by Ian Rankin
‘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 swift 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.
‘No, it’s all right. I won’t stay if she’s asleep. One last thing though.’
‘Yes?’
‘Who did it?’
Who did it. That was the hardest part to understand. Walking back along the corridor, Rebus saw Nell’s puffy face, saw her distress as she tried to talk, and couldn’t. She had signalled for some paper. He had taken a notebook from his pocket, and handed her his pen. Then she had written furiously for a full minute. He stopped now and took out the notebook, reading it through for the fourth or fifth time that evening.
‘I was working at the library. A woman tried to push her way into the building, past the guard. Talk to him if you want to check. This woman then butted me on the face. I was trying to help, to calm her down. She must have thought I was interfering. But I wasn’t. I was trying to help. She was the girl in that photograph, the nude photograph Brian had in his briefcase last night in the pub. You were there, weren’t you, in the same pub as us? Not easy not to notice – the place was empty, after all. Where’s Brian? Out chasing more salacious pictures for you, Inspector?’
Rebus smiled now, as he had smiled then. She had guts, that one. He rather liked her, her face taped, eyes blackened. She reminded him a lot of Gill.
So, Tracy was leaving a silvery snail’s trail of chaos by which to follow her. Little bitch. Had she simply flipped, or was there a real motive for her trip to the University Library? Rebus leaned against the wall of the corridor. God, what a day. He was supposed to be between cases. Supposed to be ‘tidying things up’ before starting full time on the drugs campaign. He was supposed, for the sake of Christ, to be having things easy. That’d be the day.
The ward doors swung shut, alerting him to the figure of Brian Holmes in the corridor. Holmes seemed lacking direction, then spotted his superior and came walking briskly up the hall. Rebus wasn’t sure yet whether Holmes was invaluable, or a liability. Could you be both things at once?
‘Is she all right?’ he asked solicitously.
‘Yes. I suppose so. She’s awake. Face looks a bit of a mess though.’
‘Just bruises. They say the nose will heal. You’ll never know it was broken.’
‘Yes, that’s what Nell said.’
‘She talking? That’s good.’
‘She also told me who did it.’ Holmes looked at Rebus, who looked away. ‘What’s this all about? What’s Nell got to do with it?’
‘Nothing, so far as I know. She just happened to be in the wrong place, et cetera. Chalk it down to coincidence.’
‘Coincidence? That’s a nice easy word to say. Put it down to “coincidence” and then we can forget all about it, is that it? I don’t know what your game is, Rebus, but I’m not going to play it any longer.’
Holmes turned and stalked off along the hall. Rebus almost warned him that there was no exit at that end of the building, but favours weren’t what Holmes wanted. He needed a bit of time, a break. So did Rebus, but he had some thinking to do, and the station was the best place for that.
By taking them slowly, Rebus managed the stairs to his office. He had been at his desk fully ten minutes before a craving for tea had him reaching for the telephone. Then he sat back, holding in front of him a piece of paper on which he had attempted to set out the ‘facts’ of the ‘case’. He was chilled by the thought that he might be wasting time and effort. A jury would have to work hard to see any crime there at all. There was no suggestion that Ronnie had not injected himself. However, he had been starved of his supply, despite there being no shortage of dope in the city, and someone had moved his body, and left behind a packet of good heroin, hoping, perhaps, that this would be tested, found clean, and therefore death by misadventure would be recorded: a simple overdose. But the rat poison had been found.
Rebus looked at the paper. Already ‘perhapses’ and conjecture had entered the picture. Maybe the frame wasn’t right. So, turn the picture another way round, John, and start again.
Why had someone gone to the trouble of killing Ronnie? After all, the poor bugger would have topped himself given time. Ronnie had been starved of a fix, then given some, but had known this stuff to be less than pure. So doubtless he had known that the person who supplied it wanted him dead. But he had taken it anyway.… No, viewed this way round it was making even less sense. Start again.
Why would someone want Ronnie dead? There were several obvious answers. Because he knew something he shouldn’t. Because he possessed something he shouldn’t. Because he didn’t possess something he should. Which was correct? Rebus didn’t know. Nobody seemed to know. The picture still lacked meaning.
There was a knock on the door, and the door itself was pushed open by a constable carrying a mug of tea. The constable was Harry Todd. Rebus recognised him.
‘You get around a bit, son.’
‘Yes, sir,’ said Todd, placing the tea on a corner of the desk, the only three square inches of wood visible from beneath a surface covering of paperwork.
