The Last Darkness Read online

  ‘You sound as if you don’t want me to read it, Murdoch.’

  ‘No, it’s not that, Sarge, I think maybe I could’ve found more material if I’d had more time, that’s all.’

  ‘Let me look through what you’ve got before I make any judgement.’ Perlman glanced at the young cop, who shrugged and bit into his bacon roll.

  He opened Murdoch’s folder. Inside was a stack of Xeroxed papers and some print-outs the young cop must have run from a computer. Perlman read swiftly, turning one page after another like a man anxious to reach the denouement of a mystery – and then he stacked the papers in a pile and stared at Murdoch’s face, which was expressionless. Perlman felt trapped in a weirdly airless space. His head filled with a darkening sense of disappointment. He lit a cigarette and blew smoke and thought the small cloud that floated away from his lips was the colour of dismay. He wanted to pretend he’d never read these papers. Put the omelette back into the eggshell, Lou. Go home and take a sleeping pill and enter the blackout zone.

  ‘Where did you get this stuff, Murdoch?’

  ‘The Jewish Telegraph was one obvious place. A lady there was very helpful. Then the Internet. There’s a lot of information about Nexus out there, Sergeant. If you’re patient enough to look for it.’

  Perlman’s hand shook very slightly. He picked up the pile, shuffled the pages until he found a newspaper clipping, badly Xeroxed, smudged but legible. It hadn’t been attributed to a writer; presumably it came from a wire service. Dated September 1995, it described the murder of a man called Yusef Barzelai in Haifa by unknown assassins. He was ‘a pioneer member of the Nexus group’, according to the story; he’d been shot down in front of his son in a busy street. The son’s name was given as Eli Barzelai: there was a poorly focused photo, snapped by some insensitive jerk, of a teenage boy holding his dying father.

  When you looked closely you saw it was Marak, Shimon Marak cradling his father. The kid’s mouth was open, frozen in a scream. How many times did you see similar photographs of personal horror and outraged grief, victims of terrorist attacks, innocent bystanders blasted by nail-filled explosives? Too often in this sad old world. Perlman looked into the devastation of the kid’s expression.

  So Eli Barzelai had travelled to Glasgow on a false passport. Why not? Maybe he was wanted by Israeli authorities in connection with the slayings of two men in a Tel Aviv cafe.

  ‘Add a beard,’ Murdoch said.

  Perlman nodded. ‘You’d get a close resemblance all right.’

  Murdoch finished his roll and looked at Perlman, who nibbled on his toast, brushed crumbs from his lips, drank some coffee, then returned his attention to the papers. He leafed through them: I’m just going through the motions, he thought. I’m stalling the inevitable. I’ve seen what I didn’t want to see. And now I’m going to look at it again.

  He stopped at an obituary of Yusef Barzelai. Born Baghdad, 1939. Emigrated with parents to Israel, 1951. In Israel, Yusef established a successful career as a political journalist, and worked for various pacifist causes. In 1988, he’d co-founded Nexus, whose original committee consisted of four Jews and four Palestinians.

  Murdoch, a conscientious boy, had gathered all kinds of items about Nexus, some no more than press releases, others analytical think-pieces on the group’s slim chances of success in the volatile atmosphere of the Middle East. There were stories that covered fund-raising activities in the United States, France, the United Kingdom. Indefatigable, Yusef Barzelai and his fellow founders had launched themselves passionately on the dinner circuits of the capitalist world, reasoning that you could broker peace only if you had financial muscle. An article in The Economist reported that by the early 1990s, the group had raised more than ten million dollars; and that was ‘a conservative estimate’. And so Nexus grew, opened offices in Tel Aviv, Jerusalem, Haifa, hired energetic people dedicated to the aims of the organization. They sent out pamphlets on coexistence, and published a quarterly journal entitled Pax: The Future of the Middle East, which was basically a low-circulation house magazine for the cause. They established a Centre for Peace Studies in Jerusalem. The Centre was bombed in 1994 by extremists; it wasn’t clear whether they were Israelis or Palestinians. The attack, in which five Nexus staff members were killed, slowed the impetus of the organization. By the middle of the 1990s, Nexus had closed its offices and ceased publication of Pax. The Centre was never rebuilt.

