Beggars Banquet (18 page)

‘They told me not to mention anything to you, but I thought . . . you know. You being a mate and all.’

And then there was a ring at the doorbell. Alice answered, and after a few moments came back into the living-room. She didn’t look well.

‘It’s the police,’ she said. ‘They want to talk to me about Maxwell. Down at the station.’

And indeed there were two grim-faced constables loitering on the stairwell.

‘What’s going on?’ I asked them.

‘Nothing to worry about, sir,’ said the more loquacious of the pair.

Well, I thought, thank God for that.

I didn’t go with Alice. I lay along the sofa, finding it curiously comfortable. The TV wasn’t on. I stared at the blank screen until, hours later, there was the sound of a key shivering in the lock. Alice looked exhausted and numb. Without demur she flopped on to the beanbag.

‘You won’t believe this,’ she said. ‘They think I had something to do with it.’

I sat up. ‘What?’

‘They think there was something going on. Between Maxwell and me.’

‘What?’ This time I stood up. Alice eyed the empty sofa, so I sat back down again. ‘They think what?’

So she told me about the interrogation. She called it that, not an interview but an interrogation. A nice WPC who didn’t say anything except when the two fat male detectives left the room.

‘She asked me if I wanted a cup of tea.’

The whole thing had been tape-recorded. ‘They kept on at me about Maxwell, how well I knew him, what he was like, did we ever see one another alone. Christ, he was
your
friend, not mine. Besides, I told them he was gay. One of them smiled. He didn’t say anything, but he grinned and shook his head at me.’ She looked like she might cry, but only for a moment. Soon enough she was all anger and retribution. She’d talk to our solicitor.

‘Solicitor?’

‘The one we used to buy this place. I told them, I said I was going to talk to my solicitor.’

‘What did they say?’

She swallowed drily. ‘They said that might be a good idea.’

Not constables this time, but a detective sergeant and another man. The other man drove, while we sat together in the back. The detective sergeant had bloodshot eyes and was overweight. He took me to an interview room where Detective Inspector Claverhouse was waiting. There was a tape recorder on the table between us. On another table sat a TV monitor with a video player built into its base. We had something similar at the school.

It took a lot of questions, some of them about parties I’d attended at Maxwell’s flat. Then Inspector Claverhouse rose from his chair.

‘There’s something we’d like to show you, sir. Just so you can give us an opinion.’

Although they must have watched the video a dozen times, they still drank it in, especially the latter sections. Then they turned to me.

‘Well,’ I said, ‘the first bit . . . with my wife . . .’

‘You recognise your wife then?’

‘Oh yes,’ I said. ‘That was her. At a party of Maxwell’s. I didn’t realise he’d taken so much film of her.’ He hadn’t, of course. After a while he’d handed the camera to me, and I’d concentrated for a few minutes on Alice, trying to work out if she looked better or worse through a lens. Better was the answer. The distance helped, and she did possess a camera-ready figure.

‘And the, er, material after that?’ said Inspector Claverhouse.

I raised my eyebrows and exhaled. ‘Looks like something home-made,’ I replied. ‘I know it’s said that couples will rent video cameras for a weekend so they can record . . . you know.’

‘But they don’t need to rent the camera if they already own one,’ said Claverhouse.

‘True.’

Claverhouse ejected the tape and examined it. ‘You couldn’t identify the participants?’

I smiled bleakly. ‘You didn’t exactly see their faces.’ Of course you didn’t, I’d made sure of that. But I’d also chosen models whose physical shape was at least similar to Maxwell and Alice. I didn’t think anyone would notice that part of the way through the male model actually changed identity. By that stage, all you could see was skin and hair. Claverhouse was looking at the spine of the videotape.

‘True enough, I just wondered. There’s some writing on here, just initials. MG and AB. What do you make of that?’

I stared at him, then at the detective sergeant, and laughed uneasily. ‘Come
on
,’ I said. ‘What are you trying to say?’

‘Nothing, sir.’

‘You know damned fine MG is Maxwell, and you’re implying AB is my wife.’

