by Ian Rankin
‘Ryan Slocum.’
‘Ryan? What’s wrong?’
‘A serious illness, sir.’ Rebus had used the lie before. ‘An elderly relative. They need Mr Slocum’s permission to operate.’
‘Good God.’
‘That’s why it’s urgent.’
‘Yes, I see, I see.’ It always worked: grandmas in peril. ‘Well, it’s not every employee whose address I know off the top of my head.’
‘But you know Mr Slocum’s?’
‘Been to dinner there a few times.’
‘He’s married?’ Enter a spouse into the equation. Rebus hadn’t imagined Bible John married.
‘Wife’s name’s Una, lovely couple.’
‘And the address, sir?’
‘Well, it’s the phone number you’ll be wanting?’
‘Both actually. That way, if no one’s home, we can send someone round to wait.’
Rebus copied the details into his notebook, thanked the man and put down the phone.
‘Any idea how to get to Springview?’ he asked the guard.
35
Springview was a modern development on the coast road south of town. Rebus parked outside Three Rankeillor Close, shut off the engine, and took a good long look at the house. There was a landscaped garden to the front – clipped lawn, rockery, shrubs and flower beds. No fence or hedge separated the garden from the pavement in front. The other properties were the same.
The house itself was a newish two-storey with gabled roof. To the right of the house was an integral garage. There was an alarm box above one of the bedroom windows. A light was on behind the living-room curtains. The car parked on the gravel driveway was a white Peugeot 106.
‘Now or never, John,’ Rebus told himself, taking a deep breath as he got out of the car. He walked up to the front door and rang the bell, then stepped back off the doorstep. If Ryan Slocum himself answered, Rebus wanted a bit of distance. He remembered his army training – unarmed combat – and an old maxim: shoot first, ask questions later. Something he should have remembered when he’d gone to Burke’s Club.
A woman’s voice came through the door. ‘Yes? What is it?’
Rebus realised he was being watched through a spy-hole. He stepped back up on to the doorstep, so she could get a close look. ‘Mrs Slocum?’ Holding his warrant card up in front of him. ‘CID, madam.’
The door was flung open. A small, slender woman stood there, black cusps beneath her eyes, her hair short and dark and untidy.
‘Oh my God,’ she said, ‘what’s happened?’ Her accent was American.
‘Nothing, madam.’ Relief washed over her face. ‘Why should there be?’
‘Ryan,’ she said, sniffing back tears. ‘I don’t know where he is.’ She sought a handkerchief, realised the box was back in the living room, and told Rebus he’d better come in. He followed her into the large, well-furnished room, and while she was pulling out paper hankies took the opportunity to open the curtains a little. If a blue BMW turned up, he wanted to know about it.
‘Working late maybe?’ he said, already knowing the answer.
‘I tried his office.’
‘Yes, but he’s a sales manager, could he be entertaining a client?’
‘He always phones, he’s very dutiful that way.’
Dutiful: odd choice of word. The room looked the sort that got cleaned before it was ever dirty; Una Slocum looked like the cleaner. Her hands twitched with the bundle of tissues, her whole face drawn with tension.
‘Try to calm down, Mrs Slocum. Is there anything you could take?’ He’d bet she had a doctor’s prescription somewhere in the house.
‘In the bathroom, but I don’t want any. They make me dopey.’
Towards the far end of the room, a large mahogany dining table and six straight-backed chairs sat in front of a trio of wall units. China dolls behind glass, bathed by recessed lighting. Some silverware. No family photographs . . .
‘Maybe a friend who could . . .?’
Una Slocum sat down, got up again, remembering she had a guest. ‘Some tea, Mr . . .?’
‘Rebus, Inspector Rebus. Tea would be great.’
Give her something to do, keep her mind busy. The kitchen was only slightly smaller than the living room. Rebus peered out into the back garden. It looked enclosed, no easy way for Ryan Slocum to sneak up on the house. Rebus’s ears were primed for car noises . . .
‘He’s gone,’ she said, stopping suddenly in the middle of the floor with the kettle in one hand, teapot in the other.
