Hide And Seek

Wednesday

Police Constables Harry Todd and Francis O’Rourke were standing outside Rebus’s office when he arrived next morning. They had been leaning against the wall, enjoying a lazy conversation, seemingly unconcerned that Rebus was twenty minutes late. He was damned if he was going to apologise. He noted with satisfaction that as he reached the top of the stairs they pulled themselves up straight and shut their mouths.

That was a good start.

He opened the door, walked into the room, and closed the door again. Let them stew for another minute. Now they’d have something really to talk about. He had checked with the desk sergeant, and Brian Holmes wasn’t in the station. He took a slip of paper from his pocket and rang Holmes’s house. The telephone rang and rang. Holmes must be out working.

The good run was continuing.

There was mail on his desk. He flipped through it, stopping only to extract a note from Superintendent Watson. It was an invitation to lunch. Today. At twelve thirty. Hell. He was meeting Holmes at three. The lunch was with some of the businessmen who were putting up the hard cash for the drugs campaign. Hell. And it was in The Eyrie, which meant wearing a tie and a clean shirt. Rebus looked down at his shirt. It would do. But the tie would not. Hell.

The smile left his soul.

It had been too good to last. Tracy had woken him with breakfast on a tray. Orange juice, toast and honey, strong coffee. She’d gone out early, she explained, taking with her a little money she found on the shelves in the living room. She hoped he didn’t mind. She had found a comer shop open, made the purchases, come back to the flat, and made him breakfast.

‘I’m surprised the smell of burning toast didn’t wake you,’ she had said.

‘You’re looking at the man who slept through Towering Inferno,’ he had replied. And she had laughed, sitting on the bed taking dainty bites of toast with her exposed teeth, while Rebus chewed his slices slowly, thoughtfully. Luxuriously. How long had it been since he’d been brought breakfast in bed? It frightened him to think….

‘Come in!’ he roared now, though no one had knocked.

Tracy had left without complaint, too. She felt all right, she said. She couldn’t stay cooped up forever, could she? He had driven her back towards Pilmuir, then had done something stupid. Given her ten pounds. It wasn’t just money, as he realised a second after handing it over. It was a bond between them, a bond he shouldn’t be making. It lay there in her hand, and he felt the temptation to snatch it back. But then she was out of the car and walking away, her body fragile as bone china, her gait determined, full of strength. Sometimes she reminded him of his daughter Sammy, other times….

Other times of Gill Templer, his ex-lover.

‘Come in!’ he roared again. This time the door opened an inch, then another ten or eleven. A head looked into the room.

‘Nobody’s been knocking, sir,’ the head said nervously.

‘Is that so?’ said Rebus in his best stage voice. ‘Well, in that case I’d better just speak to you two instead. So why don’t you come in!’

A moment later, they shuffled through the doorway, a bit less cocky now. Rebus pointed to the two chairs on the other side of his desk. One of them sat immediately, the other stood to attention.

‘I’d rather stand, sir,’ he said. The other one looked suddenly fearful, terrified that he had broken some rule of protocol.

‘This isn’t the bloody army,’ Rebus said to the standing one, just as the sitting one was rising. ‘So sit down!’

They both sat. Rebus rubbed his forehead, pretending a headache. Truth be told, he had almost forgotten who these constables were and why they were here.

‘Right,’ he said. ‘Why do you think I’ve called you here this morning?’ Corny but effective.

‘Is it to do with the witches, sir?’

‘Witches?’ Rebus looked at the constable who had said this, and remembered the keen young man who had shown him the original pentagram. ‘That’s right, witches. And overdoses.’

They blinked at him. He sought frantically for a route into the interrogation, if interrogation this was to be. He should have thought more about it before coming in.

He should have at least remembered that it had been arranged. He saw a ten-pound note, a smile, could smell burning toast…. He looked at the pentagram constable’s tie.

‘What’s your name, son?’

‘Todd, sir.’

‘Todd? That’s German for dead, did you know that, Todd?’

‘Yes, sir. I did German at school up to Highers.’

Rebus nodded, pretending to be impressed. Damn, he was impressed. They all had Highers these days, it seemed, all these extraordinarily young-looking constables. Some had gone further: college, university. He had the feeling Holmes had been to university. He hoped he hadn’t enlisted the aid of a smart arse….

Rebus pointed to the tie.

‘That looks a bit squint, Todd.’

Todd immediately looked down towards his tie, his head angled so sharply Rebus feared the neck would snap.

‘Sir?’

‘That tie. Is it your usual one?’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘So you haven’t broken a tie recently?’

‘Broken a tie, sir?’

‘Broken the clip,’ explained Rebus.

‘No, sir.’

‘And what’s your name, son?’ Rebus said quickly, turning to the other constable, who looked completely stunned by proceedings so far.

‘O’Rourke, sir.’

‘Irish name,’ Rebus commented.

‘Yes, sir.’

‘What about your tie, O’Rourke? Is that a new tie?’

‘Not really, sir. I mean, I’ve got about half a dozen of these things kicking around.’

Rebus nodded. He picked up a pencil, examined it, set it down again. He was wasting his time.

‘I’d like to see the reports you made of finding the deceased.’

‘Yes, sir,’ they said.

‘Nothing unusual in the house, was there? I mean, when you first arrived? Nothing out of the ordinary?’

‘Only the dead man, sir,’ said O’Rourke.

‘And the painting on the wall,’ said Todd.

‘Did either of you bother to check upstairs?’

‘No, sir.’

‘The body was where, when you arrived?’

‘In the downstairs room, sir.’

‘And you didn’t go upstairs?’

Todd looked towards O’Rourke. ’I think we shouted to see if anyone was up there. But no, we didn’t go up.’

So how could the tie clip have got upstairs? Rebus exhaled, then cleared his throat. ‘What kind of car do you drive, Todd?’

‘Do you mean police car, sir?’

‘No I bloody well don’t!’ Rebus slapped the pencil down against the desk. ’I mean for private use.’

Todd seemed more confused now than ever. ‘A Metro, sir.’

‘Colour?’

‘White.’

Rebus turned his gaze to O’Rourke.

‘I don’t have a car,’ O’Rourke admitted. ‘I like motorbikes. Just now I’ve got a Honda seven-fifty.’

Rebus nodded. No Ford Escorts then. Nobody hurtling away from his road at midnight.

‘Well, that’s all right then, isn’t it?’ And with a smile he dismissed them, picked up the pencil again, examined its point, and very deliberately broke it against the edge of his desk.

Rebus was thinking of Charlie as he stopped his car in front of the tiny old-fashioned mens-wear shop off George Street. He was thinking of Charlie as he grabbed the tie and paid for it. Back in the car, he thought of Charlie as he knotted the tie, started the ignition, and drove off. Heading towards lunch with some of the wealthiest businessmen in the city, all he could think of was Charlie, and how Charlie could probably still choose to be like those businessmen one day. He’d leave university, use his family connections to land a good job, and progress smoothly through to upper management in the space of a year or two. He would forget all about his infatuation with decadence, and would become decadent himself, the way only the rich and successful ever can…. True decadence, not the second-hand stuff of witchcraft and demonism, drugs and violence. That bruising on Ronnie’s body: could it really have been rough trade? A sadomasochistic game gone wrong? A game played, perhaps, with the mysterious Edward, whose name Ronnie had screamed?

Or a ritual carried too far?

Had he dismissed the Satanism angle too readily? Wasn’t a policeman supposed to keep an open mind? Perhaps, but Satanism found him with his mind well and truly closed. He was a Christian, after all. He might not attend church often, detesting all the hymn-singing and the bald sermonising, but that didn’t mean he didn’t believe in that small, dark personal God of his. Everyone had a God tagging along with them. And the God of the Scots was as ominous as He came.

Midday Edinburgh seemed darker than ever, reflecting his mood perhaps. The Castle appeared to be casting a shadow across the expanse of the New Town, but that shadow did not, could not reach as high as The Eyrie. The Eyrie was the city’s most expensive restaurant, and also the most exclusive. Rumour had it that lunchtime was solidly booked twelve months in advance, while dinner entailed the small wait of eight to ten weeks. The restaurant itself was situated on the entire top floor of a Georgian hotel in the heart of the New Town, away from the city centre’s human bustle.

Not that the streets here were exactly quiet, a steady amount of through traffic pausing long enough to make parking a problem. But not to a detective. Rebus stopped his car on a double yellow line directly outside the hotel’s main door, and, despite the doorman’s warnings about wardens and fines, left it there and entered the hotel. He squeezed his stomach as the lift carried him four floors high, and was satisfied that he felt hungry. These businessmen might well bore the pants off him, and the thought of spending two hours with Farmer Watson was almost too much to bear, but he would eat well. Yes, he would eat exceedingly well.

And, given his way with the wine list, he’d bankrupt the buggers to boot.

Brian Holmes left the snack bar carrying a polystyrene cup of grey tea, and studied it, trying to remember when he had last had a cup of good tea, of real tea, of tea he had brewed himself. His life seemed to revolve around polystyrene cups and thermos flasks, unexciting sandwiches and chocolate biscuits. Blow, sip. Blow, sip. Swallow.

For this he had given up an academic career.

Which was to say that he had careered around academia for some eight months, studying History at the University of London. The first month he had spent in awe of the city itself, trying to come to terms with its size, the complexities of actually trying to live and travel and survive with dignity. The second and third months he had spent trying to come to terms with university life, with new friends, the persistent openings for discussion, argument, for inclusion in this or that group. He tested the water each time before joining in, all of them nervous as children learning to swim. By months four and five, he had become a Londoner, commuting to the University every day from his digs in Battersea. Suddenly his life had come to be ruled by numbers, by the times of trains and buses and tube connections, the times, too, of late buses and tubes which would whisk him away from coffee-bar politics towards his noisy single room again. Missing a train connection began to be agony, suffering the rush-hour tube, a season spent in hell. Months six and seven he spent isolated in Battersea, studying from his room, hardly attending lectures at all. And in month eight, May, with the sun warming his back, he left London and returned north, back to old friends and a sudden emptiness in his life that had to be filled by work.

But why in the name of God had he chosen the police?

He screwed up the now empty polystyrene cup and threw it towards a nearby bin. It missed. So what, he thought. Then caught himself, went to the cup, stooped, picked it up, and deposited it in the bin. You’re not in London now, Brian, he told himself. An elderly woman smiled at him.

So shines a good deed in a naughty world.

