by Ian Rankin
‘Cosy,’ Rebus commented, sipping the dry perfume of Earl Grey.
Charlie sat on the sofa, crossing his legs, almost relaxed. Yes, he knew this room well, was slipping into it the way one slipped into an old, comfortable pair of trousers. He might have spoken, but Vanderhyde seemed to want to put his points forward first.
‘Charles has told me all about it, Inspector Rebus. Well, when I say that, I mean he has told me as much as he deems it necessary for me to know.’ Charlie glared at his uncle, who merely smiled, knowing the frown was there. ‘I’ve already told Charles that he should talk to you again. He seems unwilling. Seemed unwilling. Now the choice has been taken away from him.’
‘How did you know?’ asked Charlie, so much more at home here, Rebus was thinking, than in some ugly squat in Pilmuir.
‘Know?’ said Rebus.
‘Know where to find me? Know about Uncle Matthew?’
‘Oh, that.’ Rebus picked at invisible threads on his trousers. ‘Your essay. It was sitting on your desk. Handy that.’
‘What?’
‘Doing an essay on the occult, and having a warlock in the family.’
Vanderhyde chuckled. ‘Not a warlock, Inspector. Never that. I think I’ve only ever met one warlock, one true warlock, in my whole life. Local he is, mind.’
‘Uncle Matthew,’ Charlie interrupted, ‘I don’t think the Inspector wants to hear –’
‘On the contrary,’ said Rebus. ‘It’s the reason I’m here.’
‘Oh.’ Charlie sounded disappointed. ‘Not to arrest me then?’
‘No, though you deserve a good slap for that bruise you gave Tracy.’
‘She deserved it!’ Charlie’s voice betrayed petulance, his lower lip filling out like a child’s.
‘You struck a woman?’ Vanderhyde sounded aghast. Charlie looked towards him, then away, as if unable to hold a stare that didn’t – couldn’t – exist.
‘Yes,’ Charlie hissed. ‘But look.’ He pulled the polo-necked jumper down from around his neck. There were two huge weals there, the result of prising fingernails.
‘Nice scratches,’ Rebus commented for the blind man’s benefit. ‘You got the scratches, she got a bruise on her eye. I suppose that makes it neck and neck in the eye-for-an-eye stakes.’
Vanderhyde chuckled again, leaning forward slightly on his cane.
‘Very good, Inspector,’ he said. ‘Yes, very good. Now –’ he lifted the mug to his lips and blew. ‘What can we do for you?’
‘I saw your name in Charlie’s essay. There was a footnote quoting you as an interview source. I reckoned that made you local and reasonably extant, and there aren’t too many –’
‘– Vanderhydes in the phone book,’ finished the old man. ‘Yes, you said.’
‘But you’ve already answered most of my questions. Concerning the black magic connection, that is. However, I would just like to clear up a few points with your nephew.’
‘Would you like me to –?’ Vanderhyde was already rising to his feet. Rebus waved for him to stay, then realised the gesture was in vain. However, Vanderhyde had already paused, as though anticipating the action.
‘No, sir,’ Rebus said now, as Vanderhyde seated himself again. ‘This’ll only take a couple of minutes.’ He turned to Charlie, who was almost sinking into the deep padded cushions of the sofa. ‘So, Charlie,’ Rebus began. ‘I’ve got you down this far as thief, and as accessory to murder. Any comments to make?’
Rebus watched with pleasure as the young man’s face lost its tea-like colour and became more like uncooked pastry. Vanderhyde twitched, but with pleasure, too, rather than discomfort. Charlie looked from one man to the other, seeking friendly eyes. The eyes he saw were blind to his pleas.
‘I – I –’
‘Yes?’ Rebus prompted.
‘I’ll just fill my cup,’ Charlie said, as though only these five meagre words were left in his vocabulary. Rebus sat back patiently. Let the bugger fill and refill and boil another brew. But he’d have his answers. He’d make Charlie sweat tannin, and he’d have his answers.
‘Is Fife always this bleak?’
‘Only the more picturesque bits. The rest’s no’ bad at a’.’