‘Your wife
is
on the tape, sir.’

‘Yes, but not . . .’ I nodded towards the machine. ‘I mean, it’s not them doing . . .’ My voice died away again. ‘It’s not,’ I said quietly. I did not tell a lie. The two detectives understood. Inspector Claverhouse sat down again.

‘There’s also a letter, sir,’ he said sympathetically. ‘It appears to be from Maxwell Gray to someone called Alice. Perhaps you’d care to take a look.’ He produced a photocopy of the crumpled sheet for me to read. I read through it twice.

‘Alice, there’s no easy way to put this. I want out, pure and simple. It’s not your fault, it’s mine; or maybe it’s neither’s fault. I don’t know any more. It would break Kenny’s heart if he found out, you know that. Not that he would find out, he’s too stupid, too guileless. But that just makes me feel all the more guilty. I hope you can understand. I hope we can still be friends. Maxie.’

Two notes jarred. He wouldn’t have called himself Maxie, but then the police weren’t to know that. It had just been devilment on my part. But neither would he have used a semicolon. Only people like me use semicolons in this day and age. I doubted CID would notice this either. I looked up at Inspector Claverhouse. There were tears in my eyes. Then I broke down altogether.

With Alice under suspicion, I became her champion, protecting her from police and media alike. She didn’t understand any of it. How could there be a letter? How could there be a video? It wasn’t her on the video, she told Claverhouse. It wasn’t. I backed her up. I was sweating about that video. If the police watched it often enough - and I didn’t doubt it was required viewing between shifts at the station - maybe they’d begin to see discrepancies. Then again, all they’d want to watch were the dirty bits, and they would be watching for all the wrong reasons. I’d chosen the seediest, most amateurish tapes in Maxwell’s collection. They really did look home-made. The police meantime were interviewing more friends of Maxwell’s, and his colleagues. Again and again they called us to interview. It was a wearing process.

They knew they were dealing with manslaughter at least. The pathologist had been able to say that Maxwell had fallen with some force, almost certainly not of his own volition. What’s more, the body had been moved, then placed back at the foot of the stairs, as if someone had thought to dispose of it, but been unable to. A woman, for example, might not have the weight and power necessary to shift such a load very far.

It turned out, of course, that the police had wanted to prosecute at quite an early stage, but the Crown Office kept pressing for more evidence. At one stage, it seemed that the inquiry was turning more towards me. For a few days I looked like a chief suspect, but by then I was confident the police were just fishing (and
sans
hooks at that). When they’d wheelbarrowed enough information over to the Crown Office, someone must have decided something should happen. Everyone took one step forward. There was to be a trial. A trial not for manslaughter but for murder.

The police produced a witness, a neighbour of Maxwell’s who was sure she’d seen a woman of Alice’s description going in and out of the flat at irregular intervals. I took a deep breath, and began to view Alice for the first time with suspicion. What if the two of them had
really
been . . . ? And all her talk to me of Maxwell being gay was just to throw me off the scent? Was there to be a brilliant twist right at the end of the film? I asked Alice, but she denied and denied. She’d lost some weight, a lot of weight actually. And the fire had disappeared from her eyes. She wasn’t the same woman she’d been. She was obedient to commands, compliant, weepily grateful for my many kindnesses. In other words, she’d been broken. I liked her more than I had in years.

I was almost determined that she should be found not guilty, and put up a firm performance in the witness box. But the looks I got from those in court were still understanding and sympathetic. I was the faithful husband, faithful right to the end. The jury seemed to ignore me altogether, and brought back a verdict of guilty.

I visited Alice when I could. It was always an interesting experience. I’d considered writing her a letter, explaining that I was a weak man who could not live with the shame and the guilty verdict (it was true that at school both pupils and teachers looked at me oddly), and telling her I’d be filing for divorce. I’d considered it, but rejected it almost as quickly. I don’t know why exactly. Maybe it had something to do with the evenings I spent going over old photographs of the pair of us, back in the days of foreign travel and fooling around. I still went for a drink some weekends with Andrew, Mark and Jimmy, and even a few times with Frank Marsh. But mostly I stayed home.

