The Last Darkness Read online

  Scattered perceptions, mental disarray, illusion.

  Mary Gibson said, ‘Ruth was probably having a dream in which your brother was involved.’

  ‘I talked to her on the phone yesterday and she asked how Colin was doing, so the name could’ve stuck. Who knows what inspires dreams?’ He was guessing, firing blanks. Dreams were zoos where all the caged nocturnal animals were set free to roam.

  ‘Can I use your phone? I’ll only take a moment.’ He called the hospital. He found himself connected to Fiona, the receptionist. ‘This is Lou Perlman. About my brother –’

  ‘Why don’t I put you through to Dr Rifkind? Hold.’

  A series of clicks, then Rifkind came on the line. ‘Done and dusted,’ he said.

  ‘And it went well?’

  ‘Of course. What else did you imagine? My hands are exquisite instruments, Lou. You’d faint if you knew what I paid in insurance premiums.’

  ‘I’m sure I would, Martin. When can I see Colin?’

  ‘He needs rest. Tomorrow, say.’

  ‘Before noon or after?’

  ‘Make it after. Tell me the truth, what’s this I’m hearing about Artie Wexler?’

  ‘It’s true.’

  ‘Somebody actually cut his head –’

  ‘Somebody actually did.’

  ‘Sweet Jesus Christ,’ Rifkind said.

  ‘How’s the security in your hospital, Martin?’

  ‘What are you asking? Are the patients and staff safe? Are the narcotics kept under lock and key?’

  ‘Tell me about the patients.’

  ‘At any given time there are four personnel, from a highly respected private security firm, on the premises.’

  ‘I didn’t notice any.’

  ‘It’s an expensive hospital, Lou. I want it to feel more like a five-star hotel. Security’s discreet. Why do you need to know this?’

  ‘I’m curious.’

  ‘So am I. Tell me more about Artie Wexler. What did the cut look like?’

  ‘Sorry, doc, have to fly.’ Perlman put the handset down. He didn’t want to launch into a description of how Artie Wexler had looked: he wasn’t going to satisfy Rifkind’s morbid curiosity.

  Mary Gibson said, ‘I assume your brother’s all right.’

  ‘It sounds that way.’

  ‘Good. Why don’t you sit, Lou? Bring me up to speed on what you’ve been doing.’

  ‘I’m just on my way out, Super –’

  ‘A minute of your time, Lou. Condense your world for me.’

  He was uneasy. With Scullion, he was given all kinds of liberties. When he and Sandy discussed a case, they’d developed a form of verbal shorthand; besides, Sandy never asked for intricate details. He preferred broad strokes. Mary Gibson suddenly reminded him of a loan officer unwilling to be persuaded she should give him a line of credit.

  He took his sheet of paper from his pocket and peered at it. ‘It’s all over the place,’ he said.

  ‘These things often are, Lou. But sometimes they culminate in something so simple you feel damn stupid for overlooking it. Talk to me.’

  Something simple, he thought. I wish, how I wish. He ran through the tasks and names on his paper quickly, connecting this one with that, speculating here, guessing there, blowing air when he could neither guess nor speculate. He was aware of Mary Gibson’s unbroken stare as he talked. She could tell when he wasn’t walking on firm ground. It was all in the look, the tilt of head.

  ‘Three murders,’ she said. ‘You think Dogue’s might have some as yet unspecified bearing on the others?’

  ‘It’s a possibility. Anything is.’

  ‘You’re working through a wide social spectrum here, Lou. The high, the upper middle, the low, and – let’s call it the scum sector. Bannerjee may have fallen from grace, but he’s climbing back up the slopes of Olympus. Don’t underestimate him. Lindsay and Wexler, a lawyer and a businessmen, they’re sort of upper middle. Maybe Bannerjee knows something about them, maybe not. Terry Dogue is down there, or I should say was down there. And his two associates, from what you tell me, are even further down, living with the manure and the slugs and the larvae. Our city in microcosm, Lou.’

  ‘That’s Glasgow for you,’ he said. ‘Everything converges sooner or later. Stand on the corner of Sauchiehall Street and Hope Street and eventually you’ll meet everyone you ever knew.’

  ‘And what a generous city it is. It even embraces outsiders. Like this mysterious “Arab”.’

  ‘Him I’ll find.’

