Requiem for Rab

by Marie Treanor

  Laughter caught in my throat. Covering it, I called out, “Who is it?” While I ran back to scoop up my nightshirt so carelessly discarded by my ex-husband.

  The answer came back muffled but slightly irritable. “It’s Menzies, Lili—are you all right?”

  “Minger?” said Rab in disgust. “What’s he doing here?”

  “Shut up and put your pants back on.”

  “What for?” Rab enquired.

  I ignored him. “Hold on!” I called to Menzies, yanking the shirt back over my head.

  When I opened the front door, Menzies stood there alone, smiling at me, a bottle of wine held out like an offering.

  “You’re ready for bed,” he observed, in what I can only describe as a lascivious manner.

  Flushing, I muttered, “I was asleep.”

  “And then she was fucking,” said Rab helpfully from the living room. I opened my mouth to hiss at Rab to shut up, then closed it again with an effort.

  Rab stood with his arms folded, his back resting against the open living room door, stark naked from the waist down, his semi-erect cock inevitably drawing all eyes. At least all the eyes that could see him, which were, in effect, mine. When Menzies walked into the living room, he actually brushed his hip against Rab’s tackle. My mouth fell open in shock, but Menzies never even paused.

  “Mind how you go,” said Rab. I glared at him, and his lips quirked. “What?”

  Again, I shut my mouth.

  Menzies said, “Sorry to come round so late. I just wanted to make sure you’re all right.”

  “She was doing fine till you turned up,” said Rab, strolling across the room.

  “I’m okay,” I said hastily.

  “Did you sort anything out in Glasgow?”

  “No, not really. I just spoke to Rab’s friend. He told me about some stuff—bad stuff—that had been happening to him.”

  “Drugs?”

  “Drugs!” repeated Rab, affronted.

  “No, not that.”

  “Is he—Rab—okay?”

  Rab sat on the chair arm beside me and winked. I stared at him, suddenly stricken all over again.

  “I don’t know. I don’t think so.”

  Menzies looked sympathetic. “Fancy a glass of wine?”

  “No thanks, Menzies. To be honest, I’m not feeling very sociable right now. And we’ve got a big day tomorrow. I really need to get some sleep.”

  I could swear a hint of irritation flashed behind the disappointment in his deep blue eyes. I couldn’t believe I was rejecting him. Two days ago, even last night, all I’d thought about was getting him into bed, and now…

  “Of course you do,” Menzies agreed. “Though actually I thought things went far better than expected tonight. You finally seemed to be getting into Mary’s character.”

  Actually, I think I’d just stopped trying to impress him. The result was more natural.

  “Tomorrow, first thing, I’d like to concentrate on the love scenes,” he added.

  “I’ll bet you would,” Rab muttered, just as a mobile phone went off.

  Menzies delved into his pocket and clapped his slim phone to his ear. “Menzies… Hi Marty… Ah, actually no, I’m at Lili’s, so I won’t make it tonight after all…Okay, see you in the morning.”

  Something didn’t quite ring true there. Particularly, as Menzies stood up as soon as he disconnected. “I’ll leave you to sleep, Lili—sorry I disturbed you.”

  “So am I,” said Rab with feeling, and glided his hand down my breast where it lingered, stroking, tenderly pulling my nipple between his fingers. My breath caught.

  Menzies stared at me so hard that for a moment I was afraid he could actually see Rab caressing me. His gaze flickered downward, caught, no doubt, by my hard, elongated nipple straining against my night shirt. But before I could move to cover myself, the doorbell rang again.

  Menzies’s eyebrows rose in interrogation. I shrugged my ignorance and, to my annoyance, he went out into the hall, calling, “Who is it?”

  “Police.”

  Chapter Five

  I stared at Rab, my stomach lurching. “Oh shit,” I whispered. “What if they’ve found…?”

  But I wanted them to find his body, didn’t I? And his killers. So why was the idea suddenly so abhorrent?

