Watchman (novel)

by Ian Rankin

  Take the murder of that embassy man, the Israeli. Everyone shrugged their shoulders. Just a robbery gone wrong. But then why was everyone being so careful to skirt around it? That was what interested Stevens; it was as if an unspoken D-Notice had been slapped on it. He wasn’t sure what he could smell, but he could smell something. Perhaps it was the poison in his mouth, but then again…

  There were the phone calls, too, anonymous but regular. Keep at it, there’s a story there, and while you’re at it why not take a look at Harold Sizewell MP? A little birdie tells me he’s hot. Stevens called the voice on the telephone his “Deep Throat.” He kept its existence secret from everyone around him. Maybe they all had something to hide.

  The enemy tooth bunched up its fist and slammed it hard into the quivering root. Stevens threw half a cup of cold coffee over his trousers and clutched his jawbone, cursing.

  “Mr. Stevens?”

  “Yes, damn it.”

  “I telephoned you.”

  “Great, sit down. Do you have any aspirin?”

  “No.”

  “Fine.”

  He looked at the man, younger than his voice, deferential in manner. A civil servant smell about him, but very junior. Still, they knew stories, too, didn’t they? They were crawling out of the woodwork these days with their tuppence worth of spite.

  “So what can I do for you, Mr…?”

  “Sinclair, Tony Sinclair. That’s my real name, I swear, but please call me Tim Hickey from now on.”

  “That’s fine by me, Tim. Well, what is it I can do?”

  “It’s more a case of what I think I can do for you.”

  It was a cliché perhaps, but there was none sweeter to Stevens’s ear. They always liked to think of themselves as doing you a favor. It saved them feeling guilty about spilling the beans. God, Jim, there goes another cliché. All they were doing in fact, of course, was seeking revenge, sometimes out of spite, sometimes justifiably. Not that motive was any of his concern. Maybe it would be a tale of some philandering cabinet minister, a private secretary with pedophilic leanings, an administrator with occult powers and a coven in the Cotswolds. Surrogate revenge, thought Stevens, that’s what I am.

  “Go on,” he said, stabbing at his cheek with a finger, goading the pain to life.

  “Well,” said the lean young man, “you see, I’m a spy.”

  Walking down a nervous Whitehall, Stevens recalled that when he had first arrived in London, a young graduate named Compton-Burnett had been given the job of acquainting him with the city. Since he had not known any decent pubs, he had been of little use to Stevens, but he still remembered their first meeting in the editor’s office, the young man laughing behind his executive spectacles.

  “No relation, I’m afraid,” Compton-Burnett had said, as though Stevens were supposed to get some joke. He had looked toward the editor, who had looked away, baffled. Compton- Burnett had then walked him down Whitehall, pointing out the various government buildings.

  “What’s that one, then?” Stevens had asked.

  “Ah, that’s the MoD.”

  “And what about that one?”

  “Ah, I think that’s the MoD, too.”

  “And the ugly one?”

  “Milk and fish.”

  “Milk and fish?”

  “Agriculture and fisheries,” Compton-Burnett explained, laughing again, pushing his glasses back up the slippery slope of his nose.

  “And that one?”

  “Not sure. MoD possibly.” But on closer inspection, the tiny building, towered over by its colleagues like a tiny dictator by his bodyguards, had turned out to be the Scottish Office. Nowadays, Stevens knew the identities of most of these buildings, and none of them interested him except the tiny little Scottish Office. He empathized with it, seeing something of his own situation mirrored there, and tried to look the other way whenever he passed it.

  At the entrance to Downing Street, several thuggish-looking policemen had replaced the usual crew of friendly “bobbies.” It was a bad time. Bombing campaigns were bad news for everyone, but then bad news was just what the press thrived on.

  His tooth reminded him again that there were plenty of dental surgeries in the area. And he had wasted the whole morning. Nervous little Sinclair aka Hickey had wanted only to bite and scratch, having been kicked out of his little job, ready with his tiny fists to beat against the door of that which had been denied him. But Stevens had shut his eyes and his ears, had told Sinclair that there was another investigative journalist in London who would listen to him with a clearer notion of what he was talking about.

