10 Great Rebus Novels (John Rebus)

by Ian Rankin

  ‘What?’

  ‘Don’t let her get you on the couch.’

  ‘No,’ said Dr Lisa Frazer, shaking her head vigorously. ‘That’s psychiatrists. Psychiatrists have couches, not psychologists. We’re like chalk and cheese.’

  She looked stunning, yet there was no alchemy involved in the process. She was dressed simply and wore no make-up. Her hair had been brushed straight back and tied with a band. Still, casually, elegantly, simply, she was stunning. She had been dead on time at the hotel and had walked with him, her arm linked in his, along Shaftesbury Avenue, past the scene of his run-in with the patrol car. The early evening was warm, and Rebus felt good walking with her. Men were glancing towards them, okay, be honest, towards her. There might even have been a wolf whistle or two. It made Rebus feel good all the same. He was wearing his tweed jacket with an open-necked shirt and had the sudden fear that she would lead him to some fancy restaurant where men were not admitted without ties. That would be just his luck. The city teemed with nightlife, teenagers mostly, drinking from cans and calling to each other across the busy road. The pubs were doing good business and buses chugged grime into the air. Grime which would be falling unseen on Lisa Frazer. Rebus felt valiant. He felt like stopping all the traffic, confiscating all the keys so that she could walk unsullied through the streets.

  Since when did he think like that? Where had this tiny unpolished stone of romance come from? What desperate corner of his soul? Self-conscious, John. You’re becoming too self-conscious. And if a psychologist didn’t spot it, nobody would. Be natural. Be calm. Be yourself.

  She brought him into Chinatown, a few streets off Shaftesbury Avenue, where the telephone boxes were shaped like oriental temples, supermarkets sold fifty-year-old eggs, gateways were decorated like relics from Hong Kong and the street names were given in Chinese as well as English. There were a few tourists about, but mainly the pedestrianised walkway was filled with scuttling Chinese, their voices shrill. It was a different world, like something you would expect to find in New York but never dream of finding in England. Yet he could look back along the street and still see the theatres on Shaftesbury Avenue, the red buses chug-chugging, the punks yelling obscenities at the tops of immature voices.

  ‘Here we are,’ she said, stopping outside a restaurant on the corner of the street. She pulled open the door, gesturing for him to precede her into the air-conditioned chill. A waiter was upon them at once, showing them to a dimly-lit booth. A waitress smiled with her eyes as she handed them each a menu. The waiter returned with a wine list, which he placed beside Rebus.

  ‘Would you like a drink while you are deciding?’

  Rebus looked to Lisa Frazer for guidance. ‘Gin and tonic,’ she said without hesitation.

  ‘And the same for me,’ said Rebus, then regretted it. He wasn’t all that keen on gin’s chemical smell.

  ‘I’m very excited about this case, Inspector Rebus.’

  ‘Please, call me John. We’re not in the station now.’

  She nodded. ‘I’d like to thank you for giving me the chance to study the files. I think I’m already forming an interesting picture.’ She reached into her clutch-purse and produced a collection of a dozen index cards held together with an outsize paper-clip. The cards were covered in lines of tiny, neat handwriting. She seemed ready to start reading them. ‘Shouldn’t we at least order first?’ Rebus asked. She appeared not to understand, then grinned.

  ‘Sorry,’ she said. ‘It’s just that I’m . . .’

  ‘Very excited. Yes, you said.’

  ‘Don’t policemen get excited when they find what they think is a clue?’

  ‘Almost never,’ said Rebus, appearing to study the menu, ‘we’re born pessimists. We don’t get excited until the guilty party has been sentenced and locked up.’

  ‘That’s curious.’ She held her own menu still closed. The index cards had been relegated to the table-top. ‘I’d have thought to enjoy police work you would need a level of optimism, otherwise you’d never think you were going to solve the case.’

  Still studying the menu, Rebus decided that he’d let her order for both of them. He glanced up at her. ‘I try not to think about solving or not solving,’ he said. ‘I just get on with the job, step by step.’

  The waiter had returned with their drinks.

  ‘You are ready to order?’

  ‘Not really,’ said Rebus, ‘could we have a couple more minutes?’

