Hide And Seek ir-2

by Ian Rankin

  Cursing silently, he removed his socks, tossed them into the gutter, and walked back on bare feet towards the flat.

  Dectective Constable Brian Holmes was drinking tea. He had turned this into something of a ritual, holding the cup to his face and blowing on it, then sipping. Blowing then sipping. Swallowing. Then releasing a steamy breath of air. He was chilled tonight, as cold as any tramp on any park bench bed. He didn’t even have a newspaper, and the tea tasted revolting. It had come out of one or other of the thermos flasks, piping hot and smelling of plastic. The milk wasn’t of the freshest, but at least the brew was warming. Not warming enough to touch his toes, supposing he still had toes.

  ‘Anything happening?’ he hissed towards the SSPCA officer, who held binoculars to his eyes as though to hide his embarrassment.

  ‘Nothing,’ the officer whispered. It had been an anonymous tip-off. The third this month and, to be fair, the first non-starter. Dog fighting was back in vogue. Several ‘arenas’ had been found in the past three months, small dirt pits enclosed by lengths of sheet tin. Scrap yards seemed the main source of these arenas, which gave an added meaning to the term ‘scrap yard’. But tonight they were watching a piece of waste ground. Goods trains clattered past nearby, heading towards the centre of the city, but apart from that and the low hum of distant traffic, the place was dead. Yes, there was a makeshift pit all right. They’d taken a look at it in daylight, pretending to walk their own alsatian dogs, which were in fact police dogs. Pit bull terriers: that was what they used in the arenas. Brian Holmes had seen a couple of ex-combatants, their eyes maddened with pain and fear. He hadn’t stuck around for the vet with his lethal injection.

  ‘Hold on.’

  Two men were walking, hands in pockets, across the wilderness, picking their way carefully over the uneven surface, wary of sudden craters. They seemed to know where they were headed: straight towards the shallow pit. Once there, they took a final look around. Brian Holmes stared directly back at them, knowing he could not be seen. Like the SSPCA officer, he was crouching behind thick bracken, behind him one remaining wall of what had been a building of sorts. Though there was some light over towards the pit itself, there was precious little here, and so, as with a two-way mirror, he could see without being seen.

  ‘Got you,’ said the SSPCA man as the two men jumped down into the pit.

  ‘Wait …’ said Holmes, suddenly getting a funny feeling about all of this. The two men had begun to embrace, and their faces merged in a slow, lingering kiss as they sank down towards the ground.

  ‘Christ!’ exclaimed the SSPCA man.

  Holmes sighed, staring down at the damp, rock-hard earth beneath his knees.

  ‘I don’t think pit bulls enter the equation,’ he said. ‘Or if they do, bestiality rather than brutality might be the charge.’

  The SSPCA officer still held his binoculars to his eyes, horror-struck and riveted.

  ‘You hear stories,’ he said, ‘but you never … well … you know.’

  ‘Get to watch?’ Holmes suggested, getting slowly, painfully to his feet.

  He was talking with the night duty officer when the message came through. Inspector Rebus wanted a word.

  ‘Rebus? What does he want?’ Brian Holmes checked his watch. It was two fifteen a.m. Rebus was at home, and he had been told to phone him there. He used the duty officer’s telephone.

  ‘Hello?’ He knew John Rebus of course, had worked with him on several cases. Still, middle-of-the-night calls were something else entirely.

  ‘Is that you, Brian?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘Have you a sheet of paper? Write this down.’ Fumbling with pad and biro, Holmes thought he could hear music playing on the line. Something he recognised. The Beatles’ White Album. ‘Ready?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘Right. There was a junkie found dead in Pilmuir yesterday, or a couple of days ago now, strictly speaking. Overdose. Find out who the constables who found him were. Get them to come into my office at ten o’clock. Got that?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘Good. Now, when you’ve got the address where the body was found, I want you to pick up the keys from whoever’s got them and go to the house. Upstairs in one of the bedrooms there’s a wall covered in photographs. Some are of Edinburgh Castle. Take them with you and go to the local newspaper’s office. They’ll have files full of photographs. If you’re lucky they might even have a little old man on duty with a memory like an elephant. I want you to look for any photographs that have been published in the newspaper recently and look to have been taken from the same angle as the ones on the bedroom wall. Got that?’

