`I mean, how can you play a game when there's bits missing? Know what I mean, pal? Like, where's Colonel Mustard? An' the board's nearly torn in half, by the way. How much d'ye want for it?'
The argumentative punk was tall and immensely thin, his size and shape accentuated by the black he wore from tip to toe. 'Twa ply o' reek,' Rebus's father would have called him. Was the Wolfman fat or thin? tall or short? young or old? did he have a job? a wife? a husband even? Did someone close to him know the truth, and were they keeping quiet? When would he strike next? And where? Lisa had been unable to answer any of these questions. Maybe Flight was right about psychology. So much of it was guesswork, like a game where some of the pieces are missing and nobody knows the rules. Sometimes you ended up playing a game completely different to the original, 'a game of your own devising.
That was what Rebus needed: a new set of rules in his game against the Wolfman. Rules which would be to his benefit. The newspaper stories were the start of it, but only if the Wolfman made the next move.
Maybe Cafferty would get off this time, but there'd always be another. The board was always prepared for a fresh start.
Rebus gave his evidence and was out of the court by four. He handed the file on the case back to his driver, a balding middle-aged detective sergeant, and settled into the passen?ger seat.
`Let me know what happens,' he said. The driver nodded.
`Straight back to the airport, Inspector?' Funny how a Glaswegian accent could be made to sound so sarcastic. The sergeant had managed somehow to make Rebus feel his inferior. Then again, there was little love lost between east and west coasts. There might have been a wall dividing the two, such was their own abiding cold war. The driver was repeating his question, a little louder now.
`That's right,' said Rebus, just as loudly. `It's a jet-setting life in the Lothian and Borders Police.'
His head was fairly thrumming by the time he got back to the hotel in Piccadilly. He needed a quiet night, a night alone. He hadn't managed to contact Flight or Lisa, but they could wait until tomorrow. For now, he wanted nothing.
Nothing but silence and stillness, lying on the, bed and staring at the ceiling, his mind nowhere.
It had been one hell of a week, and the week was only halfway through. He took two paracetamol from the bottle he had brought and washed them down with half a glass of tepid tap-water. The water tasted foul. Was it true that London, water had passed through seven sets of kidneys before reaching the drinker? It had an oily quality in his mouth, not the sharp clear taste of the water in Edinburgh. Seven sets of kidneys. He looked at his cases, thinking of the amount of stuff he had brought with him, useless stuff, stuff he would never use. Even the bottle of malt sat more or less untouched.
There was a telephone ringing somewhere. His tele?phone, but he managed to ignore the fact for fully fifteen seconds. He growled and clawed at the wall with his hand, finally finding the receiver and dragging it to his ear. `This had better be good.'
`Where the fuck have you been?' It was Flight's voice, anxious and angry.
`Good evening to you too, George.'
`There's been another killing.'
Rebus sat up and swung his legs off the bed. `When?'
`The body was discovered an hour ago. There's something else.' He paused. `We caught the killer.'
Now Rebus stood up.
`What?'
`We caught him as he was running off.'
Rebus's knees almost failed him, but he locked them. His voice was unnaturally quiet. `Is it him?'
`Could be.'
`Where are you?'
`I'm at HQ We've brought him here. The murder took place in a house off Brick Lane. Not too far from Wolf Street.'
`In a house?' That was a surprise. The other murders had all taken place out of doors. But then, as Lisa had said, the pattern kept changing.'
`Yes,' said Flight. `And that's not all. The killer was found with money on him stolen from the house, and some jewellery and a camera.'
Another break in the pattern. Rebus sat down on the bed again. `I see what you're getting at,' he said. `But the method— ?’
'Similar, to be sure. Philip Cousins is on his way. He was at a dinner somewhere.'
`I'm going to the scene, George. I'll come to see you, afterwards.'
`Fine.' Flight sounded as though he had hoped for this. Rebus was scrabbling for paper and a pen.
`What's the address?'
`110 Copperplate Street.'
Rebus wrote the address on the back of his travel ticket from the trip to Glasgow.
`John?'
`Yes, George?'
`Don't go off again without telling me, okay?'
`Yes, George.' Rebus paused. `Can I go now?'
`Go on then, bugger off. I'll see you here later.'
Rebus put down the telephone and felt an immense weariness take control of him, weighting his legs and arms and head. He took several deep breaths and rose to his feet, then walked to the sink and splashed water on his face, rubbing a wet hand around his neck and throat. He looked up, hardly recognising himself in the wall-mounted mirror, sighed and spread his hands either side of his face, the way he'd seen Roy Scheider do once in a film.
`It's showtime.'
Rebus's taxi driver was full of tales of the Krays, Richardson and Jack the Ripper. With Brick Lane their destination, he was especially vociferous on the subject of `Old Jack'.
`Done his first prossie on Brick Lane. Richardson, though, he was evil. Used to torture people in a scrapyard. You knew when he was electrocuting some poor bastard, 'cos the bulb across the scrap yard gates kept flickering.' Then a low chuckle. A sideways flick of the head. 'Krays used to drink in that pub on the corner. My youngest used to drink in there. Got in some terrible punch-ups, so I banned him from going. He works in the City, courier sort of stuff, you know, motorbikes.'
Rebus, who had been slouching in the, back seat, now gripped the headrest on the front passenger seat and yanked himself forward. `Motorbike messenger?'
`Yeah, makes a bleeding packet. Twice What I take home a week, I'll tell you that. He's just bought himself a flat down in Docklands. Only they call them “riverside apartments” these days. That's a laugh. I know some of the guys who built them.' Every bloody shortcut in the book. Hammering in screws instead of screwing them. Plaster?board so thin you can almost see your neighbours, never mind hear them.'
`A friend of my daughter works as a courier in the City.'
`Yeah? Maybe. I know him What's his name?'
`Kenny '
`Kenny?' He shook his head. Rebus stared at where the silvery hairs on the driver's neck disappeared into his shirt collar. `Nah, I don't know a Kenny, Kev, yes, and a couple of Chrisses, but not Kenny.'
Rebus sat back again. It struck him that he didn't know, what Kenny's surname was. `Are we nearly there?' he asked.
`Two minutes, guv. There's a lovely shortcut coming up should save us some time. Takes us right past where Richardson used to hang out.'
A crowd of reporters had gathered outside in the narrow street. Housefront, pavement, then road, where the crowd stood, held back by, uniformed constables. Did nobody in London possess such a thing as a front garden? Rebus had yet to see a house with .a garden, apart from the millionaire blocks in Kensington.
`John!' A female, voice, escaping from the scrum of newsmen. She pushed her way towards him. He signalled for the line of uniforms to break momentarily, so as to let her through.
`What are you doing here?'
Lisa looked a little shaken. `Heard a newsflash,' she gasped. `Thought I'd come over.'
`I'm not sure that's such a good idea, Lisa.' Rebus was thinking of Jean Cooper's body. If this were similar . . .
`Any comment to make?' yelled one of the newsmen. Rebus was aware of flashguns, of the bright homing lamps attached to video cameras. Other reporters were shouting now, desperate for a story that would reach the first editions.