Strip Jack

by Ian Rankin

Rebus had recovered a little. He swallowed. ‘She didn’t get those bruises from falling though.’ Yes, there were bruises on her arms, fresh-looking. Kinnoul nodded.

  ‘We had a bit of a row,’ he said. ‘She went for me, so I . . . I was just trying to push her away. But she was hysterical. I decided to go for a walk until she calmed down.’

  Rebus had been looking at Kinnoul’s shoes. They were caked with mud. There were splashes, too, on his trousers. Go for a walk? In that rain? No, he’d run for it, pure and simple. He’d turned tail and run . . .

  ‘Doesn’t look as though she calmed down,’ Rebus said matter of factly. Matter of factly, she had almost murdered him, mistaking him for her husband, or so incensed by then that any man – any victim – would do. ‘Tell you what, Mr Kinnoul, I could do with a drink.’

  ‘I’ll see what there is,’ said Kinnoul, rising to his feet.

  Holmes phoned for the doctor. Cath Kinnoul was still unconscious. They’d left her lying in the hall, just to be on the safe side. It was best not to move fall victims anyway; and besides, this way they could keep an eye on her through the open door of the living room.

  ‘She needs treatment,’ Rebus said. He was sitting on the sofa, nursing a whisky and what were left of his nerves.

  ‘What she needs,’ Kinnoul said quietly, ‘is to be away from me. We’re useless together, Inspector, but then we’re just as useless apart.’ He was standing with his hands resting against the window sill, his head against the glass.

  ‘What was the fight about?’

  Kinnoul shook his head. ‘It seems stupid now. They always start with something petty, and it just builds and builds . . .’

  ‘And this time?’

  Kinnoul turned from the window. ‘The amount of time I’m spending away from home. She didn’t believe there were any “projects”. She thinks it’s all just an excuse so I can get out of the house.’

  ‘And is she right?’

  ‘Partly, yes, I suppose. She’s a shrewd one . . . a bit slow sometimes, but she gets there.’

  And what about evenings.’

  ‘What about them?’

  ‘You don’t always spend them at home either, do you? Sometimes you have a night out with friends.’

  ‘Do I?’

  ‘Say, with Barney Byars . . . with Ronald Steele.’

  Kinnoul stared at Rebus, appearing not to understand, then he snapped his fingers. ‘Christ, you mean that night. Jesus, the night . . .’ He shook his head. ‘Who told you? Never mind, it must have been one or the other. What about it?’

  ‘I just thought you made an unlikely trio.’

  Kinnoul smiled. ‘You’re right there. I don’t know Byars all that well, hardly at all really. But that day he’d been in Edinburgh and he’d sewn up a deal . . . a big deal. We bumped into each other at the Eyrie. I was in the bar having a drink, drowning my sorrows, and he was on his way up to the restaurant. Somehow I got roped in. Him and the firm he’d done the deal with. After a while . . . well, it was good fun.’

  ‘What about Steele?’

  ‘Well . . . Barney was planning on taking these guys to a brothel he knew about, but they weren’t interested. They went their way, and Barney and me nipped into the Straw-man for another drink. That’s where we picked up Ronnie. He was a bit pissed, too. Something to do with the lady in his life . . .’ Kinnoul was thoughtful for a moment. ‘Anyway, he’s usually a bit of a boring fart, but that night he seemed all right.’

  Rebus was wondering: Did Kinnoul know about Steele and Cathy? It didn’t look like it, but then the man was an actor, a pro.

  ‘And,’ Kinnoul was saying, ‘we all ended up going on to the ill-famed house.’

  ‘Did you have a good time?’

  Kinnoul seemed to think this an unusual question. ‘I suppose so,’ he said. ‘I can’t really remember too clearly.’

  Oh, thought Rebus, you can remember clearly enough. You can remember, all right. But now Kinnoul was looking through the hallway at Cathy’s still figure.

  ‘You must think I’m a bit of a shite,’ he said in a level tone. ‘You’re probably right. But, Christ . . .’ The actor had run out of words. He looked around the room, looked out of the window at what, weather willing, would have been the view, then looked towards the door again. He exhaled noisily, then shook his head.

  ‘Did you tell the others what the prostitute told you?’

  Now Kinnoul looked startled.

  ‘I mean,’ said Rebus, ‘did you tell them what she said about Gregor Jack?’

  ‘How the hell do you know about that?’ Kinnoul fell onto one of the chairs.