A naughty world all right. Rebus had landed him in a soup of melted humanity. Pilmuir, Hiroshima of the soul; he couldn’t escape quickly enough. Fear of radiation. He had a little list with him, copied down neatly from last night’s scrawled telephone conversation, and he took this from his pocket now to examine it. The constables had been easy to locate. Rebus would have seen them by now. Then he had gone to the house in Pilmuir. In his inside pocket he had the photographs. Edinburgh Castle. Good shots, too. Unusual angles. And the girl. She looked quite pretty, he supposed. Hard to tell her age, and her face seemed tempered by hard living, but she was bonny enough in a rough and ready way. He had no idea how he would find out anything about her. All he had to go on was that name, Tracy. True, there were people he could ask. Edinburgh was his home turf, an enormous advantage in this particular line of work. He had contacts all right, old friends, friends of friends. He’d re-established contact after the London fiasco. They’d all told him not to go. They’d all been pleased to see him again so soon after their warnings, pleased because they could boast of their foresight. That had only been five years ago…. It seemed longer somehow.

Why had he joined the force? His first choice had been journalism. That went way back, back to his schooldays. Well, childhood dreams could come true, if only momentarily. His next stop would be the offices of the local daily. See if he could find some more unusual angles on the Castle. With any luck, he’d get a decent cup of tea, too.

He was about to walk on when he saw an estate agent’s window across the street. He had always assumed that this particular agency would, because of its name, be expensive. But what the hell: he was a desperate man. He manoeuvred his way through the queue of unmoving traffic and stopped in front of the window of Bowyer Carew. After a minute, his shoulders slightly more hunched than before, he turned away again and stalked towards the Bridges.

‘And this is James Carew, of Bowyer Carew.’

James Carew lifted his well-upholstered bottom a millimetre off his well-upholstered chair, shook Rebus’s hand, then sat again. Throughout the introduction, his eyes had not left Rebus’s tie.

‘Finlay Andrews,’ continued Superintendent Watson, and Rebus shook another firm masonic hand. He didn’t need to know the secret pressure spots to be able to place a freemason. The grip itself told you everything, lasting as it did a little longer than normal, the extra time it took the shaker to work out whether you were of the brotherhood or not.

‘You might know Mr Andrews. He has a gaming establishment in Duke Terrace. What’s it called again?’ Watson was trying too hard: too hard to be the host, too hard to get along with these men, too hard for everyone’s comfort.

‘It’s just called Finlay’s,’ Finlay Andrews supplied, releasing his grip on Rebus.

‘Tommy McCall,’ said the final luncheon guest, making his own introduction, and giving Rebus’s hand a quick, cool shake. Rebus smiled, and sat down, joining them at the table, thankful to be sitting down at last.

‘Not Tony McCall’s brother?’ he asked conversationally.

‘That’s right.’ McCall smiled. ‘You know Tony then?’

‘Pretty well,’ said Rebus. Watson was looking bemused. ‘Inspector McCall,’ Rebus explained. Watson nodded vigorously.

‘So,’ said Carew, shifting in his seat, ‘what will you have to drink, Inspector Rebus?’

‘Not while on duty, sir,’ said Rebus, unfolding his prettily arranged napkin. He saw the look on Carew’s face and smiled. ‘Just a joke. I’ll have a gin and tonic, please.’

They all smiled. A policeman with a sense of humour: it usually surprised people. It would have surprised them even more had they known how seldom Rebus made jokes. But he felt the need to conform here, to ‘mix’, in that unhappy phrase.

There was a waiter at his shoulder.

‘Another gin and tonic, Ronald,’ Carew told the waiter, who bowed and moved off. Another waiter replaced him, and started handing out huge leather-bound menus. The thick cloth napkin was heavy on Rebus’s lap.

‘Where do you live, Inspector?’ The question was Carew’s. His smile seemed more than a smile, and Rebus was cautious.

‘Marchmont,’ he said.

‘Oh,’ Carew enthused, ‘that’s always been a very good area. Used to be a farming estate back in the old days, you know.’

‘Really?’

‘Mmm. Lovely neighbourhood.’

‘What James means,’ interrupted Tommy McCall, ‘is that the houses are worth a few bob.’

‘So they are,’ Carew answered indignantly. ‘Handy for the centre of town, close to The Meadows and the University….’

‘James,’ Finlay Andrews warned, ‘you’re talking shop.’

‘Am I?’ Carew seemed genuinely surprised. He gave Rebus that smile again. ‘Sorry.’

‘I recommend the sirloin,’ said Andrews. When the waiter returned to take their order, Rebus made a point of ordering sole.

He tried to be casual, not to stare at the other diners, not to examine the minutiae of the tablecloth, the implements unknown to him, the finger bowls, the hallmarked cutlery. But then this was one of those once-in-a-lifetime things, wasn’t it? So why not stare? He did, and saw fifty or so well-fed, happy faces, mostly male, with the occasional decorative female for the sake of decency, of elegance. Prime fillet. That’s what everyone else seemed to be having. And wine.

‘Who wants to choose the wine?’ said McCall, flourishing the list. Carew looked eager to snatch, and Rebus held back. It wouldn’t do, would it? To grab the list, to say me, me, me. To look with hungry eyes at the prices, wishing….

‘If I may,’ said Finlay Andrews, lifting the wine list from McCall’s hand. Rebus studied the hallmark on his fork.

‘So,’ said McCall, looking at Rebus, ‘Superintendent Watson has roped you in on our little mission, eh?’

‘I don’t know that any rope was needed,’ said Rebus. ‘I’m glad to help if I can.’

‘I’m sure your experience will be invaluable,’ Watson said to Rebus, beaming at him. Rebus stared back evenly, but said nothing.

As luck would have it, Andrews seemed to know a bit about wine himself, and ordered a decent ’8₂ claret and a crisp Chablis. Rebus perked up a bit as Andrews did the ordering. What was the name of the gaming club again? Andrews? Finlay’s? Yes, that was it. Finlay’s. He’d heard of it, a small casino, quiet. There had never been any cause for Rebus to go there, either on business or for pleasure. What pleasure was there in losing money?

‘Is your Chinaman still haunting the place, Finlay?’ asked McCall now, while two waiters ladled a thin covering of soup into wide-circumferenced Victorian soup plates.

‘He won’t get in again. Management reserves the right to refuse entry, et cetera.’

McCall chuckled, turned to Rebus.

‘Finlay had a bad run back there. The Chinese are terrible for gambling, you know. Well, this one Chinaman was taking Finlay for a ride.’

‘I had an inexperienced croupier,’ Andrews explained. ‘The experienced eye, and I do mean experienced, could tell pretty much where the ball was going to land on the roulette wheel, just by watching carefully how this youngster was flicking the ball.’

‘Remarkable,’ said Watson, before blowing on a spoonful of soup.

‘Not really,’ said Andrews. ‘I’ve seen it before. It’s simply a matter of spotting the type before they manage to lay on a really heavy bet. But then, you have to take the rough with the smooth. This has been a good year so far, a lot of money moving north, finding there’s not so much to do up here, so why not simply gamble it away?’

‘Money moving north?’ Rebus was interested.

‘People, jobs. London executives with London salaries and London habits. Haven’t you noticed?’

‘I can’t say I have,’ Rebus confessed. ‘Not around Pilmuir at any rate.’

There were smiles at this.

‘My estate agency has certainly noticed it,’ said Carew. ‘Larger properties are in great demand. Corporate buyers in some cases. Businesses moving north, opening offices. They know a good thing when they see it, and Edinburgh is a good thing. House prices have gone through the roof. I see no reason for them to stop.’ He caught Rebus’s eye. ‘They’re even building new homes in Pilmuir.’

‘Finlay,’ McCall interrupted, ‘tell Inspector Rebus where the Chinese players keep their money.’

‘Not while we’re eating, please,’ said Watson, and when McCall, chuckling to himself, looked down at his soup plate, Rebus saw Andrews flash the man a hateful look.

The wine had arrived, chilled and the colour of honey. Rebus sipped. Carew was asking Andrews about some planning permission to do with an extension to the casino.

‘It seems to be all right.’ Andrews tried not to sound smug. Tommy McCall laughed.

‘I’ll bet it does,’ he said. ‘Would your neighbours find the going as smooth if they tried to stick a big bloody extension on the back of their premises?’

Andrews gave a smile as cold as the Chablis. ‘Each case is considered individually and scrupulously, Tommy, so far as I know. Maybe you know better?’

‘No, no.’ McCall had finished his first glass of wine, and was reaching for a second. ‘I’m sure it’s all totally above board, Finlay.’ He looked conspiratorially at Rebus. ‘I hope you’re not going to tell tales, John.’

‘No.’ Rebus glanced towards Andrews, who was finishing his soup. ‘Over lunch, my ears are closed.’

Watson nodded agreement.

‘Hello there, Finlay.’ A large man, heavily built but with the accent on muscularity, was standing by the table. He was wearing the most expensive-looking suit Rebus had ever seen. A silken sheen of blue with threads of silver running through it. The man’s hair was silvered, too, though his face looked to be fortyish, no more. Beside him, leaning in towards him, stood a delicate Oriental woman, more girl than woman. She was exquisite, and everyone at the table rose in a kind of awe. The man waved an elegant hand, demanding they be seated. The woman hid her pleasure beneath her eyelashes.

‘Hello, Malcolm.’ Finlay Andrews gestured towards the man. ‘This is Malcolm Lanyon, the advocate.’ The last two words were unnecessary. Everyone knew Malcolm Lanyon, the gossip column’s friend. His very public lifestyle provoked either hatred or envy. He was at the same time all that was most despised about the law profession, and a walking TV mini-series. If his lifestyle occasionally scandalised the prurient, it also satisfied a deep need in the readers of Sunday tabloids. He was also, to Rebus’s sure knowledge, an extraordinarily good lawyer. He had to be, otherwise the rest of his image would have been wallpaper, nothing more. It wasn’t wallpaper. It was bricks and mortar.

‘These,’ Andrews said, gesturing now to the occupants of the table, ‘are the working members of that committee I was telling you about.’

‘Ah.’ Lanyon nodded. ‘The campaign against drugs. An excellent idea, Superintendent.’

Watson almost blushed at the compliment: the compliment was that Lanyon knew who Watson was.

‘Finlay,’ Lanyon continued, ‘you’ve not forgotten tomorrow night?’

‘Firmly etched in my diary, Malcolm.’

‘Excellent.’ Lanyon glanced over the table. ‘In fact, I’d like you all to come. Just a little gathering at my house. No real reason for it, I just felt like having a party. Eight o’clock. Very casual.’ He was already moving off, an arm around the porcelain waist of his companion. Rebus caught his final words: his address. Heriot Row. One of the most exclusive streets in the New Town. This was a new world. Although he couldn’t be sure that the invitation was serious, Rebus was tempted to take it up. Once in a lifetime, and all that.

A little later, conversation moved to the anti-drugs campaign itself and the waiter brought more bread.

‘Bread,’ the nervous young man said, carrying another bound file of newspapers over to the counter where Holmes stood. ‘That’s what worries me. Everybody’s turning into a bread head. You know, nothing matters to them except getting more than anyone else. Guys I went to school with, knew by the age of fourteen that they wanted to be bankers or accountants or economists. Lives were over before they’d begun. These are May.’

