Country of the Blind

by Brookmyre, Christopher

  “Brave woman,” Parlabane said.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Well anyone demanding rights for those guys – other than their right to be taken forth from this place and hanged by the neck until dead – is gaunny get some kicking in the press, just doing her job or not. I take it she was pretty young?”

  “Yeah,” Jenny said, remembering. “I only saw her from a few yards away but she looked a wee bit like her mammy probably didn’t know she was out. How did you know?”

  “She’ll be from some major firm. They’ll be happy enough to be involved in this case, for the publicity, but none of the big names will want to be seen sticking up for these guys, not at this stage anyway. I mean, given the climate of bloodlust and retribution over this thing, most firms would see their “defence” role as little more than the formality of delivering their clients into the hands of the sentencing judge.”

  Oh no. He was off.

  “Maybe they’ve got something, who knows,” he continued. “But it sounds to me like they’re not sure themselves, otherwise it would be one of their famous names talking to the cameras. Instead they’ll send in someone junior – ideally photogenic – who can be ‘young and idealistic’ in pursuing her cause. They’re angling. If it works out, the big man takes over and they wheel her out every so often because the cameras like her. And if it goes nowhere, she can be ‘inexperienced and naive’ in chasing up a blind alley, and the big man can join in the condemnation of the baddies with everyone else.”

  Jenny glanced up at the clock. She was in real danger of being sucked into his vortex. Time to eject.

  “Well, tell you what, Scoop,” she said. “I’ve got to go. Why don’t you tune in and find out. I can’t. I’ve just spotted a formidably solid-looking wall down the corridor and I could really do with banging my head against it.”

  Parlabane sat back on the settee, having wandered around the room for fully five minutes in a second vain attempt to locate the VCR’s remote control before admitting defeat and making the gruelling six-foot journey to the telly to start the tape recording. Pulling his legs up on to the settee, an indulgent luxury of Sarah’s absence, he felt a lump under one thigh and proceeded to fish the errant electronic device out from between two of the cushions.

  “Good afternoon,” said the newsreader, in a stern tone of voice that suggested it should be anything but; He is dead! He is dead! Anyone caught not mourning to be reported to Conservative Central Office immediately! Parlabane recognised the anchor-woman as one of those media phenomena that just showed up everywhere, like some kind of human corporate logo. Fashion shows, chat shows, consumer relations and even the news, an abject lack of discernible talent, intelligence or personality having proven no impediment to a rocketing career. He distantly wondered for a moment whose cock she had had to suck to enjoy such success, then realised that on this sort of scale, as Hicks would have suggested, it was probably Satan’s.

  “Inside information may have played a part in the murders last night of Roland and Helene Voss,” she led off, subtly relegating the two dead bodyguards to the appropriate proletarian status of Total Fucking Nobodies. “It has emerged today that the four men apprehended at the scene of the crimes may have been assisted by someone connected with the security operations at Craigurquhart House.”

  Parlabane snorted in mild amusement at her pronunciation, “Craigurkew-hart”, Right up there with “Tannadeechee”.

  The programme cut to the location reporter, one of their big-story first-team, no doubt dispatched to replace last night’s “Scottish affairs correspondent” as this was of national importance and therefore had to be presented in a Home Counties accent and a trenchcoat. He was standing somewhere in Princes Street Gardens. It was nowhere near L&B HQ, but having the Castle in the background was presumably obligatory for broadcasts from Edinburgh – in the same way that, in London, a backdrop of Buckingham Palace wasn’t.

  “This latest dramatic development followed the arrival of a lawyer representing one of the suspects, Thomas McInnes. Nicole Carrow, of Glasgow law firm Manson & Boyd, gave police a letter she claims was written by her client more than a week before the murders, in which he says he had received vital information about the security arrangements at Craigurquhart House, and that this information would be used to plan a burglary.”