‘What makes you say that, Mrs Slocum?’
‘A suitcase, some clothes . . . they’re gone.’
‘Business, maybe? Something at the last minute?’
She shook her head. ‘He’d have left a note or something, a message on the machine.’
‘You’ve checked?’
She nodded. ‘I was in Aberdeen all day, shopping, walking around. When I got back, the house felt different somehow, emptier. I think I knew right off.’
‘Has he said anything about leaving?’
‘No.’ The ghost of a smile. ‘But a wife gets to know, Inspector. Another woman.’
‘A woman?’
Una Slocum nodded. ‘Isn’t it always? He’s been so . . . I don’t know, just different lately. Short-tempered, distracted . . . spending time away from home when I knew he’d no business meetings.’ She was still nodding, confirming it to herself. ‘He’s gone.’
‘And you’ve no idea where he could be?’
She shook her head. ‘Wherever she is, that’s all.’
Rebus walked back through to the living room, checked the window: no BMW. A hand touched his arm, and he spun. It was Una Slocum.
‘Jesus,’ he said. ‘I nearly died.’
‘Ryan always complains I never make any noise. It’s the carpet.’
Half-inch Wilton, yards of it.
‘Have you any children, Mrs Slocum?’
She shook her head. ‘I think Ryan would have liked a son. Maybe that was the problem . . .’
‘How long have you been married?’
‘A long time, fifteen years, nearer sixteen.’
‘Where did you meet?’
She smiled, drifting back. ‘Galveston, Texas. Ryan was an engineer, I was a secretary in the same company. He’d emigrated from Scotland some time before. I could tell he missed home, I always knew we’d end up coming back.’
‘How long have you been here?’
‘Four and a half years.’ And no killings during that time, so maybe Bible John had come out of retirement for this one job . . . ‘Of course,’ Una Slocum said, ‘we go back now and then to see my folks. They’re in Miami. And Ryan goes over three or four times a year on business.’
Business. Rebus added a rider to his previous thought: or maybe not.
‘Is he a churchgoer, Mrs Slocum?’
She stared at him. ‘He was when we met. It tailed off, but he’s been attending again.’
Rebus nodded. ‘Any chance I could look around? He may have left a clue where he was headed.’
‘Well . . . I suppose that would be all right.’ The kettle came to the boil and clicked off. ‘I’ll make the tea.’ She turned to go, paused, turned back. ‘Inspector, what are you doing here?’
Rebus smiled. ‘A routine inquiry, Mrs Slocum, to do with your husband’s work.’
She nodded as though this explained everything, then walked silently back to the kitchen.
‘Ryan’s study’s to the left,’ she called. So Rebus started there.
It was a small room, made smaller by the furniture and bookshelves. There were dozens of books about the Second World War, a whole wall covered with them. Papers were laid out neatly on the desk – stuff from Slocum’s work. In the drawers were more work files, plus others for tax, house and life insurance, pension. A life put into compartments. There was a small radio, and Rebus turned it on. Radio Three. He turned it off again, just as Una Slocum put her head round the door.
‘Tea’s in the living room.’
‘Thank you.’
‘Oh, another thing, he’s taken his computer.’
‘Computer?’
‘You know, a laptop. He used it a lot. He kept this door locked while he worked, but I could hear the clatter of keys.’
There was a key on the inside of the door. When she’d gone, Rebus closed the door and locked himself in, then turned and tried to imagine this as the den of a murderer. He couldn’t. It was a workspace, nothing more. No trophies, and no place to hide them. No bag filled with souvenirs, like Johnny Bible had collected. And no shrine, no scrapbooks of horror. No indication at all that this person lived a double life . . .
Rebus unlocked the door, went through to the living room, checked the window again.
‘Find anything?’ Una Slocum was pouring tea into fine china cups. A Battenberg cake had been sliced on a matching plate.
‘No,’ Rebus admitted. He took a cup and a slice of cake from her. ‘Thank you.’ Then retreated to the window again.
‘When your husband’s a salesman,’ she went on, ‘you get used to seeing him irregularly, to having to attend boring parties and gatherings, to being hostess at dinner parties where the guests are not ones you’d have chosen for yourself.’