  Lisa Frazer was staring across the table at him. It wasn’t a large table. Her right hand rested on the rim of her glass, barely an inch from his left hand. Rebus could sense the presence of her knees almost touching his own under the table. The other tables in the restaurant all seemed larger than this one, and the booths seemed better lit.

  ‘Frazer’s a Scottish name,’ he said. It was as good a line as any.

  ‘That’s right,’ she replied. ‘My great grandfather came from a place called Kirkcaldy.’

  Rebus smiled. She had pronounced the word the way it looked. He corrected her, then added, ‘I was born and brought up not far from there. Five or six miles, to be precise.’

  ‘Really? What a coincidence. I’ve never been there, but my grandaddy used to tell me it was where Adam Smith was born.’

  Rebus nodded. ‘But don’t hold that against it,’ he said. ‘It’s still not a bad wee town.’ He picked up his glass and swirled it, enjoying the sound of the ice chinking on the glass. Lisa was at last studying her menu. Without looking up, she spoke.

  ‘Why are you here?’ The question was sudden, catching Rebus off-balance. Did she mean here in the restaurant, here in London, here on this planet?

  ‘I’m here to find answers.’ He was pleased with this reply; it seemed to deal with all three possibilities at once. He lifted his glass. ‘Here’s to psychology.’

  She raised her own glass, ice rattling like musical chimes. ‘Here’s to taking things one step at a time.’ They both drank. She studied her menu again. ‘Now,’ she said, ‘what shall we have?’

  Rebus knew how to use a pair of chopsticks, but perhaps tonight had just been the wrong time to try. He suddenly found himself unable to pick up a noodle or a sliver of duck without the thing sliding out of his grasp and falling back to the table, splashing sauce across the tablecloth. The more it happened, the more frustrated he became and the more frustrated he became, the more it happened. Finally, he asked for a fork.

  ‘My coordination’s all gone,’ he explained. She smiled in understanding (or was it sympathy?) and poured more tea into his tiny cup. He could see that she was impatient to tell him what she thought she had discovered about the Wolfman. Over a starter of crabmeat soup the talk had been safe, guarded, had been of pasts and futures, not the present. Rebus stabbed his fork into an unresisting slice of meat. ‘So what have you found?’

  She looked at him for confirmation that this was her cue. When he nodded, she put down her chopsticks, then pushed aside the paper-clip from her index cards and cleared her throat, not so much reading from the cards, more using them as occasional prompts.

  ‘Well,’ she said, ‘the first thing I found revealing was the evidence of salt on the bodies of the victims. I know some people think it may be sweat, but I’m of the opinion that these are tear stains. A lot can be learned from any killer’s interpersonal relationship with his or her victim.’ There it was again: his or her. Her. ‘To me the tear stains indicate feelings of guilt in the attacker, guilt felt, moreover, not in reflection but at the actual time of the attack. This gives the Wolfman a moral dimension, showing that he is being driven almost against his will. There may well be signs of schizophrenia here, the Wolfman’s dark side operating only at certain times.’

  She was about to rush on, but already Rebus needed time to catch up. He interrupted. ‘You’re saying most of the time the Wolfman may seem as normal as you or me?’

  She nodded briskly. ‘Yes, exactly. In fact, I’m saying that between times the Wolfman doesn’t just seem a
s normal as anyone else, he is as normal, which is why he’s been hard to catch. He doesn’t wander around the streets with the word “Wolfman” tattooed across his forehead.’

  Rebus nodded slowly. He realised that by seeming to concentrate on her words, he had an excuse for staring at her face, consuming it with eyes more proficient than any cutlery. ‘Go on,’ he said.

  She flipped one card over and moved to the next, taking a deep breath. ‘That the victim is abused after death indicates that the Wolfman feels no need to control his victim. In some serial killers, this element of control is important. Killing is the only time when these people feel in any kind of control of their lives. This isn’t the case with the Wolfman. The murder itself is relatively quick, occasioning little pain or suffering. Sadism, therefore, is not a feature. Rather, the Wolfman is playing out a scenario upon the corpse.’

