Beggars Banquet (collection)

by Ian Rankin

  She was middle-aged, her face lined and rouged. She’d been a looker in younger days, he could see that, but scarlet lipstick now made her mouth look too large and moist. She wore black muslin over her head, a gold band holding it in place. Her costume looked authentic enough: black lace, red silk, with astrological signs sewn into the arms. On the table sat a crystal ball, covered for now with a white handkerchief. The red fingernails of one hand tapped against a tarot deck. She asked him his name.

  ‘Is that necessary?’ he asked.

  She shrugged. ‘It helps sometimes.’ They were like blind dates alone in a restaurant, the world outside ceasing to matter. Her eyes twinkled in the candlelight.

  ‘My name’s Mort,’ he told her.

  She repeated the name, seeming amused by it.

  ‘Short for Morton. My father was born there.’

  ‘It’s also the French for death,’ she added.

  ‘I didn’t know,’ he lied.

  She was smiling. ‘There’s a lot you don’t know, Mort. That’s why you’re here. A palm-reading, is it?’

  ‘What else do you offer?’

  ‘The ball.’ She nodded towards it. ‘The cards.’

  He asked which she would recommend. In turn, she asked if this was his first visit to a psychic healer – that was what she called herself, ‘a psychic healer’: ‘because I heal souls’, she added by way of explanation.

  ‘I’m not sure I need healing,’ he argued.

  ‘Oh, my dear, we all need some kind of healing. We’re none of us whole. Look at you, for example.’

  He straightened in his chair, becoming aware for the first time that she was holding his right hand, palm upwards, her fingers stroking his knuckles. She looked down at the palm, frowned a little in concentration.

  ‘You’re a visitor, aren’t you, dear?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Here on business, I’d say.’

  ‘Yes.’ He was studying the palm with her, as though trying to read its foreign words.

  ‘Mmm.’ She began running the tip of one finger down the well-defined lines which criss-crossed his palm. ‘Not ticklish? ’ she chuckled. He allowed her the briefest of smiles. Looking at her face, he noticed it seemed softer than it had when he’d first entered the caravan. He revised her age downwards, felt slight pressure as she seemed to squeeze his hand, as if acknowledging the compliment.

  ‘Doing all right for yourself though,’ she informed him. ‘I mean moneywise; no problems there. No, dear, your problems all stem from your particular line of work.’

  ‘My work?’

  ‘You’re not as relaxed about it as you used to be. Time was, you wouldn’t have considered doing anything else. Easy money. But it doesn’t feel like that any more, does it?’

  It felt warm in the caravan, stuffy, with no air getting in and all those candles burning. There was the metal weight pressed to his groin, the weight he’d always found so reassuring in times past. He told himself she was using cheap psychology. His accent wasn’t local; he wore no wedding ring; his hands were clean and manicured. You could tell a lot about someone from such details.

  ‘Shouldn’t we agree a price first?’ he asked.

  ‘Why should we do that, dear? I’m not a prostitute, am I?’ He felt his ears reddening. ‘And besides, you can afford it, we both know you can. What’s the point of letting money get in the way?’ She was holding his hand in an ever tighter grip. She had strength, this one; he’d bear that in mind when the time came. He wouldn’t play around, wouldn’t string out her suffering. A quick squeeze of the trigger.

  ‘I get the feeling,’ she said, ‘you’re wondering why you’re here. Would that be right?’

  ‘I know exactly why I’m here.’

  ‘What? Here with me? Or here on this planet, living the life you’ve chosen?’

  ‘Either… both.’ He spoke a little too quickly, could feel his pulse-rate rising. He had to get it down again, had to be calm when the time came. Part of him said Do it now. But another part said Hear her out. He wriggled, trying to get comfortable.

  ‘What I meant though,’ she went on, ‘is you’re not sure any more why you do what you do. You’ve started to ask questions.’ She looked up at him. ‘The line of business you’re in, I get the feeling you’re just supposed to do what you’re told. Is that right?’ He nodded. ‘No talking back, no questions asked. You just do your work and wait for payday.’

  ‘I get paid upfront.’

