Tooth & Nail

Rebus smiled and moved on. London was different to, all this. It felt more, congested, things moved too quickly, there seemed pressure and stress everywhere. Driving a car from A to B, shopping for groceries, going out for the evening, all were turned into immensely tiring activities. Londoners appeared to him to be on very short fuses indeed. Here, the people were stoics. They used their humour as a barrier against everything Londoners had to take on the chin. Different worlds. Different civilisations. Glasgow had been the second, city of the Empire. It had been the first city of Scotland all through the twentieth century.

`Got a fag, mister?'

It was one of the punks. Now, up close, Rebus saw she was a girl. He'd assumed the group had been all male. They all looked so similar.

`No, sorry, I'm trying to give up—'

But she had already started to move away, in search of someone, anyone, who could immediately gratify. He looked at his watch. It was gone two, and it might take him half an hour to get from here to the court. The punks were still arguing about the missing Cluedo pieces.

`I mean, how can you play a game when there's bits missing? Know what I mean, pal? Like, where's Colonel Mustard? An' the board's nearly torn in half, by the way. How much d'ye want for it?'

The argumentative punk was tall and immensely thin, his size and shape accentuated by the black he wore from tip to toe. 'Twa ply o' reek,' Rebus's father would have called him. Was the Wolfman fat or thin? tall or short? young or old? did he have a job? a wife? a husband even? Did someone close to him know the truth, and were they keeping quiet? When would he strike next? And where? Lisa had been unable to answer any of these questions. Maybe Flight was right about psychology. So much of it was guesswork, like a game where some of the pieces are missing and nobody knows the rules. Sometimes you ended up playing a game completely different to the original, 'a game of your own devising.

That was what Rebus needed: a new set of rules in his game against the Wolfman. Rules which would be to his benefit. The newspaper stories were the start of it, but only if the Wolfman made the next move.

Maybe Cafferty would get off this time, but there'd always be another. The board was always prepared for a fresh start.

Rebus gave his evidence and was out of the court by four. He handed the file on the case back to his driver, a balding middle-aged detective sergeant, and settled into the passen?ger seat.

`Let me know what happens,' he said. The driver nodded.

`Straight back to the airport, Inspector?' Funny how a Glaswegian accent could be made to sound so sarcastic. The sergeant had managed somehow to make Rebus feel his inferior. Then again, there was little love lost between east and west coasts. There might have been a wall dividing the two, such was their own abiding cold war. The driver was repeating his question, a little louder now.

`That's right,' said Rebus, just as loudly. `It's a jet-setting life in the Lothian and Borders Police.'

His head was fairly thrumming by the time he got back to the hotel in Piccadilly. He needed a quiet night, a night alone. He hadn't managed to contact Flight or Lisa, but they could wait until tomorrow. For now, he wanted nothing.

Nothing but silence and stillness, lying on the, bed and staring at the ceiling, his mind nowhere.

It had been one hell of a week, and the week was only halfway through. He took two paracetamol from the bottle he had brought and washed them down with half a glass of tepid tap-water. The water tasted foul. Was it true that London, water had passed through seven sets of kidneys before reaching the drinker? It had an oily quality in his mouth, not the sharp clear taste of the water in Edinburgh. Seven sets of kidneys. He looked at his cases, thinking of the amount of stuff he had brought with him, useless stuff, stuff he would never use. Even the bottle of malt sat more or less untouched.

There was a telephone ringing somewhere. His tele?phone, but he managed to ignore the fact for fully fifteen seconds. He growled and clawed at the wall with his hand, finally finding the receiver and dragging it to his ear. `This had better be good.'

`Where the fuck have you been?' It was Flight's voice, anxious and angry.

`Good evening to you too, George.'

`There's been another killing.'

Rebus sat up and swung his legs off the bed. `When?'

`The body was discovered an hour ago. There's something else.' He paused. `We caught the killer.'

Now Rebus stood up.

`What?'

`We caught him as he was running off.'

Rebus's knees almost failed him, but he locked them. His voice was unnaturally quiet. `Is it him?'

`Could be.'

`Where are you?'

`I'm at HQ We've brought him here. The murder took place in a house off Brick Lane. Not too far from Wolf Street.'

`In a house?' That was a surprise. The other murders had all taken place out of doors. But then, as Lisa had said, the pattern kept changing.'