Hide And Seek

choking off as she recognised the exact address, and then tried not to let that recognition show.

The photograph was on her lap when she turned from the window. She flicked it from her with a squeal, as though it were an insect. Rebus plucked the photo from the floor of the car and held it out to her.

‘Yours, I believe.’

‘Where the hell did you get that?’

‘Do you want to tell me about it?’

Her face was as red as the stonework now, her eyes flitting in panic like a bird’s. She fumbled with the seatbelt, desperate to be out of the car, but Rebus’s hand on the catch was rock hard.

‘Let me go!’ she yelled, thumping down on his fist. Then she pushed open the door, but the camber of the road pulled it shut again. There was not enough give in the seatbelt anyway. She was securely bound.

‘I thought we’d pay Mr Hutton a call,’ Rebus was saying, his voice like a blade. ‘Ask him about this photo. About how he paid you a few quid to model for him. About how you brought him Ronnie’s pictures. Looking for a few bob more maybe, or just to spite Ronnie. Is that how it was, Tracy? I’ll bet Ronnie was pissed off when he saw Hutton had stolen his ideas. Couldn’t prove it though, could he? And how was he to know how the hell Hutton got them in the first place? I suppose you put the blame on Charlie, and that’s why the two of you aren’t exactly on speaking terms. Some friend to Ronnie you were, sweet-heart. Some friend.’

She broke down at that, and gave up trying to free herself from the seatbelt. Her head angled forward into her hands, and she wept, loudly and at length. While Rebus caught his breath. He wasn’t proud of himself, but it had needed saying. She had to stop hiding from the truth. It was all conjecture, of course, but Rebus was sure Hutton could confirm the details if pressed. She had modelled for money, maybe happened to mention that her boyfriend was a photographer. Had taken the photos to Hutton, giving away Ronnie’s glimmer of a chance, his creativity, for a few more pound notes. If you couldn’t trust your friends, who could you trust?

He had left her overnight in the cells to see if she would crack. She hadn’t, so he supposed she must be clean. But that didn’t mean she didn’t have some kind of habit. If not needles, then something else. Everybody needed a little something, didn’t they? And the money was needed, too. So she had ripped off her boyfriend….

‘Did you plant that camera in Charlie’s squat?’

‘No!’ It was as though, after all that had gone before, the accusation still hurt. Rebus nodded. So Charlie had taken the camera, or someone else had planted it there. For him to find. No … not quite, because he hadn’t found it: McCall had. And very easily at that, the way he had blithely found the dope in the sleeping bag. A true copper’s nose? Or something else? A little information perhaps, inside information? If you can’t trust your friends….

‘Did you see the camera the night Ronnie died?’

‘It was in his room, I’m sure it was.’ She blinked back the tears and wiped her nose on the handkerchief Rebus gave her. Her voice was cracked still, her throat a little clogged, but she was recovering from the shock of the photo, and the greater shock that Rebus knew now of her betrayal.

‘That guy who came to see Ronnie, he was in Ronnie’s room after me.’

‘You mean Neil?’

‘I think that was his name, yes.’

Too many cooks, Rebus was thinking. He was going to have to revise his definition of ‘circumstantial’. He had very little so far that wasn’t circumstantial. It felt like the spiral was widening, taking him further and further away from the central, crucial point, the point where Ronnie lay dead on a damp, bare floor, flanked by candles and dubious friends.

‘Neil was Ronnie’s brother.’

‘Really?’ Her voice was disinterested. The safety curtain between her and the world was coming down again. The matinee was over.

‘Yes, really.’ Rebus felt a sudden chill. If nobody, nobody cares what happened to Ronnie except Neil and me, why am I bothering?

‘Charlie always thought they had some kind of gay thing going. I never asked Ronnie. I don’t suppose he would have told me.’ She rested her head against the back of the seat, seeming to relax again. ‘Oh God.’ She released a whistle of breath from her lungs. ‘Do we have to stick around here?’

Her hands were rising slowly, ready to clasp her head, and Rebus was beginning to answer in the negative, when he saw those same hands come swiftly down, curling into tiny fists. There was no room to escape them, and so they hit him full in the groin. A flashgun exploded somewhere behind his eyes, the world turning into nothing but sound and blinding pain. He was roaring, doubled up in agony, head coming to rest on the steering wheel, which was also the car’s horn. It was blaring lazily as Tracy undid her seatbelt, opened the door, and swivelled out of the car. She left the door wide open as she ran. Rebus watched through eyes brimming with tears, as if he were in a swimming pool, watching her running along the edge of the pool away from him, chlorine stinging his pupils.

‘Jesus Almighty Christ,’ he gasped, still hunched over the wheel, and not about to move for some considerable time.

Think like Tarzan, his father had told him once: one of the old man’s few pieces of advice. He was talking about fights. About one-to-one scrapes with the lads at school. Four o‘clock behind the bike shed, and all that. Think like Tarzan. You’re strong, king of the jungle, and above all else you’re going to protect your nuts. And the old boy had raised a bent knee towards young John’s crotch….

‘Thanks, Dad,’ Rebus hissed now. ‘Thanks for reminding me.’ Then the reaction hit his stomach.

By lunchtime he could just about walk, so long as he kept his feet close to the ground, moving as though he had wet himself. People stared, of course, and he tried to improvise a limp specially for them. Ever the crowd pleaser.

The thought of the stairs to his office was too much, and driving the car had been excruciating, the foot pedals impossible to operate. So he had taken a taxi to the Sutherland Bar. Three quarter-gill measures of whisky later, he felt the pain replaced by a drowsy numbness.

‘“As though of hemlock …”,’ he muttered to himself.

He wasn’t worried about Tracy. Anyone with a punch like that could look after herself. There were probably kids on the street harder than half the bloody police force. Not that Tracy was a kid. He still hadn’t found out anything about her. That was supposed to be Holmes’s department, but Holmes was off on a wild dog chase in Fife. No, Tracy would be all right. Probably there had been no men chasing her. But then why come to him that night? There could be a hundred reasons. After all, she’d conned a bed, the best part of a bottle of wine, a hot bath and breakfast out of him. Not bad going that, and him supposed to be a hardened old copper. Too old maybe. Too much the ‘copper’, not enough the police officer. Maybe.

Where to next? He already had the answer to that, legs permitting and pray God he could drive.

He parked at a distance from the house, not wanting to scare off anyone who might be there. Then he simply walked up to the door and knocked. Standing there, awaiting a response, he remembered Tracy opening that door and running into his arms, her face bruised, her eyes welling with tears. He didn’t think Charlie would be here. He didn’t think Tracy would be here. He didn’t want Tracy to be here.

The door opened. A bleary teenage boy squinted up at Rebus. His hair was lank, lifeless, falling into his eyes.

‘What is it?’

‘Is Charlie in? I’ve got a bit of business with him.’

‘Naw. Havenae seen him the day.’

‘All right if I wait a while?’

‘Aye.’ The boy was already closing the door on Rebus’s face. Rebus stuck a hand up against the door and peered round it.

‘I meant, wait indoors.’

The boy shrugged, and slouched back inside, leaving the door ajar. He slipped back into his sleeping bag and pulled it over his head. Just passing through, and catching up on lost sleep. Rebus supposed the boy had nothing to lose by letting a stranger into this way station. He left him to his sleep, and, after a cursory check that there was no one else in the downstairs rooms, climbed the steep staircase.

The books were still slewed like so many felled dominoes, the contents of the bag McCall had emptied still