The Beat Goes On

by Ian Rankin

  ‘Does that mean we can go?’

  Rebus nodded. Another woman left, then another, then a couple.

  ‘I hope you’re not thinking of kicking me out,’ Lesley Jameson warned. She wanted desperately to be a journalist, and to do it the hard way, sans nepotism. Rebus shook his head.

  ‘Just keep talking,’ he said.

  Cluzeau was in conversation with Serena Davies. When Rebus approached them, she was studying the Frenchman’s strong-looking hands. Rebus waved his own nail-bitten paw around the gallery.

  ‘Do you,’ he asked, ‘have any trouble getting people to pose for all these paintings?’

  She shook her head. ‘No, not really. It’s funny you should ask, Monsieur Cluzeau was just saying—’

  ‘Yes, I’ll bet he was. But Monsieur Cluzeau—’ testing the words, not finding them risible any more, ‘has a wife and family.’

  Serena Davies laughed; a deep growl which seemed to run all the way up and down the Frenchman’s spine. At last, she let go his hand. ‘I thought we were talking about modelling, Inspector.’

  ‘We were,’ said Rebus drily, ‘but I’m not sure Mrs Cluzeau would see it like that…’

  ‘Inspector…?’ It was Maureen Beck. ‘Everyone seems to be leaving. Do I take it we’re free to go?’

  Rebus was suddenly businesslike. ‘No,’ he said. ‘I’d like you to stay behind a little longer.’ He glanced towards the group–Ginny Elyot, Moira Fowler, Margaret Grieve–‘all of you, please. This won’t take long.’

  ‘That’s what my husband says,’ commented Moira Fowler, raising a glass of water to her lips. She placed a tablet on her tongue and washed it down.

  Rebus looked to Lesley Jameson, then winked. ‘Fasten your seatbelt,’ he told her. ‘It’s going to be a bumpy ride.’

  The gallery was now fast emptying and Holmes, having battled against the tide on the stairwell, entered the room on unsteady legs, his eyes seeking out Rebus.

  ‘Jeez!’ he cried. ‘I thought you’d decided to bugger off after all. What’s up? Where’s everyone going?’

  ‘Anything in the skip?’ But Holmes shrugged: nothing. ‘I’ve sent everyone home,’ Rebus explained.

  ‘Everyone except us,’ Maureen Beck said sniffily.

  ‘Well,’ said Rebus, facing the four women, ‘that’s because nobody but you knows anything about the statue.’

  The women themselves said nothing at this, but Cluzeau gave a small gasp–perhaps to save them the trouble. Serena Davies, however, had replaced her growl with a lump of ice.

  ‘You mean one of them stole my work?’

  Rebus shook his head. ‘No, that’s not what I mean. One person couldn’t have done it. There had to be an accomplice.’ He nodded towards Moira Fowler. ‘Ms Fowler, why don’t you take DC Holmes down to your car? He can carry the statue back upstairs.’

  ‘Moira!’ Another change of tone, this time from ice to fire. For a second, Rebus thought Serena Davies might be about to make a lunge at the thief. Perhaps Moira Fowler thought so too, for she moved without further prompting towards the door.

  ‘Okay,’ she said, ‘if you like.’

  Holmes watched her pass him on her way to the stairwell.

  ‘Go on then, Brian,’ ordered Rebus. Holmes seemed undecided. He knew he was going to miss the story. What’s more, he didn’t fancy lugging the bloody thing up a flight of stairs.

  ‘Vite!’ cried Rebus, another word of French suddenly coming back to him. Holmes moved on tired legs towards the door. Up the stairs, down the stairs, up the stairs. It would, he couldn’t help thinking, make good training for the Scottish pack.

  Serena Davies had put her hand to her brow. Clank-a-clank-clank went the bracelets. ‘I can’t believe it of Moira. Such treachery.’

  ‘Hah!’ This from Ginny Elyot, her eyes burning. ‘Treachery? You’re a good one to speak. Getting Jim to “model” for you. Neither of you telling her about it. What the hell do you think she thought when she found out?’

  Jim being, as Rebus knew from Lesley, Moira Fowler’s husband. He kept his eyes on Ginny.

  ‘And you, too, Ms Elyot. How did you feel when you found out about… David, is it?’