  By the spring of 1995, according to an article in the New York Times, Nexus was in the process of ‘regrouping’. The report also said that ‘funds are still available for restructuring’ the organization.

  ‘Irrepressible optimists,’ Perlman said in a dry way. Men dream of the unattainable, and sometimes even achieve it. But the house odds were always stacked against visionaries.

  Murdoch asked, ‘Is there anything wrong with a little optimism? Where would we be if we always looked on the gloomy side of things?’

  ‘You’re a cheerful soul, Murdoch. Your glass is always half-full, eh?’

  ‘I try to be upbeat,’ Murdoch said.

  ‘Don’t lose that attitude, son.’ Perlman drank his coffee then fidgeted with the rim of the cup. He gazed at the papers on the table. He picked another sheet from the bunch.

  I didn’t like this one when I first saw it, and I like it even less now, he thought. He took off his glasses, wiped them with a paper napkin, replaced them. ‘This old shot. Where did you find it?’

  ‘A back issue of Pax on the Internet.’

  The Internet. The WorldWide Web. A whole world I know nothing about, Perlman thought. He looked at the photograph, the smiling well-nourished faces, men of beaming prosperity. They wore tuxedos. On the right of the photograph Artie Wexler smoked a cigar. This was a slightly thinner Artie, but not by much. At the front stood Lindsay, smiling in a lawyerly way, as if he’d just demonstrated the validity of some arcane legal precedent. Behind Lindsay was Shiv Bannerjee, his tux a wee bit more fashionable than any of the others, his shirt frilly, the cuffs extravagant.

  Perlman felt the weight of a grave depression settle on him. He couldn’t take his eyes from the picture. It fogged in front of him.

  ‘He’s your brother, isn’t he?’ Murdoch asked.

  ‘He’s my brother all right.’

  ‘I heard somebody say he was sick. Heart problem.’

  ‘He had a bypass today.’

  ‘Did it go all right?’

  ‘I think it did, Murdoch.’

  ‘He looks healthy in that picture,’ Murdoch said.

  ‘This was taken in 1992.’

  ‘So it says.’

  Perlman clasped his hands on the table. 1992. Ancient history. Let it go, Lou. What does it matter? Colin operated in some shady areas. You knew that. You knew he moved in the cool grey canyons of cash, in the ever-shifting scree of stock certificates and shares. Funny business. You’d had it confirmed by Bannerjee. Why be shocked by anything else you discovered?

  You were even prepared to overlook Colin’s past.

  His eye travelled to the side of the group.

  Colin looked directly back at him, his expression one of good cheer and good health; he emitted the confident glow of a man who’s never been bruised by life, never battered. A man whose expectations have always been met, and more usually surpassed.

  Perlman read the caption for what seemed to him the hundredth time. He was no longer really seeing it. Friends of Nexus Dinner, the Savoy, London, April 1992: Our guests from Glasgow. And a list of the names of this Glasgow contingent was provided in bold font after the caption. Perlman, who felt he’d stumbled into the secret of some ancient freemasonry, remembered his brother saying: Nexus? I have an extremely vague memory of the name.

  He scrunched the page from Pax in his hand and stuffed it in his pocket. Oh, brother, you never thought anybody would come across this old article from an obscure magazine neglected for years and left to decay in some dark underpass of the information highway, did you?

  He g
ot up from the table, patted Murdoch’s shoulder. ‘Thanks for all your help, son.’ Then he picked up the folder and went quickly out into the night.

  54

  He drove across the river to the south side on roads as hard as diamonds. Streetlamps created glossy reflections, traffic signals burned red and amber and green on the ice. There were few cars around. The city’s wintry desolation was total. Christmas trees seen in the windows of houses looked cheerless, already dying. Decorations hanging inside living rooms resembled paper braids from Yules a century ago.

  Christmas was created for manic depressives, he thought.

  Spring was years away. You must remember spring.

  When he reached the Cedars he parked the Mondeo and walked directly to the building, in darkness except for a few pale lights upstairs. The front door wasn’t locked. It didn’t need to be, because a heavyweight security guard sat in the reception area. He was a crewcut man with a thick neck and a nose battered flat into his frightening face, a misshapen glob of bone and flesh. Perlman wondered if he ever heard little bells ring in his head. Seconds out.

  ‘What can I do for you?’ he asked.

