Ian Rankin - Hide And Seek

Then came up short, blood pounding. The circles were still there, and the five-pointed star within them. But there were fresh additions, zodiac signs and other symbols between the two circles, painted in red. He touched the paint. It was tacky. Bringing his fingers away, he shone the torch further up the wall, and read the dripping message:

HELLO RONNIE

Superstitious to his core, Rebus turned on his heels and fled, not bothering to relock the door behind him. Walking briskly towards his car, his eyes turned back in the direction of the house, he fell into someone, and stumbled. The other figure fell awkwardly, and was slow to rise. Rebus switched on his torch, and confronted a teenager, eyes sparkling, face bruised and cut.

‘Jesus, son,’ he whispered, ‘what happened to you?’

‘I got beat up,’ the boy said, shuffling away on a painful leg.

Rebus made the car somehow, his nerves as thin as old shoelaces. Inside, he locked the door and sat back, closing his eyes, breathing hard. Relax, John, he told himself. Relax. Soon, he was even able to smile at his momentary lapse of courage. Tomorrow he’d come back. In daylight.

He’d seen enough for now.

Sleep did not come easy, but eventually, slumped in his favourite chair, a book propped open on his lap, he must have dozed off, because it took a nine o‘clock call to bring him to life.

His back, legs and arms were stiff and aching as he scrabbled on the floor for his new cordless telephone.

‘Yes?’

‘Lab here, Inspector Rebus. You wanted to know first thing.’

‘What have you got?’ Rebus slumped back into the warm chair, pulling at his eyes with his free hand, trying to engage their cooperation in this fresh and waking world. He glanced at his watch and realised just how late he’d slept.

‘Well, it’s not the purest heroin on the street.’

He nodded to himself, confident that his next question hardly needed asking. ‘Would it kill whoever injected it?’

The reply jolted him upright.

‘Not at all. In fact, it’s very clean, all things considered. A bit watered down from its pure form, but that’s not uncommon. In fact, it’s mandatory.’

‘But it would be okay to use?’

‘I imagine it would be very good to use.’

‘I see. Well, thank you.’ Rebus pressed the disconnect button. He had been so sure. So sure…. He reached into his pocket, found the number he needed, and pushed the seven digits quickly, before the thought of morning coffee could overwhelm him.

‘Inspector Rebus for Doctor Enfield.’ He waited. ‘Doctor? Fine thanks. How about you? Good, good. Listen, that body yesterday, the druggie on the Pilmuir Estate, any news?’ He listened. ‘Yes, I’ll hold.’

Pilmuir. What had Tony McCall said? It had been lovely once, a place of innocence, something like that. The old days always were though, weren’t they? Memory smoothed the comers, as Rebus himself knew well.

‘Hello?’ he said to the telephone. ‘Yes, that’s right.’ Paper was rustling in the background, Enfield’s voice dispassionate.

‘Bruising on the body. Fairly extensive. Result of a heavy fall or some kind of physical confrontation. The stomach was almost completely empty. HIV negative, which is something. As for the cause of death, well….’

‘The heroin?’ Rebus prompted.

‘Mmm. Ninety-five percent impure.’

‘Really?’ Rebus perked up. ‘What had it been diluted with?’

‘Still working on that, Inspector. But an educated guess would be anything from ground-up aspirin to rat poison, with the emphasis strictly on rodent control.’

‘You’re saying it was lethal?’

‘Oh, absolutely. Whoever sold the stuff was selling euthanasia. If there’s more of it about … well, I dread to think.’

More of it about? The thought made Rebus’s scalp tingle. What if someone were going around poisoning junkies? But why the one perfect packet? One perfect, one as rotten as could be. It didn’t make sense.

‘Thanks, Doctor Enfield.’

He rested the telephone on the arm of the chair. Tracy had been right in one respect at least. They had murdered Ronnie. Whoever ‘they’ were. And Ronnie had known, known as soon as he’d used the stuff…. No, wait…. Known before he’d used the stuff? Could that be possible? Rebus had to find the dealer. Had to find out why Ronnie had been chosen to die. Been, indeed, sacrificed….

It was Tony McCall’s backyard. All right, so he had moved out of Pilmuir, had eventually bought a crippling mortgage which some people called a house. It was a nice house, too. He knew this because his wife told him it was. Told him continually. She couldn’t understand why he spent so little time there. After all, as she told him, it was his home too.

Home. To McCall’s wife, it was a palace. ‘Home’ didn’t quite cover it. And the two children, son and daughter, had been brought up to tiptoe through the interior, not leaving crumbs or fingerprints, no mess, no breakages. McCall, who had lived a bruising childhood with his brother Tommy, thought it unnatural. His children had grown up in fear and in a swaddling of love — a bad combination. Now Craig was fourteen, Isabel eleven. Both were shy, introspective, maybe even a bit strange. Bang had gone McCall’s dream of a professional footballer for a son, an actress for a daughter. Craig played chess a lot, but no physical sports. (He had won a small plaque at school after one tournament. McCall had tried to learn to play after that, but had failed.) Isabel liked knitting. They sat in the too-perfect living room created by their mother, and were almost silent. The clack-clack of needles; the soft movement of chess pieces.

Christ, was it any wonder he kept away?

So here he was in Pilmuir, not checking on anything exactly, just walking. Taking some air. From his own ultra-modern estate, all detached shoeboxes and Volvos, he had to cross some waste ground, avoid the traffic on a busy arterial road, pass a school playing-field and manoeuvre between some factory units to find himself in Pilmuir. But it was worth the effort. He knew this place; knew the minds that festered here.

He was one of them, after all.

‘Hello, Tony.’

He swirled, not recognising the voice, expecting hassle. John Rebus stood there, smiling at him, hands in pockets.

‘John! Christ, you made me jump.’

‘Sorry. Stroke of luck bumping into you though.’ Rebus checked around them, as though looking for someone. ‘I tried phoning, but they said it was your day off.’

‘Aye, that’s right.’

‘So what are you doing here?’

‘Just walking. We live over that way.’ He jerked his head towards the south-west. ‘It’s not far. Besides, this is my patch, don’t forget. Got to keep an eye on the boys and girls.’

‘That’s why I wanted to speak to you actually.’

‘Oh?’

Rebus had begun to walk along the pavement, and McCall, still rattled by his sudden appearance, followed.

‘Yes,’ Rebus was saying. ‘I wanted to ask if you know someone, a friend of the deceased’s. The name is Charlie.’

‘That’s all? Charlie?’ Rebus shrugged. ‘What does he look like?’

Rebus shrugged again. ‘I’ve no idea, Tony. It was Ronnie’s girlfriend Tracy who told me about him.’

‘Ronnie? Tracy?’ McCall’s eyebrows met. ‘Who the hell are they?’

‘Ronnie is the deceased. That junkie we found on the estate.’

Everything was suddenly clear in McCall’s mind. He nodded slowly. ‘You work quickly,’ he said.