Tooth & Nail

`It's only a game,' she whispers, her voice a mere tremble at—the back of her throat. `Only a game.' She hears the woman's words again: certainly not a gentleman. No, certainly not. Her laughter is harsh and abrupt. Suddenly, she feels it again. No! Not already! Next time. The knife twitches. She hasn't even finished with this one. She can't possibly do another tonight! It would be madness. Sheer madness. But the craving is there, an absolute and unappeasable hunger. This time with a mirror. She covers her eyes with a bloodstained, hand.

Unknown

`Stop!' she cries. `Stop it, daddy!—Mummy! Make it stop! Please, make it stop!'

But that's the problem, as, she knows only too well. Nobody can make it stop, nobody will make it stop. On it must go, night after night now. Night after night. No letting up, no pausing for breath.

Night after night after night.

Fibs

`You've got to be kidding!'

Rebus was too tired to be truly angry, but there was enough exasperation in his voice to worry the caller on the other end of the telephone, delegated to order Rebus to Glasgow.

`That case isn't supposed to be heard until the week after next.)

'They moved it,' says the voice.

Rebus groaned. He lay back on his hotel bed with the receiver pressed to his ear and checked his watch. Eight thirty. He'd slept soundly last night, waking at seven, dressed quietly so as not to disturb Lisa and had left her a note before making his exit. His nose had led him to the hotel with only a couple of wrong turnings along the way and now he had walked into this telephone call.

`They brought it forward,' the voice is saying. `It starts today. They need your testimony, Inspector.'

As if Rebus didn't know. He knows that all he has to do is go into the witness box and say he saw Morris Gerald Cafferty (known in the protection game as `Big Ger') accept one hundred pounds from the landlord of the City Arms pub in Grangemouth. It's as easy as that, but he needs to be there to say it. The case against Cafferty, boss of a thuggish protection and gaming racket, is not airtight. In fact, it's got more punctures than a blind dressmaker's thumb.

He resigns himself to it. Must it be? Yes, it must be. But there was still the problem of logistics.

`It's all been taken care of,' says the voice. `We did try phoning you last night, but you were never there. Catch the first available shuttle from Heathrow. We'll have a car meet you and bring you into Glasgow. The prosecution reckons he'll call you about half past three, so there's time enough. With any luck, you can be back in London by tonight.'

`Gee, thanks,' says Rebus, voice so thick with irony the words hardly escape into the air.

`You're welcome,' says the voice.

He found that the Piccadilly Line went to Heathrow, and Piccadilly Circus tube was right outside the hotel. So things started well enough, though the tube ride itself was slow and stifling. At Heathrow, he picked up his ticket and had just enough time for a dash into the Skyshop. He picked, up a Glasgow Herald, then saw the row of tabloids on another shelf: SECRET LIFE OF GAY WOLFMAN; SICK KILLER `NEEDS HELP' SAY POLICE; CATCH THIS MADMAN

Cath Farraday had done well. He bought a copy of all three papers as well as the Herald and made for the Departure Lounge. Now that his mind was working, he saw all around him people reading the same headlines and the stories below them. But would the Wolfman see the stories? And if so, would he or she make some kind of move? Hell, the whole thing might be about to crack open, and here he was heading four hundred miles north. Damn the judicial system, the judges and advocates and solicitors and all. The Cafferty case had probably been brought forward so that it would not interfere with a golf game or a school sports day. Some spoilt child's involvement with an egg-and-spoon race might be behind this whole breathless journey. Rebus tried to calm down, sucking in gulps of air and releasing them slowly. He didn't like flying as it was. Never since his days in the SAS, when they had dropped him from a helicopter. Jesus! That was no way to calm yourself.

'Will passengers for British Airways Super Shuttle flight —'

The voice was cool and precise, triggering a mass movement. People rose to their feet, checked their baggage and made for the gate just mentioned. Which gate? He'd missed the announcement. Was it his flight?' Maybe he should phone ahead so they would have the car waiting. He hated flying. That was why he had come down by train on Sunday. Sunday? And today was Wednesday. It felt like over. a week had passed. In fact, he'd been in London only two full days.