'Just here for the show, same as you are.' He did~'t dare say that his brother was the hypnotist. That would have left too many avenues for a response.

'You like this sort of thing, do you?'

'I've never been before.'

'Neither have I.' She smiled again, conspiratorially this time. She had found that they had something in common. Thankfully, the lights were going down-what lighting there was-and a spot had come up on the stage. Someone was introducing the show. The woman opened her handbag and produced a noisy bag of boiled sweets. She offered one to Rebus.

Rebus found himself, to his own surprise, enjoying the show, but not half as much as the woman beside him was. She howled with laughter as one willing partic.i.p.ant, his trousers left on the stage, pretended to swim up and down the aisles. Another guinea-pig was made to believe that he was ravenously hungry. Another that she was a professional striptease artiste at one of her bookings. Another that he was falling asleep.

83 Still enjoying the show, Rebus began to nod off himself. It was the effect of too much alcohol, too little sleep, and the warm, broody darkness of the theatre. Only the final applause of the audience awoke him. Michael, sweating in his glittery stage suit, took the applause as though addicted to it, coming back for another bow when most of the people were leaving their seats. He had told his brother that he had to get home quickly, that he would not see him after the show, that he would phone him sometime for his reaction.

And John Rebus had slept through much of it.

He felt refreshed, however, and could hear himself accepting the perfumed woman's offer of a 'one for the road' drink at a local bar. They left the theatre arm-in-arm, smiling at something. Rebus felt relaxed, a child again. This woman was treating him like her son, really, and he was happy enough to be coddled. A final drink, and then he'd go home. Just one drink.

Jim Stevens watched them leave the theatre. It was becoming very strange indeed. Rebus seemed to be ignoring his brother now, and he had a woman with him. What did it all mean? One thing it meant was that Gill should be told about it at some opportune moment. Stevens, smiling, added it to his collection of such moments. It had been a good night's work so far.

So where in the evening had mother-love changed into physical contact? In that pub, perhaps, where her reddened fingers had bitten into his thigh? Outside in the cooling air when he wrapped his arms around her neck in a fumbled attempt at a kiss? Or here in her musty flat, smelling still of her husband, where Rebus and she lie across an old settee and exchange tongues?

No matter. It's too late to regret anything, and too early. So he slouches after her when she retires to her bedroom. He tumbles into the huge double-bed, springy and covered in thick blankets and quilts. He watches her undress in darkness. The bed feels like one he had as a kid, when a hot-water-bottle was all he had to keep the chill off, and mounds of gritty blankets, puffed-out quilts. Heavy and suffocating, tiring in themselves.

No matter.

Rebus did not enjoy the particulars of her heavy body, and was forced to think of everything in the abstract. His hands on 84 I.

her well-suckled b.r.e.a.s.t.s reminded him of late nights with Rhona. Her calves were thick, unlike Gill's, and her face was worn with too much living. But she was a woman, and she was with him, so he squeezed her into an abstract and tried to make them both happy. But the heaviness of the bedding oppressed him, caging him, making him feel small and trapped and isolated from the world. He fought against it, fought against the memory of Gordon Reeve and he as they sat in solitary, listening to the screams of those around them, but enduring, always enduring, and reunited finally. Having won. Having lost. Lost everything. His heart was pounding to her grunts, now some distance away it seemed. He felt the first wave of that absolute repulsion hit him in the stomach like a truncheon, and his hands slid around the hanging, yielding throat beneath him. The moans were inhuman now, cat-like, keening. His hands pushed a little, the fingers finding their own purchase against skin and sheet. They locked him up and they threw away the key. They pushed him to his death and they poisoned him. He should not have been alive. He should have died back then, back in the rank, animal cells with their power-hoses and their constant questionings. But he had survived. He had survived. And he was coming.

He alone, all alone And the screaming Screaming Rebus became aware of the gurgling sounds beneath him just before his head started to fry. He fell over onto the gasping figure and lost consciousness. It was like a switch being flipped.

XVI.

He awoke in a white room. It reminded him very much of the hospital rQom in which he had awoken after his nervous breakdown all those years ago. There were m.u.f.fled noises from outside. He sat up, his head throbbing. What had happened? Christ, that woman, that poor woman. He had tried to kill her! Drunk, way too drunk. Merciful G.o.d, he had tried to strangle her, hadn't he? Why in G.o.d's name had he done that? Why?

