Strip Jack Read online

  No problem, he was assured, but if he could keep the conversation to himself . . .

  Meantime, the car owners had turned out to be businessmen, some local, but the majority visiting the city from south of the border. Heartened by this, Watson had started planning the raid. With his usual blend of wit and acumen, he chose to call it Operation Creeper.

  ‘Brothel creepers, you see, John.’

  ‘Yes sir,’ Rebus answered. ‘I used to own a pair myself. I’ve often wondered how they got the name.’

  Watson shrugged. He was not a man to be sidetracked. ‘Never mind the creepers,’ he said. ‘Let’s just get the creeps.’

  The house, it was reckoned, would be doing good business by midnight. One o’clock Saturday morning was chosen as the time of the raid. The warrants were ready. Every man in the team knew his place. And the solicitor had even come up with plans of the house, which had been memorized by the officers.

  ‘It’s a bloody warren,’ Watson had said.

  ‘No problem, sir, so long as we’ve got enough ferrets.’

  In truth, Rebus wasn’t looking forward to this evening’s work. Brothels might be illegal, but they fulfilled a need and if they veered towards respectability, as this one certainly did, then what was the problem? He could see some of this doubt reflected in Watson’s eyes. But Watson had been enthusiastic from the first, and to pull back now was unthinkable, would seem a sign of weakness. So, with nobody really keen for it, Operation Creeper went ahead. While other, meaner streets went unpatrolled. While domestic violence took its toll. While the Water of Leith drowning still remained to be solved . . .

  ‘Okay, in we go.’

  They left their cars and vans and marched towards the front door. Knocked quietly. The door was opened from within, and then things began to move like a video on double-speed. Other doors were opened . . . how many doors could a house have? Knock first, then open. Yes, they were being courteous.

  ‘If you wouldn’t mind getting dressed, please . . .’

  ‘If you could just come downstairs now . . .’

  ‘You can put your trousers on first, sir, if you like . . .’

  Then: ‘Christ, sir, come and take a look at this.’ Rebus followed the flushed, youthful face of the detective constable. ‘Here we are, sir. Feast your peepers on this lot.’

  Ah yes, the punishment room. Chains and thongs and whips. A couple of full-length mirrors, a wardrobe full of gear.

  ‘There’s more leather here than in a bloody milking shed.’

  ‘You seem to know a lot about cows, son,’ Rebus said. He was just thankful the room wasn’t in use. But there were more surprises to come.

  In parts, the house resembled nothing more lewd than a fancy-dress party – nurses and matrons, wimples and high heels. Except that most of the costumes revealed more than they hid. One young woman seemed to be wearing a rubber diving suit with the nipples and crotch cut away. Another looked like a cross between Heidi and Eva Braun. Watson watched the parade, righteous fury filling him. He had no doubts now: it was absolutely proper that this sort of place be closed down. Then he turned back to the conversation he was having with Mrs Croft, while Chief Inspector Lauderdale lingered only a short distance away. He had insisted on coming along, knowing his superior and fearing some almighty cock-up. Well, thought Rebus with a smile, no cock-ups in sight yet.

  Mrs Croft spoke in a kind of gentrified Cockney, which became less gentrified as time went on and more couples spilled down the stairs and into the large, sofa-crammed living room. A room smelling of expensive perfume and proprietary whisky. Mrs Croft was denying everything. She was even denying that they were standing in a brothel at all.

  I am not my brothel’s keeper, thought Rebus. All the same, he had to admire her performance. She was a businesswoman, she kept saying, a taxpayer, she had rights . . . and where was her solicitor?

  ‘I thought it was her that was doing the soliciting,’ Lauderdale muttered to Rebus: a rare moment of humour from one of the dourest buggers Rebus had ever worked with. And as such, it deserved a smile.

  ‘What are you grinning at? I didn’t know there was an interval. Get back to work.’

  ‘Yes, sir.’ Rebus waited till Lauderdale had turned away from him, the better to hear what Watson was saying, and then flicked a quick v-sign at him. Mrs Croft, though, caught the gesture and, perhaps thinking it intended at her, returned it. Lauderdale and Watson both turned towards where Rebus was standing, but by then he was already on his way . . .

