The Last Darkness (34 page)

Scullion said, ‘Send us your report asap, Cameron.'

‘Will do, sir.'

Perlman and Scullion moved towards the stairs. As they did, Mary Gibson appeared. She looked drawn, vitality drained. Her makeup had faded in the course of the day. The bloom was off, and her eyes lacked light. Perlman didn't like her expression. Something of sorrow, of anger, it was hard to tell. She didn't look like the Mary Gibson he saw on a regular basis.

‘There's been another one,' she said. ‘This fucking city's having a mental breakdown.'

Perlman had never heard her curse before. She pronounced the g in ‘fucking', which gave the word a decorum it normally lacked.

‘Another murder?' he asked.

‘Another one. Correct.'

‘Who's the victim?' Perlman asked.

‘This'll kick-start you, Lou. Shiv Bannerjee.'

‘
Bannerjee
? I saw him only – what? Four or five hours ago?'

‘Then here's your chance to see him again, Lou. Just go to the Waterloo Hotel in Sauchiehall Street.'

Perlman didn't wait to ask more questions. He hurried to the stairs. He heard Scullion rushing behind him.

‘I'll drive,' Scullion said.

‘Be my guest.'

‘My car's just up the block.'

The night air was arctic and brittle, the sky clear in the brilliant way of extremely cold weather. The moon, crystalline and indifferent, was motionless against the stars. A mental breakdown, Mary Gibson had said. Or a bad spell, Perlman thought, cast over the city by the black deeds of bad men.

48

Marak slipped on ice and fell as he ran. He struck his elbow and a pain scorched his arm. He rose quickly. The stretch of pavement in front of him was slick. He rubbed his arm and kept moving, more carefully this time. He didn't know where he was, none of the buildings around him looked familiar, all that mattered was to get as far away from the hotel as he could. He travelled a network of side streets, avoiding the main thoroughfares with their Christmas baubles. Darkness and silence was what he needed: an end to the nightmare his task had become.

He entered a railway station. It wasn't the one he'd been in before, when he'd used a telephone to call Lindsay's office – how long ago that seemed now. This one was bigger, brighter. He looked at the Arrivals and Departures board. The names of destinations flickered and changed in front of his eyes. Kilmarnock. Barassie. Ardrossan. He wondered about these towns and whether he could hide in them while he made plans for his journey home. He imagined small rooms, narrow streets, long bitter nights.

He had to get out of Glasgow now. Tonight. It was folly to stay any longer. He'd been tricked, manipulated. He'd come from Israel to kill certain men, and he hadn't had to lift a finger in anger to any one of them. Two dead, one suicide. And now he wondered if Lindsay had really killed himself.

Or if it had been made to look that way.

Why had an elaborate organization been set up to send him here – with fake passport, money, travel arrangements, personnel in Israel, Greece, Scotland – if it was all designed to fail? He thought of the hotel, the woman in the bed, the sight of the dead man at the sink, the nausea he'd felt flood his mouth with bitter saliva, how difficult it had been for him not to throw up –

He'd call Zerouali. He'd do that before he did anything else. The Moroccan might be helpful, perhaps able to suggest the safest route across Europe. He walked to the public phones. The number, what was the number? He'd misdialled it before. He reorganized the digits in his mind until he had them in what he believed was the correct order.

He dialled the number, and when a woman answered in Arabic he began to punch in coins.

The woman said, ‘Café Tahini.'

Marak spoke in Arabic. ‘Connect me to the owner, please.'

‘I am the owner.'

‘I mean Zerouali. The Moroccan.'

‘Zerouali?'

‘He owns the Tahini.'

‘There is no Zerouali here. Excuse me. You have a wrong number.'

‘I don't think so. This is the Café Tahini, correct?'

‘Yes. I told you. This is Tahini. But there is nobody here called Zerouali.'

More coins. Marak's hand trembled. ‘A fat man, grey beard, Moroccan. Surely you know him?'

‘Please. Believe me. There is nobody by the name of Zerouali here. And there is no bearded Moroccan. I think this is a mistake. I must go.'

‘Wait,' Marak said.

‘I tell you one last time. No Zerouali. Okay? I am hanging up on you.'

‘No, please –'

But the line was cut.

Zero sound. The bottom of a dry well.

