Hide & Seek

He brought from his pocket the gains from this latest pilfering. The photograph was curled now, but he straightened it between his hands. A woman, pushing a pram past him, glanced at the photograph then hurried on, throwing back a disgusted look towards him. It’s all right, madam, I’m a police officer. He smiled at the thought, then studied the nude shot again. It was mildly salacious, nothing more. A young woman, stretched out on what appeared to be silk or satin. Photographed from above, as she lay spreadeagled on this sheet. Her mouth open in an amateur’s pout, eyes narrowed to slits of fake

ecstasy. All this was common enough. More interesting though was the model’s identity.

For Holmes was sure it was the girl Tracy, the one whose photograph he already had from the squat. The one whose background he was trying to ascertain. The girlfriend of the deceased. Posed for the camera, uncovered, not at all shy, and enjoying herself.

What was it that kept bringing him back to this house? Rebus wasn’t sure. He turned his torch onto Charlie’s wall painting again, trying to make sense of the mind that had created it. But why did he want to try to understand a piece of jetsam like Charlie anyway? Perhaps because of the nagging feeling that he was absolutely integral to the case.

‘What case?’

There, he had actually, finally said it aloud. What case? There was no ‘case’, not in the sense in which any criminal court would understand the term. There were personalities, misdeeds, questions without answers. Illegalities, even. But there was no case. That was the frustrating thing. If there were only a case, only something structured enough, tangible enough for him to hold on to, some casenotes which he could physically hold up and say, look, here it is. But there was nothing like that. It was all as insubstantial as candle wax. But candle wax left its mark, didn’t it? And nothing ever vanished, not totally. Instead, things altered shape, substance, meaning. A five-pointed star within two concentric circles was nothing in itself. To Rebus it looked like nothing so much as a tin sheriff’s badge he’d had as a boy. Lawman of the Texas tin badge state, cap-firing six-gun in his plastic holster.

To others it was evil itself.

He turned his back on it, remembering how proudly he had worn that badge, and went upstairs. Here was where the tie clip had lain. Past it, he entered Ronnie’s bedroom

and walked over to the window, peering out through a chink in the boards covering the glass. The car had drawn up now, not too far from his own. The car that had followed him from the station. The car he had recognised at once as the Ford Escort which had waited outside his flat, the one which had roared away. Now it was here, parked next to the burnt-out Cortina. It was here. Its driver was here. The car itself was empty.

He heard the floorboard creak just the once, and knew that the man was behind him.

‘You must know this place pretty well,’ he said. ‘You managed to miss most of the noisy ones.’

He turned from the window and shone his torch onto the face of a young man with short dark hair. The man shielded his eyes from the beam, and Rebus angled the light down onto the man’s body.

It was dressed in a police constable’s uniform.

‘You must be Neil,’ said Rebus calmly. ‘Or do you prefer Neilly?’

He levelled the torch at the floor. There was enough light for him to see and be seen by. The young man nodded.

‘Neil’s fine. Only my friends call me Neilly.’

‘And I’m not your friend,’ Rebus said, nodding acquiescence. ‘Ronnie was though, wasn’t he?’

‘He was more than that, Inspector Rebus,’ said the constable, moving into the room. ‘He was my brother.’

There was nowhere in Ronnie’s bedroom for them to sit, but that didn’t matter, since neither could have sat still for more than a second or two anyway. They were filled with energy: Neil needing to tell his story, Rebus needing to be told. Rebus chose in front of the window as his territory, and paced backwards and forwards without seeming to, his head down, stopping from time to time to lend more concentration to Neil’s words. Neil stayed by the door,

swinging the handle to and fro, listening for that moment before the whole door creaked, and then pulling or pushing the door through that slow, rending sound. The torch served the scene well, casting unruly shadows over the walls, making silhouettes of each man’s profile, the talker and the listener.

‘Sure, I knew what he was up to,’ Neil said. ‘He may have been older than me, but I always knew him better than he knew me. I mean, I knew how his mind worked.’

‘So you knew he was a junkie?’

‘I knew he took drugs. He started when we were at school. He was caught once, almost expelled. They let him back.in after three months, so he could do his exams. He passed the lot of them. That’s more than I did.’

Yes, Rebus thought, admiration could make you turn a blind eye. …