Then one night there was a ring at the doorbell. I got the shock of my life when I answered the door. It was Donna, blue-eyed blonde-haired Donna, looking exquisite and smelling of recent perfume. She just needed to talk, to talk with someone who’d known Maxwell like she’d known him. She missed him so much.

‘So do I,’ I said.

She collapsed into my gentle arms. I smoothed her hair away from one ear, shushing her. Like a friend. Like a friend.

Rebus knew that there were men in his own station who would try to take a break between ten-forty-five and eleven-fifteen just to listen. The people who phoned the show knew what they’d get, of course: that was part of the fun. Rebus wondered if they were masochists, but in fact he knew they probably saw themselves as challengers. If they could best MacDiarmid, they would have ‘won’. And so MacDiarmid himself became like some raging bull, entering the ring every morning for another joust with the picadors. So far he’d been goaded but not wounded, but who knew how long the luck would last . . . ?

The other ‘personality’ - always supposing personality could be applied to someone so ethereal - was Penny Cook, the softly spoken, seductive voice on the station’s late-night slot. Five nights a week, on her show
What’s Cookin’
, she offered a mix of sedative music, soothing talk, and calming advice to those who took part in her own phone-in segment. These were very different people from those who chose to confront Hamish MacDiarmid. They were quietly worried about their lives, insecure, timid; they had home problems, work problems, personal problems. They were the kind of people, Rebus mused, who got sand kicked in their faces. MacDiarmid’s callers, on the other hand, were probably the ones doing the kicking . . .

Perhaps it said something about the lowlands of Scotland that Penny Cook’s show was said to be the more popular of the two. Again, people at the station talked about it with the fervour usually reserved for TV programmes.

‘Did you hear yon guy with the bend in his tackle . . . ?’

‘That woman who said her husband didn’t satisfy her . . .’

‘I felt sorry for that hooker though, wantin’ out o’ the game . . .’

And so on. Rebus had listened to the show himself a few times, slumped on his chair after closing-time. But never for more than a few minutes; like a bedtime story, a few minutes of Penny Cook sent John Rebus straight to the land of Nod. He’d wondered what she looked like. Husky, comfortable, come-to-bed: the picture of her he’d built up was all images, but none of them exactly physical. Sometimes she sounded blonde and tiny, sometimes statuesque with flowing raven hair. His picture of Hamish MacDiarmid was much more vivid: bright red beard, caber-tossing biceps and a kilt.

Well, the truth would out. Rebus stood in the cramped reception area of Lowland Radio and waited for the girl on the switchboard to finish her call. On the wall behind her, a sign said WELCOME:. That colon was important. This seemed to be Lowland Radio’s way of greeting the personalities who’d come to the station, perhaps to give interviews. Today, below the WELCOME:, written in felt tip were the names JEZ JENKS and CANDY BARR. Neither name meant anything to Rebus, though they probably would to his daughter. The receptionist had finished her call.

‘Have you come for some stickers?’

‘Stickers?’

‘Car-stickers,’ she explained. ‘Only we’re all out of them. Just temporary, we’ll be getting more next week if you’d like to call back.’

‘No, thanks anyway. I’m Inspector Rebus. I think Miss Cook’s expecting me.’

‘Oh, sorry.’ The receptionist giggled. ‘I’ll see if she’s around. It was Inspector . . . ?’

‘Rebus.’

She scribbled the name on a pad and returned to her switchboard. ‘An Inspector Reeves to see you, Penny . . .’

Rebus turned to another wall and cast an eye over Lowland Radio’s small display of awards. Well, there was stiff competition these days, he supposed. And not much advertising revenue to go round. Another local station had countered the challenge posed by Hamish MacDiarmid, hiring what they called ‘The Ranter’, an anonymous individual who dished out insult upon insult to anyone foolish enough to call his show.

