‘Like what?’
‘Well, the state he was in.’
‘You mean the bruises?’
‘Yes.’
‘He often came back looking like that. Never talked about it.’
‘Got in a lot of fights, I suppose. Was he short-tempered?’
‘Not with me.’
Rebus sunk his hands into his pockets. A chill wind was whipping up off the water, and he wondered whether she was warm enough. He couldn’t help noticing that her nipples were very prominent through the cotton of her T- shirt.
‘Would you like my jacket?’ he asked.
‘Only if your wallet’s in it,’ she said with a quick smile.
He smiled back, and offered a cigarette instead, which she accepted. He didn’t take one for himself. There were only three left out of the day’s ration, and the evening stretched ahead of him.
‘Do you know who Ronnie’s dealer was?’ he asked casually, helping her to light the cigarette. With her head tucked into his open jacket, the lighter shaking in her hand, she shook her head. Eventually, the windbreak worked, and she sucked hard at the filter.
‘I was never really sure,’ she said. ‘It was something else he didn’t talk about.’
‘What did he talk about?’
She thought about this, and smiled again. ‘Not much, now you mention it. That was what I liked about him. You always felt there was more to him than he was letting on.’
‘Such as?’
She shrugged. ‘Might have been anything, might have been nothing.’
This was harder work than Rebus had anticipated, and he really was getting cold. It was time to speed things up.
‘He was in the bedroom when you found him?’
‘Yes.’
‘And the squat was empty at the time?’
‘Yes. Earlier on, there’d been a few people there, but they’d all gone. One of them was up in Ronnie’s room, but I didn’t know him. Then there was Charlie.’
‘You mentioned him on the telephone.’
‘Yes, well, when I found Ronnie, I went looking for him. He’s usually around somewhere, in one of the other squats or in town doing a bit of begging. Christ, he’s strange.’
‘In what way?’
‘Didn’t you see what was on the living-room wall?’
‘You mean the star?’
‘Yes, that was Charlie. He painted it.’
‘He’s keen on the occult then?’
‘Mad keen.’
‘What about Ronnie?’
‘Ronnie? Jesus, no. He couldn’t even stand to watch horror films. They scared him.’
‘But he had all those horror books in his bedroom.’
‘That was Charlie, trying to get Ronnie interested. All they did was give him more nightmares. And all those did was push him into taking more smack.’
‘How did he finance his habit?’ Rebus watched a small boat come gliding through the mist. Something fell from it into the water, but he couldn’t tell what.
‘I wasn’t his accountant.’
‘Who was?’ The boat was turning in an arc, slipping further west towards Queensferry.
‘Nobody wants to know where the money comes from, that’s the truth. It makes you an accessory, doesn’t it?’
‘That depends.’ Rebus shivered.
‘Well, I didn’t want to know. If he tried to tell me, I put my hands over my ears.’
‘He’s never had a job then?’
‘I don’t know. He used to talk about being a photographer. That’s what he’d set his heart on when he left school. It was the only thing he wouldn’t pawn, even to pay for his habit.’
Rebus was lost. ‘What was?’
