The Last Darkness (27 page)

‘You mentioned on the phone you wanted to talk about Joe Lindsay.'

‘Right. Your solicitor.'

‘Oh, in a limited way only. He handled some property transactions for me some time ago. I didn't use him for anything else.'

A lie, a lapse in memory? Perlman wondered. Or had Miriam been wrong with her investment-fund story? He was biased: he trusted Miriam's version. ‘So he only handled property for you.'

‘Yes, poor fellow,' Bannerjee said. ‘I had no idea he was capable of taking his own life.'

‘He was murdered.'

‘Pardon?'

‘Murdered,' Perlman said.

‘My
God
. Are you serious?'

‘The suicide was a rigged job.'

Bannerjee rose and walked to the window and clasped his hands behind his back. ‘I'm sorry. This distresses me. I liked Lindsay. I liked him a lot.'

‘Enemies come to mind?'

Bannerjee turned, shook his head. ‘None. Absolutely.'

The predictable response. Perlman moved on: ‘Did you ever meet a man called Wexler? Artie Wexler?'

‘I meet a lot of people.'

‘Artie Wexler was a close friend of Lindsay.'

Bannerjee said, ‘The name's familiar … wait, isn't he the unfortunate man …'

‘Aye. He's the one. Spread all across the TV. The early edition of our beloved evening newspaper splashed it on the front page. People buy murder, Shiv, the more exotic the better.'

‘I didn't know he was a friend of Lindsay's.'

‘You're sure?'

‘Unless I'm forgetting. In my high-flying days,' and here Bannerjee smiled in a coy, self-deprecating way, ‘I met hundreds of people, Lou. I don't meet so many now.'

Show me your open veins, Perlman thought. Break out the bandages. He sashayed in another direction. ‘Colin Perlman, Shiv. Does that name mean anything?'

‘A relative of yours?'

‘Brother. Associate of the late Lindsay, in some small way.'

‘I can't say I ever met him, Lou. Where are you going with this?'

‘I'm a seeker after truth, Shiv.'

‘And how can
I
help you along this difficult path you've chosen?' Bannerjee smiled. A gentle smile. You couldn't imagine a man with that smile perpetrating bad deeds.

‘Let's run another memory test. Lindsay invested a large sum of money for you in a fund managed by my brother. Right or wrong?'

Bannerjee sat down. ‘No, Lindsay didn't handle investments for me.'

‘Think again.'

‘I'm thinking. I'm just not getting anything.'

‘Listen carefully, Shiv. If Lindsay invested money for you, what is there to be ashamed of? My brother managed a lot of funds, and as far as I know he operated a legal shop. Somewhere in Lindsay's files, I'm sure there's some reference, even a tiny one, to the transaction involving you. What I'm saying is this: be careful when you lie to a cop, because he can get a warrant to take him into all the paper crevices where your average
schmuck
can't go. There's no hiding place in the end.'

Perlman chewed on a thumbnail and wondered what the fuck made people so reluctant to talk about this connection: Colin had denied remembering the name of Lindsay's client, and now Bannerjee was going down the same Avenue of the Amnesiacs. It's shite, Perlman thought, an information brown-out. And suddenly the events of the day broke over him like the rush of a toxic tide and he was impatient and angry. Bannerjee – who'd once spouted from the pulpit of high moral rectitude even as he'd been dipping into the till and fleecing the public – was beginning to irritate him.

‘I can do it, Shiv. Believe me. I can get a legal paper any time to go through Lindsay's files with a fucking microscope. Try me.'

Bannerjee clenched his hands together loosely. ‘Even if I did get Joe to invest with your brother – and I'm not saying I did, please keep that at the front of your mind – how does it help you catch Lindsay's killer? Or Wexler's? I fail to see.'

‘I'll put it to you this way. You expose one lie, Shiv, and it's like peeling back a scab. And beneath that scab, who knows, you might find the original wound, the cut, the scar, whatever it is. You might find the source of an infection.'

‘By the same token, you might find nothing.'

‘Then all I've wasted is my time,' Perlman said.

‘I think you've just wasted some, Lou.'

