Strip Jack (3 page)

‘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.

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.

‘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 . . .