  The image cut to a petite figure in a light blue skirt and jacket, walking down the steps of the police building, being swarmed upon by an insect-like infestation of multi-limbed creatures – arms, hands, booms, mics and cameras. The purpose of the chaotic footage was, of course, to underline just how bloody important this news programme was when she appeared talking exclusively to them in the next shot.

  The autumn breeze blew her straight black hair erratically around her pale, girlish face as she spoke, nervous but determined. Parlabane realised then how flustered Jenny must have been; even if Carrow wasn’t one hundred per cent exactly the policewoman’s type, she was certainly cute enough to have normally elicited comment. Such declarations of desire were a running joke between them; Jenny indulged in the occasional ostentatious pastiche of dykiness when in Parlabane’s company, and he steadfastly made no reaction to it. Neither was ever quite sure who was taking the piss out of who.

  “I received an envelope from my client at the beginning of last week,” she began, English accent, surprisingly husky voice for her age and size, “and was told he would collect it again today. If he did not, I had instructions to open it. Inside wuh . . .” She cleared her throat, brushed some straggly hair from one eye. “Excuse me. Inside was a letter from my client stating that he had been in receipt of information from someone he believed to be connected to the security staff at Craigurquhart House. But most importantly, he states that this information was being used to plan a burglary, as he had been informed that, and I quote, ‘someone very rich would be staying there from September the twenty-first to the twenty-fifth’.

  “I have presented this letter to the police because I believe it proves not only that my client’s motive for breaking into the house was robbery, but also, that neither he nor his accomplices knew the identity of this ‘very rich’ guest. Nonetheless, the police have persisted in refusing me access to my client under Prevention of Terrorism powers, even though what I am in possession of casts a great deal of doubt upon the notion of a plot to assassinate Mr Voss.”

  “So you believe Thomas McInnes and his gang simply intended to murder and rob whoever they found in the house?” the reporter interjected, suddenly having some sort of Jeremy Paxman delusion.

  “No,” she said, fixing the off-camera interviewer with a scolding, don’t-be-so-fucking-stupid look, “and as a matter of fact I don’t believe my client murdered anyone. Right now we’re seeing an awful lot in the way of hand-wringing and hysteria and very little in the way of evidence, and until those proportions change I will be persisting in that belief.”

  “Ha-ha!” Parlabane clapped his hands in appreciation. “Get that up ye, ya poe-faced bastard,” he muttered, momentarily distracted from the nagging thought that something she said earlier was bothering him.

  “However,” continued the poe-faced bastard, now straight-to-camera once more in his editorialising, This Is The News voice, “the police take a different view of what Miss Carrow’s letter implies. Detective Superintendent David Garloch, who has been coordinating an investigation involving police from two different Scottish regional forces, believes it could be a deliberate red herring.”

  Cut to a tired, middle-aged man in a crumpled suit, looking like he could use a sleep, a coffee and a shower. He was sitting at a desk in an open office area, uniformed officers buzzing around looking serious and busy. The next shot was closer up, without such ambitary distraction. He spoke in tones intended to suggest he was a reasonable man trying to remain mannered and calm in the face of unnecessary frustration, like it wasn’t enough he had all this to sort out without some daft tart insisting on rocking the boat.

 
“I appreciate that in light of how dramatic and distressing last night’s events may have been for many people,” he said, “any new development may be bound to cause great excitement, but it is vital that we keep our feet on the ground. In this climate of uncertainty, it would be easy to imagine Miss Carrow’s apparent revelation as a twist in the tale, but in fact it merely confirms what our investigations have been increasingly leading us to believe – that some kind of security leak facilitated last night’s tragic events. And indeed, we are already involved in efforts to establish the source of the leak right now. However, it strikes me as disingenuous to suggest that a few handwritten words can in any way clear the suspicion of a terrorist motive.”

  “And why do you believe that?”