It all seemed a long way from the Light Programme, a long way from glowing valves and Home Counties diction. Was it true that the BBC announcers used to wear dinner jackets? DJs in DJs, Rebus thought to himself and laughed.

‘I’m glad somebody’s cheerful.’ It was Penny Cook’s voice; she was standing right behind him. Slowly he turned to be confronted by a buxom lady in her early forties - only a year or two younger than Rebus himself. She had permed light brown hair and wore round glasses - the kind popularised by John Lennon on one hand and the NHS on the other.

‘I know, I know,’ she said. ‘I’m never what people expect.’ She held out a hand, which Rebus shook. Not only did Penny Cook sound unthreatening, she
looked
unthreatening.

All the more mysterious then that someone, some anonymous caller, should be threatening her life . . .

They walked down a corridor towards a sturdy-looking door, to the side of which had been attached a push-button array.

‘Security,’ she said, pressing four digits before pulling open the door. ‘You never know what a lunatic might do given access to the airwaves.’

‘On the contrary,’ said Rebus, ‘I’ve heard Hamish MacDiarmid.’

She laughed. He didn’t think he’d heard her laugh before. ‘Is Penny Cook your real name?’ he asked, thinking the ice sufficiently broken between them.

‘Afraid so. I was born in Nairn. To be honest, I don’t think my parents had heard of Penicuik. They just liked the name Penelope.’

They were passing studios and offices. Loudspeakers placed in the ceiling of the corridor relayed the station’s afternoon show.

‘Ever been inside a radio station before, Inspector?’

‘No, never.’

‘I’ll show you around if you like.’

‘If you can spare the time . . .’

‘No problem.’ They were approaching one studio outside which a middle-aged man was in quiet conversation with a spiky-headed teenager. The teenager looked sullen and in need of a wash. Rebus wondered if he were the man’s son. If so, a lesson in parental control was definitely needed.

‘Hi, Norman,’ Penny Cook said in passing. The man smiled towards her. The teenager remained sullen: a controlled pose, Rebus decided. Further along, having passed through another combination-lock door, Penny herself cleared things up.

‘Norman’s one of our producers.’

‘And the kid with him?’

‘Kid?’ She smiled wryly. ‘That was Jez Jenks, the singer with Leftover Lunch. He probably makes more a day than you and I make in a good year.’

Rebus couldn’t remember ever having a ‘good year’ - the curse of the honest copper. A question came to him.

‘And Candy Barr?’

She laughed at this. ‘I thought my own name took some beating. Mind you, I don’t suppose it’s her real name. She’s an actress or a comedienne or something. From across the water, of course.’

‘Doesn’t sound like an Irish name,’ Rebus said as Penny Cook held open her office door.

‘I wouldn’t make jokes around here, Inspector,’ she said. ‘You’ll probably find yourself being signed up for a spot on one of our shows.’

‘The Laughing Policeman?’ Rebus suggested. But then they were in the office, the door was closed, and the atmosphere cooled appropriately. This was business, after all. Serious business. She sat at her desk. Rebus sat down on the chair across from her.

‘Do you want a coffee or anything, Inspector?’

‘No thanks. So, when did these calls start, Miss Cook?’

‘About a month ago. The first time he tried it, he actually got through to me on-air. That takes some doing. The calls are filtered through two people before they get to me. Efficient people, too. They can usually tell a crank caller from the real thing.’

‘How does the system work? Somebody calls in . . . then what?’

‘Sue or David takes the call. They ask a few questions. Basically, they want to know the person’s name, and what it is they want to talk to me about. Then they take a telephone number, tell the caller to stay by his or her telephone, and if we want to put the person on-air, they phone the caller back and prepare them.’

‘Fairly rigorous then.’

‘Oh yes. And even supposing the odd crank does get through, we’ve got a three-second delay on them when they’re on-air. If they start cussing or raving, we cut the call before it goes out over the ether.’

‘And is that what happened with this guy?’

‘Pretty much.’ She shook a cassette box at him. ‘I’ve got the tape here. Do you want to hear?’

‘Please.’

