Beggars Banquet

by Ian Rankin

  What he hadn’t expected was that Gillian Webster would not be home. He also had not expected the Websters to be entertaining. They’d invited a dozen or so people for late-afternoon drinks. He was lucky the weather was cool: nobody seemed inclined to wander down into the garden towards where he was hiding. But a veranda ran the length of the back of the house, and some of the guests wandered out on to it; so, occasionally, did the host and hostess. He shot off a single roll of film, concentrating on Webster and his wife. She was younger than her husband by at least ten years; even so, she was showing her age. The skin sagged from her face and neck, and her short blonde hair looked brittle.

  Lying on the bed, he paused at one particular photograph. A man had been standing alone on the veranda, then had been joined by Mrs Webster. It looked as though she were greeting the man. They were kissing. The man, who was holding a champagne flute, held Mrs Webster’s arm with his free hand, drawing her towards him. The kiss was no perfunctory peck. Their lips met, were maybe even parted. The kiss had seemed to last quite a while. He searched through the other photos for a better one of the man. Yes, here he was with Mr Webster and another guest. They looked serious, as though discussing business. The man was caught face-on. He was shorter than Webster, heavily built, with dark wavy hair just covering his ears. Early on in the party, he had loosened his tie and his shirt collar. Did he merely look serious in this photo, or did he look worried? There were dark bags under his eyes . . .

  He lifted a newspaper and stared at the photofit police had issued, the one made up from Gillian Webster’s description. It was the guest from the party. He was sure of that.

  The local radio station had set up a van in the police station car park, with a tall antenna flexing from its roof. It looked as though the journalists had been made to move into the car park. Probably their cars had been holding up traffic in Castle Lane. As he arrived, they were milling around, drinking beakers of tea, talking into portable phones, reading from sheets of paper.He looked around. One young man stood apart from the others. He looked shy and uncomfortable, and was wearing cheap clothes. There were spots around his mouth and on his neck, and he kept pushing slippery glasses back up his nose as he read from his own sheets of paper, glancing up from time to time to see what the other journalists were doing.

  He was perfect.

  ‘Local are you, chief ?’

  The young man looked up in surprise at the man with the south-east accent, the man wearing the expensive jacket.

  ‘Sorry?’

  ‘You look like the local press.’

  The young man twitched. ‘I’m from the Post.’

  ‘Thought so.’ The sheets of paper were plucked from the young man’s hands. They detailed the morning’s media briefing. There would be a conference at three o’clock, and another at seven. Otherwise, the only news was that the man they’d been questioning was to be held for another twenty-four hours.

  ‘What do you think, chief?’ The young man looked dazed. ‘Come on, you can tell Uncle Des.’

  ‘There’s not much to think.’

  He wrinkled his nose, folding the press release and shoving it into the young man’s anorak pocket. ‘Don’t give me that. That’s the official line, but this is between you and me. You’re local, my son, you’ve got the edge on all of us.’ He nodded towards the scattering of journalists, none of whom was taking any notice of this conversation.

  ‘Who are you?’

  ‘I thought I told you, Des Beattie.’

  ‘Beattie?’

  ‘How long you been in this game, son?’ He shook his head sadly. ‘The Ripper case, I covered it for the Telegraph. Freelance now, of course. I can pick and choose my crime stories. A certain magazine has asked me to see if there’s an angle in all this.’ He looked the young man up and down. ‘You might be in for half the byline. Could be your ticket out of here, chief. We all had to start somewhere.’

  ‘Stefan’s my name, Stefan Duniec.’

  ‘Pleased to meet you, Stefan.’ They shook hands. ‘What’s that, Russian is it?’

  ‘Polish.’

  ‘Well, I’m Des Beattie and I’m from Walthamstow. Only I live in Docklands now.’ He winked. ‘Handy for the newspaper offices. So what’ve you got?’

  ‘Well . . .’ Duniec looked around. ‘It’s not really my idea . . .’ Beattie shrugged this aside. There was no copyright on news. ‘But I’ve heard that someone’s got a name.’

  ‘For the sod they’re questioning?’ Duniec nodded. Beattie seemed thoughtful. ‘Maybe it’ll tie in with my own ideas. What’s the name, Stefan?’