  Officers who had been posted in the back garden now marched a few pale-faced souls back into the house. One man had leapt from a first-floor window, and was hobbling as a result. But he was insistent, too, that no doctor was necessary, that no ambulance be called. The women seemed to find the whole thing amusing, and appeared especially taken by the looks on their clients’ faces, looks ranging from the ashamed and embarrassed to the furious and embarrassed. There was some short-lived bravado of the I-know-my-rights variety. But in the main, everybody did as they were told: that is, they shut up and tried to be patient.

  Some of the shame and embarrassment started to lift when one of the men recalled that it wasn’t illegal to visit a brothel; it was only illegal to run one or work in one. And this was true, though it didn’t mean the men present were going to escape into the anonymous night. Give them a scare first, then send them away. Starve the brothels of clients, and you’d have no brothels. That was the logic. So the officers were prepared with their usual stories, the ones they used with kerb-crawlers and the like.

  ‘Just a quiet word, sir, between you and me, like. If I were you, I’d have myself checked over for AIDS. I’m serious. Most of these women could well be carrying the disease, even if it doesn’t show. Mostly, it doesn’t show till it’s too late anyway. Are you married, sir? Any girlfriends? Best tell them to have a test, too. Otherwise, you never know, do you . . .?’

  It was cruel stuff, but necessary; and as with most cruel words, there was a truth to it. Mrs Croft seemed to use a small back room as an office. A cash-box was found. So was a credit-card machine. A receipt-book was headed Crofter Guest House. As far as Rebus could tell, the cost of a single room was seventy-five pounds. Dear for a B&B, but how many company accountants would take the trouble to check? It wouldn’t surprise Rebus if the place was VAT registered to boot . . .

  ‘Sir?’ It was Detective Sergeant Brian Holmes, newly promoted and bristling with efficiency. He was halfway up one of the flights of stairs, and calling down to Rebus. ‘I think you better come up here . . .’

  Rebus wasn’t keen. Holmes looked to be a long way up, and Rebus, who lived on the second floor of a tenement, had a natural antipathy to stairs. Edinburgh, of course, was full of them, just as it was full of hills, biting winds, and people who liked to girn about things like hills and stairs and the wind . . .

  ‘Coming.’

  Outside a bedroom door, a detective constable stood in quiet discussion with Holmes. When Holmes saw Rebus reaching the landing, he dismissed the DC.

  ‘Well, Sergeant?’

  ‘Take a look, sir.’

  ‘Anything you want to tell me first?’

  Holmes shook his head. ‘You’ve seen the male member before, sir, haven’t you?’

  Rebus opened the bedroom door. What was he expecting to find? A mock-up dungeon, with someone stretched out naked on the rack? A farmyard scene with a few chickens and sheep? The male member. Maybe Mrs Croft had a collection of them displayed on her bedroom wall. And here’s one I caught in ’73. Put up a tough fight, but I had it in the end . . .

  But no, it was worse than that. Much worse. It was an ordinary bedroom, albeit with red lightbulbs in its several lamps. And in an ordinary bed lay an ordinary enough looking woman, her elbow pressed into the pillow, head resting at an angle on her clenched fist. And on that bed, dressed and staring at the floor, sat someone Rebus recognized: the Member of Parliament for North and South Esk.

  ‘Jesus Christ,’
said Rebus. Holmes put his head round the door.

  ‘I can’t work in front of a fucking audience!’ yelled the woman. Her accent, Rebus noted, was English. Holmes ignored her.

  ‘This is a bit of a coincidence,’ he said to Gregor Jack MP. ‘Only, my girlfriend and me have just moved into your constituency.’

  The MP raised his eyes more in sorrow than in anger.

  ‘This is a mistake,’ he said. ‘A terrible mistake.’

  ‘Just doing a bit of canvassing, eh, sir?’

  The woman had begun to laugh, head still resting on her hand. The red lamplight seemed to fill her gaping mouth. Gregor Jack looked for a moment as though he might be about to throw a punch in her general direction. Instead he tried a slap with his open hand, but succeeded only in catching her arm, so that her head fell back on to the pillow. She was still laughing, almost girl-like. She lifted her legs high into the air, the bedcovers falling away. Her hands thumped the mattress with glee. Jack had risen to his feet and was scratching nervously at one finger.

  ‘Jesus Christ,’ Rebus said again. Then: ‘Come on, let’s get you downstairs.’

