Hide & Seek

Tracy couldn’t say why it was that she’d visited Nell Stapleton, or why she’d told Nell what she had. She felt some kind of bond, not merely because of what she’d done. There was something about Nell Stapleton, something wise and kind, something Tracy had lacked in her life until now. Maybe that’s why she was finding it so hard to leave the hospital. She had walked the corridors, drunk two cups of coffee in a cafe across the road from the main building, wandered in and out of Casualty, X-Ray, even some clinic for diabetics. She’d tried to leave, had walked as far as the city’s art college before turning round and retreading the two hundred paces to the hospital.

And she was entering the side gates when the men grabbed her.

‘Hey!’

‘If you’ll just come with us, miss.’

They sounded like security men, policemen even, so she didn’t resist. Maybe Nell Stapleton’s boyfriend wanted to

see her, to give her a good kicking. She didn’t care. They were taking her towards the hospital entrance, so she didn’t resist. Not until it was too late.

At the last moment, they stopped short, turned her, and pushed her into the back of an ambulance.

‘What’s -! Hey, come on!’ The doors were closing, locking, leaving her alone in the hot, dim interior. She thumped on the doors, but the vehicle was already moving off. As it pulled away, she was thrown against the doors, then back onto the floor. When she had recovered herself, she saw that the ambulance was an old one, no longer used for its original purpose. Its insides had been gutted, making it merely a van. The windows had been boarded over, and a metal panel separated her from the driver. She clawed her way to this panel and began hitting it with her fists, teeth gritted, yelling from time to time as she remembered that the two men who had grabbed her at the gates were the same two men who’d been following her that day on Princes Street, that day she’d run to John Rebus.

‘Oh God,’ she murmured, ‘oh God, oh God.’

They’d found her at last.

The evening was sticky with heat, the streets quiet for a Saturday.

Rebus rang the doorbell and waited. While he waited, he looked to left and right. An immaculate double row of Georgian houses, stone frontages dulled black through time and car fumes. Some of the houses had been turned into offices for Writers to the Signet, chartered accountants, and small, anonymous finance businesses. But a few - a precious few - were still very comfortable and well-appointed homes for the wealthy and the industrious. Rebus had been to this street before, a long time ago now in his earliest CID days, investigating the death of a young

girl. He didn’t remember much about the case now. He was too busy getting ready for the evening’s pleasures.

He tugged at the black bow tie around his throat. The whole outfit, dinner jacket, shirt, bow tie and patent shoes, had been hired earlier in the day from a shop on George Street. He felt like an idiot, but had to admit that, examining himself in his bathroom mirror, he looked pretty sharp. He wouldn’t be too out of place in an establishment like Finlay’s of Duke Terrace.

The door was opened by a beaming woman, young, dressed exquisitely, and greeting him as though wondering why he didn’t come more often.

‘Good evening,’ she said. ‘Will you come in?’

He would, he did. The entrance hall was subtle. Cream paint, deep pile carpeting, a scattering of chairs which might have been designed by Charles Rennie Mackintosh, high backs and looking extraordinarily uncomfortable to sit in.

‘I see you’re admiring our chairs,’ the woman said.

‘Yes,’ Rebus answered, returning her smile. ‘The name’s Rebus, by the way. John Rebus.’

‘Ah yes. Finlay told me you were expected. Well, as this is your first visit, would you like me to show you around?’

‘Thank you.’

‘But first, a drink, and the first drink is always on the house.’

Rebus tried not to be nosey, but he was a policeman after all, and not being nosey would have gone against all that he held most dear. So he asked a few questions of his hostess, whose name was Paulette, and pointed to this and that part of the gaming club, being shown the direction of the cellars (’Finlay has their contents insured for quarter of a million’), kitchen (’our chef is worth his weight in Beluga’), and guest bedrooms (’the judges are the worst, there are one or two who always end up sleeping here, too drunk to go home’). The lower ground

floor housed the cellars and kitchen, while the ground floor comprised a quiet bar area, and the small restaurant, with cloakrooms and an office. On the first floor, up the carpeted staircase and past the collection of eighteenth-and nineteenth-century Scottish paintings by the likes of Jacob More and David Allan, was the main gaming area: roulette, blackjack, a few other tables for card games, and one table given over to dice. The players were businessmen, their bets discreet, nobody losing big or winning big. They held their chips close to them.

Paulette pointed out two closed rooms.