The Last Darkness (20 page)

Lou looked at the screen briefly. ‘When's the op?'

‘Noonish. Rifkind says it's essential. Lifesaving. I asked for a second opinion. He declined. I feel my rights have been infringed here. Whose heart is it anyway?'

‘Rifkind's not going to mislead you,' Lou Perlman said.

‘Fucking quack. Loses more bloody patients than Scotland lose rugby matches to England.'

‘That many?' Lou said. He looked down at the bedside table, scanning a small bottle of Lucozade, and a paperback novel of the escapist kind, SAS action stuff where men were men and women mattresses.

‘I have a confession,' Colin said.

‘Want a priest?'

‘You'll do just fine. For the record, I'm a wee bit scared, that's all.'

‘You? Scared? I never heard you say anything like that before.'

‘I know, I know. Outdoor adventure type. Mountain-climbing. Kayaking. Freefalling from planes. Fearless bastard, that Colin Perlman. That's me.'

Lou said, ‘There's nothing wrong in feeling afraid.'

‘You say. I'm the one going down the long black chute, Lou. I'm the one whose fucking central pump is about to be explored and surgically altered –' He was out of breath suddenly, sucking air quickly through his open mouth and looking irritated.

‘You okay?' Lou asked.

‘Just a bloody pain in my chest. I get them now and again.' Colin settled again, smiled weakly. He pressed the remote and the TV went off. ‘Lou, I'm sorry, did I snap at you just then? I didn't mean to. It's just I've been lying here taking stock of my life and at some point in the horrible black armpit of a sleepless night I found myself wondering what the fuck I'd actually done with my six decades on this planet. Made pots of loot, fine. Took some downright amazing holidays. But isn't there supposed to be something else? I get the feeling there's a contribution I haven't made, only I don't know what it is. Am I talking about something spiritual that's missing? Is that it?'

‘Maybe,' Lou said. A new Colin, he thought.
Spiritual
? Superman in the Versace business suit, wealthy overachiever, seeks true meaning of life in his hour of darkness.
Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death
. Lou supposed it came to us all, that narrow-angled introspection: what has my life added up to? Your face in the mirror becomes unfamiliar. Even the backs of your hands, your fingernails. You don't know who you are any more.
Pots of loot and amazing holidays:
why hadn't Colin mentioned his prime achievement, the love of Miriam?

‘I regret I never had kids,' Colin said. ‘Maybe what's bothering me deep down. No kids, therefore no stake in immortality. No continuance. I wanted children. Just couldn't have them. Did I ever tell you that?'

Lou shook his head. ‘Never.'

‘Something wrong with my fucking seed, would you believe? Miserly sperm-count. A horny old bastard like me and I don't have enough in the sperm division to make babies. God's not fair, Lou.'

‘Sometimes I think God's a merchant in the souk, Colin. You want something, you pay a price. You got a good marriage and a life of enviable prosperity. In the debit column, no kids.'

‘Plus a dicky ticker.'

‘That too.'

‘You don't believe this shite, do you? That there's some celestial set of scales, and everything's measured?'

Lou shrugged. ‘The older I get, the less I know what I believe.'

‘Law and order, though. You believe in that?'

‘It's my business.'

‘And bad people deserve to get punished?'

‘I go along with that.'

‘Such uncomplicated convictions.'

‘They work for me,' Lou said. He picked up the bottle of Lucozade and looked absently at the label, and wondered if Miriam carried around regrets about the failure to have kids. He wanted to ask why they hadn't adopted, but he knew he had no right to pry. Maybe Colin was too proud, too macho to admit, by the public act of adoption, that he couldn't impregnate his wife. A man's vanity.

‘They gave me some Valium half an hour ago,' Colin said. ‘My brain feels like that homemade jam our mother used to make. Remember that – gooseberry stuff, gooey and sweet? Maybe that's why I'm boring you with the story of my disappointment. Besides, you didn't come here to listen to me
kvetch
. You're here because of Lindsay.'

‘You saw it on TV.'

‘Yes. Apparent suicide.'

‘He was murdered, Colin.'

‘Murdered? I don't believe it.'

‘Don't tell me. He was the least likely candidate for homicide you can imagine. Right?'

‘Totally.'

‘How well did you know him?'

