Beggars Banquet

by Ian Rankin

  There was nothing from his wife. He thought about heading to her new beau’s house - wouldn’t that surprise them? - but didn’t. One or two past and potential clients did call him. His home phone number was part of the message they got if they called his office, though it warned them to call his home only in an emergency. The calls he listened to didn’t sound like emergencies. A woman who was on her third husband. She’d had him investigate all three. He’d reported back that they were all good and true and faithful, but she didn’t sound convinced.

  A man who was on the run from his wife. She wanted maintenance payments, money the man said he didn’t have. Now he thought she’d hired a private detective, and wanted to hire one of his own to find out.

  And how, Chick wondered, was he going to get paid, when the man had no money for maintenance . . . ? Some of these people . . .

  But then she rang. And the sound of her voice made him replay the tape. And on the third play, he found himself reaching for pen and notepad, taking down her number, calling her back.

  ‘I’m glad you could come in at such short notice,’ she said.It was after hours at the car showroom. She’d told him the door would be open, he could let himself in. To get to her office, he’d walked past a gleaming display of supercars. Chick had never been inside the showroom before; knew there was nothing here he’d be able to afford.

  She held out her hand and he took it. She was a well-preserved fifty, expensive hair and just the right amount of make-up. He told her he’d always imagined the J. Gemmell of J. Gemmell Motors would be a man. She smiled.

  ‘Surprises a lot of people. The J’s for Jacqueline.’

  He sat down opposite her, asked what it was he could do for her. She told him she had a repo job.

  ‘That’s what they call it, isn’t it?’

  Chick nodded, though he wasn’t sure himself. He took down details as she told him about the car. It was a top-of-the-range Lexus, bought on credit. The last two monthly payments hadn’t come through, and the buyer had done a bunk.

  ‘I put word out discreetly,’ she told Chick. ‘I don’t want it getting about that I’m an easy target. That’s where you come in.’ She told him a garage on the outskirts of Inverness had reported the Lexus stopping for petrol. The driver had told the attendant he was on his way to his holiday place in the hills above Loch Ness. ‘I want you to find him, Mr Morrison, and bring my car back here.’

  Chick nodded. He was still nodding as she brought a roll of banknotes from her drawer and proceeded to peel off ten fifties.

  ‘I get a lot of cash customers,’ she said with a wink. ‘Hard to bank the stuff without the taxman taking an interest.’

  Chick pocketed the money. Then he asked for the driver’s name.

  ‘Jack Grover,’ she told him. ‘He has a personalised number plate.’ As she went on to describe Grover, a smile spread over Chick’s face. She saw it and broke off.

  ‘You know him?’

  Chick told her he thought he did. He shrugged like it was the most natural thing in the world, and added that knowing people was his job, after all. She looked impressed. As he was leaving, he had a thought.

  ‘Any chance of a test-drive some day?’ he asked.

  She smiled at him. ‘Bring back my Lexus, you can have your pick of the showroom.’

  Chick was actually blushing as he left.

  He knew a mechanic in Peterhead who showed him the best way to get into a Lexus and start it up. It took the mechanic about a minute and a half. He told Chick his teenage son could do it in twenty-eight seconds flat.On the drive west, thoughts raced through Chick’s mind. A body could disappear in a loch and never be found. Then there were the Highlands themselves, remote and unvisited. A corpse could lie there for months, becoming unrecognisable. And the roads around Loch Ness were treacherous . . . an accident could have you over the side.

  He asked at the tourist board about holiday cottages in the area, got a list. But it might be a private house, so he bought himself an Ordnance Survey map. Each little black dot was a building. He made a triangle of Inverness, Beauly and Urquhart Castle. Somewhere in here, he felt, he would find the Lexus and its driver, Jack Grover, the man who’d beaten him at cards.