The SSPCA officer was guiding Brian Holmes across a twilit field, the area around almost completely flat, a dead tree breaking the monotony. A fierce wind was blowing, and it was a cold wind, too. The SSPCA man had called it an ‘aist wind’. Holmes assumed that ‘aist’ translated as ‘east’, and that the man’s sense of geography was somewhat askew, since the wind was clearly blowing from the west.
The landscape proved deceptive. Seeming flat, the land was actually slanting. They were climbing a slope, not steep but perceptible. Holmes was reminded of some hill somewhere in Scotland, the ‘electric brae’, where a trick of natural perspective made you think you were going uphill when in fact you were travelling down. Or was it vice versa? Somehow, he didn’t think his companion was the man to ask.
Soon, over the rise, Holmes could see the black, grainy landscape of a disused mineworking, shielded from the field by a line of trees. The mines around here were all worked out, had been since the 1960s. Now, money had appeared from somewhere, and the long-smouldering bings were being levelled, their mass used to fill the chasms left by surface mining. The mine buildings themselves were being dismantled, the landscape reseeded, as though the history of mining in Fife had never existed.
This much Brian Holmes knew. His uncles had been miners. Not here perhaps, but nevertheless they had been great deep workings of information and anecdote. The child Brian had stored away every detail.
‘Grim,’ he said to himself as he followed the SSPCA officer down a slight slope towards the trees, where a cluster of half a dozen men stood, shuffling, turning at the sound of approach. Holmes introduced himself to the most senior-looking of the plain-clothes men.
‘DC Brian Holmes, sir.’
The man smiled, nodded, then jerked his head in the direction of a much younger man. Everyone, uniformeds, plain-clothes, even the SSPCA Judas, was smiling, enjoying Holmes’s mistake. He felt a rush of blood to his face, and was rooted to the spot. The young man saw his discomfort and stuck out a hand.
‘I’m DS Hendry, Brian. Sometimes I’m in charge here.’ There were more smiles. Holmes joined in this time.
‘Sorry, sir.’
‘I’m flattered actually. Nice to think I’m so young-looking, and Harry here’s so old.’ He nodded towards the man Holmes had mistaken for the senior officer. ‘Right, Brian. I’ll just tell you what I’ve been telling the lads. We have a good tip that there’s going to be a dog fight here tonight. It’s secluded, half a mile from the main road, a mile from the nearest house. Perfect, really. There’s a track the lorries take from the main road up to the site here. That’s the way they’ll come in, probably three or four vans carrying the dogs, and then who knows how many cars with the punters. If it gets to Ibrox proportions, we’ll call in reinforcements. As it is, we’re not bothered so much about nabbing punters as about catching the handlers themselves. The word is that Davy Brightman’s the main man. Owns a couple of scrap yards in Kirkcaldy and Methil. We know he keeps a few pit bulls, and we think he fights them.’
There was a blast of static from one of the radios, then a call sign. DS Hendry responded.
‘Do you have a Detective Constable Holmes with you?’ came the message. Hendry stared at Holmes as he handed him the radio. Holmes could only look apologetic.
‘DC Holmes speaking.’
‘DC Holmes, we’ve a message for you.’
‘Go ahead,’ said Holmes.
‘It’s to do with a Miss Nell Stapleton.’
Sitting in the hospital waiting room, eating chocolate from a vending machine, Rebus went over the day’s events in his mind. Remembering the incident with Tracy in the car, his scrotum began to rise up into his body in an act of self-protection. Painful still. Like a double hernia, not that he’d ever had one.
But the
afternoon had been very interesting indeed. Vanderhyde had been interesting. And Charlie, well, Charlie had sung like a bird.
‘What is it you want to ask me?’ he had said, bringing more tea into the living room.
‘I’m interested in time, Charlie. Your uncle has already told me that he’s not interested in time. He isn’t ruled by it, but policemen are. Especially in a case like this. You see, the chronology of events isn’t quite right in my mind. That’s what I want to clear up, if possible.’
‘All right,’ Charlie said. ‘How can I help?’
‘You were at Ronnie’s that night?’
‘Yes, for a while.’
‘And you left to look for some party or other?’
‘That’s right.’
‘Leaving Neil in the house with Ronnie?’
‘No, he’d left by then.’
‘You didn’t know, of course, that Neil was Ronnie’s brother?’
