“Well, you better come in.”
“You understand, Allan, I’m here in an official capacity.”
“I heard you were in the police. Funny how things turn out.” As Rebus followed his cousin down the hall, Siobhan introduced herself to the young woman, who in turn said she was Kate, “Derek’s sister.”
Siobhan remembered the name from the case information. “You’re at university, Kate?”
“St. Andrews. I’m studying English.”
Siobhan couldn’t think of anything else to say, nothing that wouldn’t sound trite or forced. So she just made her way down the long, narrow hallway, past a table strewn with unopened mail, and into the living room.
There were photographs everywhere. Not just framed and decorating the walls or arranged along the shelving units, but spilling from shoeboxes on the floor and coffee table.
“Maybe you can help,” Allan Renshaw was telling Rebus. “I’m having trouble putting names to some of the faces.” He held up a batch of black-and-white photos. There were albums, too, open on the sofa and showing the growth of two children: Kate and Derek. Starting with what looked like christening pictures and progressing through summer holidays, Christmas mornings, days out and special treats. Siobhan knew that Kate was nineteen, two years older than her brother. She knew, too, that the father worked as a car salesman on Seafield Road in Edinburgh. Twice-in the pub and again on the drive here-Rebus had explained his connection to the family. His mother had had a sister, and that sister had married a man called Renshaw. Allan Renshaw was their son.
“You never kept in touch?” she had asked.
“That’s not the way our family worked,” he’d replied.
“I’m sorry about Derek,” Rebus was saying now. He hadn’t managed to find anywhere to sit, so he was standing by the fireplace. Allan Renshaw had perched on the arm of the sofa. He nodded, but then saw that his daughter was about to clear a space so that their visitors could sit.
“We’re not finished sorting them yet!” he snapped.
“I just thought…” Kate’s eyes were filling.
“What about some tea?” Siobhan said quickly. “Maybe we could all sit in the kitchen.”
There was just enough room for the four of them around the table, Siobhan squeezing past to deal with the kettle and the mugs. Kate had offered to help, but Siobhan had cajoled her into sitting down. The view from the window above the sink was of a handkerchief-sized garden, hemmed in by a picket fence. A single dishcloth was pegged to a whirligig dryer, and two strips of lawn had been cut, the mower stationary now as the grass grew around it.
There was a sudden noise as the cat flap rattled and a large black and white cat appeared, leapt onto Kate’s lap, and glared at the newcomers.
“This is Boethius,” Kate said.
“Ancient queen of Britain?” Rebus guessed.
“That was Boudicca,” Siobhan corrected him.
“Boethius,” Kate explained, “was a Roman philosopher.” She stroked the cat’s head. Its markings, Rebus couldn’t help thinking, made it look like it was wearing a Batman mask.
“A hero of yours, was he?” Siobhan guessed.
“He was tortured for his beliefs,” Kate went on. “Afterwards, he wrote a treatise, trying to explain why good men suffer -” She broke off, glancing towards her father. But he appeared not to have heard.
“While evil men prosper?” Siobhan guessed. Kate nodded.
“Interesting,” Rebus commented.
Siobhan handed out the tea and sat down. Rebus ignored the mug in front of him, perhaps unwilling to draw attention to his bandages. Allan Renshaw had tight hold of the handle of his own mug but seemed in no hurry to try lifting it.
“I had a phone call from Alice,” Renshaw was saying. “You remember Alice?” Rebus shook his head. “Wasn’t she a cousin on… Christ, whose side was it?”
“Doesn’t matter, Dad,” Kate said softly.
“It matters, Kate,” he argued. “Time like this, family’s all there is.”
“Didn’t you have a sister, Allan?” Rebus asked.
“Aunt Elspeth,” Kate answered. “She’s in New Zealand.”
“Has anyone told her?”
Kate nodded.
“What about your mother?”
“She was here earlier,” Renshaw interrupted, gaze fixed on the table.
“She walked out on us a year ago,” Kate explained. “She lives with -” She broke off. “She lives back in Fife.”
Rebus nodded, knowing what she’d been about to say:
“What was the name of that park you took me to, John?” Renshaw asked. “I’d only have been seven or eight. Mum and Dad had taken me to Bowhill, and you said you’d go for a walk with me. Remember?”
Rebus remembered. He’d been home on leave from the army, itching for some action. Early twenties, SAS training still ahead of him. The house had felt too small, his father too set in a routine. So Rebus had taken young Allan down to the shops. They’d bought a bottle of juice and a cheap football, then had headed to the park for a kickabout. He looked at Renshaw now. He would be forty. His hair was graying, with a pronounced bald spot at the crown. His face was slack, unshaven. He’d been all skin and bones as a kid but was now heavily built, most of it around the waist. Rebus struggled for some vestige of the kid who’d played football with him, the kid he’d taken to Kirkcaldy to watch Raith play some forgotten opponent. The man in front of him was aging fast: wife gone, son now murdered. Aging fast and struggling to cope.
“Is anyone looking in?” Rebus asked Kate. He meant friends, neighbors. She nodded, and he turned back to Renshaw.
“Allan, I know this has been a shock for you. Do you feel up to answering a few questions?”
“What’s it like being a policeman, John? You have to do this sort of thing every day?”
“Not every day, no.”
“I couldn’t do it. Bad enough selling cars, watching the buyer driving off in this perfect machine, big smile on their face, and then you watch them coming back for service or repairs or whatever, and you see the car losing that shine it once had… They’re not smiling anymore.”
Rebus glanced at Kate, who just shrugged. He guessed she’d been hearing a lot of her father’s ramblings.
“The man who shot Derek,” Rebus said quietly, “we’re trying to work out why he did it.”
“He was a madman.”
“But why the school? Why that particular day? You see what I’m saying.”
“You’re saying you won’t let it lie. All we want is to be left alone.”
“We need to know, Allan.”
“Why?” Renshaw’s voice was rising. “What’s it going to change? You going to bring Derek back? I don’t think so. The bastard who did it’s dead… I don’t see that anything else matters.”
“Drink your tea, Dad,” Kate said, a hand reaching for her father’s arm. He took it in his own hand, held it up to plant a kiss.
“It’s just us now, Kate. Nobody else matters.”
“I thought you just told me family mattered. The inspector’s our family, isn’t he?”
Renshaw looked at Rebus again, eyes filling with tears. Then he got up and walked from the room. They sat for a moment, hearing him climbing the stairs.
“We’ll just leave him,” Kate said, sounding sure of her role and comfortable with it. She straightened in her seat and pressed her hands together. “I don’t think Derek knew the man. I mean, South Queensferry’s a village, there’s always the chance he knew his face, maybe even who he was. But nothing other than that.”
Rebus nodded but stayed quiet, hoping she would feel the need to fill the silence. It was a game Siobhan knew how to play, too.
“He didn’t pick them out, did he?” Kate went on, going back to stroking Boethius. “I mean, it was just the wrong place at the wrong time.”
“We don’t know yet,” Rebus responded. “It was the first room he went into, but he’d passed other doors to get to it.”
