Beggars Banquet (collection)

by Ian Rankin

  That particular advert was beginning to get to him. It careered around in his head, even when it wasn’t being broadcast. The actor’s voice was so… what was the word? It was like being force-fed a tablespoon of honey. Cloying, sickly, altogether too much.

  ‘Was Camelot a myth or is it real? Arthur and Guinevere, Merlin and Lancelot. A dream, or-’

  Rebus switched off the radio. ‘It’s only a jar of bloody coffee,’ he told his radio set. Yes, he thought, a jar of coffee… and mmm… it tastes so good. Come to think of it, he needed coffee for the flat. He’d stop off at the corner shop, and whatever he bought it wouldn’t be Camelot.

  But, as a promotional gimmick, there was a fifty-pence refund on Camelot, so Rebus did buy it, and sat at home that evening drinking the vile stuff and listening to Penny Cook’s tape. Tomorrow evening, he was thinking, he might go along to the station to catch her show live. He had an excuse after all: he wanted to speak with Sue, the telephonist. That was the excuse; the truth was that he was intrigued by Penny Cook herself.

  You’re not quite what I was expecting.

  Was he reading too much into that one sentence? Maybe he was. Well, put it another way then: he had a duty to return to Lowland Radio, a duty to talk to Sue. He wound the tape back for the umpteenth time. That ferocious voice. Sue had been surprised by its ferocity, hadn’t she? The man had seemed so quiet, so polite in their initial conversation. Rebus was stuck. Maybe the caller would simply get fed up. When it was a question of someone’s home being called, there were steps you could take: have someone intercept all calls, change the person’s number and keep it ex-directory. But Penny Cook needed her number to be public. She couldn’t hide, except behind the wall provided by Sue and David.

  Then he had an idea. It wasn’t much of an idea, but it was better than nothing. Bill Costain at the Forensic Science Lab was keen on sound recording, tape recorders, all that sort of stuff. Maybe he could do something with Mr Anonymous. Yes, he’d call him first thing tomorrow. He sipped his coffee, then squirmed.

  ‘Tastes more like camel than Camelot,’ he muttered, hitting the play button.

  The morning was bright and clear, but Bill Costain was dull and overcast.

  ‘I was playing in a darts match last night,’ he explained. ‘We won for a change. The amount of drink we put away, you’d think Scotland had just done the Grand Slam.’

  ‘Never mind,’ said Rebus, handing over the cassette tape. ‘I’ve brought you something soothing…’

  ‘Soothing’ wasn’t the word Costain himself used after listening to the tape. But he enjoyed a challenge, and the challenge Rebus had laid down was to tell him anything at all about the voice. He listened several times to the tape, and put it through some sort of analyser, the voice becoming a series of peaks and troughs.

  Costain scratched his head. ‘There’s too big a difference between the voice at the beginning and the voice when hysterical.’

  ‘How do you mean?’ Costain always seemed able to baffle Rebus.

  ‘The hysterical voice is so much higher than the voice at the beginning. It’s hardly… natural.’

  ‘Meaning?’

  ‘I’d say one of them’s a put-on. Probably the initial voice. He’s disguising his normal tone, speaking in a lower register than usual.’

  ‘So can we get back to his real voice?’

  ‘You mean can we retrieve it? Yes, but the lab isn’t the best place for that. A friend of mine has a recording studio out Morningside way. I’ll give him a bell…’

  They were in luck. The studio’s facilities were not in use that morning. Rebus drove them to Morningside and then sat back as Costain and his friend got busy at the mixing console. They slowed the hysteric part of the tape; then managed somehow to take the pitch of the voice down several tones. It began to sound more than slightly unnatural, like a Dalek or something electronic. But then they started to build it back up again, until Rebus was listening to a slow, almost lifeless vocal over the studio’s huge monitor speakers.

  ‘I… know… what… you’ve… done.’

  Yes, there was life there now, almost a hint of personality. After this, they switched to the caller’s first utterance – ‘Not so good, Penny’ – and played around with it, heightening the pitch slightly, even speeding it up a bit.

  ‘That’s about as good as it gets,’ Costain said at last.

  ‘It’s brilliant, Bill, thanks. Can I get a copy?’

