Beggars Banquet

by Ian Rankin

  Methadone was a joke. He sold his. Some chemists had started taking the junkies in ten at a time, shutting up shop while each dose was dispensed. Standing in a line like cub scouts or something. One wee plastic cup . . . With jellies hard to come by, what was the alternative?

  There is no alternative, that’s what heroin would have said. It wasn’t true it would kill you. It was the crap they cut it with did that. Anybody who could afford a good, big habit of the nice stuff, they could go on for ever. Look at Keef. Learned to ski, used to whip Jagger at tennis, made Exile on Main Street - skagged out the whole time. Skagged out and playing tennis. Nelly started to laugh. He was still laughing when the sound of the tenement door closing came crashing up the stairwell. Slow, steady steps. He rubbed tears from his eyes. His shoulder hurt where it had connected with Mrs McIver’s door. And here she was now, climbing towards him.

  ‘What’s the joke, Nelly?’

  He stood up to let her past. She was getting her keys out of her bag. Big canvas bag with Las Vegas painted on the side in loopy red writing. Looked like big red veins to Nelly. He could see a newspaper and a library book and a purse.

  ‘Nothing really, Mrs McIver.’ A purse.

  ‘What’re you doing up here anyway?’

  ‘Thought I heard something. Wanted to check you were all right.’

  ‘You must be hearing things. I thought you’d be out on the town, night like this.’

  ‘I was just heading out.’ He stepped on to her landing. She had her key in the door. ‘Eh, Mrs McIver . . . ?’

  As she turned her head, his fist caught her on the cheek.

  Johnny Hunter was holding court in his local. He was in his favourite corner seat, both arms draped round the necks of the blondes he’d chatted up at Chapters on Boxing Day evening. He’d given them champagne, driven them around in his Saab convertible, keeping the top down even though it was cold. He’d told them they needed fur coats, said he’d measure them up. They’d laughed. The littler one, Margo, he’d told her that was the name of an expensive wine. The other one, Juliet, was quieter. A bit stuck-up maybe, but not about to duck out, not with The Hunter throwing his money and his weight around. He’d done a few deals tonight, nothing cataclysmic. The punters wanted speed to keep them going, coke to lend an air of celebration to the new beginning. He’d steered a couple of them towards smack instead. Fashion was cyclical, whether it was hemlines or recreational drugs. Heroin was back in style. That was his pitch.

  ‘And it’s safe,’ he’d tell them. ‘Just follow the instructions on the box.’ And with a wink he’d be off, rearranging the lines of his Armani jacket, eyes open to the possibilities around him. Margo seemed to be cosying into him, maybe to get away from Panda, who was seated next to her. Panda was the scariest thing in the pub, which was the whole point of him. He was paid to be a deterrent, and also did the deals outside. The Hunter didn’t touch the goods if he could help it. The cops had come after him three times already this year, never enough for a prosecution. And now he had a pair of ears in the Drugs Squad: a hundred a week just for the odd phone call. Cheap insurance, Caldwell had agreed when Hunter had told him about it. Cheap for Caldwell, at any rate.

  Hunter didn’t know how much Caldwell was making. Ten, fifteen grand a week, had to be. House down in the Borders apparently, more a castle than a house. Six cars, each one better than the Saab. Hunter wanted to be Caldwell. He knew he could be Caldwell. He was good enough. But Caldwell had the contacts . . . and the money . . . and the muscle. Caldwell had made people disappear. And if Hunter didn’t keep business moving, he might find himself on the wrong end of his boss. There were other dealers out there: younger, just as hungry, and edging on the desperate, which meant reckless. All of them would like Hunter’s power, and his clothes and car, his women and money. They all wanted his money. And now Nelly of all runts was giving him grief - just by his very existence. Caldwell’s goons making sure Hunter knew what had to be done, making him acknowledge just how low he was on the ladder.

  ‘It’ll be you takes the fall,’ one of them had said. ‘You or him, so make it clean.’

  Oh, he’d make it clean, if that was what it took. He knew he’d no choice, much as he liked Nelly.

  ‘Are we clubbing or what?’

