by Iain Banks
You pull an easy chair over to where he can see it, near the cold, dark stone hearth. You roll the calor-gas bottle over to the chair, then haul the cylinder up and onto the chair until it rolls down the arms, resting against the back of the seat. The chair threatens to tip over backwards and you push it against the stones and slates of the fireplace so it can't move. Sir Rufus is still trying to work the gag off. You look in your day-pack and pull out the valve with the length of rubber pipe and the brass nozzle attached. You secure it to the top of the calor-gas bottle.
There is a hacking, spitting noise from behind you. "Look! For Christ's sake! What is this? Stop! I'm rich! I can —»
You go over to him, plant one foot on his head and soak the sanitary towel again.
"Ah! Look, I can get money! Christ! No —!"
You clamp the towel over his face again. He struggles for a while before he goes limp. You put another, bigger strip of tape across his mouth.
It takes a while to get the nozzle set just so on the seat of the easy chair. Then, as you are testing the gas-flow, you hear a whistling, retching noise, and turn in time to see twin streams of vomit spurting from Sir Rufus's nostrils and spattering over the floorboards.
"Shit," you say, and go quickly over to him, tearing the tape off his mouth.
He gasps and splutters, almost choking. More of the vomit comes up, rolling out of his mouth and onto the floor. You smell garlic. He coughs some more, then breathes more easily.
When you are sure he isn't going to drown on his vomit and he's starting to make semi-comprehensible noises again, you hold the wispy hair at the back of his head and wind a length of tape right round his head a couple of times, sealing his mouth again.
You put your stuff away in the day-pack as he lies there, moving weakly then more powerfully, the noises coming down his nose faint, then strong; moans followed by what would be shouts if he could open his mouth.
You squat down by the side of the easy chair, where the rubber hose from the calor-gas bottle loops down and round and up before it ends in the brass nozzle. Sitting on the cushion of the easy chair, looking black and incongruous, is the iron grate from the living-room fire. You have tied the brass nozzle to the grate with wire, pointing it up at the scuffed red wall of the gas cylinder about fifteen centimetres above. Sir Rufus's head is about a metre and a half from the easy chair. He has a good view of it.
"Well, Sir Rufus," you say, tugging a pretend forelock and still imitating the sing-song of a Welsh accent. You tap the wall of the cylinder. "I suppose you know what a blevey is, don't you?"
His eyes look like they're coming out of their sockets. His voice, coming down his nose, sounds strangled.
"Of course you do," you say, smiling behind the mask and nodding. "That ship; that LPG carrier of yours — well, your company's — did just that in the Bombay docks, didn't it?" You nod again; a sort of floating, bobbing nod you somehow associate with the Welsh. "Thousand dead, wasn't it? Mind you, they're only Indians, eh? Still fighting it in the courts, are you? Shame these things always take so long really, isn't it? Of course, altering the corporate structure like that, making the ship the only asset of the company; that makes life a bit easier for you, doesn't it? Not nearly so much compensation to fork out, I suppose?"
He coughs down his nose, then sneezes and seems to be trying to shout something.
"Terrifying things, bleveys, they say," you tell him, shaking your head. "Ever wondered what one looks like close up, have you?" You nod again. "I know I have. Well," — you turn and pat the cold, fat shoulder of the gas cylinder — "here's one I prepared earlier."
You turn the knurled wheel on the valve. The gas hisses gently. You take a cigarette lighter from your pocket and hold it to the mouth of the little brass nozzle tied to the grate. You flick the lighter and the gas ignites, a small flickering yellow and blue flame blowing up towards the gas cylinder.
"Oh," you say. "That looks a bit tentative, wouldn't you say, Sir Rufus? You could be here all night!" You turn the valve wheel slowly until the jet is roaring and the fierce yellow-blue flame licks around the curved cylinder wall. "That's better." Sir Rufus is screaming quite hard now and his face is very red. You hope he doesn't have a heart attack before the blevey. That would be… well, just what you'd expect from a man like Sir Rufus: getting out of something through a loophole. Sadly, you can't hang around to make sure.
