“Ach,” he said, dismissing the need for any ministrations of sympathy.
“No, that must have been a horrible shock. Believe me, I’m becoming something of an authority. And I’m sorry for pressing the idea that he might have been in on the Voss thing.”
“It was a fair point at the time.”
“Still sorry. It was just that when you mentioned his appearance on the news, I thought . . . well, he said some rather odd things, and I wondered if what he said might have been some kind of message or code after all. That the . . . bad guys . . . knew what he meant because he had been, I don’t know, somehow one of them.”
Parlabane sat up, that sad smile on his lips and in his eyes again, like when he had spoken about first meeting Lafferty.
“‘I haven’t had time to catch up on developments at this end of the arena’,” he recited. “‘It’s not as if I’ve been sitting around listening to my favourite music, although a lot more people should.’”
“Yes, that was it, that was what he said.”
“It was a message,” he stated firmly, causing her to sit up and even to hold her breath. “Donald would have been trying to work out what the fuck happened all night. Examining the scene, the grounds, talking to the cops . . . all that stuff. Trying to explain how someone so successfully circumvented all of his security systems, trying to deduce what failure had allowed four people to be slaughtered in cold blood. At some point he’d have found out who was being held, and we can only guess at what else he might have discovered. But whatever he suspected, he could see that he was being manoeuvred into the frame, and unlike McInnes he couldn’t preempt the accusation. He knew they had him done up like the proverbial kipper, and very possibly that the culprits had heavy-weight police connections. I doubt if even he suspected they would kill him, but he knew he was going down, alongside the four stooges.
“He needed an advocate, someone on the outside. He needed someone to start searching for what really happened at Craigurquhart House before the conspirators had covered their tracks and completed the job of framing up their scapegoats. Someone he could trust, someone who would believe him. Someone with a track record for tenacious, exhaustive and frequently illegal methods of investigation.”
“Someone in black, perhaps?”
“These are just my working clothes. Try breaking into someplace in faded denims and a white T-shirt and you’ll be counting the seconds before you hear sirens. But yes, you’re right.”
“And someone whose phone number he didn’t have.”
“Correct. So he got a message across the only way he could, a message he knew only I would understand – though he probably knew he was also inviting the bad guys to burgle his flat and rifle through his record collection.”
“So what does it mean? What was his favourite music?”
“Lately? No idea. Once upon a time, I don’t know, The Skids, The Boomtown Rats, The Police, Undertones.”
She felt the pain returning behind her eyes. He was regressing once more into inscrutability.
He reached for his duffel bag and rummaged inside it, then produced a battered and aged-looking white cassette, minus cover, which he threw to her.
“Clue was in what he said beforehand. ‘At this end of the arena’,” Parlabane explained. “Skids had a song called Arena. Donald loved it. We both did. Well, not the whole song. Verses and chorus were ploddingly awful, and the lyrics were among the most excruciatingly pompous, pretentious and downright stupid that Richard Jobson ever wrote – and believe me, that’s saying something.”
“Richard Jobson?”
“Yes. For it was he. Self-styled Aryan-Olympian-Dunfermlian post-punk poet, fashion model, ubiquitous TV star etcetera etcetera. Like I said, most of the song is absolute bollocks. But after the second chorus, it gets interesting. Play it.”
Nicole put the tape into the hefty but purportedly portable cassette and CD player on the mantelpiece, momentarily nervous that Parlabane’s geriatric tape would give it the audio equivalent of a sexually transmitted disease. He had cued it up at the right place, and she pushed up the volume as the sound began to break through.
She glanced briefly at him, but he was staring fixedly at the machine, either urging her attention or aware of the awkwardness of not knowing where to look when two people are concentrating on simply listening to something.
The recently abused chorus was ending, and the song broke down to just a synth sound and a tentative, creeping bass for a few bars. The synth riff was repeated as a rhythm guitar surfaced somewhere, a dry sound like helicopter blades chopping overhead. Then a lead guitar entered quietly, snaking around the synth and growing gradually louder in the mix as the hypnotic melody circled again and again and drums began to pulse in the distance, getting ever clearer, ever nearer.
She felt a thrilling sense of anticipation as the orchestration expanded and each of the instruments grew louder, her desire for the song to reveal its hidden secret enhanced by the dramatic and teasing build-up. The tension reached breaking point and the toms suddenly gave way to snare, the lead guitar screaming in, full-blooded, to take up the riff introduced by the synth, a crashing wave of sound and emotion. Somewhere she could see the man in black, younger than her, swaying and waving in a bacchae of sweating bodies beneath the swelter of stage lights.
There was a voice, somewhere, lost amidst the storm. She was about to reach for the volume control again when she realised that, like what had gone before it, the voice would grow stronger and louder in passing cycles. Other voices joined it on each pass, their tune now defined but the lyrics still agonisingly obscured.
With the next repetition, she thought she had made out what was being said, and it was a possibility that stopped her breath until the next pass confirmed it.
The voices were singing the same words over and over.
Over and over.
