Free The Black Book by Ian Rankin

weary stairs, and flopped onto the sofa. He had spent so many evenings deep in thought in this room, but that had been back when the flat was his, only his.
    Michael came into the living room, fresh from a shave and a shower. He wore a towel tight around his flat stomach. He was in good shape; Rebus hadn’t noticed before. But Michael saw him noticing now, and patted his stomach.
    ‘One thing about Peterhead, plenty of exercise.’
    ‘I suppose you’ve got to get fit in there,’ Rebus drawled, ‘so you can fight back when someone’s after your arse.’
    Michael shook off the remark like it was so much water. ‘Oh, there’s plenty of that too. Never interested me.’ Whistling, he went into the box room and started to dress.
    ‘Going out?’ Rebus called.
    ‘Why stay in?’
    ‘Seeing that wee girl again?’
    Michael put his head around the door. ‘She’s a consenting adult.’
    Rebus got to his feet. ‘She’s a wee girl.’ He walked over to the box room and stared at Michael, forcing him to stop what he was doing.
    ‘What, John? You want me to stop going out with women? If you don’t like it, tough.’
    Rebus thought of all the remarks he could make. This is my flat … I’m your big brother … you should know better … He knew Mickey would laugh – quite rightly – at any and all of them. So he thought of something else to say.
    ‘Fuck you, Mickey.’
    Michael Rebus recommenced dressing. ‘I’m sorry I’m such a disappointment, but what’s the alternative? Sit here all night watching you stew or sulk or whatever it is you do inside your head? Thanks but no thanks.’
    ‘I thought you were going to look for a job.’
    Michael Rebus grabbed a book from the bed and threw it at his brother. ‘I’m looking for a fucking job! What do you think I do all day? Just give it a rest, will you?’ He picked up his jacket and pushed past Rebus. ‘Don’t wait up for me, eh?’
    That was a laugh: Rebus was asleep, and alone in the flat, before the ten o’clock news. But it wasn’t a sound sleep. It was a sleep filled with dreams. He was chasing Patience through some office block, always just losing her. He was eating in a restaurant with a teenage girl while the Rolling Stones entertained unnoticed on the small stage in the corner. He was watching a hotel burn to the ground, wondering if Brian Holmes, still unaccounted for, had gotten out alive …
    And then he was awake and shivering, the room illuminated only by the street-lamp outside, burning through a chink in the curtains. He’d been reading the book Michael had thrown at him. It was about hypnotherapy and still lay in his lap, beneath the blanket someone had thrown over him. There were noises nearby, noises of pleasure. They were coming from the box room. Some therapy, no doubt. Rebus listened to them for what seemed like hours until the light outside grew pale.

5
    Andrew McPhail sat beside his bedroom window. Across the road, the children were being lined up two by two outside the school doors. The boys had to hold hands with the girls, the whole thing supervised by two female staff members, looking hardly old enough to be parents, never mind teachers. McPhail sipped cold tea from his mug and watched. He paid very close attention to the children. Any one of the girls might have been Melanie. Except, of course, that Melanie would be older. Not much older, but older. He wasn’t kidding himself. He knew the odds were Melanie wouldn’t be at this school, probably wasn’t even in Edinburgh any more. But he watched all the same, and imagined her down there, her hand touching the cool wet hand of one of the boys. Small delicate fingers, the beginning of fine lines on the palm. One girl was really quite similar: short straight hair curling in towards her ears and the nape of her neck. The height was familiar, too, but the face, what he could see of the face, was nothing like Melanie. Really, nothing like her. And besides, what did it matter to