  Having dropped Costain back at the lab, Rebus wormed his way back through the lunchtime traffic to Great London Road police station. He played this new tape several times, then switched from tape to radio. Christ, he’d forgotten: it was still tuned to Lowland.

  ‘… and mmm… it tastes so good.’

  Rebus fairly growled as he reached for the off button. But the damage, the delirious, wonderful damage, had already been done…

  The wine bar was on the corner of Hanover Street and Queen Street. It was a typical Edinburgh affair in that though it might have started with wine, quiche and salad in mind, it had reverted to beer – albeit mainly of the ‘designer’ variety – and pies. Always supposing you could call something filled with chickpeas and spices a ‘pie’. Still, it had an IPA pump, and that was good enough for Rebus. The place had just finished its lunchtime peak, and tables were still cluttered with plates, glasses and condiments. Having paid over the odds for his drink, Rebus felt the barman owed him a favour. He gave the young man a name. The barman nodded towards a table near the window. The table’s sole occupant looked just out of his teens. He flicked a lock of hair back from his forehead and gazed out of the window. There was a newspaper folded into quarters on his knee. He tapped his teeth with a ballpoint, mulling over some crossword clue.

  Without asking, Rebus sat down opposite him. ‘It whiles away the time,’ he said. The tooth-tapper seemed still intent on the window. Maybe he could see his reflection there. The modern Narcissus. Another flick of the hair.

  ‘If you got a haircut, you wouldn’t need to keep doing that.’

  This achieved a smile. Maybe he thought Rebus was trying to chat him up. Well, after all, this was known as an actors’ bar, wasn’t it? Half a glass of orange juice sat on the table, the ubiquitous ice-cube having melted away to a sliver.

  ‘Aye,’ Rebus mused, ‘passes the time.’

  This time the eyes turned from the window and were on him. Rebus leaned forward across the table. When he spoke, he spoke quietly, confidently.

  ‘I know what you’ve done,’ he said, not sure even as he said it whether he were quoting or speaking for himself.

  The lock of hair fell forward and stayed there. A frozen second, then another, and the man rose quickly to his feet, the chair tipping back. But Rebus, still seated, had grabbed at an arm and held it fast.

  ‘Let go of me!’

  ‘Sit down.’

  ‘I said let go!’

  ‘And I said sit down!’ Rebus pulled him back on to his chair. ‘That’s better. We’ve got a lot to talk about, you and me. We can do it here or down at the station, and by “station” I don’t mean Scotrail. OK?’

  The head was bowed, the careful hair now almost completely dishevelled. It was that easy… Rebus found the tiniest grain of pity. ‘Do you want something else to drink?’ The head shook from side to side. ‘Not even a cup of coffee?’

  Now the head looked up at him.

  ‘I saw the film once,’ Rebus went on. ‘Bloody awful it was, but not half as bad as the coffee. Give me Richard Harris’s singing any day.’

  Now, finally, the head grinned. ‘That’s better,’ said Rebus. ‘Come on, son. It’s time, if you’ll pardon the expression, to spill the beans.’

  The beans spilled…

  Rebus was there that night for What’s Cookin’. It surprised him that Penny Cook herself, who sounded so calm on the air, was, before the programme, a complete bundle of nerves. She slipped a small yellow tablet on to her tongue and washed it down with a beaker of water.

/>   ‘Don’t ask,’ she said, cutting off the obvious question. Sue and David were stationed by their telephones in the production room; which was separated from Penny’s studio by a large glass window. Her producer did his best to calm things down. Though not yet out of his thirties, he looked to be an old pro at this. Rebus wondered if he shouldn’t have his own counselling show…

  Rebus chatted with Sue for ten minutes or so, and watched as the production team went through its paces. Really, it was a two-man operation – producer and engineer. There was a last-minute panic when Penny’s microphone started to play up, but the engineer was swift to replace it. By five minutes to eleven, the hysteria seemed over. Everyone was calm now, or was so tense it didn’t show. Like troops just before a battle, Rebus was thinking. Penny had a couple of questions about the running order of the night’s musical pieces. She held a conversation with her producer, communicating via mikes and headphones, but looking at one another through the window.

  Then she turned her eyes towards Rebus, winked at him, and crossed her fingers. He crossed his fingers back at her.