  Billy Bones talking: skinny as a wisp of smoke, seated the other side of Juliet, whose legs he’d been staring at for the past half-hour.

  ‘One more,’ Hunter said. The pub was heaving, table service impossible. There were a dozen empty glasses on the table. Hunter reached out an arm and swept them to the floor.

  Patrick Caldwell examined himself in his bathroom’s full-length mirror. He was casually dressed: brogues, chinos, yellow shirt, and a Ralph Lauren red V-necked sweater. Nearing fifty, he was pleased that he still possessed a good head of hair, and that the only grey was provided by touches at either temple. His face was tanned, and his eyes sparkled with self-satisfaction. It had, in the words of the song, been a very good year: less merchandise apprehended by the authorities; demand steady in some areas, increasing in others. A very satisfactory year. But still something niggled him. The more money he made, the more contented he should be: wasn’t that the dream? But the things he really wanted seemed still intangible. Seemed further away than ever, yet so close he could almost taste them . . .He turned out the light and headed back downstairs, where his guests were waiting. The cheeseboard was being placed on the table. A huge log fire crackled and spat in the hearth. The room was wood-panelled and fifty feet long, a devil to heat. But nobody looked uncomfortable. The whiskies and champagnes and wines had done their trick. Armagnac still to come, and the best champagne kept for midnight itself. On his way to his chair, he leaned down and kissed his wife’s head, which drew smiles from the guests. Eight of them, all but two staying the night. His driver would take these two home - that way they could both drink.

  ‘I’ll have no sobersides tonight,’ he’d told them.

  His guests were all professional people, wealthy in their own right, and as far as they were concerned Caldwell made his pile in a variety of property deals, security transactions and foreign investments. The Tomkinsons - Ben and Alicia - were seated nearest Caldwell. Ben had made his money early in life, a communications company in the City. He’d been a lowly BT engineer before founding his company, taking his one big risk in life. Now, twenty years on, he had homes in Kent, Scotland and Barbados, and liked to talk too readily about fishing. But Caldwell’s wife got on well with Alicia, ten years younger than Ben and a real beauty.

  Jonathan Trent had been an MP for two years, resigning finally (and famously) because the hours were too long, the pay laughable. He’d returned to his merchant bank, and was these days one of Caldwell’s many advisers. Trent didn’t mind where Caldwell’s money came from, didn’t ask too many questions. His first piece of advice to his client: get the best accountants money can buy. These days Caldwell was shielded as much by his small army of legal people and moneymen as by his hulking Mercedes and bodyguard. Even tonight Crispin was on duty, somewhere on the property, revealing himself only to any unwelcome visitors.

  Caldwell glanced at Trent’s wife, who was as usual putting away double the drinks her husband was. Not that she couldn’t hold the stuff, but it was always quantity over quality with Stella, and this irked Caldwell. Put the finest Burgundy in front of her and she slugged it like it was off the bottom shelf at Thresher’s. He’d seated Parnell Wilson next to her, in the hope that the racing driver’s tanned good looks would take Stella’s mind off grain and grape. But Wilson was too obviously besotted with his girlfriend, Fran, who sat directly opposite him. From their looks, Caldwell knew they were playing some provocative game of footsie under the table. And why not? Fran was like all Wilson’s conquests: tiny and gorgeous and leaping out of what dress there was, naked skin the only cloth that would really suit her.

  Caldwell had a large share in the syndicate which owned Wilson’s racing team. Not that Caldwell enjoyed the sport: fr
ankly, he could see no point to it. But he did enjoy the travelling - Italy, Brazil, Monte Carlo - and he always met interesting people, some of whom turned into useful contacts.

  Final guests: Sir Arthur Lorimer and his museum-piece of a wife. Lorimer was a judge and near-neighbour, and it pleased Caldwell to have the old soak here. Cultivate the Establishment: Trent’s second piece of advice. His reasoning: if you’re ever found out, it reflects badly on them, and as a result they’ll try to ignore what misdemeanours they can. Caldwell hoped he’d never have to put this to the test. But that might be up to Hunter.

  There’d been a phone call earlier from Franz in Dortmund, just to wish him a happy and prosperous new year.