Perlman was jangling.
Smoke, I must fucking smoke
. Circumspection annoyed the hell out of him. He deplored obfuscation, shilly-shallying, tiptoeing. ‘I have a question, Shiv. In this new incarnation of yours, that of a man projecting a saintly image,
mea culpa
et cetera, can you afford a police and/or Inland Revenue investigation of any hidden monetary investments?'

‘Saint? I'm no saint, I'm not trying to be one.'

‘Answer the question, Shiv.'

‘Why are you so
hostile
?'

‘Because you piss me off.'

‘You don't bring much in the way of tact to an interview, do you?'

‘Tact's a tool that only takes you so far. When it comes to a scrum, you need to get dirty and hustle. If I'm not polite, Shiv, it's because I'm a very weary man. I live in this amazing citadel of lies and frankly I'm tired of it. And I don't believe much of what you say, old son. Try again. Tell me you don't know my brother. Tell me his name isn't familiar to you. Look me in the eye and tell me you just blindly gave Lindsay a big sum of money and said, Here, Joe, invest this where you like, I trust you.' Restless, agitated, Perlman got up. The leg clicked again. He walked to the window and saw the streetlamps and sparkling rain fall through them. ‘What the fuck is it, Shiv? Are you worried about having invested the money? Or are you really
more
bothered that I might find out the truth about where the money came from in the first place. What is it?'

‘I think I should have my solicitor present, Sergeant, before we continue.'

Perlman felt a buzz in his blood, a hum in his skull. He was rolling, getting into his stride. ‘Solicitor? Great. Call him. I'll go and get a warrant that gives me total licence to scour Lindsay's files and records. No sweat, Shiv. See you in court. I'll alert the press, of course. They're always cynical about born-again sinners.'

‘Am I to be haunted the rest of my life by my past bloody mistakes?' Bannerjee asked.

‘Are you? Who knows? Do you have a conscience, Shiv? Can you salvage your life by good works? Or is this charity of yours really all showbiz and photo opportunities?'

‘I try, I try, God knows I try, I really do.' Bannerjee picked up the telephone and Perlman moved towards the door.

Bannerjee hung up and said, ‘Wait, Lou.'

‘I'm listening.'

‘There's no guarantee that Lindsay kept a record of this alleged investment.'

‘I'll take the chance, Shiv. It's no skin off my nose either way. What about
your
nose?'

Bannerjee smiled somewhat sadly, and for a second Perlman weakened: I feel sorry for the bastard, he thought. Maybe he
is
climbing the ladder of salvation, a man who deserves the chance to re-create himself. Who am I to judge, to bring him down?

Except he's lying. And saints don't fabricate.

Bannerjee said, ‘I can't afford adverse publicity all over again, and you damn well know it. I'm not going through that bloody circus. No way. So I'll tell you this. All right, I
know
Colin. We met a couple of times when he was structuring an investment fund. I agreed to put in money, and I let Lindsay handle the fine print. It was that simple.'

Perlman said, ‘So bloody simple you had to lie about it? Why?'

Bannerjee made a little wigwam of his fingers, tip pressed to tip. ‘I failed to report the investment to the appropriate authorities.'

‘Ah so. The box springs open.'

‘I should have declared it. I should have told the tax people there was x amount of money in a fund in Aruba or wherever. I didn't. I suppose I was arrogant enough to think that three months in jail was adequate recompense for my sins, so why shouldn't I keep the money?'

‘Colin hid it for you. How?'

‘I don't know the mechanics of it. I suppose he buried it inside a money fund, and buried that inside another, a paper trail. He told me he was good at that. Believe me, I didn't ask.'