  ‘Bernard Cooke.’

  Beattie nodded slowly. ‘Bernie Cooke. The businessman, right?’

  Now Duniec nodded. ‘Does it tie in?’

  Beattie puckered his mouth. ‘Might well do. I need to check a few facts first.’

  ‘I could help.’ The kid was keen all right. He didn’t want to wear that anorak for ever. Beattie patted his shoulder.

  ‘Stick around here, Stefan. Keep your ears open. I’ll go make a couple of calls.’ Duniec glanced down at the large pockets of Beattie’s sheepskin. Beattie grinned. ‘We can’t all afford cell phones. Meantime . . .’ He nodded towards the other reporters. ‘You might try writing this up. You know, something wry about the long wait. Eight hundred words, who knows, there’s always a market for filler. The Sundays are nothing but filler these days.’

  ‘Eight hundred?’

  Beattie nodded, then reconsidered. ‘Seven-fifty,’ he said, heading out of the car park.

  A small engineering works on a purpose-built estate.A helpful sign at the site entrance told him he was looking for Unit 32, Cooke Engineering Ltd. He drove his rented Fiesta slowly through the narrow winding roads, giving way to lorries and delivery vans. Half a dozen cars were parked outside Unit 32 in tightly marked bays. The building was grey corrugated steel, shared by two companies. Unit 31 manufactured frozen foods. Driving past it, he sized up Unit 32. There was a door which would lead to the reception area or offices, and a loading-bay door near it. Both were closed. Parked in the loading bay was a sporty Ford Sierra, one of the custom jobs. In the driver’s seat, a man was talking on a car phone. In the back seat were two more large pasty-faced men. They looked like reporters. Well, if a dolt like Duniec knew about Cooke, the professionals would know too. And though Cooke himself wasn’t here, though he was sweating and dog-tired in one of Castle Lane’s interview rooms, a team had been sent to stake the place out.

  He gnawed at his bottom lip, and decided to take a calculated risk. He drove to the next lot of units, parked, and walked back towards Cooke Engineering. The door he was approaching, having ignored the carful of staring eyes, had OFFICE printed on it. He knocked and entered, closing the door behind him. He’d expected noise: after all, only a partition wall separated this part of the unit from the actual production line. But there was silence, punctuated by the slow clack of fingers on a computer keyboard.

  ‘Can I help you?’ She sat behind a desk, but also behind huge red-rimmed spectacles, which magnified her already large eyes. Her tone was hardly welcoming.

  ‘Mr Cooke?’ He said nervously. ‘Wondered if I could have a—’

  ‘Do you have an appointment?’

  ‘No, well I . . .’

  ‘Are you a reporter?’ She examined him, hunched over as he was, shuffling and twitching and awkward. ‘You don’t look like one.’ She sighed. ‘No cold calling, reps by appointment only. I take it you are a rep?’

  ‘Well, as it happens I—’

  ‘Sorry,’ she said, seeming to take pity on this particularly pitiful example of an unlovely breed. ‘Mr Cooke’s not here anyway.’

  He looked around. ‘Place looks dead.’

  ‘Dead about sums it up.’

  ‘Business bad.’

  ‘Let’s just say you shouldn’t look for too many orders.’

  ‘Ah . . .’ He seemed to think of something. ‘But the cars outside . . . ?’

  ‘We
let the guys from the frozen-food place park their excess cars there.’

  ‘Oh dear.’ He nodded towards where he assumed the production line would be, just through the wall. ‘Then you’re not . . . ?’

  ‘We’re not producing. So unless you’re selling jobs in the light engineering sector, I shouldn’t bother.’

  He smiled. ‘But you’re still here.’

  ‘Only till the weekend. No pay by Friday, I’m off.’ She went back to her typing, her fingers hammering the keys.

  He turned to leave, his back and shoulders more hunched than ever. Then he stopped and half turned. ‘What made you think I was a reporter?’

  ‘You’ll read about it.’

  Only after he’d gone did she pause in her work. She’d seen them all in her time, all the types of rep you could imagine. But she’d never come across one who didn’t even bother to bring samples with him . . .

