Serial killers not infrequently had a history of homosexual activity — not guilty.
They were usually unmarried — tell that to the Yorkshire Ripper.
They often heard two voices inside their heads, one good and the other evil. They collected weapons, and gave them pet names. Many dressed up in women’s clothes. Some showed an interest in black magic or in monsters, and collected sadistic pornography. Many had a ‘private place’ where objects such as hoods, dolls and rubber diving-suits would be kept.
He looked around his study and shook his head.
There were only a few points where the psychiatrist got it right. Yes, he would say he was egocentric — like half the population. Yes, he was neat and tidy. Yes, he had an interest in the Second World War (but not solely Nazism or concentration camps). Yes, he was a plausible liar — or rather, people were gullible listeners. And yes, he planned his culls well in advance, as it appeared the Upstart was now doing.
The librarian had not yet finished compiling his newspaper list. A check of requests for Bible John literature had drawn a blank. That was the bad news. But there was good news too. Thanks to the recent upsurge of interest in the original Bible John case, he had newspaper details of other unsolved murders, seven of them. Five took place in 1977, one in ’78, and one much more recently. These gave him a second thesis. The first had the Upstart just beginning his career; the second had him recommencing it after a long gap. He might have been out of the country, or in some institution, or even in a relationship where he did not feel it necessary to kill. If the police were being meticulous — which he doubted — they’d be looking at recent divorces of men who had married in ’78 or ’79. Bible John did not have the means at his disposal to do this, which was frustrating. He got up and stared at his shelves of books, not really seeing them. There was an opinion that the Upstart was Bible John, that the eyewitness descriptions were flawed. As a result, the police and the media had dusted off their photofits and artists’ impressions.
Dangerous. He knew the only way to quash such speculation was to locate the Upstart. Imitation was not the sincerest form of flattery. It was potentially lethal. He had to find the Upstart. Either that or lead the police to him. One way or another, it would be done.
8
He was in a six a.m. opener, drinking off a good sleep.
He’d woken up way too early, got dressed, and decided to go for a walk. He crossed the Meadows, headed down George IV Bridge and the High Street, left on to Cockburn Street. Cockburn Street: shopping mecca to teenagers and hippies; Rebus remembered Cockburn Street market when it was a damned sight more disreputable than these days. Angie Riddell had bought her necklace in a shop on Cockburn Street. Maybe she’d worn it the day he’d taken her to the café, but he didn’t think so. He switched off the thought, turned down a passageway, a steep flight of steps, and took another left on Market Street. He was opposite Waverley Station, and there was a pub open. It catered to night-shift workers, a drink or two before home and bed. But you saw businessmen in it too, bracing themselves for the day ahead.
With newspaper offices nearby, the regulars were print-workers and subs, and there were always first editions available, the ink just dry. Rebus was known here, and no one ever bothered him. Even if a reporter was having a drink, they didn’t hassle him for stories or quotes — it was an unwritten rule, never breached.
This morning, three teenagers sat slumped at a table, barely touching their drinks. Their dishevelled and sleepy state told Rebus they’d just completed a ‘twenty-four’: round-the-clock drinking. The daytime was easy: you started at six in the morning — somewhere like this — and the pubs were licensed till midnight or one o’clock. After that, it had to be clubs, casinos, and you finished the marathon at a pizza parlour on Lothian Road, open till six a.m., at which point you returned here for the last drink of the session.
The bar was quiet, no TV or radio, the fruit machine not yet plugged in: another unwritten rule. At this time of day, what you did in this place was drink. And read the papers. Rebus poured a helping of water into his whisky, took it and a paper to a table. The sun outside the windows was skin-tone pink against a milky sky. It had been a good walk; he liked the city quiet: taxis and early risers, first dogs being exercised, clear, clean air. But the night before still clung to the place: a litter-bin upturned, a bench on the Meadows with a broken back, traffic cones hoisted on to bus shelter roofs. It was true of the bar too: last night’s fug had not had time to dissipate. Rebus lit a cigarette and read his paper.
A story on the inside page caught his attention: Aberdeen was hosting an international convention on offshore pollution and the role of the oil industry. Delegates from sixteen countries were expected to attend. There was a smaller story tacked on to the article: the Bannock oil and gas field, 100 miles north-east of Shetland, was coming to the end of its ‘useful economic life’, and was about to undergo decommissioning. Environmentalists were making an issue of Bannock’s main production platform, a steel and concrete structure weighing 200,000 tonnes. They wanted to know what the owners, T-Bird Oil, planned to do with it. As required by law, the company had submitted an Abandonment Programme to the Oil and Gas Division of the Department of Trade and Industry, but its contents had not been made public.
The environmentalists were saying that there were over 200 oil and gas installations on the UK Continental Shelf, and they all had a finite production life. The government seemed to be backing an option which would leave the majority of the deep-water platforms in place, with only minimal maintenance. There was even talk of selling them off for alternative use — plans included prisons and casino/hotel complexes. The government and the oil companies were talking cost-effectiveness, and about striking a balance between cost, safety and the environment. The protesters’ line was: the environment at any cost. Stoked up from their victory over Shell with the Brent Spar, the pressure groups were planning to make Bannock an issue too, and would be holding marches, rallies, and an open-air concert close to the site of the Aberdeen convention.
Aberdeen: fast becoming the centre of Rebus’s universe.
He finished his whisky, decided against a second, then changed his mind. Flicked through the rest of the paper: nothing new on Johnny Bible. There was a property section; he checked the Marchmont/Sciennes prices, then laughed at some of the New Town specs: ‘luxurious townhouse, elegant living on five floors...’; ‘garage for sale separately, £20,000’. There were still a few places in Scotland where £20,000 would buy you a house, maybe with the garage thrown in. He looked down the ‘Country Property’ list, saw more wild prices, flattering photos attached. There was a place on the coast south-east of the city, picture windows and sea views, for the price of a Marchmont flat. Dream on, sailor...
He walked home, got in his car, and drove out to Craigmillar, one area of the city not yet represented in the property section, and not likely to be for some time to come.
The night shift was just about to come off. Rebus saw officers he hadn’t seen before. He asked around: it had been a quiet night; the cells were empty, ditto the biscuit-tins. In the Shed, he sat at his desk and saw new paperwork staring up at him. He fetched himself a coffee and picked up the first sheet.
More dead ends on Allan Mitchison; the head of his children’s home interviewed by local CID. A check of his bank account, nothing amiss. Nothing from Aberdeen CID on Tony El. A woolly suit came in with a package addressed to Rebus. Postmarked Aberdeen, a printed labeclass="underline" T-Bird Oil. Rebus opened it. Publicity material, a compliment slip from Stuart Minchell, Personnel Dept. Half a dozen A4 pamphlets, quality layout and paper, colour throughout, facts kept to a minimum. Rebus, author of five thousand reports, knew waffle when he saw it. Minchell had enclosed a copy of ‘T-BIRD OIL — STRIKING THE BALANCE’, identical to the one in the side pocket of Mitchison’s rucksack. Rebus opened it, saw a map of the Bannock field, laid out across a grid showing which blocks it occupied. A note explained that the North Sea had been divided into blocks of 100 square miles apiece, and oil companies initially made bids for exploration rights to these blocks. Bannock was slap-bang up against the international boundary — a few miles east and you came to more oil fields, but this time Norwegian rather than British.