Tooth & Nail

`I heard it on the radio just twenty minutes ago.'

`Done another, has he?'

`That's what they're saying.'

The woman shivered. `Don't bear thinking about. Did they say it was definitely him?'

'Not definitely, but you just know, don't you?'

There was truth in that. So, Rebus had arrived in time for another small piece of the drama to unfold around him. Another murder, making four in all. Four in the space of three months. He was a busy little man, this killer they had named the Wolfman. They had named him the Wolfman and then they had sent word to Rebus's boss. Lend us your man, they had said. Let's see what he can do. Rebus's boss, Chief Superintendent Watson, had handed the letter over to him.

`Better take some silver bullets with you, John,' he had said. `It looks like you're their only hope.' And then he had chuckled, knowing as well as Rebus. knew himself that he could be of little help in the case. But Rebus had gnawed on his bottom lip, silent in front of his desk-bound superior. He would do what he could. He would do everything he could. Until they saw through him and sent him back home.

Besides, perhaps he needed the break. Watson seemed glad to be rid of him, too.

`If nothing else, it'll keep us out of one another's hair for a while.'

The Chief Superintendent, an Aberdonian, had carried the nickname `Farmer Watson', a nickname every police officer beneath him in Edinburgh understood. But then one day Rebus, a nip of malt too many beneath his belt, had blurted out the nickname in front of Watson himself, since when he had found himself assigned to more than his fair share of tedious details, desk jobs, lookouts and training courses.

Training courses! At least Watson had a sense of humour. The most recent had been termed `Management for Senior Officers' and had been a minor disaster—all psychology and how to be nice to junior officers. How to involve them, how to motivate them; how to relate to them. Rebus had returned to his station and tried it for one day, a day of involving, of motivating, of relating. At the end of the day, a DC had slapped a hand onto Rebus's back, smiling.

`Bloody hard work today, John. But I've enjoyed it.'

`Take your hand off my fucking back,' Rebus had snarled. `And don't call me John.'

The DC's mouth fell open. `But you said . . . ' he began, but didn't bother finishing. The brief holiday was over. Rebus had tried being a manager. Tried it and loathed it.

He was halfway down the steps to the Underground when he stopped, put down his suitcase and briefcase, pulled open the zip on his sports bag and found the transistor radio. Switching it on, he held it to his ear with one hand while the other turned the tuning dial. Eventually, he found a news bulletin, listening as the other travellers passed him, a few of them staring, but mostly ignoring him. At last he heard what he had been waiting for, then switched off the radio and threw it. back into the sports bag. Now, he released the two catches on his briefcase and brought out the A-Z. Flipping through the pages of street names at the back, he remembered just how large London really was. Large and populous. Something like ten million, was it? Wasn't that twice the population of Scotland? It didn't bear thinking about. Ten million souls.

`Ten million and one,' Rebus whispered to himself, finding the name he had been looking for.

The Chamber of Horrors

`Not a pretty sight.'

Looking around him, Detective Inspector George Flight wondered whether the sergeant had been referring to the body or, to the surrounding area. You could say what you liked about the Wolfman, he wasn't choosy about his turf. This time it was a riverside path. Not that Flight had ever really thought of the Lea as a `river'. It was, a place where supermarket trolleys came to die, a dank stretch of water bordered on one side by marshland and on the other by industrial sites and lo-rise housing. Apparently you could walk the course of the Lea from the Thames to up past Edmonton. The narrow river ran like a mottled black vein from east central London to the most northerly reaches of the capital and beyond. The vast majority of Londoners didn't even know it existed.

George Flight knew about it though. He had been brought up in Tottenham Hale, not far from the Lea. His father had fished on the Navigation section, between Stonebridge and Tottenham Locks. When he was young he had played football on the marshes, smoked illicit cigarettes in the long grass with his gang, fumbled with a blouse or a brassiere on the wasteland just across the river from where, he now stood.