‘What?’ Holmes was shifting his weight from one leg to another. Why couldn’t they have chairs in this place? He had been here over an hour, his fingers blackened by old newsprint as he flicked through each day’s editions, one daytime, one evening. Now and then, a headline or some football story he’d missed first time around would attract his attention. But soon enough he had tired, and now it was merely routine. What’s more, his arms were aching from all that page turning.

‘May,’ the youth explained. ‘These are the May editions.’

‘Right, thanks.’

‘Finished with June?’

‘Yes, thanks.’

The youth nodded, buckled shut two leather straps on the open end of the bound file, and heaved the whole up into his arms, shuffling out of the room. Here we go again, thought Holmes, unbuckling this latest batch of old news and space fillers.

Rebus had been wrong. There had been no old retainer to act as a computer memory, and no computer either. So it was down to hard graft and page turning, looking for photographs of familiar places, made fresh through the use of odd camera angles. Why? He didn’t know even that yet, and the thought frustrated him. He’d find out later this afternoon hopefully, when he met with Rebus. There was a shuffling sound again as the youth re-entered, arms dangling now, jaw hanging.

‘So why didn’t you do the same as your friends?’ Holmes said conversationally.

‘You mean go in for banking?’ The youth wrinkled his nose. ‘Wanted something different. I’m learning journalism. Got to start somewhere, haven’t you?’

Indeed you have, thought Holmes, turning another page. Indeed you have.

‘Well, it’s a start,’ said McCall, rising. They were crumpling their used napkins, tossing them onto the dishevelled tablecloth. What had once been pristine was now covered with breadcrumbs and splashes of wine, a dark patch of butter, a single dripped coffee stain. Rebus felt woozy as he pulled himself out of the chair. And full. His tongue was furred from too much wine and coffee, and that cognac — Christ! Now these men were about to go back to work, or so they claimed. Rebus, too. He had a meeting at three with Holmes, didn’t he? But it was already gone three. Oh well, Holmes wouldn’t complain. Couldn’t complain, thought Rebus smugly.

‘Not a bad spread that,’ said Carew, patting his girth.

Rebus couldn’t be sure whether this, or the food itself, was the spread he meant.

‘And we covered a lot of ground,’ said Watson, ‘let’s not forget that.’

‘Indeed not,’ said McCall. ‘A very useful meeting.’

Andrews had insisted on paying the bill. A good three figures’ worth by Rebus’s hasty calculation. Andrews was studying the bill now, lingering over each item as though checking it against his own mental price list. Not only a businessman, thought Rebus unkindly, but a bloody good Scot. Then Andrews called over the brisk maitre d’ and told him quietly about one item for which they had been overcharged. The maitre d’ took Andrews’ word for it, and altered the bill there and then with his own ballpoint pen, apologising unreservedly.

The restaurant was just beginning to empty. A nice lunch hour over for all the diners. Rebus felt sudden guilt overwhelm him. He had just eaten and drunk his share of about two hundred pounds. Forty quid’s worth, in other words. Some had dined better, and were noisily, laughingly making their way out of the dining room. Old stories, cigars, red faces. McCall put an unwelcome arm around Rebus’s back, nodding towards the leavetaking.

‘If there were only fifty Tory voters left in Scotland, John, they’d all be in this room.’

‘I believe it,’ said Rebus.

Andrews, turning from the maitre d‘, had heard them. ’I thought there were only fifty Tories left up here,’ he said.

There, Rebus noted, were those quiet, confident smiles again. I have eaten ashes for bread, he thought. Ashes for bread. Cigar ash burned red all around him, and for a moment he thought he might be sick. But then McCall stumbled, and Rebus had to hold him up until he found his balance.

‘Bit too much to drink, Tommy?’ said Carew.

‘Just need a breath of air,’ said McCall. ‘John’ll help me, won’t you, John?’

‘Of course,’ said Rebus, glad of this excuse for the very thing he needed.

McCall turned back towards Carew. ‘Got your new car with you?’

Carew shook his head. ‘I left it in the garage.’

McCall, nodding, turned to Rebus. ‘The flash bugger’s just bought himself a V-Twelve Jag,’ he explained. ‘Nearly forty thousand, and I’m not talking about miles on the clock.’

One of the waiters was standing by the lift.

‘Nice to have seen you gentlemen again,’ he said, his voice as automatic as the lift doors which closed when Rebus and McCall stepped inside.

‘I must have arrested him some time,’ Rebus said,

‘because I’ve never been here before, so he can’t have seen me here before.’

‘This place is nothing,’ said McCall, screwing up his face. ‘Nothing. You want some fun, you should come to the club one night. Just say you’re a friend of Finlay’s. That’ll get you in. Great place it is.’

‘I might do that,’ said Rebus as the lift doors opened. ‘Just as soon as my cummerbund comes back from the dry cleaners.’

McCall laughed all the way out of the building.

Holmes was stiff as he left the building by its staff entrance. The youth, having shown him through the maze of corridors, had already turned back inside, hands in pockets, whistling. Holmes wondered if he really would end up with a career in journalism. Stranger things had happened.

He had found the photographs he wanted, one in each of three consecutive Wednesday daytime’s editions. From these, the photographic library had traced the originals, and on the backs of the originals was the same golden rectangular sticker, denoting that the photos were the property of Jimmy Hutton Photographic Studios. The stickers, bless them, even mentioned an address and phone number. So Holmes allowed himself the luxury of a stretch, cracking his spine back into some semblance of shape. He thought about treating himself to a pint, but after leaning over the study table for the best part of two hours the last thing he wanted to do was lean against a bar as he drank. Besides, it was three fifteen. He was already, thanks to a quick-witted but slow-moving photo library, late for his meeting — his first — with Inspector Rebus. He didn’t know how Rebus stood on the issue of punctuality; he feared the stand would be hard. Well, if the day’s work so far didn’t cheer him up, he wasn’t human.

But then that was the rumour anyway.

Not that Holmes believed rumours. Well, not always.

As it turned out, Rebus was the later of the two for the meeting, though he had phoned ahead to apologise, which was something. Holmes was seated in front of Rebus’s desk when Rebus finally arrived, pulling off rather a gaudy tie and dumping it into a drawer. Only then did he turn to Holmes, stare at him, smile, and stretch out a hand, which Holmes accepted.

Well that’s something, thought Rebus: he’s not a mason either.

‘Your first name is Brian, isn’t it?’ said Rebus sitting down.

‘That’s right, sir.’

‘Good. I’ll call you Brian, and you can keep on calling me sir. That seem fair enough?’

Holmes smiled. ‘Very fair, sir.’

‘Right, any progress?’

So Holmes started at the beginning. As he spoke, he noticed that Rebus, though trying his damnedest to be attentive, was drowsy. His breath across the table was strong-smelling. Whatever he’d had for lunch had agreed with him too well. Finishing his report, he waited for Rebus to speak.

Rebus merely nodded, and was silent for some time. Collecting his thoughts? Holmes felt the need to fill the vacuum.

‘What’s the problem, sir, if you don’t mind my asking?’

‘You’ve every right to ask,’ said Rebus at last. But he stopped at that.

‘Well, sir?’

‘I’m not sure, Brian. That’s the truth. Okay, here’s what I know — and I stress know, because there’s plenty I think, which isn’t quite the same thing in this case.’

‘There is a case then?’

‘You tell me, as soon as you’ve listened.’ And it was Rebus’s turn to make his ‘report’ of sorts, fixing it again in his mind as he told the story. But it was too fragmented, too speculative. He could see Holmes struggling with the pieces, trying to see the whole picture. Was there a picture there to see?

‘So you see,’ Rebus ended, ‘we’ve got a junkie full of poison, self-inflicted. Someone who supplied the poison. Bruising on the body, and the hint of a witchcraft connection. We’ve got a missing camera, a tie clip, some photographs, and a girlfriend being followed. You see my problem?’

‘Too much to go on.’

‘Exactly.’

‘So what do we do now?’

That ‘we’ caught Rebus’s attention. For the first time, he realised that he was no longer in this alone, whatever ‘this’ was. The thought cheered him a little, though the hangover was starting now, the sleepy slow thumping either side of his forehead.

‘I’m going to see a man about a coven,’ he said, sure now of the next steps. ‘And you’re going to visit Hutton’s Photographic Studios.’

‘That sounds reasonable,’ said Holmes.

‘So it bloody well should,’ said Rebus. ‘I’m the one with the brains, Brian. You’re the one with the shoeleather. Call me later on to let me know how you get on. Meantime, bugger off.’

Rebus didn’t mean to be unkind. But there had been something just too cosy and conspiratorial in the younger man’s tone towards the end, and he’d felt the need to reestablish boundaries. His own mistake, he realised as the door closed behind Holmes. His own mistake, for coming on so chattily, for telling all, for confiding, and for using Holmes’s first name. That bloody lunch had been to blame. Call me Finlay, call me James, call me Tommy…. Never mind, it would all work out. They had begun well, then less well. Things could only get worse, which was fine by Rebus. He enjoyed a measure of antagonism, of competition. They were distinct bonuses in this line of work.

So Rebus was a bastard after all.

Brian Holmes stalked out of the station with hands in pockets tightened to fists. Knuckles red. You’re the one with the shoeleather. That had really brought him down with a thump, just when he’d thought they were getting on so well. Almost like human beings rather than coppers. Should’ve known better, Brian. And as for the reason behind all this work…. Well, it hardly bore thinking about. It was so flimsy, so personal to Rebus. It wasn’t police work at all. It was an inspector with nothing to do for a while, trying to fill the time by playing at being Philip Marlowe. Jesus, they both had better things they could be doing. Well, Holmes did anyway. He wasn’t about to head some cushy anti-drugs campaign. And what a choice Rebus was for that! Brother inside Peter-head, doing time for pushing. Biggest dealer in Fife, he’d been. That should have screwed up Rebus’s career forever and anon, but instead they’d given him promotion. A naughty world, all right.

He had to visit a photographer. Maybe he could get some passport shots done at the same time. Pack his bags and fly off to Canada, Australia, the States. Sod his flat hunting. Sod the police force. And sod Detective Inspector John Rebus and his witch hunt.

There, it was done.

Rebus found some aspirin in one of his chaotic drawers, and crunched them to a bitter powder as he made his way downstairs. Bad mistake. They removed every fleck of saliva from his mouth, and he couldn’t even swallow, couldn’t speak. The desk sergeant was sipping a polystyrene beaker of tea. Rebus grabbed it from him and gulped at the tepid liquid. Then squirmed.

‘How much sugar did you put in that, Jack?’

‘If I’d known you were coming to tea, John, I’d have made it just the way you like it.’

The desk sergeant always had a smart answer, and Rebus could never think of a smarter rejoinder. He handed back the cup and walked away, feeling the sugar cloy inside him.

