Ian Rankin - Hide And Seek

McCall thought about this. He let the bits of the photograph flutter into the ashtray, then set light to them with a match. They dissolved to blackened ash, and he seemed satisfied.

‘Andrews needed a favour. It was always “favours” with him. I think he’d seen The Godfather too many times. Pilmuir was my beat, my territory. We’d met through Tommy, so he thought to ask me.’

‘And you were happy to oblige.’

‘Well, he had the picture, didn’t he?’

‘There must’ve been more.’

‘Well …’ McCall paused again, crushed the ash in the ashtray with his forefinger. A fine dust was all that was left. ‘Yes, hell, I was happy enough to do it. The guy was a junkie after all, a piece of rubbish. And he was already dead. All I had to do was place a little packet beside him, that’s all.’

‘You never questioned why?’

‘Ask no questions and all that.’ He smiled. ‘Finlay was offering me membership, you see. Membership of Hyde’s. Well, I knew what that meant. I’d be on nodding terms with the big boys, wouldn’t I? I even started to dream about career advancement, something I hadn’t done in quite some time. Let’s face it, John, we’re tiny fish in a small pool.’

‘And Hyde was offering you the chance to play with the sharks?’

McCall smiled sadly. ‘I suppose that was it, yes.’

Rebus sighed. ‘Tony, Tony, Tony. Where would it have ended, eh?’

‘Probably with you having to call me “sir”,’ McCall answered, his voice firming up. ‘Instead of which, I suppose the trial will see me on the front of the scum sheets. Not quite the kind of fame I was looking for.’

He rose from the chair.

‘See you in court,’ he said, leaving John Rebus to his flavourless tea and his thoughts.

Rebus slept fitfully, and was awake early. He showered, but without any of his usual vocal accompaniment. He telephoned the hospital, and ascertained that Tracy was fine, and that Finlay Andrews had been patched up with the loss of very little blood. Then he drove to Great London Road, where Malcolm Lanyon was being held for questioning.

Rebus was still officially a non-person, and DS Dick and DC Cooper had been assigned to the interrogation. But Rebus wanted to be close by. He knew the answers to all their questions, knew the sorts of trick Lanyon was capable of pulling. He didn’t want the bastard getting away with it because of some technicality.

He went to the canteen first, bought a bacon roll, and, seeing Dick and Cooper seated at a table, went to join them.

‘Hello, John,’ Dick said, staring into the bottom of a stained coffee mug.

‘You lot are early birds,’ Rebus noted. ‘You must be keen.’

‘Farmer Watson wants it out of the way as soon as poss, sooner even.’

‘I’ll bet he does. Look, I’m going to be around today, if you need me to back up anything.’

‘We appreciate that, John,’ said Dick, in a voice which told Rebus his offer was as welcome as a dunce’s cap.

‘Well…’ Rebus began, but bit off the sentence, and ate his breakfast instead. Dick and Cooper seemed dulled by the enforced early rise. Certainly, they were not the most vivacious of table companions. Rebus finished quickly and rose to his feet.

‘Mind if I take a quick look at him?’

‘Not at all,’ said Dick. ‘We’ll be there in five minutes.’

Passing through the ground-floor reception area, Rebus almost bumped into Brian Holmes.

‘Everyone’s after the worm today,’ Rebus said. Holmes gave him a puzzled, sleepy look. ‘Never mind. I’m off to take a peek at Lanyon-alias-Hyde. Fancy a bit of voyeurism?’

Holmes didn’t answer, but fell in stride with Rebus.

‘Actually,’ Rebus said, ‘Lanyon might appreciate that image.’ Holmes gave him a more puzzled look yet. Rebus sighed. ‘Never mind.’

‘Sorry, sir, bit of a late night yesterday.’

‘Oh, yes. Thanks for that, by the way.’

‘I nearly died when I saw the bloody Farmer staring at the lot of us, him in his undertaker’s suit and us pretending to be pissed Dundonians.’

They shared a smile. Okay, the plan had been lame, conceived by Rebus during the course of his fifty-minute drive back from Calum McCallum’s cell in Fife. But it had worked. They’d got a result.

‘Yes,’ Rebus said. ‘I thought you looked a bit nervy last night.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Well. you were doing your Italian army impression, weren’t you? Advancing backwards, and all that.’

Holmes stopped dead, his jaw dropping. ‘Is that the thanks I get? We put our careers on the line for you last night, all four of us. You’ve used me as your gofer — go find this, go check that — as a bit of bloody shoeleather, half the time for jobs that weren’t even official, you’ve had my girlfriend half killed — ’

‘Now wait just one second — ’

‘ — and all to satisfy your own curiosity. Okay, so there are bad guys behind bars, that’s good, but look at the scales. You’ve got them, the rest of us have got sod all except a few bruises and no bloody soles on our shoes!’

Rebus stared at the floor, almost contrite. The air flew from his nostrils as from a Spanish bull’s.

‘I forgot,’ he said at last. ‘I meant to take that bloody suit back this morning. The shoes are ruined. It was you talking about shoeleather that reminded me.’

Then he set off again, along the corridor, towards the cells, leaving Holmes speechless in his wake.

Outside the cell, Lanyon’s name had been printed in chalk on a board. Rebus went up to the steel door and pulled aside the shutter, thinking how it reminded him of the shutter on the door of some prohibition club. Give the secret knock and the shutter opened. He peered into the cell, started, and groped for the alarm bell situated beside the door. Holmes, hearing the siren, forgot to be angry and hurt and hurried forward. Rebus was pulling at the edge of the locked door with his fingernails.

‘We’ve got to get in!’

‘It’s locked, sir.’ Holmes was afraid: his superior looked absolutely manic. ‘Here they come.’

A uniformed sergeant came at an undignified trot, keys jangling from his chain.

‘Quick!’

The lock gave, and Rebus yanked open the door. Inside, Malcolm Lanyon lay slumped on the floor, head resting against the bed. His feet were splayed like a doll’s. One hand lay on the floor, some thin nylon wire, like a fishing-line, wrapped around the knuckles, which were blackened. The line was attached to Lanyon’s neck in a loop which had embedded itself so far into the flesh that it could hardly be seen. Lanyon’s eyes bulged horribly, his swollen tongue obscene against the blood-darkened face. It was like a last macabre gesture, and Rebus watched the tongue protruding towards him, seeming to take it as a personal insult.

He knew it was way too late, but the sergeant loosened the wire anyway and laid the corpse flat on the floor. Holmes was resting his head against the cold metal door, screwing shut his eyes against the parody inside the cell.

‘He must’ve had it hidden on him,’ the sergeant said, seeking excuses for the monumental blunder, referring to the wire which he now held in his hands. ‘Jesus, what a way to go.’

Rebus was thinking: he’s cheated me, he’s cheated me. I wouldn’t have had the guts to do that, not slowly choke myself…. I could never do it, something inside would have stopped me….

‘Who’s been in here since he was brought in?’

The sergeant stared at Rebus, uncomprehending.

‘The usual lot, I suppose. He had a few questions to answer last night when you brought him in.’

‘Yes, but after that?’

‘Well, he had a meal when you lot went. That’s about it.’