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.’