  ‘Oh, I don’t doubt it at all. You’re persistent. That leaves us finally with Nexus, which brings all manner of things together in a comprehensible fashion. Maybe.’

  ‘I’m not making that kind of claim, Superintendent.’

  ‘Of course you’re not.’ She smiled. She had a good honest face. ‘A few things before you dash off. I’ve set up a crime-scene office with a confidential twenty-four-hour freephone. So we may hook some information. Second, Ruth Wexler told WPC Gayle she has no knowledge of anyone possessing a spare key to her house.’

  ‘She could have forgotten.’

  ‘Admittedly. She’s a very confused woman. One other thing, nobody in that cul-de-sac heard any unusual noises. They saw no strangers, no unfamiliar cars, nothing out of the ordinary. How can that happen? A man dies a violent death, a very brutal death, glass shattering, perhaps he screamed – but nobody hears a damn thing. What kind of society have we become?’

  ‘People who can afford it live in cork-lined rooms with reinforced walls. Hear nothing, see nothing. What does that tell you?’

  ‘We’re mutating into bloody brass monkeys,’ Mary Gibson said.

  ‘Who don’t feel the cold,’ Perlman said. He edged towards the door.

  ‘Answer me this, Sergeant. Are you a happy man?’

  ‘I’m more a melancholic fatalist. As that well-known philosopher Doris Day used to say: Que sera sera.’

  ‘And the future’s not ours to see,’ Mary Gibson said.

  38

  Inside the Brewery Taps BJ Quick accepted the envelope from Bear, who slid it surreptitiously across the counter.

  ‘Who delivered this time?’ Quick asked. ‘Same boy on a bike?’

  Bear said, ‘No, different fellow. Came on a motorcycle, wore a black helmet, black visor. I didn’t see his face. Big guy. Black helmet and the usual leather gear.’

  Quick snatched up the envelope and went outside, where Furf sat inside the Peugeot. It was raining again, and cold. The afternoon light was dying fast. Quick slid behind the wheel and laid the envelope on his lap. Furf stared at him, red-eyed from dope.

  ‘They sent a different messenger, Furf. I wonder why. I like consistency. Why did they change the messenger? Why didn’t they send the guy that delivered the first two?’

  ‘Mibbe he had flu. Something.’

  Quick said, ‘Aye, mibbe,’ and opened the envelope.

  The picture inside was a black-and-white glossy. He stared at it.

  Furfee said, ‘Looks vaguely familiar.’

  Dry-mouthed from grass, Quick was about to reply when he realized the envelope contained something else. He tipped it over and a smaller envelope slipped into the palm of his hand. He ripped this open. Hundred-pound notes, a wedge of them. Oh Christ oh Christ, fuck out my eye and call me Long John Silver. Nothing felt better than cash, not even a smooth tit or that soft stretch of inner thigh beneath a young girl’s honeycake. Money money money! Money overruled all other considerations, cancelled misgivings, soothed anxieties. Whatever doubts he had were instantly dispelled. Money was the elixir. It turned base feelings into the gold of exhilaration.

  His fingers trembled. He counted five thousand pounds. A slip of paper was attached by a pink plastic clip to the bottom note. Final instalment due on delivery and completion. The handwriting was unfamiliar. It wasn’t the same as before. Different handwriting, different messenger.

  So fucking what. Big deal. Money took the edge off paranoia.


  ‘Half,’ he said.

  ‘Great,’ Furf said.

  ‘With the last chunk to come. Written right here.’ He pressed a cold kiss on the money. It tasted good. ‘My darlings, my wee precious darlings. Come to daddy, babies.’

  Furf said, ‘Fucking A.’

  Elevated, heartbeat fast, Quick sang, ‘Open uppa honey it’s yer lovah boy me that’s knockin’.’

  Furf did a truly awful impression of the dwarf on ‘Fantasy Island’. ‘De club, boss, de club!’

  Quick stuffed the cash into his jeans. De club. Right on. Club farraday was his Jerusalem, and it burned silver and gold on the horizon, blinding him to everything.

  39

  Rain streamed across Perlman’s windscreen. In Wellington Street, where lamps were lit, traffic was dense and ill-tempered: horn-blowers all. Incarceration in a motionless car diminished the zone of your tolerance, especially in the period leading up to Christmas. He couldn’t find a parking space in Wellington, so he turned the car into Waterloo Street and deftly beat a slick young man in a Beamer to the only available space.

