Hide & Seek

She broke down at that, and gave up trying to free herself from the seatbelt. Her head angled forward into her hands, and she wept, loudly and at length. While Rebus caught his breath. He wasn’t proud of himself, but it had needed saying. She had to stop hiding from the truth. It was all conjecture, of course, but Rebus was sure Hutton could confirm the details if pressed. She had modelled for money, maybe happened to mention that her boyfriend was a photographer. Had taken the photos to Hutton, giving away Ronnie’s glimmer of a chance, his creativity, for a few more pound notes. If you couldn’t trust your friends, who could you trust?

He had left her overnight in the cells to see if she would crack. She hadn’t, so he supposed she must be clean. But that didn’t mean she didn’t have some kind of habit. If not needles, then something else. Everybody needed a little something, didn’t they? And the money was needed, too. So she had ripped off her boyfriend. . . .

‘Did you plant that camera in Charlie’s squat?’ ‘No!’ It was as though, after all that had gone before, the accusation still hurt. Rebus nodded. So Charlie had taken the camera, or someone else had planted it there. For him to find. No … not quite, because he hadn’t found it: McCall had. And very easily at that, the way he had blithely found the dope in the sleeping bag. A true copper’s nose? Or something else? A little information perhaps, inside information? If you can’t trust your friends. . . .

‘Did you see the camera the night Ronnie died?’ ‘It was in his room, I’m sure it was.’ She blinked back the tears and wiped her nose on the handkerchief Rebus gave her. Her voice was cracked still, her throat a little clogged, but she was recovering from the shock of the photo, and the greater shock that Rebus knew now of her betrayal.

‘That guy who came to see Ronnie, he was in Ronnie’s room after me.’

‘You mean Neil?’

‘I think that was his name, yes.’

Too many cooks, Rebus was thinking. He was going to have to revise his definition of ‘circumstantial’. He had very little so far that wasn’t circumstantial. It felt like the spiral was widening, taking him further and further away from the central, crucial point, the point where Ronnie lay dead on a damp, bare floor, flanked by candles and dubious friends.

‘Neil was Ronnie’s brother.’

‘Really?’ Her voice was disinterested. The safety curtain between her and the world was coming down again. The matinee was over.

‘Yes, really.’ Rebus felt a sudden chill. If nobody, nobody cares what happened to Ronnie except Neil and me, why am I bothering?

‘Charlie always thought they had some kind of gay thing going. I never asked Ronnie. I don’t suppose he would have told me.’ She rested her head against the back of the seat, seeming to relax again. ‘Oh God.’ She released a whistle of breath from her lungs. ‘Do we have to stick around here?’

Her hands were rising slowly, ready to clasp her head, and Rebus was beginning to answer in the negative, when he saw those same hands come swiftly down, curling into tiny fists. There was no room to escape them, and so they hit him full in the groin. A flashgun exploded somewhere behind his eyes, the world turning into nothing but sound and blinding pain. He was roaring, doubled up in agony, head coming to rest on the steering wheel, which was also the car’s horn. It was blaring lazily as Tracy undid her seatbelt, opened the door, and swivelled out of the car. She left the door wide open as she ran. Rebus watched through eyes brimming with tears, as if he were in a

swimming pool, watching her running along the edge of the pool away from him, chlorine stinging his pupils.

‘Jesus Almighty Christ,’ he gasped, still hunched over the wheel, and not about to move for some considerable time.

Think like Tarzan, his father had told him once: one of the old man’s few pieces of advice. He was talking about fights. About one-to-one scrapes with the lads at school. Four o’clock behind the bike shed, and all that. Think like Tarzan. You’re strong, king of the jungle, and above all else you’re going to protect your nuts. And the old boy had raised a bent knee towards young John’s crotch. . ..

‘Thanks, Dad,’ Rebus hissed now. ‘Thanks for reminding me.’ Then the reaction hit his stomach.

By lunchtime he could just about walk, so long as he kept his feet close to the ground, moving as though he had wet himself. People stared, of course, and he tried to improvise a limp specially for them. Ever the crowd pleaser.

The thought of the stairs to his office was too much, and driving the car had been excruciating, the foot pedals impossible to operate. So he had taken a taxi to the Sutherland Bar. Three quarter-gill measures of whisky later, he felt the pain replaced by a drowsy numbness.

‘”As though of hemlock . . .”,’ he muttered to himself.