Strip Jack Read online

  ‘I want you to stick close to this one, John. Professor Costello is highly thought of, an international figure in this field . . .’

  ‘And?’

  ‘And,’ Lauderdale tried to look as though his next utterance meant nothing to him, ‘he’s a close personal friend of Chief Superintendent Watson.’

  ‘Ah.’

  ‘What is this – Monosyllable Week?’

  ‘Monosyllable?’ Rebus frowned. ‘Sorry, sir, I’ll have to ask DS Holmes what that means.’

  ‘Don’t try to be funny –’

  ‘I’m not, sir, honest. It’s just that DS Holmes has had the benefit of a university education. Well . . . five months’ worth or thereabouts. He’d be the very man to coordinate the officers working on this highly sensitive case.’

  Lauderdale stared at the seated figure for what seemed – to Rebus at least – a very long time. God, was the man really that stupid? Did no one appreciate irony these days?

  ‘Look,’ Lauderdale said at last, ‘I need someone a bit more senior than a recently promoted DS. And I’m sorry to say that you, Inspector, God help us all, are that bit more senior.’

  ‘You’re flattering me, sir.’

  A file landed with a dull thud on Rebus’s desk. The chief inspector turned and left. Rebus rose from his chair and turned to his sash window, tugging at it with all his might. But the thing was stuck tight. There was no escape. With a sigh, he turned back and sat down at his desk. Then he opened the folder.

  It was a straightforward case of theft. Professor James Aloysius Costello was Professor of Divinity at the University of Edinburgh. One day someone had walked into his office, then walked out again taking with them several rare books. Priceless, according to the Professor, though not to the city’s various booksellers and auction rooms. The list seemed eclectic: an early edition of Knox’s Treatise on Predestination, a couple of Sir Walter Scott first editions, Swedenborg’s Wisdom of Angels, a signed early edition of Tristram Shandy, and editions of Montaigne and Voltaire.

  None of which meant much to Rebus until he saw the estimates at auction, provided by one of the George Street auction houses. The question then was: what were they doing in an unlocked office in the first place?

  ‘To be read,’ answered Professor Costello blithely. ‘To be enjoyed, admired. What good would they be locked up in a safe or in some old library display case?’

  ‘Did anyone else know about them? I mean, about how valuable they are?’

  The Professor shrugged. ‘I had thought, Inspector, that I was amongst friends.’

  He had a voice like a peat bog and eyes that gleamed like crystal. A Dublin education, but a life spent, as he put it, ‘cloistered’ in the likes of Cambridge, Oxford, St Andrews, and now Edinburgh. A life spent collecting books, too. Those left in his office – still kept unlocked – were worth at least as much as the stolen volumes, perhaps more.

  ‘They say lightning never strikes twice,’ he assured Rebus.

  ‘Maybe not, but villains do. Try to lock your door when you step out, eh, sir? If nothing else.’

  The Professor had shrugged. Was this, Rebus wondered, a kind of stoicism? He felt nervous sitting there in the office in Buccleuch Place. For one thing, he was a kind of Christian himself, and would have liked to be able to talk the subject through with this wise-seeming man. Wise? Well, perhaps not worldly-wise, not wise enough to know how snib locks and human minds worked, but wise in other ways. But Rebus was nervous, too, because he knew himself for a clever man who could have been cleverer, given the breaks. He had never gone to university, and never would. He wondered how different he would be if he had or could . . .

  The Professor was staring out of his window, down on to the cobblestoned street. On one side of Buccleuch Place sat a row of neat tenements, owned by the university and used by various departments. The Professor called it Botany Bay. And across the road uglier shapes reared up, the modern stone mausoleums of the main university complex. If this side of the road was Botany Bay, Rebus was all for transportation.

  He left the Professor to his muses and musings. Had the books been filched at random? Or was this designer theft, the thief stealing to order? There might well be unscrupulous collectors who would pay – no questions asked – for an early Tristram Shandy. Though the authors’ names had rung bells, only that particular title had meant anything to Rebus. He owned a paperback copy of the book, bought at a car-boot sale on The Meadows for tenpence. Maybe the Professor would like to borrow it . . .

