Strip Jack (29 page)

‘I told Helen to run off a hundred copies.’

‘As many as that? Well, whatever you think, Ian.’

Now Urquhart looked towards Gregor Jack. He wants to shake him, too, Rebus thought. But he won’t.

‘You’ve got to be strong, Gregor. You’ve got to
look
strong.’

‘You’re right, Ian. Yes, look strong.’

Like wet tissue paper, Rebus thought. Like an infestation of woodworm. Like an old person’s bones.

Ronald Steele was a hard man to catch. Rebus even went to his home, a bungalow on the edge of Morningside. No sign
of life. Rebus went on trying the rest of the day. At the fourth ring of Steele’s telephone, an answering machine came into play. At eight o’clock, he stopped trying. What he didn’t want was Gregor Jack warning Steele that their story had come apart at its badly stitched seams. Given the means, he’d have kept Steele’s answering machine busy all night. But instead his own telephone rang. He was in the Marchmont flat, slumped in his own chair, with nothing to eat or drink, and nothing to take his mind off the case.

He knew who it would be. It would be Patience. She would just be wondering if and when he intended making an appearance. She would just have been worried, that was all. They’d spent a rare weekend together: shopping on Saturday afternoon, a film at night. A drive to Cramond on Sunday, wine and backgammon on Sunday night. Rare . . . He picked up the receiver.

‘Rebus.’

‘Jesus, you’re a hard man to catch.’ It was a male voice. It was not Patience. It was Holmes.

‘Hello, Brian.’

‘I’ve been trying you for hours. Always engaged or else not answering. You should get an answering machine.’

‘I’ve
got
an answering machine. I just sometimes forget to plug it in. What do you want anyway? Don’t tell me, you’re telephone-selling as a sideline? How’s Nell?’

‘As well as can be not expecting.’

‘She’s negative then?’

‘I’m positive she is.’

‘Maybe next time, eh?’

‘Listen, thanks for the interest, but that’s not why I’m calling. I thought you’d want to know, I had a very interesting chat with Mr Pond.’

A.k.a. Tampon, thought Rebus. ‘Oh yes?’ he said.

‘You’re not going to believe it . . .’ said Brian Holmes. For once, he was right.

The way Tom Pond explained it to Rebus, architects were either doomed to failure or else doomed to success. He had no doubt at all that he came into the latter category.

‘I know architects my age, guys I went to college with, they’ve been on the dole for the past half dozen years. Or else they give up and go do something sensible like working on a building site or living on a kibbutz. Then there are some of us, for a time we can’t put a foot wrong. This prize leads to that contract, and that contract gets noticed by an American corporation, and we start calling ourselves “international”. Note, I say “for a time”. It can all turn sour. You get in a rut, or the economic situation can’t support your new ideas. I’ll tell you, the best architectural designs are sitting locked away in drawers – nobody can afford to build the buildings, not yet anyway, maybe not ever. So I’m just enjoying my lucky break. That’s all I’m doing.’

It was not
quite
all Tom Pond was doing. He was also crossing the Forth Road Bridge doing something in excess of one hundred miles an hour. Rebus daren’t look at the speedo.

‘After all,’ Pond had explained, ‘it’s not every day I can go breaking the speed limit with a policeman in the car to explain it away if we get stopped.’ And he laughed. Rebus didn’t. Rebus didn’t say much after they hit the ton.

Tom Pond owned a forty-grand Italian racing job that looked like a kit-car and sounded like a lawnmower. The last time Rebus had been sitting this close to ground level, he’d just slipped on some ice outside his flat.

‘I’ve got three habits, Inspector: fast cars, fast women, and slow horses.’ And he laughed again.

‘If you don’t slow down, son,’ Rebus yelled above the engine’s whine, ‘I’m going to have to book you for speeding myself!’

Pond looked hurt, but eased back on the accelerator. And after all, he
was
doing them all a favour, wasn’t he?

‘Thank you,’ Rebus conceded.

Holmes had told him he wouldn’t believe it. Rebus was still trying. Pond had arrived back the previous day from the States, only to find a message waiting for him on his answering machine.

‘It was Mrs Heggarty.’

‘Mrs Heggarty being . . .?’

‘She looks after my cottage. I’ve got a cottage up near Kingussie. Mrs Heggarty goes in now and again to give it a clean and check everything’s okay.’

‘And this time everything
wasn’t
?’