  The roads were narrow and steep, the land empty except for the occasional croft or recently built bungalow. He stopped to ask questions, not being subtle about it. A man in a big silver car: had anyone seen him? He was living nearby. He spent two days like this, two days of rejection, silence and slow shakes of the head. Two days spent mostly by himself. To save money and the journey back to Inverness, he slept in his Ford Mondeo, parking it on forest tracks. He knew he needed a shave and change of clothes, but those could wait. He wanted the job finished, because now he had a plan of sorts. It was stupid to blame his wife, to think of harming her. Her new man . . . well, that was for the future maybe. But Jack Grover, on the other hand . . . he just had to rub his nose in it. Just to show him he could.

  He was thinking these things when he found the Lexus. It was parked in full view, outside a two-storey house on the outskirts of Milton. Chick stopped his car by the roadside and looked around. The house seemed quiet. He drove into Milton and left his car there - it could be picked up later. Then, taking his camera with him, he walked back to the Lexus, took another look around, and got to work. He was sweating by the time he’d got the door open and started the ignition. He got his camera ready and sounded the horn, wanting Grover to see him making off in the car, wanting a photo of the moment of triumph. But no one came to the door. Chick tried again; still no one came. He felt deflated as he sped out of the driveway and down to the banks of the loch, taking the road back into Inverness.

  But as he crossed the Caledonian Canal, he felt the car’s steering slip, and a low juddering from beneath. He pulled over and found that he had a puncture. Cursing silently, he kicked the tyre and opened the boot, looking for a jack and spare tyre.

  And found instead a body.

  Not any old body, but that of the card player, Jack Grover. Chick stumbled backwards and turned his head to be sick on the verge. Trembling, approaching the boot again, he took a handkerchief out to wipe his mouth. The bundle of notes came with it, floating into the boot. He reached in for them . . . beginning to wonder now. Cash in hand, untraceable . . . Gently, he patted the dead man’s pockets and reached a hand into one, bringing out a wallet. He thought he could hear a siren in the distance. There were credit cards in the wallet, and the same name on all of them: James Gemmell. The JG on the numberplate stood for James Gemmell, not Jack Grover.

  He saw it in a flash: there was no Jack Grover; no stolen Lexus. There was just Jacqueline Gemmell’s husband, who had gone home and told his wife about some drunk in the casino who’d been steamed up at him, a private detective of all things . . .

  The sirens were closer now. Chick rubbed his jaw, feeling the rasp of his beard, seeing himself dishevelled and dirty, recalling all the witnesses who would say he’d been looking for a man in a Lexus. And the witnesses at the casino - he’d told them to remember his name . . .

  Seeing, with absolute clarity, the way he’d been used by Gemmell’s wife, who had found for herself the perfect way to get rid of an unwanted spouse. Chick had been wrong: you didn’t need an unbreakable alibi or some obscure hiding-place. All you needed was someone like him, unlucky in love, unlucky at cards. Someone you could put in the frame . . .

  Video, Nasty

  You know the videos I mean. They get passed around, brought back from trips to Germany or France or the United States. A case of beer and a few mates round while the ladies are elsewhere. You won’t see ladies in these videos, except on the covers. Oh yes, the models on the covers are dolls, but on the tape itself . . . well. Once inside, we are talking gynaecology, and the rougher it gets the rougher the women begin to look. When one of the men suggests anal sex, you can be sure a new woman is about to enter the scene, her eyes as tired and heavy as her flesh, all pucker and tattoo and bruise. I wonder a
bout those bruises sometimes, about coercion and persuasion behind the scenes.I’m always invited to watch these videos. For two reasons: my working knowledge of French and German, and my technical ability with video recorders. These films aren’t always compatible with the British VHS players. You can lose colour, sound, or even the picture. But with a few home-made cables and boxes of tricks everything’s made hunky-dory, which pleases my friend Maxwell no end.

  ‘What’s that he’s saying, Kenny?’

  ‘Which one?’ I can see at least three men.

  ‘The one who’s talking, idiot.’

  ‘He’s saying “faster, faster”.’