  And so the Case of the Lifted Literature had, for Inspector John Rebus, begun. The ground had been covered before, as the case-notes showed, but it could be covered again. There were the auction houses, the bookshops, the private collectors . . . all to be talked to. And all to satisfy an unlikely friendship between a police chief superintendent and a professor of Divinity. A waste of time, of course. The books had disappeared the previous Tuesday. It was now Saturday, and they would doubtless be under lock and key in some dark and secret corner.

  What a way to spend a Saturday. Actually, if the time had been his own, this would have been a nice afternoon, which was perhaps why he hadn’t balked at the task. Rebus collected books. Well, that was putting it strongly. He bought books. Bought more of them than he had time to read, attracted by this cover or that title or the fact that he’d heard good things about the author. No, on second thoughts it was just as well these were business calls he was making, otherwise he’d be bankrupting himself in record time.

  In any case, he didn’t have books on his mind. He kept thinking about a certain MP. Was Gregor Jack married? Rebus thought so. Hadn’t there been some big society wedding several years previous? Well, married men were bread and butter to prostitutes. They just gobbled them up. Shame though, about Jack. Rebus had always respected the man – which was to say, now that he thought about it, that he’d been taken in by Jack’s public image. But it wasn’t all image, was it? Jack really had come from a working-class background, had clawed his way upwards, and was a good MP. North and South Esk was difficult territory, part mining villages, part country homes. Jack seemed to glide easily between the two hemispheres. He’d managed to get an ugly new road rerouted well away from his well-heeled constituents, but had also fought hard to bring new high-tech industry to the area, retraining the miners so that they could do the jobs.

  Too good to be true. Too bloody good to be true . . .

  Bookshops. He had to keep his mind on bookshops. There were only a few to check, the ones that had not been open earlier in the week. Footwork really, the stuff he should have been doling out to more junior men. But all that meant was that he’d feel bound to come round after them, double checking what they’d done. This way, he saved himself some grief.

  Buccleuch Street was an odd mixture of grimy junk shops and bright vegetarian takeaways. Student turf. Not far from Rebus’s own flat, yet he seldom ventured into this part of town. Only on business. Only ever on business.

  Ah, this was it. Suey Books. And for once the shop looked to be open. Even in the spring sunshine there was a need for a light inside. It was a tiny shop, boasting an unenthusiastic window display of old hardbacks, mostly with a Scottish theme. An enormous black cat had made a home for itself in the centre of the display, and blinked slowly if malignly up at Rebus. The window itself needed washing. You couldn’t make out the titles of the books without pressing your nose to the glass, and this was made difficult by the presence of an old black bicycle resting against the front of the shop. Rebus pushed open the door. If anything, the shop’s interior was less pristine than its exterior. There was a bristle-mat just inside the door. Rebus made a note to wipe his feet before he went back into the street . . .

  The shelves, a few of them glass-fronted, were crammed, and the smell was of old relatives’ houses, of attics and the insides of school desks. The aisles were narrow. Hardly enough room to swing a . . . There was a thump somewhere behind him, and he feared one of the books had fallen, but when
he turned he saw that it was the cat. It swerved past him and made for the desk situated to the rear of the shop, the desk with a bare lightbulb dangling above it.

  ‘Anything in particular you’re looking for?’

  She was seated at the desk, a pile of books in front of her. She held a pencil in one hand and appeared to be writing prices on the inside leaves of the books. From a distance, it was a scene out of Dickens. Close up was a different story. Still in her teens, she had hennaed her short spiked hair. The eyes behind the circular tinted glasses were themselves round and dark, and she sported three earrings in either ear, with another curling from her left nostril. Rebus didn’t doubt she’d have a pale boyfriend with lank dreadlocks and a whippet on a length of clothes-rope.

  ‘I’m looking for the manager,’ he said.

  ‘He’s not here. Can I help?’

  Rebus shrugged, his eyes on the cat. It had leapt silently on to the desk and was now rubbing itself against the books. The girl held her pencil out towards it, and the cat brushed the tip with its jaw.

  ‘Inspector Rebus,’ said Rebus. ‘I’m interested in some stolen books. I was wondering if anyone had been in trying to sell them.’

  ‘Do you have a list?’

  Rebus did. He drew it out of his pocket and handed it over. ‘You can keep it,’ he said. ‘Just in case.’

  She glanced down the typed list of titles and editions, her lips pursed.

