Hide & Seek

‘You’re saying we won’t be made very welcome?’

‘Something like that.’

‘Well, just give me the addresses and point me in the right direction. It’s your day off after all.’

McCall looked slighted. ‘You’re forgetting, John. This is my patch. By rights, this should be my case, if there is a case.’

‘It would’ve been your case if you hadn’t had that hangover.’ They smiled at this, but Rebus was wondering whether, in Tony McCall’s hands, there would have been anything to investigate. Wouldn’t Tony just have let it slip? Should he, Rebus, let it slip, too?

‘Anyway,’ McCall was saying on cue, ’surely you must have better things to do?’

Rebus shook his head. ‘Nothing. All my work’s been farmed out, with the emphasis on “farmed”.’

‘You mean Superintendent Watson?’

‘He wants me working on his anti-drugs campaign. Me. for Christ’s sake.’

‘That could be a bit embarrassing.’

‘I know. But the idiot thinks I’ve got “personal experience”.’

‘He’s got a point, I suppose.’ Rebus was about to argue, but McCall got in first. ‘So you’ve nothing to do?’

‘Not until summoned by Fanner Watson, no.’

‘You jammy bugger. Well, that does change things a bit, but not enough, I’m sorry to say. You’re my guest here, and you’re going to have to put up with me. Until I get bored, that is.’

Rebus smiled. ‘I appreciate it, Tony.’ He looked around them. ‘So, where to first?’

McCall inclined his head back the way they had just come. They turned around and walked.

‘So tell me,’ said Rebus, ‘what’s so awful at home that you’d think of coming here on your day off?’

McCall laughed. ‘Is it so obvious then?’

‘Only to someone who’s been there himself.’

‘Ach, I don’t know, John. I seem to have everything I’ve never wanted.’

‘And it’s still not enough.’ It was a simple statement of belief.

‘I mean, Sheila’s a wonderful mother and all that, and the kids never get into trouble, but….’

‘The grass is always greener,’ said Rebus, thinking of his own failed marriage, of the way his flat was cold when he came home, the way the door would close with a hollow sound behind him.

‘Now Tommy, my brother, I used to think he had it made. Plenty of money, house with a Jacuzzi, automatic-opening garage. . . .’ McCall saw that Rebus was smiling, and smiled himself.

‘Electric blinds,’ Rebus continued, ‘personalised number plate, car phone. ..’

‘Time share in Malaga,’ said McCall, close to laughter, ‘marble-topped kitchen units.’

It was too ridiculous. They laughed out loud as they walked, adding to the catalogue. But then Rebus saw where they were, and stopped laughing, stopped walking.

This was where he’d been heading all along. He touched the torch in his jacket pocket.

‘Come on, Tony,’ he said soberly. ‘There’s something I want to show you.’

‘He was found here,’ Rebus said, shining the torch over the bare floorboards. ‘Legs together, lying on his back. arms outstretched. I don’t think he got into that position by accident, do you?’

McCall studied the scene. They were both professionals now, and acting almost like strangers. ‘And the girlfriend says she found him upstairs?’ -’That’s right.’

‘You believe her?’

‘Why would she lie?’

‘There could be a hundred reasons, John. Would I know the girl?’

‘She hasn’t been in Pilmuir long. Bit older than you’d imagine, midtwenties, maybe more.’

‘So this Ronnie’s already dead, and he’s brought downstairs and laid out with the candles and everything.’

‘That’s right.’

‘I’m beginning to see why you need to find the friend who’s into the occult.’

‘Right. Now come and look at this.’ Rebus led McCall to the far wall and shone the torch onto the pentagram, then further up the wall.

‘”Hello Ronnie”,’ McCall read aloud.

‘And this wasn’t here yesterday.’

‘Really?’ McCall sounded surprised. ‘Kids, John, that’s all.’

‘Kids didn’t draw that pentagram.’

‘No, agreed.’

‘Charlie drew that pentagram.’

‘Right.’ McCall slipped his hands into his pockets and

drew himself upright. ‘Point taken, Inspector. Let’s go squat hunting.’

But the few people they found seemed to know nothing, and to care even less. As McCall pointed out, it was the wrong time of day. Everyone from the squats was in the city centre, stealing purses from handbags, begging, shoplifting, doing deals. Reluctantly, Rebus agreed that they were wasting their time.

Since McCall wanted to listen to the tape Rebus had made of his interview with Tracy, they headed back to Great London Road. McCall had the idea that there might be some clue on the tape that would lead them to Charlie, something that would help him place the guy, something Rebus had missed.