Strip Jack

by Ian Rankin

  The nurse looked at him. ‘Because that’s his name.’ They walked on in silence.

  Forster had been right. There were few moans or groans or sudden curdling shrieks, and few enough signs of movement, never mind violent movement. They passed through a large room where people were watching TV. Forster had explained that actual television wasn’t allowed, since it couldn’t be pre-determined. Instead, there was a daily diet of specially chosen video titles. The Sound of Music seemed to be a particular favourite. The patients watched in mute fascination.

  ‘Are they on drugs?’ Rebus hazarded.

  The nurse suddenly became talkative. ‘As many as we can stick down their throats. Keeps them out of mischief.’

  So much for the caring face . . .

  ‘Nothing wrong with it,’ the nurse was saying, ‘giving them drugs. It’s all in the MHA.’

  ‘MHA?’

  ‘Mental Health Act. Allows for sedation as part of the treatment process.’

  Rebus got the feeling the nurse was reciting a little defence he’d prepared to deal with visitors who asked. He was a big bugger: not tall, but broad, with bulging arms.

  ‘Do any weight training?’ Rebus asked.

  ‘Who? That lot?’

  Rebus smiled. ‘I meant you.’

  ‘Oh.’ A grin. ‘Yeah, I push some weights. Most of these places, the patients get all the facilities and there’s nothing for the staff. But we’ve got a pretty good gym. Yeah, pretty good. In here . . .’

  Another door was unlocked, another corridor beckoned, but off this corridor a sign pointed through yet another door – unlocked – to the Kinnoul Ward. ‘In there,’ the guard commanded, pushing open the door. His voice became firm. ‘Okay, walk to the wall.’

  Rebus thought for a moment the nurse was talking to him, but he saw that the object of the command was a tall, thin man, who now rose from his bed and walked to the far wall, where he turned to face them.

  ‘Hands against the wall,’ the nurse commanded. Andrew Macmillan placed the palms of his hands against the wall behind him.

  ‘Look,’ began Rebus, ‘is this really –?’

  Macmillan smiled wryly. ‘Don’t worry,’ the nurse told Rebus. ‘He won’t bite. Not after what we’ve pumped into him. You can sit there.’ He was pointing to a table on which a board had been set for chess. There were two chairs. Rebus sat on the one which faced Andrew Macmillan. There were four beds, but they were all empty. The room was light, its walls painted lemon. There were three narrow barred windows, through which some rare sunshine poured. The nurse looked to be staying, and took up position behind Rebus, so that he was reminded of the scene in Dufftown interview room, with himself and Corbie and Knox.

  ‘Good morning,’ Macmillan said quietly. He was balding, and looked to have been doing so for some years. He had a long face, but it was not gaunt. Rebus would have called the face ‘kindly’.

  ‘Good morning, Mr Macmillan. My name’s Inspector Rebus.’

  This news seemed to excite Macmillan. He took half a step forward.

  ‘Against the wall,’ said the nurse. Macmillan paused, then retreated.

  ‘Are you an Inspector of Hospitals?’ he asked.

  ‘No, sir, I’m a police inspector.’

  ‘Oh.’ His face dulled a little. ‘I thought maybe you’d come to . . . they don’t treat us well here, you know.’ He paused. ‘There, because I’ve told you that I’ll probably be disciplined, maybe even put into solitary. Everything, any dissension, gets reported back. But I’ve got to keep telling people, or nothing will be done. I have some influential friends, Inspector.’ Rebus thought this was for the nurse’s ears more than his own. ‘Friends in high places . . .’

  Well, Dr Forster knew that now, thanks to Rebus.

  ‘. . . friends I can trust. People need to be told, you see. They censor our mail. They decide what we can read. They won’t even let me read Das Kapital. And they give us drugs. The mentally ill, you know, by whom I mean those who have been judged to be mentally ill, we have less rights than the most hardened mass murderer . . . hardened but sane mass murderer. Is that fair? Is that . . . humane?’

  Rebus had no ready answer. Besides, he didn’t want to be sidetracked.

  ‘You had a visit from Elizabeth Jack.’

  Macmillan seemed to think back, then nodded. ‘So I did. But when she visits me she’s Ferrie, not Jack. It’s our secret.’

  ‘What did you talk about?’

  ‘Why are you interested?’