  ‘I don’t think Ronald could afford them, even if he was tempted.’

  ‘Ronald being the manager?’

  ‘That’s right. Where were they stolen from?’

  ‘Round the corner in Buccleuch Place.’

  ‘Round the corner? They’d hardly be likely to bring them here then, would they?’

  Rebus smiled. ‘True,’ he said, ‘but we have to check.’

  ‘Well, I’ll hang on to this anyway,’ she said, folding the list. As she pushed it into a desk drawer, Rebus reached out a hand and stroked the cat. Like lightning, a paw flicked up and caught his wrist. He drew back his hand with a sharp intake of breath.

  ‘Oh dear,’ said the girl. ‘Rasputin’s not very good with strangers.’

  ‘So I see.’ Rebus studied his wrist. There were inch-long claw marks there, three of them. Whitened scratches, they were already rising, the skin swelling and breaking. Beads of blood appeared. ‘Jesus,’ he said, sucking on the damaged wrist. He glared at the cat. It glared back, then dropped from the desk and was gone.

  ‘Are you all right?’

  ‘Just about. You should keep that thing on a chain.’

  She smiled. ‘Do you know anything about that raid last night?’

  Rebus blinked, still sucking. ‘What raid?’

  ‘I heard the police raided a brothel.’

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘I heard they caught an MP, Gregor Jack.’

  ‘Oh?’

  She smiled again. ‘Word gets about.’ Rebus thought, not for the first time, I don’t live in a city, I live in a bloody village . . .

  ‘I just wondered,’ the girl was saying, ‘if you knew anything about it. I mean, if it’s true. I mean, if it is . . .’ she sighed. ‘Poor Beggar.’

  Rebus frowned now.

  ‘That’s his nickname,’ she explained. ‘Beggar. That’s what Ronald calls him.’

  ‘Your boss knows Mr Jack then?’

  ‘Oh yes, they were at school together. Beggar owns half of this. She waved a hand around her, as though she were proprietress of some Princes Street department store. She saw that the policeman didn’t seem impressed. ‘We do a lot of business behind the scenes,’ she said defensively. ‘A lot of buying and selling. It might not look much, but this place is a goldmine.’

  Rebus nodded. ‘Actually,’ he said, ‘now that you mention it, it does look a bit like a mine.’ His wrist was crackling now, as though stung by nettles. Bloody cat. ‘Right, keep an eye out for those books, won’t you?’

  She didn’t answer. Hurt, he didn’t doubt, by the ‘mine’ jibe. She was opening a book, ready to pencil in a price. Rebus nodded to himself, walked to the door, and rubbed his feet noisily on the mat before leaving the shop. The cat was back in the window, licking its tail.

  ‘Fuck you too, pal,’ muttered Rebus. Pets, after all, were his pet hate.

  Dr Patience Aitken had pets. Too many pets. Tiny tropical fish . . . a tame hedgehog in the back garden . . . two budgies in a cage in the living room . . . and, yes, a cat. A stray which, to Rebus’s relief, still liked to spend much of its time on the prowl. It was a tortoiseshell and it was called Lucky. It liked Rebus.

  ‘It’s funny,’ Patience had said, ‘how they always seem to go for the people who don’t like them, don’t want them, or are allergic to them. Don’t ask me why.’

  As she said this, Lucky was climbing across Rebus’s shoulders. He snarled and shrugged it off. It fell to the floor, landing on its feet.

  ‘You’ve got to have patience, John.’

  Yes, she was right. If he did not have patience, he might lose Patience. So he’d been trying. He’d been trying. Which was perhaps why he’d been tricked into trying to stroke Rasputin. Rasputin! Why was it pets always seemed to be called either Lucky, Goldie, Beauty, Flossie, Spot, or else Rasputin, Beelzebub, Fang, Nirvana, Bodhisattva? Blame the breed of owner.

  Rebus was in the Rutherford, nursing a half of eight-shilling and watching the full-time scores on TV, when he remembered that he was expected at Brian Holmes’ new house this evening, expected for a meal with Holmes and Nell Stapleton. He groaned. Then remembered that his only clean suit was at Patience Aitken’s flat. It was a worrying fact. Was he really moving in with Patience? He seemed to be spending an awful lot of time there these days. Well, he liked her, even if she did treat him like yet another pet. And he liked her flat. He even liked the fact that it was underground.

