Strip Jack

by Ian Rankin

  Cath Kinnoul seemed in a state of shock. A doctor had been to the house, but had left by the time Rebus and Holmes reached the scene. They shed their sodden jackets in the hall, while Rebus had a quiet word with the WPC.

  ‘No sign of the husband?’

  ‘No, sir.’

  ‘How is she?’

  ‘Comfortably numb.’

  Rebus tried to look bedraggled and pathetic. It wasn’t difficult. The WPC read his mind and smiled.

  ‘I’ll make some tea, shall I?’

  ‘Anything hot would hit the spot, believe me.’

  Cath Kinnoul was sitting in one of the living room’s huge armchairs. The chair itself looked like it was in the process of consuming her, while she looked about half the size and a quarter of the age she’d been when Rebus had last seen her.

  ‘Hello again,’ he said, mock-cheerily.

  ‘Inspector . . . Rebus?’

  ‘That’s it. And this is Sergeant Holmes. No jokes, please, he’s heard them all before, haven’t you, Sergeant?’

  Holmes saw that they were playing the comedy duo, trying to bring some life back into Mrs Kinnoul. He nodded encouragingly. In fact, he was glancing around wistfully, hoping to find a roaring log or coal fire. But there wasn’t even a roaring gas fire for him to stand in front of. Instead, there was a one-bar electric job, just about glowing with warmth, and there were two radiators. He went and stood in front of one of these, separating his trousers from his legs. He pretended to be admiring the pictures on the wall in front of him. Rab Kinnoul with a TV actor . . . with a TV comedian . . . with a gameshow host . . .

  ‘My husband,’ Mrs Kinnoul explained. ‘He works in television.’

  Rebus spoke. ‘No idea what he’s up to today though, Mrs Kinnoul?’

  ‘No,’ she said quietly, ‘no idea.’

  Two witnesses who had known the deceased in life . . . Well, thought Rebus, you can scrub Cath Kinnoul. She’d fall apart if she knew it was Liz Jack out there, never mind having to identify the body. Even now, someone was trying to get in touch with Gregor Jack, and Jack would probably arrive at the mortuary with Ian Urquhart or Helen Greig, either of whom would do as the second nod of the head. No need to bother Cath Kinnoul

  ‘You look soaked,’ she was saying. ‘Something to drink?’

  ‘The WPC’s making some tea . . .’ But as he spoke, Rebus knew this was not what she was suggesting. ‘A drop of the cratur wouldn’t go amiss though, if it’s not too much trouble.’

  She nodded towards a sideboard. ‘Right-hand cupboard,’ she said. ‘Please help yourself.’

  Rebus thought of suggesting that she join them. But what pills had the doctor given her? And what pills had she taken of her own? He poured Glenmorangie into two long slim glasses and handed one to Holmes, who had taken up a canny position in front of a radiator.

  ‘Mind you don’t get steaming,’ Rebus said in a murmur. Just then, the WPC appeared, carrying a tray of tea things. She saw the alcohol and almost frowned.

  ‘Here’s tae us,’ said Rebus, downing the drink in one.

  At the mortuary, Gregor Jack seemed hardly to recognize Rebus at all. Jack had been holding his weekly constituency surgery, Ian Urquhart explained to Rebus in a conspiratorial whisper. This was usually held on a Friday, but there was a Private Member’s Bill in the Commons this Friday, and Gregor Jack wanted to be part of the debate. So, Gregor having been in the area on Wednesday anyway, they’d decided to hold the surgery on Thursday, leaving Friday free.

  Listening to all this in silence, Rebus thought: Why are you telling me? But Urquhart was clearly nervous and felt the need to talk. Well, mortuaries could have that effect, never mind the fact that your employer was about to see scandal heaped upon scandal. Never mind the fact that your job was about to be made more difficult than ever.

  ‘How did the golf game go?’ Rebus asked back.

  ‘What golf game?’

  ‘Yesterday.’

  ‘Oh.’ Urquhart nodded. ‘You mean Gregor’s game. I don’t know. I haven’t asked him yet.’

  So Urquhart himself hadn’t been involved. He paused for so long that Rebus thought a dead end had been reached, but the need to speak was too great.

  ‘That’s a regular date,’ Urquhart went on. ‘Gregor and Ronnie Steele. Most Wednesday afternoons.’

