Hide & Seek

towel slipped from her head, so that bedraggled rat’s-tails of hair strung themselves out across her forehead. ‘No, never mind. The camera cost about a hundred and fifty quid. Okay?’

‘Fine.’

‘Interested in photography are you?’

‘Only since recently. More tea?’

He poured from the teapot, then added a sachet of sugar. She liked lots of sugar.

‘Thanks,’ she said, cradling the mug. ‘Listen.’ She was bathing her face in the steam from the surface of the tea. ‘Can I ask you a favour?’

Here it comes, thought Rebus: money. He had already made a mental note to check whether anything in the flat was missing before letting her leave. ‘What?’

Her eyes were on his now. ‘Can I stay the night?’ Her words came out in a torrent. ‘I’ll sleep on the couch, on the floor. I don’t mind. I just don’t want to go back to the squat, not tonight. It’s been getting pretty crazy lately, and those men following me. …” She shivered, and Rebus had to admit that if this were all an act, she was a top-of-the-form drama student. He shrugged, was about to speak, but rose and went to the window instead, deferring a decision.

The orange street lamps were on, casting a Hollywood film-set glow over the pavement. There was a car outside, directly opposite the flat. Being two floors up, Rebus couldn’t quite see into the car, but the driver’s side window had been rolled down, and smoke oozed from it.

‘Well?’ the voice said behind him. It had lost all confidence now.

‘What?’ Rebus said distractedly.

‘Can I?’ He turned towards her. ‘Can I stay?’ she repeated.

‘Sure,’ Rebus said, making for the door. ‘Stay as long as you like.’

He was halfway down the curving stairwell before he realised that he was not wearing any shoes. He paused, considering. No, to hell with it. His mother had always warned him about catching chilblains, and he never had. Now was as good a time as any to find out whether his medical luck was holding.

He was passing a door on the first floor when it rattled open and Mrs Cochrane thrust her whole frame out, blocking Rebus’s path.

‘Mrs Cochrane,’ he said after the initial shock had passed.

‘Here.’ She shoved something towards him, and he could do nothing but take it from her. It was a piece of card, about ten inches by six. Rebus read it: IT IS YOUR TURN TO WASH THE STAIRS. By the time he looked up again, Mrs Cochrane’s door was already closing. He could hear her carpet slippers shuffling back towards her TV and her cat. Smelly old thing.

Rebus carried the card downstairs with him, the cold steps penetrating his stockinged soles. The cat didn’t smell too good either, he thought maliciously.

The front door was on the latch. He eased it open, trying to keep the aged mechanism as silent as possible. The car was still there. Directly opposite him as he stepped outside. But the driver had already seen him. The cigarette stub was flicked onto the road, and the engine started. Rebus moved forward on his toes. The car’s headlamps came on suddenly, their beam as full as a Stalag searchlight. Rebus paused, screwing his eyes, and the car started forward, then swerved to the left, racing downhill to the end of the street. Rebus stared after it, trying to make out the number plate, but his eyes were full of white fuzziness. It had been a Ford Escort. Of that much he was sure.

Looking down the road, he realised that the car had stopped at the junction with the main road, waiting for a

space in the traffic. It was less than a hundred yards away. Rebus made up his mind. He had been a handy sprinter in his youth, good enough for the school team when they had been a man short. He ran now with a kind of drunken euphoria, and remembered the wine he had opened. His stomach turned sour at the mere thought, and he slowed. Just then he slipped, skidding on something on the pavement, and, brought up short, he saw the car slip across the junction and roar away.

Never mind. That first glimpse as he’d opened the door had been enough. He’d seen the constabulary uniform. Not the driver’s face, but the uniform for sure. A policeman, a constable, driving an Escort. Two young girls were approaching along the pavement. They giggled as they passed Rebus, and he realised that he was standing panting on the pavement, without any shoes but holding a sign telling him it was his turn to WASH THE STAIRS. When he looked down, he saw what it was he had skidded on.

Cursing silently, he removed his socks, tossed them into the gutter, and walked back on bare feet towards the flat.