Hide And Seek

‘What?’ he barked, enjoying his role now.

‘Photographs. Somebody’s putting a whisper around that there’s interest in photographs. Not faked ones, either. The real McCoy.’

‘Porn shots?’

‘I suppose so. The rumours have been a bit vague. Rumours get that way when they’ve gone past being second-hand.’

‘Chinese whispers,’ said Rebus. He was thinking: this whole thing is like a game of Chinese whispers, everything at second and third remove, nothing absolutely proof positive.

‘What?’

‘Never mind. Anything else?’

The boy shook his head. Rebus reached into his pocket and, to his own surprise, found yet another tenner. Then he remembered that he’d visited a cashpoint machine somewhere during the drinking session with McCall. He handed the money over.

‘Here. And I’ll give you my name and phone number. I’m always open to bits of information, no matter how small. Sorry about your head, by the way.’

The boy took the money. ‘That’s all right. I’ve seen worse pay.’ Then he smiled.

‘Can I give you a lift?’

‘The Bridges maybe?’

‘No problem. What’s your name?’

‘James._’

‘Really?’ Rebus was smiling.

‘Yes, really.’ The boy was smiling, too. ‘Listen, there is one other thing.’

‘Go ahead, James.’

‘It’s just a name I’ve been hearing. Maybe it doesn’t mean anything.’

‘Yes?’

‘Hyde.’

Rebus frowned. ‘Hide? Hide what?’

‘No, Hyde. H-y-d-e.’

‘What about Hyde?’

‘I don’t know. Like I said, it’s just a name.’

Rebus gripped the steering wheel. Hyde? Hyde? Was that what Ronnie had been telling Tracy? Not just to hide, but to hide from some man called Hyde? Trying to think, he found himself staring at the Jag again. Or rather, staring at the profile of the man in the driver’s seat. The man with his hand up around the neck of the much younger occupant of the passenger seat. Stroking, and all the time talking in a low voice. Stroking, talking. All very innocent.

A wonder then that James Carew of Bowyer Carew Estate Agents should look so startled when, being stared at, he returned the stare and found himself eye to eye with Dectective Inspector John Rebus.

Rebus was taking all this in as Carew fumbled with his ignition key, revved up the new V₁₂ engine and reversed out of the car park as though Cutty Sark herself were after him.

‘He’s in a hurry,’ said James.

‘Have you seen him before?’

‘Didn’t really catch his face. Haven’t seen the car before though.’

‘No, well, it’s a new car, isn’t it?’ said Rebus, lazily starting his own.

The flat was still redolent of Tracy. She lingered in the living room and the bathroom. He saw her with a towel falling down around her head, legs tucked beneath her…. Bringing him breakfast: the dirty dishes were still lying beside his unmade bed. She had laughed to find that he slept on a mattress on the floor. ‘Just like in a squat,’ she had said. The flat seemed emptier now, emptier than it had felt for a while. And Rebus could do with a bath. He returned to the bathroom and turned the hot tap on. He could still feel James’s hand on his leg…. In the living room, he looked at a bottle of whisky for a full minute, but turned his back on it and fetched a low-alcohol lager from the fridge instead.

The bath was filling slowly. An Archimedean screw would have been more efficient. Still, it gave him time to make another telephone call to the station, to check on how they were treating Tracy. The news was not good. She was becoming irritable, refusing to eat, complaining of pains in her side. Appendicitis? More likely cold turkey. He felt a fair amount of guilt at not having gone to see her before now. Another layer of guilt wouldn’t do any harm, so he decided to put off the visit until morning. Just for a few hours he wanted to be away from it all, all the sordid tinkering with other people’s lives. His flat didn’t feel so secure any more, didn’t feel like the castle it had been only a day or two ago. And there was internal damage as well as the structural kind: he was feeling soiled in the pit of his gut, as though the city had scraped away a layer of its surface grime and force-fed him the lot.

To hell with it.

He was caught all right. He was living in the most beautiful, most civilised city in northern Europe, yet every day had to deal with its flipside, with the minor matter of its animus. Animus? Now there was a word he hadn’t used in a while. He wasn’t even sure now what it meant exactly; but it sounded right. He sucked from the beer bottle, holding the foam in his mouth like a child playing with toothpaste. This stuff was all foam. No substance.

All foam. Now there was another idea. He would put some foaming bath oil in the water. Bubblebath. Who the hell had given him this stuff? Oh. Yes. Gill Templer. He remembered now. Remembered the occasion, too. She had been gently chiding him about how he never cleaned the bath. Then had presented him with this bath oil.

‘It cleans you and your bath,’ she had said, reading from the bottle. ‘And puts the fun back into bathtime.’

He had suggested that they test this claim together, and they had…. Jesus, John, you’re getting morbid again. Just because she’s gone off with some vacuum-headed disc jockey with the unlikely name of Calum McCallum. It wasn’t the end of anybody’s world. The bombs weren’t falling. There were no sirens in the sky.

Nothing but … Ronnie, Tracy, Charlie, James and the rest. And now Hyde. Rebus was beginning to know now the meaning of the term ‘dead beat’. He rested his naked limbs in the near-scalding water and closed his eyes.

Thursday

That house of voluntary bondage … with its inscrutable recluse.

Dead beat: Holmes yawned again, dead on his feet. For once, he had actually beaten the alarm, so that he was returning to bed with instant coffee when the radio blared into action. What a way to wake up every day. When he had a spare half hour, he’d retune the bloody thing to Radio Three or something. Except he knew Radio Three would send him straight back to sleep, whereas the voice of Calum McCallum and the grating records he played in between hoots and jingles and enthusiastic bad jokes brought him awake with a jolt, ready, teeth gritted, to face another day.

This morning, he had beaten the smug little voice. He switched the radio off.

‘Here,’ he said. ‘Coffee, and time to get up.’

Nell turned her head from the pillow, squinting up at him.

‘Has it gone nine?’

‘Not quite.’

She turned back into the pillow again, moaning softly. ‘Good. Wake me up again when it does.’

‘Drink your coffee,’ he chided, touching her shoulder. Her shoulder was warm, tempting. He allowed himself a wistful smile, then turned and left the bedroom. He had gone ten paces before he paused, turned, and went back. Nell’s arms were long, tanned, and open in welcome.

Despite the breakfast he had brought her in the cell, Tracy was furious with Rebus, and especially when he