  ‘Yes, sir,’ said Holmes, scribbling furiously.

  ‘Good. I want to know who took the newspaper photographs. There’ll be a sticker or something on the back of each print giving a name and address.’

  ‘Anything else, sir?’ It came out as sarcasm, meant or not.

  ‘Yes.’ Rebus seemed to drop his voice a decibel. ‘On the bedroom wall you’ll also find some photos of a young lady. I’d like to know more about her. She says her middle name is Tracy. That’s what she calls herself. Ask around, show the picture to anyone you think might have an inkling.’

  ‘Right, sir. One question.’

  ‘Go ahead.’

  ‘Why me? Why now? What’s all this in aid of?’

  ‘That’s three questions. I’ll answer as many of them as I can when I see you tomorrow afternoon. Be in my office at three.’

  And with that, the line went dead on Brian Holmes. He stared at the drunken rows of writing on his pad, his own shorthand of a week’s worth of work, delivered to him in a matter of minutes. The duty officer was reading it over his shoulder.

  ‘Rather you than me,’ he said with sincerity.

  John Rebus had chosen Holmes for a whole bundle of reasons, but mostly because Holmes didn’t know much about him. He wanted someone who would work efficiently, methodically, without raising too much fuss. Someone who didn’t know Rebus well enough to complain about being kept in the dark, about being used as a shunting engine. A message boy and a bloodhound and a dogsbody. Rebus knew that Holmes was gaining a reputation for efficiency and for not being a complaining sod. That was enough to be going on with.

  He carried the telephone back from the hall into the living room, placed it on the bookshelves, and went across to the hi-fi, where he switched off the tape machine, then the amplifier. He went to the window and looked out on an empty street whose lamplight was the colour of Red Leicester cheese. The image reminded him of the midnight snack he had promised himself a couple of hours ago, and he decided to make himself something in the kitchen. Tracy wouldn’t be wanting anything. He was sure of that. He stared at her as she lay along the settee, her head at an angle towards the floor, one hand across her stomach, the other hanging down to touch the wool carpet. Her eyes were unseeing slits, her mouth open in a pout, revealing a slight gap between her two front teeth. She had slept soundly as he had thrown a blanket over her, and was sleeping still, her breathing regular. Something niggled him, but he couldn’t think what it was. Hunger perhaps. He hoped the freezer would yield a pleasant surprise. But first he went to the window and looked out again. The street was absolutely dead, which was just how Rebus himself was feeling: dead but active. He picked Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde from the floor and carried it through to the kitchen.

  Wednesday

  The more it looks like Queer Street, the less I ask.

  Police Constables Harry Todd and Francis O’Rourke were standing outside Rebus’s office when he arrived next morning. They had been leaning against the wall, enjoying a lazy conversation, seemingly unconcerned that Rebus was twenty minutes late. He was damned if he was going to apologise. He noted with satisfaction that as he reached the top of the stairs they pulled themselves up straight and shut their mouths.

  That was a good start.

  He opened the door, walked into the room, and closed the door again. Let
them stew for another minute. Now they’d have something really to talk about. He had checked with the desk sergeant, and Brian Holmes wasn’t in the station. He took a slip of paper from his pocket and rang Holmes’s house. The telephone rang and rang. Holmes must be out working.

  The good run was continuing.

  There was mail on his desk. He flipped through it, stopping only to extract a note from Superintendent Watson. It was an invitation to lunch. Today. At twelve thirty. Hell. He was meeting Holmes at three. The lunch was with some of the businessmen who were putting up the hard cash for the drugs campaign. Hell. And it was in The Eyrie, which meant wearing a tie and a clean shirt. Rebus looked down at his shirt. It would do. But the tie would not. Hell.

  The smile left his soul.

  It had been too good to last. Tracy had woken him with breakfast on a tray. Orange juice, toast and honey, strong coffee. She’d gone out early, she explained, taking with her a little money she found on the shelves in the living room. She hoped he didn’t mind. She had found a comer shop open, made the purchases, come back to the flat, and made him breakfast.