  Ah, Suey, Mr would-be teenage suicide . . .

  Rebus tried to make his next question sound like a joke. ‘Doesn’t Gregor ever do any work?’

  Urquhart looked stunned. ‘He’s always working. That game of golf . . . it’s about the only free time I’ve ever known him have.’

  ‘But he doesn’t seem to be in London very often.’

  ‘Ah well, the constituency comes first, that’s Gregor’s way.’

  ‘Look after the folk who voted you in, and they’ll look after you?’

  ‘Something like that,’ Urquhart allowed. There was no more time for talk. The identification was about to take place. And if Gregor Jack looked bad before he saw the body, he looked like a half-filled rag doll afterwards.

  ‘Oh Christ, that dress . . .’ He seemed about to collapse, but Ian Urquhart had a firm grip on him.

  ‘If you’ll look at the face,’ someone was saying. ‘We need to be definite . . .’

  They all looked at the face. Yes, thought Rebus, that’s the person I saw beside the stream.

  ‘Yes,’ said Gregor Jack, his voice wavering, ‘that’s my . . . that’s Liz.’

  Rebus actually breathed a sigh of relief.

  What nobody had expected, what nobody had really considered, was Sir Hugh Ferrie.

  ‘Let’s just say,’ said Chief Superintendent Watson, ‘that a certain amount of . . . pressure . . . is being applied.’

  As ever, Rebus couldn’t hold his tongue. ‘There’s nothing to apply pressure to! What are we supposed to do that we’re not already doing?’

  ‘Sir Hugh considers that we should have caught William Glass by now.’

  ‘But we don’t even know –’

  ‘Now, we all know Sir Hugh can be a bit hot-headed. But he’s got a point . . .’

  Meaning, thought Rebus, he’s got friends in high places.

  ‘He’s got a point, and we can do without the media interest that’s bound to erupt. All I’m saying is that we should give the investigation an extra push whenever and wherever we can. Let’s get Glass in custody, let’s make sure we keep everyone informed, and let’s get that autopsy report as soon as humanly possible.’

  ‘Not so easy with a drowning.’

  ‘John, you know Dr Curt fairly well, don’t you?’

  ‘We’re on second-name terms.’

  ‘How about giving him that extra little nudge?’

  ‘What happens if he nudges me back, sir?’

  Watson looked like a kindly uncle suddenly tiring of a precocious nephew. ‘Nudge him harder. I know he’s busy. I know he’s got lectures to give, university work to do, God knows what else. But the longer we have to wait, the more the media are going to fill the gaps with speculation. Go have a word, John, eh? Just make sure he gets the message.’

  Message? What message? Dr Curt told Rebus what he’d always told him. I can’t be rushed . . . delicate business, deciding an actual drowning from mere immersion . . . professional reputation . . . daren’t make mistakes . . . more haste, less speed . . . patience is a virtue . . . many a mickle maks a muckle . . .

  All of this delivered between appointments in the doctor’s Teviot Place office. The Department of Pathology’s Forensic Medicine Unit, divided in loyalties between the Faculty of Medicine and the Faculty of Law, had its offices within the University Medical School in Teviot Place. Which seemed, to Rebus, natural enough. You didn’t want your Commercial Law students mixing with people who keened over cadavers . . .

  ‘Diatoms . . .’ Dr Curt was saying. ‘Washerwoman’s skin . . . blood-tinged froth . . . distended lungs . . .’ Almost a litany now, and none of it got them any further. Tests on tis
sue . . . examination . . . diatoms . . . toxicology . . . fractures . . . diatoms. Curt really did have a thing about those tiny algae.

  ‘Unicellular algae,’ he corrected.

  Rebus bowed his head to the correction. ‘Well,’ he said, rising to his feet, ‘fast as you can, eh, Doctor? If you can’t catch me in the office, you can always try me by unicellular phone.’

  ‘Fast as I can,’ agreed Doctor Curt, chuckling. He too got to his feet. ‘Oh, one thing I can tell you straight away.’ He opened his office door for Rebus.

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Mrs Jack was depilated. There’d be no getting her by the short-and-curlies . . .’

  Because Teviot Place wasn’t far from Buccleuch Street, Rebus thought he’d wander along to Suey Books. Not that he was expecting to catch Ronald Steele, for Ronald Steele was a hard man to catch. Busy behind the scenes, busy out of sight. The shop itself was open, the rickety bicycle chained up outside. Rebus pushed the door open warily.