The look of surprise on Charlie’s face seemed authentic, but then Rebus knew him for an accomplished actor, and was taking nothing for granted, not any more.
‘No, I didn’t know that. Shit, his brother. Why didn’t he want any of us to meet him?’
‘Neil and I are in the same profession,’ Rebus explained. Charlie just smiled and shook his head. Vanderhyde was leaning back thoughtfully in his chair, like a meticulous juror at some trial.
‘Now,’ Rebus continued, ‘Neil says he left quite early. Ronnie was being uncommunicative.’
‘I can guess why.’
‘Why?’
‘Easy. He’d just scored, hadn’t he? He hadn’t seen any stuff for ages, and suddenly he’d scored.’ Charlie suddenly remembered that his aged uncle was listening, and stopped short, looking towards the old man. Vanderhyde, shrewd as ever, seemed to sense this, and waved his hand regally before him, as if to say, I’ve been too long on this planet and can’t be shocked any more.
‘I think you’re right,’ Rebus said to Charlie. ‘One hundred percent. So, in an empty house, Ronnie shoots up. The stuffs lethal. When Tracy comes in, she finds him in his room –’
‘So she says,’ interrupted Charlie. Rebus nodded, acknowledging his scepticism.
‘Let’s accept for the moment that’s what happened. He’s dead, or seems so to her. She panics, and runs off. Right. So far so good. Now it begins to get hazy, and this is where I need your help, Charlie. Thereafter, someone moves Ronnie’s body downstairs. I don’t know why. Maybe they were just playing silly buggers, or, as Mr Vanderhyde put it so succinctly, trying to muddy the water. Anyway, around this stage in the chronology, a second packet of white powder appears. Tracy only saw one –’ Rebus saw that Charlie was about to interrupt again ‘– so she says. So, Ronnie had one packet and shot up with it. When he died, his body came downstairs and another packet magically appeared. This new packet contains good stuff, not the poison Ronnie used on himself. And, to add a little more to the concoction, Ronnie’s camera disappears, to turn up later in your squat, Charlie, in your room, and in your black polythene bag.’
Charlie had stopped looking at Rebus. He was looking at the floor, at his mug, at the teapot. His eyes still weren’t on Rebus when he spoke.
‘Yes, I took it.’
‘You took the camera?’
‘I just said I did, didn’t I?’
‘Okay.’ Rebus’s voice was neutral. Charlie’s smouldering shame might at any moment catch light and ignite into anger. ‘When did you take it?’
‘Well, I didn’t exactly stop to look at my watch.’
‘Charles!’ Vanderhyde’s voice was loud, the word coming from his mouth like a bite. Charlie took notice. He straightened in his chair, reduced to some childhood fear of this imposing creature, his uncle the magician.
Rebus cleared his throat. The taste of Earl Grey was thick on his tongue. ‘Was there anyone in the house when you got back?’
‘No. Well, yes, if you’re counting Ronnie.’
‘Was he upstairs or down?’
‘He was at the top of the stairs, if you must know. Just lying there, like he’d been trying to come down them. I thought he was crashed out. But he didn’t look right. I mean, when someone’s sleeping, there’s some kind of movement. But Ronnie was . . . rigid. His skin was cold, damp.’
‘And he was at the top of the stairs?’
‘Yes.’
‘What did you do then?’
‘Well, I knew he was dead. And it was like I was dreaming. That sounds stupid, but it was like that. I know now that I was just trying to shut it out. I went into Ronnie’s room.’
‘Was the syringe jar there?’
‘I can’t remember.’
‘Never mind. Go on.’
‘Well, I knew that when Tracy got back –’
‘Yes?’
‘God, this is going to make me sound like a monster.’
‘What is it?’
‘Well, I knew that when she came back, she’d see Ronnie was dead and grab what she could of his. I knew she would, I just felt it. So I took something I thought he’d have wanted me to have.’
‘For sentimental reasons then?’ asked Rebus archly.
‘Not totally,’ Charlie admitted. Rebus had a sudden cooling thought: this is going too easily. ‘It was the only thing Ronnie had that was worth any money.’
Rebus nodded. Yes, that was more like it. Not that Charlie was short of a few bob; he could always rely on Uncle Matthew. But it was the illicit nature of the act that appealed. Something Ronnie would have wanted him to have. Some chance.
