Tooth & Nail

Having said in the diary entry quoted above that I should plan more and research more, I should confess here that the lengthy list of acknowledgements at the end of Tooth & Nail is actually an extended joke. Each recipient is a friend of mine, and I just wanted to sneak as many of . their names into the book as I could. Steve Adams and Fiona Campbell, for example, were our next-door neighbours in Tottenham, while Tee Macgregor and Don Nichol had been literature postgrads during my own time at the University of Edinburgh. Professor J. Curt, however, deserves special mention. He's my mate Jon Curt. I shared a flat with him for an intensely boozy year when I was a postgrad and he was finishing his MA. As well as being a student, Jon was part-time barman at the Oxford Bar. Without him, I might never have found what was to become Rebus's favourite watering-hole. I rewarded Jon with a professorship in Tooth & Nail, and would later turn him into Dr Curt, pathologist and friend of Rebus in many of the later novels.

The book also contains one of my favourite one-liners, in any of my novels. I won't give the game away here, but watch out for the mention of a 'nudist beach' . . .

Prologue

She drives home the knife.

The moment, she knows from past experience, is a very intimate one. Her hand is gripped around the knife's cool handle and the thrust takes the blade into the throat up to the hilt until her hand meets the throat itself. Flesh upon flesh. Jacket first, or woollen jersey, cotton shirt or T-shirt, then flesh. Now rent. The knife is writhing, like an animal sniffing. Warm blood covering hilt and hand. (The other hand covers the mouth, stifling screams.) The moment is complete. A meeting. Touching. The body is hot, gaping, warm with blood. Seething inside, as insides become outsides. Boiling. The moment is coming to an end all too soon.

And still she feels hungry. It isn't right, isn't usual, but she does. She removes some of the clothing; in fact, removes quite a lot of it, removes more, perhaps, than is necessary. And she does what she must do, the knife squirming again. She keeps her eyes screwed tightly shut. She does not like this part. She has never liked this part, not then, not now. But especially not then.

Finally, she brings out her teeth and sinks them into the white stomach, until they grind together in a satisfying bite, and, whispers, as she always does, the same four words.

`It's only a game.'

It is evening when George Flight gets the call. Sunday evening. Sunday should be his blessed relief, beef and Yorkshires, feet up in front of the television, papers falling from his lap. But he's had a feeling all day. In the pub at lunchtime he'd felt it, a wriggling in, his gut like there were worms in there, tiny blind white worms, hungry worms, worms he could not hope to satisfy. He knew what they were and they knew what they were. And then he'd won third prize in the pub raffle: a three-foot high orange and white teddy bear. Even the worms had laughed at him then and he'd known the day would end badly.

As it was doing now, the phone as insistent as last orders. Ringing with whatever bad news couldn't wait until the morning shift. He knew what it meant of course. Hadn't he been expecting it these past weeks? But still he was reluctant to pick up the receiver. At last he did.

`Flight speaking.'

`There's been another one, sir. The Wolfman. He's done another.'

Flight stared at the silent television. Highlights of the previous day's rugby match. Grown men running after a funny-shaped ball as though their lives depended on it. It was only a bloody game after all. And propped up against the side of the TV that smirking prize, the teddy bear. What the hell could he do with a teddy bear?

`Okay,' he said, `just tell me where . . .’

`After all, it is only a game.'

Rebus smiled and nodded at the Englishman across the table. Then he stared out of the window, pretending once more, to be interested in the blur of dark scenery. If the Englishman had said it once, he had said it a dozen times. And during the trip, he had said little else. He also kept stealing precious legroom from Rebus, while his collection of empty beer cans was creeping across the table, invading Rebus's space, pushing against the neatly folded stack of newspapers and magazines.

`Tickets, please!' yelled the guard from the other end of the carriage.

So, with a sigh, and for the third time since leaving Edinburgh, Rebus sought out his ticket. It was never where he thought it was. At Berwick, he'd thought it was in his shirt pocket. It was in the outer top pocket of his Harris tweed jacket. Then at Durham he'd looked for it in his jacket, only to find it beneath one of the magazines on the table. Now, ten minutes out of Peterborough, it had moved to the back pocket of his trousers. He retrieved it, and waited for the guard to make his way forward.