You take a quick look from the front door with the night sight, your hands shaking as you listen to the distant roaring sound coming from the living room (even though you know it will take a while yet), and the faint, almost childish screams.
It's still raining. You close the door and lock it and walk quickly off into the night.
Five minutes later, as you're about to start the bike and beginning to worry that it hasn't worked, that he's got free somehow, or the gas jet has blown itself out, or his mistress got here earlier than expected and had a key, or something else has gone wrong, the explosion bursts suddenly, fabulously into the night, lighting up the whole rain-swept valley and the clouds above and producing a small mushroom cloud of incandescent gas, climbing and rolling into the darkness. You start the engine with the noise still rumbling down between the Welsh hills.
"Right, Mr Colley, I'd better tell you what's happening here."
"Suits me," I say, with only slightly more bravado than I feel.
Detective Inspector McDunn and Detective Sergeant Flavell are sitting across the boardroom table from me. The Caley's boardroom is directly above the editor's office, set into the slope of the building's castellated roof. It's an impressively raftered room containing a massive, venerable-looking table and seats that look like smaller versions of the one in the Ed's office. The walls are oak panels; they support dully formal paintings of former editors, stern faces glaring down to remind you this is one of the oldest newspapers in the world. Being a floor higher than the Ed's office, the view is even better but, despite the fact I haven't visited here before, I'm not spending too much time looking out the window.
The DI is a dark, heavy-set man with an accent that sounds half Glaswegian and half English. He wears a dark suit and he's carrying a black coat. Young Sergeant Flavell, who's in charge of a cheap-looking briefcase, looks a little like Richard Gere with a thin moustache but spoils the effect by wearing a blue quilted anorak over his suit. Still, at least he's warm. I left my jacket hanging over the back of my seat in the news room and it's cold up here. Eddie suggested we used the boardroom after I went to his office, was introduced to the two cops and told they wanted a word with me.
The DI looks round the room. "I suppose it's all right to smoke in here?" he asks me.
"I suppose so."
Sergeant Flavell spots an ashtray on a window-ledge and goes to get it. The inspector lights a B&H. "Smoke?" he asks me, seeing me watching him.
I shake my head. "No, thanks."
"Right, Mr Colley," Inspector McDunn says in a getting-down-to-business sort of way. "We're carrying out an investigation into a number of serious assaults and murders, plus related crimes. We think you might be able to help and we'd like to ask you a few questions, if you don't mind."
"Not at all," I say, breathing deeply as the cloud of smoke from McDunn's cigarette rolls over the table towards me. Smells good.
"Sergeant, could you…?" McDunn says.
The sergeant takes an A4 manila envelope from his briefcase and hands it to the inspector, who takes out a single sheet of paper. He hands it over to me. "I assume you recognise this."
It's a photocopy of a piece of TV criticism I did for the paper about fifteen months ago. Not exactly my speciality, but the regular guy had come down with an eye infection and I welcomed the opportunity to editorialise a bit. "Yeah, I wrote this," I say, grinning. Hell, my name's at the top of the piece, beside the headline RADICAL EQUALISER?
Inspector McDunn smiles thinly. I read the piece while the boys in blue — well, black and blue — look on.
As I read,
and remember, I feel the hairs on the back of my neck prickle. This hasn't happened for twenty years or so.
I hand it back. "So?" I ask.
The inspector looks at the A4 sheet for a moment.
""Perhaps,"" he quotes from it, ""somebody should make one of these programmes for those of us who're fed up seeing the usual suspects get theirs (corrupt landlords, substance-abusing youths and of course the inevitable drug dealers; reprehensible villains all, no doubt, but too predictable, too safe) and introduce a Real Avenger, a Radical Equaliser who'll take on some alternative hate-figures. Somebody who'll give people like James Anderton, Judge Jamieson and Sir Toby Bissett a taste of their own medicine, somebody who'll attack the asset strippers and the arms smugglers (ministers of HMG included — listening, Mr Persimmon?); somebody who'll stand up against the tycoons who put their profits before others" safety, like Sir Rufus Carter; somebody who'll punish the captains of industry who parrot that time-honoured phrase about their shareholders" interests coming first as they close down profitable factories and throw thousands out of work, just so that their already comfortable investors in the Home Counties and Marbella can make that little bit extra that always comes in so handy darling when you're thinking about trading up to a 7-series Beamer or moving the gin-palace to a more expensive mooring."" The detective inspector smiles briefly, humourlessly at me. "You did write that, Mr Colley?"
