Strip Jack

The wife… Elizabeth… something didn't seem right there. Something seemed very odd indeed. Background, he needed more background. He needed to be sure. The lodge address was fixed in his mind, but from what he knew of Highland police stations little good would come of phoning on a Sunday. Background… He thought again of Chris Kemp, the reporter. Yes, why not? Wake up, arms, wake up, chest, neck and head. Sunday was no time to be resting. For some people, Sunday was a day of work.

Patience stuck her head round the door. 'Quiet night in this evening?' she suggested. I'll cook us a -'

'Quiet night be damned,' Rebus said, rising impressively from the water. 'Let's go out for a drink.'

'You know me, John. I don't mind a bit of sleaze, but this place is cheapskate sleaze. Don't you think I'm worth better?'

Rebus pecked Patience's cheek, placed their drinks on the table, and sat down beside her. 'I got you a double,' he said.

'So I see.' She picked up the glass. 'Not much room for the tonic, is there?'

They were seated in the back room of the Horsehair public house on Broughton Street. Through the doorway could be seen the bar itself, noisy as ever. People who wanted to have a conversation seemed to place themselves like duellists a good ten paces away from the person they wanted to talk with. The result was that a lot of shouting went on, producing much crossfire and more crossed wires. It was noisy, but it was fun. The back room was quieter. It was a U-shaped arrangement of squashy seating (around the walls) and rickety chairs. The narrow lozenge-shaped tables were fixed to the floor. Rumour had it that the squashy seating had been stuffed with horsehair in the 1920s and not restuffed since. Thus the Horsehair, whose real and prosaic name had long since been discarded.

Patience poured half a small bottle of tonic water into her gin, while Rebus supped on a pint of IPA.

'Cheers,' she said, without enthusiasm. Then: 'I know damned fine that there's got to be a reason for this. I mean, a reason why we're here. I suppose it's to do with your work?'

Rebus put down the glass. 'Yes,' he said.

She raised her eyes to the nicotine-coloured ceiling. 'Give me strength,' she said.

'It won't take long,' Rebus said. 'I thought afterwards we could go somewhere… a bit more your style.'

'Don't patronize me, you pig.'

Rebus stared into his drink, thinking about that statement's various meanings. Then he caught sight of a new customer in the bar, and waved through the doorway. A young man came forwards, smiling tiredly.

'Don't often see you in here, Inspector Rebus,' he said.

'Sit down,' said Rebus. 'It's my round. Patience, let me introduce you to one of Scotland's finest young reporters. Chris Kemp.'

Rebus got up and headed for the bar. Chris Kemp pulled over a chair and, having tested it first, eased himself on to it.

'He must want something,' he said to Patience, nodding towards the bar. 'He knows I'm a sucker for a bit of flattery.'

Not that it was flattery. Chris Kemp had won awards for his early work on an Aberdeen evening paper, and had then moved to Glasgow, there to be voted Young Journalist of the Year, before arriving in Edinburgh, where he had spent the past year and a half 'stirring it' (as he said himself). Everyone knew he'd one day head south. He knew it himself. It was inescapable. There didn't seem to be much left for him to stir in Scotland. The only problem was his student girlfriend, who wouldn't graduate for another year and wouldn't think of moving south before then, if ever…

By the time Rebus returned from the bar, Patience had been told all of this and more. There was a film over her eyes which Chris Kemp, for all his qualities, could not see. He talked, and as he talked she was thinking: Is John Rebus worth all this? Is he worth the effort I seem to have to make? She didn't love him: that was understood. 'Love' was something that had happened to her a few times in her teens and twenties and even, yes, in her thirties. Always with inconclusive or atrocious results. So that nowadays it seemed to her 'love' could as easily spell the end of a relationship as its beginning.

She saw it in her surgery. She saw men and women (but mostly women) made ill from love, from loving too much and not being loved enough in return. They were every bit as sick as the child with earache or the pensioner suffering angina. She had pity and words for them, but no medicines.

Time heals, she might say in an unguarded moment. Yes, heals into a callus over the wound, hard and protective. Just like she felt: hard and protective. But did John Rebus need her solidity, her protection?

'Here we are,' he said on his return. 'The barman's slow tonight, sorry.'

Chris Kemp accepted the drink with a thin smile. 'I've just been telling Patience…'