  Three-thirty and almost dark. The wind, whipping through old shipbuilding yards, blew the rain from the river. Perlman drew up the collar of his coat and walked until he found himself outside Solway House, an office building made of glass. It looked fragile, like a big bright lightbulb. He went inside, checked the directory in the foyer, an area of muted lights and fancy palms in giant ceramic pots with African motifs.

  He found the name he wanted, and rode the lift to the fourth floor, where he stepped into the reception area of SB Worldwide (Scotland), A Registered Charity. Glossy flyers and folders, descriptive of SB’s good works in Africa and the Far East, were stacked on a coffee table.

  Perlman approached the receptionist’s desk.

  The woman who sat there was a pleasant young Asian. ‘Are you Mr Bannerjee’s three-thirty?’ she asked.

  ‘Right. Perlman. I called.’

  ‘You can go straight in, Mr Perlman,’ and she pointed an elegantly bangled hand at a door on the other side of the room. Perlman thanked her, opened the door, entered another room, big but barely furnished.

  He thought: Those who come back from the dead via the avenue of good causes can’t afford to be ostentatious. Resurrected, these sinners need a nimbus of humility. Like Shiv Bannerjee, who was rising from his plain wooden desk and reaching out for a handshake. Well-dressed, good black suit, grey shirt, grey silk tie: a stylish little fellow. But nothing over the top, everything understated. There was something different in his look, and it took Perlman only a moment to realize that the full head of hair was white; in his Westminster days, it had been black.

  Perlman took the man’s hand, shook it. ‘Thanks for seeing me at short notice.’

  ‘No problem. I like to help the police when I can. Sit down, Sergeant.’ Bannerjee gestured to a chair.

  He likes to help the police, Perlman thought. Why not? He’d had plenty of experience cooperating with them in the past, when he’d been arraigned for an assortment of misdemeanours stemming from the fiscal ‘irregularities’ that occurred during his time at Westminster. Perlman believed, perhaps with the unjustified optimism of a man born in less cynical times, that anyone voted into public office had a moral responsibility. You get votes, it was the same as taking out a loan; you were indebted to your constituency, and if you betrayed it then that was default. What could be simpler?

  Shiv Bannerjee had defaulted in a major way.

  A bone creaked in Perlman’s leg as he sat. It was plainly audible and he felt a need to explain it. ‘I’ve been exercising,’ he said. ‘Running. Probably too much for my age and condition.’

  ‘Hard on the skeleton,’ Bannerjee said. ‘Be careful.’

  Perlman felt like having a cigarette, but there was a no-smoking sign on Bannerjee’s desk. ‘I try.’

  Bannerjee ran a hand over his neat blowdryed hair. ‘We all do. Most of the time. I’ve had my moments when I was less than careful. You’re aware of them, I dare say.’

  ‘I’d have to be blind and illiterate not to be. As a matter of interest, do you feel a need to open up your old wounds? I didn’t ask about your past, you brought it up.’

  ‘Force of habit. People tell me I apologize too much,’ Bannerjee said and smiled, a beatific little placement of the lips. ‘Repentance is hard work, Detective.’

  ‘I don’t doubt it. I’ve never been very good at it myself. Everybody has something in their life they regret. Most of us are less public than you, Mr Bannerjee.’

  ‘It’s okay as long as you keep your indiscretions private, right? It’s not always possible for a public figure. Call me Shiv. Everyone else does.’

  Indiscretions? Perlman considered this a charitable way to describe graft and the sale of political influence. ‘Fine. Call me Lou.’

  ‘You mentioned on the phone you wanted to talk about Joe Lindsay.’

  ‘Right. Your solicitor.’

  ‘Oh, in a limited way only. He handled some property transactions for me some time ago. I didn’t use him for anything else.’

  A lie, a lapse in memory? Perlman wondered. Or had Miriam been wrong with her investment-fund story? He was biased: he trusted Miriam’s version. ‘So he only handled property for you.’

  ‘Yes, poor fellow,’ Bannerjee said. ‘I had no idea he was capable of taking his own life.’

  ‘He was murdered.’

  ‘Pardon?’

  ‘Murdered,’ Perlman said.