  “Sh-sh.” Rab straightened and put his arms round me. I buried my face in his shoulder, briefly, and then I heard the unmistakable accents of the Glasgow officers I’d spoken to this morning. Menzies showed them into the living room, almost as if it was his.

  I lifted my head, and Rab dropped his arms, though he maintained hold of my hand. I squeezed his fingers convulsively.

  “Sorry to disturb you so late, Mrs. Connor.”

  “Graham,” snapped Menzies, although I hadn’t noticed and still didn’t care about the slip—which I was fairly sure was deliberate anyway.

  “What’s happened?” I demanded with foreboding. “Have you found Rab?”

  “Not yet,” said Inspector McInnes and, in my inexplicable relief, I sagged against Rab. I didn’t want it to be over, I realized. For some reason I knew that when his body was found, Rab’s ghost would vanish for good, and I would have lost him all over again.

  He’d made it right, and now I wanted him all the time.

  In fact, in a blinding flash of self-knowledge, I realized I’d never stopped wanting him, even when it was all wrong and I was so angry and hurt I could probably have murdered him myself.

  “The thing is,” McInnes explained, “it just came to us that maybe we’d been asking the wrong questions. You said you hadn’t seen your husband…”

  “Ex-husband,” Menzies interpolated.

  “…in two years. Maybe we should have been asking have you heard from him.”

  I hesitated, staring at his fingers curling around mine. At last I said, “Not in any meaningful sense.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” Rab demanded.

  “None of this makes sense!” I exclaimed.

  The others looked slightly taken aback. Rab grinned.

  “So how did you hear from him?” the younger officer, Sergeant Lovat, asked. He looked eager.

  I shrugged, hating to disappoint him. “I didn’t. They were only dreams.”

  “Then he hasn’t called you? Left any messages? Sent you anything through the post?”

  “Not that I know of.” I frowned. “But I was staying down south. I only came back up here last week. There could be something at the London flat…?”

  I couldn’t quite keep the interrogation out of my voice as I looked at Rab. However, he only shook his head.

  “Is there someone who could check?” the older policeman asked.

  I nodded. “I can contact my neighbour in the morning. I don’t really want to wake her at this time of night.”

  “No point,” said Rab laconically.

  “I’m sure he wouldn’t have sent anything to me,” I translated. “Are you thinking of the disks containing his games?”

  “Anything like that.”

  “I don’t know what he did with them,” I said, staring at Rab.

  “Bank,” said Rab without interest.

  “Tony Ianucci said he—Rab—stored them in a bank but told the company that he always kept them with him. So…what would anyone get out of killing Rab?”

  McInnes pounced. “Killing?”

  “In a worst case scenario,” I added hastily. “They might have killed him to get the disks—only they wouldn’t have been with him.”

  “They got disks,” Rab contributed. “But they weren’t the ones they wanted. Partials, little bits of games with no cohesion. Crap, in other words.”

  “That’s no help!”

  “True,” McInnes agreed. “This your new boyfriend?”

  “Yes,” said Menzies with flattering pride.

  “No,” said Rab with undisguised revulsion.

  Baffled by the sudden change of subject, I didn’t say anything at all, particularly since Ra
b placed my hand firmly over his naked cock, and I could feel it growing.

  “You’ve had a lot of success since you split up with your husband,” Lovat observed, looking curiously at the strange angle of my hand.

  I pulled it back, just as Menzies came to stand proprietarily beside me. Unfortunately this meant he also stood on Rab’s bare toes. “Some,” I said vaguely.

  “Oy!” said Rab, pushing at Menzies. His hands went straight through the other man’s shoulders. I stared and, because I couldn’t help it, reached behind Menzies to touch him. I found warm, firm, naked flesh. Rab’s taut, solid buttocks.

  I closed my mouth. My hand fell nervelessly back to my side.

  Sergeant Lovat said, “Would you say the two are connected in any way? Your divorce and your success?”

  Numb, I shook my head, watching as Rab emerged in front of Menzies to stand facing him. Then he blew directly into Menzies’s ear. Reaching up to scratch it, Menzies actually slapped Rab’s face. I laughed without meaning to, startling everyone. The policemen looked at me very closely, and I sobered, squashing the sudden urge to hysteria.

