‘How?’
‘The university,’ said McCall. Rebus frowned, disbelieving. ‘I’m serious. They’ve got some kind of department
that studies ghosts and all that sort of thing. Set up with money from some dead writer.’ McCall shook his head. ‘Incredible what people will do.’
Rebus was nodding. ‘I did read about that, now you mention it. Arthur Koestler’s money, wasn’t it?’
McCall shrugged.
‘Arthur Daley’s more my style,’ he said, emptying his glass.
Rebus was studying the pile of paperwork on his desk when the telephone rang.
‘DI Rebus.’
‘They said you were the man to talk to.’ The voice was young, female, full of unfocussed suspicion.
‘They were probably right. What can I do for you, miss .. .?’
‘Tracy.. ..’ The voice fell to a whisper on the last syllable of the name. She had already been tricked into revealing herself. ‘Never mind who I am!’ She had become immediately hysterical, but calmed just as quickly. ‘I’m phoning about that squat in Pilmuir, the one where they found.. ..’ The voice trailed off again.
‘Oh yes.’ Rebus sat up and began to take notice. ‘Was it you who phoned the first time?’
‘What?’
‘To tell us that someone had died there.’
‘Yes, it was me. Poor Ronnie.
‘Ronnie being the deceased?’ Rebus scribbled the name onto the back of one of the files from his in-tray. Beside it he wrote ‘Tracy - caller’.
‘Yes.’ Her voice had broken again, near to tears this time.
‘Can you give me a surname for Ronnie?’
‘No.’ She paused. ‘I never knew it. I’m not sure Ronnie was even his real name. Hardly anyone uses their real name.’
‘Tracy, I’d like to talk to you about Ronnie. We can do it over the telephone, but I’d rather it was face to face. Don’t worry, you’re not in any trouble -’
‘But I am. That’s why I called. Ronnie told me, you see.’
‘Told you what, Tracy?’
‘Told me he’d been murdered.’
The room around Rebus seemed suddenly to vanish. There was only this disconnected voice, the telephone, and him.
‘He said that to you, Tracy?’
‘Yes.’ She was crying now, sniffing back the unseen tears. Rebus visualised a frightened little girl, just out of school, standing in a distant callbox. ‘I’ve got to hide,’ she said at last. ‘Ronnie said over and over that I should hide.’
‘Shall I bring my car and fetch you? Just tell me where you are.’
‘No!’
‘Then tell me how Ronnie was killed. You know how we found him?’
‘Lying on the floor by the window. That’s where he was.’
‘Not quite.’
‘Oh yes, that’s where he was. By the window. Lying wrapped up into a little ball. I thought he was just sleeping. But when I touched his arm he was cold. … I went to find Charlie, but he’d gone. So I just panicked.’
‘You say Ronnie was lying in a ball?’ Rebus had begun to draw pencilled circles on the back of the file.
‘Yes.’
‘And this was in the living room?’
She seemed confused. ‘What? No, not in the living room. He was upstairs, in his bedroom.’
‘I see.’ Rebus kept on drawing effortless circles. He was trying to imagine Ronnie dying, but not really dead, crawling downstairs after Tracy had fled, ending up in the living room. That might explain those bruises. But the
candles…. He had been so perfectly positioned between them. … ‘And when was this?’
‘Late last night, I don’t know exactly when. I panicked. When I calmed down, I phoned for the police.’
‘What time was it when you phoned?’
She paused, thinking. ‘About seven this morning.’
‘Tracy, would you mind telling this to some other people?’
‘Why?’
