‘If you want info on Uncle Joe,’ he was told during the second call, ‘best talk to Chick Ancram. Wait, I’ll give you his number.’
Charles Ancram, it turned out, was a Chief Inspector based in Govan. Rebus spent a fruitless half hour trying to find him, then went for a walk. The shops in front of Fort Apache were the usual metal shutters and mesh grille affairs, Asian owners mostly, even if the shops were staffed with white faces. Men hung around on the street outside, T-shirted, sporting tattoos, smoking. Eyes as trustworthy as a weasel in a hen-house.
Eggs? Not me, pal, can’t stand them.
Rebus bought cigarettes and a newspaper. Walking out of the shop, a baby buggy caught his ankles, a woman told him to mind where he was fucking going. She bustled away, hauling a toddler behind her. Twenty, maybe twenty-one, hair dyed blonde, two front teeth missing. Her bared forearms showed tattoos, too. Across the road, an advertising hoarding told him to spend £20k on a new car. Behind it, the discount supermarket was doing no business, kids using its car park as a skateboard rink.
Back in the Shed, Maclay was on the telephone. He held the receiver out to Rebus.
‘Chief Inspector Ancram, returning your call.’ Rebus rested against the desk.
‘Hello?’
‘Inspector Rebus? Ancram here, I believe you want a word.’
‘Thanks for getting back to me, sir. Two words really: Joseph Toal.’
Ancram snorted. He had a west coast drawl, nasal, always managing to sound a little condescending. ‘Uncle Joe Corleone? Our own dear Godfather? Has he done something I don’t know about?’
‘Do you know one of his men, a guy called Anthony Kane?’
‘Tony El,’ Ancram confirmed. ‘Worked for Uncle Joe for years.’
‘Past tense?’
‘He hasn’t been heard of in a while. Story is he crossed Uncle Joe, and Uncle Joe got Stanley to see to things. Tony El was all cut up about it.’
‘Who’s Stanley?’
‘Uncle Joe’s son. It’s not his real name, but everyone calls him Stanley, on account of his hobby.’
‘Which is?’
‘Stanley knives, he collects them.’
‘You think Stanley topped Tony El?’
‘Well, the body hasn’t turned up, which is usually proof enough in a perverse way.’
‘Tony El’s very much alive. He was through here a few days ago.’
‘I see.’ Ancram was quiet for a moment. In the background Rebus could hear busy voices, radio transmissions, police station sounds. ‘Bag over the head?’
‘How did you know?’
‘Tony El’s trademark. So he’s back in circulation, eh? Inspector, I think you and me better have a talk. Monday morning, can you find Govan station? No, wait, make it Partick, 613 Dumbarton Road. I’ve a meeting there at nine. Can we say ten?’
‘Ten’s fine.’
‘See you then.’
Rebus put down the telephone. ‘Monday morning at ten,’ he told Bain. ‘I’m off to Partick.’
‘You poor bastard,’ Bain replied, sounding like he meant it.
‘Want us to put out Tony El’s description?’ Maclay asked.
‘Pronto. Let’s see if we can lassoo him before Monday.’
Bible John flew back into Scotland on a fine Friday morning. The first thing he did at the airport was pick up some newspapers. In the kiosk, he saw that a new book had been published on World War Two, so bought that too. Sitting in the concourse, he flicked through the newspapers, finding no new stories concerning the Upstart. He left the papers on his seat and went to the carousel, where his luggage was waiting.
A taxi took him into Glasgow. He had already decided not to stay in the city. It wasn’t that he had anything to fear from his old hunting-ground, but that a stay there would bring little profit. Of necessity, Glasgow brought back bittersweet memories. In the late sixties, it had been reinventing itself: knocking down old slums, building their concrete equivalents on the outskirts. New roads, bridges, motorways — the place had been an enormous building site. He got the feeling the process was still ongoing, as if the city still hadn’t acquired an identity it could be comfortable with.
A problem Bible John knew something about.
From Queen Street station, he took a train to Edinburgh, and used his cellphone to reserve a room at his usual hotel, placing it on his corporate account. He called his wife to tell her where he’d be. He had his laptop with him, and did some work on the train. Work soothed him; a busy brain was best. Go therefore now, and work; for there shall no straw be given you, yet shall ye deliver the tale of bricks. The Book of Exodus. The media back then had done him a favour, and so had the police. They’d issued a description saying his first name was John and he was ‘fond of quoting from the Bible’. Neither was particularly true: his middle name was John, and he had only occasionally quoted aloud from the good book. In recent years, he’d started attending church again, but now regretted it, regretted thinking he was safe.
There was no safety in this world, just as there would be none in the next.
He left the train at Haymarket — in summer it was easier to catch a taxi there — but when he stepped out into sunshine, he decided to walk to the hoteclass="underline" it was only five or ten minutes away. His case had wheels, and his shoulder-bag was not particularly heavy. He breathed deeply: traffic fumes and a hint of brewery hops. Tired of squinting, he paused to put on sunglasses, and immediately liked the world better. Catching his reflection in a shop window he saw just another businessman tired of travelling. There was nothing memorable about either face or figure, and the clothes were always conservative: a suit from Austin Reed, shirt by Double 2. A well-dressed and successful businessman. He checked the knot of his tie, and ran his tongue over the only two false teeth in his head — necessary surgery from a quarter-century before. Like everyone else, he crossed the road at the lights.
Check-in at his hotel took a matter of moments. He sat at the room’s small circular table and opened his laptop, plugging it into the mains, changing the adaptor from 110v to 240. He used his password, then double-clicked on the file marked UPSTART. Inside were his notes on Johnny Bible so-called, his own psychological profile of the killer. It was building nicely.
Bible John reflected that he had something the authorities didn’t have: inside knowledge of how a serial killer worked, thought and lived, the lies he had to tell, the guile and disguises, the secret life behind the everyday face. It put him ahead in the game. With any luck, he’d get to Johnny Bible before the police did.
He had avenues to follow. One: from his working habits, it was clear the Upstart had prior knowledge of the Bible John case. How did he gain this knowledge? The Upstart was in his twenties, too young to remember Bible John. Therefore he’d heard about it somewhere, or read about it, and then had gone on to research it in some detail. There were books — some of them recent, some not — about the Bible John killings or with chapters on them. If Johnny Bible were being meticulous, he would have consulted all the available literature, but with some of the material long out of print he must have been searching secondhand bookshops, or else must have used libraries. The search was narrowing nicely.
Another connected avenue: newspapers. Again, it was unlikely the Upstart had open access to papers from a quarter century ago. That meant libraries again, and very few libraries held newspapers for that length of time. Search narrowing nicely.
Then there was the Upstart himself. Many predators made errors early on, mistakes executed due to a lack either of proper planning or of simple nerve. Bible John himself was unusuaclass="underline" his real mistake had come with victim three, with sharing a taxi with her sister. Were there victims around who had escaped the Upstart? That meant looking through recent newspapers, seeking out attacks on women in Aberdeen, Glasgow, Edinburgh, tracking down the killer’s false starts and early failures. It would be time-consuming work. But therapeutic, too.