New questions and fears had replaced the old ones. Rebus didn't know what to tell her. He wasn't family and couldn't begin to answer her question. Didn't want to begin to answer it.
'He's doing OK,' he repeated. 'Just give him some time.'
She was crying now, softly. He imagined her with head bowed, hair falling over the telephone receiver.
'We did everything, John. You can't know how much we've given him. We always put ourselves second, never a minute's thought for anything but him…'
'Janis…' he began.
She took a deep breath. 'Will you come and see me, John?'
Rebus looked around the office, eyes resting eventually on his own desk and the paperwork stacked there.
'I can't, Janis. I'd like to, but I just can't. See, it's not as if I…'
He didn't know how he was going to finish the sentence, but it didn't matter. She'd put her phone down. He sat back in his chair and remembered dancing with her, how brittle her body had seemed. But that had been half a lifetime ago. They'd made so many choices since. It was time to let the past go. Siobhan Clarke was at her desk. She was looking at him. Then she mimed the drinking of a cup of coffee, and he nodded and got to his feet.
Did a little dance as he shuffled towards her.
AFTERWORD
I wrote this novella a couple of years ago at the behest of my friend Otto Penzler. The theme of 'vanishing' has stayed with me ever since, to the extent that I have, in Raymond Chandler's phrase, 'cannibalized' part of it for a sub-plot in the subsequent full-length Rebus novel, Dead Souls, while altering the histories of the characters involved so that both can be read independently.
Ian Rankin