‘That’s right. At first, she said there’d been a break-in, but then I called her back and from what she said they’d used my spare key to get in. I keep a key under a rock beside the front door. Hadn’t made any mess or anything, not really. But Mrs Heggarty knew somebody’d been there and it hadn’t been me. Anyway, I happened to mention it to the detective sergeant . . .’

The detective sergeant whose geography was better than fair. Kingussie wasn’t far from Deer Lodge. It certainly wasn’t far from Duthil. Holmes had asked the obvious question.

‘Would Mrs Jack have known about the key?’

‘Maybe. Beggar knew about it. I suppose
everybody
knew about it, really.’

All of which Holmes had relayed to Rebus. Rebus had gone to see Pond, their conversation lasting just over half an hour, at the end of which he had announced a wish to see the cottage.

‘Be my guest,’ Pond had said. And so Rebus was trapped in this narrow metal box, travelling so fast at times that his
eyeballs were aching. It was well after midnight, but Pond seemed neither to notice nor to mind.

‘I’m still in New York,’ he said. ‘Brain and body still disconnected. You know, this all sounds incredible, all this stuff about Gregor and Liz and her being found by Gowk. Just incredible.’

Pond had been in the United States for a month; already he was hooked. He was testing out the language, the intonation, even some of the mannerisms. Rebus studied him. Thick, wavy blond hair (dyed? highlighted?) atop a beefy face, the face of someone who had been good-looking in youth. He wasn’t tall, but he
seemed
taller than he was. A trick of posture; yes, to a certain extent, but he also had that confidence, that aura Gregor Jack had once possessed. He was firing on all cylinders.

‘Can this car take a corner or what? Say what you like about the Italians, they build a mean ice cream and a meaner car.’

Rebus gritted his lower intestine. He was determined to talk seriously with Pond. It was too good a chance to miss, the two of them trapped like this. He tried to talk without his teeth knocking each other out of his mouth.

‘So, you’ve known Mr Jack since school?’

‘I know, I know, it’s hard to believe, isn’t it? I look so much younger than him. But yes, we only lived three streets apart. I think Bilbo lived in the same street as Beggar. Sexton and Mack lived in the same street, too. I mean, the same street as one another, not the same as Beggar and Bilbo. Suey and Gowk lived a bit further away, other side of the school from the rest of us.’

‘So what drew you all together?’

‘I don’t know. Funny, I’ve never really thought about it. I mean, we were all pretty clever, I suppose. Down a gear for this corner . . . and . . .
like shit off a goddamned shovel
!’

Rebus felt as though his seat was trying to push its way through his body.

‘More like a motorbike than a car. What do you think, Inspector?’

‘Do you keep in touch with Mack?’ Rebus asked at last.

‘Oh, you know about Mack? Well . . . no, not really. Beggar was the catalyst. I think it was only because I kept in touch with him that I kept in touch with everybody else. But after Mack . . . well, when he went into the nuthouse . . . no, I don’t keep in touch. I think Gowk does. You know, she was the cleverest of the lot of us, and look what happened to her.’

‘What did happen to her?’

‘She married that spunk-head and started shovelling Valium because it was the only way she could cope.’

‘Is her problem common knowledge then?’

He shrugged. ‘I only know because I’ve seen it happen to other people . . . other times.’

‘Have you tried talking to her?’

‘It’s her life, Inspector. I’ve got enough trouble keeping myself together.’

The Pack. What did a pack do when one of its number grew lame or sick? They left it to die, the fittest trotting along at the head . . .

Pond seemed to sense Rebus’s thoughts. ‘Sorry if that sounds callous. I was never one for tea and sympathy.’

‘Who was?’

‘Sexton was always ready with a willing ear. But then she buggered off south. Suey, too, I suppose. You could talk to him. He never had any answers, mind, but he was a good listener.’

Rebus hoped he’d be as good a talker. There were more and more questions to be answered. He decided – how would an American phrase it? – yes, to throw Pond a few curve-balls.

‘If Elizabeth Jack had a lover, who would be your guess?’

Pond actually slowed down a little. He thought for a moment. ‘Me,’ he said at last. ‘After all, she’d be stupid to plump for anybody else, wouldn’t she?’ And he grinned again.

‘Second choice?’

‘Well, there were rumours . . . there were
always
rumours.’

‘Yes?’