  ‘Two minutes everyone…’

  At the top of the hour there was news, and straight after the news…

  A tape played. The show’s theme music. Penny leaned towards her microphone, which hung like an anglepoise over her desk. The music faded.

  ‘Hello again. This is Penny Cook, and this is What’s Cookin’. I’ll be with you until three o’clock, so if you’ve got a problem, I’m just a phone call away. And if you want to ring me the number as ever is…’

  It was extraordinary, and Rebus could only marvel at it. Her eyes were closed, and she looked so brittle that a shiver might turn her to powder. Yet that voice… so controlled… no, not controlled; rather, it was as though it were apart from her, as though it possessed a life of its own, a personality… Rebus looked at the studio clock. Four hours of this, five nights a week? All in all, he thought, he’d rather be a policeman.

  The show was running like clockwork. Calls were taken by the two operators, details scribbled down. There was discussion with the producer about suitable candidates, and during the musical interludes or the commercials -‘… and mmm… it tastes so good’ – the producer would relay details about the callers to Penny.

  ‘Let’s go with that one,’ she might say. Or: ‘I can’t deal with that, not tonight.’ Usually, her word was the last, though the producer might demur.

  ‘I don’t know, it’s quite a while since we covered adultery…’

  Rebus watched. Rebus listened. But most of all, Rebus waited…

  ‘OK, Penny,’ the producer told her, ‘it’s line two next. His name’s Michael.’

  She nodded. ‘Can somebody get me a coffee?’

  ‘Sure.’

  ‘And next,’ she said, ‘I think we’ve got Michael on line two. Hello, Michael?’

  It was quarter to midnight. As usual, the door of the production room opened and Gordon Prentice stepped into the room. He had nods and smiles for everyone, and seemed especially pleased to see Rebus.

  ‘Inspector,’ he said shaking Rebus’s hand. ‘I see you take your work seriously, coming here at this hour.’ He patted the producer’s shoulder. ‘How’s the show tonight?’

  ‘Been a bit tame so far, but this looks interesting.’

  Penny’s eyes were on the dimly lit production room. But her voice was all for Michael.

  ‘And what do you do for a living, Michael?’

  The caller’s voice crackled out of the loudspeakers. ‘I’m an actor, Penny.’

  ‘Really? And are you working just now?’

  ‘No, I’m what we call “resting”.’

  ‘Ah well, they say there’s no rest for the wicked. I suppose that must mean you haven’t been wicked.’

  Gordon Prentice, running his fingers through his beard, smiled at this, turning to Rebus to see how he was enjoying himself. Rebus smiled back.

  ‘On the contrary,’ the voice was saying. ‘I’ve been really quite wicked. And I’m ashamed of it.’

  ‘And what is it you’re so ashamed of, Michael?’

  ‘I’ve been telephoning you anonymously, Penny. Threatening you. I’m sorry. You see, I thought you knew about it. But the policeman tells me you don’t. I’m sorry.’

  Prentice wasn’t smiling now. His eyes had opened wide in disbelief.

  ‘Knew about what, Michael?’ Her eyes were staring at the window. Light bounced off her spectacles, sending flashes like laser beams into the production room.

  ‘Knew about the fix. When the ratings were going down, the station head, Gordon Prentice, started rigging the shows, yours and Hamish MacDiarmid’s. MacDiarmid might even be in on it.’

  ‘What do you mean, rigging?’

  ‘Kill it!’ shouted Prentice. ‘Kill transmission! He’s raving mad! Cut the line someone. Here, I’ll do it-’

  But Rebus had come up behind Prentice and now locked his own arms around Prentice’s. ‘I think you’d better listen,’ he warned.

  ‘Out of work actors,’ Michael was saying, the way he’d told Rebus earlier in the day. ‘Prentice put together a… you could call it a cast, I suppose. Half a dozen people. They phone in using different voices, always with a controversial point to make or some nice juicy problem. One of them told me at a party one night. I didn’t believe her until I started listening for myself. An actor can tell that sort of thing, when a voice isn’t quite right, when something’s an act rather than for real.’

  Prentice was struggling, but couldn’t break Rebus’s hold. ‘Lies!’ he yelled. ‘Complete rubbish! Let go of me, you-’

  Penny Cook’s eyes were on Prentice now, and on no one but Prentice.