  “You wouldn’t say you were better off without him?” Lovat enquired.

  “No,” I whispered.

  Rab smiled at me. Maybe I was crying, because he seemed a bit misty.

  “No?” McInnes looked faintly amused. “Then you don’t really understand the motivation of your character in Queen of Scotts?”

  I blinked. “What motivation?”

  “She murdered her husband, didn’t she?”

  “In our play, yes, but trust me, Rab’s no Darnley. And before you ask, Bothwell is just a part to Menzies, too.”

  “Does Rab have a new girlfriend?”

  I glanced instinctively to where I’d last seen Rab, but he wasn’t there. “I don’t know. A few, I think. Rab’s good fun—girls always liked him. But Tony said none of them were serious. Look, you don’t really believe this is some sort of delayed crime of passion, do you?”

  “What I believe is immaterial right now. I don’t even have a body.”

  “That’s funny,” said Rab in my ear. “Neither do I.”

  I swung round toward him, but there was no one there. Scouring the room, I found no sign of him. Not even his jeans that had lain in a pile in the corner where he’d kicked them. And yet, while the conversation went on around me, a low, discordant hum of voices, I realized I could still feel him. His body had gone, but something of him remained—insubstantial, formless but unmistakably the quirky, comforting, hugely warm spirit of my ex. I could almost imagine his touch on the back of my neck, and reached round to cover his hand with mine. There was only my own skin, and yet…

  “Mrs. Connor?”

  “Mmmm?” I glanced distractedly toward Inspector McInnes. I could tell it wasn’t the first time he’d addressed me.

  “I said, has anyone approached you from Head Games? Or anyone claiming to represent them?”

  I shook my head.

  “Any strangers trying to approach you by phone, or accost you in person?”

  “Apart from the double-glazing salesmen?”

  “Inspector, she’s a well-known actress,” Menzies pointed out. “People approach her all the time.”

  “Anyone not obviously a fan,” Lovat corrected.

  Again, I shook my head. “Look, I’m tired, guys. Unless there’s anything else urgent, I’d really like to go back to sleep.”

  “Sorry to disturb you,” said Lovat in a perfunctory sort of way.

  “Would you like me to stay a little?” Menzies asked, concern in his deep, moving voice.

  I touched his arm in quick gratitude, and shook my head dumbly. There was no future for Menzies and me. Not because he was out of my league, but because if the events of the weekend had shown me anything, it was that I was still hung up on Rab. Dead or alive, he was all I’d ever wanted.

  ***

  Our float for the traditional Fringe parade looked really good. The scenery guys had done a wonderful job providing a castle-like backdrop—old stone and wood, a couple of genuine swords propped up against it. Portraits of Mary, Queen of Scots, Lord Darnley and the Earl of Bothwell took pride of place, providing a nice contrast to the actors in their contemporary power suits, moving around the large, impressive mahogany desk.

  We attracted a lot of attention, and I threw myself into the role with enthusiasm. It was the only way I could escape the fearful churning of my stomach, the only possible way to stop thinking of Rab and pass the time until he next dropped in. If he ever did. He’d made it right between us—maybe that was the only reason he’d been allowed to hang around in the world of the living. After all he said he was pulled to me…

  Besides, leaving Rab out of it, tonight was the opening of the play and I owed it to my colleagues to give it my all. I tried, with a sort of feverish intensity that somehow suited my role. Reality and acting came together in a way that impressed even Marty.

  Menzies was delighted with the love scenes and with the rather belated dress rehearsal we’d squashed into the morning before the Fringe Parade. Now he lorded it on the float, managing to combine the confident, modern business man with old-world courtesy. And yet beneath that simmered a brutal, Machiavellian and predatory figure. He was magnificent. I almost wished I loved him.