  And Maxwell nods. He looks like he’s watching a Buñuel film, my translation crucial to his understanding and appreciation of the director’s intent. But the film we’re watching, along with Andrew, Mark and Jimmy, has the same dénouement as the dozen or so others in Maxwell’s mews flat. Despite being a bachelor, he keeps these videos tucked away in the wardrobe in his bedroom. I think for him the furtiveness is part of the fun; perhaps even all the fun. I look around at my friends’ faces. They are like kids at a birthday party watching Goofy cartoons. They say you can choose your friends, but that’s a lie. My life, I am sure, is a closed loop, like the eight-track cartridges you still find at car boot sales, along with Betamax video recorders and broken Rolf Harris Stylophones.

  Look at Maxwell. I didn’t choose him. On our first day at school we just happened to sit together. The next day, it seemed polite to do the same (and besides, the other desks and chairs were already occupied). We never had much in common. More, certainly, when at school than at university. And more at university than since. Maxwell is still single, has a fabulous job (with attendant car and home in the right part of town), and sees life as a series of challenges. I am married, in a dead-end career, with an ailing automobile and a tenement flat. My life too is a series of challenges. But where Maxwell spends his time trying to work out which gorgeous woman to date next, or where next to go for a sun-drenched holiday, I spend my time worrying over mortgage, overdraft, car insurance and council tax.

  One night a week, I slip out from Alice’s clutches for the euphemistic ‘pint with the lads’. We meet up in the same pub, then visit a new pub where Maxwell will chat up the barmaid, and take carry-out food back to his place where we might watch a video or play cards. Since the videos are all basically the same video, Maxwell attempts variety by trying to freeze-frame the come shot, fast-forward through the humping, or slo-mo the oral sex. I think this irritates the others, not just me. And at the end of it all, Maxwell has the same comment ready for me. A comment whose surface envy disguises a deeper sense of superiority.

  ‘Of course,’ he’ll say, ‘Kenny’s the lucky one. He spends all day surrounded by teenage lovelies.’

  Of course I do. It’s one of the schoolteacher’s few perks.

  You’re asking yourself: what does all this have to do with the fact that Alice was eventually put away for murder? And I answer that it’s all to do with a video. Because the barmaid reminded me of a model on the cover of one of Maxwell’s videos. The video was called ‘Asian Brothel Orgy’. No vagueness there. Video titles are seldom open to misinterpretation. You don’t look at them and ask yourself, Hm, wonder what that one’s about? ‘Teenage Dog Orgy’ would mean just that, I’m afraid.

  Of course, none of ‘Asian Brothel Orgy’ took place in Asia, and only one model bore any resemblance to someone from that part of the globe. The cover showed a perky blonde and blue-eyed teenager (American, I suppose, like the movie) looking coy and positioned so that, nude, she still showed little of interest to the regular porno customer. She was the tease, the promise of interior revelation.

  The back cover of course was a different matter: medical close-ups of penetration and ingestion. The front cover model naturally did not appear in the film. It took me a while to place her. I’m not suggesting that the new lunchtime barmaid did spare-time modelling for porno cassettes, but the two were distinctly similar. I went to the pub most lunchtimes, but seldom paid attention to the staff, being more interested in my beer and the all too occasional presence of Jennie Muir, our French teacher. Actually, it was Jennie’s more frequent absences from the pub which put blinkers on me. I’d sit eating crisps, staring into the bag as it emptied, wondering what she’d make of my Friday night translations for Maxwell and the others. ‘What’s she saying now, Kenny?’ ‘She’s saying “harder harder, faster faster”.’ When I wanted to watch a video in my own home, I’d try to rent something French, despite Alice’s protests that subtitles were too much like hard work. She preferred Steve Martin or Michael Caine over the latest Gallic smash, and had actually unplugged the machine halfway through Delicatessen.

  ‘It’s anything but delicate,’ she’d fumed.

  In my short reverie, prior to two crushing hours with the sixth years or an hour of Shakespeare or poetry, I’d stare into the crisp packet and see it as the interior of a nice flat by the river, a small balcony leading to the living-room where Jennie sat on a white leather sofa, sipping Chablis and chuckling at Delicatessen. I proffered more wine, which she accepted. We chinked glasses. Then I folded the crisp packet, tied a knot in it, and tossed it into the ashtray.

  It was Frank Marsh who noticed her.‘New barmaid’s a smasher,’ he said, placing a pint in front of me.

