Rebus smiled, shook his head and ordered his drink. ‘Do you want another, or does that count as a chat-up line?’
‘It does and I will.’ She saw him looking at her cigarette. ‘Sobranie.’
‘Does the black paper make them taste any better?’
‘The tobacco makes them taste better.’
Rebus got out his own pack. ‘I’m a wood-shavings man myself.’
‘So I see.’
The drinks arrived. Rebus signed the chit to charge them to his room.
‘Are you here on business?’ Her voice was deep, west coast or thereabouts, working-class educated.
‘Sort of. What about you?’
‘Business. So what do you do?’
World’s worst reply to a chat-up: ‘I’m a police officer.’
She raised one eyebrow, interested. ‘CID?’
‘Yes.’
‘Are you working on the Johnny Bible case?’
‘No.’
‘The way the papers tell it, I thought every policeman in Scotland was.’
‘I’m the exception.’
‘I remember Bible John,’ she said, sucking on the cigarette. ‘I was brought up in Glasgow. For weeks my mum wouldn’t let me out of the house. It was like being in the clink.’
‘He did that to a lot of women.’
‘And now it’s all happening again.’ She paused. ‘When I said I remembered Bible John, your line should have been, “You don’t look old enough”.’
‘Which proves I’m not chatting you up.’
She stared at him. ‘Pity,’ she said, reaching for her drink. Rebus used his own glass as a prop, too, buying time. She’d given him all the information he needed. He had to decide whether to act on it or not. Ask her up to his room? Or plead... what exactly? Guilt? Fear? Self-loathing?
Fear.
He saw the way the night could go, trying to extract beauty from need, passion from a certain despair.
‘I’m flattered,’ he said at last.
‘Don’t be,’ she said quickly. His move again, an amateur chess player thrown against a pro.
‘So what do you do?’
She turned to him. Her eyes said that she knew every tactic in this game. ‘I’m in sales. Products for the oil industry.’ She angled her head towards the rest of the men in the bar. ‘I may have to work with them, but nobody says I have to share my time off with them.’
‘You live in Aberdeen?’
She shook her head. ‘Let me get you another.’
‘I’ve an early start tomorrow.’
‘One more won’t hurt.’
‘It might,’ Rebus said, holding her gaze.
‘Well,’ she said, ‘bang goes the perfect end to a perfectly shitty day.’
‘Sorry.’
‘Don’t worry about it.’
He felt her eyes on him as he walked out of the bar towards reception. He had to force his feet up the stairs towards his room. Her pull was strong. He realised he didn’t even know her name.
He switched on the TV while he got undressed. Some sub-Hollywood garbage: the women looked like skeletons with lipstick; the men acted with their necks — he’d seen barbers with more Method. He thought of the woman again. Was she on the game? Definitely not. But she’d hit on him quick. He’d told her he was flattered; in truth, he was bemused. Rebus had always found relationships with the opposite sex difficult. He’d grown up in a mining village, a bit behind the times when it came to things like promiscuity. You stuck your hand in a girl’s blouse and next thing her father was after you with a leather belt.
Then he’d joined the army, where women were by turns fantasy figures and untouchables: slags and madonnas, there seemed no middle ground. Released from the army, he’d joined the police. Married by then, but his job had proved more seductive, more all-consuming than the relationship — than any relationship. Since then, his affairs had lasted months, weeks, mere days sometimes. Too late now, he felt, for anything more permanent. Women seemed to like him — that wasn’t the problem. The problem lay somewhere inside him, and it hadn’t been eased by things like the Johnny Bible case, by women abused and then killed. Rape was all about power; killing, too, in its way. And wasn’t power the ultimate male fantasy? And didn’t he sometimes dream of it, too?
He’d seen the post mortem photos of Angie Riddell, and the first thought that had come to him, the thought he’d had to push past, was: good body. It had bothered him, because in that instant she’d been just another object. Then the pathologist had got to work, and she had stopped being even that.
He was asleep as soon as his head touched the pillow. His prayer, as every night, was that there would be no dreams. He woke up in darkness, his back drenched in sweat, and to a ticking noise. It wasn’t a clock, not even his watch. His watch was on the cabinet. This was closer, much more intimate. Was it coming from the wall? The headboard? He switched the light on, but the sound had stopped. Woodworm maybe? He couldn’t find any holes in the headboard’s wooden surround. He switched the lamp off and closed his eyes. There it was again: more geiger counter than metronome. He tried to ignore it, but it was too close. It was inescapable. It was the pillow, his feather pillow. There was something inside, something alive. Would it want to crawl into his ear? Lay its eggs there? Mutate or pupate or just enjoy a snack of wax and eardrum? Sweat cooled on his back and on the sheet beneath him. There was no air in the room. He was too tired to get up, too nervy to sleep. He did what he had to do — tossed the pillow towards the door.
No more ticking, but still he couldn’t sleep. The ringing phone came as a relief. Maybe it was the woman from the bar. He’d tell her, I’m an alcoholic, a fuck-up, I’m no good for any other human being.
‘Hello?’
‘It’s Ludo here, sorry to wake you.’
‘I wasn’t asleep. What’s the problem?’
‘A patrol car’s coming to pick you up.’ Rebus grimaced: had Ancram tracked him down already?
‘What for?’
‘A suicide in Stonehaven. Thought you might be interested. The name appears to be Anthony Ellis Kane.’
Rebus shot out of bed. ‘Tony El? Suicide?’
‘Looks like. The car should be there in five minutes.’
‘I’ll be ready.’
Now that John Rebus was in Aberdeen, things were more dangerous.
John Rebus.
The librarian’s list had first thrown up the name, along with an address in Arden Street, Edinburgh EH9. With a short-term reader’s ticket, Rebus had consulted editions of The Scotsman from February 1968 to December 1969. Four others had consulted the same sets of microfilm during the previous six months. Two were known to Bible John as journalists, the third was an author — he’d written a chapter on the case for a book on Scottish murderers. As for the fourth... the fourth had given his name as Peter Manuel. It would have meant nothing to the librarian writing out another short-term reader’s ticket. But the real Peter Manuel had killed up to a dozen people in the 1950s, and been hanged for it at Barlinnie Prison. It became clear to Bible John: the Upstart had been reading up on famous murderers, and in the course of his studies had come across both Manuel and Bible John. Narrowing his search, he’d decided to concentrate his research on Bible John, learning more about the case by reading newspapers from the period. ‘Peter Manuel’ had requested not only Scotsmans from 1968–70, but Glasgow Heralds too.
His was to be thorough research. And the address on his reader’s ticket was as fictitious as his name: Lanark Terrace, Aberdeen. The real Peter Manuel had carried out his killing spree in Lanarkshire.