  She nodded. Her hand went towards her hair again, but she caught herself, and gripped one hand in the other. ‘Yes, David,’ she said quietly. ‘That statue’s got David’s eyes, his hair.’ She wasn’t looking at Rebus. He didn’t feel she was even replying to his question.

  She was remembering.

  ‘And Gerry’s nose and jawline. I’d recognise them anywhere.’ This from Margaret Grieve, she of the significant other. ‘But Gerry can’t keep secrets, not from me.’

  Maureen Beck, who had been nodding throughout, never taking her moist eyes off the artist, was next. Her husband too, Robert, the architect, had modelled for Serena Davies. On the quiet, of course. It had to be on the quiet: no knowing what passions might be aroused otherwise. Even in a city like Edinburgh, even in women as seemingly self-possessed and cool-headed as these. Perhaps it had all been very innocent. Perhaps.

  ‘He’s got Robert’s figure,’ Maureen Beck was saying. ‘Down to the scar on his chest from that riding accident.’

  A crime of passion, just as Cluzeau had predicted. And after Rebus telling him that there was no such thing as passion in the city. But there was; and there were secrets too. Locked within these paintings, fine so long as they were abstract, so long as they weren’t modelled from life. But for all that ‘Monstrous Trumpet’ was, in Serena Davies’s words, a ‘composite’, its creation still cut deep. For each of the four women, there was something recognisable there, something modelled from life, from husband or lover. Something which burned and humiliated.

  Unable to stand the thought of public display, of visitors walking into the gallery and saying ‘Good God, doesn’t that statue look like…?’ Unable to face the thought of this, and of the ridicule (the detailed penis, the tongue, and that sticking-plaster) they had come together with a plan. A clumsy, almost unworkable plan, but the only plan they had.

  The statue had gone into Margaret Grieve’s roomy bag, at which point Ginny Elyot had raised the alarm–hysterically so, attracting all the guests towards that one room, unaware as they pressed forwards that they were passing Margaret Grieve discreetly moving the other way. The bag had been passed to Maureen Beck, who had then slipped upstairs to the toilet. She had opened the window and dropped the statue down into the skip, from where Moira Fowler had retrieved it, carrying it out to her own car. Beck had returned, to find Serena Davies stopping people from leaving; a minute or two later, Moira Fowler had arrived.

  She now walked in, followed by a red-faced Holmes, the statue cradled in his arms. Serena Davies, however, appeared not to notice. She had her eyes trained on the parquet floor and, again, she was being studied by Cluzeau. ‘What a creature,’ he had said of her. What a creature indeed. The four thieves would certainly be in accord in calling her ‘creature’.

  Who knows, thought Rebus, they might even be in bon accord.

  The artist was neither temperamental nor stupid enough to insist on pressing charges and she bent to Rebus’s suggestion that the piece be withdrawn from the show. The pressure thereafter was on Lesley Jameson not to release the story to her father’s paper. Female solidarity won in the end, but it was a narrow victory.

  Not much female solidarity elsewhere, thought Rebus. He made up a few mock headlines, the sort that would have pleased Dr Curt. Feminist Artist’s Roll Models; Serena’s Harem of Husbands; The Anti-Knox Knocking Shop. All as he sat squeezed into a corner of the Sutherland Bar. Somewhere along the route, Cluzeau–now insisting that Rebus call him Jean-Pierre–had found half a dozen French fans, in town for the rugby and already in their cups. Then a couple of the Scottish fans had tagged along too and now there were about a dozen of them, standing at the bar and singing French rugby songs. Any minute now someone would tip an ice-bucket onto their heads. He prayed it wouldn’t be Brian Holmes, who, shirt-tail out
and tie hanging loose, was singing as lustily as anyone, despite the language barrier–or even, perhaps, because of it.

  Childish, of course. But then that was men for you. Simple pleasures and simple crimes. Male revenge was simple almost to the point of being infantile: you went up to the bastard and you stuck your fist into his face or kneed him in the nuts. But the revenge of the female. Ah, that was recondite stuff. He wondered if it was finished now, or would Serena Davies face more plots, plots more subtle, or better executed, or more savage? He didn’t really want to think about it. Didn’t want to think about the hate in the four women’s voices, or the gleam in their eyes. He drank to forget. That was why men joined the Foreign Legion too, wasn’t it? To forget. Or was it?

