A Question of Blood

answer. Cautiously, he climbed the stairs. There was a metal stepladder in the middle of the upstairs hall, leading up through an open hatch in the ceiling. Rebus took each rung slowly.

“Allan?”

There was a light on in the attic and the buzzing was louder. Rebus stuck his head through the hatch. His cousin was seated cross-legged on the floor, a control panel in his hand, mimicking the sound the toy racing car made as it sped around the figure-eight track.

“I always let him win,” Allan Renshaw said, giving the first sign that he was aware of Rebus’s appearance. “Derek, I mean. We got him this for Christmas one year…”

Rebus saw the open box, lengths of unused track spilling from it. Packing boxes had been emptied, suitcases opened. Rebus saw women’s dresses, children’s clothes, a stack of old 45s. He saw magazines with long-forgotten TV stars on the front. He saw plates and ornaments, peeled from their protective newsprint. Some might have been wedding gifts, dispatched to darkness by changing fashions. A folded stroller waited to be claimed by the generation to come. Rebus had reached the top of the ladder, and settled his weight against the edge of the hatch. Somehow, amidst the clutter, Allan Renshaw had negotiated room for the racetrack, his eyes following the red plastic car as it completed its endless circuits.

“Never saw the attraction myself,” Rebus commented. “Same with train sets.”

“Cars are different. You’ve got that illusion of speed… and you can race against everyone else. Plus…” Renshaw pushed his finger down harder on the accelerator button, “if you take a bend too fast and crash…” His car spun from the track. He reached out for it, slid its guiding front brush into the slot on the roadway. Pressed the button and sent it on its renewed journey. “You see?” he said, glancing towards Rebus.

“You can always start again?” Rebus guessed.

“Nothing’s changed. Nothing’s broken,” Renshaw said, nodding. “It’s as if nothing happened.”

“It’s an illusion then,” Rebus intimated.

“A comforting illusion,” his cousin agreed. He paused. “Did I have a race set when I was a kid? I don’t remember…”

Rebus shrugged. “I know I didn’t. If they were around, they were probably too expensive.”

“The money we spend on our kids, eh, John?” Renshaw produced the glimmer of a smile. “Always wanting the best for them, never begrudging anything.”

“Must’ve been expensive, putting your two through Port Edgar.”

“Wasn’t cheap. You’ve just got the one, is that right?”

“She’s all grown now, Allan.”

“Kate’s growing, too… moving on to another life.”

“She’s got a head on her shoulders.” Rebus watched as the car tripped from the track again. It ended up near him, so he reached forwards to replace it. “That crash Derek was in,” he said. “It wasn’t his fault, was it?”

Renshaw shook his head. “Stuart was a wild one. We’re lucky Derek was all right.” He set the car moving again. Rebus had noticed a blue car in the box, and a spare controller sitting by his cousin’s left shoe.

“We going to have a race, then?” he asked, sliding farther into the space, picking up the small black box.

“Why not?” Renshaw agreed, placing Rebus’s car on the starting line. He brought his own car to meet it, then counted down from five. Both cars jolted towards the first bend, Rebus’s careering off straightaway. He crawled over on hands and knees and fixed it back onto the track, just as Renshaw’s car lapped him.

“You’ve had more practice than me,” he complained, sitting back down again. Drafts of warm air were gusting up through the open hatch, providing the attic with its only source of heat. Rebus knew that if he stood, there wouldn’t be quite enough room for him. “So how long have you been up here?” he asked. Renshaw ran a hand over what was now more beard than stubble.

“Since first thing,” he said.

“Where’s Kate?”

“Out helping that MSP.”

“The front door isn’t locked.”

“Oh?”

“Anyone could walk in.” Rebus had waited for Renshaw’s car to catch up with him, and now they were racing again, crossing lanes at one point in the track.

“Know what I was thinking about last night?” Renshaw said. “I think it was last night…”

“What?”

“I was thinking about your dad. I really liked him. He used to do tricks for me, do you remember that?”

“Producing pennies from behind your ear?”

“And making them disappear. He said he’d learned it in the army.”

“Probably.”

“He was in the Far East, wasn’t he?”

Rebus nodded. His father had never said much about his wartime exploits. Mostly, all he’d shared were anecdotes, things they could laugh at. But later on… towards the end of his life, he’d let slip details of some of the horrors he’d witnessed.

These weren’t professional soldiers, John, they were conscripts-men who worked in banks, shops, factories. War changed them, changed all of us. How could it not?

“Thing is,” Allan Renshaw continued, “thinking about your dad got me thinking about you. Remember that day you took me to the park.”

“The day we played football?”

Renshaw nodded, gave a weak smile. “You remember it?”

“Probably not as well as you.”

“Oh, I remember, all right. We were playing football, and then some guys you knew turned up, and I had to play by myself while you talked to them.” Renshaw paused. The cars crossed each other again. “Coming back to you?”

“Not really.” But Rebus supposed it could be true. Whenever he’d gone home on leave, there’d been friends from school to catch up with.

“Then we started walking home. Or you and your pals did, me trailing behind, carrying the ball you’d bought us… Now this bit, this bit I’d pushed to the back of my mind…”

“What bit?” Rebus was concentrating on the racetrack.

“The bit where we were passing the pub. You remember the pub on the corner?”

“The Bowhill Hotel?”

“That was it. We were passing, only then you turned to me, pointed at me, told me I’d to wait outside. Your voice was different, a lot harder, like you didn’t want your pals to know we were pals…”

“You sure about this, Allan?”

“Oh, I’m sure. Because the three of you went inside, and I sat at the curb and waited. I was holding on to the ball, and after a while you came out again, but just to hand me a bag of crisps. You went back inside, and then these other kids came up, and one of them kicked the ball out of my grasp, and they ran off, laughing and kicking it to each other. That’s when I started crying, and still you didn’t come out, and I knew I couldn’t go in. So I got to my feet and walked back to the house by myself. I got lost once, but I stopped and asked someone.” The racing cars were speeding towards the point at which they would switch lanes. They arrived at the same time, met and bounced off the track, landing on their backs. Neither man moved. The attic was silent for a moment. “You came home later,” Renshaw continued, breaking the silence, “and nobody said anything because I’d not said anything to them. But you know what really got me? You never asked what had happened to the ball, and I knew why you didn’t ask. It was because you’d forgotten all about it. Because it wasn’t important to you.” Renshaw paused. “And I was just some little kid again, and not your friend.”

“Jesus, Allan…” Rebus was trying to remember, but there was nothing there. The day he’d thought he’d known had been sunshine and football, nothing else.

“I’m sorry,” he said at last.

Tears were dripping down Renshaw’s cheeks. “I was family, John, and you treated me like I was nothing.”

“Allan, believe me, I never -”

“Out!” Renshaw yelled, sniffing back more tears. “I want you out of my house-now!” He’d risen stiffly to his