  ‘An inspired guess. Did you?’

  ‘I suppose so.’ He thought about it. ‘Yes, definitely. Well, it was such a strange thing for her to say.’

  ‘A strange thing for you to say, too, Mr Kinnoul.’

  Kinnoul shrugged his huge shoulders. ‘Just a laugh, Inspector. I was a bit pissed. I thought it would be funny to pretend to be Gregor. To be honest, I was a bit hurt that she didn’t recognize Rab Kinnoul. Look at the photos on the wall. I’ve met all of them.’ He was up on his feet again now, studying the pictures of himself, like he was in an art gallery and not seeing them for the thousandth, the ten thousandth time.

  ‘Bob Wagner . . . Larry Hagman . . . I knew them all once.’ The litany continued. ‘Martin Scorsese . . . the top director, absolutely the top . . . John Hurt . . . Robbie Coltrane and Eric Idle . . .’

  Holmes was motioning for Rebus to come into the hall. Cathy Kinnoul was coming round. Rab Kinnoul stood in front of his photographs, his mementoes, the list of names sloshing around in his mouth.

  ‘Take it easy,’ Holmes was telling Cathy Kinnoul. ‘How do you feel?’

  Her speech was slurred to incoherence.

  ‘How many have you taken, Cathy?’ Rebus asked. ‘Tell us how many?’

  She was trying to focus. ‘I’ve checked all the rooms,’ Holmes said. ‘No sign of any empty bottles.’

  ‘Well, she’s taken something.’

  ‘Maybe the doctor will know.’

  ‘Yes, maybe.’ Rebus leaned down close to Cathy Kinnoul, his mouth two inches from her ear. ‘Gowk,’ he said quietly, ‘tell me about Suey.’

  The names registered with her, but the question seemed not to.

  ‘You and Suey,’ Rebus went on. ‘Have you been seeing Suey? Just the two of you, eh? Like the old days? Have you and Suey been seeing one another?’

  She opened her mouth, paused, then closed it again, and slowly began to shake her head. She mumbled something.

  ‘What was that, Gowk?’

  Clearly this time: ‘Rab mussn know.’

  ‘He won’t know, Gowk. Trust me, he won’t know.’

  She was sitting up now, holding her head in one hand while the other hand rested on the floor.

  ‘So,’ Rebus persisted, ‘you and Suey have been seeing one another, eh? Gowk and Suey?’

  She smiled drunkenly. ‘Gow’ an’ Suey,’ she said, enjoying the words. ‘Gow’ an’ Suey.’

  ‘Remember, Gowk, remember the day before you found the body? Remember that Wednesday, that Wednesday afternoon? Did Suey come and see you? Did he, Gowk? Did Suey pay a visit that Wednesday?’

  ‘Wensay? Wensay?’ She was shaking her head. ‘Poor Lizzie . . . poor, poor . . .’ Now she held her hand palm upwards. ‘Gi’ me th’ knife,’ she said. ‘Rab’ll never know. Gi’ me th’ knife.’

  Rebus glanced at Holmes. ‘We can’t let you do that, Gowk. That would be murder.’

  She nodded. ‘Thas right, murder.’ She said the final word very carefully, enunciating each letter, then repeated it. ‘Cut off his head,’ she said. ‘An’ they’ll put me beside Mack.’ She smiled again, the thought pleasing her. And all the time Rab Kinnoul’s names were drifting from the other room . . .

  ‘. . . best, absolutely . . . like to work with him again. Consummate professionalism . . . and good old George Cole, too . . . the old school . . . yes, the old schoo
l . . . the old school . . .’

  ‘Mack . . .’ Cathy Kinnoul was saying. ‘Mack . . . Suey . . . Sexton . . . Beggar . . . Poor Beggar . . .’

  ‘The old school.’

  Some school ties you just kept too long. Way after they should have been thrown out.

  Rebus telephoned Barney Byars. The secretary put him through.

  ‘Inspector,’ came Byars’ voice, all energy and business, ‘I just can’t shake you off, can I?’

  ‘You’re too easy to catch,’ Rebus said.

  Byars laughed. ‘I’ve got to be,’ he said, ‘otherwise the clients can’t catch me. I always like to make myself available. Now, what’s your beef this time?’

  ‘It’s about an evening you spent not so long ago with Rab Kinnoul and Ronald Steele . . .’

  Byars was able to substantiate the story in all but the most crucial details. Rebus explained about Kinnoul coming downstairs and repeating what Gail had said to him.