I’ll never touch another drop, he was thinking as he started his car. Honest to God, only the occasional glass of wine. Allow me that. But no more indulgence, and no more mixing wine and spirits. Okay? So give me a break, God, and lift this hangover. I only drank the one glass of cognac, maybe two glasses of claret, one of Chablis. One gin and tonic. It was hardly the stuff of legend, hardly a case for the detox ward.

The roads were quiet though, which was a break. Not enough of a break, but a break. So he made good time to Pilmuir, and then remembered that he didn’t know where Charlie boy lived. Charlie, the person he needed to talk to if he was going to find an address for a coven. A white coven. He wanted to double-check the witchcraft story. He wanted to double-check Charlie, too, come to that. But he didn’t want Charlie to know he was being checked.

The witchcraft thing niggled. Rebus believed in good and evil, and believed stupid people could be attracted towards the latter. He understood pagan religions well enough, had read about them in books too thick and intense for their own good. He didn’t mind people worshipping the Earth, or whatever. It all came down to the same thing in the end. What he did mind was people worshipping Evil as a force, and as more than a force: as an entity. Especially, he disliked the idea of people doing it for ‘kicks’ without knowing or caring what it was they were involved in.

People like Charlie. He remembered that book of Giger prints again. Satan, poised at the centre of a pair of scales, flanked by a naked woman left and right. The women were being penetrated by huge drills. Satan was a goat’s head in a mask….

But where would Charlie be now? He’d find out. Stop and ask. Knock on doors. Hint at retribution should information be withheld. He’d act the big bad policeman if that was what it took.

He didn’t need to do anything, as it happened. He just had to find the police constables who were loitering outside one of the boarded-up houses, not too far from where Ronnie had died. One of the constables held a radio to his mouth. The other was writing in a notebook. Rebus stopped his car, stepped out. Then remembered something, leaned back into the car and drew his keys from out of the ignition. You couldn’t be too careful around here. A second later, he actually locked his driver’s side door, too.

He knew one of the constables. It was Harry Todd, one of the men who had found Ronnie. Todd straightened when he saw Rebus, but Rebus waved this acknowledgment aside, so Todd continued with his radio conversation. Rebus concentrated on the other officer instead.

‘What’s the score here?’ The constable turned from his writing to give Rebus that suspicious, near-hostile look almost unique to the constabulary. ‘Inspector Rebus,’ Rebus explained. He was wondering where Todd’s Irish sidekick O’Rourke was.

‘Oh,’ said the constable. ‘Well …’ He started to put away his pen. ‘We were called to a domestic, sir. In this house. A real screaming match. But by the time we got here, the man had fled. The woman is still inside. She’s got herself a black eye, nothing more. Not really your territory, sir.’

‘Is that right?’ said Rebus. ‘Well, thank you for telling me, sonny. It’s nice to be told what is and isn’t my “territory”. Thank you so much. Now, may I have your permission to enter the premises?’

The constable was blushing furiously, his cheeks an almighty red against his bloodless face and neck. No: even his neck was blushing now. Rebus enjoyed that. He didn’t even mind that behind the constable, but in full view of Rebus himself, Todd was smirking at this encounter.

‘Well?’ Rebus prompted.

‘Sorry, sir,’ said the constable.

‘Right,’ said Rebus, walking towards the door. But before he reached it, it was opened from the inside, and there stood Tracy, both eyes reddened from crying, one eye bruised a deep blue. She didn’t seem surprised to see Rebus standing in front of her; she seemed relieved, and threw herself at him, hugging him, her head against his chest, the tears beginning all over again.

Rebus, startled and embarrassed, returned the embrace only lightly, with a patting of his hands on her back: a father’s ‘there, there’ to a frightened child. He turned his head to look at the constables, who were pretending to have noticed nothing. Then a car drew up beside his own, and he saw Tony McCall put on his handbrake before pushing open the driver’s door, stepping out and seeing Rebus there, and the girl.

Rebus laid his hands on Tracy’s arms and pushed her away from him a little, but still retaining that contact between them. His hands, her arms. She looked at him, and began to fight against the tears. Finally, she pulled one arm away so that she could wipe her eyes. Then the other arm relaxed and Rebus’s hand fell from it, the contact broken. For now.

‘John?’ It was McCall, close behind him.

‘Yes, Tony?’

‘Why is it my patch has suddenly become your patch?’

‘Just passing,’ said Rebus.

The interior of the house was surprisingly neat and tidy. There were numerous, if uncoordinated, sticks of furniture — two well-worn settees, a couple of dining chairs, trellis table, half a dozen pouffes, burst at the seams and oozing stuffing — and, most surprising of all, the electricity was connected.

‘Wonder if the electric board know about that,’ said McCall as Rebus switched on the downstairs lights.

For all its trappings, the place had an air of impermanence. There were sleeping bags laid out on the living-room floor, as though ready for any stray waifs and passers-by. Tracy went to one of the settees and sat down, wrapping her hands around her knees.

‘Is this your place, Tracy?’ said Rebus, knowing the answer.

‘No. It’s Charlie’s.’

‘How long have you known?’

‘I only found out today. He moves around all the time. It wasn’t easy tracking him down.’

‘It didn’t take you long.’ She shrugged her shoulders.

‘What happened?’

‘I just wanted to talk to him.’

‘About Ronnie?’ McCall watched Rebus as he said this. McCall was concentrating now, aware that Rebus was trying to fill him in on the situation while at the same time questioning Tracy. Tracy nodded.

‘Stupid, maybe, but I needed to talk to someone.’

‘And?’

‘And we got into an argument. He started it. Told me I was the cause of Ronnie’s death.’ She looked up at them; not pleadingly, but just to show that she was sincere. ‘It’s not true. But Charlie said I should have looked after Ronnie, stopped him taking the stuff, got him away from Pilmuir. How could I have done that? He wouldn’t have listened to me. I thought he knew what he was doing. Nobody could tell him otherwise.’

‘Is that what you told Charlie?’

She smiled. ‘No. I only thought of it just now. That’s what always happens, isn’t it? You only think of the clever comeback after the argument’s finished.’

‘I know what you mean, love,’ said McCall.

‘So you started a slanging match — ’

‘I never started the slanging match!’ she roared at Rebus.

‘Okay,’ he said quietly, ‘Charlie started shouting at you, and you shouted back, then he hit you. Yes?’

‘Yes.’ She seemed subdued.

‘And maybe,’ Rebus prompted, ‘you hit him back?’

‘I gave as good as I got.’

‘That’s my girl,’ said McCall. He was touring the room, turning up cushions on the settees, opening old magazines, crouching to pat each sleeping bag.

‘Don’t patronise me, you bastard,’ said Tracy.

McCall paused, looked up, surprised. Then smiled, and patted the next sleeping bag along. ‘Ah-ha,’ he said, lifting the sleeping bag and shaking it. A small polythene bag fell out onto the floor. He picked it up, satisfied. ‘A little bit of blaw,’ he said. ‘Makes a house into a home, eh?’

‘I don’t know anything about that,’ said Tracy, looking at the bag.

‘We believe you,’ said Rebus. ‘Charlie did a runner then?’

‘Yes. The neighbours must’ve phoned for the pigs … I mean, the police.’ She averted her eyes from them.

‘We’ve been called worse,’ said McCall, ‘haven’t we, John?’

‘That’s for sure. So the constables arrived at one door, and Charlie left by another, right?’

‘Out of the back door, yes.’

‘Well,’ said Rebus, ‘while we’re here we might as well have a look at his room, if such a thing exists.’

‘Good idea,’ said McCall, pocketing the polythene bag. ‘There’s no smoke without fire.’

Charlie had a room all right. It consisted of a single sleeping bag, a desk, anglepoise lamp, and more books than Rebus had ever seen in such an enclosed space. They were piled against the walls, reaching in precarious pillars from floor to ceiling. Many were library books, well overdue.

‘Must owe the City Fathers a small fortune,’ said McCall.

There were books on economics, politics and history, as well as learned and not so learned tomes on demonism, devil worship and witchcraft. There was little fiction, and most of the books had been read thoroughly, with much underlining and pencilled marginalia. On the desk sat a half-completed essay, part of Charlie’s university course work no doubt. It seemed to be trying to link ‘magick’ to modern society, but was mostly, to Rebus’s eye, rambling nonsense.

‘Hello!’

This was shouted from downstairs, as the two constables started to climb the staircase.

‘Hello yourselves,’ McCall called back. Then he shook the contents of a large supermarket carrier bag onto the floor, so that pens, toy cars, cigarette papers, a wooden egg, a spool of cotton, a personal cassette player, a Swiss army knife, and a camera fell out. McCall stooped to pick up the camera between thumb and middle finger. Nice model, thirty-five-millimetre SLR. Good make. He gestured with it towards Rebus, who took it from him, having first produced a handkerchief from his pocket, with which he held it. Rebus turned towards Tracy who was standing against the door with her arms folded. She nodded back at him.

‘Yes,’ she said. ‘That’s Ronnie’s camera.’

The constables were at the top of the stairs now. Rebus accepted McCall’s offer of the supermarket carrier and dropped the camera into it, careful not to mess up any prints.

‘Todd,’ he said to the constable he knew, ‘take this young lady down to Great London Road station.’ Tracy’s mouth opened. ‘It’s for your own protection,’ Rebus said. ‘Go on with them. I’ll see you later, soon as I can.’

She still seemed ready to voice a complaint, but thought better of it, nodded and turned, leaving the room. Rebus listened as she went downstairs, accompanied by the officers. McCall was still searching, though without real concern. Two finds were quite enough to be going on with.

‘No smoke without fire,’ he said.

‘I had lunch with Tommy today,’ said Rebus.

‘My brother Tommy?’ McCall looked up. Rebus nodded. ‘Then that’s one up to you. He’s never taken me to lunch these past fifteen years.’

‘We were at The Eyrie.’ Now McCall whistled. ‘To do with Watson’s anti-drugs campaign.’

‘Yes, Tommy’s shelling out for it, isn’t he? Ach, I shouldn’t be hard on him. He’s done me a few favours in his time.’

‘He had a few too many.’

McCall laughed gently. ‘He hasn’t changed then. Still, he can afford it. That transport company of his, it runs itself. He used to be there twenty-four hours a day, fifty-two weeks of the year. Nowadays, he can take off as long as he likes. His accountant once told him to take a year off. Can you imagine that? For tax purposes. If only we had those kinds of problem, eh, John?’

‘You’re right there, Tony.’ Rebus was still holding the supermarket bag. McCall nodded towards it.

‘Does this tie it up?’

‘It makes things a bit clearer,’ said Rebus. ‘I might get it checked for prints.’

‘I can tell you what you’ll find,’ said McCall. ‘The deceased’s and this guy Charlie’s.’