  Across from the industrial estate was a recently built pub, doubtless put there by a canny brewing concern who knew there would be plenty of clients from an estate of eighty-odd units.‘That was the idea anyway,’ the barman admitted, pouring a pint of beer, ‘before times got hard. What gets me is that none of these financial projections’ - he said the words with distaste - ‘ever projected hard times ahead. And let me tell you, there’s no money-back guarantee with these things.’ He had handed over the drink, received a five-pound note, and now pressed a key on the till.

  ‘Accountants aren’t all bad,’ said the customer.

  As the barman handed over the change, the customer asked a question.

  ‘Does a man called Bernard Cooke drink in here?’

  There was a snort from further down the bar, where a man on a stool was doing the crossword in the local paper.

  ‘Why do you ask?’ asked the barman.

  ‘I was supposed to be seeing him today. Drove all the way down from bloody Lancaster.’ The barman didn’t seem about to doubt his north-west accent. ‘Only there’s no bugger about except some right rough types in a car parked outside.’

  ‘Reporters,’ said the crossword solver.

  ‘Oh aye?’

  ‘You won’t be seeing Cooke for a while.’ The crossword solver tipped back the dregs of a half-pint.

  ‘We don’t know that,’ snapped the barman. ‘Don’t go jumping to bloody conclusions, Arthur.’

  Arthur merely shrugged in compliance, staring down at his paper.

  ‘He’s in trouble, is he?’ asked the traveller.

  ‘Maybe.’

  ‘Bang goes my bloody contract.’

  ‘You’re lucky, then,’ said Arthur.’

  ‘How do you mean?’ He nodded towards the empty glass. ’Get you another?’

  ‘Thanks, I will.’

  The barman refilled the glass, but wouldn’t take one himself. Arthur sipped and swallowed. ‘I mean,’ he said at last, ‘Bernie’s been in trouble for yonks, money trouble. Chances are, if you were buying from him, you wouldn’t have got what you ordered, and if you were selling, you wouldn’t have seen the money.’

  ‘Thanks for the tip.’

  ‘I’ve known for months he was in trouble. Used to be, he’d nip in here Friday lunchtime for something to eat and a couple of brandies. Then it got to be twice a week and four brandies, and three times a week and six. Somebody drinks like that, it’s not because they’re flush, it’s that they’re worried.’

  ‘I know what you mean.’

  ‘All I know,’ chipped in the barman, ‘is that he always paid . . . and that’s more than some.’

  Arthur winked at Beattie. ‘That’s a dig at me.’

  Beattie finished his drink and eased himself off the bar stool.

  ‘Back to Lancaster?’

  He shook his head. ‘Couple more calls first.’

  After he’d gone, the bar was silent a few moments, then Arthur cleared his throat.

  ‘What do you think?’

  ‘Well,’ said the barman, ‘he wasn’t a reporter. I’m not even sure he’s in business.’

  ‘How do you make that out?’

  ‘No expense account - didn’t ask for a receipt for the drinks.’

  ‘Maybe he doesn’t need receipts, Sherlock.’

  ‘Maybe.’ The barman lifted away the empty glass and washed it, placing it on the rack to dry. Then he wiped the bartop where the man had been sitting, and put down a fresh beermat. Now there was no sign anyone had ever been there.

  ‘Just be a second,’ the barman told Arthur. Then he disappeared into the alcove where the telephone was kept.

  At three-forty, the journalists slouched out of the press room carrying the latest news release. They were talkative, if they weren’t too busy drawing in cigarette smoke. Some were making calls on their telephones, or going off to their cars to make calls. They squeezed from the police station’s double doors and fanned out across the car park. A camera unit had been readied for the TV reporter called Martin Brockman, who was now checking his script while a make-up girl tried to get his hair to stop flying into a vertical peak every time a gust blew.Stefan Duniec walked slowly across the car park, not heading towards his car - he did not have a car - but just keeping moving, so he looked as busy and important as the other reporters. He was staring down at his notebook and didn’t notice the figure blocking his way until he’d practically bumped into it.

  ‘Hello, Mr Beattie, you missed the conference.’