  ‘My God. Are you serious?’

  ‘The suicide was a rigged job.’

  Bannerjee rose and walked to the window and clasped his hands behind his back. ‘I’m sorry. This distresses me. I liked Lindsay. I liked him a lot.’

  ‘Enemies come to mind?’

  Bannerjee turned, shook his head. ‘None. Absolutely.’

  The predictable response. Perlman moved on: ‘Did you ever meet a man called Wexler? Artie Wexler?’

  ‘I meet a lot of people.’

  ‘Artie Wexler was a close friend of Lindsay.’

  Bannerjee said, ‘The name’s familiar … wait, isn’t he the unfortunate man …’

  ‘Aye. He’s the one. Spread all across the TV. The early edition of our beloved evening newspaper splashed it on the front page. People buy murder, Shiv, the more exotic the better.’

  ‘I didn’t know he was a friend of Lindsay’s.’

  ‘You’re sure?’

  ‘Unless I’m forgetting. In my high-flying days,’ and here Bannerjee smiled in a coy, self-deprecating way, ‘I met hundreds of people, Lou. I don’t meet so many now.’

  Show me your open veins, Perlman thought. Break out the bandages. He sashayed in another direction. ‘Colin Perlman, Shiv. Does that name mean anything?’

  ‘A relative of yours?’

  ‘Brother. Associate of the late Lindsay, in some small way.’

  ‘I can’t say I ever met him, Lou. Where are you going with this?’

  ‘I’m a seeker after truth, Shiv.’

  ‘And how can I help you along this difficult path you’ve chosen?’ Bannerjee smiled. A gentle smile. You couldn’t imagine a man with that smile perpetrating bad deeds.

  ‘Let’s run another memory test. Lindsay invested a large sum of money for you in a fund managed by my brother. Right or wrong?’

  Bannerjee sat down. ‘No, Lindsay didn’t handle investments for me.’

  ‘Think again.’

  ‘I’m thinking. I’m just not getting anything.’

  ‘Listen carefully, Shiv. If Lindsay invested money for you, what is there to be ashamed of? My brother managed a lot of funds, and as far as I know he operated a legal shop. Somewhere in Lindsay’s files, I’m sure there’s some reference, even a tiny one, to the transaction involving you. What I’m saying is this: be careful when you lie to a cop, because he can get a warrant to take him into all the paper crevices where your average schmuck can’t go. There’s no hiding place in the end.’

 
Perlman chewed on a thumbnail and wondered what the fuck made people so reluctant to talk about this connection: Colin had denied remembering the name of Lindsay’s client, and now Bannerjee was going down the same Avenue of the Amnesiacs. It’s shite, Perlman thought, an information brown-out. And suddenly the events of the day broke over him like the rush of a toxic tide and he was impatient and angry. Bannerjee – who’d once spouted from the pulpit of high moral rectitude even as he’d been dipping into the till and fleecing the public – was beginning to irritate him.

  ‘I can do it, Shiv. Believe me. I can get a legal paper any time to go through Lindsay’s files with a fucking microscope. Try me.’

  Bannerjee clenched his hands together loosely. ‘Even if I did get Joe to invest with your brother – and I’m not saying I did, please keep that at the front of your mind – how does it help you catch Lindsay’s killer? Or Wexler’s? I fail to see.’

  ‘I’ll put it to you this way. You expose one lie, Shiv, and it’s like peeling back a scab. And beneath that scab, who knows, you might find the original wound, the cut, the scar, whatever it is. You might find the source of an infection.’

  ‘By the same token, you might find nothing.’

  ‘Then all I’ve wasted is my time,’ Perlman said.

  ‘I think you’ve just wasted some, Lou.’

  Perlman was jangling. Smoke, I must fucking smoke. Circumspection annoyed the hell out of him. He deplored obfuscation, shilly-shallying, tiptoeing. ‘I have a question, Shiv. In this new incarnation of yours, that of a man projecting a saintly image, mea culpa et cetera, can you afford a police and/or Inland Revenue investigation of any hidden monetary investments?’

  ‘Saint? I’m no saint, I’m not trying to be one.’

  ‘Answer the question, Shiv.’

  ‘Why are you so hostile?’

  ‘Because you piss me off.’

  ‘You don’t bring much in the way of tact to an interview, do you?’