Tooth And Nail by Ian Rankin Read Free Book Online Page B

see.’
    Flight laughed tiredly. Both men were wondering how to turn the conversation around to the autopsy.
    ‘Best leave it until morning, eh?’ said Rebus, speaking for them both. Flight merely nodded and moved off, waving to Cousins and Isobel Penny, who were about to get into their car. Rebus stared out of his side window to where DC Lamb stood beside his own car, a flash little sports model. Typical, thought Rebus. Just typical. Lamb stared back at him, and then gave that three-quarters sneer again.
    FYTP, Rebus mentally intoned. FYTP. Then he turned in his seat to examine the teddy bear behind him. Flight was resolutely refusing to take the hint, and Rebus, though curious, wasn’t about to jeopardise whatever relationship he might be able to strike up with this man by asking the obvious question. Some things were always best left until morning.
    The whisky had cleared his nostrils, lungs and throat. He breathed deeply, seeing in his mind the little mortuary attendant, that livid birthmark, and Isobel Penny, sketching like any amateur artist. She might have been in front of a museum exhibit for all the emotion she had shown. He wondered what her secret was, the secret of her absolute calmness, but thought he probably knew in any case. Her job had become merely that: a job. Maybe one day Rebus would feel the same way. But he hoped not.
    If anything, Flight and Rebus said less during the drive to the hotel than they had done on the way to the mortuary. The whisky was working on Rebus’s empty stomach and the interior of the car was oppressively hot. He tried opening his window a quarter of an inch, but the blast of chill air only made things worse.
    The autopsy was being played out again before him. The cutting tools, the lifting of organs out of the body, the incisions and inspections, Cousins’s face peering at spongy tissue from no more than an inch away. One twitch and his face would have been smothered in … Isobel Penny watching all, recording all, the slice from throat to pubis … London sped past him. Flight, true to his word, was cruising through some red lights and slowing merely for others. There were still cars on the streets. The city never slept. Nightclubs, parties, drifters, the homeless. Sleepless dog-walkers, all night bakeries and beigel shops. Some spelt ‘beigel’ and some spelt ‘bagel’. What the hell was a beigel? Wasn’t that what they were always eating in Woody Allen films?
    Samples from her eyebrows, for Christ’s sake. What use were samples from her eyebrows? They should be concentrating on the attacker, not the victim. Those teeth marks. What was the dentist’s name again? Not a dentist, a dental pathologist . Morrison. Yes, that was it. Morrison, like the street in Edinburgh, Morrison Street, not too far from the brewery canal, where the swans lived, a single pair of swans. What happened when they died? Did the brewery replace them? So damned hot in this shiny red car. Rebus could feel his insides wanting to become his outsides. The knife twisted in the throat. A small knife. He could almost visualise it. Something like a kitchen knife. Sharp, sour taste in his mouth.
    ‘Nearly there,’ said Flight. ‘Just along Shaftesbury Avenue. That’s Soho on the right. By God, we’ve cleaned that den up this past few years. You wouldn’t believe it. You know, I’ve been thinking, where the body was found, it’s not so far from where the Krays used to live. Somewhere on Lea Bridge Road. I was just a young copper when they were on the go.’
    ‘Please …’ said Rebus.
    ‘They did somebody in Stokie. Jack McVitie, I think it was. Jack the Hat, they called him.’
    ‘Can you stop here?’ Rebus blurted out. Flight looked at him.
    ‘What’s up?’
    ‘I need some air. I’ll walk the rest of the way. Just stop the car, please.’
    Flight began to protest, but pulled over to the kerb. Stepping out of the car, Rebus immediately felt better. There was cold sweat on his forehead,