  ‘Aren’t you the lucky one?’ She chuckled again. ‘But the money’s not enough, is it? It can never recompense for not being happy or fulfilled.’

  ‘I could have got that from my girlfriend’s Cosmopolitan.’

  She smiled, then clapped her hands. ‘I’d like to try you with the cards. Are you game?’

  ‘Is that what that is – a game?’

  ‘You have your fun with words, dear. Euphemisms, that’s all words are.’

  He tried not to gasp: it was as if she’d read his mind from earlier – all those euphemisms for ‘killer’. She wasn’t paying him any heed, was busy shuffling the outsized Tarot deck. She asked him to touch the deck three times. Then she laid out the top three cards.

  ‘Ah,’ she said, her fingers caressing the first one. ‘ Le soleil. It means the sun.’

  ‘I know what it means,’ he snapped.

  She made a pout with her lips. ‘I thought you didn’t know any French.’

  He was stuck for a moment. ‘There’s a picture of the sun right there on the card,’ he said finally.

  She nodded slowly. His breathing had quickened again.

  ‘Second card,’ she said. ‘Death himself. La mort. Interesting that the French give it the feminine gender.’

  He looked at the picture of the skeleton. It was grinning, doing a little jig. On the ground beside it sat a lantern and an hourglass. The candle in the lantern had been snuffed out; the sand in the hourglass had all fallen through.

  ‘Don’t worry,’ she said, ‘it doesn’t always portend a death.’

  ‘That’s a relief,’ he said with a smile.

  ‘The final card is intriguing – the hanged man. It can signify many things.’ She lifted it up so he could see it.

  ‘And the three together?’ he asked, curious now.

  She held her hands as if in prayer. ‘I’m not sure,’ she said at last. ‘An unusual conjunction, to be sure.’

  ‘Death and the hanged man: a suicide maybe?’

  She shrugged.

  ‘Is the sex important? I mean, the fact that it is a man?’

  She shook her head.

  He licked his lips. ‘Maybe the ball would help,’ he suggested.

  She looked at him, her eyes reflecting light from the candles. ‘You might be right.’ And she smiled. ‘Shall we?’ As if they were not prospective lovers now but children, and the crystal ball little more than an illicit dare.

  As she pulled the small glass globe towards them, he shifted again. The pistol barrel was chafing his thigh. He rubbed his jacket pocket, the one containing the silencer. He would have to hit her first, just to quiet her while he fitted the silencer to the gun.

  Slowly, she lifted the handkerchief from the ball, as if raising the curtain on some miniaturised stage-show. She leaned forward, peering into the glass, giving him a view of crêped cleavage. Her hands flitted over the ball, not quite touching it. Had he been a gerontophile, there would have been a hint of the erotic to the act.

  ‘Don’t you go thinking that!’ she snapped. Then, seeing the startled look on his face, she winked. ‘The ball often makes things clearer.’

  ‘What was I thinking?’ he blurted out.

  ‘You want me to say it out loud?’

  He shook his head, looked into the ball, saw her face reflected there, stretched and distorted. And floating somewhere within was his own face, too, surrounded by licking flames.

  ‘What do you see?’ he asked, needing to know now.

  ‘I see a man who is asking w
hy he is here. One person has the answer, but he has yet to ask this person. He is worried about the thing he must do – rightly worried, in my opinion.’

  She looked up at him again. Her eyes were the colour of polished oak. Tiny veins of blood seemed to pulse in the whites. He jerked back in his seat.

  ‘You know, don’t you?’

  ‘Of course I know, Mort.’

  He nearly overturned the table as he got to his feet, pulling the gun from his waistband. ‘How?’ he asked. ‘Who told you?’

  She shook her head, not looking at the gun, apparently not interested in it. ‘It would happen one day. The moment you walked in, I felt it was you.’

  ‘You’re not afraid.’ It was a statement rather than a question.

  ‘Of course I’m afraid.’ But she didn’t look it. ‘And a little sad, too.’

  He had the silencer out of his pocket, but was having trouble coordinating his hands. He’d practised a hundred times in the dark, and had never had this trouble before. He’d had victims like her, though: the ones who accepted, who were maybe even a little grateful.

