Strip Jack Read Online Free PDF Page B

flat. It was a worrying fact. Was he
really
moving in with Patience? He seemed to be spending an awful lot of time there these days. Well, he liked her, even if she did treat him like yet another pet. And he liked her flat. He even liked the fact that it was underground.
    Well, not quite underground. In some parts of town, it might once have been described as the ‘basement’ flat, but in Oxford Terrace, well-appointed Oxford Terrace, Stockbridge’s Oxford Terrace, it was a
garden
flat. And sure enough it had a garden, a narrow isosceles triangle of land. But the flat itself was what interested Rebus. It was like a shelter, like a children’s encampment. You could stand in either of the front bedrooms and stare up out of the window to where feet and legs moved along the pavement above you. People seldom looked down. Rebus, whose own flat was on the second floor of a Marchmont tenement, enjoyed this new perspective. While other men his age were moving out of the city andinto bungalows, Rebus found a sort of amused thrill from walking
downstairs
to the front door instead of walking
up
. More than novelty, it was a reversal, a major shift, and his life felt full of promise as a result.
    Patience, too, was full of promise. She was keen for him to move more of his things in, to ‘make himself at home’. And she had given him a key. So, beer finished, and car persuaded to make the five-minute trip, he was able to let himself in. His suit, newly cleaned, was lying on the bed in the spare bedroom. So was Lucky. In fact, Lucky was lying on the suit, was rolling on it, plucking at it with his claws, was shedding on it and marking it. Rebus saw Rasputin in his mind’s eye as he swiped the cat off the bed. Then he picked up the suit and took it to the bathroom, where he locked the door behind him before running a bath.
    The parliamentary constituency of North and South Esk was large but not populous. The population, however, was growing. New housing estates grew in tight clusters on the outskirts of the mining towns and villages. Commuter belt. Yes, the region was changing. New roads, new railway stations even. New kinds of people doing new kinds of jobs. Brian Holmes and Nell Stapleton, however, had chosen to buy an old terraced house in the heart of one of the smallest of the villages, Eskwell. Actually, it was all about Edinburgh in the end. The city was growing, spreading out. It was the city that swallowed villages and spawned new estates. People weren’t moving
into
Edinburgh; the city was moving into
them
. . .
    But by the time Rebus reached Eskwell he was in no mood to contemplate the changing face of country living. He’d had trouble starting the car. He was
always
having trouble starting the car. But wearing a suit and shirt and tie had made it that bit more difficult to tinker beneath the bonnet. One fine weekend he’d strip the engine down. Of course he would. Then he’d give up and phone for a tow truck.
    The house was easy to find, Eskwell boasting one main street and only a few back roads. Rebus walked up the gardenpath and stood on the doorstep, a bottle of wine gripped in one hand. He clenched his free fist and rapped on the door. It opened almost at once.
    ‘You’re late,’ said Brian Holmes.
    ‘Perogative of rank, Brian. I’m allowed to be late.’
    Holmes ushered him into the hall. ‘I did say informal, didn’t I?’
    Rebus puzzled for a moment, then saw that this was a comment on his suit. He noticed now that Holmes himself was dressed in open-necked shirt and denims, with a pair of moccasins covering his bare feet.
    ‘Ah,’ said Rebus.
    ‘Never mind, I’ll nip upstairs and change.’
    ‘Not on my account. This is your house, Brian. You do as you please.’
    Holmes nodded to himself, suddenly looking pleased. Rebus was right: this
was
his house. Well, the mortgage was his . . .
half
the mortgage. ‘Go on through,’ he said, gesturing to a door at the end of the hall.
    ‘I think I’ll nip