‘So you lifted the camera?’ Rebus said. Charlie nodded. ‘Then you left?’
‘Went straight back to my squat. Somebody said Tracy had come looking for me. Said she’d been in a right state. So I assumed she already knew about Ronnie.’
‘And she hadn’t made off with the camera. She’d come looking for you instead.’
‘Yes.’ Charlie seemed almost contrite. Almost. Rebus wondered what Vanderhyde was making of all this.
‘What about the name Hyde, does it mean anything to you?’
‘A character in Robert Louis Stevenson.’
‘Apart from that.’
Charlie shrugged.
‘What about someone called Edward?’
‘A character in Robert Louis Stevenson.’
‘I don’t understand.’
‘Sorry, I’m being facetious. Edward is Hyde’s first name in Jekyll and Hyde. No, I don’t know anyone called Edward.’
‘Fair enough. Do you want to know something, Charlie?’
‘What?’
Rebus looked to Vanderhyde, who sat impassively. ‘Actually, I think your uncle already knows what I’m going to say.’
Vanderhyde smiled. ‘Indeed. Correct me if I’m wrong, Inspector Rebus, but you were about to say that, the young man’s corpse having moved from the bedroom to the stairs, you can only assume that the person who moved the body was actually in the house when Charles arrived.’
Charlie’s jaw dropped open. Rebus had never witnessed the effect in real life before.
‘Quite right,’ he said. ‘I’d say you were lucky, Charlie. I’d say that someone was moving the body downstairs and heard you arrive. Then they hid in one of the other rooms, maybe even that stinking bathroom, until you’d left. They were in the house all the time you were.’
Charlie swallowed. Then closed his mouth. Then let his head fall forward and began to weep. Not quite silently, so that his uncle caught the action, and smiled, nodding towards Rebus with satisfaction.
Rebus finished the chocolate. It had tasted of antiseptic, the same strong flavour of the corridor outside, the wards themselves, and this waiting room, where anxious faces buried themselves in old colour supplements and tried to look interested for more than a second or two. The door opened and Holmes came in, looking anxious and exhausted. He’d had the distance of a forty-minute car journey in which to mentally live his worst fears, and the result was carved into his face. Rebus knew that swi
ft treatment was needed.
‘She’s fine. You can see her whenever you like. They’re keeping her in overnight for no good reason at all, and she’s got a broken nose.’
‘A broken nose?’
‘That’s all. No concussion, no blurred vision. A good old broken nose, curse of the bare-knuckle fighter.’
Rebus thought for one moment that Holmes was about to take offence at his levity. But then relief flooded the younger man and he smiled, his shoulders relaxing, head dropping a little as though from a sense of anticlimax, albeit a welcome one.
‘So,’ Rebus said, ‘do you want to see her?’
‘Yes.’
‘Come on, I’ll take you.’ He placed a hand on Holmes’s shoulder and guided him out of the door again.
‘But how did you know?’ Holmes asked as they walked up the corridor.
‘Know what?’
‘Know it was Nell? Know about Nell and me?’
‘Well now, you’re a detective, Brian. Think about it.’
Rebus could see Holmes’s mind take on the puzzle. He hoped the process was therapeutic. Finally, Holmes spoke.
‘Nell’s got no family, so she asked for me.’
‘Well, she wrote asking for you. The broken nose makes it hard to understand what she’s saying.’
Holmes nodded dully. ‘But I couldn’t be located, and you were asked if you knew where I was.’
‘That’s close enough. Well done. How was Fife anyway? I only get back there once a year.’ April 28th, he thought to himself.
‘Fife? It was okay. I’d to leave before the bust. That was a shame. And I don’t think I exactly impressed the team I was supposed to be part of.’
‘Who was in charge?’
‘A young DS called Hendry.’
Rebus nodded. ‘I know him. I’m surprised you don’t, at least by reputation.’
Holmes shrugged. ‘I just hope they nab those bastards.’
Rebus had stopped outside the door of a ward.
‘This it?’ Holmes asked. Rebus nodded.
‘Want me to come in with you?’
Holmes stared at his superior with something approaching gratitude, then shook his head.