Dismayed suddenly, Perlman thought:
Colin
,
Colin, oh laddie, what have you done
? He was quiet a second: any exposure of Shiv Bannerjee would draw his brother into the same web. Colin with his suspect money deals and his dicky ticker, Bannerjee with his aspirations to global philanthropy – they'd both be smeared by a court case. He wondered how he'd feel if he was involved in the prosecution of his own brother. Like shite, what else? But he had no evidence against Colin, only Bannerjee's hearsay.
I'm good at burying money
. Is that what Colin would have said? His exact words? Nobody could ever prove it. Colin would deny it. Money, Perlman thought. It was complex, paper trails were complex and difficult to pursue, computers were deliberately programmed with misinformation, companies that began life under one name cloned themselves under different ones, and then, like amoebae, went on dividing to infinity, and each division bore a different identity. He realized, with hindsight, that he'd sometimes wondered in a vague way about Colin's business affairs, the trips to places like Belize and the Bahamas and even to Havana in recent years. He'd imagined Colin meeting bankers and pseudo-bankers and assorted moneymen, travellers on the dollar and deutschmark highways, keepers of secret accounts, Boss-suited scoundrels who buried enormous amounts of loot in places where Revenue officers couldn't find them. He'd taken it for granted that where there were piles of
gelt
that had to be concealed in hidden honeycombs, so there were grey areas where laws might be broken, or at the very least ‘rules' might be bent. Wasn't that in the nature of capitalism anyway? Earn a lot and watch it grow and grow and grow. But he was out of his depth with the intricacies of finance, and he'd never thought it through, and he'd never questioned Colin either. My brother. I gave him leeway. I bestowed my blessing by omission; I never asked how he accumulated his capital. Naïve, Sergeant.

‘Where are the funds now?'

‘I channelled some into this charity. Seed money.'

‘Very noble,' Perlman said. ‘And the rest?'

‘Less noble, I'm afraid. I bought a fine house, and I stuck the rest in more offshore accounts. You're thinking what an admirable fellow I am, eh?'

‘The halo needs Brasso. How much money is left?'

‘A million, a little more.'

‘Tidy,' Perlman said.

‘I can't go through another investigation, Lou. You have no bloody idea what that's like. The indignity. The family shame. I'm being honest with you.'

‘Be even
more
honest, Shiv. One last effort. Did you know Wexler?'

Bannerjee sighed like a man harpooned and breathing his last. ‘Yes, yes. I knew him.'

‘Vaguely? Intimately? How?'

‘Hardly at all. Lindsay introduced him to me.'

‘And you didn't socialize? You didn't get into any funny-money schemes with Artie?'

‘No, on both counts. I didn't like him much. As for money, no, I didn't trust him.'

‘Why are they both dead, Shiv?'

‘Now how would I know such a thing?'

‘Their names weren't picked out of a hat. It wasn't some lethal lottery type of thing. Did they swindle somebody, Shiv?'

‘I don't know,' Bannerjee said.

‘You're not lying to me again?'

‘No, no I'm not.'

Perlman listened to rain on the glass. Wind roared at the frame of the building. He thought of the same wind blowing up through Gourock and Greenock and Port Glasgow, ruffling the Clyde.

Bannerjee said, ‘We've talked in confidence, I trust.'

‘Are you asking me if I'll keep this information to myself? I can't give promises, Shiv. Not even where my brother's involved.'

‘The fine upstanding policeman, eh? You're looking for a little nobility of your own, are you?'

‘Nobility? That's too grand for me. I'm only trying to make sense of what's happening in this messy little corner of the world I occupy.'

‘Infinitely more difficult than being
noble
,' Bannerjee said. ‘I'd be careful, Lou. I'd be mindful of your brother's welfare. I really would.'

‘Your concern is noted.'

‘I mean it. Keep picking that scab you were talking about, and you may find out more about Colin than you really want to know.'

Did he want to know more? Did he want to know whether there might be other layers of deceit and sleight-of-hand? He didn't like to think of Colin sinking in a bog of fiscal shenanigans.

He opened the door.

Bannerjee said, ‘You understand, of course, I can always deny we talked about anything.'

‘Goes without saying.'

‘Your word against mine.'

‘I wonder who they'd believe, Shiv.'

‘I wonder too,' Bannerjee said. ‘SB Worldwide is sponsoring a programme to open schools for the blind in Soweto. We open our first next month. In the Sahara, we're working on raising funds for deep wells. What can you say
you're
doing, Lou?'

‘In global terms I'm not such a
mensch
as you,' Perlman said. ‘I spend all my time on the local level, digging through the hard outer crust of this city. Some days I think I'll never discover what
really
lies beneath Glasgow. But I persevere, Shiv. I don't know any other way. Thanks for your time.'

Perlman stopped in the threshold and swung round. One last sneak attack. ‘When did you last attend a Nexus gathering?'