Read Online A Question of Blood (2003) by Ian Rankin - Free Book Online

for his beliefs,” Kate went on. “Afterwards, he wrote a treatise, trying to explain why good men suffer —” She broke off, glancing towards her father. But he appeared not to have heard.
    “While evil men prosper?” Siobhan guessed. Kate nodded.
    “Interesting,” Rebus commented.
    Siobhan handed out the tea and sat down. Rebus ignored the mug in front of him, perhaps unwilling to draw attention to his bandages. Allan Renshaw had tight hold of the handle of his own mug but seemed in no hurry to try lifting it.
    “I had a phone call from Alice,” Renshaw was saying. “You remember Alice?” Rebus shook his head. “Wasn’t she a cousin on . . . Christ, whose side was it?”
    “Doesn’t matter, Dad,” Kate said softly.
    “It matters, Kate,” he argued. “Time like this, family’s all there is.”
    “Didn’t you have a sister, Allan?” Rebus asked.
    “Aunt Elspeth,” Kate answered. “She’s in New Zealand.”
    “Has anyone told her?”
    Kate nodded.
    “What about your mother?”
    “She was here earlier,” Renshaw interrupted, gaze fixed on the table.
    “She walked out on us a year ago,” Kate explained. “She lives with —” She broke off. “She lives back in Fife.”
    Rebus nodded, knowing what she’d been about to say: she lives with a man . . .
    “What was the name of that park you took me to, John?” Renshaw asked. “I’d only have been seven or eight. Mum and Dad had taken me to Bowhill, and you said you’d go for a walk with me. Remember?”
    Rebus remembered. He’d been home on leave from the army, itching for some action. Early twenties, SAS training still ahead of him. The house had felt too small, his father too set in a routine. So Rebus had taken young Allan down to the shops. They’d bought a bottle of juice and a cheap football, then had headed to the park for a kickabout. He looked at Renshaw now. He would be forty. His hair was graying, with a pronounced bald spot at the crown. His face was slack, unshaven. He’d been all skin and bones as a kid but was now heavily built, most of it around the waist. Rebus struggled for some vestige of the kid who’d played football with him, the kid he’d taken to Kirkcaldy to watch Raith play some forgotten opponent. The man in front of him was aging fast: wife gone, son now murdered. Aging fast and struggling to cope.
    “Is anyone looking in?” Rebus asked Kate. He meant friends, neighbors. She nodded, and he turned back to Renshaw.
    “Allan, I know this has been a shock for you. Do you feel up to answering a few questions?”
    “What’s it like being a policeman, John? You have to do this sort of thing every day?”
    “Not every day, no.”
    “I couldn’t do it. Bad enough selling cars, watching the buyer driving off in this perfect machine, big smile on their face, and then you watch them coming back for service or repairs or whatever, and you see the car losing that shine it once had . . . They’re not smiling anymore.”
    Rebus glanced at Kate, who just shrugged. He guessed she’d been hearing a lot of her father’s ramblings.
    “The man who shot Derek,” Rebus said quietly, “we’re trying to work out why he did it.”
    “He was a madman.”
    “But why the school? Why that particular day? You see what I’m saying.”
    “You’re saying you won’t let it lie. All we want is to be left alone.”
    “We need to know, Allan.”
    “Why?” Renshaw’s voice was rising. “What’s it going to change? You going to bring Derek back? I don’t think so. The bastard who did it’s dead . . . I don’t see that anything else matters.”
    “Drink your tea, Dad,” Kate said, a hand reaching for her father’s arm. He took it in his own hand, held it up to plant a kiss.
    “It’s just us now, Kate. Nobody else matters.”
    “I thought you just told me family mattered. The inspector’s our family, isn’t he?”
    Renshaw looked at Rebus again, eyes filling with tears. Then he got up and walked from the room. They