Ian Rankin: A Question of Blood

There was a sudden noise as the cat flap rattled and a large black and white cat appeared, leapt onto Kate’s lap, and glared at the newcomers.

“This is Boethius,” Kate said.

“Ancient queen of Britain?” Rebus guessed.

“That was Boudicca,” Siobhan corrected him.

“Boethius,” Kate explained, “was a Roman philosopher.” She stroked the cat’s head. Its markings, Rebus couldn’t help thinking, made it look like it was wearing a Batman mask.

“A hero of yours, was he?” Siobhan guessed.

“He was tortured for his beliefs,” Kate went on. “Afterwards, he wrote a treatise, trying to explain why good men suffer -” She broke off, glancing towards her father. But he appeared not to have heard.

“While evil men prosper?” Siobhan guessed. Kate nodded.

“Interesting,” Rebus commented.

Siobhan handed out the tea and sat down. Rebus ignored the mug in front of him, perhaps unwilling to draw attention to his bandages. Allan Renshaw had tight hold of the handle of his own mug but seemed in no hurry to try lifting it.

“I had a phone call from Alice,” Renshaw was saying. “You remember Alice?” Rebus shook his head. “Wasn’t she a cousin on… Christ, whose side was it?”

“Doesn’t matter, Dad,” Kate said softly.

“It matters, Kate,” he argued. “Time like this, family’s all there is.”

“Didn’t you have a sister, Allan?” Rebus asked.

“Aunt Elspeth,” Kate answered. “She’s in New Zealand.”

“Has anyone told her?”

Kate nodded.

“What about your mother?”

“She was here earlier,” Renshaw interrupted, gaze fixed on the table.

“She walked out on us a year ago,” Kate explained. “She lives with -” She broke off. “She lives back in Fife.”

Rebus nodded, knowing what she’d been about to say: she lives with a man…

“What was the name of that park you took me to, John?” Renshaw asked. “I’d only have been seven or eight. Mum and Dad had taken me to Bowhill, and you said you’d go for a walk with me. Remember?”

Rebus remembered. He’d been home on leave from the army, itching for some action. Early twenties, SAS training still ahead of him. The house had felt too small, his father too set in a routine. So Rebus had taken young Allan down to the shops. They’d bought a bottle of juice and a cheap football, then had headed to the park for a kickabout. He looked at Renshaw now. He would be forty. His hair was graying, with a pronounced bald spot at the crown. His face was slack, unshaven. He’d been all skin and bones as a kid but was now heavily built, most of it around the waist. Rebus struggled for some vestige of the kid who’d played football with him, the kid he’d taken to Kirkcaldy to watch Raith play some forgotten opponent. The man in front of him was aging fast: wife gone, son now murdered. Aging fast and struggling to cope.

“Is anyone looking in?” Rebus asked Kate. He meant friends, neighbors. She nodded, and he turned back to Renshaw.

“Allan, I know this has been a shock for you. Do you feel up to answering a few questions?”

“What’s it like being a policeman, John? You have to do this sort of thing every day?”

“Not every day, no.”

“I couldn’t do it. Bad enough selling cars, watching the buyer driving off in this perfect machine, big smile on their face, and then you watch them coming back for service or repairs or whatever, and you see the car losing that shine it once had… They’re not smiling anymore.”

Rebus glanced at Kate, who just shrugged. He guessed she’d been hearing a lot of her father’s ramblings.

“The man who shot Derek,” Rebus said quietly, “we’re trying to work out why he did it.”

“He was a madman.”

“But why the school? Why that particular day? You see what I’m saying.”

“You’re saying you won’t let it lie. All we want is to be left alone.”

“We need to know, Allan.”

“Why?” Renshaw’s voice was rising. “What’s it going to change? You going to bring Derek back? I don’t think so. The bastard who did it’s dead… I don’t see that anything else matters.”

“Drink your tea, Dad,” Kate said, a hand reaching for her father’s arm. He took it in his own hand, held it up to plant a kiss.

“It’s just us now, Kate. Nobody else matters.”

“I thought you just told me family mattered. The inspector’s our family, isn’t he?”

Renshaw looked at Rebus again, eyes filling with tears. Then he got up and walked from the room. They sat for a moment, hearing him climbing the stairs.

“We’ll just leave him,” Kate said, sounding sure of her role and comfortable with it. She straightened in her seat and pressed her hands together. “I don’t think Derek knew the man. I mean, South Queensferry’s a village, there’s always the chance he knew his face, maybe even who he was. But nothing other than that.”

Rebus nodded but stayed quiet, hoping she would feel the need to fill the silence. It was a game Siobhan knew how to play, too.

“He didn’t pick them out, did he?” Kate went on, going back to stroking Boethius. “I mean, it was just the wrong place at the wrong time.”

“We don’t know yet,” Rebus responded. “It was the first room he went into, but he’d passed other doors to get to it.”

She looked at him. “Dad told me the other boy was a judge’s son.”

“You didn’t know him?”

She shook her head. “Not well.”

“Weren’t you a pupil at Port Edgar?”

“Yes, but Derek’s two years younger than me.”

“I think what Kate means,” Siobhan clarified, “is that all the boys in his year were two years younger than her, so she wouldn’t be disposed to have any interest in them.”

“Too true,” Kate agreed.

“What about Lee Herdman? Did you know him?”

She met Rebus’s stare, then nodded slowly. “I went out with him once.” She paused. “I mean, I went out on his boat. A bunch of us did. We thought waterskiing would be glamorous, but it was too much like hard work, and he scared the shit out of me.”

“In what way?”

“If you were on the skis, he tried to freak you out, pointing the boat towards one of the bridge supports or Inch Garvie Island. You know it?”

“The one that looks like a fortress?” Siobhan guessed.

“I suppose they must have had guns there during the war, cannons or something to stop anyone coming up the Forth.”

“So Herdman tried scaring you?” Rebus asked, steering the conversation back on course.

“I think it was some sort of trial, to see if your nerve held. We all thought he was a maniac.” She stopped abruptly, hearing her own words. Some of the color left her already pale face. “I mean, I never thought he’d…”

“Nobody did, Kate,” Siobhan reassured her.

It took the young woman a few seconds to regain her composure. “They’re saying he was in the army, maybe even a spy.” Rebus didn’t know where she was headed, but nodded anyway. She looked down at the cat, who now lay with eyes closed, purring loudly. “This is going to sound crazy…”

Rebus leaned forwards. “What is it, Kate?”

“Well, it’s just… the first thing that went through my mind when I heard…”

“What?”

She looked from Rebus to Siobhan and then back again. “No, it’s just too stupid.”

“Then I’m your man,” Rebus said, giving her a smile. She almost smiled back, then took a deep breath.

“Derek was in a car smash a year back. He was okay, but the other kid, the one who was driving…”

“He died?” Siobhan guessed. Kate nodded.

“Neither of them had a license, and they’d both been drinking. Derek felt really guilty about it. Not that there was a court case or anything…”