  Again the rush of words, her energy, her eagerness to share her findings, all swept past Rebus. How could he concentrate when she was so close to him, so close and so beautiful? ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘It’ll become clearer.’ She stopped to take a sip of tea. Her food was barely touched, the mound of rice in the bowl beside her hardly dented. In her own way, Rebus realised, she was every bit as nervous as he was, but not for the same reasons. The restaurant, though hectic, might have been empty. This booth was their territory. Rebus took a gulp of the still-scalding tea. Tea! He could kill for a glass of cold white wine.

  ‘I thought it interesting,’ she was saying now, ‘that the pathologist, Dr Cousins, feels the initial attack comes from behind. This makes the attacks non-confrontational and the Wolfman is likely to be like this in his social and working life. There’s also the possibility that he cannot look his victims in the eye, out of fear that their fear would destroy his scenario.’

  Rebus shook his head. It was time to own up. ‘You’ve lost me.’

  She seemed surprised. ‘Simply, he’s taking out revenge and to him the victims represent the individual against whom he’s taking his revenge. If he confronted them face to face, he’d realise they’re not the person he bears the grudge against in the first place.’

  Rebus still felt a little bit lost. ‘Then these women are stand-ins?’

  ‘Substitutes, yes.’

  He nodded. This was getting interesting, interesting enough for him to turn his gaze from Lisa Frazer, the better to concentrate on her words. She was still only halfway through her cards.

  ‘So much for the Wolfman,’ she said, flipping to the next card. ‘But the chosen location can also say a lot about the inner life of the attacker, as can age, sex, race and class of the victims. You’ll have noticed that they are all women, that they are mostly older women, women approaching middle age, and that three out of four have been white. I’ll admit that I can’t make much out of these facts as they stand. In fact, it was just the failure of pattern that made me think a little harder about location. You see, just when a pattern looks to be emerging, an element arises that destroys the precision: the killer attacks a much younger woman, or strikes earlier in the evening, or chooses a black victim.’

  Or, Rebus was thinking, kills outside the pattern of the full moon.

  Lisa continued, ‘I started to give some consideration to the spatial pattern of the attacks. These can determine where the killer may strike next, or even where he lives.’ Rebus raised his eyebrows. ‘It’s true, John, it’s been proved in several cases.’

  ‘I don’t doubt it. I was raising my eyebrows at that phrase “spatial pattern”.’ A phrase he’d heard before, on the loathed management course.

  She smiled. ‘Jargon, yes. There’s a lot of it about. What I mean is the pattern of the murder sites. A canal path, a railway line, the vicinity of a tube station. Three out of four take place near travel systems, but again the fourth case defeats the pattern. All four take place north of the river. At least there’s some evidence of a pattern there. But – and this is my point – the non-emergence of a pattern seems to me in itself a conscious act. The Wolfman is making sure you have as little as possible to go on. This would indicate a high level of psychological maturity.’

  ‘Yes, he’s as mature as a hatter all right.’

  She laughed. ‘I’m being serious.’

  ‘I know you are.’

  ‘There is one other possibility.’

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘The Wolfman knows how not to leave a trail because he is familiar with police work.’

  ‘Familiar with it?’

  She nodded. ‘Especially the way you go about investigating a series of murders.’

  ‘You’re saying he’s a copper?’

  She laughed again, shaking her head. ‘I’m saying he may have prior convictions.’

  ‘Yes, well,’ he thought of the file George Flight had shown him a few hours earlier, ‘we’ve checked on over a hundred ex-offenders already. No luck there.’

  ‘But you can’t possibly have talked to every man who has ever been convicted of rape, violent assault or the like.’

  ‘Agreed. But there’s something you seem to have overlooked – the teeth marks. Those are very palpable clues. If the Wolfman is being so clever, why does he leave us a neat set of bite marks every time?’

  She blew on her tea, cooling it. ‘Maybe,’ she said, ‘the teeth are a – what do you call it – a red herring?’

  Rebus thought about this. ‘It’s possible,’ he conceded, ‘but there’s something else. I visited a dental pathologist today. From the marks made by the teeth, he said he couldn’t rule out the possibility that the Wolfman is a woman.’

  ‘Really?’ Her eyes opened wide. ‘That’s very interesting. I’d never even considered it.’

  ‘Neither had we.’ He scooped more rice into his bowl. ‘So tell me, why does he, or she, bite the victims?’