  “Well, Miss Carrow’s paragraphs do not actually prove the suspects didn’t know the identity of whoever would be staying at Craigurquhart House. Indeed it strikes me that by going on about ‘some rich person’ it sounds very much like McInnes was deliberately attempting to cover up the fact that they did know, and you have to ask yourself why that might be. You have to ask yourself why Mr McInnes would deposit such a letter with his lawyer prior to taking part in this atrocity. It seems to me the only reason could be as a damage limitation exercise in the event that he was caught. If he has written a letter claiming he intended merely to rob some anonymous rich guest, and that he did not know that rich guest’s identity, it would suggest that Mr Voss was not a premeditated target, as well as protecting whoever might be behind the operation – by suggesting that no-one was behind it.”

  The policeman held up his hands in an explanatory gesture. “At this stage,” he continued, “we cannot for certain say that this wasn’t just a very bloody and ruthless attempted robbery, but nothing we have seen gives us any reason to rule out a terrorist motive either, and for that reason we can’t afford to relax our position. These men have already managed to murder one of the most powerful businessmen in the world. If there is a terrorist group behind them, then it is a very merciless and very resourceful one, and if this is a demonstration of their capabilities, I think it is vital to the security of not just our own country that we do everything in our power to hunt them down.”

  Fair enough, thought Parlabane, but something was still discomforting him, some half-formed realisation that had got lost along the way, an irritation like trying to remember in which movie he had previously seen some minor-role actress – and whether she might have taken her clothes off in it.

  He jogged the remote control to picture-search Rewind, watching the figures and talking heads suddenly turn black and white, and jiggle, newsreel-style, at jerky high-speed. The cop disappeared, replaced by the reporter, replaced in turn by Nicole Carrow, Parlabane all the time trying to remember what had sparked his truncated revelation.

  There, he suddenly thought, watching her hand place hair into her eye in a sharp, precise movement. He hit Play and the image slowed, lurchingly, restoring itself to colour a moment before sound returned.

  “. . . ot, I had instructions to open it. Inside wuh . . .”

  Sudden look of uncertainty in the unobscured eye, glancing quickly off and back before she cleared her throat and then swept the offending strands clear. Offending strands that hadn’t been bothering her for the four or five seconds they had already been sitting there.

  “Excuse me. Inside was a let . . .”

  Something was wrong. Something had slightly knocked her off balance.

  He jogged into reverse once again, that hand plonking the hair faithfully back into her eye a second time.

  “. . . open it. Inside wuh . . . Excuse me. Inside was a letter . . .”

  She had given something away, or rather was afraid she had.

  “. . . uctions to open it. Inside wuh . . . Excuse me. Inside waw . . .”

  He listened to the accent, the inflections and emphases.

  “. . . it. Inside wuh . . .”

  He had it. She was about to say “inside were”, not “inside was”. That’s what was bothering him. She had talked about an envelope first, not a letter.

  She had something else. McInnes had given her something else.

  The tape played on, Parlabane’s blind wondering about what more had been in Carrow’s envelope giving way to wondering why no extracts from the letter were being thrown up in any tediously overblown computer-animated graphic sequence to accompany the report, or at least read out by the poe-faced bastard in the trenchcoat. The only explanation for this was that they hadn’t been given a copy, and as he couldn’t imagine the cops sticking any kind of injunction on the letter and then blabbing on about its contents to the cameras, it must have been Carrow who denied them.

  Why?

  At this stage, with no evidence on the table, the name of the game is publicity. Why not give the media a copy, get it right into the public domain? Unless she was holding something else back, too.

  “. . . as disingenuous to suggest that a few handwritten words can in any way clear the suspicion of a terrorist motive,” said Garloch again.

  “And why do you believe that?”

  “Well, Miss Carrow’s paragraphs do not actually prove that the suspects didn’t . . .”

  He sat up straight, hit Pause, leaving the policeman open-mouthed and palms-up on the screen in front of him, trisected by two vibrating lines of interference.