  ‘With your help, Franz,’ Caldwell had said. They never said very much on the phone. You never knew who was listening, even at Hogmanay. It was all codes and intermediaries.

  ‘Your party’s tonight?’

  ‘In full flow. I’m sorry you couldn’t make it.’

  ‘Business so often interrupts my pleasures. But I’m sending a little token, Patrick. A gift for the millennium.’

  ‘Franz, you needn’t have.’

  ‘Oh, but it’s nothing really. I look forward to seeing you soon, my friend. And enjoy what’s left of your party.’

  Enjoy what’s left.

  They were on dessert when the doorbell rang. Caldwell decided to answer it himself, thinking of Franz’s gift.

  A man was standing on the porch. He was dressed all in black, smiling, pointing a gun directly at Caldwell’s heart.

  Franz knew he was going to have to head up to Denmark. Those damned Hell’s Angels and their little squabbles. All that tribalism was so bad for business. Not that they cared much about business, all they cared about was themselves. They reminded him of nothing so much as feuding families in some American cartoon book, a face-off between two mountain shacks. It had started as a question of territory - almost always his business disputes were to do with encroachment. That was why meetings were so important, so lines of demarcation could be drawn. But these bikers . . . put them in a room together and the hate was like some fug in the air, sucking out oxygen and replacing it with toxic gas.He needed couriers to Denmark, and the Angels were good at their job. But they lacked dedication. And he definitely didn’t need a war starting up between rival chapters. He needed that like he needed a hole in the head.

  He thought of Caldwell’s gift and allowed himself a smile.

  No visitors to Franz’s home this night. Few visitors on that day of the year. He conducted business from an office in the city, and travelled often. But here, in this fortress he had constructed, spending the best part of DM300,000 on security alone, here he felt safe, felt a certain tranquillity at times. These were the moments when his thinking was at its best, when he could plan and debate. Beloved Mozart on the stereo, and tonight not the Requiem - not on a night that should be a blossoming of hope and fresh intentions.

  His second fresh intention: after the diplomatic trip to Denmark, a further trip to Afghanistan. He’d heard worrying reports of depleted harvests, and of crops and fields being burned by suddenly efficient soldiers. He’d asked an associate in Chicago what the hell they thought was going on.

  ‘Blame our fucking dick-dipping President. He’s trying the same shit he pulled in South America. “Be my friend,” he tells them. “Let me loan you money, billions of dollars of clean government money. Use it to rebuild your infrastructure or line your private Zurich bank vault. But just get rid of all the shit you grow.” It’s all politics, as usual.’

  The voice from Chicago was distorted - a side-effect of the scrambler. At least no one would be listening in.

  ‘I don’t understand,’ Franz had said - though he did. ‘I thought we had arranged for friends to be placed where they could help us.’

  ‘What can they do? CBS go prime-time on a field of burning poppies, then up pops the Prez to say he did it. His ratings jump a couple of points, Franz, this guy would do his dear departed grandma in the ass for a couple of points.’

  End of conversation.

  Sad really, to think that decisions taken a continent away could affect one so much, but thrilling too. Because Franz saw himself as part of a network which embraced the globe, and felt his importance, his place in the scheme of things. If they ever set up colonies in space, he wanted to be supplying them. Dealer to the universe, by appointment to infinity . . .

  Mozart silent now. He hadn’t realised, but midnight had come and gone. Then a buzzer sounding: the guardroom, one of his men informing him of intruders entering the compound.

  It was not yet quite dawn, and Kejan lay in the darkness, as he had for the preceding five hours, his eyes staring, ears attuned to his wife’s light breathing. Three of their children slept in the room with them. Hama, the youngest, coughed and turned, made a slight moan before relaxing again. Kejan didn’t know if he’d ever relax again in his life, ever sleep again on this earth. Would the soldiers fulfil their promise and return to torch the shacks by the side of what had once been fields full of crops? Those fields had been Kejan’s future. Not that he’d owned them: the owner was a brutal man, a slave-driver. But Kejan had mouths to feed, and what other work was there? Now, with the fields reduced to cinders, he could only wait and wonder: would the soldiers drive the families away? Or would the Bossman chase them off his land, now that there was no work for them?It was a matter of time. It was for the future.