‘Not very.' Colin Perlman looked at the window where grey light lay on the panes and the wind stroked the branches of trees. ‘He lived a boring little life, Lou. Why anyone would kill –'

Lou Perlman sighed. ‘All I hear about Lindsay is how fucking dull he was.'

‘But nice. Don't forget nice.'

Perlman swatted the air as if at a pestering fly. ‘Nice, nice, so where the hell does
nice
get me?'

‘You've got a look on your face you must use when you're interrogating a suspect, Lou. You're frowning like a fog coming down. Suddenly I'm terrified of you.'

‘Right. Tell me this. Why did you invite this nice boring little guy to dinner at your house?'

‘You've been talking to Miriam.'

‘She volunteered the information.'

‘As I remember it, we had a client in common. Somebody Lindsay represented – the name slips my mind – had invested in one of those offshore funds I used to manage. We talked a couple of times. I was doing the polite thing by asking Lindsay to dinner. Also I was schmoozing him to send more business my way. It's really not very interesting, Lou. It's the kind of fiscal bullshit that always bores you.'

‘Can you remember the client's name?'

‘It's going back a few years, Lou. What difference would it make if I remembered?'

‘Who knows. Tell me about Nexus.'

‘Nexus?'

‘It doesn't mean anything to you?'

‘Is it supposed to?'

‘It's an organization Joseph Lindsay once belonged to.'

‘Oh,
that
. I have an extremely vague memory of it, but I can't for the life of me think why … Maybe they bombed me with requests for a donation. What makes you think
I'd
know anything about Joe Lindsay's affiliations anyway?'

‘Assumption. You knew Lindsay. Plus your old pal Artie Wexler named the organization for me.
Plus
the fact that Nexus was busy in our community for a time. Connections, Colin. I'm in the business of making daisychains.'

‘Be wary of assumption, old son,' Colin said. ‘Wexler was close to Lindsay. They go back to undergraduate days together. He's the one you should be asking these questions.'

‘I already did. He wasn't much help.'

‘He's ageing badly. He's puckered and jumps at the sight of his own shadow. Plus he farts a lot, and leaves an old man's whiff in the air. Like mouldy bran. I always expect to see him coming down the road with a cane. So where do you go from here, Lou?'

Lou Perlman shrugged. He'd half-hoped Colin might have illuminated a dark corner, a small candle flame at least. But no. And so the questions piled up like boxcars in a freight-train wreck, and nobody had sent in the heavy equipment to clear the line.

He laid a hand on his brother's shoulder. ‘I hope it all goes well for you today, Colin.'

‘I appreciate that. I wish you'd smuggled me in something to eat. A Bounty bar, yummy. They starve you before they operate.'

Rifkind appeared in the doorway. White coat, stethoscope. His big domed head reminded Lou Perlman of an eccentric scientist in a sci-fi film he couldn't name.
The Invasion of …
whatever.

‘Are you upsetting my patient, Lou?'

‘Just wishing him good luck.'

Rifkind smiled, patted Lou's arm. ‘What's luck got to do with it? I'm the best in the business.'

Colin said, ‘Any man who blows his own fucking trumpet is a goddamn liar.'

Rifkind laughed quietly. ‘I have testimonials.'

‘Only from the survivors,' Colin said. ‘The dead can't speak.'

Lou Perlman moved towards the door. He stopped, turned, looked back at his brother. Rifkind was listening to Colin's chest; the stethoscope joined the two men like an umbilical cord.

‘Did you remember the name of that client?' Lou asked.

Colin Perlman said, ‘Totally gone. Maybe another time, eh? If I make it through the hands of this white-coated assassin.'

Lou raised one hand in a slow gesture of goodbye. He went out into the hallway and back to the reception area. He was surprised to see Sandy Scullion in the centre of the room, his beige raincoat stained by rain.

‘Lou,' Scullion said. He looked bleak.

‘If it's bad news, don't tell me, Sandy.'

‘It's not great.'

Perlman said, ‘Fucking winter and bad news. They go hand-in-hand, don't they?'

‘It would seem,' Scullion said, and frowned.

Perlman realized how rarely he'd seen DI Scullion, a family man of sunny disposition, make his face into a frown.

