Exit Music (2007) Read Free Page B

Nobel Prize.”
    Clarke had closed the book. “There’s always the Russian consulate,” she suggested. Rebus gave a slow nod. They could hear a car drawing up outside.
    “That’ll be at least one of them,” the other attendant said. “Best get the lab ready, Lord Byron.”
    Simpson had reached out a hand for his book, but Clarke waved it at him.
    “Mind if I hang on to it, Mr. Simpson? Promise I won’t put it on eBay.”
    The young man seemed reluctant but was being prodded into action by his colleague. Clarke sealed the deal by slipping the book into her coat pocket. Rebus had turned to face the outer door, which was being hauled open by a puffy-eyed Professor Gates. Only a couple of steps behind him was Dr. Curt—the two pathologists had worked together so frequently that they often seemed to Rebus a single unit. Hard to imagine that outside of work they could ever lead separate, distinguishable lives.
    “Ah, John,” Gates said, proffering a hand as chilled as the room. “The night’s grown bitter. And here’s DS Clarke, too—looking forward, no doubt, to stepping out from the mentor’s shadow.”
    Clarke prickled but kept her mouth shut—no point in arguing that, as far as she was concerned, she’d long ago left Rebus’s shadow. Rebus himself offered a smile of support before shaking hands with the ashen-faced Curt. There had been a cancer scare eleven months back, and some of the man’s energy had failed to return, though he’d given up the cigarettes for good.
    “How are you, John?” Curt was asking. Rebus felt maybe that should have been his question, but he offered a reassuring nod.
    “I’m guessing box two,” Gates was saying, turning to his associate. “Deal or no deal?”
    “It’s number three actually,” Clarke told him. “We think he may be a Russian poet.”
    “Not Todorov?” Curt asked, one eyebrow raised. Clarke showed him the book, and the eyebrow went a little higher.
    “Wouldn’t have taken you for a poetry lover, Doc,” Rebus commented.
    “Are we in the midst of a diplomatic incident?” Gates snorted. “Should we be checking for poisoned umbrella tips?”
    “Looks like he was mugged by a psycho,” Rebus explained. “Unless there’s a poison out there that strips the skin away from your face.”
    “Necrotizing fasciitis,” Curt muttered.
    “Arising from Streptococcus pyogenes, ” Gates added. “Not that I think we’ve ever seen it.” To Rebus’s ears, he sounded genuinely disappointed.
    Blunt force trauma: the police doctor had been spot on. Rebus sat in his living room, not bothering to switch on any lights, and smoked a cigarette. Having banned nicotine from workplaces and pubs, the government was now looking at banning it from the home, too. Rebus wondered how they’d go about enforcing that . A John Hiatt album was on the CD player, volume kept low. The track was called “Lift Up Every Stone.” All his time on the force, he hadn’t done anything else. But Hiatt was using stones to build a wall, while Rebus just peered beneath them at the tiny dark things scuttling around. He wondered if the lyric was a poem, and what the Russian poet would have made of Rebus’s riff on it. They’d tried phoning the consulate, but no one had answered, not even a machine, so they’d decided to call it a night. Siobhan had been dozing off during the autopsy, much to Gates’s irritation. Rebus’s fault: he’d been keeping her late at the office, trying to get her interested in all those cold cases, all the ones still niggling him, hoping that maybe they would keep his memory warm . . .
    Rebus had dropped her home and then driven through the silent pre-dawn streets to Marchmont, an eventual parking space, and his second-floor tenement flat. The living room had a bay window, and that was where his chair was. He was promising himself he’d make it as far as the bedroom, but there was a spare duvet behind the sofa just in case. He had a bottle of whisky,