  Perlman showed his Force ID, which the guard scanned with a lack of interest. ‘My brother’s a patient here. He had an op today. I want to see him.’

  ‘See him? This time of night? You’re joking. Come back during visiting hours,’ the guard said. ‘Ten a.m. to noon. Or four to seven.’

  ‘I mean now,’ Perlman said.

  ‘The only way you can get to see your brother at this hour is if Dr Rifkind gives his okay.’ The guard flashed a wrist, scanning the fattest wristwatch Perlman had ever seen, a great chunky slab of a thing. ‘If I was you, I’d wait for visiting hours.’

  ‘Then I’ll speak to Rifkind. Is he here?’

  ‘He went home hours ago.’

  ‘I’ll call him,’ Perlman said.

  ‘What’s the bloody urgency?’

  ‘It would take too long to explain, even if I felt like it, and I don’t. Just give me Rifkind’s number –’

  ‘It’s ex-directory.’

  ‘So if there’s an emergency you don’t know how to contact the chief physician? What happens? Patients just expire?’

  The guard said, ‘If your brother’s had an op, he needs rest. Last thing he wants is visitors.’

  ‘He’ll want to see me,’ Perlman said. ‘I have an uplifting effect on him.’

  ‘At this hour?’ the guard said.

  Perlman leaned across the desk. ‘Get used to this. I don’t intend to leave without seeing him. What are you going to do? Restrain me? Assault a police officer?’

  ‘I have my instructions, Sergeant.’

  ‘Let’s see what happens, shall we?’ Perlman stepped towards the door that led to the corridor.

  The guard hopped over the desk briskly. ‘Don’t do this,’ he said. He positioned himself squarely between Perlman and the door. ‘Now I’ve told you the visiting hours and I expect you to have a wee bit of respect for the regulations we have here.’

  Perlman said, ‘I can have a fucking squad car here in minutes. I can have you removed from the premises on the grounds of almost anything I choose to invent. I’ve been a policeman too long, and power’s completely corrupted the fuck out of me.’

  ‘You’re putting me on the spot,’ the guard said.

  ‘Look away. Turn your back. Bend down and tie your shoelace. You never saw me.’

  The guard’s expression was one of exasperation. He was thinking of the consequences of a patrol car screaming into the car park, policemen rushing into the building, DS Perlman drumming up some ridiculous accusation that might affect his job with Strathclyde Number One Security, who never hired anyone with a criminal record. There was a pension involved, and a good health-plan, and bonus money every Christmas. Strathclyde Number One Security had been good to him.

  ‘Fuck it. Okay. I’m not looking. Satisfied?’

  ‘You’re a great man.’

  Bluffed, the guard walked back to his desk and Perlman stepped through the door into the corridor. At the far end a dim lamp glowed. The place was silent. No stirring patients, no night-time coughers or hackers, no sound of machinery monitoring anyone’s health. Which room was Colin’s? Wasn’t it room 9?

  He moved slowly past closed doors, checking numbers. Wouldn’t Colin be in intensive care after heart surgery? He wasn’t sure about that. Why were hospitals so inherently spooky in the dead of night? He’d seen too many movies in which psychotic nurses performed mercy-killings on terminal patients. He’d seen evil angels prowl darkened wards with a lethal syringe concealed under a towel.

  He found number 9, stopped outside the door.

  ‘Lou?’

  Perlman turned. Rifkind was coming down the corridor towards him. He wore pyjamas and a robe. ‘What are you doing here?’

  ‘Visiting Colin.’

  ‘He’s asleep, Lou. Come back in the morning.’

  ‘I’m tired of being told that,’ Perlman said.

  ‘He’s exhausted.’

  Perlman touched the door handle. ‘The alsatian at the desk said you’d gone home.’

  Rifkind smiled. ‘He’s paid to say what I want him to say. Sometimes I sleep here when I need to keep an eye on specific patients. I have a small apartment upstairs. If you’re worried about Colin, there’s no need. The operation went like a dream. Is something troubling you? You look fraught.’

  Fraught, yes. Totally riddled with fraught. ‘I just want to see him, Martin. He’s my brother, for God’s sake.’

  ‘You sound very petulant, Lou. Will you stamp your feet next? I think we keep a jar of lollipops somewhere for naughty little boys. Would you like one? Red? Green?’

  Perlman said, ‘I’m going inside.’