  ‘So what you’re saying, Michael, if I understand you, is that Gordon Prentice is rigging our phone-ins so as to boost audience figures?’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘Michael, thank you for your call.’

  It was Rebus who spoke, and he spoke to the producer.

  ‘That’ll do.’

  The producer nodded through the glass to Penny Cook, then flipped a switch. Music could be heard over the loudspeakers. The producer started to fade the piece out. Penny spoke into her microphone.

  ‘A slightly longer musical interlude there, but I hope you enjoyed it. We’ll be going back to your calls very shortly, but first we’ve got some commercials.’

  She slipped off her glasses and rubbed the bridge of her nose.

  ‘A private performance,’ Rebus explained to Prentice. ‘For our benefit only. The listeners were hearing something else.’ Rebus felt Prentice’s body soften, the shoulders slump. He was caught, and knew it for sure. Rebus relaxed his hold on the man: he wouldn’t try anything now.

  The Camelot Coffee ad was playing. It had been easy really. Recognising the voice on the commercial as that of the phone caller, Rebus had contacted the ad agency involved, who had given him the name and address of the actor concerned: Michael Barrie, presently resting and to be found most days in a certain city-centre wine bar…

  Barrie knew he was in trouble, but Rebus was sure it could be smoothed out. But as for Gordon Prentice… ah, that was different altogether.

  ‘The station’s ruined!’ he wailed. ‘You must know that!’ He pleaded with the producer, the engineer, but especially with the hate-filled eyes of Penny Cook who, behind glass, could not even hear him. ‘Once this gets out, you’ll all be out of a job! All of you! That’s why I-’

  ‘Back on in five seconds, Penny,’ said the producer, as though it was just another night on What’s Cookin’. Penny Cook nodded, resting her glasses back on her nose. The stuffing looked to have been knocked out of her. With one final baleful glance towards Prentice, she turned to her microphone.

  ‘Welcome back. A change of direction now, because I’d like to say a few words to you about the head of Lowland Radio, Gordon Prentice. I hope you’ll bear with me for a minute or two. It shouldn’t take much longer than that…’

&nbs
p; It didn’t, but what she said was tabloid news by morning, and Lowland Radio’s licence was withdrawn not long after that. Rebus went back to Radio Three for when he was driving, and no radio at all in his flat. Hamish MacDiarmid, as far as he could ascertain, went back to a croft somewhere, but Penny Cook stuck around, going freelance and doing some journalism as well as the odd radio programme.

  It was very late one night when the knock came at Rebus’s door. He opened it to find Penny standing there. She pretended surprise at seeing him.

  ‘Oh, hello,’ she said. ‘I didn’t know you lived here. Only, I’ve run out of coffee and I was wondering…’

  Laughing, Rebus led her inside. ‘I can let you have the best part of a jar of Camelot,’ he said. ‘Or alternatively we could get drunk and go to bed…’

  They got drunk.

  Castle Dangerous – AN INSPECTOR REBUS STORY

  Sir Walter Scott was dead.

  He’d been found at the top of his namesake’s monument in Princes Street Gardens, dead of a heart attack and with a new and powerful pair of binoculars hanging around his slender, mottled neck.

  Sir Walter had been one of Edinburgh’s most revered QCs until his retirement a year ago. Detective Inspector John Rebus, climbing the hundreds (surely it must be hundreds) of spiralling steps up to the top of the Scott Monument, paused for a moment to recall one or two of his run-ins with Sir Walter, both in and out of the courtrooms on the Royal Mile. He had been a formidable character, shrewd, devious and subtle. Law to him had been a challenge rather than an obligation. To John Rebus, it was just a day’s work.

  Rebus ached as he reached the last incline. The steps here were narrower than ever, the spiral tighter. Room for one person only, really. At the height of its summer popularity, with a throng of tourists squeezing through it like toothpaste from a tube, Rebus reckoned the Scott Monument might be very scary indeed.

  He breathed hard and loud, bursting through the small doorway at the top, and stood there for a moment, catching his breath. The panorama before him was, quite simply, the best view in Edinburgh. The castle close behind him, the New Town spread out in front of him, sloping down towards the Firth of Forth, with Fife, Rebus’s birthplace, visible in the distance. Calton Hill… Leith… Arthur’s Seat… and round to the castle again. It was breathtaking, or would have been had the breath not already been taken from him by the climb.