  ‘I don’t remember that,’ Byars said. ‘I was well on by then, mind. So well on I think I stumped up for the three of us.’ He chuckled. ‘Suey had his usual excuse of being flat broke, and Rab was carrying not more than ten bar by then.’ Another chuckle. ‘See, I always remember my sums, especially when it’s money.’

  ‘But you’re sure you don’t recall Mr Kinnoul telling you what the prostitute told him?’

  ‘I’m not saying he didn’t say it, mind, but no, I can’t for the life of me remember it.’

  Which made it Kinnoul’s word against Byars’ memory. The only thing for it was to talk to Steele again. Rebus could call in on the way to Patience’s. It was a long way round for a shortcut, but it shouldn’t take too long. Cathy Kinnoul was another problem. It didn’t do to have knife-wielding pill-poppers running around at large. The family doctor, summoned by Holmes, had listened to their story and suggested that Mrs Kinnoul be admitted to a hospital on the outskirts of the city. Would there be any criminal charges . . .?

  ‘Of course,’ said Holmes testily. ‘Attempted murder for starters.’

  But Rebus was thinking. He was thinking of how badly Cath Kinnoul had been treated. Thinking, too, of all those obstruction charges he might be filing – Hector, Steele, Jack himself. And, most of all, thinking of Andrew Macmillan. He’d seen what ‘special hospitals’ did with the criminally insane. Cath Kinnoul would be treated anyway. So long as she underwent treatment, what was the point of pressing a charge of attempted murder on her?

  So he shook his head – to Brian Holmes’ astonishment. No, no charges, not if she was admitted straight away. The doctor checked that the paperwork would be a mere formality, and Kinnoul, who had come back to something like his senses by this time, agreed to the whole thing.

  ‘In that case,’ said the doctor, ‘she can be admitted today.’

  Rebus made one more call. To Chief Inspector Lauderdale.

  ‘Where the hell did you disappear to?’

  ‘It’s a long story, sir.’

  ‘It usually is.’

  ‘How did the meeting go?’

  ‘It went. Listen, John, we’re formally charging William Glass.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘The Dean Bridge victim had had intercourse just before she died. Forensics tell me the DNA-test matches our man Glass.’ Lauderdale paused, but Rebus said nothing. ‘Don’t worry, John, we’ll start with the Dean Bridge murder. But really, just between us . . . do you think you’re getting anywhere?’

  ‘Really, sir, just between us . . . I don’t know.’

  ‘Well, you’d better get a move on, otherwise I’m going to charge Glass with Mrs Jack, too. Ferrie and that solicitor are going to start asking awkward questions any minute now. It’s on a knife edge, John, understand?’

  ‘Yes, sir, oh yes, I understand all about knife edges, believe me . . .’

  Rebus didn’t walk up to Ronald Steele’s front door – not straight away. First, he stood in front of the garage and peered in through a crack between the two doors. Steele’s Citroën was at home, which presumably meant the man himself was at home. Rebus went to the door and pushed the bell. He could hear it sounding in the hall. Halls: he could write a book on them. My night sleeping in a hallway; the day I was almost stabbed in a hallway . . . He rang again. It was a loud and unpleasant bell, not the kind you could easily ignore.

  So he rang one more time. Then he tried the door. It was locked. He walked on to the little strip of grass running in front of the bungalow and pressed his face against the living room window. The room was empty. Maybe he’d just popped out for a pint of milk . . . Rebus tried the gate to the side of the garage, the gate giving access to the back garden. It, too, was locked. He walked back to the front gate and stood beside it, looking up and down the silent street. Then he checked his watch. He could give it five minutes, ten at most. The last thing he felt like was sitting down to dinner with Patience. But he didn’t want to lose her either . . . Quarter of an hour to get back to Oxford Terrace . . . twenty minutes to be on the safe side. Yes, he could still be there by seven thirty. Time enough. Well, you’d better get a move on. Why bother? Why not give Glass his moment of infamy, his second – his famous – victim?

  Why bother with anything? Not for the praise of a pat on the back; not for the rightness of it; maybe, then, from sheer stubbornness. Yes, that would just about fit the bill. Someone was coming . . . His car was pointing the wrong way, but he could see in his rearview. Not a man but a woman. Nice legs. Carrying two carrier bags of shopping. She walked well but she was tired. It couldn’t be . . .? What the . . .?