‘You’re forgetting someone.’

‘Who?’

‘You, Tony. You picked the camera up with your fingers, remember?’

‘Ah, sorry. I didn’t think.’

‘Never mind.’

‘Anyway, it’s something, isn’t it? Something to celebrate, I mean. I don’t know about you, but I’m starved.’

As they left the room, one pillar of books finally gave way, slewing down across the floor like dominoes waiting to be shuffled. Rebus opened the door again to look in.

‘Ghosts,’ said McCall. ‘That’s all. Just ghosts.’

It wasn’t much to look at. Not what he’d been expecting. Okay, so there was a potted plant in one corner, and black roller blinds over the windows, and even a word processor gathering dust on a newish plastic desk. But it was still the second floor of a tenement, still designed as somebody’s home and never meant to be used as office, studio, workplace. Holmes gave the room — the so-called ‘front office’ — a tour as the cute little school-leaver went off to fetch ‘His Highness’. That was what she’d called him. If your staff didn’t hold you in esteem, or at the very least in frightened awe, there was something wrong with you. Certainly, as the door opened and ‘His Highness’ walked in, it was evident to Holmes that there was something wrong with Jimmy Hutton.

For a start, he was the other side of fifty, yet what hair he still had was long, thin strands covering his forehead almost down to his eyes. He was also wearing denims: a mistake easily made by those aspiring to youth from the wrong side. And he was short. Five foot two or three. Now Holmes began to see the relevance of the secretary’s pun. His highness, indeed.

He had a harassed look on his face, but had left the camera through in the back bedroom or box room or whichever room of the smallish flat served as his studio. He stuck out a hand, and Holmes shook it.

‘Detective Constable Holmes,’ he announced. Hutton nodded, took a cigarette from the packet on his secretary’s desk and lit it. She frowned openly at this as she sat down again, smoothing her tight skirt beneath her. Hutton had not yet looked at Holmes. His eyes seemed to be mirroring some distraction in his mind. He went to the window, looked out, arched his neck to blow a plume of smoke towards the high, dark ceiling, then let his head go limp, leaning against the wall.

‘Get me a coffee, Christine.’ His eyes met Holmes’s momentarily. ‘Do you want one?’ Holmes shook his head.

‘Sure?’ said Christine kindly, rising out of her seat again.

‘Okay then. Thanks.’

With a smile she left the room, off to the kitchen or darkroom to fill a kettle.

‘So,’ said Hutton. ‘What can I do for you?’

That was another thing about the man. His voice was high, not shrill or girlish, just high. And slightly rasping, as though he had damaged his vocal cords at some point in his youth and they had never recovered.

‘Mr Hutton?’ Holmes needed to be sure. Hutton nodded.

‘Jimmy Hutton, professional photographer, at your service. You’re getting married and you want me to do you a discount?’

‘No, nothing like that.’

‘A portrait then. Girlfriend perhaps? Mum and dad?’

‘No, this is business, I’m afraid. My business, that is.’

‘But no new business for me, right?’ Hutton smiled, chanced another glance towards Holmes, drew on his cigarette again. ‘I could do a portrait of you, you know. Nice strong chin, decent cheekbones. With the proper lighting….’

‘No, thanks. I hate having my picture taken.’

‘I’m not talking about pictures.’ Hutton was moving now, circling the desk. ‘I’m talking about art.’

‘That’s why I came here actually.’

‘What?’

‘Art. I was impressed by some of your photos I saw in a newspaper. I was wondering whether you might be able to help me.’

‘Oh?’

‘It’s a missing person.’ Holmes was not a great liar. His ears tingled when he told a real whopper. Not a great liar, but a good one. ‘A young man called Ronnie McGrath.’

‘Name doesn’t mean anything.’

‘He wanted to be a photographer, that’s why I was wondering.’

‘Wondering what?’

‘If he’d ever come to you. You know, asking advice, that sort of thing. You’re an established name, after all.’ It was almost too blatant. Holmes could sense it: could sense Hutton just about realising what the game was. But vanity won in the end.

‘Well,’ the photographer said, leaning against the desk, folding his arms, crossing his legs, sure of himself. ‘What did he look like, this Ronnie?’

‘Tallish, short brown hair. Liked to do studies. You know the sort of thing, the Castle, Calton Hill….’

‘Are you a photographer yourself, Inspector?’

‘I’m only a constable.’ Holmes smiled, pleased by the error. Then caught himself: what if Hutton were trying to play the vanity game with him? ‘And no, I’ve never really done much photography. Holiday snaps, that sort of thing.’

‘Sugar?’ Christine put her head around the door, smiling at Holmes again.

‘No thanks,’ he said. ‘Just milk.’

‘Put a drop of whisky in mine,’ said Hutton. ‘There’s a love.’ He winked towards the door as it closed again. ‘Sounds familiar, I have to admit. Ronnie…. Studies of the Castle. Yes, yes. I do remember some young guy coming in, bloody pest he was. I was doing a portfolio, some long-term stuff. Mind had to be one hundred percent on the job. He was always coming round, asking to see me, wanting to show me his work.’ Hutton raised his hands apologetically. ‘I mean, we were all young once. I wish I could have helped him. But I didn’t have the time, not right then.’

‘You didn’t look at his work?’

‘No. No time, as I say. He stopped coming by after a few weeks.’

‘How long ago was this?’

‘Few months. Three or four.’

The secretary appeared with their coffees. Holmes could smell the whisky wafting out of Hutton’s mug, and was jealous and repelled in equal measure. Still, the interview was going well enough. Time for a side road.

‘Thanks, Christine,’ he said, seeming to please her with the familiarity. She sat down, not drinking herself, and lit a cigarette. He thought for a moment of reaching out to light it for her, but held back.

‘Look,’ said Hutton. ‘I’d like to be of assistance, but….’

‘You’re a busy man.’ Holmes nodded agreement. ‘I really do appreciate your giving me any time at all. Anyway, that just about wraps it up.’ He took a scalding mouthful of coffee, but dared not spit it back into the mug, so swallowed hard instead.

‘Right,’ said Hutton, rising from the edge of the desk.

‘Oh,’ said Holmes. ‘Just one thing. Curiosity really, but is there any chance I could have a peek at your studio? I’ve never been in a proper studio before.’

Hutton looked at Christine, who muffled a smile behind her fingers as she pretended to puff on her cigarette.

‘Sure,’ he said, smiling himself. ‘Why not? Come on.’

The room was large, but otherwise pretty much as Holmes had expected, excepting one significant detail. Half a dozen different types of camera stood on half a dozen tripods. There were photographs covering three of the walls, and against the fourth was a large white backcloth, looking suspiciously like a bedsheet. This was all obvious enough. However, in front of the backcloth had been arranged the set for Hutton’s present ‘portfolio’: two large, freestanding sections, painted pink. And in front of these was a chair, against which, arms folded, stood a young, blonde and bored-looking man.

A man who was naked.

‘Detective Holmes, this is Arnold,’ said Hutton by way of introduction. ‘Arnold is a male model. Nothing wrong, is there?’

Holmes, who had been staring, now tried not to. The blood was rising to his face. He turned to Hutton.

‘No, no, nothing.’

Hutton went to one camera and bent down to squint through the viewfinder, aiming in Arnold’s general direction. Not at head height.

‘The male nude can be quite exquisite,’ Hutton was saying. ‘Nothing photographs quite as well as the human body.’ He clicked the shutter, ran the film on, clicked again, then looked up at Holmes, smiling at the policeman’s discomfort.

‘What will you do with the …’ Holmes searched for some decorous word. ‘I mean, what are they for?’

‘My portfolio, I told you. To show to possible future clients.’

‘Right.’ Holmes nodded, to show he understood.

‘I am an artist, you see, as well as a portrait snapper.’

‘Right,’ Holmes said, nodding again.

‘Not against the law, is it?’

‘I don’t think so.’ He went to the heavily draped window and peeked out through a slight opening. ‘Not unless it disturbs the neighbours.’

Hutton laughed. Even the sober face of the model opened in a momentary grin.

‘They queue up,’ said Hutton, coming to the window and peering out. ‘That’s why I had to put up the curtains. Dirty buggers that they were. Women and men, crammed into the width of a window.’ He pointed to a top-storey window in the tenement across the way. ‘There. I caught them one day, took a couple of quick shots of them with the motor-drive. They didn’t like that.’ He turned away from the window. Holmes was browsing along the walls, picking out this and that photograph and nodding praise towards Hutton, who lapped it up and began to walk with him, pointing out this or that angle or trick.

‘That’s good,’ said Holmes, gesturing towards one shot of Edinburgh Castle bathed in mist. It was almost identical to the one he had seen in the newspaper, which made it a very near relative to the one in Ronnie’s bedroom. Hutton shrugged.

‘That’s nothing,’ he said, resting a hand on Holmes’s shoulder. ‘Here, have a look at some of my nude work.’

There was a cluster of a dozen black and white ten-by-eights, pinned to the wall in one corner of the room. Men and women, not all of them young or pretty. But well enough taken, artistic even, Holmes supposed.

‘These are just the best,’ said Hutton.

‘The best, or the most tasteful?’ Holmes tried not to make the remark sound judgmental, but even so Hutton’s good humour vanished. He went to a large chest of drawers and pulled open the bottom one, scooping up an armful of photographs which he threw to the floor.

‘Have a look,’ he said. ‘There’s no porn. Nothing sleazy or disgusting or obscene. They’re just bodies. Posed bodies.’

Holmes stood over the photographs, not seeming to pay them any attention.

‘I’m sorry,’ he said, ‘if I seemed — ’

‘Forget it.’ Hutton turned away, so that his face was towards the male model. He rubbed at his eyes, shoulders slumped. ‘I’m just tired. I didn’t mean to snap like that. Just tired.’

Holmes stared at Arnold over Hutton’s shoulder, then, because there was no way it could be done stealthily, bent down, picked out a photograph from the selection on the floor, and, coming upright again, stuffed the photo into his jacket. Arnold saw, of course, and Holmes just had time to wink at him conspiratorially before Hutton turned back towards him.

‘People imagine it’s easy, just taking photos all day,’ Hutton said. Holmes risked a look over the man’s shoulder and saw Arnold wag an admonitory finger. But he was smiling archly. He wasn’t about to tell. ‘You’re thinking all the time,’ Hutton went on. ‘Every waking minute of every day, every time you look at something, every time you use your eyes. Everything’s material, you see.’

Holmes was at the door now, not about to linger.

‘Yes, well, I’d better let you get on,’ he said.

‘Oh,’ said Hutton, as though coming out of a dream. ‘Right.’

‘Thanks for all your help.’

‘Not at all.’

‘Bye, Arnold,’ Holmes called, then pulled the door shut behind him and was gone.

‘Back to work,’ said Hutton. He stared at the photographs on the floor. ‘Give me a hand with these, Arnold.’

