Tooth & Nail

It had all happened so fast. Kenny was still trying to ?unravel Rebus's story and Rebus could see it. The poor half-educated runt was trying to work out just how far Rebus had put him down. Rebus could answer that as far as was necessary. Rhona hated him for it, of course, and Samantha looked embarrassed. Well to hell with them. He'd done his duty, he'd paid his respects. He wouldn't bother them any more. Let them live in the cramped flat visited by this gentleman, this mock adult. Rebus had more important things to do. Books to read. Notes to make And another busy day ahead. It was ten o'clock. He could be back at his hotel by eleven. An early night, that's what was needed. Eight hours' sleep in the last two days. No wonder he was ratty, looking for a fight.

He began to feel a little bit ashamed. Kenny was too easy a target. He'd crushed a tiny fly beneath a tower-block of resentment. Resentment, John, or plain jealousy?' That was not a question for a tired man. Not a question for a man like John Rebus. Tomorrow. Tomorrow, he might start getting some answers. He was determined to pay for hi keep now that he had been brought to London. Tomorrow the task began in earnest.

He shook. Kenny's hand again and gave him a man-to-man half-wink before leaving the flat. Rhona offered to see him to the, door. They went into the hall, leaving Samantha and Kenny in the living-room, behind a closed door.

`It's okay,' Rebus said quickly. `I'll see myself out.' He started downstairs, aware that to linger was, to invite a argument with Rhona. What was the point? `Better go keep an eye on Lothario,' he called, unable to resist the parting shot.

Outside, he remembered that Rhona liked her loves young, too. Perhaps she . . . but no that thought was unworthy of him. `Sorry, God,' he said, turning with steady stride back towards the Underground.

Something is going wrong.

After the first killing, she had felt horror, remorse, guilt. She had begged forgiveness; she would not kill again.

After a month, a month of not being found, she grew more optimistic, and grew hungry too. So she killed again. This had satisfied for another month, and so it had gone on, But now, only, twenty-four hours after the fourth time, she had felt the urge again. An urge more powerful and focused than ever. She would get away with it, too. But it would be dangerous. The police were still hunting. Time had not elapsed. The public was wary. If she killed now, she would break her patternless pattern, and perhaps that would give the police some clue that she could not predict.

There was only one solution. It was wrong; she knew it was wrong. This wasn't her flat, not really. But she did it anyway. She unlocked the door and entered the gallery. There, tied up, on the floor, lay the latest body. She would store this one. Keep it out of sight of the police. Examining it, she realised that now she would have more time with it, more time in which to play. Yes, storage was the answer. This lair was the answer. No fear of being found. After all, this was a private place, not a public place. No fear. She walked around the body, enjoying its silence. Then she raised the camera to her eye.

`Smile please,' she says, snapping her way through the film. Then she has an idea. She loads another, film cartridge and photographs one of the paintings, a landscape. This is the one she will carve, just as soon as she has finished playing with her new toy. But now she has a record of it, too. A permanent record. She watches the photograph develop but then starts to scratch across the plate, smearing the colours and the focus until the picture becomes a chemical swirl, seemingly without form, God, her mother would have hated that.

`Bitch,' she says, turning from the wall filled with paintings. Her face is creased with anger and resentment. She picks up a pair of scissors and goes to her plaything again, kneels in front of it, takes, a firm hold of the head and brings the scissors down towards the face until they hover a centimetre away from the nose. `Bitch,' she says again, then carefully snips at the nostrils, her hand shaking. `Long nosehairs,' she wails, `are so unbecoming. So unbecoming.'

At last she rises again and crosses to the opposite wall—lifts an aerosol and shakes it noisily. This wall—she calls it her Dionysian wall—is covered in spray-painted black slogans: DEATH TO ART, KILLING IS AN ART, THE LAW IS AN ARSE, FUCK THE RICH, FEEL THE POOR. She thinks of something else to say, something worth the diminishing space. She sprays with a flourish. .