“All the boys are innocent.”
“Well, if this isn’t what he meant, it’s a hell of a coincidence,” Nicole admitted.
“Yeah. Either that or I’ve picked the wrong song and someone called Albert Tatlock is getting away with murder.”
“What?”
“Never mind. Skids joke. Let’s get going.”
Nicole shifted in her seat, straining momentarily against the belt to glance up at the buildings as the car passed beneath them, the looming glass towers slalomed by the motorway incongruously futuristic amidst the dignified age of the terraces, domes and spires. The night was crisply still and clear, the waters of the Clyde black, motionless and reflective as the vehicle crossed a hundred feet above.
She felt sharply awake despite the late hour and the unusual rigours of a long and unprecedentedly distressing day, brightly alive to the beauty of the city by night. As they passed through the centre of it, she felt they had the place to themselves, so deserted were the roads, pavements, buildings and even the motorway.
She looked across at Parlabane, his profile composed and determined as he held the wheel and fixed his eyes upon the road, occasionally glancing down at the speedometer. He had maintained a steady thirty until reaching the motorway, and once upon it stuck rigidly to the fluctuating limits despite the inviting emptiness of the highways. She had wondered for a while whether he compensated for his repertoire of recklessness by being the world’s most boring driver, then remembered the importance of avoiding the attentions of the law. If people with major police connections were going to be out looking for her, it probably wouldn’t help to have some traffic cop say her description matched the passenger of a guy he booked for speeding the other night. Hey, here’s his name and address.
There was a cool reality about her situation now, a feeling that it was actually happening, made less frightening by the sense that it was now something she was doing, rather than something that was being done to her. It was the travelling that did it. The discussions, the devices, the revelations had all been enclosed in the cocoon of that absurdly twee flat, just words and stories about
events going on elsewhere. In there it was disturbing, certainly, but somehow removed; like she could go to bed, get up tomorrow, walk out the front door and get on with her life, while all that nastiness happened to someone else. But the moment she took action was the moment she accepted it, the moment she became part of it, and when she left the flat, the feeling that her old life was gone hit her hard in that first breath of cold wind as they emerged from the close into the back court.
The grass underfoot; the steam of his breath in the half-light; the sudden, stupidly startling noise of water down a drainpipe above them; the smell of the old Sirocco’s interior.
This was not a dream.
He had slung her bag in the boot and then opened the passenger door for her, pushing the seat forward and telling her to lie along the back, out of sight. Once they were well clear of her neighborhood he had stopped the car and allowed her to move up front. The radio had been burbling away since they drove off, but she had barely been aware of the songs, jingles and ads, as it wasn’t on loud enough to compete for attention with the raging current-affairs debate going on inside her head.
Parlabane turned the volume up, obviously recognising a cheaply dramatic burst of brass as heralding a news bulletin.
“ . . . with Graham Forbes.
“The main story tonight, of course, the brutal and bloody escape of the four men accused of murdering Roland Voss, during which two police officers and a driver were killed. Thomas McInnes, his son Paul, Robert Hannah . . .”
Nicole turned to Parlabane. He said nothing, his face poker-set, only a small swallow in his throat betraying any reaction. The radio newscaster’s smooth tones were replaced by a highland accent speaking over a crackly phone line from nearer the scene.
“The men were being transported from Edinburgh to Peterhead Prison, where, ironically, they were being taken for security reasons. Details are sketchy at this stage, but it is believed that their prison bus went out of control and turned on its side near the village of Strathgair, after colliding with an abandoned car. Police believe that the four men took advantage of the accident to overpower their armed guards, stealing their weapons before making their escape. It is suspected that one officer may have died from injuries sustained during the crash, but police say that the bodies of the second officer and the driver were found handcuffed to the bus, having been shot through the head in a manner chillingly similar to the murders of Roland Voss’s bodyguards on Sunday.
“It is believed the fugitives are now in possession of several firearms, and police are warning the public that these men are extremely dangerous and must not be approached at any cost. With discovery of the escape coming at such a late hour, officers have been sent door-to-door in the surrounding area to warn local residents who may have gone to bed before the news broke.”
“Reaction to the escape has been extreme,” rejoined the newsreader, “from police and government officials still shell-shocked by Sunday night’s atrocities. There have been calls for the army to be brought in to hunt the men down, and a pledge from Scottish Secretary Alastair Dalgleish that no resource shall be spared in bringing the four to justice.”
“I will be insisting on a full inquiry into how this atrocity was allowed to happen,” began a rasping, upper-class voice, the sound of film winding in press cameras wheezing loudly in the background. “But for now the priority is the apprehension of these . . . animals,” the voice spat. “For that is all they are. And like animals they will be hunted down – by all means available and by all means necessary.”
The Sirocco coasted on into the night, the lights of Glasgow fading behind. Parlabane said nothing, his face still stone-set, Nicole guessing at the babbling frenzy of calculation, projection and conjecture going on behind those locked and focused eyes.