"Guilty," I say, then give a small laugh. Neither man laughs uproariously, slaps his thigh or has to wipe tears from his eyes. I clear my throat. "How is that nice Mr Anderton, anyway? Enjoying his retirement?" I sit back in my seat, feeling the carved wood against my back. I'm cold.
"Well, Mr Colley," the detective inspector says, slipping the photocopy of the article into the envelope and handing it back to the sergeant, "he's all right, I believe." McDunn clasps his hands on the table. "But Judge Jamieson and his wife were assaulted while on holiday in Carnoustie during the summer; Sir Toby Bissett was murdered outside his home in London in August, as I'm sure you're aware; and Mr Persimmon was murdered last month, at his house in Sussex."
I'm aware my eyes are bulging. "What? But I didn't know —! There's been nothing about Persimmon — he was supposed to have died peacefully at home!"
"There was a security aspect to Mr Persimmon's murder, as I'm sure you'll appreciate, Mr Colley."
"But you kept it quiet for a month?"
"Needed a D-notice on one of the London papers," the sergeant says, smirking. "But they were cooperative."
And it never got round the journo jungle-network. Shit. Must have been the Telegraph.
"And then on Friday night there, somebody blew up Sir Rufus Carter at his cottage in Wales. Burned to a cinder, he was; they only just identified the body."
I don't react for a moment. Oh my God. "Ah, sorry; what?"
He tells me again, then asks, "Mind if we ask what you were doing on Friday night, Mr Colley?"
"What? … Ah, I stayed in."
Sergeant Flavell looks significantly at the inspector, who doesn't return the look. He's watching me. He makes a strange sucking noise with his teeth, like he's straining something through them. I don't think he's aware he's doing it. "All night?" he asks.
"Ah?" I'm a bit distracted. "Yes, all night. I was… working." I can see he spotted the hesitation. "And playing computer games." I look from the detective inspector to the detective sergeant. "There's no law against playing computer games, is there?"
Christ, this is awful, I feel like I'm a child again, like I'm up before the headmaster, like I'm back being castigated by Sir Andrew for that botched Gulf trip. That was bad enough but this is ghastly. I can't believe they're actually asking me this sort of stuff. They can't really think I'm a murderer, can they? I'm a journalist; cynical and hard-bitten and all that shit and I do drugs and I drive too fast and I hate the Tories and all their accomplices, but I'm not a fucking murderer, for Christ's sake. The sergeant takes out a notebook and starts making notes.
"You didn't see anybody else that evening?" McDunn asks.
"Look, I was here, in Edinburgh; I wasn't in Wales. How on earth am I supposed to get from here to Wales?"
"We're not accusing you of anything, Mr Colley," The DI says, sounding mildly aggrieved. "Did you see anybody else that evening?"
"No; I stayed in."
"You live alone, Mr Colley?"
"Yes. I did some work, then I played a game called Despot."
"Nobody called round, nobody saw you?"
"No, they didn't." I try to remember what happened that evening. "I had a phone call."
"About what time would that be?"
"Midnight."
"And who was that from?"
I hesitate. "Look," I say. "Am I being charged with anything? Because I mean if I am, this is just ludicrous but I want a lawyer —»
"You're not being charged with anything, Mr Colley," the inspector says, sounding reasonable and slightly offended. "These are enquiries, that's all. You're not under arrest, you don't have to tell us anything, and certainly you may have a lawyer present."
Sure, and if I don't cooperate they might arrest me, or at least get a search warrant for the flat. (Gulp. There's a couple of quarters of dope, some speed and at least one ancient tab of acid in there.)
"Well, it's just, I'm a journalist, you know? I have to protect my sources, if —»
"Oh. Was this midnight phone call on a professional matter then, Mr Colley?" the inspector asks.
