Ian Rankin - Hide And Seek

‘But he got in touch with you?’

‘Yes. Wrote a letter to me care of a pal of mine. Clever move that. So I got the letter without Mum and Dad knowing. He told me he had come to Edinburgh. That he liked it better than Stirling. That he had a job and a girlfriend. That was it, no address or phone number.’

‘Did he write often?’

‘Now and then. He lied a lot, made things seem better than they were. Said he couldn’t come back to Stirling until he had a Porsche and a flat, so he could prove something to Mum and Dad. Then he stopped writing. I left school and joined the police.’

‘And came to Edinburgh.’

‘Not straight away, but yes, eventually.’

‘Specifically to find him?’

Neil smiled.

‘Not a bit of it. I was forgetting him, too. I had my own life to think about.’

‘So what happened?’

‘I caught him one night, out on my regular beat.’

‘What beat is that exactly?’

‘I’m based out at Musselburgh.’

‘Musselburgh? Not exactly walking distance of here, is it? So what do you mean “caught him”?’

‘Well, not caught, since he wasn’t really doing anything. But he was high as a kite, and he’d been bashed up a bit.’

‘Did he tell you what he’d been doing?’

‘No. I could guess though.’

‘What?’

‘Acting as a punchbag for some of the rough traders around Calton Hill.’

‘Funny, someone else mentioned that.’

‘It happens. Quick money for people who don’t give a shit.’

‘And Ronnie didn’t give a shit?’

‘Sometimes he did. Other times…. I don’t know, maybe I didn’t know his mind as well as I thought.’

‘So you started to visit him?’

‘I had to help him home that first night. I came back the next day. He was surprised to see me, didn’t even remember that I’d helped him home the previous night.’

‘Did you try to get him off drugs?’

Neil was silent. The door creaked on its hinges.

‘At the beginning I did,’ he said at last. ‘But he seemed to be in control. That sounds stupid, I know, after what I’ve said about finding him in such a state that first night, but it was his choice, after all, as he kept reminding me.’

‘What did he think of having a brother in the force?’

‘He thought it was funny. Mind you, I never came round here with my uniform on.’

‘Not till tonight.’

‘That’s right. Anyway, yes, I visited a few times. We stayed up here mostly. He didn’t want the others to see me. He was afraid they’d smell pork.’

It was Rebus’s turn to smile. ‘You didn’t happen to follow Tracy, did you?’

‘Who’s Tracy?’

‘Ronnie’s girlfriend. She turned up at my flat last night. Some men had been following her.’

Neil shook his head. ‘Wasn’t me.’

‘But you were at my flat last night?’

‘Yes.’

‘And you were here the night Ronnie died.’ It was blunt, but necessarily so. Neil stopped playing with the door handle, was silent this time for twenty or thirty seconds, then took a deep breath.

‘For a while I was, yes.’

‘You left this behind.’ Rebus held out the shiny clip, but Neil couldn’t quite make it out in the torchlight. Not that he needed to see it to know what it was.

‘My tie clip? I wondered about that. My tie had broken that day, it was in my pocket.’

Rebus made no attempt to hand over the clip. Instead, he put it back in his pocket. Neil just nodded, understanding.

‘Why did you start following me?’

‘I wanted to talk to you. I just couldn’t pluck up the courage.’

‘You didn’t want news of Ronnie’s death getting back to your parents?’

‘Yes. I thought maybe you wouldn’t be able to trace his identity, but you did. I don’t know what it’ll do to my mum and dad. I think at worst it’ll make them happy, because they’ll know they were right all along, right not to give him a second’s thought.’

‘And at best?’

‘Best?’ Neil stared through the gloom, searching out Rebus’s eyes. ‘There’s no best.’

‘I suppose not,’ said Rebus. ‘But they’ve still got to be told.’

‘I know. I’ve always known.’

‘Then why follow me?’

‘Because now you’re closer to Ronnie than I am. I don’t know why you’re so interested in him, but you are. And that interests me. I want you to find whoever sold him that poison.’

‘I intend to, son, don’t worry.’

‘And I want to help.’

‘That’s the first stupid thing you’ve said, which isn’t bad going for a PC. Truth is, Neil, you’d be the biggest bloody nuisance I could ask for. I’ve got all the help I need for now.’

‘Too many cooks, eh?’

‘Something like that.’ Rebus decided that the confession was ending, that there was little left to be said. He came away from the window and walked to the door, stopping in front of Neil. ‘You’ve already been a bigger nuisance than I needed. It’s not pork I can smell off you, it’s fish. Herrings, to be precise. And guess what colour they are.’

‘What?’

‘Red, son, red.’

There was a noise from downstairs, pressure on floorboards, better than an infra-red alarm anyday. Rebus turned off the torch.

‘Stay here,’ he whispered. Then he went to the top of the stairs. ‘Who’s there?’ A shadow appeared below him. He switched on the torch, and shone it into Tony McCall’s squinting face.

‘Christ, Tony.’ Rebus started downstairs. ‘What a fright.’

‘I knew I’d find you here,’ said McCall. ‘I just knew it.’ His voice was nasal, and Rebus reckoned that since the time they’d parted some three hours before, McCall had kept on drinking. He stopped on the staircase, then turned and headed back up.

‘Where are you going now?’ called McCall.

‘Just shutting the door,’ said Rebus, closing the bedroom door, leaving Neil inside. ‘Don’t want the ghosts to catch cold, do we?’

McCall was chuckling as Rebus headed downstairs again.

‘Thought we might have a wee snifter,’ he said. ‘And none of that bloody alcohol-free stuff you were quaffing before.’

‘Fair enough,’ said Rebus, expertly manoeuvring McCall out of the front door. ‘Let’s do that.’ And he locked the door behind him, figuring that Ronnie’s brother would know of the many easy ways in and out of the house. Everybody else seemed to know them, after all.

Everybody.

‘Where’ll it be?’ said Rebus. ‘I hope you didn’t drive here, Tony.’

‘Got a patrol car to drop me off.’

‘Fine. We’ll take my car then.’

‘We could drive down to Leith.’

‘No, I fancy something more central. There are a few good pubs in Regent Road.’

‘By Calton Hill?’ McCall was amazed. ‘Christ, John, I can think of better places to go for a drink.’

‘I can’t,’ said Rebus. ‘Come on.’

Nell Stapleton was Holmes’s girlfriend. Holmes had always preferred tall women, tracing the fixation back to his mother who had been five foot ten. Nell was nearly three quarters of an inch taller than Holmes’s mother, but he still loved her.

Nell was more intelligent than Holmes. Or, as he liked to think, they were more intelligent than one another in different ways. Nell could crack the Guardian cryptic crossword in under quarter of an hour on a good day. But she had trouble with arithmetic and remembering names: both strengths possessed by Holmes. People said they looked good together in public, looked comfortable with one another, which was probably true. They felt good together, too, living as they did by several simple rules: no talk of marriage, no thoughts of children, no hinting at living together, and definitely no cheating.