Ian Rankin: Hide And Seek

‘Cheese and onion.’

‘We’ve run out.’

‘Well, ready salted then.’

‘No, they’re out too.’ The barman had cheered up again.

‘Well,’ said Rebus in growing frustration, ‘what in the name of God have you got?’

‘Two flavours. Curry, or egg, bacon and tomato.’

‘Egg?’ Rebus sighed. ‘All right, give me a packet of each.’

The barman stooped beneath the counter to find the smallest possible bags, past their sell-by dates if possible.

‘Any nuts?’ It was a last desperate hope. The barman looked up.

‘Dry roasted, salt and vinegar, chilli flavour,’ he said.

‘One of each then,’ said Rebus, resigned to an early death. ‘And another half of eighty-shillings.’

He was finishing this second drink when the bar door shuddered open and an instantly recognisable figure entered, his hand signalling for refreshment before he was even halfway through the door. He saw Rebus, smiled, and came to join him on one of the high stools.

‘Hello, John.’

‘Afternoon, Tony.’

Inspector Anthony McCall tried to balance his prodigious bulk on the tiny circumference of the bar stool, thought better of it, and stood instead, one shoe on the foot-rail, and both elbows on the freshly wiped surface of the bar. He stared hungrily at Rebus.

‘Give us one of your crisps.’

When the packet was offered, he pulled out a handful and stuffed them into his mouth.

‘Where were you this morning then?’ said Rebus. ‘I’d to take one of your calls.’

‘The one at Pilmuir? Ach, sorry about that, John. Heavy night last night. I had a bit of a hangover this morning.’ A pint of murky beer was placed in front of him. ‘Hair of the dog,’ he said, and took four slow gulps, reducing it to a quarter of its former size.

‘Well, I’d nothing better to do anyway,’ said Rebus, sipping at his own beer. ‘Christ, those houses down there are a mess though.’

McCall nodded thoughtfully. ‘It wasn’t always like that, John. I was born there.’

‘Really?’

‘Well, to be exact, I was born on the estate that was there before this one. It was so bad, so they said, that they levelled it and built Pilmuir instead. Bloody hell on earth it is now.’

‘Funny you should say that,’ said Rebus. ‘One of the young uniformed kids thought there might be some kind of occult tie-in.’ McCall looked up from his drink. ‘There was a black-magic painting on the wall,’ Rebus explained. ‘And candles on the floor.’

‘Like a sacrifice?’ McCall offered, chuckling. ‘My wife’s dead keen on all those horror films. Gets them out of the video library. I think she sits watching them all day when I’m out.’

‘I suppose it must go on, devil worship, witchcraft. It can’t all be in the imagination of the Sunday newspaper editors.’

‘I know how you might find out.’

‘How?’

‘The university,’ said McCall. Rebus frowned, disbelieving. ‘I’m serious. They’ve got some kind of department that studies ghosts and all that sort of thing. Set up with money from some dead writer.’ McCall shook his head. ‘Incredible what people will do.’

Rebus was nodding. ‘I did read about that, now you mention it. Arthur Koestler’s money, wasn’t it?’

McCall shrugged.

‘Arthur Daley’s more my style,’ he said, emptying his glass.

Rebus was studying the pile of paperwork on his desk when the telephone rang.

‘DI Rebus.’

‘They said you were the man to talk to.’ The voice was young, female, full of unfocussed suspicion.

‘They were probably right. What can I do for you, miss …?’

‘Tracy….’ The voice fell to a whisper on the last syllable of the name. She had already been tricked into revealing herself. ‘Never mind who I am!’ She had become immediately hysterical, but calmed just as quickly. ‘I’m phoning about that squat in Pilmuir, the one where they found….’ The voice trailed off again.

‘Oh yes.’ Rebus sat up and began to take notice. ‘Was it you who phoned the first time?’

‘What?’

‘To tell us that someone had died there.’

‘Yes, it was me. Poor Ronnie….’

‘Ronnie being the deceased?’ Rebus scribbled the name onto the back of one of the files from his in-tray. Beside it he wrote ‘Tracy — caller’.

‘Yes.’ Her voice had broken again, near to tears this time.

‘Can you give me a surname for Ronnie?’

‘No.’ She paused. ‘I never knew it. I’m not sure Ronnie was even his real name. Hardly anyone uses their real name.’

‘Tracy, I’d like to talk to you about Ronnie. We can do it over the telephone, but I’d rather it was face to face. Don’t worry, you’re not in any trouble — ’

‘But I am. That’s why I called. Ronnie told me, you see.’

‘Told you what, Tracy?’

‘Told me he’d been murdered.’

The room around Rebus seemed suddenly to vanish. There was only this disconnected voice, the telephone, and him.

‘He said that to you, Tracy?’

‘Yes.’ She was crying now, sniffing back the unseen tears. Rebus visualised a frightened little girl, just out of school, standing in a distant callbox. ‘I’ve got to hide,’ she said at last. ‘Ronnie said over and over that I should hide.’

‘Shall I bring my car and fetch you? Just tell me where you are.’

‘No!’

‘Then tell me how Ronnie was killed. You know how we found him?’

‘Lying on the floor by the window. That’s where he was.’

‘Not quite.’

‘Oh yes, that’s where he was. By the window. Lying wrapped up into a little ball. I thought he was just sleeping. But when I touched his arm he was cold…. I went to find Charlie, but he’d gone. So I just panicked.’

‘You say Ronnie was lying in a ball?’ Rebus had begun to draw pencilled circles on the back of the file.

‘Yes.’

‘And this was in the living room?’

She seemed confused. ‘What? No, not in the living room. He was upstairs, in his bedroom.’

‘I see.’ Rebus kept on drawing effortless circles. He was trying to imagine Ronnie dying, but not really dead, crawling downstairs after Tracy had fled, ending up in the living room. That might explain those bruises. But the candles…. He had been so perfectly positioned between them…. ‘And when was this?’

‘Late last night, I don’t know exactly when. I panicked. When I calmed down, I phoned for the police.’

‘What time was it when you phoned?’

She paused, thinking. ‘About seven this morning.’

‘Tracy, would you mind telling this to some other people?’

‘Why?’

‘I’ll tell you when I pick you up. Just tell me where you are.’

There was another pause while she considered this. ‘I’m back in Pilmuir,’ she said finally. ‘I’ve moved into another squat.’

‘Well,’ said Rebus, ‘you don’t want me to come down there, do you? But you must be quite close to Shore Road. What about us meeting there?’

‘Well….’

‘There’s a pub called the Dock Leaf,’ continued Rebus, giving her no time to debate. ‘Do you know it?’

‘I’ve been kicked out of it a few times.’

‘Me too. Okay, I’ll meet you outside it in an hour. All right?’

‘All right.’ She didn’t sound over-enthusiastic, and Rebus wondered if she would keep the appointment. Well, what of it? She sounded straight enough, but she might just be another casualty, making it up to draw attention to herself, to make her life seem more interesting than it was.

But then he’d had a feeling, hadn’t he?

‘All right,’ she said, and the connection was severed.

Shore Road was a fast road around the north coast of the city. Factories, warehouses, and vast DIY and home furnishing stores were its landmarks, and beyond them lay the Firth of Forth, calm and grey. On most days, the coast of Fife was visible in the distance, but not today, with a cold mist hanging low on the water. On the other side of the road from the warehouses were the tenements, four-storey predecessors of the concrete high-rise. There was a smattering of comer shops, where neighbour met neighbour, and information was passed on, and a few small unmodernised pubs, where strangers did not go unnoticed for long.