"Ah…" Shit. Decision time. Now what? What do I do? Fuck it; Andy won't mind. He'll back me up. "No," I tell the inspector. "No, it was a friend."
"A friend."
"His name's Andy Gould." I have to spell his surname for the sergeant, then give them the phone number for Andy's decrepit hotel.
"And he called you?" the inspector says.
"Yes. Well, no; I called him, left a message on his answer-machine and then he called me back a few minutes later."
"I see," the inspector says. "And this was on your home phone, correct?"
"Yes."
"The one that comes with your flat."
"Yes. Not on my mobile, if that's what you're driving at."
"Mm-hmm," the inspector says. He folds the last three centimetres of his cigarette carefully into the ashtray and takes out a little notebook and flips it open to where the page is held by an elastic band. He looks from the notebook to me. "And what about October the twenty-fifth, and September the fourth, and August the sixth, and July the fifteenth?"
I almost laugh. "Are you serious? I mean, are you asking me do I have alibis?"
"We'd just like to know what you were doing on those dates."
"Well, I was here. I mean, I haven't left Scotland, I haven't been anywhere near London, or… I haven't been down south for nearly a year."
The inspector smiles thinly.
"Okay, look," I say. "I'd have to check in my diary."
"Could you fetch your diary, Mr Colley?"
"Well, I say my diary; it's in my lap-top. My computer."
"Ah, so you do have one of those. Is that in the building?"
"Yeah. It's downstairs. I just got a new one but all the files are transferred. I'll —»
I start to stand, but the inspector holds up one hand. "Let Sergeant Flavell do that, eh?"
"All right." I sit down again, and nod. "It's on my desk," I tell the sergeant as he goes to the door.
The inspector sits back in his seat and takes out his B&H packet. He sees me watching him again and waves the packet at me. "Sure you won't —?" he asks.
"Um, yeah, I will, thanks," I say, reaching out to take the cigarette and hating myself as I do it but thinking, Christ, these are exceptional circumstances here; I need all the help I can get; every prop counts.
The inspector lights my cigarette and then stands up and walks to the windows facing out towards Princes Street. I turn in my seat to watch him. It's a blustery day; cloud-shadows and patches of golden sunshine slide quickly ove
r the face of the city, turning the buildings to dark then shining grey.
"Lovely view from here, isn't it?" the inspector says.
"Yeah, great," I say. I'm getting a fairly decent hit from the cigarette. I should give up more often.
"Dare say they don't use this room much."
"No. No, I don't think they do."
"Shame, really."
"Yes."
"Funny thing, you know," the inspector says, peering out over the city to the distant fields of Fife, grey-green under heavier clouds on the far side of the river. "The night Sir Toby was killed, and the morning after Mr Persimmon was found, somebody rang up The Times and claimed they were IRA attacks."
The inspector turns to look at me, face wreathed in smoke.
"Yes, well," I say, "I heard the IRA claimed they killed Sir Toby, but then retracted."
"Yes," the inspector says, looking, seemingly puzzled, at his cigarette. "Whoever it was used the same IRA code-word both times."
"Oh?"
"Yes; that's what's funny, you see, Mr Colley. You and me, we both know there are code-words the IRA use when they phone in a bomb warning or take responsibility for a murder or some other crime. You have to have these codes or otherwise any Tom, Dick or Paddy could call in and claim they were the IRA; close down London, they could, first time. But our murderer… he knew one of the code-words. A recent one."
"Uh-huh." I'm feeling cold again. I can see where this is leading. Brazen it out. "So, what?" I say, pulling on my fag, eyes narrowing. "You suspect an ex-policeman, yeah?"
I am favoured with the inspector's thin smile again. He makes that funny sucking noise with his saliva and moves towards me and I have to lean to one side to make way for him. He reaches past me, flicking some ash into the ashtray, then steps back to the window. "That's right, Mr Colley. We did think of a policeman, serving or not." The DI looks like he is thinking. "Or a telephone operator, I suppose," he says, as though surprising himself.