Ian Rankin - Hide And Seek

A wonder then that James Carew of Bowyer Carew Estate Agents should look so startled when, being stared at, he returned the stare and found himself eye to eye with Dectective Inspector John Rebus.

Rebus was taking all this in as Carew fumbled with his ignition key, revved up the new V 12engine and reversed out of the car park as though Cutty Sark herself were after him.

‘He’s in a hurry,’ said James.

‘Have you seen him before?’

‘Didn’t really catch his face. Haven’t seen the car before though.’

‘No, well, it’s a new car, isn’t it?’ said Rebus, lazily starting his own.

The flat was still redolent of Tracy. She lingered in the living room and the bathroom. He saw her with a towel falling down around her head, legs tucked beneath her…. Bringing him breakfast: the dirty dishes were still lying beside his unmade bed. She had laughed to find that he slept on a mattress on the floor. ‘Just like in a squat,’ she had said. The flat seemed emptier now, emptier than it had felt for a while. And Rebus could do with a bath. He returned to the bathroom and turned the hot tap on. He could still feel James’s hand on his leg…. In the living room, he looked at a bottle of whisky for a full minute, but turned his back on it and fetched a low-alcohol lager from the fridge instead.

The bath was filling slowly. An Archimedean screw would have been more efficient. Still, it gave him time to make another telephone call to the station, to check on how they were treating Tracy. The news was not good. She was becoming irritable, refusing to eat, complaining of pains in her side. Appendicitis? More likely cold turkey. He felt a fair amount of guilt at not having gone to see her before now. Another layer of guilt wouldn’t do any harm, so he decided to put off the visit until morning. Just for a few hours he wanted to be away from it all, all the sordid tinkering with other people’s lives. His flat didn’t feel so secure any more, didn’t feel like the castle it had been only a day or two ago. And there was internal damage as well as the structural kind: he was feeling soiled in the pit of his gut, as though the city had scraped away a layer of its surface grime and force-fed him the lot.

To hell with it.

He was caught all right. He was living in the most beautiful, most civilised city in northern Europe, yet every day had to deal with its flipside, with the minor matter of its animus. Animus ? Now there was a word he hadn’t used in a while. He wasn’t even sure now what it meant exactly; but it sounded right. He sucked from the beer bottle, holding the foam in his mouth like a child playing with toothpaste. This stuff was all foam. No substance.

All foam. Now there was another idea. He would put some foaming bath oil in the water. Bubblebath. Who the hell had given him this stuff? Oh. Yes. Gill Templer. He remembered now. Remembered the occasion, too. She had been gently chiding him about how he never cleaned the bath. Then had presented him with this bath oil.

‘It cleans you and your bath,’ she had said, reading from the bottle. ‘And puts the fun back into bathtime.’

He had suggested that they test this claim together, and they had…. Jesus, John, you’re getting morbid again. Just because she’s gone off with some vacuum-headed disc jockey with the unlikely name of Calum McCallum. It wasn’t the end of anybody’s world. The bombs weren’t falling. There were no sirens in the sky.

Nothing but … Ronnie, Tracy, Charlie, James and the rest. And now Hyde. Rebus was beginning to know now the meaning of the term ‘dead beat’. He rested his naked limbs in the near-scalding water and closed his eyes.

Dead beat: Holmes yawned again, dead on his feet. For once, he had actually beaten the alarm, so that he was returning to bed with instant coffee when the radio blared into action. What a way to wake up every day. When he had a spare half hour, he’d retune the bloody thing to Radio Three or something. Except he knew Radio Three would send him straight back to sleep, whereas the voice of Calum McCallum and the grating records he played in between hoots and jingles and enthusiastic bad jokes brought him awake with a jolt, ready, teeth gritted, to face another day.

This morning, he had beaten the smug little voice. He switched the radio off.

‘Here,’ he said. ‘Coffee, and time to get up.’

Nell turned her head from the pillow, squinting up at him.

‘Has it gone nine?’

‘Not quite.’

She turned back into the pillow again, moaning softly. ‘Good. Wake me up again when it does.’

‘Drink your coffee,’ he chided, touching her shoulder. Her shoulder was warm, tempting. He allowed himself a wistful smile, then turned and left the bedroom. He had gone ten paces before he paused, turned, and went back. Nell’s arms were long, tanned, and open in welcome.

Despite the breakfast he had brought her in the cell, Tracy was furious with Rebus, and especially when he explained to her that she could leave whenever she wanted, that she wasn’t under arrest.

‘This is called protection,’ he told her. ‘Protection from the men who were chasing you. Protection from Charlie.’

‘Charlie….’ She calmed a little at the sound of his name, and touched her bruised eye. ‘But why didn’t you come to see me sooner?’ she complained. Rebus shrugged.

‘Things to do,’ he said.

He stared at her photograph now, while Brian Holmes sat on the other side of the desk, warily sipping coffee from a chipped mug. Rebus wasn’t sure whether he hated Holmes or loved him for bringing this into the office, for laying it flat on the desktop in front of him. Not saying a word. No good morning, no hail fellow well met. Just this. This photograph, this nude shot. Of Tracy.

Rebus had stared at it while Holmes made his report. Holmes had worked hard yesterday, and had achieved a result. So why had he snubbed Rebus in the bar? If he’d seen this picture last night, it would not now be ruining his morning, not now be eroding the memory of a good night’s sleep. Rebus cleared his throat.

‘Did you find out anything about her?’

‘No, sir,’ said Holmes. ‘All I got was that.’ He nodded towards the photograph, his eyes unblinking: I’ve given you that. What more do you want from me?

‘I see,’ said Rebus, his voice level. He turned the photo over and read the small label on the back. Hutton Studios. A business telephone number. ‘Right. Well, leave this with me, Brian. I’ll have to give it some thought.’

‘Okay,’ said Holmes, thinking: he called me Brian! He’s not thinking straight this morning.

Rebus sat back, sipping from his own mug. Coffee, milk no sugar. He had been disappointed when Holmes had asked for his coffee the same way. It gave them something in common. A taste in coffee.

‘How’s the househunting going?’ he said conversationally.

‘Grim. How did you …?’ Holmes remembered the Houses for Sale list, folded in his jacket pocket like a tabloid newspaper. He touched it now. Rebus smiled, nodded.

‘I remember buying my flat,’ he said. ‘I scoured those freesheets for weeks before I found a place I liked.’

‘Liked?’ Holmes snorted. ‘That would be a bonus. The problem for me is just finding somewhere I can afford.’

‘That bad, is it?’

‘Haven’t you noticed?’ Holmes was slightly incredulous. So involved was he in the game, it was hard to believe that anyone wasn’t. ‘Prices are going through the roof. In fact, a roofs about all I can afford near the centre of the city.’