Hide And Seek Read Online Free

it was face to face. Don’t worry, you’re not in any trouble -’
    ‘But I am. That’s why I called. Ronnie told me, you see.’
    ‘Told you what, Tracy?’
    ‘Told me he’d been murdered.’
    The room around Rebus seemed suddenly to vanish. There was only this disconnected voice, the telephone, and him.
    ‘He said that to you, Tracy?’
    ‘Yes.’ She was crying now, sniffing back the unseen tears. Rebus visualised a frightened little girl, just out of school, standing in a distant callbox. ‘I’ve got to hide,’ she said at last. ‘Ronnie said over and over that I should hide.’
    ‘Shall I bring my car and fetch you? Just tell me where you are.’
    ‘No!’
    ‘Then tell me how Ronnie was killed. You know how we found him?’
    ‘Lying on the floor by the window. That’s where he was.’
    ‘Not quite.’
    ‘Oh yes, that’s where he was. By the window. Lying wrapped up into a little ball. I thought he was just sleeping. But when I touched his arm he was cold.... I went to find Charlie, but he’d gone. So I just panicked.’
    ‘You say Ronnie was lying in a ball?’ Rebus had begun to draw pencilled circles on the back of the file.
    ‘Yes.’
    ‘And this was in the living room?’
    She seemed confused. ‘What? No, not in the living room. He was upstairs, in his bedroom.’
    ‘I see.’ Rebus kept on drawing effortless circles. He was trying to imagine Ronnie dying, but not really dead, crawling downstairs after Tracy had fled, ending up in the living room. That might explain those bruises. But the candles.... He had been so perfectly positioned between them.... ‘And when was this?’
    ‘Late last night, I don’t know exactly when. I panicked. When I calmed down, I phoned for the police.’
    ‘What time was it when you phoned?’
    She paused, thinking. ‘About seven this morning.’
    ‘Tracy, would you mind telling this to some other people?’
    ‘Why?’
    ‘I’ll tell you when I pick you up. Just tell me where you are.’
    There was another pause while she considered this. ‘I’m back in Pilmuir,’ she said finally. ‘I’ve moved into another squat.’
    ‘Well,’ said Rebus, ‘you don’t want me to come down there, do you? But you must be quite close to Shore Road. What about us meeting there?’
    ‘Well....’
    ‘There’s a pub called the Dock Leaf,’ continued Rebus, giving her no time to debate. ‘Do you know it?’
    ‘I’ve been kicked out of it a few times.’
    ‘Me too. Okay, I’ll meet you outside it in an hour. All right?’
    ‘All right.’ She didn’t sound over-enthusiastic, and Rebus wondered if she would keep the appointment. Well, what of it? She sounded straight enough, but she might just be another casualty, making it up to draw attention to herself, to make her life seem more interesting than it was.

    But then he’d had a feeling, hadn’t he?
    ‘All right,’ she said, and the connection was severed.

    Shore Road was a fast road around the north coast of the city. Factories, warehouses, and vast DIY and home furnishing stores were its landmarks, and beyond them lay the Firth of Forth, calm and grey. On most days, the coast of Fife was visible in the distance, but not today, with a cold mist hanging low on the water. On the other side of the road from the warehouses were the tenements, four-storey predecessors of the concrete high-rise. There was a smattering of comer shops, where neighbour met neighbour, and information was passed on, and a few small unmodernised pubs, where strangers did not go unnoticed for long.
    The Dock Leaf had shed one generation of low-life drinkers, and discovered another. Its denizens now were young, unemployed, and living six to a three-bedroom rented flat along Shore Road. Petty crime though was not a problem: you didn’t mess your own nest. The old community values still held.
    Rebus, early for the meeting, just had time for a half in the saloon bar. The beer was cheap but bland, and everyone seemed to know if not who