`Yes,' he said, still muzzy. `What is it?'
A sympathetic smile. They weren't all like Lamb, he had to remember that. On, a case like this, you, became a team, came to feel as close to the others as you would to your best friend. Closer than that even, sometimes.
`Someone to see you, sir. Well, she wants to speak to someone about the murders. and you're about the only one here.'
Rebus looked at his watch. Eight forty-five. He hadn't been asleep long then. Good. He felt he could confide in this WPC. `How do I look?' he asked.
`Well,' she said, `one side of your face is red from where you've been lying on it, but otherwise you'll do.' Then the smile again. A, good deed in a naughty world.
`Thanks,' he said. `Okay, send her in, please.'
`Right you are.' The head disappeared, but only momentarily. `Can I get you a coffee or something?'
`Coffee would hit the spot,' said Rebus. `Thanks.'
`Milk? Sugar?'
`Just milk.'
The head disappeared. The door closed. Rebus tried to look busy: it wasn't difficult. There was a mound of fresh paperwork to be gone through. Lab reports and the like. Results (negative) from door-to-door on the Jean Cooper murder from the interviews with everyone who'd been in the pub with her that Sunday night. He picked up the first sheet and held it in front of him. There was a knock on the door, so soft that he only just caught it.
`Come in,' he called.
The door opened slowly. A woman was standing there, looking around her as though her timidity might be about to turn to fright. She was in her late twenties, with closely cropped brown hair, but other than that she defied description. She was more a collection of `hots' than anything else: not tall, but, not exactly short; not slim, but by no means overweight, and her face lacked anything approaching a personality.
`Hello,' Rebus said, half-rising to his feet. He indicated a chair on the other side of the desk, and watched as, with breathtaking slowness, she closed the door, testing it afterwards to make sure it was going to stay shut. Only then did she turn to, look at him—or at least towards him; for she had a way of focusing just to the side of his face, so that her eyes never met his.
`Hello,' she said. She seemed ready to stand throughout proceedings. Rebus, who had seated himself again, gestured once more with his hand
`Please. Sit down.'
At last, she poised herself above the chair and lowered herself into it. Rebus had the feeling that he was the boss at some job interview, and that she wanted the job so much she'd worked herself into a good and proper state about it.
`You wanted to speak to someone,' he said, in what he hoped were soft and sympathetic tones.
`Yes,' she said.
Well, it was a start. `My name is Inspector Rebus. And yours is . . . ?’
'Jan Crawford.'
`Okay, Jan. Now, how can I help you?'
She swallowed, gazing at the window behind Rebus's left ear. `It's the killings,' she said. `They call him the Wolfman.'
Rebus was undecided. Maybe she was, a crank, but she didn't seem like one. She just seemed jumpy. Perhaps she had good reason. .
`That's right,' he cajoled. `The papers call him that.'
`Yes, they do.' She had become suddenly excitable, the words spilling from her. `And they said last night on the radio, this morning in the paper . . . ' She pulled a newspaper clipping from her bag. It was the photograph of Rebus and Lisa Frazer. `This is you, isn't it?'
Rebus nodded.
`Then you'll know. I mean, you must. The paper says he's done it again, they're saying you've caught him, or maybe you've caught him, nobody's sure.' She paused, breathing heavily. All the time her eyes were on the window. Rebus kept his mouth shut, letting her calm down. Her eyes were filling, becoming glossy with tears. As she spoke, one droplet squirmed out from the corner of an eye, and crept down towards her lips, her chin. `Nobody's sure whether you've caught him, but I could be sure. At least, I think I can be sure. I didn't get, I mean, I've been scared so long now, and I haven't said anything. I didn't want anybody to know, my mum and dad to know. I just wanted to shut it out, but that's stupid, isn't it?’ when he could do it again if he's not caught. So I decided to, I mean, maybe I can . . . ' She made to stand up, thought better of it, and squeezed her hands together instead.
`Can what, Miss Crawford?'
`Identify him,' she said, her voice almost a whisper. now. She searched in the sleeve of her blouse, found a tissue, and blew her nose. The tear dripped onto one knee. `Identify him,' she repeated, `if he's here, if you've caught him.'
Rebus was staring hard at her now, and at last his eyes found hers. Her brown eyes, covered with a film of liquid. He'd seen cranks before, plenty of them. Maybe she was, and maybe she wasn't.
`What do you mean, Jan?'
She sniffed again, turned her eyes to the window, swallowed. `He almost got me,' she said. `I was the first, before all the others. He almost got me. I was almost the first.'
And then she lifted her head. At first Rebus couldn't understand why. But then he saw. Under her right ear, running in a crescent shape towards her white throat, there was a dark pink scar, no more than an inch long.
The kind of scar you made with a knife.
The first intended kill of the Wolfman.
`What do you think?'
They faced one another across the desk. Four inches of fresh paperwork had appeared in the in-tray, threatening to overbalance the pile and send it slewing down across the floor. Rebus was eating a cheese and onion sandwich from Gino's. Comfort food. One of the nice things about being a bachelor was that you could eat, without, fear of regrets, onions, Branston pickle, huge sausage, egg and tomato sauce sandwiches, curried beans on toast and all the other delicacies favoured by the male.
`What do you think then?'
Flight sipped from a can of cola, giving slight closed-mouth burps between times. He had listened to Rebus's story and had met with Jan Crawford. She had now been taken to an interview room to be fed tea and sympathy by a WPC while a detective took her statement. Flight and Rebus both hoped she would not have to deal with Lamb.
`Well?'
Flight rubbed a knuckle against his right eye. `I don't know, John. This case has gone ga-ga. You're off telling porkies to the press, your picture's all over the front pages, we've got our first—maybe not our last—copycat killing, then you come up with some idea of flea markets and false teeth. And now this.' He opened his arms wide, pleading for help to put his world back into some semblance of order. `It's all a bit much.'
Rebus bit into the sandwich, chewing slowly. `But it fits the pattern, doesn't it? From what I've read about serial killers, the first attempt is often botched. They're not quite ready, ' they haven't planned well enough. Somebody screams, they panic. He didn't have his technique honed. He didn't go for the mouth, so she was able to scream. Then he found that human skin and muscle is tougher than it looks. He'd probably seen too many horror films, thought it was like cutting through butter. So he scraped her, but not enough to do serious damage. Maybe the knife wasn't sharp enough, who knows. The point is, he got scared and he ran.'
Flight merely shrugged. `And she didn't come forward,' he said. `That's what bothers me.'
`She's come forward now. Tell me this, George. How many rape victims do we actually see? I heard tell somebody reckons it's less than one in three. Jan Crawford is a timid little woman, scared half to death. All she wanted to do was forget about it, but she couldn't. Her conscience wouldn't let her. Her conscience brought her to us.'
`I still don't like it, John. Don't ask me why.'
Rebus finished the sandwich and made a show of wiping his hands .together. `Your copper's instinct?' he suggested, just a little sarcastically.