Ian Rankin: A Good Hanging and other stories

She now walked in, followed by a red-faced Holmes, the statue cradled in his arms. Serena Davies, however, appeared not to notice. She had her eyes trained on the parquet floor and, again, she was being studied by Cluzeau. ‘What a creature,’ he had said of her. What a creature indeed. The four thieves would certainly be in accord in calling her ‘creature’.

Who knows, thought Rebus, they might even be in bon accord.

The artist was neither temperamental nor stupid enough to insist on pressing charges and she bent to Rebus’s suggestion that the piece be withdrawn from the show. The pressure thereafter was on Lesley Jameson not to release the story to her father’s paper. Female solidarity won in the end, but it was a narrow victory.

Not much female solidarity elsewhere, thought Rebus. He made up a few mock headlines, the sort that would have pleased Doctor Curt. Feminist Artist’s Roll Models; Serena’s Harem of Husbands; The Anti-Knox Knocking Shop. All as he sat squeezed into a corner of the Sutherland Bar. Somewhere along the route, Cluzeau - now insisting that Rebus call him Jean-Pierre - had found half a dozen French fans, in town for the rugby and already in their cups. Then a couple of the Scottish fans had tagged along too and now there were about a dozen of them, standing at the bar and singing French rugby songs. Any minute now someone would tip an ice-bucket onto their head. He prayed it wouldn’t be Brian Holmes, who, shirt-tail out and tie hanging loose, was singing as lustily as anyone, despite the language barrier - or even, perhaps, because of it.

Childish, of course. But then that was men for you. Simple pleasures and simple crimes. Male revenge was simple almost to the point of being infantile: you went up to the bastard and you stuck your fist into his face or kneed him in the nuts. But the revenge of the female. Ah, that was recondite stuff. He wondered if it was finished now, or would Serena Davies face more plots, plots more subtle, or better executed, or more savage? He didn’t really want to think about it. Didn’t want to think about the hate in the four women’s voices, or the gleam in their eyes. He drank to forget. That was why men joined the Foreign Legion too, wasn’t it? To forget. Or was it?

He was buggered if he could remember. But something else niggled too. The women had laid claim to a lover’s jawline, a husband’s figure. But whose, he couldn’t help wondering, was the penis?

Someone was tugging at his arm, pulling him up. The glasses flew from the table and suddenly he was being hugged by Jean-Pierre.

‘John, my friend, John, tell me who this man Peter Zealous is that everyone is talking to me about?’

‘It’s Sellars,’ Rebus corrected. To tell or not to tell? He opened his mouth. There was the machine-gun sound of things spilling onto the bar behind him. Small, solid things. Next thing he knew, it was dark and his head was very cold and very wet.

‘I’ll get you for this, Brian,’ he said, removing the ice-bucket from his head. ‘So help me I will.’

There are Cluzeaus in and around Périgueux. Lots of them, and all spelt like that. You can find them in the Dordogne phone book. I did.

I.R.