Ian Rankin - Black and Blue

‘Maybe a friend who could...?’

Una Slocum sat down, got up again, remembering she had a guest. ‘Some tea, Mr...?’

‘Rebus, Inspector Rebus. Tea would be great.’

Give her something to do, keep her mind busy. The kitchen was only slightly smaller than the living room. Rebus peered out into the back garden. It looked enclosed, no easy way for Ryan Slocum to sneak up on the house. Rebus’s ears were primed for car noises...

‘He’s gone,’ she said, stopping suddenly in the middle of the floor with the kettle in one hand, teapot in the other.

‘What makes you say that, Mrs Slocum?’

‘A suitcase, some clothes... they’re gone.’

‘Business, maybe? Something at the last minute?’

She shook her head. ‘He’d have left a note or something, a message on the machine.’

‘You’ve checked?’

She nodded. ‘I was in Aberdeen all day, shopping, walking around. When I got back, the house felt different somehow, emptier. I think I knew right off.’

‘Has he said anything about leaving?’

‘No.’ The ghost of a smile. ‘But a wife gets to know, Inspector. Another woman.’

‘A woman?’

Una Slocum nodded. ‘Isn’t it always? He’s been so... I don’t know, just different lately. Short-tempered, distracted... spending time away from home when I knew he’d no business meetings.’ She was still nodding, confirming it to herself. ‘He’s gone.’

‘And you’ve no idea where he could be?’

She shook her head. ‘Wherever she is, that’s all.’

Rebus walked back through to the living room, checked the window: no BMW. A hand touched his arm, and he spun. It was Una Slocum.

‘Jesus,’ he said. ‘I nearly died.’

‘Ryan always complains I never make any noise. It’s the carpet.’

Half-inch Wilton, yards of it.

‘Have you any children, Mrs Slocum?’

She shook her head. ‘I think Ryan would have liked a son. Maybe that was the problem...’

‘How long have you been married?’

‘A long time, fifteen years, nearer sixteen.’

‘Where did you meet?’

She smiled, drifting back. ‘Galveston, Texas. Ryan was an engineer, I was a secretary in the same company. He’d emigrated from Scotland some time before. I could tell he missed home, I always knew we’d end up coming back.’

‘How long have you been here?’

‘Four and a half years.’ And no killings during that time, so maybe Bible John had come out of retirement for this one job... ‘Of course,’ Una Slocum said, ‘we go back now and then to see my folks. They’re in Miami. And Ryan goes over three or four times a year on business.’

Business. Rebus added a rider to his previous thought: or maybe not .

‘Is he a churchgoer, Mrs Slocum?’

She stared at him. ‘He was when we met. It tailed off, but he’s been attending again.’

Rebus nodded. ‘Any chance I could look around? He may have left a clue where he was headed.’

‘Well... I suppose that would be all right.’ The kettle came to the boil and clicked off. ‘I’ll make the tea.’ She turned to go, paused, turned back. ‘Inspector, what are you doing here?’

Rebus smiled. ‘A routine inquiry, Mrs Slocum, to do with your husband’s work.’

She nodded as though this explained everything, then walked silently back to the kitchen.

‘Ryan’s study’s to the left,’ she called. So Rebus started there.

It was a small room, made smaller by the furniture and bookshelves. There were dozens of books about the Second World War, a whole wall covered with them. Papers were laid out neatly on the desk — stuff from Slocum’s work. In the drawers were more work files, plus others for tax, house and life insurance, pension. A life put into compartments. There was a small radio, and Rebus turned it on. Radio Three. He turned it off again, just as Una Slocum put her head round the door.

‘Tea’s in the living room.’

‘Thank you.’

‘Oh, another thing, he’s taken his computer.’

‘Computer?’

‘You know, a laptop. He used it a lot. He kept this door locked while he worked, but I could hear the clatter of keys.’

There was a key on the inside of the door. When she’d gone, Rebus closed the door and locked himself in, then turned and tried to imagine this as the den of a murderer. He couldn’t. It was a workspace, nothing more. No trophies, and no place to hide them. No bag filled with souvenirs, like Johnny Bible had collected. And no shrine, no scrapbooks of horror. No indication at all that this person lived a double life...

Rebus unlocked the door, went through to the living room, checked the window again.

‘Find anything?’ Una Slocum was pouring tea into fine china cups. A Battenberg cake had been sliced on a matching plate.

‘No,’ Rebus admitted. He took a cup and a slice of cake from her. ‘Thank you.’ Then retreated to the window again.

‘When your husband’s a salesman,’ she went on, ‘you get used to seeing him irregularly, to having to attend boring parties and gatherings, to being hostess at dinner parties where the guests are not ones you’d have chosen for yourself.’

‘Can’t be easy,’ Rebus agreed.

‘But I never complained. Maybe Ryan would have paid me more attention if I had.’ She looked at him. ‘You’re sure he’s not in trouble?’

Rebus put on his most sincere face. ‘I’m positive, Mrs Slocum.’

‘I suffer from nerves, you know. I’ve tried everything — pills, potions, hypnosis... But if something’s in you, there’s not much they can do, is there? I mean, if it’s there from the time you’re born, a little ticking time bomb...’ She looked around. ‘Maybe it’s this house, so new and all, nothing for me to do.’

Aldous Zane had predicted a house like this, a modern house...

‘Mrs Slocum,’ Rebus said, eyes on the window, ‘this might sound like a daft request, and I’ve no way to explain it, but do you think I could take a look at your attic?’

A chain on the first-floor landing. You tugged at it and the trapdoor opened, the wooden steps sliding down to meet you.

‘Clever,’ Rebus said. He began to climb, Una Slocum staying on the landing.

‘The light switch is just to your right when you get up,’ she called.

Rebus poked his head into space, half-expecting a shovel to come crashing down on it, and fumbled for the switch. A single bare bulb illuminated the floored attic.

‘We talked about converting it,’ Una Slocum called. ‘But why bother? The house is too big for us as it is.’

The attic was a few degrees cooler than the rest of the house, testament to modern insulation. Rebus looked around, not sure what he might find. What had Zane said? Flags: the Stars and Stripes and a swastika. Slocum had lived in the US, and seemed fascinated by the Third Reich. But Zane had also seen a trunk in the attic of a large, modern house. Well, Rebus couldn’t see anything like that. Packing cases, boxes of Christmas decorations, a couple of broken chairs, a spare door, a couple of hollow-sounding suitcases...

‘I haven’t been up here since last Christmas,’ Una Slocum said. Rebus helped her up the last couple of steps.

‘It’s big,’ Rebus said. ‘I can see why you thought of converting it.’

‘Planning permission would have been the problem. All the houses here are supposed to stay the same. You spend a fortune on a place, then you aren’t allowed to do anything with it.’ She lifted a folded piece of red cloth from one of the suitcases, brushed dust from it. It looked like a tablecloth, maybe a curtain. But when she shook it, it unfurled into a large flag, black on a white circle with red border. A swastika. She saw the shock on Rebus’s face.