  ‘I’ve given that a lot of thought.’ She flipped to her final card. ‘The bite is always on the stomach, the female stomach, carrier of life. Maybe the Wolfman has lost a child, or maybe he was abandoned and consequently adopted and resents the fact. I don’t know. A lot of serial killers have fragmented upbringings.’

  ‘Mmm. I read all about it in those books you gave me.’

  ‘Really? You read them?’

  ‘Last night.’

  ‘And what did you think?’

  ‘I thought they were clever, sometimes ingenious.’

  ‘But do you think the theories are valid?’

  Rebus shrugged. ‘I’ll tell you if and when we catch the Wolfman.’

  She toyed with her food again, but ate nothing. The meat in her bowl had a cold, gelatinous look. ‘What about the anal attacks, John. Do you have any theories there?’

  Rebus considered this. ‘No,’ he said finally, ‘but I know what a psychiatrist might say.’

  ‘Yes, but you’re not with a psychiatrist, remember. I’m a psychologist.’

  ‘How can I forget? You said in your essay that there are thirty known serial killers active in the USA. Is that true?’

  ‘I wrote that essay over a year ago. By now, there are probably more. Frightening, isn’t it?’

  He shrugged, the shrug disguising a shiver. ‘How’s the food?’ he asked.

  ‘What?’ She looked at her bowl. ‘Oh, I’m not really very hungry. To tell you the truth, I feel a little bit . . . deflated, I suppose. I was so excited at what I thought I’d managed to piece together, but in telling it all to you, I see that really there’s not very much there at all.’ She was thumbing through the index cards.

  ‘There’s plenty there,’ said Rebus. ‘I’m impressed, honest. Every little bit helps. And you stick to the known facts, I like that. I was expecting more jargon.’ He remembered the terms from one of her books, the one by MacNaughtie. ‘Latent psychomania, Oedipal urgings, gobbledygook.’

  ‘I could give you plenty of that stuff,’ she said, ‘but I doubt it would help.’

  ‘Exactly.’

  ‘Besides, that’s more in line wit
h psychiatry. Psychologists prefer drive theories, social learning theory, multiphasic personalities.’ Rebus had clamped his hands over his ears.

  She laughed again. He could make her laugh so easily. Once upon a time he’d made Rhona laugh too, and after Rhona a certain Liaison Officer back in Edinburgh. ‘So what about policemen?’ he asked, closing off the memory. ‘What can psychologists tell about us?’

  ‘Well,’ she said, relaxing into her seat, ‘you’re extrovert, tough-minded, conservative.’

  ‘Conservative?’

  ‘With a small “c”.’

  ‘I read last night that serial killers are conservative, too.’

  She nodded, still smiling. ‘Oh yes,’ she said, ‘you’re alike in a lot of ways. But by conservative I mean specifically that you don’t like anything that changes the status quo. That’s why you’re reticent about the use of psychology. It interferes with the strict guidelines you’ve set yourselves. Isn’t that so?’

  ‘Well, I suppose I could argue, but I won’t. So what happens now you’ve studied the Wolfman?’

  ‘Oh, all I’ve done so far is scratch the surface.’ Her hands were still on the index cards. ‘There are other tests to be done, character analyses and so on. It’ll take time.’ She paused. ‘What about you?’

  ‘Well, we’ll plod along, checking, examining, taking it –’

  ‘Step by step,’ she interrupted.

  ‘That’s right, step by step. Whether I’ll be on the case much longer or not I can’t say. They may send me back to Edinburgh at the end of the week.’

  ‘Why did they bring you to London in the first place?’

  The waiter had come to clear away their dishes. Rebus sat back, wiping his lips with the serviette.

  ‘Any coffees or liqueurs, sir?’

  Rebus looked to Lisa. ‘I think I’ll have a Grand Marnier,’ she said.

  ‘Just coffee for me,’ said Rebus. ‘No, hold on, what the hell, I’ll have the same.’ The waiter bowed and moved off, his arms heavy with crockery.

  ‘You didn’t answer my question, John.’

  ‘Oh, it’s simple enough. They thought I might be able to help. I worked on a previous serial killing, up in Edinburgh.’