  He tried to envisage a future for his wife, his three children. He had more than once caught the Bossman staring at his wife, running his tongue over his bottom lip. And talking to her once, too, though she would not even admit it, kept her eyes on the ground as she denied and denied.

  Kejan had slapped her then, the bruise a lasting smudge against her cheekbone. It didn’t seem to want to go away.

  There were so many things Kejan didn’t understand.

  The soldiers passed around lighted torches. Their commander, arguing with the Bossman. The Bossman saying that he always paid, that he always kept everyone sweet. The commander not listening, the Bossman persistent. Soldiers fingering their weapons, noting that the Bossman’s men were better armed with newer, gleaming automatics.

  ‘Orders,’ the commander kept saying. And: ‘Just let us get on with it for now.’

  ‘For now’: meaning things might be okay later, that this had some deeper meaning which the commander felt unable to share.

  But later . . . later there would be other workers, willing workers. New people could always be found later. Now was what mattered to Kejan. He lived from moment to moment in this dark, overcrowded room. He waited for the moment he knew was coming, when the future would become the present and he would be consigned to the road with his family.

  Or perhaps - please, no - without them. He had hit his wife. The Bossman had smiled at her. The Bossman would take her, and Kejan couldn’t be sure she wouldn’t go. Would she take his children? Would the Bossman want them? Would he treat them right?

  His wife’s breathing, so shallow. The room a little lighter now, so he could see the outline of her neck, the way it was angled against the stem-filled sack she used as a pillow.

  Slender neck. Brittle neck. Kejan touched it with the tips of his fingers, heard a child cough and pulled his fingers away like they’d been too close to a torch.

  He sat up then, looked down on the dark, curved shape. Twisted his own body around so that it was easier to reach down with both hands.

  And heard the sound of lorries on the rough track outside, coming closer.

  An aggrieved Hell’s Angel sat in Franz’s study, and it was all Franz could do not to reach into his desk drawer for the pistol and blow the man’s brains all over the walls. Defilement: that was what it felt like. Engine oil and cigarette smoke had invaded his most private space, and even when the man had gone, those taints would remain.The rest of the gang was outside. One on one: Franz had demanded it, and the leader had agreed. A dozen of them. They’d scaled
the perimeter wall. A dozen of them armed, and Franz with only three guards on duty. But now more were on their way: calls had been made. And meantime the three guards faced off the leather-clad bandits, while their leader and Franz sat with only the antique rosewood desk between them.

  ‘Nice place,’ the Angel said. His name was Lars. Well over six feet tall, hair stretched back into a thin ponytail. Denim waistcoat - all-important ‘colours’ - worn over leather jacket. And his jackboots up on Franz’s desk.

  He’d grinned when Franz had stopped short of telling him to take his feet off the desk. But Franz was biding his time, waiting for his other men to arrive, and wanting to rise above all this, to be the diplomat. So he’d offered Lars a drink, and Lars now rested a bottle of beer against his crotch, and looked relaxed.

  ‘You’re financing our rivals,’ the gang leader said, getting down to business.

  ‘In what way?’

  ‘We’re in a war, no room for neutrals. And you’re funding their side of things.’

  ‘I pay them to act as my couriers, that’s all. I’m not financing any conflict.’

  ‘But it’s your money they’re using when they buy guns and ammo.’

  Franz shrugged. ‘And whose money are you using, my friend? Are your mortal enemies at this very moment confronting your employer?’ He smiled. ‘Do you see the absurdity of the situation? I’m not happy, because here you are invading my privacy, and I don’t suppose your employer will be feeling any different. I’m a businessman. I am neutral: business always is. What you’re doing, right this second, is fucking with my business. My instinct naturally is to get out, which is what you want, yes?’

  He had lost the biker, who nodded slowly.

  ‘Exactly. But what if the same thought is going through your employer’s mind? Where does that leave you? With no money, no prospects.’ Franz shook his head. ‘My friend, the best thing you can do for all our sakes is to begin discussions with your rivals, settle this thing, then we can all get back to what we want to be doing: making money.’