A doctor pushed open his door.

85 'Ah, Mister Rebus. Good, you're awake. We're about to move you into one of the wards. How do you feel?'

His pulse was taken.

'Simple exhaustion, we think. Simple nervous exhaustion. Your friend who called for the ambulance-'

'My friend?'

'Yes, she said that you just collapsed. And from what we can gather from your employers, you've been working pretty hard on this dreadful murder hunt. Simple exhaustion. What you need is a break.'

'Where's my . . . my friend?'

'No idea. At home, I expect.'

'And according to her, I just collapsed?'

'That's right.'

Rebus felt immediate relief flooding through him. She had not told them. She had not told them. Then his head began to pulse again. The doctor's wrists were hairy and scrubbed clean. He slipped a thermometer into Rebus's mouth, smiling. Did he know what Rebus had been doing prior to the blackout? Or had his friend dressed him before calling the ambulance? He had to contact the woman. He didn't know where she stayed, not exactly, but the ambulancemen would know, and he could check.

Exhaustion. Rebus did not feel exhausted. He was beginning to feel rested and, though slightly unnerved, quite unworried about life. Had they given him anything while he was asleep?

'Can I see a newspaper?' he muttered past the thermometer.

'I'll get an orderly to fetch you one. Is there anyone you wish us to contact? Any clo~e relative or friend?'

Rebus thought of Michael.

'No,' he said, 'there's n.o.body to contact. All I want is a newspaper.'

'Fair enough.' The thermometer was removed, the details noted.

'How long do you want to keep me in here?'

'Two or three days. I may want you to see an a.n.a.lyst.'

'Forget the a.n.a.lyst. I'll need some books to read.'

'We'll see what we can do.'

Rebus settled back then, having decided to let things take their course. He would lie here, resting though he needed no 86 rest, and would let the rest of them worry about the murder case. Sod them all. Sod Anderson. Sod Wallace. Sod Gill Templer.

But then he remembered his hands slipping around that ageing throat, and he shivered. It was as though his mind were not his own. Had he been about to kill that woman? Should he see the a.n.a.lyst after all? The questions made his headache worse. He tried not to think about anything at all, but three figures kept coming back to him: his old friend Gordon Reeve, his new rover Gill Templer, and the woman he had betrayed her for, and nearly strangled. They danced in his head until the dance became blurred. Then he fell asleep.

'John!'

She walked quickly to his bed, fruit and vitamin-drink in her hands. She had make-up on her face, and was wearing strictly off-duty clothes. She pecked his cheek, and he could smell her French perfume. He could also see down the front of her silk blouse. He felt a little guilty.

'h.e.l.lo, D.I. Templer,' he said. 'Here,' lifting one edge of the bedcover, 'get in.'

She laughed, dragging across a stern-looking chair. Other visitors were entering the ward, their smiles and quiet voices redolent of illness, an illness Rebus did not feel.

'How are you, John?'

'Terrible. What have you brought me?'

'Grapes, bananas, diluting orange. Nothing very imaginative, I'm afraid.'

Rebus picked a grape from the bunch and popped it into his mouth, setting aside the trashy novel in which he had been painfully involved.

'I don't know, Inspector, the things I have to do to get a date with you.' Rebus shook his head wearily. Gill was smiling, but nervously..

'We were worried about you, John. What happened?'

'I fainted. In the home of a friend, by all accounts. It's nothing very serious. I have a few weeks to live.'

Gill's smile was warm.

'They say it's overwork.' Then she paused. 'What's all this "Inspector" stuff?'

87 Rebus shrugged, then looked sulky. His guilt was mixing with the remembrance of that snub he had been given, that snub which had started the whole ball rolling. He turned into a patient again, weakly slumping against his pillow.

'I'm a very ill man, Gill. Too ill to answer questions.

'Well, in that case I won't bother to slip you the cigarettes sent by Jack Morton.'

Rebus sat up again.

'Bless that man. Where are they?'

She brought two packs from her jacket pocket and slipped them beneath the beddothes. He gripped her hand.