  ‘Really?’ Frank taught woodwork. His working knowledge was of planes and drill bits rather than women. He’d been fifty-six years a single man, never having ‘seen the point of getting bogged down’. I was a little envious of him. I glanced over my shoulder anyway. ‘Christ,’ I said, causing Frank to chuckle. She was chatting to a customer, fresh-faced and with a hand resting on one of the beer pumps, slender arms appearing from a baggy white T-shirt. I imagined Jennie Muir having depths of passion and provocation. But there was nothing submerged about the vision in front of me; all was glorious surface.

  Inside a few days the lunchtime clientele of our unassuming pub had doubled. Word was getting around. Only later did I equate Donna the barmaid’s years, blonde hair and blue eyes with ‘Asian Brothel Orgy’. Then I happened to mention it to Maxwell. The biggest mistake of my life, just about.

  He turned up one lunchtime with a slap on my shoulder. Startled, I tipped some beer on to my trousers.

  ‘Sorry, Kenny,’ he said. ‘Here, I’ll fetch a cloth.’

  When he returned, he already knew her name and her age. ‘You were absolutely right,’ he told me, watching as I wiped stains from my crotch, ‘she’s great. And she does look like the bird off the front of the vid.’

  ‘What the hell are you doing here?’ I knew Maxwell worked three miles away from the school and regarded lunch-hours as an anachronism. He shrugged.

  ‘Just passing. My name’s Maxwell, by the way.’ He shoved a hand out towards Frank Marsh. ‘Since Kenny’s not going to introduce us.’

  Frank blinked towards me. Maxwell was the only one who called me ‘Kenny’. At school I was Ken, and to Alice I was always Kenneth. (She managed to make it sound like a rebuke.) I hated ‘Kenny’, and Maxwell knew it. Once or twice I’d responded in kind with Max or even Maxie, but he just smiled fondly and eventually I came back to Maxwell. He’d managed somehow to avoid abbreviations and nicknames at school, while I was (thanks to my parents) already a Kenny when I arrived there. The nearest I got to niggling him was to attempt what I call the ‘reverse pun’, opening our conversations with the line ‘How’s Maxwell?’ making the ‘How’s’ sound like ‘House’. Get it?

  ‘Can I get anyone a drink?’ Maxwell asked now. Frank rapidly finished his pint. ‘And tell me, do they do food here?’ Maxwell stood up. ‘No, don’t bother. I’ll just go ask Donna.’

  By this time, you see, Donna had replaced Jennie Muir in my fantasies. Instead of the riverside apartment, there was a stuffy blanketed room, walls painted black and hung with animal skins. Candles flickered on every surface, and in the middle of the floor was a mattress sans bedstead.
Blood-red wine replaced the chilled Chablis, and there was a frenzy of music on the hi-fi. For nearly two weeks I’d been looking forward to lunchtimes and then going over them again during the subsequent afternoons. I’d broken the ice with Donna, had ascertained that she liked rock and a little bit of jazz, didn’t go to watch films but liked ‘clubbing’ at weekends.‘That’s why I work lunchtimes whenever I can, keeps the nights free.’ Her pale face surrounded crimson lips. She wore two gold studs in either earlobe. I started to drink a whisky with my beer, just so she’d turn around towards the row of optics, giving me the chance to stare. Her shape seemed near perfect, set off by short hugging skirts and thick black tights. Surface. Everything was there. Not like in the videos where the nakedness was so naked that it became clothing in itself.

  ‘I don’t know how you can teach in the afternoons,’ she said one day. She meant, how could I teach after a couple of pints and a couple of shorts. The answer was: by remote control, literally. I used videos more and more in the classroom, hogging the TV set, showing whatever was vaguely relevant and available. Shakespeare was easy, poetry not. I’d even take a class to the school’s video lab - we have some excellent facilities, due to a go-ahead rector who realises that technology is where future jobs lie. (What he doesn’t realise is that after hours I often use the video lab’s facilities for copying Maxwell’s tapes.) I could fill an hour showing the class how to edit films, why the cameraman is so important, and how an editor can make a movie work where the director has failed.