The Last Darkness (28 page)

Bannerjee opened his mouth reflexively to reply, then he smiled. ‘A what, Lou?'

‘It doesn't matter.'

Perlman rode down in the lift, listening to Muzak, a sanitized version of ‘Take the “A” Train': sacrilege.

His nerves screeched. Colin, he thought. Stupid fucker.

Outside, he called Sandy Scullion's direct line at Force HQ.

‘I was about to send a search party out for you,' Scullion said. ‘What news?'

‘Let's meet. I'll pick you up in Pitt Street in five minutes.'

‘You're doing the
driving
?'

‘Does that send a chill through your balls, Sandy?'

‘Are you sure you have a full licence?' Scullion asked.

‘Funny man.'

40

Marak stood outside an electronics shop in Maryhill Road and stared at some fifty TV screens transmitting the same image in the big front window. Black rain soaked him, but he didn't feel it. He was engrossed by the newsreel footage unfolding mutely behind glass. The cul-de-sac, the police cars, the ambulance, he recognized it all. He wanted to hear what was being said by the blonde female with the microphone, so he entered the shop.

…
lack of any motive behind the vicious slaying of Mr Wexler. Detective-Superintendent Mary Gibson said she was shocked by the brutality of the decapitation. Strathclyde Police have set up a confidential hotline …
Marak tuned the rest of it out, he'd heard enough, but the images fascinated him a while longer and he felt paralysed by the dreamy motion of light and colour. He thought he might somehow make an escape into the secret world behind the screen, a cathode-ray reality where everything passed in a blur.

A sales assistant, a young man in white shirt and black tie, asked if he could be of any help.

‘Help?' Marak asked.

‘Was there something you wanted to see? There's a special offer on Sanyo portable tellies this week. Dirt-cheap, lovely colour. Very sharp.'

Marak shook his head. He didn't want anything. He backed away. The young man seemed surprised by Marak's sudden movement.

‘You won't get a better price anywhere in the city, I give you my personal guarantee, sir.'

Marak retreated to the street. He stood in the rain and shivered. His shoes leaked. His socks were wet and clung to his skin. He was aware of the sales assistant watching him from behind the glass. He walked away with his head down, not absolutely sure where he was going. The flat was nearby somewhere, he only had to find the right street. But dare he go inside the building? What if the cop who'd chased him had tracked him down? Or what if Ramsay had betrayed him for reasons too obscure to be understood? How did things work in this city? How were transactions between men conducted?

Wexler had been murdered. Lindsay was dead.

Rain slithered into his eyes and he blinked. He dabbed his beard with his scarf. He felt he was turning into water. Everything he'd come here to do was being taken away from him. Somebody was dispossessing him.

He slowed his walk. Kids stood in the shelter of closes and smoked. They observed him pass. A stranger, bearded, a foreigner, somebody to mock. He heard them laugh behind his back. When he reached Braeside Street he climbed the stairs of the tenement and he paused, listening to the drum of his pulses. These nerves. He took his knife from his pocket, slipped it out of the leather sheath. He concealed the weapon in his hand, and continued to go up. When he reached the top floor he saw nothing out of the ordinary.

He unlocked the door and went inside the flat.

In the living room Ramsay stood with his back to the bars of the electric fire. The big man, Ramsay's companion, leaned against the wall and looked sullen. Ramsay's tuft of yellow hair appeared waxy. He held out an envelope which Marak didn't take.

‘He's got himself a knife,' Ramsay said.

‘Aye, I see,' the big man said.

‘Handsome thing,' Ramsay said. ‘Victor Morris, eh?'

They watch me all the time, Marak thought. Wherever I go.

‘Put the blade away now, Abdullah,' Ramsay said. ‘Take the envelope.'

Marak shook his head. ‘The police know what I look like.'

‘How do you come to that conclusion?'

‘One of them recognized me today,' Marak said.

‘You sure?'

‘Of course I'm sure.'

Ramsay glanced at his companion a second. ‘Buncha wankers, Marak. They know sweet fuck all. Don't let them bother you. Put the knife away and take the envelope.'

‘How do they know what I look like? How could they possibly know? I went to that street in a taxi, and I had to turn around and leave again immediately when I saw all the police cars. One of the policemen chased me on foot. Why? How did he know me?'