'I missed you, Gill.' She smiled, and did not withdraw the hand.

Limitless visiting-time being a prerogative of the police, Gill stayed for two hours, talking about her past, asking hirn~ about his own. She had been born on an air-force base in Wiltshire, just after the war. She told Rebus that her father had been an engineer in the RAF.

'My dad,' Rebus said, 'was in the Army during the war. I was conceived while he was on one of his last leaves. He was a stage hypnotist by profession.' People usually raised an eyebrow at that, but not Gill Templer. 'He used to work the music-halls and theatres, doing summer stints in Blackpool and Ayr and places like that, so we were always sure of a summer holiday away from Fife.' - She sat with her head c.o.c.ked to one side, content to be told stories. The ward was quiet once the other visitors had obeyed the leaving-bell. A nurse pushed around a trolley with a huge, battered pot of tea on it. Gill was given a cup, the nurse smiling at her in sisterhood.

'She's a nice kid, that nurse,' said Rebus, relaxed. He had been given two pills, one blue and one brown, and they were making him drowsy. 'She reminds me of a girl I knew when I was in the Paras.'

'How long were you in the Paras, John?'

'Six years. No, eight years it was.

'What made you leave?'

What made him leave? Rhona had asked him the same question over and over, her curiosity piqued by the feeling that he had something to hide, some monstrous skeleton in his closet.

88 'I don't know really. It's hard to remember that far back. I was picked for special training and I didn't like it.'

And this was the truth. He had no use for memories of his training, the reek of fear and mistrust, the screaming, that screaming in his memory. Let me out. The echo of solitary.

'Well,' said Gill, 'if my niemory serves me right, I've got a case waiting for me back at base-camp.'

'That reminds me,' he said, 'I think I saw your friend last night. The reporter. Stevens, wasn't it? He was in a pub the same jime I was. Strange.'

'Not so very strange. That's his kind of hunting-ground. Funny, he's a bit like you in some ways. Not as s.e.xy though.' She smiled and pecked his cheek again, rising from the metal chair. 'I'll try to drop in again before they let you out, but you know what it's like. I can't make any concrete promises, D.S. Rebus.'

Standing, she seemed taller than Rebus had imagined her. Her hair fell forward onto his face for another kiss, full on the lips this time, and he staring at the dark deft between her b.r.e.a.s.t.s. He felt a little tired, so tired. He forced his eyes to remain open while she walked away, her heels clacking on the tiled floor while the nurses floated past like ghosts on their rubber-soled shoes. He pushed himself up so that he could watch her legs retreat. She had nice legs. He had remembered that much. He remembered them gripping his sides, the feet resting on his b.u.t.tocks. He remembered her hair falling across the pillow like a Turner seascape. He remembered her voice hissing in his ears, that hissing. Oh yes, John, oh, John, yes, yes, yes.

Why did you leave the army?

As she turned over, turning into the woman with the choking cries of his climax.

Why did you?

Oh, oh, oh, oh.

Oh yes, the safety of dreams.

89 XVII.

The editors loved what the Edinburgh Strangler was doing for the circulations of their newspapers. They loved the way his story grew almost organically, as though carefully nurtured. The modus operandi had altered ever so slightly for the killing of Nicola Turner. The Strangler had, it seemed, tied a knot in the cord prior to strangulation. This knot had pressed heavily on the girl's throat, bruising it. The police did not consider this of much significance. They were too busy checking through the records of blue Ford Escorts to be busy with a slight detail of technique. They were out there checking every blue Escort in the area, questioning every owner, every driver.

Gill Templer had released details of the car to the press, hoping for a huge public response. It came: neighb6urs reported their neighbours, fathers their sons, wives their husbands, and husbands their wives. There were over two- hundred blue Escorts to investigate, and if nothing came of that, they would be re-investigated; before moving on to other colours of Ford Escort, other makes of light-blue saloon car. It might take months; certainly it would take weeks.