She started to load a cassette player on the ledge behind her. There were no windows in the office. From the number of steps they’d descended to get there, Rebus reckoned this whole floor of the building was located beneath ground-level.

‘So you got a phone number for this guy?’

‘Only it turned out to be a phone box in some housing scheme. We didn’t know that at the time. We never usually take calls from phone boxes. But it was one of those ones that use the phone cards. No beeps, so nobody could tell.’ She had loaded the tape to her satisfaction, but was now waiting for it to rewind. ‘After he tried getting through again, we phoned his number. It rang and rang, and then some old girl picked it up. She explained where the box was. That was when we knew he’d tricked us.’ The tape thumped to a stop. She hit the play button, and sat down again. There was hiss as the tape began, and then her voice filled the room. She smiled in embarrassment, as if to say: yes, it’s a pose, this husky, sultry, late-night me. But it’s a living . . .

‘And now we’ve got Peter on line one. Peter, you’re through to Penny Cook. How are things with you this evening?’

‘Not so good, Penny.’

She interrupted the tape for a moment: ‘This is where we cut him off.’

The man’s voice had been sleepy, almost tranquillised. Now it erupted. ‘I know what you’re up to! I know what’s going on!’ The tape went dead. She leaned back in her chair and switched off the machine.

‘It makes me shiver every time I hear it. That anger . . . such a sudden change in the voice. Brr.’ She reached into her drawer and brought out cigarettes and lighter. Rebus accepted a cigarette from her.

‘Thanks,’ he said. Then: ‘The name’ll be false, of course, but did he give a surname?’

‘A surname, an address, even a profession. He said he lived in Edinburgh, but we looked up the street name in the
A to Z
and it doesn’t exist. From now on, we check that addresses are real before we call back. His surname was Gemmell. He even spelt it out for Sue. She couldn’t believe he was a crank, he sounded so genuine.’

‘What did he tell her his problem was?’

‘Drinking too much . . . how it was affecting his work. I like that sort of problem. The advice is straightforward, and it can be helping a lot of people too scared to phone in.’

‘What did he say his job was?’

‘Bank executive. He gave Sue the bank’s name and everything, and he kept saying it wasn’t to be broadcast.’ She smiled, shook her head. ‘I mean, this nut really was
good
.’

Rebus nodded. ‘He seems to have known the set-up pretty well.’

‘You mean he got to the safe without triggering any of the alarms?’ She smiled still. ‘Oh yes, he’s a real pro.’

‘And the calls have persisted?’

‘Most nights. We’ve got him tagged now though. He’s tried using different accents . . . dialects . . . always a different name and job. But he hasn’t managed to beat the system again. When he knows he’s been found out, he does that whole routine again. “I know what you’ve done.” Blah, blah. We put the phone down on him before he can get started.’

‘And what
have
you done, Miss Cook?’

‘Absolutely nothing, Inspector. Not that I know of.’

Rebus nodded slowly. ‘Can I hear the tape again?’

‘Sure.’ She wound it back, and they listened together. Then she excused herself - ‘to powder my nose’ - and Rebus listened twice more. When she returned, she was carrying two plastic beakers of coffee.

‘Thought I might tempt you,’ she said. ‘Milk, no sugar . . . I hope that’s all right.’

‘Thank you, yes, that’s just the job.’

‘So, Inspector, what do you think?’

He sipped the lukewarm liquid. ‘I think,’ he said, ‘you’ve got an anonymous phone-caller.’

She raised her cup, as though to toast him. ‘God bless CID,’ she said. ‘What would we do without you?’

‘The problem is that he’s probably mobile, not sticking to the same telephone kiosk every time. That’s supposing he’s as clever as he seems. We can get BT to put a trace on him, but for that you’d have to keep him talking. Or, if he gives his number, we can trace him from that. But it takes time.’

‘And meanwhile he could be slipping off into the night?’

‘I’m afraid so. Still, apart from continuing to fend him off and hoping he gets fed up, I can’t see what else can be done. You don’t recognise the voice? Someone from your past . . . an ex-lover . . . someone with a grudge?’