  Rebus decided that Macmillan did not know of Liz Jack’s murder. How could he know? There was no access to news in this place. Rebus’s fingers toyed with the chessmen.

  ‘It’s to do with an investigation . . . to do with Mr Jack.’

  ‘What has he done?’

  Rebus shrugged. ‘That’s what I’m trying to find out, Mr Macmillan.’

  Macmillan had turned his face towards the ray of sunshine. ‘I miss the world,’ he said, his voice dropping to a murmur. ‘I had so many – friends.’

  ‘Do you keep in touch with them?’

  ‘Oh yes,’ Macmillan said. ‘They come and take me home with them for the weekend. We enjoy evenings out at the cinema, the theatre, drinking in bars. Oh, we have some wonderful times together.’ He smiled ruefully, and tapped his head. ‘But only in here.’

  ‘Hands against the wall.’

  ‘Why?’ he spat. ‘Why do I have to keep my hands against the wall? Why can’t I just sit down and have a normal conversation like . . . a . . . normal . . . person.’ The angrier he got, the lower his voice dropped. There were flecks of saliva either side of his mouth, and a vein bulged above his right eye. He took a deep breath, then another, then bowed his head slightly. ‘I’m sorry, Inspector. They give me drugs, you know. God knows what they are. They have this . . . effect on me.’

  ‘That’s all right, Mr Macmillan,’ Rebus said, but inside he was quivering. Was this madness or sanity? What happened to sanity when you chained it to a wall? Chained it, moreover, with chains that weren’t real.

  ‘You were asking,’ Macmillan went on, breathless now, ‘you were asking about . . . Eliza . . . Ferrie. You’re right, she did come and visit. Quite a surprise. I know they have a home near here, yet they’ve never visited before. Lizzie . . . Eliza . . . did visit once, a long time ago. But Gregor . . . Well, he’s a busy man, isn’t he? And she’s a busy woman. I hear about these things . . .’

  From Cath Kinnoul, Rebus didn’t doubt.

  ‘Yes, she visited. A very pleasant hour we spent. We talked about the past, about . . . friends. Friendship. Is their marriage in trouble?’

  ‘Why do you say that?’

  Another creased smile. ‘She came alone, Inspector. She told me she was on holiday alone. Yet a man was waiting for her outside. Either it was Gregor, and he didn’t want to see me, or else it was one of her . . . friends.’

  ‘How do you know?’

  ‘Nursie here told me. If you don’t want to sleep tonight, Inspector, get him to show you the punishment block. I bet Doc Forster didn’t mention the punishment block. Maybe that’s where they’ll throw me for talking like this.’

  ‘Shut it, Macmillan.’

  Rebus turned to the nurse. ‘Is it true?’ he asked. ‘Was someone waiting outside for Mrs Jack?’

  ‘Yeah, there was somebody in the car. Some guy. I only saw him from one of the windows. He’d got out of the car to stretch his legs.’

  ‘What did he look like?’

  But the nurse was shaking his head. ‘He was getting back in when I saw him. I just saw his back.’

  ‘What kind of car was it?’

  ‘Black 3-series, no mistake about that.’

  ‘Oh, he’s very good at noticing things, Inspector, except when it suits him.’

  ‘Shut it, Macmillan.’

  ‘Ask yourself this, Inspector. If this is a hospital, why are all the so-called “nurses” members of the Prison Officers’ Association? This isn’t a hospital, it’s a w
arehouse, but full of headcases rather than packing cases. The twist is, the headcases are the ones in charge!’

  He was moving away from the wall now, walking on slow, doped legs, but his energy was unmistakable. Every nerve was blazing.

  ‘Against the wall –’

  ‘Headcases! I took her head off! God knows, I did –’

  ‘Macmillan!’ The nurse was moving too.

  ‘But it was so long ago . . . a different –’

  ‘Warning you –’

  ‘And I want so much . . . so much to –’

  ‘Right, that’s it.’ The nurse had him by the arms.

  ‘– touch the earth.’

  In the end, Macmillan offered little resistance, as the straps were attached to his arms and legs. The guard laid him out on the floor. ‘If I leave him on the bed,’ he told Rebus, ‘he just rolls off and injures himself.’

  ‘And you wouldn’t want that,’ said Macmillan, sounding almost peaceful now that he’d been restrained. ‘No, nurse, you wouldn’t want that.’

  Rebus opened the door, making to leave.

  ‘Inspector!’