  ‘It’s okay,’ called a voice from the back of the shop. ‘Rasputin’s gone out for a wander.’

  Rebus closed the door and approached the desk. The same girl was sitting there, and her duties still seemed to entail the pricing of books. There wasn’t any room for any more books on the shelves. Rebus wondered where these new titles were headed . . .

  ‘How did you know it was me?’ he asked.

  ‘That window.’ She nodded towards the front-of-shop. ‘It might look filthy from the outside, but you can see out of it all right. Like one of those two-way mirrors.’

  Rebus looked. Yes, because the shop’s interior was darker than the street, you could see out all right, you just couldn’t see in.

  ‘No sign of your books, if that’s what you’re wondering.’

  Rebus nodded slowly. It was not what he was wondering . . .

  ‘And Ronald’s not here.’ She checked the oversized face of her wristwatch. ‘Should have been in half an hour ago. Must have got held up.’

  Rebus kept on nodding. Steele had told him this girl’s name. What was it again . . .? ‘Was he in yesterday?’

  She shook her head. ‘We were shut. All day. I was a bit off colour, couldn’t come in. At the start of the university year, we do okay business on a Wednesday, Wednesday being a half-teaching day, but not just now . . .’

  Rebus thought of Vaseline . . . vanishing cream . . . Vanessa! That was it.

  ‘Well, thanks anyway. Keep an eye out for those books . . .’

  ‘Oh! Here’s Ronald now.’

  Rebus turned round, just as the door rattled open. Ronald Steele closed it heavily behind him, started up the central aisle of books, but then almost lost balance and had to rest against a bookcase. His eyes caught a particular spine, and he levered the book out from the others around it.

  ‘Fish out of Water,’ he said. ‘Out of water . . .’ He threw the book as far as he could – a matter of a yard or so. It crashed into a bookcase and fell open on to the floor. Then he began picking books out at random and throwing them with force, his eyes red with tears.

  Vanessa screamed at him and came round from her desk, making towards him, but Steele pushed past her and stumbled past Rebus, past the desk, and through a doorway at the very back of the shop. There was the sound of another door closing.

  ‘What’s back there?’

  ‘The loo,’ said Vanessa, stooping to recover a few of the books. ‘What the hell’s the matter with him?’

  ‘Maybe he’s had a bit of bad news,’ Rebus speculated. He was helping her retrieve books. He stood up and examined the blurb on the back jacket of Fish out of Water. The front cover illustration showed a woman seated more or less demurely on a chaise longue, while a rugged suitor leant over her from behind, his lips just short of her bared shoulder. ‘I think I might buy this,’ he said. ‘Looks like just my sort of thing.’

  Vanessa accepted the book, then stared up from it to him, her disbelief not quite showing through the shock of the scene she’d just witnessed. ‘Fifty pence,’ she told him quietly.

  ‘Fifty pence it is,’ said Rebus.

  *

  And after the formal identification, while the autopsy took its defined and painstaking course, there were the questions. There were an awful lot of questions.

  Cath Kinnoul had to be questioned. Gently questioned, with her husband by her side and a bloodstream dulled by tranqs. No, she hadn’t really taken a close look at the body. She’d known from a good way off what it was. She could see the dress, could see that it was a dress. She’d run back to the house and telephoned for the police. Nine-nine-nine, the way they told you to in emergencies. No, she hadn’t gone back out to the river. She doubted she’d ever go there again.

  And, turning to Mr Kinnoul, where had he been this morning? Business meetings, he said. Meetings with potential partners and potential backers. He was trying to set up an independent television company, though he’d be grateful if the information went no further. And the previous evening? He’d spent it at home with his wife. And they hadn’t seen or heard anything? Not a thing. They’d been watching TV all night, not current TV but old stuff kept on video, stuff featuring Mr Kinnoul himself . . . Knife Ledge. The on-screen assassin.

  ‘You must have learned a few tricks of the trade in your time, Mr Kinnoul.’

  ‘You mean acting?’

  ‘No, I mean about how to kill . . .’