‘Listen. A cop sees a stranger in a taxi coming into a street where there's a big crime, you can bet your arse he's going to be suspicious, especially when that somebody in a taxi makes a quick exit. Stands to reason. It looks suspicious, Abdullah.'

‘Maybe so. Maybe you're correct. I don't know. They might even know where I live. They could be here at any minute –'

‘Abdullah, they don't know where you live or they'd be here now, a whole fucking posse of them.'

Marak didn't move. ‘What is the point of another envelope? Another picture, another name, what is the point? Lindsay died before I made contact with him. And now somebody murdered Wexler. Who killed him? How do you explain these things, Ramsay? Two names from you, both dead.'

‘I can't explain. You're foaming at the mouth, friend. Screw the bobbin. Get a grip, for fuck's sake.'

Marak wiped the back of his sleeve across his lips. He noticed the big man gaze at the knife with more than casual interest. He thought: All this way to fail. Everything was spinning away, moving beyond his outstretched hand.

‘Did
you
tell the police about me?' he asked.

Ramsay said, ‘Think about that for a minute. You're my meal-ticket, Abdullah. You're my luncheon-voucher, for Christ's sake. Why would I drop you in the shite? Take the envelope. Do whatever you have to do. This is the last one, Abdullah.'

Marak stared at the manila envelope. He remembered pressing a cold wet cloth to his mother's fevered forehead, and Dr Solomon saying:
the prognosis is gloomy
. The motion of the fan, the bottle on the bedside table that contained aloe vera oil the nurses rubbed into her skin to keep it from drying out, the solitary lily, replaced daily, in a thin-stemmed vase. The memories that had filled him with sorrow and fogged his vision before – he
needed
them now, he needed to be in touch with the details of the hatred that had brought him here in the first place. Remember the horror. Remember remember. A man dies in a dry street on a blue day under a hot blood-orange sun. His hand touches yours as he enters the last darkness. He slips away from you, his hand goes limp in your fingers, there are figures in doorways, they rush towards the fallen man. And you, Marak, you try to keep the crowd away even as you hold your father's body. But people converge in shock, and women scream and cry, and little children stare numbly, there is always death here, always the gun, always. The music of this land is the music of the automatic rifle. Tak-tak-tak-tak. This is what you need to bring back in all its repugnance.

Otherwise, you will not be strong.

Ho chalashim lo matslichim
. The weak win nothing.

‘Take the bloody thing, Abdullah,' Ramsay said, pushing the envelope forward.

Marak looked into Ramsay's eyes. ‘This is the last one? You're sure?'

‘Aye. Then you can bugger off all the way home, Abdullah.'

Marak took the envelope. He didn't open it. My last chance, he thought. What lies in here might be my redemption. And then home. He realized he hadn't thought about the return journey. He understood that the machinery set in place for his outward trip would play no role in his return. It had probably been dismantled instantly for security reasons. It was the nature of these allegiances that they came into existence for only a brief time.

He'd be on his own. But it didn't matter. He'd make his way back.

‘Have you ever hated, Ramsay?' he asked.

‘A few people have regretted crossing my path,' Ramsay said.

‘No, you don't understand. I'm talking about the kind of hatred that consumes you. It never stops. You nurture it. You're addicted to the feeling. When you lose sight of it, you're empty.'

Ramsay shuffled his feet, said nothing.

Marak thought: he grasps only localized hatred, specific moments of loathing. He doesn't carry it day to day, minute to minute, like an incurable ill in the blood. You have to hate with the certainty of sunrise, or the waxing and waning of moons. He had an image of his mother slicing melons on the long plain wood table at the back of the house in a neighbourhood near HaNassis Avenue, and his young brothers sitting and joking, and his sister combing her long black hair. Such a pretty girl. And his father, yes, presiding in his benign way over this regular family occurrence, this simple business of slicing fruit, sharing and laughing. The dinners of spinach and haricot beans, sometimes called
espinakas kon avas
. Or Chicken Polo, rich with apricots and cinnamon. He could even taste the apricots; a remembrance of summer here in this city locked by the deadbolt of winter. He remembered the cable car between Stelle Maris and Bat Galim, the strolls along the promenade.

Those were sweet, sweet times.

And always laughter. Laughter was what he remembered most.

Except for the gunfire.

He opened the envelope. He looked inside.