  He turned. ‘Yes, Mr Macmillan?’

  Macmillan had twisted his head so it was facing the door. ‘Touch the earth for me . . . please.’

  Rebus left the hospital on shakier legs than he’d entered it. He didn’t want the tour of the pool and the gym. Instead, he’d asked the nurse to show him the punishment block, but the nurse had refused.

  ‘Look,’ he’d said, ‘you might not like what goes on here, I might not like some of what goes on, but you’ve seen how it is. They’re supposed to be “patients”, but you can’t turn your back on them, you can’t leave them alone. They’ll swallow lightbulbs, they’ll be shitting pens and pencils and crayons, they’ll try to put their head through the television. I mean, they might not, but you just can’t ever be sure . . . ever. Try to keep an open mind, Inspector. I know it’s not easy, but try.’

  And Rebus had wished the young man luck with his weight training before making his exit. Into the courtyard. He stooped by a flowerbed and plunged his fingers deep into it, rubbing the soil between forefinger and thumb. It felt good. It felt good to be outside. Funny the things he took for granted, like earth and fresh air and free movement.

  He looked up at the hospital windows, but couldn’t be sure which, if any, belonged to Macmillan’s ward. There were no faces staring at him, no signs of life at all. He rose to his feet, went to his car and got in, staring out through the windscreen. The brief sunshine had vanished. There was drizzle again, obscuring the view. Rebus pressed the button . . . and the windscreen wipers came on, came on and stayed on, their blades moving smoothly. He smiled, hands resting on the steering wheel, and asked himself a question.

  ‘What happens to sanity when you chain it to a wall?’

  He took a detour on his way back south, coming off the dual carriageway at Kinross. He passed Loch Leven (scene of many a family picnic when Rebus had been a kid), took a right at the next junction, and headed towards the tired mining villages of Fife. He knew this territory well. He’d been born and brought up here. He knew the grey housing schemes and the corner shops and the utilitarian pubs. The people cautious with strangers, and almost as cautious with friends and neighbours. Street-corner dialogues like bare-knuckle fights. His parents had taken his brother and him away from it at weekends, travelling to Kirkcaldy for shopping on the Saturday, and Loch Leven for those long Sunday picnics, sitting cramped in the back of the car with salmon-paste sandwiches and orange juice, flasks of tea smelling of hot plastic.

  And for summer holidays there had been a caravan in St Andrews, or bed and breakfast in Blackpool, where Michael would always get into trouble and have to be hauled out by his older brother.

  ‘And a lot of bloody thanks I got for it.’

  Rebus kept driving.

  Byars Haulage was sited halfway up a steep hill in one of the villages. Across the road was a school. The kids were on their way home, swinging satchels at each other and swearing choicely. Some things never changed. The yard of Byars Haulage contained a neat row of artics, a couple of nondescript cars, and a Porsche Carrera. None of the cars was blue. The offices were actually Portakabins. He went to the one marked ‘Main Office’ (below which someone had crayoned ‘The Boss’) and knocked.

  Inside a secretary looked up from her word-processor. The room was stifling, a calor-gas heater roaring away by the side of the desk. There was another door behind the secretary. Rebus could hear Byars talking fast and loud and uproariously behind the door. Since no one answered him back, Rebus reckoned it was a phone call.

  ‘Well tell Shite-for-brains to get off his arse and get over here.’ (Pause.) ‘Sick? Sick? Sick means he’s shagging that missus of his. Can’t blame him, mind . . .’

  ‘Yes?’ the secretary said to Rebus. ‘Can I help you?’

  ‘Well never mind what he says,’ came Byars’ voice, ‘I’ve got a load here that’s got to be in Liverpool yesterday.’

  ‘I’d like to see Mr Byars, please,’ said Rebus.

  ‘If you’ll take a seat, I’ll see whether Mr Byars is available. What’s the name, please?’

  ‘Rebus, Detective Inspector Rebus.’

  At that moment, the door of Byars’ office opened and Byars himself came out. He was holding a portable phone in one hand and a sheet of paper in the other. He handed the paper to his secretary.

  ‘That’s right, wee man, and there’s a load coming up from London the day after.’ Byars’ voice was louder than ever. Rebus noticed that, unseen by her, Byars was staring at his secretary’s legs. He wondered if this whole performance was for her benefit . . .