  Not the Farmer. The Farmer might go to pieces. Lauderdale then. Rebus approached with as much humility as he could muster.

  ‘Sir, we’ve got a bit of a problem.’

  ‘I know. It must have been that bugger Watson. Wanted his moment of glory captured. He’s always been keen on publicity, you should know that.’ Was that a sneer on Lauderdale’s face? With his gaunt figure and bloodless face, he reminded Rebus of a painting he’d once seen of some Calvinists or Seceders . . . some grim bunch like that. Ready to burn anyone who came to hand. Rebus kept his distance, all the time shaking his head.

  ‘I’m not sure I –’

  ‘The bloody papers are here,’ hissed Lauderdale. ‘Quick off the mark, eh? Even for our friends in the press. Bloody Watson must have tipped them off. He’s out there now. I tried to stop him.’

  Rebus went to one of the windows and peeped out. Sure enough, there were three or four reporters gathered at the bottom of the steps up to the front door. Watson had finished his spiel and was answering a couple of questions, at the same time retreating slowly back up the steps.

  ‘Oh dear,’ Rebus said, admiring his own sense of understatement. ‘That only makes it worse.’

  ‘Makes what worse?’

  So Rebus told him. And was rewarded with the biggest smile he’d ever seen flit across Lauderdale’s face.

  ‘Well, well, who’s been a naughty boy then? But I still don’t see the problem.’

  Rebus shrugged. ‘Well, sir, it’s just that it doesn’t do anyone any good.’ Outside, the vans were arriving. Two to take the women to the station, two to take the men. The men would be asked a few questions, names and addresses taken, then released. The women . . . well, that was another thing entirely. There would be charges. Rebus’s colleague Gill Templer would call it another sign of the phallocentric society, something like that. She’d never been the same since she’d got her hands on those psychology books . . .

  ‘Nonsense,’ Lauderdale was saying. ‘He’s only got himself to blame. What do you want us to do? Sneak him out the back door with a blanket over his head?’

  ‘No, sir, it’s just –’

  ‘He gets treated the same as the rest of them, Inspector. You know the score.’

  ‘Yes, sir, but –’

  ‘But what?’

  But what? Well, that was the question. What? Why was Rebus feeling so uncomfortable? The answer was complicatedly simple: because it was Gregor Jack. Most MPs, Rebus wouldn’t have given the time of day. But Gregor Jack was . . . well, he was Gregor Jack.

  ‘Vans are here, Inspector. Let’s round ’em up and ship ’em out.’

  Lauderdale’s hand on his back was cold and firm.

  ‘Yes, sir,’ said Rebus.

  So it was out into the cool dark night, lit by orange sodium lights, the glare of headlamps, and the dimmer light from open doors and twitching windows. The natives were restless. Some had come out on to their doorsteps, wrapped in paisley dressing gowns or wearing hastily found clothes, not quite hanging right.

  Police, natives, and of course the reporters. Flash-guns. Christ, there were photographers too, of course. No camera crews, no video machines. That was something: Watson hadn’t persuaded the TV companies to attend his little soirée.

  ‘Into the van, quick as you can,’ called Brian Holmes. Was that a new firmness, a new authority in his voice? Funny what promotion could do to the young. But by God they were quick. Not so much following Holmes’ orders, Rebus knew, as keen to escape the cameras. One or two of the women posed, trying a lopsided glamour learned from page three, before being persuaded by WPCs that this was neither the time nor the place.

  But the reporters were hanging back. Rebus wondered why. Indeed, he wondered what they were doing here at all. Was it such a big story? Would it provide Watson with useful publicity? One reporter even grabbed at a photographer’s arm and seemed to warn him about shooting off too many pictures. But now they were keening, now they were shouting. And the flashbulbs were going off like flak. All because they’d recognized a face. All because Gregor Jack was being escorted down the steps, across the narrow pavement, and into a van.

  ‘Christ, it’s Gregor Jack!’

  ‘Mr Jack! A word!’

  ‘Any comment to make?’

  ‘What were you doing –’

  ‘Any comment?’

  The doors were closing. A thump with the constabulary hand on the side of the van, and it moved slowly away, the reporters jogging after it. Well, Rebus had to admit it: Jack had held his head high. No, that wasn’t being accurate. He had, rather, held his head just low enough, suggesting penitence but not shame, humility but not embarrassment.

