A Good Hanging: Short Stories (Inspector Rebus Novels) by Rankin Ian

Author:Rankin, Ian [Rankin, Ian]
Language: eng
Format: mobi
ISBN: 9780312980009
Publisher: St. Martin's Press
Published: 2010-12-06T16:00:00+00:00

IV

There the grin promptly vanished. There was a message marked URGENT from the police pathologist asking Rebus to call him. Rebus pressed the seven digits on his new-fangled telephone. The thing had a twenty-number memory and somewhere in that memory was the single-digit number that would connect him with the pathologist, but Rebus could never remember which number was which and he kept losing the sheet of paper with all the memory numbers on it.

“It’s four,” Holmes reminded him, just as he’d come to the end of dialling. He was throwing Holmes a kind of half-scowl when the pathologist himself answered.

“Oh, yes, Rebus. Hello there. It’s about this hanging victim of yours. I’ve had a look at him. Manual strangulation, I’d say.”

“Yes?” Rebus, his thoughts on Marie Hivert, was waiting for some punch-line.

“I don’t think you understand me, Inspector. Manual strangulation. From the Latin manus, meaning the hand. From the deep body temperature, I’d say he died between midnight and two in the morning. He was strung up on that contraption some time thereafter. Bruising around the throat is definitely consistent with thumb-pressure especially.”

“You mean someone strangled him?” Rebus said, really for Holmes’ benefit.

“I think that’s what I’ve been telling you, yes. If I find out anything more, I’ll let you know.”

“Are the forensics people with you?”

“I’ve contacted the lab. They’re sending someone over with some bags, but to be honest, we started off on this one thinking it was simple suicide. We may have inadvertently destroyed the tinier scraps of evidence.”

“Not to worry,” Rebus said, a father-confessor now, easing guilt. “Just get what you can.”

He put down the receiver and stared at his Detective Constable. Or, rather, stared through him. Holmes knew that there were times for talking and times for silence, and that this fell into the latter category. It took Rebus a full minute to snap out of his reverie.

“Well I’ll be buggered,” he said. “We’ve been talking with a murderer this morning, Brian. A coldblooded one at that. And we didn’t even know it. I wonder whatever happened to the famous police ‘nose’ for a villain. Any idea?”

Holmes frowned. “About what happened to the famous police ‘nose’?”

“No,” cried Rebus, exasperated. “I mean, any idea who did it?”

Holmes shrugged, then brought the Fringe programme back out from where it had been rolled up in his jacket pocket. He started turning pages. “I think,” he said, “there’s an Agatha Christie playing somewhere. Maybe we could get a few ideas?”

Rebus’s eyes lit up. He snatched the programme from Holmes’ hands. “Never mind Agatha Christie,” he said, starting through the programme himself. “What we want is Shakespeare.”

“What, Macbeth! Hamlet! King Lear”

“No, not a tragedy, a good comedy, something to cheer the soul. Ah, here we go.” He stabbed the open page with his finger. ”Twelfth Night. That’s the play for us, Brian. That’s the very play for us.”

The problem, really, in the end was: which Twelfth Night! There were three on offer, plus another at the Festival proper. One of

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