  He was buggered if he could remember. But something else niggled too. The women had laid claim to a lover’s jawline, a husband’s figure. But whose, he couldn’t help wondering, was the penis?

  Someone was tugging at his arm, pulling him up. The glasses flew from the table and suddenly he was being hugged by Jean-Pierre.

  ‘John, my friend, John, tell me who this man Peter Zealous is that everyone is talking to me about?’

  ‘It’s Sellers,’ Rebus corrected. To tell or not to tell? He opened his mouth. There was the machine-gun sound of things spilling onto the bar behind him. Small, solid things. Next thing he knew, it was dark and his head was very cold and very wet.

  ‘I’ll get you for this, Brian,’ he said, removing the ice-bucket from his head. ‘So help me I will.’

  My Shopping Day

  Two things about being a good-looking guy who dresses well: one, you tend to get noticed; two, nobody thinks you capable of a naughty deed. In my line of work–necessarily peripatetic–there’s a tradeoff between the two. I’m hoping people will be looking at my face and not my hands. And I’m hoping they’ll wander off in blissful ignorance afterwards.

  I’m a pickpocket, only the term has lost its meaning–fine for Oliver Twist, but not for the 1990s. We’re dippers, lifters. I specialise in handbags, shopping-bags, carriers. I’m not a weight-lifter or a big dipper–a little but often, that’s me. I saw a stage act once, he could have your wristwatch off your hand, the belt off your trousers, and you wouldn’t notice. He’d have your wallet, your glasses, your wife, your kids, and you’d take a look around and be naked and shivering in a dark alley.

  He was that good. I’m not. But I look better than he did; I take care of myself. I went backstage after the show and he was pouring whisky into a glass that wasn’t too clean. I got him to go through a couple of moves, thinking I could maybe incorporate them into my act, but nothing came of it. I asked him why, when he could make a fortune in train stations, airports and cinema foyers, he was wasting his time on the stage of a working-men’s club in Leven. He said the problem was he needed to show off. He had this gift, and he couldn’t keep it quiet. He knew damned well that if he lifted a wallet, he’d want the victim to know about it.

  Theatrical types, I’ve met a few.

  I’m a bit of an actor myself of course; have to be. My face is smiling, giving a come-on, and my mouth is saying all this ‘pardon-me-all-my-fault’ stuff, but my mind is on what my hands are doing, slipping in and out of bags and baskets, palming the purse or the wallet or whatever of value happens to be lying there in plain view or just beyond. I wear expensive aftershave–not that cloying crap you see shagged to death on TV just before Christmas–and when I get close they get a good waft of it. It all helps to keep them occupied–preoccupied–during the performance. That was one lesson the old stooge in Leven taught me: preoccupation. Persuade them they’re part of a certain scenario and they’ll go along with it. Simple really.

  I frequent the big supermarkets and shopping centres. I see young women kicking their heels and holding clipboards, ready to collar some brain-fried shopper into taking part in their ‘consumer survey’. Right, only what they’re really doing is easing you into a pitch for double glazing, new kitchen, conservatory. And people keep taking the bait. I want to scream at them: come on! Wakeywakey! But what use would it do? A trawl up and down those aisles and your head is mush.

  I know shopping centres don’t want you doing it, but just walk in some day and position yourself on the safe side of the check-outs. Now stand there and watch the show. Watch a shopper breeze into the shop with head held high, trolley buzzing. Then watch them at the check-out, watch them as they leave. Their skin’s turned grey, eyes dark. They frown, their jaw moves, there’s almost drool there at the corners. Shoulders slumped, head sagging. These people have been beaten, pummelled. They’ve been hijacked, gagged, throttled, stymied, shaken and stirred. On the way home, they’ll be argumenta tive, downright rude, and once home they’ll collapse, fight with spouse and kids, maybe have a little weep in the privacy of the toilet. And inside their head will be some shocking refrain, something they can’t seem to shrug off without the aid of hard drink. It’ll be some synthesised, sanitised, la-la-la singalong hit from the ’60s or ’70s. The music they shopped to, music you don’t so much hear as ingest. While you’re standing at the check-out, watching the sorry parade, you might want to try listening to that music. Believe me, it’s hard to do: the music doesn’t want you to listen to it. It wants you to feel it, which is a different thing altogether.

