Ian Rankin - Hide And Seek

Holmes sighed, staring down at the damp, rock-hard earth beneath his knees.

‘I don’t think pit bulls enter the equation,’ he said. ‘Or if they do, bestiality rather than brutality might be the charge.’

The SSPCA officer still held his binoculars to his eyes, horror-struck and riveted.

‘You hear stories,’ he said, ‘but you never … well … you know.’

‘Get to watch?’ Holmes suggested, getting slowly, painfully to his feet.

He was talking with the night duty officer when the message came through. Inspector Rebus wanted a word.

‘Rebus? What does he want?’ Brian Holmes checked his watch. It was two fifteen a.m. Rebus was at home, and he had been told to phone him there. He used the duty officer’s telephone.

‘Hello?’ He knew John Rebus of course, had worked with him on several cases. Still, middle-of-the-night calls were something else entirely.

‘Is that you, Brian?’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘Have you a sheet of paper? Write this down.’ Fumbling with pad and biro, Holmes thought he could hear music playing on the line. Something he recognised. The Beatles’ White Album. ‘Ready?’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘Right. There was a junkie found dead in Pilmuir yesterday, or a couple of days ago now, strictly speaking. Overdose. Find out who the constables who found him were. Get them to come into my office at ten o’clock. Got that?’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘Good. Now, when you’ve got the address where the body was found, I want you to pick up the keys from whoever’s got them and go to the house. Upstairs in one of the bedrooms there’s a wall covered in photographs. Some are of Edinburgh Castle. Take them with you and go to the local newspaper’s office. They’ll have files full of photographs. If you’re lucky they might even have a little old man on duty with a memory like an elephant. I want you to look for any photographs that have been published in the newspaper recently and look to have been taken from the same angle as the ones on the bedroom wall. Got that?’

‘Yes, sir,’ said Holmes, scribbling furiously.

‘Good. I want to know who took the newspaper photographs. There’ll be a sticker or something on the back of each print giving a name and address.’

‘Anything else, sir?’ It came out as sarcasm, meant or not.

‘Yes.’ Rebus seemed to drop his voice a decibel. ‘On the bedroom wall you’ll also find some photos of a young lady. I’d like to know more about her. She says her middle name is Tracy. That’s what she calls herself. Ask around, show the picture to anyone you think might have an inkling.’

‘Right, sir. One question.’

‘Go ahead.’

‘Why me? Why now? What’s all this in aid of?’

‘That’s three questions. I’ll answer as many of them as I can when I see you tomorrow afternoon. Be in my office at three.’

And with that, the line went dead on Brian Holmes. He stared at the drunken rows of writing on his pad, his own shorthand of a week’s worth of work, delivered to him in a matter of minutes. The duty officer was reading it over his shoulder.

‘Rather you than me,’ he said with sincerity.

John Rebus had chosen Holmes for a whole bundle of reasons, but mostly because Holmes didn’t know much about him. He wanted someone who would work efficiently, methodically, without raising too much fuss. Someone who didn’t know Rebus well enough to complain about being kept in the dark, about being used as a shunting engine. A message boy and a bloodhound and a dogsbody. Rebus knew that Holmes was gaining a reputation for efficiency and for not being a complaining sod. That was enough to be going on with.

He carried the telephone back from the hall into the living room, placed it on the bookshelves, and went across to the hi-fi, where he switched off the tape machine, then the amplifier. He went to the window and looked out on an empty street whose lamplight was the colour of Red Leicester cheese. The image reminded him of the midnight snack he had promised himself a couple of hours ago, and he decided to make himself something in the kitchen. Tracy wouldn’t be wanting anything. He was sure of that. He stared at her as she lay along the settee, her head at an angle towards the floor, one hand across her stomach, the other hanging down to touch the wool carpet. Her eyes were unseeing slits, her mouth open in a pout, revealing a slight gap between her two front teeth. She had slept soundly as he had thrown a blanket over her, and was sleeping still, her breathing regular. Something niggled him, but he couldn’t think what it was. Hunger perhaps. He hoped the freezer would yield a pleasant surprise. But first he went to the window and looked out again. The street was absolutely dead, which was just how Rebus himself was feeling: dead but active. He picked Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde from the floor and carried it through to the kitchen.

Police Constables Harry Todd and Francis O’Rourke were standing outside Rebus’s office when he arrived next morning. They had been leaning against the wall, enjoying a lazy conversation, seemingly unconcerned that Rebus was twenty minutes late. He was damned if he was going to apologise. He noted with satisfaction that as he reached the top of the stairs they pulled themselves up straight and shut their mouths.

That was a good start.

He opened the door, walked into the room, and closed the door again. Let them stew for another minute. Now they’d have something really to talk about. He had checked with the desk sergeant, and Brian Holmes wasn’t in the station. He took a slip of paper from his pocket and rang Holmes’s house. The telephone rang and rang. Holmes must be out working.

The good run was continuing.

There was mail on his desk. He flipped through it, stopping only to extract a note from Superintendent Watson. It was an invitation to lunch. Today. At twelve thirty. Hell. He was meeting Holmes at three. The lunch was with some of the businessmen who were putting up the hard cash for the drugs campaign. Hell. And it was in The Eyrie, which meant wearing a tie and a clean shirt. Rebus looked down at his shirt. It would do. But the tie would not. Hell.

The smile left his soul.

It had been too good to last. Tracy had woken him with breakfast on a tray. Orange juice, toast and honey, strong coffee. She’d gone out early, she explained, taking with her a little money she found on the shelves in the living room. She hoped he didn’t mind. She had found a comer shop open, made the purchases, come back to the flat, and made him breakfast.

‘I’m surprised the smell of burning toast didn’t wake you,’ she had said.

‘You’re looking at the man who slept through Towering Inferno,’ he had replied. And she had laughed, sitting on the bed taking dainty bites of toast with her exposed teeth, while Rebus chewed his slices slowly, thoughtfully. Luxuriously. How long had it been since he’d been brought breakfast in bed? It frightened him to think….

‘Come in!’ he roared now, though no one had knocked.

Tracy had left without complaint, too. She felt all right, she said. She couldn’t stay cooped up forever, could she? He had driven her back towards Pilmuir, then had done something stupid. Given her ten pounds. It wasn’t just money, as he realised a second after handing it over. It was a bond between them, a bond he shouldn’t be making. It lay there in her hand, and he felt the temptation to snatch it back. But then she was out of the car and walking away, her body fragile as bone china, her gait determined, full of strength. Sometimes she reminded him of his daughter Sammy, other times….