Marak hung the handset back in place then stood motionless in the forecourt of the station and felt dizzy, as if his body was rising upward to meet the high glass roof of the place. His hands wouldn't stop shaking. He was a mass of pulses, of systems breaking down. No Zerouali. Think. It wasn't the man's real name. Why would he use his real name in a clandestine situation? Why had he lied when he'd said he was the owner of Tahini? For the same reason: to protect his identity. You move in secret places for secret purposes, you leave behind your name and your occupation, you shed the outer skins of your identity: you keep only the kernel. Zerouali had dissolved into the scenery. Probably the kibbutz kid with the UCLA T-shirt had vanished too. The man in the Athens hotel who'd given him the passport, and the captain of the ferryboat – other players in this charade.

Now what, now what. He went inside a bar, a big gloomy room. A jukebox played a boring pop tune. Marak asked for water. He was given a bottle of Strathmore and a wet glass that contained one tiny cube of ice. He placed coins on the counter. The barman picked them up without looking at him. Marak drank the water quickly. The ice-cube rattled in the glass. He realized he should have left Glasgow when he'd learned about the death of Wexler, and when he understood that the police knew his face. That had been the time to abort the enterprise. But he'd been driven along blindly because he no longer knew how to open his eyes and acknowledge reality.

He wondered how he could contact Ramsay. But what help could he expect there? None. He knew that.

Has there been a plot against me
? he wondered. Even if he couldn't define the precise nature of it, he was suddenly frightened. He sensed that he didn't have much time left to him in this city. He had to get away. He patted the pockets of his coat. He had his wallet, some Scottish banknotes. His traveller's cheques and his passport were back at the flat with his other few belongings. He left the bar, walked out of the station. The dark engulfed him. His feet were marble. His elbow ached. He'd go and fetch his stuff, discard what he didn't need, and then he'd be gone without pausing to look back. This was a city he'd forget, this a season he'd relegate to that junk room in the head where all bad dreams were stored.

49

The corridor outside room 408 of the Waterloo Hotel was crowded with hotel staff and guests. Perlman shoved his way through, barking at these witless spectators. Scullion, a pace behind, used his shoulders freely. A man who claimed to be the manager, fat-necked with the red fissured face of a boozer, was complaining loudly about how he was being denied access to a room in his own hotel, and what was going on anyway?

‘Out the way,' Perlman said. ‘Move it. Move it. Keep this passage free. You, manager man, get these people out of here, okay? Make it fast. On the double.' He forced his way into the room. A couple of uniforms were lingering in the doorway, keeping onlookers at bay. A man in a raincoat and an old-fashioned felt hat was standing inside the bathroom. He glanced at Perlman and shrugged. Rodgers, Perlman thought. Or Hart. He'd have to get them straight one day.

He noticed the woman on the edge of the bed. She sat with her hands clasped in her lap and a bedsheet draped round her like a toga. A handsome young woman, strong features, good healthy complexion, he thought: she was no cheapo pick-up, no pavement fodder. She had a stunned expression, a concussion in her eyes.

‘You all right, love?' Perlman asked.

She looked at him, nodded her head very slowly.

‘You want me to get a doctor for you?'

She spoke in a dry-mouthed way. ‘No, don't.'

‘Somebody shut the bloody door,' Perlman said. ‘Give this woman some peace. And send that manager for some ice-water. Tell him to make himself useful.'

‘Thanks,' she said. ‘I appreciate it.'

Uniforms conveyed Perlman's order. The door shut, and the clamour in the corridor became muted. Perlman excused himself and stepped into the bathroom. Scullion was already inside, talking to the cop in the hat and raincoat.

He looked at Perlman. ‘Bailey's been telling me about the woman; Lou.'

George Bailey spoke like a man with serious adenoidal problems. ‘Name's Charlotte Leckie. Girlfriend of the deceased. The hotel manager says they met here every week, same night, same time.'

‘She's no pro, is she?' Perlman asked.

Bailey took off his hat and ran a hand across his forehead. ‘I don't think so. If she took money from Bannerjee, she probably thought of it as a gift. Maybe he gave her a bracelet here, a ring there. That kind of thing. That's the impression I get. I mean, when did you last hear a hooker who'd had elocution lessons? Talks quite lah-di-da really.'