  ‘I’m surprised the smell of burning toast didn’t wake you,’ she had said.

  ‘You’re looking at the man who slept through Towering Inferno,’ he had replied. And she had laughed, sitting on the bed taking dainty bites of toast with her exposed teeth, while Rebus chewed his slices slowly, thoughtfully. Luxuriously. How long had it been since he’d been brought breakfast in bed? It frightened him to think….

  ‘Come in!’ he roared now, though no one had knocked.

  Tracy had left without complaint, too. She felt all right, she said. She couldn’t stay cooped up forever, could she? He had driven her back towards Pilmuir, then had done something stupid. Given her ten pounds. It wasn’t just money, as he realised a second after handing it over. It was a bond between them, a bond he shouldn’t be making. It lay there in her hand, and he felt the temptation to snatch it back. But then she was out of the car and walking away, her body fragile as bone china, her gait determined, full of strength. Sometimes she reminded him of his daughter Sammy, other times….

  Other times of Gill Templer, his ex-lover.

  ‘Come in!’ he roared again. This time the door opened an inch, then another ten or eleven. A head looked into the room.

  ‘Nobody’s been knocking, sir,’ the head said nervously.

  ‘Is that so?’ said Rebus in his best stage voice. ‘Well, in that case I’d better just speak to you two instead. So why don’t you come in!’

  A moment later, they shuffled through the doorway, a bit less cocky now. Rebus pointed to the two chairs on the other side of his desk. One of them sat immediately, the other stood to attention.

  ‘I’d rather stand, sir,’ he said. The other one looked suddenly fearful, terrified that he had broken some rule of protocol.

  ‘This isn’t the bloody army,’ Rebus said to the standing one, just as the sitting one was rising. ‘So sit down!’

  They both sat. Rebus rubbed his forehead, pretending a headache. Truth be told, he had almost forgotten who these constables were and why they were here.

  ‘Right,’ he said. ‘Why do you think I’ve called you here this morning?’ Corny but effective.

  ‘Is it to do with the witches, sir?’

  ‘Witches?’ Rebus looked at the constable who had said this, and remembered the keen young man who had shown him the original pentagram. ‘That’s right, witches. And overdoses.’

  They blinked at him. He sought frantically for a route into the interrogation, if interrogation this was to be. He should have thought more about it before coming in.

  He should have at least remembered that it had been arranged. He saw a ten-pound note, a smile, could smell burning toast…. He looked at the pentagram constable’s tie.

  ‘What’s your name, son?’

  ‘Todd, sir.’

  ‘Todd? That’s German for dead, did you know that, Todd?’

  ‘Yes, sir. I did German at school up to Highers.’

  Rebus nodded, pretending to be impressed. Damn, he was impressed. They all had Highers these days, it seemed, all these extraordinarily young-looking constables. Some had gone further: college, university. He had the feeling Holmes had been to university. He hoped he hadn’t enlisted the aid of a smart arse….

  Rebus pointed to the tie.

  ‘That looks a bit squint, Todd.’

  Todd immediately looked down towards his tie, his head angled so sharply Rebus feared the neck would snap.

  ‘Sir?’

  ‘That tie. Is it your usual one?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘So you haven’t broken a tie recently?’

  ‘Broken a tie, sir?’

  ‘Broken the clip,’ explained Rebus.

  ‘No, sir.’

  ‘And what’s your name, son?’ Rebus said quickly, turning to the other constable, who looked completely stunned by proceedings so far.

  ‘O’Rourke, sir.’

  ‘Irish name,’ Rebus commented.

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘What about your tie, O’Rourke? Is that a new tie?’

  ‘Not really, sir. I mean, I’ve got about half a dozen of these things kicking around.’

  Rebus nodded. He picked up a pencil, examined it, set it down again. He was wasting his time.

  ‘I’d like to see the reports you made of finding the deceased.’

  ‘Yes, sir,’ they said.

  ‘Nothing unusual in the house, was there? I mean, when you first arrived? Nothing out of the ordinary?’