‘Is it quiet tonight?’
‘The usual, sir. A few drunks. Couple of break-ins. Nasty car crash down near the docks.’
Rebus nodded, reaching for the tea. ‘Do you know another constable, name of Neil McGrath?’ Raising the mug to his lips, Rebus stared up at Todd, who had begun to blush.
‘Yes, sir,’ he said. ‘I know him.’
‘Mm-hm.’ Rebus tested the tea, seeming to relish the bland flavour of milk and hot water. ‘Told you to keep an eye on me, did he?’
‘Sir?’
‘If you happen to see him, Todd, tell him everything’s fine.’
‘Yes, sir.’ Todd was turning to leave.
‘Oh, and Todd?’
‘Yes, sir?’
‘Don’t let me see you near me again, understood?’
‘Yes, sir.’ Todd was clearly downhearted. At the door, he paused, seeming to have a sudden plan that would ingratiate himself with his superior. Smiling, he turned back to Rebus.
‘Did you hear about the action across in Fife, sir?’
‘What action?’ Rebus sounded uninterested.
‘The dog fight, sir.’ Rebus tried hard to still look unmoved. ‘They broke up some dog fight. Guess who got arrested?’
‘Malcolm Rifkind?’ guessed Rebus. This deflated Todd totally. The smile left his face.
‘No, sir,’ he said, turning again to leave. Rebus’s patience was short.
‘Well who then?’ he snapped.
‘That disc jockey, Calum McCallum,’ Todd said, closing the door after him. Rebus stared at the door for a count of five before it struck home: Calum McCallum … Gill Templer’s lover!
Rebus raised his head and let out a roar which mixed laughter with a kind of twisted victory cry. And when he had stopped laughing, and was wiping his eyes with a handkerchief, he looked towards the door again and saw that it was open. There was someone standing in the doorway, watching his performance with a look of puzzlement on their face.
It was Gill Templer.
Rebus checked his watch. It was nearly one in the morning.
‘Working the late shift, Gill?’ he said to cover his confusion.
‘I suppose you’ve heard,’ she said, ignoring him.
‘Heard what?’
She walked into the room, pushed some papers off the chair onto the floor, and sat down, looking exhausted. Rebus looked at all that paper slewed across the floor.
‘The cleaners come in in the morning anyway,’ he said. Then: ‘I’ve heard.’
‘Is that what all the screaming was about?’
‘Oh, that.’ Rebus tried to shrug it off, but could feel the blood tingling in his cheeks. ‘No,’ he said, ‘that was just something … well, something else.…’
&nb
sp; ‘Not very convincing, Rebus, you bastard.’ Her words were tired. He wanted to buoy her up, tell her she was looking well or something. But it wouldn’t have been true and she would just scowl at him again. So he left it. She was looking drawn, not enough sleep and no fun left any more. She’d just had her world locked up in a cell somewhere in Fife. They would be photographing and fingerprinting it perhaps, ready to file it away. Her life, Calum McCallum.
Life was full of surprises.
‘So what can I do for you?’
She looked up at him, studying his face as though she wasn’t sure who he was or why she was here. Then she shook herself awake with a twitch of the shoulders.
‘It sounds corny, but I really was just passing. I dropped into the canteen for a coffee before going home, and then I heard –’ She shivered again; the twitch which wasn’t quite a twitch. Rebus could see how fragile she was. He hoped she wasn’t going to shake apart. ‘I heard about Calum. How could he do that to me, John? Keep a secret like that? I mean, where’s the fun in watching dogs ripping each other –’
‘That’s something you’ll have to ask him yourself, Gill. Can I get you some more coffee?’
‘Christ no, I’m going to find it hard enough getting to sleep as it is. Tell you what I would like though, if it’s not too much trouble.’
‘Name it.’
‘A lift home.’ Rebus was already nodding agreement. ‘And a hug.’
Rebus got up slowly, donned his jacket, put the pen and piece of paper in his pocket, and met her in the middle of the room. She had already risen from her chair, and, standing on reports to be read, paperwork to be signed, arrest statistics and the rest, they hugged, their arms strong. She buried her head in his shoulder. He rested his chin on her neck, staring at the closed door, rubbing her back with one hand, patting with the other. Eventually, she pulled away, head first, then chest, but still holding him with her arms. Her eyes were moist, but it was over now. She was looking a little better.