  This had not pleased the young man. He had a story to tell. (Stevens wondered now whether he had said “tell” or “sell.”) It was a tale of injustice, of underhanded dealing. It was a great big zero in Stevens’s book, a zero with not the faintest hope of any corroboration. Take it to Australia, pal. Write it up as a novel, sell a million.

  “Take me seriously, you bastard!” And with that Tim Hickey aka Tony Sinclair had risen to his feet and walked out of the café. Which was just what Jim Stevens had wanted him to do.

  He had problems of his own after all, didn’t he? And a column to write through the pain.

  He met Janine in the Tilting Room. Happy Hour. His tooth no longer hurt. He had swallowed his fear, marched into the surgery, and, hissing that this was a national emergency, had been led into the little torture room.

  And so, tooth numb, mouth half frozen, he found himself trying to drink whiskey and spilling it down his trousers. Nothing had changed. Only his pocket was lighter.

  “Hi,” said Janine, squeezing in beside him.

  “You’re late.”

  She ignored this.

  “What have you done to your face?” she asked.

  “Don’t ask.”

  She was a bright young girl with bright looks and a bright figure. Stevens was aware that they made an unlikely pair.

  “What have you got for me?”

  She was already searching in her briefcase, drawing forth a red file. She opened it and began to read to herself, her usual ploy before telling him her findings. She said it was an exercise for her short-term memory. To Stevens, it was a long-term pain in the arse.

  She was a bright girl. She wanted to work in the media. The media hadn’t existed in Stevens’s youth. But she was learning the hard way, because her family, though decent and hardworking, were nobodies, and so there was no ready-made niche for her in her chosen career. A friend had pleaded with Stevens to take her on as a lackey, and Stevens had agreed.

  “Not much up that particular avenue,” she said. “It seems that Sizewell has shares in a dozen companies apart from those of which he’s a director, but there’s nothing to suggest that he has been involved in the maneuvering of contracts toward any of those companies.”

  “You’re telling me he’s clean. What about his personal life?”

  “What do you want me to do? Sleep with him?”

  “Not a bad idea,” Stevens said, regretting it immediately as Janine threw him a ferocious look.

  “This case needs some dirty work if it’s to uncover any dirt on the Right Dishonorable Gentleman.”

  “Well, count me out,” said Janine, smiling a superior smile. No fillings in her mouth.

  The Sizewell investigation seemed to be leading nowhere. How could he ever have imagined it would, based as it was on crank phone calls and one sighting of the MP entering an exclusive gay club? It was never going to be front page, not unless he started beating up old queens or hiring rent boys. But the caller’s voice wasn’t the voice of a hoaxer. It was calm and articulate, and very sure of itself. It had told Stevens that Sizewell visited that club, the Last Peacock, now and again, and that “he has been a very naughty boy.”

  He’d give it just a little longer, just a week or so more.

  “Hello, you’re a nice girl.”

  It had been Janine’s idea, all Janine’s idea. They had left the Tilting Room, and ignoring th
e call of fast food to Stevens’s nostrils, had taken a cab (expenses! expenses!) to some new wine bar, the Lustra. This was well out of Jim Stevens’s territory, but seemed to please Janine with its wall-to-wall Porsche key rings and inherited fox stoles.

  “You are a very attractive girl.”

  The voice was new money, and there was money in the smile and money in the clothes: tasteful no, but moneyed yes. The man, blond, half permed, slid into the seat beside Janine. She smiled, enjoying the attention.

  “Yes, far too nice for the likes of him. Your uncle, is he? Or a friend of your grandfather’s perhaps?” Janine giggled at this, and Stevens felt betrayed. “Well,” continued the oil monkey, “say good-bye to the nice old man and hello to your sugar daddy, babe.”

  “Butt out, pal.” Stevens was only mildly surprised to find his voice becoming ridiculously Scottish all of a sudden.

  “No offense, Jock old boy.” The man looked across to Stevens for the first time, his grin full of good teeth. That was almost the final straw. “You don’t mind, though, if I have a chat with your niece, do you?”