  ‘Only the dead man, sir,’ said O’Rourke.

  ‘And the painting on the wall,’ said Todd.

  ‘Did either of you bother to check upstairs?’

  ‘No, sir.’

  ‘The body was where, when you arrived?’

  ‘In the downstairs room, sir.’

  ‘And you didn’t go upstairs?’

  Todd looked towards O’Rourke. ’I think we shouted to see if anyone was up there. But no, we didn’t go up.’

  So how could the tie clip have got upstairs? Rebus exhaled, then cleared his throat. ‘What kind of car do you drive, Todd?’

  ‘Do you mean police car, sir?’

  ‘No I bloody well don’t!’ Rebus slapped the pencil down against the desk. ’I mean for private use.’

  Todd seemed more confused now than ever. ‘A Metro, sir.’

  ‘Colour?’

  ‘White.’

  Rebus turned his gaze to O’Rourke.

  ‘I don’t have a car,’ O’Rourke admitted. ‘I like motorbikes. Just now I’ve got a Honda seven-fifty.’

  Rebus nodded. No Ford Escorts then. Nobody hurtling away from his road at midnight.

  ‘Well, that’s all right then, isn’t it?’ And with a smile he dismissed them, picked up the pencil again, examined its point, and very deliberately broke it against the edge of his desk.

  Rebus was thinking of Charlie as he stopped his car in front of the tiny old-fashioned mens-wear shop off George Street. He was thinking of Charlie as he grabbed the tie and paid for it. Back in the car, he thought of Charlie as he knotted the tie, started the ignition, and drove off. Heading towards lunch with some of the wealthiest businessmen in the city, all he could think of was Charlie, and how Charlie could probably still choose to be like those businessmen one day. He’d leave university, use his family connections to land a good job, and progress smoothly through to upper management in the space of a year or two. He would forget all about his infatuation with decadence, and would become decadent himself, the way only the rich and successful ever can…. True decadence, not the second-hand stuff of witchcraft and demonism, drugs and violence. That bruising on Ronnie’s body: could it really have been rough trade? A sadomasochistic game gone wrong? A game played, perhaps, with the mysterious Edward, whose name Ronnie had screamed?

  Or a ritual carried too far?

  Had he dismissed the Satanism angle too readily? Wasn’t a po
liceman supposed to keep an open mind? Perhaps, but Satanism found him with his mind well and truly closed. He was a Christian, after all. He might not attend church often, detesting all the hymn-singing and the bald sermonising, but that didn’t mean he didn’t believe in that small, dark personal God of his. Everyone had a God tagging along with them. And the God of the Scots was as ominous as He came.

  Midday Edinburgh seemed darker than ever, reflecting his mood perhaps. The Castle appeared to be casting a shadow across the expanse of the New Town, but that shadow did not, could not reach as high as The Eyrie. The Eyrie was the city’s most expensive restaurant, and also the most exclusive. Rumour had it that lunchtime was solidly booked twelve months in advance, while dinner entailed the small wait of eight to ten weeks. The restaurant itself was situated on the entire top floor of a Georgian hotel in the heart of the New Town, away from the city centre’s human bustle.

  Not that the streets here were exactly quiet, a steady amount of through traffic pausing long enough to make parking a problem. But not to a detective. Rebus stopped his car on a double yellow line directly outside the hotel’s main door, and, despite the doorman’s warnings about wardens and fines, left it there and entered the hotel. He squeezed his stomach as the lift carried him four floors high, and was satisfied that he felt hungry. These businessmen might well bore the pants off him, and the thought of spending two hours with Farmer Watson was almost too much to bear, but he would eat well. Yes, he would eat exceedingly well.

  And, given his way with the wine list, he’d bankrupt the buggers to boot.

  Brian Holmes left the snack bar carrying a polystyrene cup of grey tea, and studied it, trying to remember when he had last had a cup of good tea, of real tea, of tea he had brewed himself. His life seemed to revolve around polystyrene cups and thermos flasks, unexciting sandwiches and chocolate biscuits. Blow, sip. Blow, sip. Swallow.