  ‘You know who wants you dead?’ he asked.

  She nodded. ‘I think so. I may have gotten the odd fortune wrong, but I’ve made precious few enemies in my life.’

  ‘He’s a rich man.’

  ‘Very rich,’ she conceded. ‘Not all of it honest money. And I’m sure he’s well used to getting what he wants.’ She slid the ball away, brought out the cards again and began shuffling them. ‘So ask me your question.’

  He was screwing the silencer on to the end of the barrel. The pistol was loaded, he only had to slide the safety off. He licked his lips again. So hot in here, so dry…

  ‘Why?’ he asked. ‘Why does he want a fortune-teller dead?’

  She got up, made to open the curtains.

  ‘No,’ he commanded, pointing the gun at her, sliding off the safety. ‘Keep them closed.’

  ‘Afraid to shoot me in daylight?’ When he didn’t answer, she pulled open one curtain, then blew out the candles. He kept the pistol trained on her: a head shot, quick and always fatal. ‘I’ll tell you,’ she said, sliding into her seat again. She motioned for him to sit. After a moment’s hesitation, he did so, the pistol steady in his right hand. Wisps of smoke from the extinguished candles rose either side of her.

  ‘We were young when we met,’ she began. ‘I was already working in a fairground – not this one. One night, he decided there had been enough of a courtship.’ She looked deep into his eyes, his own oak-coloured eyes. ‘Oh yes, he’s used to getting what he wants. You know what I’m saying?’ she went on quietly. ‘There was no question of consent. I tried to have the baby in secret, but it’s hard to keep secrets from a man like him, a man with money, someone people fear. My baby was stolen from me. I began travelling then, and I’ve been travelling ever since. But always with my ear to the ground, always hearing things.’ Her eyes were liquid now. ‘You see, I knew a time would come when my baby would grow old enough to begin asking questions. And I knew the baby’s father would not want the truth to come out.’ She reached out a shaking hand, reached past the gun to touch his cheek. ‘I just didn’t think he’d be so cruel.’

  ‘Cruel?’

  ‘So cruel as to send his own son – our son – to do his killing.’

  He shot to his feet again, banged his fists against the wall of the caravan. Rested his head there and screwed shut his eyes, the oak-coloured eyes – mirrors of her own – which had told her all she’d needed to know. He’d left the pistol on the table. She lifted it, surprised by its weight, and turned it in her hand.

  ‘I’ll kill him,’ he groaned. ‘I swear, I’ll kill him for this.’

  With a smile, she slid the safety catch on, placed the gun back on the table. When he turned back to her, blinking away tears, she looked quite calm, almost serene, as if her faith in him had been rewarded at last. In her hand, she was holding a Tarot card.

  The hanged man.

  ‘It will need to look like an accident,’ she said. ‘Either that or suicide.’

  Outside, the screams of frightened children: waltzers and big wheel and ghost train. One of his hands fell lightly on hers, the other reaching for his pistol.

  ‘Mother,’ he said, with all the tenderness his parched soul could muster.

  Window of Opportunity – AN INSPECTOR REBUS STORY

  Bernie Few’s jailbreaks were an art.

  And over the years he had honed his art. His escapes from prison, his shrugging off of guards and prison officers, his vanishing acts were the stuff of lights-out stories in jails the length and breadth of Scotland. He was called ‘The Grease-Man’, ‘The Blink’, and many other names, including the obvious ‘Houdini’ and the not-so-obvious ‘Claude’ (Claude Rains having starred as the original Invisible Man).

  Bernie Few was beautiful. As a petty thief he was hopeless, but after capture he started to show his real prowess. He wasn’t made for being a housebreaker; but he surely did shine as a jailbreaker. He’d stuffed himself into rubbish bags and mail sacks, taken the place of a corpse from one prison hospital, squeezed his wiry frame out of impossibly small windows (sometimes buttering his naked torso in preparation), and crammed himself into ventilation shafts and heating ducts.

  But Bernie Few had a problem. Once he’d scaled the high walls, waded through sewers, sprinted from the prison bus, or cracked his guard across the head, once he’d done all this and was outside again, breathing free air and melting into the crowd… his movements were like clockwork. All his ingenuity seemed to be exhausted. The prison psychologists put it differently. They said he wanted to be caught, really. It was a game to him.