‘Can’t be easy,’ Rebus agreed.
‘But I never complained. Maybe Ryan would have paid me more attention if I had.’ She looked at him. ‘You’re sure he’s not in trouble?’
Rebus put on his most sincere face. ‘I’m positive, Mrs Slocum.’
‘I suffer from nerves, you know. I’ve tried everything – pills, potions, hypnosis . . . But if something’s in you, there’s not much they can do, is there? I mean, if it’s there from the time you’re born, a little ticking time bomb . . .’ She looked around. ‘Maybe it’s this house, so new and all, nothing for me to do.’
Aldous Zane had predicted a house like this, a modern house . . .
‘Mrs Slocum,’ Rebus said, eyes on the window, ‘this might sound like a daft request, and I’ve no way to explain it, but do you think I could take a look at your attic?’
A chain on the first-floor landing. You tugged at it and the trapdoor opened, the wooden steps sliding down to meet you.
‘Clever,’ Rebus said. He began to climb, Una Slocum staying on the landing.
‘The light switch is just to your right when you get up,’ she called.
Rebus poked his head into space, half-expecting a shovel to come crashing down on it, and fumbled for the switch. A single bare bulb illuminated the floored attic.
‘We talked about converting it,’ Una Slocum called. ‘But why bother? The house is too big for us as it is.’
The attic was a few degrees cooler than the rest of the house, testament to modern insulation. Rebus looked around, not sure what he might find. What had Zane said? Flags: the Stars and Stripes and a swastika. Slocum had lived in the US, and seemed fascinated by the Third Reich. But Zane had also seen a trunk in the attic of a large, modern house. Well, Rebus couldn’t see anything like that. Packing cases, boxes of Christmas decorations, a couple of broken chairs, a spare door, a couple of hollow-sounding suitcases . . .
‘I haven’t been up here since last Christmas,’ Una Slocum said. Rebus helped her up the last couple of steps.
‘It’s big,’ Rebus said. ‘I can see why you thought of converting it.’
‘Planning permission would have been the problem. All the houses here are supposed to stay the same. You spend a fortune on a place, then you aren’t allowed to do anything with it.’ She lifted a folded piece of red cloth from one of the suitcases, brushed dust from it. It looked like a tablecloth, maybe a curtain. But when she shook it, it unfurled into a large flag, black on a white circle with red border. A swastika. She saw the shock on Rebus’s face.
‘He used to collect this sort of stuff.’ She looked around, her face creasing into a frown. ‘That’s odd.’
Rebus swallowed. ‘What?’
‘The trunk’s gone.’ She pointed to a space on the floor. ‘Ryan must have moved it.’ She looked around, but it obviously wasn’t anywhere in the attic.
‘Trunk?’
‘A big old thing, he’s had it for ever. Why would he move it? Come to that, how would he move it?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘It was heavy. He kept it locked, said it was full of old stuff, mementoes of his life before we met. He promised he’d show me some day . . . Do you think he took it with him?’
Rebus swallowed again. ‘A possibility,’ he said, making for the stairs. Johnny Bible had a holdall, but Bible John needed a whole trunk. Rebus began to feel queasy.
‘There’s more tea in the pot,’ Mrs Slocum said as they went back down to the living room.
‘Thanks, but I really must be going.’ He saw her try to hide a look of disappointment. It was a cruel life when the only company you had was a policeman chasing your husband.
‘I’m sorry,’ he said, ‘about Ryan.’ Then he glanced out of the window one last time.
And there was a blue BMW parked by the kerb.
Rebus’s heart kicked at his chest. He couldn’t see anyone in the car, no one moving towards the house . . .
Then the doorbell rang.
‘Ryan?’ Mrs Slocum was making for the door. Rebus caught her and pulled her back. She squealed.
He put a finger to his lips, motioned for her to stay where she was. His gorge was rising, as if he might bring up the curry from earlier. His whole body felt electric. The bell went again. Rebus took a deep breath, ran to the door and hauled it open.