  He rolled down his window. ‘Hello, Gill.’

  Gill Templer stopped, stared, smiled. ‘You know, I thought I recognized that heap of junk.’

  ‘Ssh! Cars have feelings, too.’ He patted the steering wheel. She put down her bags.

  ‘What are you doing here?’

  He nodded towards Steele’s house. ‘Waiting to talk to someone who isn’t going to show.’

  ‘Trust you.’

  ‘What about you?’

  ‘Me? I live here. Well, next street on the right to be honest. You knew I’d moved.’

  He shrugged. ‘I didn’t realize it was round here.’

  She gave him an unconvinced smile.

  ‘No, honest,’ he said. ‘But now I am here, can I give you a lift?’

  She laughed. ‘It’s only a hundred yards.’

  ‘Please yourself.’

  She looked down at her bags. ‘Oh, go on then.’

  He opened the door for her and she put the bags down on the floor, squeezing her feet in beside them. Rebus started the car. It spluttered, wheezed, died. He tried again, choke full out. The car gasped, whinnied, then got the general idea.

  ‘Like I said, heap of junk.’

  ‘That’s why it’s behaving like this,’ Rebus warned. ‘Temperamental, like a thoroughbred horse.’

  But the field of an egg-and-spoon race could probably have beaten them over the distance. Finally, they reached the house unscathed. Rebus looked out.

  ‘Nice,’ he said. It was a double-fronted affair with bay windows either side of the front door. There were three floors all told, with a small and steep garden dissected by the stone steps which led from gate to doorway.

  ‘I haven’t got the whole house, of course. Just the ground floor.’

  ‘Nice all the same.’

  ‘Thanks.’ She pushed open the door and manoeuvred her bags out on to the pavement. She gestured towards them. ‘Vegetable stir-fry. Interested?’

  It took him a moment’s eternity to decide. ‘Thanks, Gill. I’m tied up tonight.’

  She had the grace to look disappointed. ‘Maybe another time then.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Rebus, as she pushed the passenger door shut. ‘Maybe another time.’

  The car crawled back along her road. If it gives out on me, he thought, I’ll go back and take her up on her offer. It’ll be a sign. But the car actually began to sound healthier as it passed Steele’s bu
ngalow. There was still no sign of life, so Rebus kept going. He was thinking of a set of weighing scales. On one side sat Gill Templer, on the other Dr Patience Aitken. The scales rose and fell, while Rebus did some hard thinking. Christ, it was hard too. He wished he had more time, but the traffic lights were with him most of the way, and he was back at Patience’s by half past.

  ‘I don’t believe it,’ she said as he walked into the kitchen. ‘I really don’t believe you actually kept a date.’ She was standing beside the microwave. Inside, something was cooking. Rebus pulled her to him and gave her a wet kiss on the lips.

  ‘Patience,’ he said, ‘I think I love you.’

  She pulled back from him a little, the better to look at him. ‘And there’s not a drop of alcohol in the man either. What a night for surprises. Well, I think I should tell you that I’ve had a foul day and as a result I’m in a foul mood . . . that’s why we’re eating chicken.’ She smiled and kissed him. ‘“I think I love you,’” she mimicked. ‘You should have seen the look on your face when you said that. A picture of sheer puzzlement. You’re not exactly the last of the red-hot romantics, are you, John Rebus?’

  ‘So teach me,’ said Rebus, kissing her again.

  ‘I think,’ said Patience . . . ‘I think we’ll have that chicken cold.’

  He was up early next morning. More unusually, he was up before Patience herself, who lay with a satisfied, debauched look on her sleeping face and with her hair wild around her on the pillow. He let Lucky in and gave him a bigger than normal bowl of food, then made tea and toast for himself and Patience.

  ‘Pinch me, I must be dreaming,’ she said when he woke her up. She gulped at the tea, then took a small bite from one buttered triangle. Rebus half refilled his own cup, drained it, and got up from the bed.

  ‘Right,’ he said, ‘I’m off.’

  ‘What?’ She looked at her clock. ‘Night shift is it this week?’

  ‘It’s morning, Patience. And I’ve a lot on today.’ He bent over her to peck her forehead, but she pulled at his tie, tugging him further down so that she could give him a salty, crumbly kiss on the mouth.

  ‘See you later?’ she asked.

  ‘Count on it.’

  ‘It would be nice to be able to.’ But he was already on his way. Lucky came into the room and leapt on to the bed. The cat was licking his lips.