Widow’s Peak by Ian Rankin

Prologue

The man from Stirling was rapidly losing patience with his companion, the Fifer. They’d been at this for 2 hours now, and the night air was “colder than a witch’s tit” as the Fifer had put it, more than once. For a corpse there was no doubting her beauty, mused the man from Sterling as he paused to rub his handkerchief over his by now drenched widow’s peak. His mother would have called her a “wee bobby dazzler”. Such a shame what had to be done had to be done, but the Boss wasn’t one to take no for an answer. Still, with any luck they’d be halfway to Manchester before any alarm was raised. “What the bloody helll are you doing now?” he hissed at the Fifer, who for some reason was fumbling at the blue neck of the girl. “Nae use to her noo, eh?” came the reply as the Fifer snapped off the girl’s necklace and stuffed it into the pocket of his filthy tracksuit bottoms. The man from Stirling merely shook his head and went back to digging the grave. He would deal with the Fifer later. 

1

Wee Tam drained his pint of Guiness and looked at John Rebus quizzically. “So, she was murdered tae fuck then, aye, the poor lassie?” Rebus, 3 pints and a double Laphroigh into his session at the Oxford bar, knew he should resist Tam’s drunken interrogation but something about the one-eared father of six’s demeanour was nagging at Rebus as he noticed Tam’s hands were shakier than usual. Maybe Tam could be of use for once in his wasted life? The older man gulped down the remnants of his own glass and tapped Tam on the beefy arm that boasted a rudimentary Hibernian tattoo, or rather a “Hibbies” tattoo. He thought better of mentioning it. “What have you heard about it then, Tam?” Rebus enquired. He was gasping for a smoke, but he had a sniff of a lead here, his first of a miserable week of endless busywork. 

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“Useless prick.” muttered Rebus to himself upon his return to the new flat in Tollcross, the encounter with Wee Tam having resulted only in a larger bill at the Oxford. The third floor property overlooked the independent Cameo cinema, but Rebus thought the last time he’d been to “the pictures”, as it was always known in his family, was a matinee screening of The French Connection sometime back in the 80s on a terrible date with Helen whatshername. Fishing in his coat pocket for his keys, Rebus noticed a crack in the door’s paintwork almost exactly halfway down, dividing it much like the old and new town of Auld Reekie itself, he thought. After missing the lock the first time, Rebus steadied himself and managed to get the door open on the second attempt. When he saw what was waiting for him inside he soon wished he hadn’t.