The Last Darkness

by Campbell Armstrong

  ‘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?’

  Bannerjee opened his mouth reflexively to reply, then he smiled. ‘A what, Lou?’

  ‘It doesn’t matter.’

  Perlman rode down in the lift, listening to Muzak, a sanitized version of ‘Take the “A” Train’: sacrilege.

  His nerves screeched. Colin, he thought. Stupid fucker.

  Outside, he called Sandy Scullion’s direct line at Force HQ.

  ‘I was about to send a search party out for you,’ Scullion said. ‘What news?’

  ‘Let’s meet. I’ll pick you up in Pitt Street in five minutes.’

  ‘You’re doing the driving?’

  ‘Does that send a chill through your balls, Sandy?’

  ‘Are you sure you have a full licence?’ Scullion asked.

  ‘Funny man.’

  40

  Marak stood outside an electronics shop in Maryhill Road and stared at some fifty TV screens transmitting the same image in the big front window. Black rain soaked him, but he didn’t feel it. He was engrossed by the newsreel footage unfolding mutely behind glass. The cul-de-sac, the police cars, the ambulance, he recognized it all. He wanted to hear what was being said by the blonde female with the microphone, so he entered the shop.

  … lack of any motive behind the vicious slaying of Mr Wexler. Detective-Superintendent Mary Gibson said she was shocked by the brutality of the decapitation. Strathclyde Police have set up a confidential hotline … Marak tuned the rest of it out, he’d heard enough, but the images fascinated him a while longer and he felt paralysed by the dreamy motion of light and colour. He thought he might somehow make an escape into the secret world behind the screen, a cathode-ray reality where everything passed in a blur.

  A sales assistant, a young man in white shirt and black tie, asked if he could be of any help.

  ‘Help?’ Marak asked.

  ‘Was there something you wanted to see? There’s a special offer on Sanyo portable tellies this week. Dirt-cheap, lovely colour. Very sharp.’

  Marak shook his head. He didn’t want anything. He backed away. The young man seemed surprised by Marak’s sudden movement.

  ‘You won’t get a better price anywhere in the city, I give you my personal guarantee, sir.’

  Marak retreated to the street. He stood in the rain and shivered. His shoes leaked. His socks were wet and clung to his skin. He was aware of the sales assistant watching him from behind the glass. He walked away with his head down, not absolutely sure where he was going. The flat was nearby somewhere, he only had to find the right street. But dare he go inside the building? What if the cop who’d chased him had tracked him down? Or what if Ramsay had betrayed him for reasons too obscure to be understood? How did things work in this city? How were transactions between men conducted?

  Wexler had been murdered. Lindsay was dead.

  Rain slithered into his eyes and he blinked. He dabbed his beard with his scarf. He felt he was turning into water. Everything he’d come here to do was being taken away from him. Somebody was dispossessing him.

  He slowed his walk. Kids stood in the shelter of closes and smoked. They observed him pass. A stranger, bearded, a foreigner, somebody to mock. He heard them laugh behind his back. When he reached Braeside Street he climbed the stairs of the tenement and he paused, listening to the drum of his pulses. These nerves. He took his knife from his pocket, slipped it out of the leather sheath. He concealed the weapon in his hand, and continued to go up. When he reached the top floor he saw nothing out of the ordinary.

  He unlocked the door and went inside the flat.

  In the living room Ramsay stood with his back to the bars of the electric fire. The big man, Ramsay’s companion, leaned against the wall and looked sullen. Ramsay’s tuft of yellow hair appeared waxy. He held out an envelope which Marak didn’t take.

  ‘He’s got himself a knife,’ Ramsay said.

  ‘Aye, I see,’ the big man said.

  ‘Handsome thing,’ Ramsay said. ‘Victor Morris, eh?’

  They watch me all the time, Marak thought. Wherever I go.

  ‘Put the blade away now, Abdullah,’ Ramsay said. ‘Take the envelope.’

  Marak shook his head. ‘The police know what I look like.’

  ‘How do you come to that conclusion?’

  ‘One of them recognized me today,’ Marak said.

  ‘You sure?’

  ‘Of course I’m sure.’

  Ramsay glanced at his companion a second. ‘Buncha wankers, Marak. They know sweet fuck all. Don’t let them bother you. Put the knife away and take the envelope.’

