Tooth & Nail

He ate two small packets of cereal. A cereal killer. Smiled grimly and went to the trestle table to help himself to more juice. Lots more juice. It had a funny artificial smell to it, and a' taste best described as `wersh'. But it was cold and wet and the vitamin C would help his head. The waitress brought him two daily papers. Neither contained anything of interest. Flight had not yet used Rebus's idea of the detailed description. Maybe Flight had passed it on to Cath Farraday. Would she sit on it out of spite? After all, she hadn't been too happy about his last little stunt, had she? Maybe she was holding, back on this one, just to show him that she could. Well, sod them. He didn't see anyone coming up with better ideas, with any ideas at all, come to that. Nobody wanted to make a mistake; they'd all rather sit on their hands than be seen to get it wrong. Jesus Christ.

When the first customer proper of the morning ordered bacon, eggs and tomatoes, Rebus finished his orange juice and left the restaurant.

In the Murder Room, he sat at one of the typewriters and prepared detailed descriptions of the gang members. His typing had never been proficient at the best of times, but today's hangover was compounded by an electronic type?writer of infernal complexity. He couldn't get the thing to set a reasonable line length, the tabs appeared not to work and every time he pressed a wrong key the thing bleeped at him.

`Bleep yourself,' he said, trying again to set it for single space typing.

Eventually, he had a typed description. It looked like the work of a ten-year-old, but it would have to do. He took the sheets of paper through to his office. There was a note from Flight on his desk.

`John, I wish you wouldn't keep disappearing. I've run a check on missing persons. Five women have been reported missing north of the river in the past forty-eight hours. Two of these could be explicable, but the other three look more serious. Maybe you're right, the Wolfman's getting hungrier. No feedback from the press stories yet though. See you when you've finished shagging the Prof.'

It was signed simply `GF'. How did Flight know where he'd been yesterday afternoon? An inspired guess, or something more cunning and devious? It didn't really matter. What mattered were the missing women. If Rebus's hunch were true, then the Wolfman was losing some of his previous control and that, meant that sometime soon he was bound to make a mistake. They need only goad him a little more. The Jan Crawford story might just' do that particular trick. Rebus had to sell the idea to Flight—and to Farraday. They had to be made to see that it was the right move at the right time. Three missing women. That would bring the count to seven. Seven murders. There was no telling where it would stop. He rubbed at his head again. The hangover was returning with a steel-tipped vengeance.

`John?'

She was standing in the doorway, trembling, her eyes wide.

`Lisa?' He rose slowly to his, feet. `Lisa, what is it? What's wrong?'

She stumbled towards him. There were tears in her eyes and her hair was slick with sweat. `Thank God,' she said, clinging to him. `I thought I'd never . . . I didn't know what to do, where to go. Your hotel said you'd already left. The Sergeant on the desk downstairs let me come up. He recognised me from the photo in the papers. My photo.' And then the tears came: hot, scalding, and loud. Rebus patted her on the back, trying to calm. her, wanting to know just what the hell had happened.

`Lisa,' he said quietly, `just tell me about it.' He manoeuvred her onto a chair, with his hand rubbing soothingly at her neck. Every bit of her seemed damp with perspiration.

She pulled her bag onto her lap, opened it, and drew from one of the three compartments a small envelope, which she handed silently to Rebus.

`What is it?' he asked.

`I got it this morning,' she said, `addressed to me by name and sent to my home.'

Rebus examined the typed name and address, the first class stamp, and the postmark: London EC4. The frank stated that the letter had been posted the previous morning.

`He knows where I live, John. When I opened it this morning, I nearly died on the spot. I had to get out of the flat, but all the time I knew that maybe he was watching me.' Her eyes filled with water again, but she threw back her head so that the tears would not escape. She fished in her bag and came out with some paper tissues, peeling off one so that she could blow her nose. Rebus said nothing.

`It's a death threat,' she explained.

`A death threat?'

She nodded.

`Who from? Does it say?'

`Oh yes, it says all right. It's from the Wolfman, John. He says I'm going to be next.'