  “If you don’t butt out, pal, I’m going to butt in—your teeth.” Oh yes, Jim, the macho act. This won’t help your position with Janine. Wit perhaps, some cutting riposte which would leave the opponent reduced to rubble. He was a journalist, after all, he should know a few comebacks. He racked his brain: none. His fists began to squeeze themselves into little bon mots beneath the table, and his temporary filling throbbed with a whole glucose-drip’s worth of adrenaline.

  “It’s OK, Jim,” said Janine, trying to reason with the incoming tide. Stevens knew that if he used force, he would lose her, lose any kind of chance that he might ever have with her. But then what chance did he have anyway?

  When golden boy put his hand on her knee, three things happened rather quickly. One was that Janine swiped the hand away expertly, with the minimum of fuss and the maximum of contempt. The second was that Jim Stevens leaned across the table, pulled golden boy across it by his skinny leather tie, and chopped him on the back of the neck as he fell, hoping that he had laid some kind of rabbit punch upon his opponent’s pale flesh.

  The man crawled a little way across the room, then got to his knees, and finally, rubbing his neck, to his feet. His friends were there beside him, and money began changing hands, as though after a bet. The bar was quiet: some kind of “happening” had just occurred, and everyone was humble with awe before the participants.

  It was only then that the third thing registered upon Jim Stevens: someone had taken a flash photograph as he had tugged at the man. He stared at the crew before him. Although he did not recognize the blond, the others were definitely reporters. Reporters. Of course they were, or he was Bruce Lee.

  “Thanks, people,” said golden boy, still rubbing his neck. “Let’s go.” And with that the entourage left the bar, one of them packing away his camera and lenses as he went.

  “What was all that—” began Janine, reddening as the clientele continued to stare at her. A bouncer of professional wrestler proportions was striding toward their table.

  “Don’t ask,” growled Stevens, “and don’t, for Christ’s sake, buy a tabloid tomorrow.”

  “So you know about it then?”

  “Cynegetics?” Billy Monmouth laughed. “Of course.”

  “Why am I always the last to hear about everything?”

  For once, it was Miles who had insisted on lunch, and he had insisted, too, that he should pay. Billy had shrugged, smiling, briskly alive to the beginning of October, autumn seeming to bring out the hunter in him.

  “Well, it’s not the sort of thing I would gossip about normally. How did you find out about it?”

  “Luck, really,” said Miles. “It doesn’t matter.”

  They had eaten at a restaurant close to Holborn.

  “How many are there working on Harvest?” Billy had asked.

  “Seven altogether,” Miles had lied.

  “Seven, eh? A sort of combine Harvester, would you say?” Billy had laughed at his joke.

  “Yes,” Miles had said, his mouth dry despite the Pomerol, “and I for one don’t want to come a cropper this time.”

  “A cropper, that’s very good, Miles.” But Billy had stopped laughing, faced with the steel in Miles’s voice and in his eyes.

  “What do you know about Cynegetics?” Miles asked now, waiting for the coffee and Billy’s brandy.

  “Oh, not very much. Rumors mostly. Nobody’s really sure who’s in it, you see, but the whole thing is probably run under Partridge’s direction.”

  “Partridge?”

  Billy nodded. He was being cagier than usual.

  “It was set up under his directive, apparently. It’s Partridge’s pear tree.”

  “But why?”

  “Paranoia, Miles. You know the firm.”

  During lunch, a litany of facts about beetles had played in Miles’s head. He thought of the death watch beetle, ticking like a time bomb, and of the whirligig beetle, skating across the surfaces of ponds. Miles felt like a whirligig beetle, dizzy yet exhilarated. But he felt like a death watch beetle, too.

  “What was that, Billy? I was miles away.”

  “I said that Jeff Phillips is rumored to have been transferred to Cynegetics as from last week. Lateral promotion.”

  “Good God. But Phillips is in on Richard Mowbray’s little scheme.”

  “Then maybe the gossip is wrong. It sometimes happens.”

  “But not often.”

  Billy smiled again, swirling the brandy around in his mouth before swallowing. He cleared his throat to speak.