  A few handwritten words, thought Parlabane. Miss Carrow’s paragraphs. Never mind what else she was holding back – she hadn’t even let the cops see the full text of the letter.

  Sarah rested her head on Parlabane’s chest as she lay along the settee, eyes on the TV screen, attempting to digest the latest assault in his chili-laden campaign to defoliate their colonic flora. He lowered his head slightly as he sat, enough for his nose to touch a few stray strands of that cascading red hair, and breathed in her smell as she wriggled cosily against him. She was losing herself in the video; he was losing himself in her. Again.

  “Surprised to see you here,” she had said when she arrived back from work and found him in the kitchen, thoughtfully stirring a voluminous pot. “I thought you’d be up in Perthshire causing trouble, and asking awkward questions.”

  “Who, me?” he asked, feigning indignant disbelief, arms wide like an Italian full-back who’s just decapitated a winger. They were both making light of it, tiptoeing their way around a dangerous obstacle. She had to joke because she didn’t want to sound too accusatory, or to lay her worries on too thick. He had to joke back to assure her that he wasn’t offended and that she had nothing to worry about anyway.

  And she didn’t, he had gradually come to realise.

  “There’s no angle,” he said as they ate. She had brought the Voss thing up, probably hoping that he might benefit from a certain amount of catharsis, and hoping equally that what she heard would reassure her. “I’m interested, of course, but really just from a spectator’s point of view. I spoke to Jenny today, and it sounds like they’re under martial law.”

  “So they’re really going for this terrorist thing? What do you reckon about it?”

  “Couldn’t say. That lawyer on the news knows something more than she’s letting on, but what she’s said doesn’t change the fact that these guys went in very well prepared and took out four people in an incisively clinical exercise. They knew what they were doing, and whether it was for purposes of robbery, revenge, terrorism or their idea of a laugh on a dull Sunday night seems of secondary importance to me.”

  “So if they knew what they were doing so much, how come they all got caught?”

  “Don’t know. Cops haven’t said yet. In fact, there’s a lot of things the cops haven’t said, but I can’t say their reticence either surprises me or makes me suspicious. Whatever went on up there, there’s some bad bastards involved, and I’m more than happy for it to be the cops who find out who they are and what they’re about. Whether it’s cops and robbers or cops and terrorists, I don’t care. Either way it’s cops and very dangerous people
, and that’s my principal consideration.”

  His eyes were on the screen, but he wasn’t watching the movie. He’d seen it a dozen times and he’d see it a dozen more when he would be paying attention. But what was weird was that it wasn’t the Voss murder that was distracting him; it was the fact that the Voss murder wasn’t distracting him.

  Sure, there were a few tantalising contradictions and enticing inconsistencies in the information being issued, but somehow none of it seemed enough any more to have him sliding down the Batpole and into action. Not off this settee with the scent of Sarah’s hair in his nostrils, the warmth of her shoulders in his lap and his left palm rested on her left breast, pressed into place against her T-shirt by her own right hand.

  He realised that all of this meant he was changing; indeed had changed, and he wasn’t even sure whether he should feel sad about that. He felt a confusing mixture of excitement, envy and comfort when he thought about Nicole Carrow, recklessly playing cat-and-mouse with the cops, driven by a belief in some unknowable cause, running on adrenalin and hiding her fear behind a glistening sheen of arrogance. Excitement at recognising someone he once knew, someone that age, who had shown the same raw, enervating energy and promise, with a glint in the eye that said “I’ll find out all your secrets, but you’ll never know mine.” Envy that that person still had so many exciting paths to explore back then; at the thought of what was to follow. And comfort at the thought that someone from the Resignation Generation actually looked like picking up the torch.

  “We’re going to fuck you up the arse,” said the government, all the time. In his adolescence the collective response was: “Come ahead and try it, ya bass. See what you get.” These days they would just drop their trousers then drop some eckies so that their acquiescent complicity was a fun and trippy experience.