'Excuse me.' The voice was muffled, and Flight half-turned to let the diver past him. This diver was followed by another, both of them holding powerful torches. Flight did not envy the police frogmen their job. The river was dark and poisonous, chilled and most probably the consistency of soup. But it had to be searched now. If the killer had dropped something into the Lea by mistake, or had thrown his knife into the river, it had to be recovered as soon as possible. Silt or shifting rubbish might cover it before daybreak. Simply, they couldn't afford the time. And so he had ordered a search just after hearing the news, before he had even left his warm and comfortable home to hurry to the, scene. His wife had patted him on the arm. 'Try not to be late.' Both knew the words were meaningless.
He watched the first frogman slip into the water and stared entranced as the water began to glow from the torchlight. The second diver followed the first into the water and disappeared from view. Flight checked the sky. A thick layer of cloud lay still and silent above him. The weather report was for early morning rain. It would dissolve footprints and wash fibres, bloodstains and hair into the hard-packed soil of the path. With any luck, they would complete the initial scene of crime work without the need for plastic tents.
'George!'
Flight turned to greet the newcomer. The man was in his mid-fifties, tall with cadaverous features lit up by a wide grin, or as wide as the long and narrow, face would allow. He carried a large black bag in his left hand, and stretched out his right for Flight to shake. By his side walked a handsome woman of Flight's own age. In fact, as far as he could recall she was exactly, one month and a day younger than him. Her name was Isobel Penny, and she was, in a euphemistic phrase, the cadaverous man's 'assistant' and 'secretary'. That they had been sleeping together these past eight or nine years was something nobody really discussed, though Isobel had told Flight all about it, for no other reason than that they had been in the same class together at school and had kept in touch with one another ever since.
'Hello, Philip,' said Flight, shaking the pathologist's hand.
Philip Cousins was not just a Home Office pathologist: he was by far the best Home Office pathologist, with, a reputation resulting from twenty-five years worth of work, twenty-five years during which, to Flight's knowledge, the man had never once 'got it wrong'. Cousins's eye for retail and his sheer bloody doggedness had seen him crack, or help crack, several dozen murder investigations, ranging from stranglings in Streatham to the poisoning of a government official in the West Indies. People who did not know him said that he looked the part, with his dark blue suits and cold; grey features.: They could not know about his quick and ready humour, his kindness, or the way he thrilled student doctors at his packed lectures. Flight had attended one of those lectures, something to do with arterial sclerosis and hadn't laughed so much in years.
'I thought you two were in Africa,' he said now, pecking Isobel on the cheek by way of greeting.
Cousins sighed. 'We were, but Penny got homesick.' He always called her by her surname. 'She gave him a playful thump on his forearm.
'You liar!' Then she turned her pale blue eyes to Flight. 'It was Philip,' she said. 'He couldn't bear to be away from his corpses. The first decent holiday we've had in years and he says he's bored. Can you believe that, George?'
Flight smiled and shook his head. 'Well, I'm glad you were able to make it. Looks like another victim of the Wolfman.'
Cousins looked over Flight's shoulder towards where the photographers were still photographing, the crouched scientists still sticky-taping, like so many flies about to settle on the corpse. He had examined the first three Wolfman victims, and that sort of continuity helped in a case. It wasn't just that he would know what to look for, what marks were indicative of the Wolfman; he would also spot anything not in keeping with the other killings, anything that might hint at a change of modus operandi: a different weapon, say, or a new angle of attack. Flight's mental picture of the Wolfman was coming together piece by tiny piece, but Cousins was the man who could show him here those pieces fitted.
'Inspector Flight?'
'Yes?' A man in a tweed jacket was approaching, carrying several cases and trailing a uniformed constable behind' him. He placed the bags on the ground and introduced himself.
'John Rebus.' Flight's face remained blank. 'Inspector John Rebus.' The hand shot out, and Flight accepted it, feeling his grip strongly returned.
'Ah yes,' he said. 'Just arrived, have you?' He glanced meaningfully towards the bags. 'We weren't expecting you until tomorrow, Inspector.!
'Well, I got into King's Cross and heard about' Rebus nodded towards the illuminated towpath. 'So I thought I'd come straight over.'
Flight nodded, trying to appear preoccupied. In fact, he was playing for time while he tried to come to grips with the Scotsman's thick accent. One of the forensic scientists had risen from his squatting position and was coming towards the group.
'Hello, Dr Cousins,' he said, before turning to Flight.
'We're pretty much finished if Dr Cousins wants to take a look.' Flight turned to Philip Cousins, who nodded gravely. 'Come on, 'Penny.'
Flight was about to follow them, when he remembered the new arrival. He turned back to John Rebus, his eyes immediately drifting down from Rebus's face to his loud and rustic jacket. He looked like something out of DrFinlay's Casebook. Certainly, he looked out of place on this urban towpath at the dead of night.
'Do you want to take a look?' Flight asked generously. He watched as Rebus nodded without enthusiasm. 'Okay, leave your bags where they are then.'
The two men started forward together, Cousins and Isobel a couple of yards in front. Flight pointed towards them. 'Dr Philip Cousins,' he said. 'You've probably heard of him.' But Rebus shook his head slowly. Flight stared, at him as though Rebus had just failed to pick out the Queen from a row of postage stamps. 'Oh,' he said coldly. Then, pointing again: 'And that's Isobel Penny, Dr Cousins's assistant.'
Hearing her name, Isobel turned her head back and smiled. She had an attractive face, round and girl-like with a shiny glow to her cheeks. Physically, she was the antithesis of her companion. Though tall, she was well-built — what Rebus's father might have called big boned and she boasted a healthy complexion to balance Cousins's sickly colour. Rebus couldn't recall ever having seen a really healthy looking pathologist. He put it down to all the time they spent standing under artificial light.
They had reached the body. The first thing Rebus saw was someone aiming a video camera towards him. But the camera moved away again to focus on the corpse. Flight was in conversation with one of the forensics team. Neither looked at the other's face, but concentrated instead on the strips of tape which had been carefully lifted from the corpse and which the scientist now held.
'Yes,' said Flight, 'no need to send them to the lab yet. We'll do another taping at the mortuary.' The man nodded and moved away. There was a noise from: the river and Rebus turned to watch as a frogman broke the surface, looked around him, and then dived again. He knew a place like this in Edinburgh, a canal running through the west of the city, between parks and breweries and stretches of nothingness. He'd had to investigate a murder there once, the battered body of a tramp found beneath a road bridge, one foot in the canal. The killer had been easy to find: another tramp, an argument over a can of cider. The court had settled; for manslaughter, but it hadn't been manslaughter. It had been murder. Rebus would never forget that.