  Well, not quite underground. In some parts of town, it might once have been described as the ‘basement’ flat, but in Oxford Terrace, well-appointed Oxford Terrace, Stockbridge’s Oxford Terrace, it was a garden flat. And sure enough it had a garden, a narrow isosceles triangle of land. But the flat itself was what interested Rebus. It was like a shelter, like a children’s encampment. You could stand in either of the front bedrooms and stare up out of the window to where feet and legs moved along the pavement above you. People seldom looked down. Rebus, whose own flat was on the second floor of a Marchmont tenement, enjoyed this new perspective. While other men his age were moving out of the city and into bungalows, Rebus found a sort of amused thrill from walking downstairs to the front door instead of walking up. More than novelty, it was a reversal, a major shift, and his life felt full of promise as a result.

  Patience, too, was full of promise. She was keen for him to move more of his things in, to ‘make himself at home’. And she had given him a key. So, beer finished, and car persuaded to make the five-minute trip, he was able to let himself in. His suit, newly cleaned, was lying on the bed in the spare bedroom. So was Lucky. In fact, Lucky was lying on the suit, was rolling on it, plucking at it with his claws, was shedding on it and marking it. Rebus saw Rasputin in his mind’s eye as he swiped the cat off the bed. Then he picked up the suit and took it to the bathroom, where he locked the door behind him before running a bath.

  The parliamentary constituency of North and South Esk was large but not populous. The population, however, was growing. New housing estates grew in tight clusters on the outskirts of the mining towns and villages. Commuter belt. Yes, the region was changing. New roads, new railway stations even. New kinds of people doing new kinds of jobs. Brian Holmes and Nell Stapleton, however, had chosen to buy an old terraced house in the heart of one of the smallest of the villages, Eskwell. Actually, it was all about Edinburgh in the end. The city was growing, spreading out. It was the city that swallowed villages and spawned new estates. People weren’t moving into Edinburgh; the city was moving into them . . .

  But by the time Rebus reached Eskwell he was in no
mood to contemplate the changing face of country living. He’d had trouble starting the car. He was always having trouble starting the car. But wearing a suit and shirt and tie had made it that bit more difficult to tinker beneath the bonnet. One fine weekend he’d strip the engine down. Of course he would. Then he’d give up and phone for a tow truck.

  The house was easy to find, Eskwell boasting one main street and only a few back roads. Rebus walked up the garden path and stood on the doorstep, a bottle of wine gripped in one hand. He clenched his free fist and rapped on the door. It opened almost at once.

  ‘You’re late,’ said Brian Holmes.

  ‘Perogative of rank, Brian. I’m allowed to be late.’

  Holmes ushered him into the hall. ‘I did say informal, didn’t I?’

  Rebus puzzled for a moment, then saw that this was a comment on his suit. He noticed now that Holmes himself was dressed in open-necked shirt and denims, with a pair of moccasins covering his bare feet.

  ‘Ah,’ said Rebus.

  ‘Never mind, I’ll nip upstairs and change.’

  ‘Not on my account. This is your house, Brian. You do as you please.’

  Holmes nodded to himself, suddenly looking pleased. Rebus was right: this was his house. Well, the mortgage was his . . . half the mortgage. ‘Go on through,’ he said, gesturing to a door at the end of the hall.

  ‘I think I’ll nip upstairs myself first,’ Rebus said, handing over the bottle. He spread his hands out palms upwards, then turned them over. Even Holmes could see the traces of oil and dirt.

  ‘Car trouble,’ he said, nodding. ‘The bathroom’s to the right of the landing.’

  ‘Right.’

  ‘And those are nasty scratches, too. I’d see a doctor about them.’ Holmes’ tone told Rebus that the young man assumed a certain doctor had been responsible for them in the first place.

  ‘A cat,’ Rebus explained. ‘A cat with eight lives left.’

  Upstairs, he felt particularly clumsy. He rinsed the wash-hand-basin after him, then had to rinse the muck off the soap, then rinsed the basin again. A towel was hanging over the bath, but when he started to dry his hands he found he was drying them not on a towel but on a foot-mat. The real towel was on a hook behind the door. Relax, John, he told himself. But he couldn’t. Socializing was just one more skill he’d never really mastered.