She stared ahead at the dotted white lines being gobbled up by the car, emotional voices echoing through her head, the hum of the engine and the burr of tyres on tarmac somehow silenced by their own constancy.
Someone tried to kill you today.
He’s dead. Aw hen, aw pet.
Like animals they will be hunted down.
Scum four must die.
All the boys are innocent.
II
This is Iron Age,
Steel blue Medusa eyes,
If I could scratch a name,
That would outlive hers,
That would make me feel that I belong here,
To everything and not a fraction,
To everything and not an age.
– Billy Franks, Age
SIX
Of course, he had to go.
There really was no choice in the matter, and the sadly ironic thing was that it had been Voss who saw to that. He had them by the balls, there was no denying it, demanding that they fall on their swords or he would run them through.
Some might say that they were biting the hand that fed them, but that would be to make the same mistake as the deluded and arrogant Dutch fool. Men like Voss, intoxicated by the self-made mythology of their own success, seemed to think that they were beneficently visiting prosperity upon a country, the choice of which nation to honour in their gift. They believed they were the engine of their own achievements, and that the era, location and political climate were incidental, a painted landscape in the background of their magnificent portrait.
In truth they were merely actors. There were roles that needed to be played, but it was up to men like himself to decide who should play them. “The part of the arch-conservative media tycoon will tonight be performed by a stand-in, as Mr Roland Voss is indisposed.”
It was we who had made him, thought Alastair Dalgleish bitterly, still smarting from the stinging gauntlet-lash of betrayal. He winced at the fiery taste as he sipped at his whisky and stood, staring from the window of his study, the chair at his desk uncomfortable during such moments of agitated reflection. The brown liquid glinted tauntingly in the crystal glass, its volume militantly refusing to deplete itself no matter how many drops he braced himself to swallow. And it was nothing to do with it being early morning; the stuff was undrinkable night and day. Damn the image-makers. He longed for the soothing cool of a nice, long G&T.
We made him.
There was a limited amount of success to go round. A finite number of major roles. Voss didn’t take, Voss didn’t demand, Voss didn’t earn. Voss was given. Voss was allowed. They didn’t need him, they just needed someone to fill the role, perform a function. Someone.
Anyone.
Voss thought that his editorial support of the Conservatives was what ensured him special consideration, allowed him to expand his media interests so unhindered. What he failed to understand was that those newspapers were going to be saying very much what the Party wanted them to, whoever owned them, as that was always going to be a condition of being green-lighted to buy them. What Voss’s monstrous ego had obscured from his view was simply that if it hadn’t been him, it would have been someone else.
The arrogance of the man.
That was what had really upset them. If it had simply been greed it would have been different. Wanting an even bigger slice of the pie when you’ve already vomited from over-eating was ideologically understandable. Perhaps a compromise could have been reached, some sop to acknowledge that the rattle of Voss’s sabre had been heard and duly noted.
But it hadn’t been about money, business or politics. It had been about power. Voss had known exactly the consequences of what he was asking them to do; not only for themselves, but for the party. For the two of them it was electoral poison – in the highly unlikely event that their constituency branches didn’t deselect them anyway. And far worse, the poison would be all the more bitter as the lethal draught was transmuted from the elixir that was ready to revive the party in the polls.
If they did not comply, Voss would destroy them anyway. His revelations would demand their resignations from the cabinet, amid a scandal that would be the coup de grace for the government’s scarred a
nd wounded credibility. Damage limitation was a negligible concept; even a repeat of the Scott spin tactics would be futile. “They acted in good faith” wasn’t going to cut it on this one. And there would be no finite period of penitence on the backbenches before rising phoenix-like into the cabinet again. They would not be forgiven for the devastation caused.
Things had changed since the glorious Thatcher era. The free-spirited philosophy of “anything goes” that came with a massive majority was but a cherished and distant memory. And it was nothing to do with Nolan. In the Conservative Party in the Nineties, there was only one rule on “standards in public life”: don’t get caught.
Consequently, they couldn’t even tell the boss about the threat.
Voss didn’t really need what he was asking from them. The Dutchman wasn’t the only one well-placed to carve out a share of the new market, and Dalgleish had wondered what impact it might have on the reputation of his newspaper group, given that its sales pitch was from a prominent kiosk on the moral high ground. Dalgleish of all people knew that Voss had always kept that aspect of his European interests conspicuously quiet.
So what had enraged him was the realisation that Voss might not particularly want what he was demanding of them. The realisation that that wasn’t the issue. He just wanted the satisfaction of exercising power. Of arbitrarily deciding to destroy a career or bring down a government, as if they were gladiators whose life or death depended upon the whim that turned Caesar’s thumb up or down.
Voss was merely amusing himself by playing a game, and the game was called God. He cared nothing for the real people whose lives were affected by his power-mongering and political masturbation. People like Michael Swan. People like Alastair Dalgleish.
So what did he think, that they were impotent little pawns on his board? That they were his creatures, to do with as he pleased?
Yes, indeed, it was about power. And by God they had shown him the true meaning of the word.
Country of the Blind Page 14