30

Rain fell across the swimming pool. Patterns on the surface of water, circles disappearing and reforming, transfixed Perlman. Some crimes shocked him even now; after all his years on the force, he still found certain acts of the human species outside his own compass. Acts, no, the word was too neutral. Outrages, yes, abnormal, misbegotten outrages at the extreme end of the behavioural spectrum where all the black and grey shades congregated. Where light was absent.

Confounded, he watched bamboo sticks float on the pool. He was aware of activity all around him, and yet removed from it. Medics, cops, forensics people, police photographers, all the buzzing and humming that came in the slipstream of a killing – but this one was different from most murder-scenes these people had catered, the buzz was muted, shouts shaded into whispers, whispers into silence. In this place dismay had accumulated a great weight, and with it came a hush.

Sidney Linklater approached and stood at Perlman's side. ‘Beats me,' he said. ‘It really does.'

Perlman didn't speak. He watched water slip through the holes in the bamboo cylinders.

Linklater cleaned his glasses with a rag. ‘A sword,' he said. ‘I think a curved blade, maybe ten to twelve inches long. I'll know more later. I have to …' His sentence was a track that faded out.

Perlman turned and looked towards the back of the house. He saw Scullion, and a woman in a maroon raincoat and matching hat, Detective-Superintendent Mary Gibson, round-cheeked, forty-something, usually dressed in Laura Ashley. She looked out of place, like somebody who'd been interrupted in her greenhouse, or during a game of canasta. But that was superficial. She was tough, and she saw through anything bogus. Perlman liked her.

‘A sword, Sid,' he said. ‘What makes somebody choose a fucking sword?'

Linklater shrugged. ‘Because he had one handy?'

‘Not nearly enough. The word monster comes to mind.'

Perlman walked towards the house. He nodded at Mary Gibson. Sometimes she reminded him of a schoolteacher in a rough district, doing hard battle all day long with tough kids. Her makeup was immaculate, her short brown hair brushed neatly back at all times. She had a doctorate in psychology, Perlman remembered. Her husband was a functionary in the Inland Revenue.

‘Some things just knock the feet out from under you, Lou,' she said.

‘Aye, don't they,' Perlman said. He caught a whiff of her cologne, a bit on the peachy side, just enough to remind you of better seasons and happier places. ‘Sid says a sword.'

Mary Gibson said, ‘I think he's right. You knew Artie Wexler, Sandy's been telling me.'

‘A little,' Lou said. ‘From the old days.'

‘Anyone or anything come to mind?'

‘Nothing out of the ordinary.' Perlman lit a cigarette. Rain dampened the paper. ‘Where's Ruth Wexler?'

‘Indoors. Sedated. Can I have one of your cigarettes, Lou?'

‘Sure. Help yourself.' He offered Mary Gibson the packet. She took a cigarette and he lit it for her. Sedated, the only way for Ruth to be. But she had to wake some time and the horror was going to detonate in her face.

‘First one in months,' Mary Gibson said, and dragged deeply.

‘Good time for bad habits,' Perlman said.

‘Ruth was the one who discovered the body. She came down looking for her husband at around eight, as far as I can gather, she became hysterical, alerted her neighbours …'

Discovering Artie. Discovering your husband like that. Perlman thought of the rich suburb all around him, the walls and electronic gates designed to keep out the scruff and the mad and the disenfranchised, the elaborate security systems configured to help you sleep at night. Nobody's safe. Not in this world. Not in this swank little Southside corner of Glasgow with its green enclaves and high-tech alarm systems. A swordsman in the dark. He could hear the rumblings of fear behind the wired gates and steel-shuttered windows as one hears the first deep stirrings of an earthquake.

Okay, he hadn't exactly liked Wexler, but who would wish such a termination on him, so vile an ending? He felt drained, angry with the kind of anger that has nowhere to go but twist back in on itself like a reptile. He heard it hiss in his head, this serpent
thing
that inhabited a place beyond language.

Sandy Scullion said, ‘The body's inside, Lou. We moved it out of the rain. You want to see it?'

‘Not especially.'

‘Neither did I, Lou.'

Perlman stared through broken glass patio doors into the interior of the house. Figures moved in the gloom. A flashbulb popped a couple of times. I don't want to go in there. Perlman's mind drifted to Lindsay, the cocaine-filled rubber shoved into his mouth,
here, swallow that
. Now Artie Wexler, sword-split, cleaved, sinking in the water of his pool.