  And then there was Gregor Jack . . . Rebus kept out of that altogether. He’d look at any notes and transcripts later. He didn’t want to get involved. There was too much he already knew, too much prejudgement, which was another way of saying potential prejudice. He let other CID men deal with Mr Jack, and with Ian Urquhart, and with Helen Greig, and with all Elizabeth Jack’s cronies and cohorts. For this wasn’t merely a case of the lady vanishing; this was a matter of death. Jamie Kilpatrick, the Hon. Matilda Merriman, Julian Kaymer, Martin Inman, Louise Patterson-Scott, even Barney Byars. They’d all either been questioned, or were about to be. Perhaps they’d all be questioned again at a later date. There were missing days to be filled. Huge gaps in Liz Jack’s life, the whole final week of her life. Where had she been? Who had she seen? When had she died? (Hurry up, please, Dr Curt. Chop-chop.) How had she died? (Ditto.) Where was her car?

  But Rebus read all the transcripts, all the notes. He read through the interview with Gregor Jack, and the interview with Ronald Steele. A Detective Constable was sent to Braidwater Golf Course to check the story of the Wednesday afternoon game. The interview with Steele, Rebus read very carefully indeed. Asked about Elizabeth Jack, Steele admitted that ‘she always accused me of not being enough fun. She was right, I suppose. I’m not exactly what you’d call a “party animal”. And I never had enough money. She liked people with money to throw around, or who threw it around even if they couldn’t afford it.’

  A touch of bitterness there? Or just the bitter truth?

  To all of which Rebus added one other question – had Elizabeth Jack ever left Edinburgh in the first place?

  Then there was the separate hunt, the hunt for William Glass. If he had gone to Queensferry, where would be next? West, towards Bathgate, Linlithgow, or Bo’ness? Or north, across the Forth to Fife? Police forces were mobilized. Descriptions were issued. Had Liz Jack spent any time at all at Deer Lodge? How could William Glass simply disappear? Was there any connection between Mrs Jack’s death and her husband’s ‘night out’ at an Edinburgh brothel?

  This last line was the one pursued most eagerly by the newspapers. They seemed to be favouring a verdict of suicide in the case of Elizabeth Jack. Husband’s shame . . . discovered after she’s been on retreat . . . on her way home she decides she can’t face things . . . sets off perhaps to visit her friend the actor Rab Kinnoul . . . but grows more desperate and, having read the details of the Dean Bridge murder, decides to end it all. Throws herself into the river above Rab Kinnoul’s house. End of story.

  Except that it wasn’t the end of the story. As far as the pap
ers were concerned, it was just the beginning. After all, this one had it all – a TV actor, an MP, a sex scandal, a death. The headline writers were boggled, trying to decide which order to put things in. Sex Scandal MP’s Wife Drowns in TV Star’s Stream? Or TV Star’s Agony at MP Friend’s Wife’s Suicide Act? You could see the problem . . . All those possessives . . .

  And the grieving husband? Kept well away from the media by protective friends and colleagues. But he was always available for interview by the police, when clarification of some point was required. While his father-in-law gave the media as many interviews as they needed, but kept his comments to the police succinct and scathing.

  ‘What do you want to talk to me for? Find the bugger who did it, then you can talk all you want. I want the animal who did this put behind bars! Better make them bloody strong bars, too, otherwise I might just pull them apart and strangle the life out of the bugger myself!’

  ‘We’re doing what we can, believe me, Sir Hugh.’

  ‘Is it enough though, that’s what I want to know!’

  ‘Everything we can . . .’

  Yes, everything. Leaving just the one final question: Did anyone do it? Only Dr Curt could answer that.

  6

  Highland Games

  Rebus packed an overnight bag. It was a large sports holdall, bought for him by Patience Aitken when she’d decided he should get fit. They’d enrolled together in a health club, bought all the gear, and had attended the club four or five times together. They’d played squash, been massaged, had saunas, encountered the plunge pool, gone swimming, survived the expensively equipped gymnasium, tried jogging . . . but ended up spending more and more time in the health club bar, which was stupid, the drinks being double the price they were at the pleasant-enough pub round the corner.

  No longer a sports bag then, but these days an overnight bag. Not that Rebus was taking much this trip. He packed a change of shirt, socks and underwear, toothbrush, camera, notebook, a kagoul. Would he require a phrase book? Probably, but he doubted if one existed. Something to read though . . . bedtime reading. He found the copy of Fish out of Water and threw it in on top of everything else. The phone was ringing. But he was in Patience’s flat, and she had her own answering machine. All the same . . .