Tooth & Nail

He did not wait for an answer, but started dialling straight away. `Hello?' he said into the receiver when he was finally connected. `Who's that? Oh, hello, Deakin, is Lamb there? Yes, put him on, will you? Thanks.' While he was waiting, Flight picked invisible threads from his trousers. The trousers were shiny from too many wearings. Everything about Flight, Rebus noticed, seemed worn: his shirt collar had an edge of grime to it and the collar itself was too tight, constricting the loose flesh of the neck, pinching it into vertical folds. Rebus found himself transfixed by that neck, by the tufts of grey sprouting hair where the razor had failed in its duty. Signs of mortality, as final as a hand around a throat. When Flight got off the phone, Rebus. would protest about sending Cousins off with Lisa. Ambassadorial Aristocrat. One of the earlier mass killers had been an aristocrat, too.

`Hello, Lamb? What have you found on Miss Crawford?' Flight listened, his eyes on Rebus, ready to communicate anything of interest. 'Uh-huh, okay. Mm, I see. Yes. Right.' All the time his eyes told Rebus that everything was checking out, that Jan Crawford was reliable, that she was telling the truth. Then Flight's eyes, widened a little. `What's that again?' And he listened more intently, moving his eyes from Rebus to study the telephone, apparatus itself `Now that is interesting.'

Rebus shifted. What? What was interesting? But Flight had again resorted to monosyllables.

'Uh-hu. Mmm. Well, never mind. I know. Yes, I'm sure.' His voice sounded resigned to something. `Okay. Thanks for letting me know. Yes. No, we'll be back in about, I don't know, maybe another hour. Right, catch you then.'

Flight held the receiver above the telephone, but did not immediately drop it back into its cradle. Instead, he let it hang there.

Rebus could contain his curiosity no longer. `What?' he said. `What is it? What's wrong?'

Flight seemed to come out of his daydream, and put down the receiver. `Oh,' he said, `it's Tommy Watkiss.'

`What about him?'

`Lamb has just heard that there isn't going to be a retrial. We don't know why yet. Maybe the judge didn't think the charges were worth all the aggro and told the CPS so.'

`Assault on a woman not worth the aggro?' All thought of Philip Cousins vanished from Rebus's mind.

Flight shrugged. `Retrials are expensive. Any trial is expensive. We cocked it up first time round, so we lose a second chance. It happens, John, you know that.'

`Of, course it happens. But the idea of a wake like Watkiss getting away with something like that—'

'Don't worry, he can't keep his nose clean for long. Breaking the law's in his blood. When he does something naughty, we'll have him, and I'll see to it there are no balls-ups, mark my words.'

Rebus sighed. Yes, it happened, you lost a few. More than a few. Incompetence or a soft judge, an unsympathetic jury or a rock-solid witness for the defence. And sometimes maybe the Procurator Fiscal thought a retrial not worth the money. You lost a few. They were like toothache.

`I bet Chambers is fuming,' Rebus said.

`Oh yes,' said Flight, smiling at the thought, `I bet he's got steam coming out of his bloody shirt-cuffs.'

But one person would be happy at least, Rebus was thinking: Kenny Watkiss. He'd be over the moon.

`So,' said Rebus, `what about Jan Crawford?'

Flight shrugged again. `She seems straight as a die. No previous, no record of mental illness, lives quietly, but the neighbours seem to like her well enough. Like Lamb said, she's so clean it's frightening.'

Yes, the squeaky clean ones often were. Frightening to a policeman the way an unknown species might be to a jungle explorer: fear of the new, the different. You got to suspect that everyone had something to hide: the schoolteachers smuggled in porn videos from their holiday in Amsterdam; the solicitors took cocaine on their weekend parties; the happily married MP was sleeping with his secretary; the magistrate had a predilection for underage boys; the librarian kept a real skeleton hidden in the closet; the angelic looking children had set fire to a neighbour's cat.

And sometimes your suspicions were correct.

And other, times' they weren't. Cousins was standing at the door now, ready to leave. Flight laid a hand softly on his arm. Rebus recalled that he'd meant to say something to Flight, but how to phrase it? Would it do to, say that Philip Cousins seemed almost too clean, with his surgeon's cold, manicured hands and his ambassadorial air? Rebus was wondering now, seriously wondering.

Since Flight had gone off with Philip Cousins to find Lisa and her protectors, Rebus went back to, the lab to hear the result of the first saliva test.