Ian Rankin - Knots And Crosses

When she returned, more jazz was playing, the music at times almost too low to be heard, and Rebus was back in his chair.

‘What’s that room across from the bathroom, John?’

‘Well,’ he said, pouring coffee, ‘it used to be my daughter’s, but now it’s just full of junk. I never use it.’

‘When did your wife and you split up?’

‘Not as long ago as we should have. I mean that seriously.’

‘How old is your daughter?’ She sounded maternal now, domestic; no longer the acid single woman or the professional.

‘Nearly twelve,’ he said. ‘Nearly twelve.’

‘It’s a difficult age.’

‘Aren’t they all.’

When the wine was finished and the coffee was down to its last half-cup, one or the other of them suggested bed. They exchanged sheepish smiles and ritual promises about not promising anything, and, the contract agreed and signed without words, went to the bedroom.

It all started well enough. They were mature, had played this game before too often to let the little fumblings and apologies get to them. Rebus was impressed by her agility and invention, and hoped that she was being impressed by his. She arched her spine to meet him, seeking the ultimate and unobtainable ingress.

‘John,’ pushing at him now.

‘What is it?’

‘Nothing. I’m just going to turn over, okay?’

He knelt up, and she turned her back to him, sliding her knees down the bed, clawing at the smooth wall with her fingertips, waiting. Rebus, in the slight pause, looked around at the room, the pale blue light shading his books, the edges of the mattress.

‘Oh, a futon,’ she had said, pulling her clothes off quickly. He had smiled in the silence.

He was losing it.

‘Come on, John. Come on.’

He bent towards her, resting his face on her back. He had talked about books with Gordon Reeve when they had been captured. Talked endlessly, it seemed, reading to him from his memory. In close confinement, torture a closed door away. But they had endured. It was a mark of the training.

‘John, oh, John.’

Gill raised herself up and turned her head towards his, seeking a kiss. Gill, Gordon Reeve, seeking something from him, something he couldn’t give. Despite the training, despite the years of practice, the years of work and persistence.

‘John?’

But he was elsewhere now, back inside the training camp, back trudging across a muddy field, the Boss screaming at him to speed up, back in that cell, watching a cockroach pace the begrimed floor, back in the helicopter, a bag over his head, the spray of the sea salty in his ears …

‘John?’

She turned round now, awkwardly, concerned. She saw the tears about to start from his eyes. She held his head to her.

‘Oh, John. It doesn’t matter. Really, it doesn’t.’

And a little later: ‘Don’t you like it that way?’

They lay together afterwards, he guiltily, and cursing the facts of his confusion and the fact that he had run out of cigarettes, she drowsily, caring still, whispering bits and pieces of her life-story to him.

After a while, Rebus forgot to feel guilty: there was nothing, after all, to feel guilty about. He felt merely the distinct lack of nicotine. And he remembered that he was seeing Sammy in six hours’ time, and that her mother would instinctively know what he, John Rebus, had been up to these past few hours. She was cursed with a witch-like ability to see into the soul, and she had seen his occasional bouts of crying at very close quarters indeed. Partly, he supposed, that had been responsible for their break-up.

‘What time is it, John?’

‘Four. Maybe a little after.’

He slid his arm from beneath her and rose to leave the room.

‘Do you want anything to drink?’ he said.

‘What did you have in mind?’

‘Coffee maybe. It’s hardly worth going to sleep now, but if you feel sleepy, don’t mind me.’

‘No, I’ll take a cup of coffee.’

Rebus knew from her voice, from its slurred growliness, that she would be fast asleep by the time he reached the kitchen.

‘Okay,’ he said.

He made himself a cup of dark, sweet coffee and slumped into a chair with it. He turned on the living-room’s small gas fire and began to read one of his books. He was seeing Sammy today, and his mind wandered from the story in front of him, a tale of intrigue which he could not remember having started. Sammy was nearly twelve. She had survived many years of danger, and now, for her, other dangers were imminent. The perverts in watch, the ogling old men, the teenage cock-fighters, would be supplemented by the new urges of boys her age, and boys she already knew as friends would become sudden and forceful hunters. How would she cope with it? If her mother had anything to do with it, she would cope admirably, biting in a clinch and ducking on the ropes. Yes, she would survive without her father’s advice and protection.

The kids were harder these days. He thought back to his own youth. He had been Mickey’s big brother, fighting battles for the two of them, going home to watch his brother coddled by his father. He had pushed himself further into the cushions on the settee, hoping to disappear one day. Then they’d be sorry. Then they’d be sorry …

At seven-thirty he went through to the musky bedroom, which smelt two parts sex to one part animal lair, and kissed Gill awake.

‘It’s time,’ he said. ‘Get up, I’ll run you a bath.’

She smelt good, like a baby on a fireside towel. He admired the shapes of her twisted body as they awoke to the thin, watery sunlight. She had a good body all right. No real stretch-marks. Her legs unscarred. Her hair just tousled enough to be inviting.

‘Thanks.’

She had to be at HQ by ten in order to co-ordinate the next press release. There could be no rest. The case was still growing like a cancer. Rebus filled the bath, wincing at the rim of grime around it. He needed a cleaning-lady. Perhaps he could get Gill to do it.

Another unworthy thought, forgive me.

Which brought him to think of church-going. It was another Sunday, after all, and for weeks he had been promising himself that he would try again, would find another church in the city and would try all over again.

He hated congregational religion. He hated the smiles and the manners of the Sunday-dressed Scottish Protestant, the emphasis on a communion not with God but with your neighbours. He had tried seven churches of varying denominations in Edinburgh, and had found none to be to his liking. He had tried sitting for two hours at home of a Sunday, reading the Bible and saying a prayer, but somehow that did not work either. He was caught; a believer outwith his belief. Was a personal faith good enough for God? Perhaps, but not his personal faith, which seemed to depend upon guilt and his feelings of hypocrisy whenever he sinned, a guilt assuaged only by public show.

‘Is my bath ready, John?’

She re-tousled her hair, naked and confident, her glasses left behind in the bedroom. John Rebus felt his soul to be imperilled. Sod it, he thought, catching her around the hips. Guilt could wait. Guilt could always wait.

He had to mop up the bathroom floor afterwards, empirical evidence that Archimedes’ displacement of water had been proved once again. The bath-water had flowed like milk and honey, and Rebus had nearly drowned.

Still, he felt better now.

‘Lord, I am a poor sinner,’ he whispered, as Gill dressed. She looked stern and efficient when she opened the front-door, almost as if she had been on a twenty-minute official visit.

‘Can we fix a date?’ he suggested.

‘We can,’ she replied, looking through her bag. Rebus was curious to know why women always did that, especially in films and thrillers, after they had been sleeping with a man. Did women suspect their sleeping partners of rifling their purses?