‘You’re the boss.’

As they began to scoop the photos back into the drawer, Hutton commented, ‘Nice enough bloke for a copper.’

‘Yes,’ said Arnold, standing naked with his hands full of paper. ‘He didn’t look like one of the dirty raincoat brigade, did he?’

And though Hutton asked him what he meant, Arnold just shrugged. It wasn’t his business after all. It was a shame though, the policeman being interested in women. A waste of a good-looking man.

Holmes stood outside for a minute. For some reason, he was trembling, as though a small motor had stuck somewhere inside him. He touched a hand to his chest. Slight heart murmur, nothing more. Everybody got them, didn’t they? He felt as though he had just committed some petty crime, which he supposed, really, he had. He had taken someone’s property away without their knowledge or consent. Wasn’t that theft? As a child, he had stolen from shops, always throwing away whatever he stole. Ach, all kids did it, didn’t they? … Didn’t they?

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 sheriffs 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….

‘He ran away after the exams. We didn’t hear anything from him for months. My mum and dad almost went crazy. Then they just shut him out completely, switched off. It was like he didn’t exist. I wasn’t supposed to mention him in the house.’

‘But he got in touch with you?’

‘Yes. Wrote a letter to me care of a pal of mine. Clever move that. So I got the letter without Mum and Dad knowing. He told me he had come to Edinburgh. That he liked it better than Stirling. That he had a job and a girlfriend. That was it, no address or phone number.’

‘Did he write often?’

‘Now and then. He lied a lot, made things seem better than they were. Said he couldn’t come back to Stirling until he had a Porsche and a flat, so he could prove something to Mum and Dad. Then he stopped writing. I left school and joined the police.’

‘And came to Edinburgh.’

‘Not straight away, but yes, eventually.’

‘Specifically to find him?’

Neil smiled.

‘Not a bit of it. I was forgetting him, too. I had my own life to think about.’

‘So what happened?’

‘I caught him one night, out on my regular beat.’

‘What beat is that exactly?’

‘I’m based out at Musselburgh.’

‘Musselburgh? Not exactly walking distance of here, is it? So what do you mean “caught him”?’

‘Well, not caught, since he wasn’t really doing anything. But he was high as a kite, and he’d been bashed up a bit.’

‘Did he tell you what he’d been doing?’

‘No. I could guess though.’

‘What?’

‘Acting as a punchbag for some of the rough traders around Calton Hill.’

‘Funny, someone else mentioned that.’

‘It happens. Quick money for people who don’t give a shit.’

‘And Ronnie didn’t give a shit?’

‘Sometimes he did. Other times…. I don’t know, maybe I didn’t know his mind as well as I thought.’

‘So you started to visit him?’

‘I had to help him home that first night. I came back the next day. He was surprised to see me, didn’t even remember that I’d helped him home the previous night.’

‘Did you try to get him off drugs?’

Neil was silent. The door creaked on its hinges.

‘At the beginning I did,’ he said at last. ‘But he seemed to be in control. That sounds stupid, I know, after what I’ve said about finding him in such a state that first night, but it was his choice, after all, as he kept reminding me.’

‘What did he think of having a brother in the force?’

‘He thought it was funny. Mind you, I never came round here with my uniform on.’

‘Not till tonight.’

‘That’s right. Anyway, yes, I visited a few times. We stayed up here mostly. He didn’t want the others to see me. He was afraid they’d smell pork.’

It was Rebus’s turn to smile. ‘You didn’t happen to follow Tracy, did you?’

‘Who’s Tracy?’

‘Ronnie’s girlfriend. She turned up at my flat last night. Some men had been following her.’

Neil shook his head. ‘Wasn’t me.’

‘But you were at my flat last night?’

‘Yes.’

‘And you were here the night Ronnie died.’ It was blunt, but necessarily so. Neil stopped playing with the door handle, was silent this time for twenty or thirty seconds, then took a deep breath.

‘For a while I was, yes.’

‘You left this behind.’ Rebus held out the shiny clip, but Neil couldn’t quite make it out in the torchlight. Not that he needed to see it to know what it was.

‘My tie clip? I wondered about that. My tie had broken that day, it was in my pocket.’

Rebus made no attempt to hand over the clip. Instead, he put it back in his pocket. Neil just nodded, understanding.

‘Why did you start following me?’

‘I wanted to talk to you. I just couldn’t pluck up the courage.’

‘You didn’t want news of Ronnie’s death getting back to your parents?’

‘Yes. I thought maybe you wouldn’t be able to trace his identity, but you did. I don’t know what it’ll do to my mum and dad. I think at worst it’ll make them happy, because they’ll know they were right all along, right not to give him a second’s thought.’

‘And at best?’

‘Best?’ Neil stared through the gloom, searching out Rebus’s eyes. ‘There’s no best.’

‘I suppose not,’ said Rebus. ‘But they’ve still got to be told.’

‘I know. I’ve always known.’

‘Then why follow me?’

‘Because now you’re closer to Ronnie than I am. I don’t know why you’re so interested in him, but you are. And that interests me. I want you to find whoever sold him that poison.’

‘I intend to, son, don’t worry.’

‘And I want to help.’

‘That’s the first stupid thing you’ve said, which isn’t bad going for a PC. Truth is, Neil, you’d be the biggest bloody nuisance I could ask for. I’ve got all the help I need for now.’

‘Too many cooks, eh?’

‘Something like that.’ Rebus decided that the confession was ending, that there was little left to be said. He came away from the window and walked to the door, stopping in front of Neil. ‘You’ve already been a bigger nuisance than I needed. It’s not pork I can smell off you, it’s fish. Herrings, to be precise. And guess what colour they are.’

‘What?’

‘Red, son, red.’

There was a noise from downstairs, pressure on floorboards, better than an infra-red alarm anyday. Rebus turned off the torch.

‘Stay here,’ he whispered. Then he went to the top of the stairs. ‘Who’s there?’ A shadow appeared below him. He switched on the torch, and shone it into Tony McCall’s squinting face.

‘Christ, Tony.’ Rebus started downstairs. ‘What a fright.’

‘I knew I’d find you here,’ said McCall. ‘I just knew it.’ His voice was nasal, and Rebus reckoned that since the time they’d parted some three hours before, McCall had kept on drinking. He stopped on the staircase, then turned and headed back up.

‘Where are you going now?’ called McCall.

‘Just shutting the door,’ said Rebus, closing the bedroom door, leaving Neil inside. ‘Don’t want the ghosts to catch cold, do we?’

McCall was chuckling as Rebus headed downstairs again.

‘Thought we might have a wee snifter,’ he said. ‘And none of that bloody alcohol-free stuff you were quaffing before.’

‘Fair enough,’ said Rebus, expertly manoeuvring McCall out of the front door. ‘Let’s do that.’ And he locked the door behind him, figuring that Ronnie’s brother would know of the many easy ways in and out of the house. Everybody else seemed to know them, after all.

Everybody.

‘Where’ll it be?’ said Rebus. ‘I hope you didn’t drive here, Tony.’

‘Got a patrol car to drop me off.’

‘Fine. We’ll take my car then.’

‘We could drive down to Leith.’

‘No, I fancy something more central. There are a few good pubs in Regent Road.’

‘By Calton Hill?’ McCall was amazed. ‘Christ, John, I can think of better places to go for a drink.’

‘I can’t,’ said Rebus. ‘Come on.’

Nell Stapleton was Holmes’s girlfriend. Holmes had always preferred tall women, tracing the fixation back to his mother who had been five foot ten. Nell was nearly three quarters of an inch taller than Holmes’s mother, but he still loved her.

Nell was more intelligent than Holmes. Or, as he liked to think, they were more intelligent than one another in different ways. Nell could crack the Guardian cryptic crossword in under quarter of an hour on a good day. But she had trouble with arithmetic and remembering names: both strengths possessed by Holmes. People said they looked good together in public, looked comfortable with one another, which was probably true. They felt good together, too, living as they did by several simple rules: no talk of marriage, no thoughts of children, no hinting at living together, and definitely no cheating.

Nell worked as a librarian at Edinburgh University, a vocation Holmes found handy. Today, for example, he had asked her to find him some books on the occult. She had done even better, locating a thesis or two which he could read on the premises if he wished. She also had a printed bibliography of relevant materials, which she handed to him in the pub when they met that evening.

The Bridge of Sighs was at a mid-week and mid-evening cusp, as were most of the city centre bars. The just-one-after-work brigade had slung their jackets over their arms and headed off, while the revitalised night-time crowd had yet to catch their buses from the housing estates into the middle of town. Nell and Holmes sat at a comer table, away from the video games, but a bit too close to one of the hi-fi system’s loudspeakers. Holmes, at the bar to buy another half for himself, an orange juice and Perrier for Nell, asked if the volume could be turned down.

‘Sorry, can’t. The customers like it.’

‘We are the customers,’ Holmes persisted.

‘You’ll have to speak to the manager.’

‘Fine.’

‘He’s not in yet.’

Holmes shot the young barmaid a filthy look before turning towards his table. What he saw made him pause. Nell had opened his briefcase and was examining the photograph of Tracy.

‘Who is she?’ Nell said, closing the case as he placed her drink on the table.

‘Part of a case I’m working on,’ he said frostily, sitting down. ‘Who said you could open my briefcase?’

‘Rule seven, Brian. No secrets.’

‘All the same — ’

‘Pretty, isn’t she?’

‘What? I haven’t really — ’

‘I’ve seen her around the university.’

He was interested now. ‘You have?’

‘Mmm. In the library cafeteria. I remember her because she always seemed a little bit older than the other students she was with.’

‘She’s a student then?’

‘Not necessarily. Anybody can go into the cafe. It’s students only in the library itself, but I can’t recall having seen her there. Only in the cafe. So what’s she done?’

‘Nothing, so far as I know.’

‘So why is there a nude photo of her in your briefcase?’

‘It’s part of this thing I’m doing for Inspector Rebus.’

‘You’re collecting dirty pictures for him.’

She was smiling now, and he smiled too. The smile vanished as Rebus and McCall walked into the pub, laughing at some shared joke as they made for the bar. Holmes didn’t want Rebus and Nell to meet. He tried very hard to leave his police life behind him when he was spending the evening with her — favours such as the occult booklist notwithstanding. He was also planning to keep Nell very much up his sleeve, so that he could have a booklist ready to hand should Rebus ever need such a thing.

Now it looked as though Rebus was going to spoil everything. And there was something else, another reason he didn’t want Rebus to come sauntering across to their table. He was afraid Rebus would call him ‘Shoeleather’.

He kept his eyes to the table as Rebus took in the bar with a single sweep of his head, and was relieved when the two senior officers, drinks purchased, wandered off towards the distant pool table, where they started another argument about who shouldn’t and should provide the two twenty-pence pieces for the game.