  ‘No. Wait. You’ll only disturb –’

  ‘I won’t wake him. I’ll just look at him. How does that sound?’ Perlman turned the handle, pushed the door, saw thin white light burning above his brother’s bed. Colin sat up in bed wearing an unbuttoned pyjama top. His chest was bandaged, and he had an arm attached to a saline drip that made a quiet glugging sound.

  ‘Well, brother,’ Colin said. ‘An unexpected visit. I’m lying here in a post-op haze, and the hell of it is I can’t sleep. They give me painkillers and big fat jellybeans loaded with downers, but nothing seems to kick in. Prowling the neighbourhood, were you?’

  ‘Sort of,’ Lou Perlman said. ‘I just wanted to visit.’

  Rifkind said, ‘Ten minutes. No more.’ Then he went out.

  Lou sat on the edge of the bed and scanned Colin’s face. The saline drip plopped. There was bruising around the place where the drip went into Colin’s arm.

  ‘The operation was successful,’ Lou said.

  ‘They tell me,’ Colin said. He looked healthy; maybe a little drained, which you’d expect, but there was colour to his face and a light in his eyes.

  Lou Perlman was quiet. He looked at the Lucozade and Kleenex on the bedside table, the pills, a get-well card in which he could see Miriam’s signature followed by a bunch of Xs. The sense of betrayal wasn’t weakening inside him; the knowledge that Colin had lied stoked his anger. And yet he wasn’t ready to speak, because too many half-formed sentences went racing through his mind and he couldn’t corral them cohesively.

  ‘Say something, brother,’ Colin said.

  ‘You’ve heard about the murders?’

  Colin Perlman said, ‘I’ve heard. Wexler is dead.’

  ‘Cruelly,’ Lou said.

  ‘I saw the story on the box. Who killed him, Detective?’

  ‘I’d be guessing if I said anything.’

  ‘No suspect in custody?’

  ‘No.’

  Colin made a gesture with his hand; the tides of fate were unpredictable. ‘Hard to believe Artie’s … gone. Artie and Lindsay both. Strange, eh?’

  ‘And Bannerjee’s dead. You see that?’

  Colin said, ‘Aye, I saw it.’

  ‘Wh
at do you think of his murder?’

  ‘I’m supposed to have an opinion on the death of this Indian parech? His passing doesn’t mean anything in my life, wee brother.’ Colin grimaced. ‘Give me that little brown bottle, will you.’

  Lou Perlman picked up the prescription bottle from the bedside table and handed it to his brother, who slipped a capsule out and conveyed it to his mouth with a short stiff movement of his arm.

  ‘I hurt like a fucking pincushion,’ Colin said.

  ‘I’m not surprised.’ Lou leaned a little closer to Colin. What was it you said before, bruder? You were lying in this hospital bed taking stock of your life? Was that the phrase you used? I wonder if you reached any conclusions. ‘You never knew Bannerjee anyway, did you, Colin?’

  ‘I’m glad to say.’

  ‘Never ran into him.’

  ‘Didn’t I just say that? Are you here to interrogate me or something?’

  Lou Perlman laughed. It didn’t sound right in his ears. A fake laugh, a cocktail-party whoop. ‘Just passing through, Colin. Besides, I was worried about you. Wexler dead. And Lindsay. I wondered if there might be a hit-list, and your name was on it for future disposal.’

  ‘My name? What have I done?’

  Lou Perlman saw the opening. ‘You’ve lied to me. We can start there, if you like.’

  ‘And how have I lied, wee Louie?’

  Wee Louie, Perlman thought. He hadn’t heard that one in years. Wee Louie’ll clean up the mess. Wee Louie’ll clear the chess pieces away. He understood Colin was trying to put him back in his place of youthful servitude. Yessir, Colin. No problem, Colin. Happy to be useful.

  ‘You lied about Bannerjee, Colin.’

  ‘Oh? Did I?’

  ‘He’s the name you couldn’t remember. Lindsay’s client? The investor?’

  ‘That. Slipped my mind. Big deal.’

  ‘Bannerjee – whose name was practically a fucking synonym for scandal in Scotland – just slipped your mind? He was in every tabloid and broadsheet for months. The morality of our politicians. Do ethnic-minority members make good politicians. Don’t bullshit me, Colin. Don’t start.’