Ian Rankin - Knots And Crosses

He alone, all alone

And the screaming

Screaming

Rebus became aware of the gurgling sounds beneath him just before his head started to fry. He fell over onto the gasping figure and lost consciousness. It was like a switch being flipped.

He awoke in a white room. It reminded him very much of the hospital room in which he had awoken after his nervous breakdown all those years ago. There were muffled noises from outside. He sat up, his head throbbing. What had happened? Christ, that woman, that poor woman. He had tried to kill her! Drunk, way too drunk. Merciful God, he had tried to strangle her, hadn’t he? Why in God’s name had he done that ?Why?

A doctor pushed open his door.

‘Ah, Mister Rebus. Good, you’re awake. We’re about to move you into one of the wards. How do you feel?’

His pulse was taken.

‘Simple exhaustion, we think. Simple nervous exhaustion. Your friend who called for the ambulance-’

‘My friend?’

‘Yes, she said that you just collapsed. And from what we can gather from your employers, you’ve been working pretty hard on this dreadful murder hunt. Simple exhaustion. What you need is a break.’

‘Where’s my … my friend?’

‘No idea. At home, I expect.’

‘And according to her, I just collapsed?’

‘That’s right.’

Rebus felt immediate relief flooding through him. She had not told them. She had not told them. Then his head began to pulse again. The doctor’s wrists were hairy and scrubbed clean. He slipped a thermometer into Rebus’s mouth, smiling. Did he know what Rebus had been doing prior to the blackout? Or had his friend dressed him before calling the ambulance? He had to contact the woman. He didn’t know where she stayed, not exactly, but the ambulancemen would know, and he could check.

Exhaustion. Rebus did not feel exhausted. He was beginning to feel rested and, though slightly unnerved, quite unworried about life. Had they given him anything while he was asleep?

‘Can I see a newspaper?’ he muttered past the thermometer.

‘I’ll get an orderly to fetch you one. Is there anyone you wish us to contact? Any close relative or friend?’

Rebus thought of Michael.

‘No,’ he said, ‘there’s nobody to contact. All I want is a newspaper.’

‘Fair enough.’ The thermometer was removed, the details noted.

‘How long do you want to keep me in here?’

‘Two or three days. I may want you to see an analyst.’

‘Forget the analyst. I’ll need some books to read.’

‘We’ll see what we can do.’

Rebus settled back then, having decided to let things take their course. He would lie here, resting though he needed no rest, and would let the rest of them worry about the murder case. Sod them all. Sod Anderson. Sod Wallace. Sod Gill Templer.

But then he remembered his hands slipping around that ageing throat, and he shivered. It was as though his mind were not his own. Had he been about to kill that woman? Should he see the analyst after all? The questions made his headache worse. He tried not to think about anything at all, but three figures kept coming back to him: his old friend Gordon Reeve, his new lover Gill Templer, and the woman he had betrayed her for, and nearly strangled. They danced in his head until the dance became blurred. Then he fell asleep.

‘John!’

She walked quickly to his bed, fruit and vitamin-drink in her hands. She had make-up on her face, and was wearing strictly off-duty clothes. She pecked his cheek, and he could smell her French perfume. He could also see down the front of her silk blouse. He felt a little guilty.

‘Hello, D.I. Templer,’ he said. ‘Here,’ lifting one edge of the bedcover, ‘get in.’

She laughed, dragging across a stern-looking chair. Other visitors were entering the ward, their smiles and quiet voices redolent of illness, an illness Rebus did not feel.

‘How are you, John?’

‘Terrible. What have you brought me?’

‘Grapes, bananas, diluting orange. Nothing very imaginative, I’m afraid.’

Rebus picked a grape from the bunch and popped it into his mouth, setting aside the trashy novel in which he had been painfully involved.

‘I don’t know, Inspector, the things I have to do to get a date with you.’ Rebus shook his head wearily. Gill was smiling, but nervously.

‘We were worried about you, John. What happened?’

‘I fainted. In the home of a friend, by all accounts. It’s nothing very serious. I have a few weeks to live.’

Gill’s smile was warm.

‘They say it’s overwork.’ Then she paused. ‘What’s all this “Inspector” stuff?’

Rebus shrugged, then looked sulky. His guilt was mixing with the remembrance of that snub he had been given, that snub which had started the whole ball rolling. He turned into a patient again, weakly slumping against his pillow.

‘I’m a very ill man, Gill. Too ill to answer questions.’

‘Well, in that case I won’t bother to slip you the cigarettes sent by Jack Morton.’

Rebus sat up again.

‘Bless that man. Where are they?’

She brought two packs from her jacket pocket and slipped them beneath the bedclothes. He gripped her hand.

‘I missed you, Gill.’ She smiled, and did not withdraw the hand.

Limitless visiting-time being a prerogative of the police, Gill stayed for two hours, talking about her past, asking him about his own. She had been born on an air-force base in Wiltshire, just after the war. She told Rebus that her father had been an engineer in the RAF.

‘My dad,’ Rebus said, ‘was in the Army during the war. I was conceived while he was on one of his last leaves. He was a stage hypnotist by profession.’ People usually raised an eyebrow at that, but not Gill Templer. ‘He used to work the music-halls and theatres, doing summer stints in Blackpool and Ayr and places like that, so we were always sure of a summer holiday away from Fife.’

She sat with her head cocked to one side, content to be told stories. The ward was quiet once the other visitors had obeyed the leaving-bell. A nurse pushed around a trolley with a huge battered pot of tea on it. Gill was given a cup, the nurse smiling at her in sisterhood.

‘She’s a nice kid, that nurse,’ said Rebus, relaxed. He had been given two pills, one blue and one brown, and they were making him drowsy. ‘She reminds me of a girl I knew when I was in the Paras.’

‘How long were you in the Paras, John?’

‘Six years. No, eight years it was.’

‘What made you leave?’

What made him leave? Rhona had asked him the same question over and over, her curiosity piqued by the feeling that he had something to hide, some monstrous skeleton in his closet.

‘I don’t know really. It’s hard to remember that far back. I was picked for special training and I didn’t like it.’

And this was the truth. He had no use for memories of his training, the reek of fear and mistrust, the screaming, that screaming in his memory. Let me out. The echo of solitary.

‘Well,’ said Gill, ‘if my memory serves me right, I’ve got a case waiting for me back at base-camp.’

‘That reminds me,’ he said, ‘I think I saw your friend last night. The reporter. Stevens, wasn’t it? He was in a pub the same time I was. Strange.’

‘Not so very strange. That’s his kind of hunting-ground. Funny, he’s a bit like you in some ways. Not as sexy though.’ She smiled and pecked his cheek again, rising from the metal chair. ‘I’ll try to drop in again before they let you out, but you know what it’s like. I can’t make any concrete promises, D.S. Rebus.’

Standing, she seemed taller than Rebus had imagined her. Her hair fell forward onto his face for another kiss, full on the lips this time, and he staring at the dark cleft between her breasts. He felt a little tired, so tired. He forced his eyes to remain open while she walked away, her heels clacking on the tiled floor while the nurses floated past like ghosts on their rubber-soled shoes. He pushed himself up so that he could watch her legs retreat. She had nice legs. He had remembered that much. He remembered them gripping his sides, the feet resting on his buttocks. He remembered her hair falling across the pillow like a Turner seascape. He remembered her voice hissing in his ears, that hissing. Oh yes, John, oh, John, yes, yes, yes.