‘What’s wrong?’

Nell was staring at him. To do so, she had brought herself to his level, her head resting against the table.

‘Nothing.’ He turned towards her, offering the rest of the room a hard profile. ‘Are you hungry?’

‘I suppose so, yes.’

‘Good, me too.’

‘I thought you said you’d eaten.’

‘Not enough. Come on, I’ll treat you to an Indian.’

‘Let me finish my drink first.’ She did so in three swallows, and they left together, the door swinging shut silently behind them.

‘Heads or tails?’ Rebus asked McCall, flipping a coin.

‘Tails.’

Rebus examined the coin. ‘Tails it is. You break.’

As McCall angled his cue down onto the table, closing one eye as he concentrated on the distant triangle of balls, Rebus stared at the door of the bar. Fair enough, he supposed. Holmes was off duty, and had a girl with him, too. He supposed that gave him grounds for ignoring his senior officer. Perhaps there had been no progress, nothing to report. Fair enough again. But Rebus couldn’t help thinking that the whole thing was meant to be taken as a snub. He had given Holmes a mouthful earlier on, and now Holmes was sulking.

‘You to play, John,’ said McCall, who had broken without potting.

‘Right you are, Tony,’ said Rebus, chalking the tip of his cue. ‘Right you are.’

McCall came to Rebus’s side as he was making ready to play.

‘This must be just about the only straight pub in the whole street,’ he said quietly.

‘Do you know what homophobia means, Tony?’

‘Don’t get me wrong, John,’ said McCall, straightening up and watching Rebus’s chosen ball miss the pocket. ‘I mean, each to his own and all that. But some of those pubs and clubs….’

‘You seem to know a lot.’

‘No, not really. It’s just what I hear.’

‘Who from?’

McCall potted one striped ball, then another. ‘Come on, John. You know Edinburgh as well as I do. Everybody knows the gay scene here.’

‘Like you said, Tony, each to his own.’ A voice suddenly sounded in Rebus’s mind: you’re the brother I never had. No, no, shut that out. He’d been there too often before. McCall missed on his next shot and Rebus approached the table.

‘How come,’ he said, completely miscuing, ‘you can drink so much and play so well?’

McCall chuckled. ‘Alcohol cures the shakes,’ he said. ‘So finish that pint and I’ll buy you another. My treat.’

James Carew felt that he deserved his treat. He had sold a substantial property on the outskirts of Edinburgh to the financial director of a company new to Scotland, and a husband and wife architects’ partnership — Scottish in origin, but now relocating from Sevenoaks in Kent — had just made a rather better offer than expected for an estate of seven acres in the Borders. A good day. By no means the best, but nevertheless worthy of celebration.

Carew himself owned a pied d terre in one of the loveliest of the New Town’s Georgian streets, and a farmhouse with some acreage on the Isle of Skye. These were good days for him. London was shifting north, it seemed, the incomers brimming with cash from properties sold in the south-east, wanting bigger and better and prepared to pay.

He left his George Street offices at six thirty, and returned to his split-level flat. Flat? It seemed an insult to term it such: five bedrooms, living room, dining room, two bathrooms, adequate kitchen, walk-in cupboards the size of a decent Hammersmith bedsit…. Carew was in the right place, the only place, and the time was right, too. This was a year to be clutched, embraced, a year unlike any other. He removed his suit in the master bedroom, showered, and changed into something more casual, but without shrugging off the mark of wealth. Though he had walked home, he would need the car for tonight. It was garaged in a mews to the rear of his street. The keys were hanging on their appointed hook in the kitchen. Was the Jaguar an indulgence? He smiled, locking the flat as he left. Perhaps it was. But then his list of indulgences was long, and about to grow longer.

Rebus waited with McCall until the taxi arrived. He gave the driver McCall’s address, and watched the cab pull away. Damn, he felt a little groggy himself. He went back into the pub and headed for the toilets. The bar was busier now, the jukebox louder. The bar staff had grown in strength from one to three, and they were working hard to cope. The toilets were a cool tiled haven, free from much of the bar’s cigarette smoke. Pine disinfectant caught in Rebus’s nostrils as he leaned over into one of the sinks. Two fingers sought out his tonsils, pausing there at the back of his throat until he retched, bringing up half a pint of beer, then another half. He breathed deeply, feeling a little better already, then washed his face thoroughly with cold water, drying himself off with a fistful of paper towels.

‘You all right?’ The voice lacked real sympathy. Its owner had just pushed open the door to the gents’ and was already seeking the closest urinal.

‘Never felt better,’ said Rebus.

‘That’s good.’

Good? He didn’t know about that, but at least his head was clearer, the world more in focus. He doubted if he’d fail a breathalyser, which was just as well, since his next port of call was his car, parked on a darkened side road. He was still wondering how Tony McCall, shaky on his pins after half a dozen pints, had managed to play pool with such a steady eye and steady hand. The man was miraculous. He’d beaten Rebus six straight games. And Rebus had been trying. By the end he’d really been trying. After all, it didn’t look good when a man barely able to stand upright could pot ball after ball, cleaning up and roaring to yet another victory. It didn’t look good. It hadn’t felt good.

It was eleven o’clock, perhaps a little early yet. He allowed himself one cigarette in the stationary car, window open, picking up the sounds from the world around him. The honest sounds of the late evening: traffic, heightened voices, laughter, the clatter of shoes on cobblestones. One cigarette, that was all. Then he started the car, and slowly drove the half mile or so to his destination. There was still some light in the sky, typical of the Edinburgh summer. Further north he knew it never got truly dark at this time of year.

But the night could be dark in other ways.

He spotted the first one on the pavement outside the Scottish Assembly building. There was no reason for the teenager to be standing there. It was an unlikely time of night to have arranged to meet friends, and the nearest bus stop was a hundred yards further up Waterloo Place. The lad stood there, smoking, one foot up behind him resting against the stone wall. He watched Rebus as the car slowly went past, and even lowered his head forward a little so that he could peer in, as though inspecting the driver. Rebus thought there was a smile there, but couldn’t be sure. Further along the road, he turned the car and came back. Another car had stopped beside the boy, and a conversation was taking place. Rebus kept driving. Two young men were talking together outside the Scottish Office building on this side of the road. A little way past them, a line of three cars stood outside Calton Cemetery. Rebus cruised one more circuit, then parked near these cars, and walked.

The night was fresh. No cloud cover. There was a slight breeze, nothing more. The lad outside the Assembly building had gone off in the car. No one stood there now. Rebus crossed the road, stopped by the wall, and waited, biding his time. He watched. One or two cars drove past him slowly, the drivers turning to stare at him. But nobody stopped. He tried memorising the number plates, unsure why.

‘Got a light, mister?’

He was young, no more than eighteen or nineteen. Dressed in jeans, training shoes, a shapeless T-shirt and denim jacket. His hair had been razored short, face clean-shaven but scarred with acne. There were two gold studs in his left ear.

‘Thanks,’ he said as Rebus held out a box of matches. Then: ‘What’s happening then?’, with an amused glance towards Rebus before lighting the cigarette.

‘Not much,’ Rebus said, taking back the matchbox. The young man blew smoke out through his nostrils. He didn’t seem about to go. Rebus wondered if there were any codes he should be using. He felt clammy beneath his thin shirt, despite the gooseflesh.

‘Nah, there’s never much happens around here. Fancy a drink?’

‘At this time? Whereabouts?’

The young man nodded a vague direction. ‘Calton Cemetery. You can always get a drink there.’

‘No, thanks anyway.’ Rebus was appalled to find himself blushing. He hoped the street lighting would disguise it.

‘Fair enough. See you around then.’ The young man was moving off.

‘Yes,’ Rebus said, relieved. ‘See you.’

‘And thanks for the light.’

Rebus watched him go, walking slowly, purposefully, turning from time to time at the sign of an approaching car. A hundred yards or so on, he crossed the road and began walking back, paying Rebus no attention, his mind on other things. It struck Rebus that the boy was sad, lonely, certainly no hustler. But no victim either.

Rebus stared at the wall of Calton Cemetery, broken only by its metal gates. He’d taken his daughter in there once to show her the graves of the famous — David Hume, the publisher Constable, the painter David Allan — and the statue of Abraham Lincoln. She’d asked him about the men who walked briskly from the cemetery, their heads bowed down. One older man, two teenagers. Rebus had wondered about them, too. But not too much.

No, he couldn’t do it. Couldn’t go in there. It wasn’t that he was afraid. Jesus, no, not that, not for one minute. He was just … he didn’t know what. But he was feeling giddy again, unsteady on his pins. I’ll go back to the car, he thought.

He went back to the car.

He had been sitting in the driver’s seat, smoking another cigarette thoughtfully for about a minute before he caught sight of the figure out of the comer of his eye. He turned and looked towards where the boy was seated; no, not seated, crouching against a low wall. Rebus turned away and resumed smoking. Only then did the boy rise to his feet and walk towards the car. He tapped on the passenger side window. Rebus took a deep breath before unlocking the door. The boy got in without a word, closing the door solidly behind him. He sat there, staring out through the windscreen, silent. Rebus, unable to think of a single sensible thing to say, stayed silent, too. The boy cracked first.

‘Hiya.’

It was a man’s voice. Rebus turned to examine the boy. He was maybe sixteen. Dressed in leather jacket, open-necked shirt. Torn jeans.

‘Hello,’ he said in reply.

‘Got a cigarette?’

Rebus handed over the packet. The boy took one and swopped the packet for a box of matches. He inhaled the cigarette smoke deeply, holding it for a long time, then exhaling almost nothing of it back into the atmosphere. Take without give, thought Rebus. The creed of the street.

‘So what are you up to tonight then?’ The question had been on Rebus’s own lips, but the boy had given voice to it.

‘Just killing time,’ said Rebus. ‘I couldn’t sleep.’

The boy laughed harshly. ‘Yeah, couldn’t sleep, so you came for a drive. Got tired driving so you just happened to stop here. This particular street. This time of night. Then you went for a walk, a stretch of the legs, and came back to the car. Right?’

‘You’ve been watching me,’ Rebus admitted.

‘I didn’t need to watch you. I’ve seen it all before.’

‘How often?’

‘Often enough, James.’

The words were tough, the voice was tough. Rebus had no cause to doubt the teenager. Certainly he was as dissimilar to the first boy as chalk to cheese.

‘The name’s not James,’ he said.

‘Of course it is. Everybody’s called James. Makes it easier to remember a name, even if you can’t recall the face.’

‘I see.’

The boy finished the cigarette in silence, then flicked it out of the window.

‘So what’s it to be?’

‘I don’t know,’ said Rebus sincerely. ‘A drive maybe?’

‘Fuck that.’ He paused, seeming to change his mind. ‘Okay, let’s drive to the top of Calton Hill. Take a look out over the water, eh?’