  ‘Couldn’t be helped, Stef. Anything to report?’

  ‘I got you a copy of the press release.’

  ‘Good lad.’ Beattie started to read from the two stapled sheets. Gillian Webster, he read, had now given a description of the room she’d been kept in during her ‘ten-day ordeal’. Not so much a room, more a cupboard, kept in darkness. She could hear distant traffic, as though heavy lorries were passing outside. But she was tied up, mouth taped shut, and couldn’t cry out.

  Beattie read it again. Well, it was true he’d kept her mouth taped shut occasionally, but everything else was a fabrication, another false account.

  ‘Interesting,’ he said. ‘Are they still questioning Cooke?’ Duniec nodded. ‘And I suppose they’ll be giving his factory the once-over?’

  ‘How do you mean?’

  ‘Stands to reason, Stef. This cupboard could be in Cooke’s factory. I’ve just come from there. He’s been laying off staff. The only person left is a secretary, and I doubt she goes anywhere near the shop floor - she might get her hands mucky.’ He glanced again at the paper. ‘Lorries going past . . . sounds just like an industrial estate.’

  ‘I suppose it does,’ Duniec said quietly.

  ‘And if he’s been laying off men, what does that tell you?’

  ‘His company’s in trouble.’

  ‘Dead right. So tell me, young Stef, is Cooke wealthy or skint?’

  ‘Skint, I suppose.’

  ‘And desperate.’

  ‘So he kidnaps someone he knows . . . How could he hope to get away with it?’

  ‘All we know is that he knew the parents; we don’t know Gillian knew him.’

  ‘But he let her see him,’ Duniec protested. ‘He must’ve known she’d give a description - that her father would see it . . .’

  Beattie nodded. Precisely. That was just one of the flaws. Would Cooke really have kept her in his factory, with someone else on the premises all day? How could he feed Gillian without the secretary becoming suspicious? Gillian’s story was badly flawed. But Beattie wondered if the police would see that. He could see what Gillian Webster was doing, and how she was doing it. He just couldn’t account for the why. But he had an idea now, a good idea. He only needed to study the photographs again.

  Meantime, Stefan had obviously been considering all the flaws too.

  ‘Like you say, he must have been desperate.’

  ‘He was desperate all right, he just wasn’t very bright.’ He tapped Duniec’s shoulder with the rolled-up press release. ‘I’ll see you later.’ He winked. ‘Remember the byline
.’

  ‘And the seven-fifty words!’ Duniec called after him. ‘I’ve already made a start!’

  Without looking back, Beattie gave a raised thumbs-up. Duniec watched till he was out of sight, then turned back towards the reporters’ cars. Three men were in a huddle next to a red Porsche.

  ‘Excuse me,’ he said, interrupting them. One man, the one with a proprietorial hand resting on the Porsche’s roof, spoke for all of them.

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘You’re Terry Greig, aren’t you?’

  Greig puffed out his chest. Of course he was Terry Greig, king of the tabloid newsroom, scourge of copy-takers. And here was another tyro looking to make his acquaintance.

  ‘What can I do for you, lad?’

  Duniec didn’t like that ‘lad’, but like Beattie’s ‘Stef ’ he let it lie. ‘Did you see that man I was talking to?’ he asked instead. ‘In the sheepskin jacket?’

  Greig nodded. Little escaped him. ‘I saw him earlier,’ he confirmed.

  ‘Right,’ said Duniec. ‘And have you seen him before? I mean, do you know who he is?’

  ‘Don’t know him from Adam. Football manager, is he? Third Division? They’re the only buggers would wear a coat like that.’

  ‘Except for Brockman,’ added one of the other reporters.

  ‘Except for old Brockie,’ Greig agreed. Then they all laughed, all except Stefan Duniec. When the laughter had died and they were waiting for him to leave, he turned his gaze once more to Greig.

  ‘He wrote up the Ripper case for the Telegraph.’

  ‘No he didn’t, not unless he meant the Belfast Telegraph.’ They all laughed again. Even Duniec’s lips were bent slightly in what might have passed for a smile.

  ‘What’s it all about, lad?’ asked Greig.