  “There’s an exhibition on around the corner from here. I was thinking of paying a visit. The gallery’s run by one of our old girls. Do you fancy it, or are you in a hurry?”

  Miles was in no hurry whatsoever.

  It was a small gallery, brightly lit. The exhibition was of “Vorticist Painting, 1912–1916.” Both Billy and Miles bought the catalog, Miles hoping to surprise Sheila with this evidence of culture, but then pulling himself up sharply when he remembered why he was here.

  While Billy hung back to have a few words with the overdressed old lady by the door, Miles entered the Vorticist world. He found the paintings forbidding, and waited for Billy to catch up.

  “Oskar Kokoschka used to live around the corner from us,” he told Billy, realizing too late how fatuous the remark must seem.

  “Really?” said Billy. “Well, well.”

  They stopped at a line drawing of Ezra Pound.

  “That’s where I got the name for Mowbray,” said Billy. “Mauberley is a character created by Pound.”

  “Oh?”

  “Yes, old Pound was a bit of a fascist. Mad, too. Wrote some of his best stuff after the Allies had declared him insane.”

  “That probably says quite a lot about poetry,” said Miles.

  “I agree. What is it Shakespeare says? ”The lunatic, the lover, and the poet, are of imagination all compact.“ Something like that.”

  “Speaking of madmen and lovers,” said Miles, “I know about you and Sheila.”

  Billy, studying the catalog with preternatural interest, glanced up at a large canvas that appeared to contain millions of tiny nuts and bolts, twisted together into a vaguely human shape.

  “Ah,” he said at last, “so that’s what this is all about. What do you want me to say?”

  “Nothing.”

  “What did Sheila say?”

  “Sheila doesn’t know. And I’m not going to tell her. You are.” Billy looked ready to protest. “I’ve already moved a few things out of the house. I’m going to stay away for a while, to give us all time to make decisions.”

  “But, Miles, it wasn’t like that,” hissed Billy. “I mean, there’s no need for—”

  “I don’t want to hear it, not any of it, not now.” Miles checked his watch. “There’s just one more thing—I think you are the most complete bastard I’ve ever met. Knowing you, you’ll t
ake that as a compliment. It’s not meant as one, believe me.” He made to move away, but Billy clawed at his sleeve. Miles turned back toward him.

  “Oh,” he said, “and I forgot this.”

  The catalog was heavy, and it hit Billy Monmouth’s jaw with a deafening crack. He staggered against the nuts and bolts painting, several visitors looking on in horror as blood began to ooze from his lip and his gum. Miles was walking away, and he did not look invisible at all now. He looked like the watched, not the watchman, while Billy Monmouth fumbled for a handkerchief and some self-esteem.

  2

  BILLY’S JAW

  THIRTEEN

  HE DETESTED AVOCADO DIP, ALWAYS had, always would. The very color was an insult to him, and so many parties these days seemed to find a bowl of such sludge de rigueur. What else was there? The smiling minion who had thrust a plate and a napkin (paper) into his hand hovered behind the table, awaiting his selection. The plate, he noted, had one of those plastic rings clipped onto its rim. He was supposed to keep his glass of vile white wine in this venerated halo, and didn’t all the guests look such complete pricks as they did so, not trusting the dreaded ring enough not to leave one hand hovering close to it? This meant that they had no free hand anyway, and so the ring did not fulfill its one and only function. Bloody thing. Sizewell ripped his from the plate and threw it, with a plop, into the avocado dip, where it sank majestically. The waitress, the only observer of this, looked at Sizewell in horror while he smiled at her, happy with life once more, and asked her quite politely for a piece of the spinach quiche and a vol-au-vent or three.

  He was ravenous, having just come from a lengthy and painstaking sitting of the committee, where just about all they had thrashed out were their legitimate and non-legitimate claims for expenses incurred thus far. But the Smythsons’ party had promised lots of food, and so he had not bothered to eat beforehand. For his sin, he was consigned to function on a stomach half full of pastry.

  “Harry, old boy.”

  “Tanya!”

  “Good to see you.”

  “Tanya, how are you?”

  “Can’t complain, you know.”