A young man stood there, denim jacket and jeans, spiky gelled hair, acne. He was holding out a set of car keys.
‘Where did you get it?’ Rebus roared. The youth took a step back, stumbled off the step. ‘Where did you get the car?’ Rebus was out of the door now and looming over him.
‘Work,’ the youth said. ‘P-part of the s-service.’
‘What is?’
‘Returning your c-car. From the airport.’ Rebus stared at him, demanding more. ‘We do valet cleaning, all that. And if you drop your car off and want it taking back to your house, we do that, too. Sinclair Car Rentals . . . you can check!’
Rebus held out a hand, pulled the youth to his feet.
‘I was only going to ask if you wanted it put away,’ the youth said, ashen-faced.
‘Leave it where it is.’ Rebus tried to control his trembling. Another car had drawn up, a horn sounded.
‘My lift,’ the youth explained, the terror still not completely gone from his face.
‘Where was Mr Slocum headed?’
‘Who?’
‘The car’s owner.’
The youth shrugged. ‘How should I know?’ He put the keys in Rebus’s hand, headed back down the drive. ‘We’re not the gestapo,’ his parting shot.
Rebus handed the keys to Mrs Slocum, who was staring at him like she had questions, like she wanted to start again from the beginning. Rebus shook his head, marched off. She looked at the keys in her hand.
‘What am I going to do with two cars?’
But Rebus was gone.
He told his story to Grogan.
The Chief Inspector was almost sober – and very ready to go home. He’d already been talked to by the Crime Squad. They’d said they’d have more questions for him tomorrow, all to do with Ludovic Lumsden. Grogan listened with growing impatience, then asked what evidence there was. Rebus shrugged. They could place Slocum’s car near the scene of the murder, and at a curious hour of the morning. But they couldn’t do more than that. Maybe forensics would throw up some connection, but they both guessed Bible John was too smart to allow that to happen. Then there was the story outlined in Lawson Geddes’ letter – a dead man’s tale – and the photo from Borneo. But that meant nothing without a confession from Ryan Slocum that he’d once been Ray Sloane, had lived in Glasgow in the late sixties and had been – and still was – Bible John.
Bu
t Ryan Slocum had disappeared.
They contacted Dyce Airport, but there was no record of his having taken a plane out of there, and no taxi or car rental company would admit seeing him. Had he already left the country? What had he done with the trunk? Was he lying low in some hotel nearby, waiting for the fuss to die?
Grogan said they’d make enquiries, put out an alert to ports and airports. He didn’t see what else they could do. They’d send someone out to talk with Mrs Slocum, maybe go through the house with a fine-toothed comb . . . Tomorrow maybe, or the day after. Grogan didn’t sound too enthusiastic. He’d found his serial killer for today, and had little inclination to go chasing ghosts.
Rebus found Jack in the canteen, drinking tea and eating chips and beans.
‘Where did you get to?’
Rebus sat down beside him. ‘Thought maybe I was cramping your style.’
Jack shook his head. ‘Tell you what though, I nearly asked her back to that hotel.’
‘Why didn’t you?’
Jack shrugged. ‘She told me she could never trust a man who didn’t drink. Do you feel like heading back?’
‘Why not?’
‘John, where did you get to?’
‘I’ll tell you on the way back. It might help keep you awake . . .’
36
Next morning, after a few hours’ sleep on the chair, Rebus telephoned Brian Holmes. He wanted to know how he was doing, and whether Ancram’s threats had evaporated in the light of Lawson Geddes’ letter. The call was answered quickly.
‘Hello?’ A woman’s voice: Nell’s. Softly, Rebus put the receiver down. So she was back. Did that mean she’d come to terms with Brian’s work? Or had he promised to give it up? Rebus was sure to find out later.
Jack wandered through. He reckoned his job of ‘minder’ was finished, but had stayed the night anyway – too tired to contemplate the miles home to Falkirk.
‘Thank God it’s the weekend,’ he said, rubbing both hands through his hair. ‘Any plans?’
‘I thought I might nip down to Fettes, see what the score is with Ancram.’
‘Good idea, I’ll come with you.’
‘You don’t need to.’