Free 10 Great Rebus Novels (John Rebus) by Ian Rankin Page A

bread and tomato.
    ‘You’re a nutter,’ she cried, ‘you really are.’
    Rebus raised his eyebrows, smiling. Had he lost his touch? He had not. It was miraculous.
    Later, she needed to go to the bathroom. Rebus was changing a tape, and realising how limited his musical tastes were. Who were these groups that she kept referring to?
    ‘It’s in the hall,’ he said. ‘On the left.’
    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,