Tooth & Nail

Rebus smiled. She had pronounced the word the way it looked. He corrected her, then added, `I was born and brought up not far from there. Five or six miles, to be precise.'

`Really? What a coincidence. I've never been there, but my grandaddy used to tell me it was where Adam Smith was born.'

Rebus nodded. `But don't hold that against it,' he said. `It's still not a bad wee town.' He picked up his glass and swirled it, enjoying the sound of the ice chinking on the glass. Lisa was at last studying her menu. Without looking up, she spoke.

`Why are you here?' The question was sudden, catching Rebus off-balance. Did she mean here in the restaurant, here in London here on this planet?

`I'm here to find answers.' He was pleased with this reply; it seemed to deal with all three possibilities at once. He lifted his glass. `Here's to psychology.'

She raised her own glass, ice rattling like musical chimes. `Here's to taking things one step at a time.' They both drank. She studied her menu again. `Now,' she said, `what shall we have?'

Rebus knew how to use a pair of chopsticks, but perhaps tonight had just been the wrong time to try. He suddenly found himself unable to pick up a noodle or a sliver of duck without the thing sliding out of his grasp and falling back to the table, splashing sauce across the tablecloth. The more it happened, the more frustrated he became and the more frustrated he became, the more it happened. Finally, he asked for a fork.

`My coordination's all gone,' he explained. She smiled in understanding (or was it sympathy?) and poured more tea into his tiny cup. He could see that she was impatient to tell him what she thought she had discovered about the Wolfman. Over a starter of crabmeat soup the talk had been safe, guarded, had been of pasts, and futures, not the, present. Rebus stabbed his fork into an unresisting' slice of meat. `So what have you found?'

She looked at him for confirmation that this was her cue.

When he nodded, she put down her chopsticks, then pushed aside the paper-clip from her index cards and cleared her, throat, not so much reading from the cards, more using them as occasional prompts.

`Well,' she said, `the first thing I found revealing was the evidence of salt on the bodies of the victims. I know some people think it may be sweat, but I'm of the opinion that these are tear stains. A lot can be learned from any killer's interpersonal relationship with his or her victim.' There it was again: his or her. Her. `To me the tear stains indicate feelings of guilt in the attacker, guilt felt, moreover, not in reflection but at the actual time of the attack. This gives the Wolfman a moral dimension, showing that he is being driven almost against his will. There may well be signs of schizophrenia here, the Wolfman's dark side operating only at certain times.'

She was about to rush on but already Rebus needed time to catch up. He interrupted. `You're saying most of the time the Wolfman may seem as normal as you or me?'

She nodded briskly. `Yes, exactly. In fact, I'm saying that between times the Wolfman doesn't just seem as normal as anyone else, he is as normal, which is why he's been hard to catch. He doesn't wander around the streets with the word “Wolfman” tattooed across his forehead.'

Rebus nodded slowly. He realised that by seeming to concentrate on her words, he had an excuse for staring at her, face, consuming it with eyes more proficient than any cutlery. `Go on,' he said.

She flipped one card over and moved to the next, taking a deep breath. `That the victim is abused after death indicates that the Wolfman feels no need to control his victim. In some serial killers, this element of control is important Killing is the only time when these people feel in any kind of control of their lives. This isn't the case with the Wolfman. The murder itself is relatively quick, occasioning little pain or suffering. Sadism, therefore, is not a feature. Rather, the Wolfman is playing out a scenario upon the corpse.'

Again the rush of words, her energy, her eagerness to share her findings, all swept past Rebus. How could he concentrate when she was so close to him, so close and so beautiful? `What do you mean?'

`It'll become clearer.' She stopped to take a sip of tea. Her food was barely touched, the mound of rice in the bowl beside her hardly dented. In her own way, Rebus realised, she was every bit as nervous as he was, but not for the same reasons. The restaurant, though hectic, might have been empty. This booth was their territory. Rebus took a gulp of the still-scalding tea. Tea! He could kill for a glass of cold white wine.

`I thought it interesting,' she was saying now, `that the pathologist, Dr Cousins, feels the initial attack comes from behind. This makes the attacks non-confrontational and the Wolfman is likely to be like this in his social and working life. There's also the possibility that he cannot look his victims in the eye, out of fear that their fear would destroy his scenario.'