  ‘Seven days he’s been my MP,’ Holmes was saying by Rebus’s side. ‘Seven days.’

  ‘You must have been a bad influence on him, Brian.’

  ‘Bit of a shock though, wasn’t it?’

  Rebus shrugged noncommitally. The woman from the bedroom was being brought out now, having pulled on jeans and a t-shirt. She saw the reporters and suddenly lifted the t-shirt high over her naked breasts.

  ‘Get a load of this then!’

  But the reporters were busy comparing notes, the photographers loading new film. They’d be off to the station next, ready to catch Gregor Jack as he left. Nobody paid her any attention, and eventually she let her t-shirt fall back down and climbed into the waiting van.

  ‘He’s not choosy, is he?’ said Holmes.

  ‘But then again, Brian,’ answered Rebus, ‘maybe he is.’

  Watson was rubbing at his gleaming forehead. It was a lot of work for only one hand, since the forehead seemed to extend as far as Watson’s crown.

  ‘Mission accomplished,’ he said. ‘Well done.’

  ‘Thank you, sir,’ Holmes said smartly.

  ‘No problems then?’

  ‘Not at all, sir,’ said Rebus casually. ‘Unless you count Gregor Jack.’

  Watson nodded, then frowned. ‘Who?’ he asked.

  ‘Brian here can tell you all about him, sir,’ said Rebus, patting Holmes’ back. ‘Brian’s your man for anything smacking of politics.’

  Watson, hovering now somewhere between elation and dread, turned to Holmes.

  ‘Politics?’ he asked. He was smiling. Please be gentle with me.

  Holmes watched Rebus moving back inside the house. He felt like sobbing. Because, after all, that’s what John Rebus was – an s.o.b.

  2

  Scratching the Surface

  It is a truth universally acknowledged that some Members of Parliament have trouble keeping their trousers on. But Gregor Jack was not thought to be one of these. Indeed, he often eschewed troose altogether, opting for the kilt on election nights and at many a public function. In London, he took the jibes in good part, his responses matching the old questions with the accuracy of catechism.

  ‘
Tell us now, Gregor, what’s worn beneath the kilt?’

  ‘Oh nothing, nothing at all. It’s all in perfect working order.’

  Gregor Jack was not a member of the SNP, though he had flirted with the party in his youth. He had joined the Labour Party, but had resigned for never specified reasons. He was not a Liberal Democrat, nor was he that rare breed – a Scots Tory MP. Gregor Jack was an Independent, and as an Independent had held the seat of North and South Esk, south and east of Edinburgh, since his mildly surprising by-election win of 1985. ‘Mild’ was an adjective often used about Jack. So were ‘honest’, ‘legal’ and ‘decent’.

  All this John Rebus knew from memory, from old newspapers, magazines and radio interviews. There had to be something wrong with the man, some chink in his shining armour. Trust Operation Creeper to find the flaw. Rebus scanned the Saturday newsprint, seeking a story. He didn’t find it. Curious that; the press had seemed keen enough last night. A story breaking at one thirty . . . plenty of time, surely, to see it into print by the final morning edition. Unless, of course, the reporters hadn’t been local. But they must have been, mustn’t they? Having said which, he hadn’t recognized any faces. Did Watson really have the front to get the London papers involved? Rebus smiled. The man had plenty of ‘front’ all right: his wife saw to that. Three meals a day, three courses each.

  ‘Feed the body,’ Watson was fond of saying, ‘and you feed the spirit.’ Something like that. Which was another thing: bible-basher or no, Watson was starting to put away a fair amount of spirits. A rosy glow to the cheeks and chins, and the unmistakable scent of extra-strong mints. When Lauderdale walked into his superior’s room these days, he sniffed and sniffed, like a bloodhound. Only it wasn’t blood he was sniffing, it was promotion.

  Lose a Farmer, gain a Fart.

  The nickname had perhaps been unavoidable. Word association. Lauderdale became Fort Lauderdale, and Fort quickly turned into Fart. Oh, but it was an apt name, too. For wherever Chief Inspector Lauderdale went, he left a bad smell. Take the Case of the Lifted Literature. Rebus had known the minute Lauderdale walked into his office that there would soon be a need to open the windows.