‘Jesus, you want me to list them? Okay, Barney Byars for a start. Do you know him?’

‘I know him.’

‘Well, Barney’s all right I suppose. Bit screwed up about class, but otherwise he’s fine. The two of them were pretty close for a while . . .’

‘Who else?’

‘Jamie Kilpatrick . . . Julian Kaymer . . . I think that fat bastard Kinnoul even tried his luck. Then she was supposed to have had a fling with that grocer’s ex.’

‘You mean Louise Patterson-Scott?’

‘Can you imagine it? Story was, the morning after a party they were found together in bed. But so what?’

‘Anyone else?’

‘Probably hundreds.’

‘You never . . .?’

‘Me?’ Pond shrugged. ‘We had a kiss and a cuddle a few times.’ He smiled at the memory. ‘It could have gone anywhere . . . but it didn’t. The thing with Liz was . . . generosity.’

Pond nodded to himself, pleased that he had found the right word, the fitting epitaph.

‘Can I use your telephone?’ Rebus asked.

‘Sure.’

He called Patience. He had tried twice before in the course of the evening – no reply. But there was a reply this time. This time, he got her out of bed.

‘Where are you?’ she asked.

‘Heading north.’

‘When will I see you?’ Her voice had lost all emotion, all interest. Rebus wondered if it was merely a trick of the telephone.

‘Tomorrow. Definitely tomorrow.’

‘It can’t keep on like this, John. Really, it can’t.’

He sought for words which would reassure her while not embarrassing him in front of Pond. He sought too long.

‘Bye, John.’ And the receiver went dead.

They reached Kingussie well before dawn, having met little enough traffic and not a single patrol car. They had brought torches, though these weren’t really necessary. The cottage was situated at the far corner of a village, a little off the main road but still receiving a good share of what street-lighting there was. Rebus was surprised to find that the ‘cottage’ was quite a modern bungalow, surrounded by a high hedge on all four sides, excepting the necessary gates which opened on to a short gravel drive leading up to the house itself.

‘When Gregor and Liz got their place,’ Pond explained, ‘I thought what the hell, only I couldn’t bear to rough it the way they do. I wanted something a bit more modern. Less charm, better amenities.’

‘Nice neighbours?’

Pond shrugged. ‘Hardly ever seen them. The place next door is a holiday home, too. Half the houses in the village are.’ He shrugged again.

‘What about Mrs Heggarty?’

‘Lives the other side of the main drag.’

‘So whoever’s been living here . . .?’

‘They could have come and gone without anyone noticing, no doubt about that.’

Pond left his headlights on while he opened the front door of the house. Suddenly, hallway and porch were illuminated. Rebus, freed from the cage, was stretching and trying to stop his knees from folding in on him.

‘Is that the stone?’

‘That’s the one,’ Pond said. It was a huge pebble-shaped piece of pinkish rock. He lifted it, showing that the spare key was still there. ‘Nice of them to leave it when they went. Come on, I’ll show you around.’

‘Just a second, Mr Pond. Could you try not to touch anything? We might want to check for fingerprints later on.’

Pond smiled. ‘Sure, but my prints’ll be everywhere anyway.’

‘Of course, but all the same . . .’

‘Besides, if Mrs Heggarty’s tidied up after our “guests”, the place’ll be polished and tidied from ceiling to floor.’

Rebus’s heart sank as he followed Pond into the cottage. There was certainly a smell of furniture polish, mingling with air-freshener. In the living room, not a cushion or an executive toy looked to be out of place.

‘Looks the same as when I left it,’ Pond said.

‘You’re sure?’

‘Pretty sure. I’m not like Liz and her crew, Inspector. I don’t go in for parties. I don’t mind other people’s, but the last thing I want to have to do is clean salmon mousse off the ceiling or explain to the village that the woman with her arse hanging out of a Bentley back window is actually an Hon.’

‘You wouldn’t be thinking of the Hon. Matilda Merriman?’

‘The same. Christ, you know them all, don’t you?’

‘I’ve yet to meet the Hon. Matilda actually.’

‘Take my advice: defer the moment. Life’s too short.’

And the hours too long, thought Rebus. Today’s hours had certainly been way too long. The kitchen was neat. Glasses sat sparkling on the draining board.

‘Shouldn’t think you’ll get many prints off them, Inspector.’

‘Mrs Heggarty’s very thorough, isn’t she?’