‘Fine,’ said Rebus, starting the car.

They drove up the steep and winding road to the top of the hill, where the observatory and the folly — a copy of one side of Greece’s Parthenon — sat silhouetted against the sky. They were not alone at the top. Other darkened cars had parked, facing across the Firth of Forth towards the dimly lit coast of Fife. Rebus, trying not to look too closely at the other cars, decided to park at a discreet distance from them, but the boy had other ideas.

‘Stop next to that Jag,’ he ordered. ‘What a great-looking car.’

Rebus felt his own car take the insult with as much pride as it could muster. The brakes squealed in protest as he pulled to a halt. He turned off the ignition.

‘What now?’ he asked.

‘Whatever you want,’ said the boy. ‘Cash on delivery, of course.’

‘Of course. What if we just talk?’

‘Depends on the kind of talk you want. The dirtier it is, the more it’ll cost.’

‘I was just thinking about a guy I met here once. Not so long ago. Haven’t seen him around. I was wondering what happened to him.’

The boy suddenly placed his hand on Rebus’s crotch, rubbing hard and fast against the material. Rebus stared at the hand for a full second before calmly, but with a deliberate grip, removing it. The boy grinned, leaning back in his seat.

‘What’s his name, James?’

Rebus tried to stop himself trembling. His stomach was filling with bile. ‘Ronnie,’ he said at last, clearing his throat. ‘Not too tall. Dark hair, quite short. Used to take a few pictures. You know, keen on photography.’

The boy’s eyebrows rose. ‘You’re a photographer, are you? Like to take a few snaps? I see.’ He nodded slowly. Rebus doubted that he did see, but wasn’t about to say more than was necessary. And yes, that Jag was nice. New-looking. Paintwork brightly reflective. Someone with a bit of money. And dear God why did he have an erection?

‘I think I know which Ronnie you mean now,’ said the boy. ‘I haven’t seen him around much myself.’

‘So what can you tell me about him?’

The boy was staring out of the windscreen again. ‘Great view from here, isn’t it?’ he said. ‘Even at night. Especially at night. Amazing. I hardly ever come here in the daytime. It all looks so ordinary. You’re a copper, aren’t you?’

Rebus looked towards him, but the boy was still staring out of the windscreen, smiling, unconcerned.

‘Thought you were,’ he went on. ‘Right from the start.’

‘So why did you get in the car?’

‘Curious, I suppose. Besides,’ and now he looked towards Rebus, ‘some of my best customers are officers of the law.’

‘Well, that’s none of my concern.’

‘No? It should be. I’m underage, you know.’

‘I guessed.’

‘Yeah, well….’ The boy slumped in his seat, putting his feet up on the dashboard. For a moment, Rebus thought he was about to do something, and jerked himself upright. But the boy just laughed.

‘What did you think? Think I was going to touch you again? Eh? No such luck, James.’

‘So what about Ronnie?’ Rebus wasn’t sure whether he wanted to punch this rather ugly little kid in the gut, or take him to a good and a caring home. But he knew, above all, that he wanted answers.

‘Give me another ciggie.’ Rebus obliged. ‘Ta. Why are you so interested in him?’

‘Because he’s dead.’

‘Happens all the time.’

‘He overdosed.’

‘Ditto.’

‘The stuff was lethal.’

The boy was silent for a moment.

‘Now that is bad news.’

‘Has there been any poisoned stuff going around recently?’

‘No.’ He smiled again. ‘Only good stuff. Got any on you?’ Rebus shook his head, thinking: I do want to punch him in the gut. ‘Pity,’ said the boy.

‘What’s your name, by the way?’

‘No names, James, and no pack drill.’ He put out his hand, palm up. ‘I need some money.’

‘I need some answers first.’

‘So give me the questions. But first, a little goodwill, eh?’ The hand was still there, expectant as any father-to-be. Rebus found a crumpled tenner in his jacket and handed it over. The boy seemed satisfied. ‘This gets you the answers to two questions.’

Rebus’s anger ignited. ‘It gets me as many answers as I want, or so help me — ’

‘Rough trade? That your game?’ The boy seemed unconcerned. Maybe he’d heard it all before. Rebus wondered.

‘Is there much rough stuff goes on?’ he asked.

‘Not much.’ the boy paused. ‘But still too much.’

‘Ronnie was into it, wasn’t he?’

‘That’s your second question,’ stated the boy. ‘And the answer is, I don’t know.’

‘Don’t knows don’t count,’ said Rebus. ‘And I’ve got plenty of questions left.’

‘Okay, if that’s the way — ’ The boy was reaching for the door handle, ready to walk away from it all. Rebus grabbed him by the neck and brought his head down against the dashboard, right between where both feet were still resting.

‘Jesus Christ!’ The boy checked for blood on his forehead. There was none. Rebus was pleased with himself: maximum shock, minimum visible damage. ‘You can’t — ’

‘I can do anything I like, son, and that includes tipping you over the edge of the highest point in the city. Now tell me about Ronnie.’

‘I can’t tell you about Ronnie.’ There were tears in his eyes now. He rubbed at his forehead, trying to erase the hurt. ‘I didn’t know him well enough.’

‘So tell me what you do know.’

‘Okay, okay.’ He sniffed, wiping his nose on the sleeve of his jacket. ‘All I know is that a few friends of mine have gotten into a scene.’

‘What scene?’

‘I don’t know. Something heavy. They don’t talk about it, but the marks are there. Bruises, cuts. One of them ended up in the Infirmary for a week. Said he fell down the stairs. Christ, he looked like he fell down a whole high-rise.’

‘But nobody’s talking?’

‘There must be good money in it somewhere.’

‘Anything else?’

‘It may not be important….’ The kid had broken. Rebus could hear it in his voice. He’d talk from now till judgment day. Good: Rebus didn’t have too many ears in this part of the city. A fresh pair might make all the difference.

‘What?’ he barked, enjoying his role now.

‘Photographs. Somebody’s putting a whisper around that there’s interest in photographs. Not faked ones, either. The real McCoy.’

‘Porn shots?’

‘I suppose so. The rumours have been a bit vague. Rumours get that way when they’ve gone past being second-hand.’

‘Chinese whispers,’ said Rebus. He was thinking: this whole thing is like a game of Chinese whispers, everything at second and third remove, nothing absolutely proof positive.

‘What?’

‘Never mind. Anything else?’

The boy shook his head. Rebus reached into his pocket and, to his own surprise, found yet another tenner. Then he remembered that he’d visited a cashpoint machine somewhere during the drinking session with McCall. He handed the money over.

‘Here. And I’ll give you my name and phone number. I’m always open to bits of information, no matter how small. Sorry about your head, by the way.’

The boy took the money. ‘That’s all right. I’ve seen worse pay.’ Then he smiled.

‘Can I give you a lift?’

‘The Bridges maybe?’

‘No problem. What’s your name?’

‘James._’

‘Really?’ Rebus was smiling.

‘Yes, really.’ The boy was smiling, too. ‘Listen, there is one other thing.’

‘Go ahead, James.’

‘It’s just a name I’ve been hearing. Maybe it doesn’t mean anything.’

‘Yes?’

‘Hyde.’

Rebus frowned. ‘Hide? Hide what?’

‘No, Hyde. H-y-d-e.’

‘What about Hyde?’

‘I don’t know. Like I said, it’s just a name.’

Rebus gripped the steering wheel. Hyde? Hyde? Was that what Ronnie had been telling Tracy? Not just to hide, but to hide from some man called Hyde? Trying to think, he found himself staring at the Jag again. Or rather, staring at the profile of the man in the driver’s seat. The man with his hand up around the neck of the much younger occupant of the passenger seat. Stroking, and all the time talking in a low voice. Stroking, talking. All very innocent.

A wonder then that James Carew of Bowyer Carew Estate Agents should look so startled when, being stared at, he returned the stare and found himself eye to eye with Dectective Inspector John Rebus.

Rebus was taking all this in as Carew fumbled with his ignition key, revved up the new V₁₂ engine and reversed out of the car park as though Cutty Sark herself were after him.

‘He’s in a hurry,’ said James.

‘Have you seen him before?’

‘Didn’t really catch his face. Haven’t seen the car before though.’

‘No, well, it’s a new car, isn’t it?’ said Rebus, lazily starting his own.

The flat was still redolent of Tracy. She lingered in the living room and the bathroom. He saw her with a towel falling down around her head, legs tucked beneath her…. Bringing him breakfast: the dirty dishes were still lying beside his unmade bed. She had laughed to find that he slept on a mattress on the floor. ‘Just like in a squat,’ she had said. The flat seemed emptier now, emptier than it had felt for a while. And Rebus could do with a bath. He returned to the bathroom and turned the hot tap on. He could still feel James’s hand on his leg…. In the living room, he looked at a bottle of whisky for a full minute, but turned his back on it and fetched a low-alcohol lager from the fridge instead.

The bath was filling slowly. An Archimedean screw would have been more efficient. Still, it gave him time to make another telephone call to the station, to check on how they were treating Tracy. The news was not good. She was becoming irritable, refusing to eat, complaining of pains in her side. Appendicitis? More likely cold turkey. He felt a fair amount of guilt at not having gone to see her before now. Another layer of guilt wouldn’t do any harm, so he decided to put off the visit until morning. Just for a few hours he wanted to be away from it all, all the sordid tinkering with other people’s lives. His flat didn’t feel so secure any more, didn’t feel like the castle it had been only a day or two ago. And there was internal damage as well as the structural kind: he was feeling soiled in the pit of his gut, as though the city had scraped away a layer of its surface grime and force-fed him the lot.

To hell with it.

He was caught all right. He was living in the most beautiful, most civilised city in northern Europe, yet every day had to deal with its flipside, with the minor matter of its animus. Animus? Now there was a word he hadn’t used in a while. He wasn’t even sure now what it meant exactly; but it sounded right. He sucked from the beer bottle, holding the foam in his mouth like a child playing with toothpaste. This stuff was all foam. No substance.

All foam. Now there was another idea. He would put some foaming bath oil in the water. Bubblebath. Who the hell had given him this stuff? Oh. Yes. Gill Templer. He remembered now. Remembered the occasion, too. She had been gently chiding him about how he never cleaned the bath. Then had presented him with this bath oil.

‘It cleans you and your bath,’ she had said, reading from the bottle. ‘And puts the fun back into bathtime.’

He had suggested that they test this claim together, and they had…. Jesus, John, you’re getting morbid again. Just because she’s gone off with some vacuum-headed disc jockey with the unlikely name of Calum McCallum. It wasn’t the end of anybody’s world. The bombs weren’t falling. There were no sirens in the sky.

Nothing but … Ronnie, Tracy, Charlie, James and the rest. And now Hyde. Rebus was beginning to know now the meaning of the term ‘dead beat’. He rested his naked limbs in the near-scalding water and closed his eyes.