  As the floats representing the many varied shows in this year’s Festival Fringe made their stately way down Prince’s Street, I lifted my face proudly into the oncoming wind. It cooled my cheeks, soothed me. Actually, the break from rehearsals to greet the cheering people—our potential audience—who lined Prince’s Street, was good for all of us.

  I even found myself looking out for people I knew among the sea of faces. A few seemed vaguely familiar, but I saw none of my friends. There were a lot of children, a lot of obvious tourists and a comfortable looking middle-aged lady in a white leather coat who smiled at me.

  Since she was among the vaguely familiar, I smiled back, graciously lifting my hand. And that was when it hit me.

  Rose Colvin, Medium. She was the medium whose website Rab had been looking at last night.

  Had he contacted her, then? Or was her presence mere coincidence? My hand froze as I realized in terror the float was about to pass and I’d lose her forever. But she began to walk in time with us, weaving her way among the people to keep up. She nodded in an amiable, vaguely comforting sort of a way, and yet I sensed she was sizing me up. She showed no interest in the other cast members, not even Menzies who stood head and shoulders above the rest of us in fame as well as experience and talent.

  I walked forward blindly—to do what, I wasn’t quite sure. Leap off the float and grab her… I needed to speak to her. But as soon as I moved, she lifted her hand, turned her back and disappeared into the crowd.

  ***

  Opening night nerves surrounded me almost palpably. In my case, they’d got lost in the welter of confusion surrounding Rab’s ghost and his murder. I wondered if he could just hang around the flat after we discovered his killers. Play computer games all day, make love to me all night… Only somehow I knew his corporeal state, even around me, wouldn’t last. Chances were, that phase had already passed with last night’s short, hot loving and all that went with it. But if I felt his presence sometimes, it would make me smile.

  “All right, Lili?” It was Jen, already dressed and made up for our first scene. She played Mary Flemming, my best friend. Like the rest of the female cast, we were in the shared dressing room, trying not to look too often at our watches.

  I finished tying my unruly chestnut hair up into a knot at the back of my head and glanced at Jen as she perched on the table in front of the mirror to face me.

  “Sure. You okay?”

  “Nothing we can do now,” she said philosophically. “It’s a sell-out. Just pray we don’t fall on our collective arse. How’re things with you and Menzies?”

  I shrugged. “We’re not right for each other. Nothing will ever happen there.”


  Jen’s enhanced eyebrows rose. Glancing around her, she lowered her voice. “You mean it hasn’t already? I have to say I’m relieved.”

  “Relieved?” I dragged my eyes away from the mirror to stare at her. “I thought you were all in favour of me getting it together with Menzies.”

  “With anyone nice,” Jen said ruefully. She hesitated. “To be honest, I’m not sure any more how nice Menzies actually is… Last night, was he at your flat?”

  “Briefly. Along with the police.”

  “Well, I think it was a set-up. We were all in the pub when Marty phoned him and there were two journalists with us. Menzies knew that. He’d told Marty to phone him in an hour. I’m pretty sure it was just so he could say he was at yours and the information would come out that you were an item. If he actually was there, you wouldn’t deny it, either. Had any journalists on the phone?”

  “There were a couple of messages on the machine. I haven’t answered them yet.” It made sense of his slightly strange behaviour last night, only— “Why would Menzies bother setting that up?”

  Jen rolled her eyes and leaned closer, almost hissing at me. “Face it, Lili, you’re the star of this show. The main attraction. Local girl comes home a star! And Menzies, however distinguished his past career, is now on the wane. Romance with you is his boost back to the spotlight. Why else would he be doing a crappy Fringe show?”

  “Back to his roots? And it’s not crappy!”

  “It would be without Menzies,” she said frankly. “Or without you. Look, don’t get me wrong, Lili, he probably does fancy you. Lots of blokes do, if you’d only notice. But if he can’t have you, he’s certainly prepared to make use of rumours that he does. In fact, he’s prepared to invent them. Not trying to spoil your big night here, but I don’t want you hurt again. You have to know what’s going on and you’ve been a bit…distracted this weekend. All the time, in fact.”