  ‘How do they know what I look like? How could they possibly know? I went to that street in a taxi, and I had to turn around and leave again immediately when I saw all the police cars. One of the policemen chased me on foot. Why? How did he know me?’

  ‘Listen. A cop sees a stranger in a taxi coming into a street where there’s a big crime, you can bet your arse he’s going to be suspicious, especially when that somebody in a taxi makes a quick exit. Stands to reason. It looks suspicious, Abdullah.’

  ‘Maybe so. Maybe you’re correct. I don’t know. They might even know where I live. They could be here at any minute –’

  ‘Abdullah, they don’t know where you live or they’d be here now, a whole fucking posse of them.’

  Marak didn’t move. ‘What is the point of another envelope? Another picture, another name, what is the point? Lindsay died before I made contact with him. And now somebody murdered Wexler. Who killed him? How do you explain these things, Ramsay? Two names from you, both dead.’

  ‘I can’t explain. You’re foaming at the mouth, friend. Screw the bobbin. Get a grip, for fuck’s sake.’

  Marak wiped the back of his sleeve across his lips. He noticed the big man gaze at the knife with more than casual interest. He thought: All this way to fail. Everything was spinning away, moving beyond his outstretched hand.

  ‘Did you tell the police about me?’ he asked.

  Ramsay said, ‘Think about that for a minute. You’re my meal-ticket, Abdullah. You’re my luncheon-voucher, for Christ’s sake. Why would I drop you in the shite? Take the envelope. Do whatever you have to do. This is the last one, Abdullah.’

  Marak stared at the manila envelope. He remembered pressing a cold wet cloth to his mother’s fevered forehead, and Dr Solomon saying: the prognosis is gloomy. The motion of the fan, the bottle on the bedside table that contained aloe vera oil the nurses rubbed into her skin to keep it from drying out, the solitary lily, replaced daily, in a thin-stemmed vase. The memories that had filled him with sorrow and fogged his vision before – he needed them now, he needed to be in touch with the details of the hatred that had brought him here in the first place. Remember the horror. Remember remember. A man dies in a dry street on a blue day under a hot blood-orange sun. His hand touches yours as he enters the last darkness. He slips away from you, his hand goes limp in your fingers, there are figures in doorways, they rush towards the fallen man. And you, Marak, you try to keep the crowd away even as you hold your father’s body. But people converge in shock, and women scream and cry, and little children stare numbly, there is always death here, always the gun, always. The music of this land is the music of the automatic rifle. Tak-tak-tak-tak. This is what you need to bring back in all its repugnance.


  Otherwise, you will not be strong.

  Ho chalashim lo matslichim. The weak win nothing.

  ‘Take the bloody thing, Abdullah,’ Ramsay said, pushing the envelope forward.

  Marak looked into Ramsay’s eyes. ‘This is the last one? You’re sure?’

  ‘Aye. Then you can bugger off all the way home, Abdullah.’

  Marak took the envelope. He didn’t open it. My last chance, he thought. What lies in here might be my redemption. And then home. He realized he hadn’t thought about the return journey. He understood that the machinery set in place for his outward trip would play no role in his return. It had probably been dismantled instantly for security reasons. It was the nature of these allegiances that they came into existence for only a brief time.

  He’d be on his own. But it didn’t matter. He’d make his way back.

  ‘Have you ever hated, Ramsay?’ he asked.

  ‘A few people have regretted crossing my path,’ Ramsay said.

  ‘No, you don’t understand. I’m talking about the kind of hatred that consumes you. It never stops. You nurture it. You’re addicted to the feeling. When you lose sight of it, you’re empty.’

  Ramsay shuffled his feet, said nothing.

  Marak thought: he grasps only localized hatred, specific moments of loathing. He doesn’t carry it day to day, minute to minute, like an incurable ill in the blood. You have to hate with the certainty of sunrise, or the waxing and waning of moons. He had an image of his mother slicing melons on the long plain wood table at the back of the house in a neighbourhood near HaNassis Avenue, and his young brothers sitting and joking, and his sister combing her long black hair. Such a pretty girl. And his father, yes, presiding in his benign way over this regular family occurrence, this simple business of slicing fruit, sharing and laughing. The dinners of spinach and haricot beans, sometimes called espinakas kon avas. Or Chicken Polo, rich with apricots and cinnamon. He could even taste the apricots; a remembrance of summer here in this city locked by the deadbolt of winter. He remembered the cable car between Stelle Maris and Bat Galim, the strolls along the promenade.