Jack Morton, another xeroxed list folded in his hand, had consulted his doctor about swollen feet. The doctor had told him that he walked too much in cheap, unsupportive shoes. This Morton already knew. He had now interviewed so many suspects that it was all becoming a blur to him. They all looked the same and acted the same: nervous, deferential, innocent. If only the Strangler would make a mistake. There were no clues worth going on. Morton suspected the car to be a false trail. No clues worth going on. He remembered John Rebus's anonymous letters. There are clues eveiywhere. Could that be true of this case? Could the clues be too big to notice, or too abstract? Certainly it was a rare-an extraordinarily rare-murder case that did not have some b.u.mper, extravagant clue lying about somewhere just waiting to be picked up. He was d.a.m.ned if he knew where this one was though, and that was why he had visited his doctor-hoping for some sympathy and a few days off. Rebus had landed on his feet again, lucky sod. Morton envied him his illness.

He parked his car on a double-yellow line outside the library 90 and sauntered in. The great front hall reminded him of the days when he had used this library himself, clutching picture-books borrowed from the children's section. It used to be situated downstairs. He wondered if it still was. His mother would give him the bus-fare, and he wQuld come into town, ostensibly to change his library books, but really so that he could wander the streets for an hour or two, savouring the taste of what it would be like to be grown up and free. He would trail American taking note of their swaggering self-confidence and their bulging wallets and waistbands. He would watch them as they photographed Greyfriar's Bobby's statue across from the kirkyard. He had stared long and hard at the statue of the small dog, and had felt nothing. He had read of Covenanters, of Deacon Brodie, of public executions on the High Street, wondering what kind of city this was, and what kind of country. He shook his head now, past caring about fantasies, and went to the information desk.

'h.e.l.lo, Mister Morton.'

He turned to find a girl, more a young lady really, standing before him, a book clasped to her small chest. He frowned.

'It's me, Samantha Rebus.'

His eyes went wide.

'Goodness, soit is. Well, well. You've certainly grown since I last saw you. Mind you, that must have been a year or two back. How are you?'

'I'm fine, thanks. I'm here with my mother. Are you here on police business?'

'Something like that~ yes.' Morton could feel her eyes burning into him. G.o.d, she had her father's eyes all right. He had left his mark.

'How's dad keeping?'

To tell or not to tell. Why not tell her? Then again, was it his place to tell her?

'He's fine, so far as I know,' he said, knowing this to be seventy-per-cent truth.

'I'm just going down to the teenagers' section. Mum's in the Reference Room. It's dead boring in there.'

'I'll go with you. That's just where I was headed.'

She smiled at him, pleased about something that was going on in her adolescent head, and Jack Morton had the thought 9' that she wasn't at all like her father. She was far too nice and polite.

A fourth girl was missing. The outcome seemed a foregone conclusion. No bookie would have given odds.

'We need special vigilance,' stressed Anderson. 'More officers are being drafted in tonight. Remember,' the officers present looked hollow-eyed and demoralized, 'if and when he kills this victim, he will attempt to dispose of the body, and if we can spot him doing that, or if any member of the public can spot him doing that, just once, then we've got him.' Anderson slapped a fist into his open hand. n.o.body seemed very cheered. So far the Strangler had dumped three corpses, quite success- fully, in different areas of the city: Oxgangs, Hayrnarket, Colinton. The police could not be everywhere (though these days it seemed to the public that they were), no matter how hard they tried.

'Again,' continued the Chief Inspector, consulting a file, 'the recent abduction seems to have little enough in common with the others. The victim's name is Helen Abbot. Eight years of age, a bit younger than the others you'll notice, light-brown shoulder-length hair. Last seen with her mother in a Princes Street store. The mother says that the girl simply disappeared. One minute there, the next minute gone, as was the case with the second victim.'

Gill Templer, thinking this over later, found it curious. The girls could not themselves have been abducted actually in the shops. That would have been impossible without screams, without witnesses. One member of the public had come for- ward to say that a girl resembling Mary Andrews-the second victim-had been seen by him climbing the steps from the National Gallery up towards The Mound. She had been alone, and had seemed happy enough. In which case, Gill mused, the girl had sneaked away from her mother. But why? For some secret rendezvous with someone she had known, someone who had turned out to be her killer? In that case, it seemed likely that all the girls had known their murderer, so they had to have something in common. Different schools, different friends, different ages. What was the common denominator?.