About this place. Give me St Leonard’s or Fettes any day.’

  Rebus wrinkled his nose. ‘No character,’ he said.

  ‘Speaking of which, what news of the male member?’

  ‘That joke’s worn as thin as my hair, Brian. Why not part-ex it against a new one?’ Rebus breathed out noisily through his nose and threw down the pen he’d been playing with. ‘What you mean,’ he said, ‘is what news of Mrs Jack, and the answer is none, nada, zero. I’ve put out the description of her car, and all the posh hotels are being checked. But so far, nothing.’

  ‘From which we infer . . .?’

  ‘Same answer: nothing. She could still be off at some Iona spiritual retreat, or shacked up with a Gaelic crofter, or doing the Munros. She could be pissed-off at her hubby, or not know a thing about any of it.’

  ‘And all that kit I found, the sex-shop stock clearance?’

  ‘What about it?’

  ‘Well . . .’ Holmes seemed stuck for an answer. ‘Nothing really.’

  ‘And there you’ve put your finger on it, Sergeant. Nothing really. Meantime, I’ve got work enough to be getting on with.’ Rebus laid a solemn hand on the pile of reports and case-notes in front of him. ‘How about you?’

  Holmes was out of his chair now. ‘Oh, I’ve plenty keeping me busy, sir. Please, don’t worry yourself about me.’

  ‘It’s natural for me to worry, Brian. You’re like a son to me.’

  ‘And you’re like a father to me,’ Holmes replied, heading for the door. ‘The fa-ther I get from you, the easier my life seems to be.’

  Rebus screwed a piece of paper into a ball, but the door closed before he had time to take aim. Ach, some days the job could be a laugh. Well, okay, a grin at least. If he forgot all about Gregor Jack, the load would be lighter still. Where would Jack be now? At the House of Commons? Sitting on some committee? Being fêted by businesses and lobbyists? It all seemed a long way from Rebus’s office, and from his life.