My father left the enclosed envelope with instructions that it should be sent on to you. I’m just back from Lanzarote, having had to arrange not only the funeral but the sale of my parents’ house and the sorting out and removal of all their things. As you may remember, Dad was a bit of a magpie. Apologies for the slight delay in sending this on, which I trust you will understand. Hoping all is well with you and your family.
She’d signed it Aileen Jarrold (née Geddes).
‘What is it?’ Jack asked as Rebus tore open the second envelope. He read the first couple of lines, then looked up at Jack.
‘It’s a very long suicide note,’ he said. ‘From Lawson Geddes.’
Jack sat down and they read it together.
John, I’m sitting here writing this in the full and certain knowledge that I’m about to top myself: we always called it the coward’s way out, remember? I’m not so sure about that now, but I get the feeling I’m maybe being more selfish than cowardly exactly, selfish because I know the telly are looking at Spaven again — they’ve even sent a team to the island. This isn’t about Spaven, it’s about Etta. I miss her, and I want to be with her, even if all the afterlife consists of is my bones lying next to hers somewhere.
As Rebus read, the years melted away again. He could hear Lawson’s voice, and see him swaggering into the station, or marching into a pub like he was the landlord, a word for everybody whether he knew them or not... Jack got up for a minute and returned with two mugs of coffee. They read on.
With Spaven dead and me out of the way, there’ll only be you left for the telly people to hassle. I don’t like to think of that — I know you’d nothing to do with any of it. So here’s this letter, after all these years, and maybe it’ll explain things. Shorn it to whoever you need to. They say dying men tell no lies, and maybe they’ll accept that the following is the truth as I know it.
I knew Lenny Spaven back in the Scots Guards. He was always getting into trouble, finding himself consigned to jankers or even on occasion the glass-house. He was a skiver, too, and that’s how he came to be involved with the minister. Spaven used to attend the Sunday church service (I say ‘church’ — in Borneo it was a tent, back home it was a Nissen hut). But I suppose a lot of places can be churches in the sight of God. Maybe I’ll ask him when I see him. It’s ninety-odd degrees outside, and I’m drinking firewater — the old usquebaugh. It tastes better than ever.
Rebus caught the sudden tang of whisky at the back of his mouth: memory playing tricks. Lawson used to drink Cutty Sark.
Spaven helped the minister out, laying hymnaries on the chairs, then counting them back in at the end. You know yourself there are some buggers in the army would steal a hymnary as soon as anything else. There weren’t many regular attenders. If things got hairy, a few more souls would turn up, praying it wouldn’t be them being nailed into a box at the end of play. Well, like I say, Spaven had it cushy. I didn‘t have much to do with him, or with any of the church types.
The thing is, John, there was a murder — a prostitute near our camp. A native girl from the kampong. The villagers blamed it on us, and even the Gurkhas knew it was probably a British soldier. There was an investigation — civil and military. Funny really, I mean, there we were going hell for leather killing people — it was what we got paid for — and there they were looking into a single murder. Anyway, they never found anyone for it. Thing is though, that prozzy was strangled, and one of her sandals was never recovered.
Rebus turned a page.
Well, all that was behind me. I was a bobby, back in Scotland and happy with my lot. Then I got roped into the Bible John case. You’ve got to remember, we didn’t know him as ‘Bible John’ until very late on. It was after the third victim that we got the description of him quoting from the Bible. That’s when the papers came up with the name. Well, when I thought about someone quoting from the Bible, a strangler and rapist, I remembered Borneo. I went to my boss and told him all about it. He said it was a long shot of Olympic standards, but that I could chase it up in my own time if I liked. You know me, John, never one to resist a challenge. Besides, I had a shortcut planned — Lenny Spaven. I knew he was back in Scotland, and he’d have info on all the church-goers. So I got in touch with him, but he’d gone from bad to rotten, didn’t want anything to do with it. I’m the persistent type, and he complained about me to my boss. That got me a warning to ease off, but I wasn’t about to ease off. I knew what I wanted: I reckoned Lenny might have photos from his days in Borneo, maybe with him and the rest of the flock. I wanted to show them to the woman who’d shared the taxi with Bible John. I wanted to see if she recognised anyone. But bloody Spaven kept standing in my way. Eventually, I did manage to get some photos — going the long way round, talking to the army first, then tracking down the minister from the time. It took weeks.
Rebus looked at Jack. ‘The photos Ancram showed us.’ Jack nodded.
We showed the photos to the eye-witness. Mind, they were eight or nine years out of date, and not very good to start with, water damaged some of them. She said she couldn’t be sure, she thought one of them ‘was like him’ — her words. But as my boss said, there were hundreds of men out there in the big wide world who bore a physical resemblance to the killer: we’d interviewed most of them. That wasn’t good enough for me. I got the man’s name, he was called Ray Sloane — an unusual enough name, and it wasn’t hard to track him down. Only he’d cleared out. He’d been living in a bedsit in Ayr, working as a toolmaker. But he’d recently given notice and moved on, nobody knew where. I was convinced in my mind that he could be the man we were looking for, but I couldn’t convince my boss to go all-out on finding him.
See, John, that delay while I was dealing with the army, it was all down to Spaven. If he’d helped, I’d have been on to Sloane before he’d had a chance to pack up and ship out. I know it, I can feel it. I might have had him. Instead of which, I had nothing but my anger and frustration, both of which I vented too publicly. The boss kicked me off the inquiry, and that was that.
‘Your coffee’s getting cold,’ Jack said. Rebus took a gulp, turned another page.
Or at least it was until Spaven came back into my life, moving to Edinburgh much the same time I did. It was like he was haunting me, and I couldn’t forgive him for what he’d done. If anything, as time passed I grew to despise him even more. That’s why I wanted him for the Elsie Rhind killing. I admit it, to you and to anyone else reading this, I wanted him so badly it was like a hard ball in my stomach, something only surgery would remove. When I was told to ease off on him, I didn’t. When I was told to steer clear, I steered closer. I followed him — on my own time — I tracked him every day and every night. I went without sleep for the best part of three days. But it was worth it when I saw him make for that lock-up, somewhere we didn’t know about. I was elated, ecstatic. I didn’t know what we’d find inside, but I had the feeling we’d find something. That’s why I came rushing over to your house, why I dragged you back there with me. You asked me about a search warrant, and I told you not to be so stupid. I put a lot of pressure on you, using our long friendship as blackmail — I was feverish, I’d have done anything, and that surely included breaking rules I now saw as being there to punish the police and protect the villains. So in we went, and found the heaps of boxes, all that knock-off from the factory job in Queensferry. Plus the bag. Elsie Rhind’s, as it turned out. I nearly dropped to my knees to thank God for finding it.