Perlman stepped closer to the sink. A flashbulb went off, startling him. The photographer, ‘Rumbleguts' McPhail, emerged from the shower-stall where he'd been half-hidden by the curtain.

‘We meet again,' he said to Perlman. ‘Twice in one twenty-four-hour span. How about that?'

‘Do you usually scare the shite out of people, Robbie? Christ, I'm blind.'

‘Sorry about that.' Robbie McPhail ran off a couple of quick shots from other angles.

‘Crowded in here,' Perlman said. His vision was filled with after-images, spikes of light. ‘Tell me you're done, Robbie.'

‘I'm on my way. Adios.' The photographer left the room.

‘Cheerio.' Perlman rubbed his eyes, slipping the tips of his fingers under his glasses. He moved as close to the sink as he could get.

Bannerjee's face was pressed against porcelain darkened by blood. His white hair was red. Blood leaked from the left ear; whoever had killed him had driven a wooden-handled screwdriver deep into the eardrum. Perlman looked at the handle of plain unvarnished wood, and thought how ordinary it was, an item you could buy cheaply in any hardware shop.

He turned away from the sight of the dead man. You reach a point, he thought, where you say okay, enough. You've seen the city's underside, that place where people do barbarous things to each other, and you say enough, enough, this is where you draw a line. And you don't think you can go on without becoming totally numb, zombie numb. But you find energy inside yourself from some uncharted reservoir, and you keep going. He imagined the hand that held the implement, and the immense force with which it had thrust the screwdriver into Bannerjee's ear.

He stepped out of the bathroom. He told the uniformed policemen in the room that he wanted privacy, and all three of them left. There was still a mumbling of discontent from the corridor. Perlman sat on the edge of the bed alongside the woman, who was holding a glass of water.

‘They brought you a drink. Good.'

‘It was kind of you to ask.'

‘I'm told you heard nothing.'

She shook her head. ‘I was sleeping …'

‘And Mr Bannerjee went to the bathroom?'

‘He must have. I didn't hear him go. I remember I woke up and …' She sipped the water. ‘I want my name kept out of this. Is that possible. I don't want my mother –'

‘We'll do what we can.' Perlman patted the back of her hand. This one was no cheap
zoineh
, that was certain.

She said, ‘I'm not on the game. I want you to know that. I'm not a streetwalker.'

‘I believe you. What else did you hear when you woke?'

‘I heard water running. This is dreamlike, Inspector.'

‘Sergeant. Lou Perlman. Call me Lou.'

Scullion came into the room, as if on tiptoe, and stood by the bed. He looked at the woman with his customary empathy. Perlman thought he detected stress behind the expression, as if Scullion wanted nothing more than to go home to his family and lock the doors and draw the curtains and sleep for a week.

‘This is Inspector Scullion, Charlotte.'

The woman gazed at Sandy. ‘I'm just telling Lou …' She paused. ‘I was dozy. I opened my eyes. I saw somebody go into the bathroom.'

‘Somebody other than Bannerjee?' Perlman asked.

‘Yes.'

‘This other man,' Scullion said. ‘Was he in the bathroom long?'

‘No, seconds. It seemed. I can't judge it. Then he came back out and saw me.'

‘Did he say anything?'

‘He asked me not to scream. I don't remember clearly.'

‘Then what? He left?'

‘Yes. Then I got up. I went inside the bathroom. And …'

Scullion asked, ‘You think this man killed Shiv Bannerjee?'

‘I assume he did.'

‘Did you hear any sounds?'

‘I heard a – I don't know how to describe it,' Charlotte Leckie said. ‘Like somebody trying to clear something from the back of his throat. I don't know.'

Perlman said, ‘You got a good look at the intruder.'

‘I got a look. I don't know how good.'

Scullion crouched in front of the woman. ‘Can you describe him?'

‘Young.… what else, what else. Dark eyes. Darkish skin, but not black. Lightish to medium brown. It's hard to say.'

‘Bearded?' Perlman asked.

‘Yes. Right. He was.'

Perlman reached inside his coat. He retrieved the crumpled shot of the man he'd come to know as Abdullah. He smoothed the picture out as much as he could, and handed it to Charlotte Leckie. ‘Is this the man you saw?'