Hide And Seek

his tenement. He started it up and drove, entering the centre of town, crossing to the New Town. At Canonmills he stopped in the forecourt of a petrol station and filled the car, adding a torch, some batteries, and several bars of chocolate to his purchases, paying by credit card.

He ate the chocolate as he drove, trying not to think of the next day’s cigarette ration, and listened to the car radio. Gill Templer’s lover, Calum McCallum, began his broadcast at eight thirty, and he listened for a few minutes. It was enough. The mock-cheery voice, the jokes so lame they needed wheelchairs, the predictable mix of old records and telephone-linked chatter…. Rebus turned the tuning knob until he found Radio Three. Recognising the music of Mozart, he turned up the volume.

He had always known that it would end here of course. He drove through the ill-lit and winding streets, threading his way further into the maze. A new padlock had been fitted to the door of the house, but Rebus had in his pocket a copy of the key. Switching on his torch, he walked quietly into the living room. The floor was bare. There was no sign that a corpse had lain there only ten hours before. The jar of syringes had gone, too, as had the candlesticks. Ignoring the far wall, Rebus left the room and headed upstairs. He pushed open the door of Ronnie’s bedroom and walked in, crossing to the window. This was where Tracy said she had found the body. Rebus squatted, resting on his toes, and shone the torch carefully over the floor. No sign of a camera. Nothing. It wasn’t going to be made easy for him, this case. Always supposing there was a case.

He only had Tracy’s word for it, after all.

He retraced his steps, out of the room and towards the stairwell. Something glinted against the top step, right in at the corner of the stairs. Rebus picked it up and examined it. It was a small piece of metal, like the clasp from a cheap brooch. He pushed it into his pocket anyway and took another look at the staircase, trying to imagine Ronnie regaining consciousness and making his way to the ground floor.

Possible. Just possible. But to end up positioned like that …? Much less feasible.

And why bring the jar of syringes downstairs with him? Rebus nodded to himself, sure that he was wandering the maze in something like the right direction. He went downstairs again and into the living room. It had a smell like the mould on an old jar of jam, earthy and sweet at the same time. The earth sterile, the sweetness sickly. He went over to the far wall and shone his torchlight against it.

Then came up short, blood pounding. The circles were still there, and the five-pointed star within them. But there were fresh additions, zodiac signs and other symbols between the two circles, painted in red. He touched the paint. It was tacky. Bringing his fingers away, he shone the torch further up the wall, and read the dripping message:

HELLO RONNIE

Superstitious to his core, Rebus turned on his heels and fled, not bothering to relock the door behind him. Walking briskly towards his car, his eyes turned back in the direction of the house, he fell into someone, and stumbled. The other figure fell awkwardly, and was slow to rise. Rebus switched on his torch, and confronted a teenager, eyes sparkling, face bruised and cut.

‘Jesus, son,’ he whispered, ‘what happened to you?’

‘I got beat up,’ the boy said, shuffling away on a painful leg.

Rebus made the car somehow, his nerves as thin as old shoelaces. Inside, he locked the door and sat back, closing his eyes, breathing hard. Relax, John, he told himself. Relax. Soon, he was even able to smile at his momentary lapse of courage. Tomorrow he’d come back. In daylight.

He’d seen enough for now.

Tuesday

I have since had reason to believe the cause to lie much deeper in the nature of man, and to turn on some nobler hinge than the principle of hatred.

Sleep did not come easy, but eventually, slumped in his favourite chair, a book propped open on his lap, he must have dozed off, because it took a nine o‘clock call to bring him to life.

His back, legs and arms were stiff and aching as he scrabbled on the floor for his new cordless telephone.

‘Yes?’

‘Lab here, Inspector Rebus. You wanted to know first thing.’

‘What have you got?’ Rebus slumped back into the warm chair, pulling at his eyes with his free hand, trying to engage their cooperation in this fresh and waking world. He glanced at his watch and realised just how late he’d slept.

‘Well, it’s not the purest heroin on the street.’

He nodded to himself, confident that his next question hardly needed asking. ‘Would it kill whoever injected it?’

The reply jolted him upright.

‘Not at all. In fact, it’s very clean, all things considered. A bit watered down from its pure form, but that’s not uncommon. In fact, it’s mandatory.’

‘But it would be okay to use?’

‘I imagine it would be very good to use.’

‘I see. Well, thank you.’ Rebus pressed the disconnect button. He had been so sure. So sure…. He reached into his pocket, found the number he needed, and pushed the seven digits quickly, before the thought of morning coffee could overwhelm him.

‘Inspector Rebus for Doctor Enfield.’ He waited. ‘Doctor? Fine thanks. How about you? Good, good. Listen, that body yesterday, the druggie on the Pilmuir Estate, any news?’ He listened. ‘Yes, I’ll hold.’

Pilmuir. What had Tony McCall said? It had been lovely once, a place of innocence, something like that. The old days always were though, weren’t they? Memory smoothed the comers, as Rebus himself knew well.

‘Hello?’ he said to the telephone. ‘Yes, that’s right.’ Paper was rustling in the background, Enfield’s voice dispassionate.

‘Bruising on the body. Fairly extensive. Result of a heavy fall or some kind of physical confrontation. The stomach was almost completely empty. HIV negative, which is something. As for the cause of death, well….’

‘The heroin?’ Rebus prompted.

‘Mmm. Ninety-five percent impure.’

‘Really?’ Rebus perked up. ‘What had it been diluted with?’

‘Still working on that, Inspector. But an educated guess would be anything from ground-up aspirin to rat poison, with the emphasis strictly on rodent control.’

‘You’re saying it was lethal?’

‘Oh, absolutely. Whoever sold the stuff was selling euthanasia. If there’s more of it about … well, I dread to think.’

More of it about? The thought made Rebus’s scalp tingle. What if someone were going around poisoning junkies? But why the one perfect packet? One perfect, one as rotten as could be. It didn’t make sense.

‘Thanks, Doctor Enfield.’

He rested the telephone on the arm of the chair. Tracy had been right in one respect at least. They had murdered Ronnie. Whoever ‘they’ were. And Ronnie had known, known as soon as he’d used the stuff…. No, wait…. Known before he’d used the stuff? Could that be possible? Rebus had to find the dealer. Had to find out why Ronnie had been chosen to die. Been, indeed, sacrificed….

It was Tony McCall’s backyard. All right, so he had moved out of Pilmuir, had eventually bought a crippling mortgage which some people called a house. It was a nice house, too. He knew this because his wife told him it was. Told him continually. She couldn’t understand why he spent so little time there. After all, as she told him, it was his home too.