Ramsay said, ‘Listen, eh, Marak … Good luck, chief. Good luck.'

41

Leo Kilroy said, ‘I told the cardinal to his face: Red isn't your colour, sunshine.'

‘This is how you talk to cardinals?' Bannerjee asked.

‘All the time. They know who butters their bread in this burg, Shiv. I get away with bloody murder. Pass me the tomato sauce, would you?'

Shiv Bannerjee slid the plastic tomato-shaped container across the table and wondered what it was that attracted Leo Kilroy, in his long brown cashmere coat and tan silk cravat and two-tone brown and white brogues, to such a greasy spoon as the Bluebird Café in Yoker. Yoker, for God's sake, nobody ever went to Yoker, which was beyond the western boundary of the city and famous only for its underwear factory.

And the menu here, oh dear lord – it consisted of some dreadful proletarian dishes: sausages, mashed potatoes and baked beans, Scotch mutton pie and baked beans, or egg and chips and baked beans. Bloody baked beans. The walls were dull dun and oily, and the window was steamed with condensation. A curtain of tobacco-cured lace hung against the pane. The grease-spotted menu, typed on cheap A4 paper, lay on the table.

Bannerjee noticed the only dessert was spotted dick. Why did they spot it? he wondered. Why didn't they just overlook it?

Kilroy speared a chip with his fork and studied it. It dripped red sauce into his fried egg. ‘Formica Hell, am I right? That's what you're thinking.'

‘Along those lines,' Bannerjee said.

‘It's pure nostalgia. I love this place,' Leo Kilroy said. ‘I was born in the next street. I've been coming here since I was wee and thin. I wasn't
born
looking like a bloody dirigible. The ambience here, Shiv. The sheer disregard of taste, style, colour. The idea that no dinner is complete without the garnish of at least one fried human hair or a couple of rodent droppings, this takes me back to when life was a simple matter. The old Bluebird hasn't changed in years. How's your sausage?'

Bannerjee said, ‘It's a bit long in the tooth, Leo.'

‘Gamey. As it should be.' Kilroy stuffed the chip into his small mouth and chewed. His fat cheeks wobbled. ‘Wait till you try the coffee. If you don't find it lukewarm with undissolved brown granules floating on top, ask for your money back.'

An old woman in a very dirty apron appeared near their booth. She wore a hearing aid and shouted when she spoke. ‘Everything awright there, Mr Kilroy?'

‘Just dandy, Mrs Bane. As always. You never fail to impress. My compliments to the chef.' Kilroy made a kissing gesture of appreciation, fingers bunched to lips.

The old woman said, ‘Don't be dropping any grease on that good coat, you hear? Musta costa fortune.'

‘I'll be careful, Mrs Bane.'

‘I see some poor bastard got his head chopped off.'

‘Dreadful business, Mrs Bane.'

‘Aye, aye. World's been going to hell since Churchill passed on.' The woman shuffled away into a back room.

‘Chef, did you say?' Bannerjee asked.

‘Dear old Mr Bane does the cooking in what he calls a kitchen, and what the health authorities would gladly condemn. I've, ah, intervened a few times on Mr Bane's behalf. A little
baksheesh
does wonders.'

Bannerjee noticed that the only other diner was a rake-skinny man with thick-lensed glasses who read a newspaper propped against an HP sauce bottle. Part of the front-page headline was readable:
orror in Suburbs
. Poor Wexler and his fragile mental condition; he'd waded most of the time in the molasses of guilt. And now he was dead. And Lindsay too.

Lou Perlman had asked:
Why are they both dead?

Bannerjee's thoughts drifted to the Detective-Sergeant; he decided Perlman wasn't really a danger. It came down to who said what and when, and the beauty of two-party conversations was the fact that either party could deny the other's claim to veracity. And if Perlman or some
apparatchik
from Pitt Street rummaged through Lindsay's files, what was he going to find that might not incriminate Colin? Given that Lindsay had
left
anything to find, of course. Bannerjee was fifty-fifty about that. Some snippet, some handwritten record, some diary reference from those times, it was always
possible
Lindsay had written a sentence or two down, perhaps even coded in some way, because the little solicitor loved secrets, and hushed conversations in the corners of quiet restaurants, and the idea he was privy to clandestine information. He was a small man who longed to hang around in places where the big boys traded gossip; a fantasist who buried himself in books about secret agents.