  But to Detective Inspector John Rebus, it was more than a game. It was a chance for a drink.

  Bernie would do three things. One, he’d go throw a rock through his ex-wife’s living-room window. Two, he’d stand in the middle of Princes Street telling everyone to go to hell (and other places besides). And three, he’d get drunk in Scott’s Bar. These days, option one was difficult for Bernie, since his ex-wife had not only moved without leaving a forwarding address but had, at Rebus’s suggestion, gone to live on the eleventh floor of an Oxgangs tower block. No more rocks through the living-room window, unless Bernie was handy with ropes and crampons.

  Rebus preferred to wait for Bernie in Scott’s Bar, where they refused to water down either the whisky or the language. Scott’s was a villain’s pub, one of the ropiest in Edinburgh. Rebus recognised half the faces in the place, even on a dull Wednesday afternoon. Bail faces, appeal faces. They recognised him, too, but there wasn’t going to be any trouble. Every one of them knew why he was here. He hoisted himself on to a barstool and lit a cigarette. The TV was on, showing a satellite sports channel. Cricket, some test between England and the West Indies. It is a popular fallacy that the Scots don’t watch cricket. Edinburgh pub drinkers will watch anything, especially if England are involved, more especially if England are odds on to get a drubbing. Scott’s, as depressing a watering hole as you could ever imagine, had transported itself to the Caribbean for the occasion.

  Then the door to the toilets opened with a nerve-jarring squeal, and a man loped out. He was tall and skinny, looselimbed, hair falling over his eyes. He had a hand on his fly, just checking prior to departure, and his eyes were on the floor.

  ‘See youse then,’ he said to nobody, opening the front door to leave. Nobody responded. The door stayed open longer than it should. Someone else was coming in. Eyes flashed from the TV for a moment. Rebus finished his drink and rose from the stool. He knew the man who’d just left the bar. He knew him well. He knew, too, that what had just happened was impossible.

  The new customer, a small man with a handful of coins, had a voice hoarse from shouting as he croakily ordered a pint. The barman didn’t move. Instead, he looked to Rebus, who was looking at Bernie Few.

  Then Bernie Few looked at Rebus.

  ‘Been down to Princes Street, Bernie?’
Rebus asked.

  Bernie Few sighed and rubbed his tired face. ‘Time for a short one, Mr Rebus?’

  Rebus nodded. He could do with another himself anyway. He had a couple of things on his mind, neither of them Bernie Few.

  Police officers love and hate surveillance operations in more or less equal measure. There’s the tedium, but even that beats being tied to a CID desk. Often on a stakeout there’s a good spirit, plus there’s that adrenal rush when something eventually happens.

  The present surveillance was based in a second-floor tenement flat, the owners having been packed off to a seaside caravan for a fortnight. If the operation needed longer than a fortnight, they’d be sent to stay with relations.

  The watchers worked in two-man teams and twelve-hour shifts. They were watching the second-floor flat of the tenement across the road. They were keeping tabs on a bandit called Ribs Mackay. He was called Ribs because he was so skinny. He had a heroin habit, and paid for it by pushing drugs. Only he’d never been caught at it, a state of affairs Edinburgh CID were keen to rectify.

  The problem was, since the surveillance had begun, Ribs had been keeping his head down. He stayed in the flat, nipping out only on brief sorties to the corner shop. He’d buy beer, vodka, milk, cigarettes, sometimes breakfast cereal or a jar of peanut butter, and he’d always top off his purchases with half a dozen bars of chocolate. That was about it. There had to be more, but there wasn’t any more. Any day now, the operation would be declared dead in the water.

  They tried to keep the flat clean, but you couldn’t help a bit of untidiness. You couldn’t help nosy neighbours either: everyone on the stairwell wondered who the strangers in the Tully residence were. Some asked questions. Some didn’t need to be told. Rebus met an old man on the stairs. He was hauling a bag of shopping up to the third floor, stopping for a breather at each step.

  ‘Help you with that?’ Rebus offered.

  ‘I can manage.’