  Okay, so you’re thinking: the best time to lift those purses and wallets is when the shoppers come stumbling out with their trolleys laden, right? Wrong: I take them inside the shop, while their minds are at the same time filling with junk and jangling with a mental shopping list. They’re seeing novelties they didn’t know they needed–chocolate-flavoured pasta; canned caffeine with a free colour-change straw–and almost forgetting washing-up liquid and the kids’ dinner. Boom: that’s when I bump into them. That’s when I brush against their cheap coats as I lean past for that perfect tomato towards the back of the display. That’s when I half-turn my head, give them the smile, and say something about how crowded the shop is today. Caught a little off-guard, they’re open to the full effect: dental work, jawline, groomed hair, expensive clothes, sweetened breath and aftershave. My blue eyes sparkle with the same drops TV presenters use. The hand I’ve reached past their own wears a Breitling wristwatch, all bells and whistles and 2k of Swiss whatever. I’m working now. See, I don’t just have to hold this woman–nearly always a woman–in thrall; I have at the same time to hide what my other hand is doing from other shoppers in the vicinity, some of whom, attracted to the show, will be watching me, watching her, and thinking they’d like to be over by the tomatoes right now instead.

  It can take ten or fifteen minutes to size up the punter. They need to be a certain type–that goes without saying–and there has to be something worth nicking from them. I have to make sure nobody knows I’m shadowing them as I pass down the aisles with my handbasket (one or two items in it which I’ll ditch later: I don’t want to be standing in a check-out queue while my victim finds out she’s missing cash and credit cards). So many variables, it’s a juggling act really. And I have to be a good psychologist. And I have to get away.

  So you can see, it’s not easy money when all’s said and done.

  But it beats clerical work, no?

  Edinburgh had produced a good haul that Saturday. I’d hit three edge-of-town superstores. Saturday afternoons in those places are like hell on earth. Plus, they’re either shrewd or tight-fisted on the east coast: no really easy pickings. They keep their money close to them and are suspicious of any stranger–any stranger. I blame those market researchers; you never know who’s going to turn out to be one. Best-looking man I’ve ever seen came to my door one night with the old clipboard and pen. Turned out he was trying to sell carpets. Looked like he was wearing one, too.

  And in the morning, just to show I’m not a bad bloke, I’d rejected a wallet which had been held out to me on a plate. There was a blind guy in the first shopping centre, walking the marbled and mirrored halls with confidence and a guide-dog. The guide-dog was
a beauty of a Labrador: I love dogs, always have done. It was early in the day and I was just limbering up, sizing the place and its level of security. So I asked the old guy if I could pat his dog, gave me a chance to take a surreptitious look around. Gorgeous dog it was, come-hither eyes, all that. Nice and solid with a good coat. Liked to be stroked, too. So me and the old guy got talking. He was wearing some tatty old tweed jacket with greasy elbows–mind, I can see that smartness of appearance is problematical when you’re blind. Anyway, the jacket was all baggy and worn, and when it swung open as the man leaned down to stroke his Lab, I saw his wallet inside, swinging from a loose pocket. And I could have had it, but he was blind for Christ’s sake, and maybe I just wasn’t ready. So I’d decided to leave it alone and guess what? He leaned a bit further down and the bloody thing slipped out onto the floor. He didn’t seem to have heard it, too busy murmuring sweet nothings to the dog, whose name was ‘Sabre’. I picked up the wallet, gave its contents a once-over. Sabre’s eyes were on me, but he wasn’t saying anything. Seemed like he was on my side.

  ‘You dropped this,’ I told the old fellow, wedging the wallet into his hand.

  Temptation is a terrible thing though…

  Anyway, afternoon shift over, I’d returned to my car and driven it to the furthest corner of the car park to count my haul. I always choose the quietest corner, usually round by the loading bays. Saturday afternoons these aren’t usually in use, unless someone’s bought a bed or a bike and has driven round to load it into the car. Today, there was a transit van parked nearby, but nobody was in it, and when I looked around I didn’t see anyone. So I spread the stuff on the passenger seat and got to work.

  There was a guy I knew once called Playtex, partnered him a couple of times. He was called Playtex because he could lift and separate–as in lift people’s money and separate them from it. Anyway, his advice was to get away from the scene pronto. But then one day while driving out of the car park, he smacked into a disabled car. There was a cop car nearby, and of course Playtex didn’t just have cash and plastic in his own car, he had the purses and wallets too, spread all over the place after the impact.