  But now Byars had spotted Rebus. It took Byars a second to place him, then he nodded a greeting in Rebus’s direction. ‘Aye, you give him big licks, wee man,’ he said into the telephone. ‘If he’s got a sick-note, fine, if not tell him I’m looking out his cards, okay?’ He terminated the call and shot out a hand.

  ‘Inspector Rebus, what the hell brings you to this blighted neck of the bings?’

  ‘Well,’ said Rebus, ‘I was passing, and –’

  ‘Passing my arse! Plenty of people pass through, but nobody stops unless they want something. Even then, I’d advise them to keep on going. But you come from round here, don’t you? Into the office then, I can spare you five minutes.’ He turned to the secretary and rested a hand on her shoulder. ‘Sheena, hen, get on to tadger-breath in Liverpool and tell him tomorrow morning definite.’

  ‘Will do, Mr Byars. Will I make a cup of coffee?’

  ‘No, don’t bother, Sheena. I know what the polis like to drink.’ He gave Rebus a wink. ‘In you go, Inspector. In you go.’

  Byars’ office was like the back room of a dirty bookshop, its walls apparently held together by nude calendars and centrefolds. The calendars all seemed to be gifts donated by garages and suppliers. Byars saw Rebus looking.

  ‘Goes with the image,’ he said. ‘A hairy-arsed truck driver with tattoos on his neck comes in here, he thinks he knows the sort of man he’s dealing with.’

  ‘And what if a woman comes in?’

  Byars clucked. ‘She’d think she knew, too. I’m not saying she’d be all wrong either.’ Byars didn’t keep his whisky in the filing cabinet. He kept it inside a wellington boot. From the other boot he produced two glasses, which he sniffed. ‘Fresh as the morning dew,’ he said, pouring the drinks.

  ‘Thanks,’ said Rebus. ‘Nice car.’

  ‘Eh? Oh, outside you mean? Aye, it’s no’ bad. Nary a dent in it either. You should see the insurance payments though. Talk about steep. They make this brae look like a billiard table. Good health.’ He sank the measure in one gulp, then noisily exhaled.

  Rebus, having taken a sip, examined the glass, then the bottle. Byars chuckled.

  ‘Think I’d give Glenlivet to the ba’-heids I get in here? I’m a businessman, not the Samaritans. They look at the bottle, think they know what they’re get
ting, and they’re impressed. Image again, like the scuddy pics on the wall. But it’s really just cheap stuff I pour into the bottle. Not many folk notice.’

  Rebus thought this was meant as a compliment. Image, that’s what Byars was, all surface and appearance. Was he so different from MPs and actors? Or policemen come to that. All of them hiding their ulterior motives behind a set of gimmicks.

  ‘So what is it you want to see me about?’

  That was easily explained. He wanted to ask Byars a little more about the party at Deer Lodge, seemingly the last party to be held there.

  ‘Not many of us there,’ Byars told him. ‘A few cried off pretty late. I don’t think Tom Pond was there, though he was expected. That’s right, he was off to the States by then. Suey was there.’

  ‘Ronald Steele?’

  ‘That’s the man. And Liz and Gregor, of course. And me. Cathy Kinnoul was there, but her husband wasn’t. Let’s see . . . who else? Oh, a couple who worked for Gregor. Urquhart . . .’

  ‘Ian Urquhart?’

  ‘Yes, and some young girl . . .’

  ‘Helen Greig?’

  Byars laughed. ‘Why bother to ask if you already know? I think that was about it.’

  ‘You said a couple who worked for Gregor. Did you get the impression that they were a couple?’

  ‘Christ, no. I think everybody but Urquhart tried to get the girl into the sack.’

  ‘Did anyone succeed?’

  ‘Not that I noticed, but after a couple of bottles of champagne I tend not to notice very much. It wasn’t like one of Liz’s parties. You know, not wild. I mean, everybody had plenty to drink, but that was all.’

  ‘All?’

  ‘Well, you know . . . Liz’s crowd was wild.’ Byars stared towards one of the calendars, seemingly reminiscing. ‘A real wild bunch and no mistake . . .’

  Rebus could imagine Barney Byars lapping it up, mixing with Patterson-Scott, Kilpatrick and the rest. And he could imagine them . . . tolerating Byars, a bit of nouveau rough. No doubt Byars was the life and soul of the party, a laugh a minute. Only they were laughing at him rather than with him . . .