Tooth & Nail

The head disappeared. The door closed. Rebus tried to look busy: it wasn't difficult. There was a mound of fresh paperwork to be gone through. Lab reports and the like. Results (negative) from door-to-door on the Jean Cooper murder from the interviews with everyone who'd been in the pub with her that Sunday night. He picked up the first sheet and held it in front of him. There was a knock on the door, so soft that he only just caught it.

`Come in,' he called.

The door opened slowly. A woman was standing there, looking around her as though her timidity might be about to turn to fright. She was in her late twenties, with closely cropped brown hair, but other than that she defied description. She was more a collection of `hots' than anything else: not tall, but, not exactly short; not slim, but by no means overweight, and her face lacked anything approaching a personality.

`Hello,' Rebus said, half-rising to his feet. He indicated a chair on the other side of the desk, and watched as, with breathtaking slowness, she closed the door, testing it afterwards to make sure it was going to stay shut. Only then did she turn to, look at him—or at least towards him; for she had a way of focusing just to the side of his face, so that her eyes never met his.

`Hello,' she said. She seemed ready to stand throughout proceedings. Rebus, who had seated himself again, gestured once more with his hand

`Please. Sit down.'

At last, she poised herself above the chair and lowered herself into it. Rebus had the feeling that he was the boss at some job interview, and that she wanted the job so much she'd worked herself into a good and proper state about it.

`You wanted to speak to someone,' he said, in what he hoped were soft and sympathetic tones.

`Yes,' she said.

Well, it was a start. `My name is Inspector Rebus. And yours is . . . ?’

'Jan Crawford.'

`Okay, Jan. Now, how can I help you?'

She swallowed, gazing at the window behind Rebus's left ear. `It's the killings,' she said. `They call him the Wolfman.'

Rebus was undecided. Maybe she was, a crank, but she didn't seem like one. She just seemed jumpy. Perhaps she had good reason. .

`That's right,' he cajoled. `The papers call him that.'

`Yes, they do.' She had become suddenly excitable, the words spilling from her. `And they said last night on the radio, this morning in the paper . . . ' She pulled a newspaper clipping from her bag. It was the photograph of Rebus and Lisa Frazer. `This is you, isn't it?'

Rebus nodded.

`Then you'll know. I mean, you must. The paper says he's done it again, they're saying you've caught him, or maybe you've caught him, nobody's sure.' She paused, breathing heavily. All the time her eyes were on the window. Rebus kept his mouth shut, letting her calm down. Her eyes were filling, becoming glossy with tears. As she spoke, one droplet squirmed out from the corner of an eye, and crept down towards her lips, her chin. `Nobody's sure whether you've caught him, but I could be sure. At least, I think I can be sure. I didn't get, I mean, I've been scared so long now, and I haven't said anything. I didn't want anybody to know, my mum and dad to know. I just wanted to shut it out, but that's stupid, isn't it?’ when he could do it again if he's not caught. So I decided to, I mean, maybe I can . . . ' She made to stand up, thought better of it, and squeezed her hands together instead.

`Can what, Miss Crawford?'

`Identify him,' she said, her voice almost a whisper. now. She searched in the sleeve of her blouse, found a tissue, and blew her nose. The tear dripped onto one knee. `Identify him,' she repeated, `if he's here, if you've caught him.'

Rebus was staring hard at her now, and at last his eyes found hers. Her brown eyes, covered with a film of liquid. He'd seen cranks before, plenty of them. Maybe she was, and maybe she wasn't.

`What do you mean, Jan?'

She sniffed again, turned her eyes to the window, swallowed. `He almost got me,' she said. `I was the first, before all the others. He almost got me. I was almost the first.'

And then she lifted her head. At first Rebus couldn't understand why. But then he saw. Under her right ear, running in a crescent shape towards her white throat, there was a dark pink scar, no more than an inch long.

The kind of scar you made with a knife.

The first intended kill of the Wolfman.

`What do you think?'

They faced one another across the desk. Four inches of fresh paperwork had appeared in the in-tray, threatening to overbalance the pile and send it slewing down across the floor. Rebus was eating a cheese and onion sandwich from Gino's. Comfort food. One of the nice things about being a bachelor was that you could eat, without, fear of regrets, onions, Branston pickle, huge sausage, egg and tomato sauce sandwiches, curried beans on toast and all the other delicacies favoured by the male.

`What do you think then?'