Hide & Seek

boasted a sleeping bag, damp from the drips coming through the roof. Some kind of identity had been imposed upon the room by the pinning of pictures to its walls. Up close, he noticed that these were original photographs, and that they comprised a sort of portfolio. Certainly they were well taken, even to Rebus’s untrained eye. A few were of Edinburgh Castle on damp, misty days. It looked particularly bleak. Others showed it in bright sunshine. It still looked bleak. One or two were of a girl, age indeterminate. She was posing, but grinning broadly, not taking the event seriously.

Next to the sleeping bag was a bin-liner half filled with clothes, and next to this a small pile of dog-eared paperbacks: Harlan Ellison, Clive Barker, Ramsey Campbell. Science fiction and horror. Rebus left the books where they were and went back downstairs.

‘All finished,’ the photographer said. ‘I’ll get those photos to you tomorrow.’

‘Thanks.’

‘I also do portrait work, by the way. A nice family group for the grandparents? Sons and daughters? Here, I’ll give you my card.’

Rebus accepted the card and pulled his raincoat back on, heading out to the car. He didn’t like photographs, especially of himself. It wasn’t just that he photographed badly. No, there was more to it than that.

The sneaking suspicion that photographs really could steal your soul.

On his way back to the station, travelling through the slow midday traffic, Rebus thought about how a group photograph of his wife, his daughter and him might look. But no, he couldn’t visualise it. They had grown so far apart, ever since Rhona had taken Samantha to live in London. Sammy still wrote, but Rebus himself was slow at responding, and she seemed to take umbrage at this,

writing less and less herself. In her last letter she had hoped Gill and he were happy.

He hadn’t the courage to tell her that Gill Templer had left him several months ago. Telling Samantha would have been fine: it was the idea of Rhona’s getting to hear of it that he couldn’t stand. Another notch in his bow of failed relationships. Gill had taken up with a disc jockey on a local radio station, a man whose enthusing voice Rebus seemed to hear whenever he entered a shop or a filling station, or passed the open window of a tenement block.

He still saw Gill once or twice a week of course, at meetings and in the station-house, as well as at scenes of crimes. Especially now that he had been elevated to her rank.

Detective Inspector John Rebus.

Well, it had taken long enough, hadn’t it? And it was a long, hard case, full of personal suffering, which had brought the promotion. He was sure of that.

He was sure, too, that he wouldn’t be seeing Rian again. Not after last night’s dinner party, not after the fairly unsuccessful bout of lovemaking. Yet another unsuccessful bout. It had struck him, lying next to Rian, that her eyes were almost identical to Inspector Gill Templer’s. A surrogate? Surely he was too old for that.

‘Getting old, John,’ he said to himself.

Certainly he was getting hungry, and there was a pub just past the next set of traffic lights. What the hell, he was entitled to a lunch break.

The Sutherland Bar was quiet, Monday lunchtime being one of the lowest points of the week. All money spent, and nothing to look forward to. And of course, as Rebus was quickly reminded by the barman, the Sutherland did not exactly cater for a lunchtime clientele.

‘No hot meals,’ he said, ‘and no sandwiches.’

‘A pie then,’ begged Rebus, anything. Just to wash down the beer.’

‘If it’s food you want, there’s plenty of cafes around here. This particular pub happens to sell beers, lagers and spirits. We’re not a chippie.’

‘What about crisps?’

The barman eyed him for a moment. ‘What flavour?’

‘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.’