by Ian Rankin
Now me, I like to take my time, not panic. Go through everything then and there, that way I can ditch the unnecessaries as soon as possible. The purses and wallets go into a bottle bank if there is one: stick them in a bin and they might be found too soon. ID cards, photo-cards, that sort of thing–same place. Cash and credit cards, cash cards, stuff like that I keep, plus any little things like stamps. These days, of course, nobody’s supposed to carry cash, but you’d be surprised. First thing a lot of people do before they start their shopping is visit the bank or the machine: they might need cash for a restaurant, a cup of coffee or a double gin, a taxi home, the TV papers… I get a lot of nice fresh tens and twenties. The plastic I offload to a guy I meet three times a week in a pub in Glasgow. It’s a hassle, meeting him this often, but he says we have to ‘strike while the iron is hot’. In other words, he needs the cards before they get too old. Some people, so he tells me, will wait up to a week before reporting missing cards, on the chance that they might turn up. Or they simply won’t notice they’re missing. But all the same, he needs them pronto, so he can maximise their shelf-life. He can use cash cards too, though I don’t know how. He bypasses the code or something; works a couple of times then you throw the card away or the machine swallows it.
I’d made not too bad a showing that afternoon. The bottle bank was about ten yards away, so I got out of the car and walked over to it, pushing the leatherware inside. I could smell sour wine and beer slops, and knew I’d be drinking better than either that evening.
I was just getting back into my car when I heard the squeal. It was coming from the transit. I heard it again. There was no one in the front of the van, so the sound had to be coming from the back. No windows, so I couldn’t be sure. But yes: the whole van rocked suddenly and I heard a thudding sound. Then a voice–definitely a voice this time–a man’s, hissing something that sounded very much like, ‘You won’t do that again, you bitch!’
I got back into my car and just sat there, hands resting on the steering-wheel. Then I put my window down. I didn’t hear anything else. The van was white mostly, but with a black roof. It looked like a respray. The front grille was crimson and the wing-mirror nearest me was missing. There was a partition behind the seats, blocking off the back. I licked my lips, wondering what was happening in there, wondering what to do about it. This last was easy to answer: nothing. Get the hell away from there and forget about it. I started my engine and slipped into first, crawling from the scene.
I’d got as far as the bottle bank when, eyes on the rearview, I saw the transit’s back doors swing open. I couldn’t see inside: the van had been backed close to a wall. I watched a man jump down and slam the doors shut. He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, then put his wrist to his mouth and sucked on it. He was over six feet, black T-shirt, black denims and a black leather waistcoat. He looked in his forties, long hair thinning badly. When he looked up, he saw my car and seemed interested in it. I started off again, hoping he’d think I’d been paying a visit to the bottle bank–which, after all, was the truth.
I circled the car park, but ignored the arrows to the exit, instead coming back round to where, from a safe distance, I could again see the transit. The man was moving now, walking towards the superstore’s front entrance. He had an awkward, gangling gait, arms swinging low. He reminded me of a guy I’d known years back who’d been the roadie with a third-rate rock band. Same straggly brown hair and overdone sideburns, same sleepless eyes. It wasn’t him, it just looked like him.
He disappeared through the automatic doors. I stared towards the van. From this distance, I couldn’t see any movement, couldn’t hear anything. But I knew there was someone in there, a woman. I didn’t like to think about what she was doing there. Had he locked the doors after him? I could hare over there and maybe let her out…
If he didn’t come back out and find me there. He’d seen me by the bottle bank. Maybe he was standing in the shop doorway, waiting for me to make a move. A car was moving slowly towards the bottle bank. It was a shiny black BMW, tinted windows. It didn’t stop at the bottle bank; it made for the van, stopped dead in front of it.
Christ, now what?
A man got out. He wore a cream-coloured suit, well-cut, and a pink polo shirt, plus sunglasses–and I’d bet they were Ray-Bans. His hair was light brown, neatly trimmed, and his jaw made chewing motions. He walked to the back of the transit and, without hesitating, pulled open the doors and jumped in. The doors closed after him.
I sat there frowning, conjuring innocent scenarios. The only one that seemed even remotely feasible was that the roadie-lookalike was a pimp, the BMW a punter, and the woman in the back a prossie. But in all honesty I didn’t believe that, not for one minute.
Then the doors of the superstore opened and this time it was a security guard who came out, two-way held to his mouth. He seemed to be scanning the car park. I knew the score: he wasn’t looking for anyone in a transit van. Chances were, he was looking for me. This time, I followed the exit arrows.
I was staying in a bed & breakfast, nicely anonymous on the Dalkeith Road. The front garden had been paved over to create three parking spaces, but mine was the only car there. It was out of season. I’d been asked if I was in town on business, and had answered that I was, the proprietor not seeming to notice that the weekend was a funny time to be conducting business.
There was a bathroom along the hall, and I soaked in a bath for half an hour, eyes closed. My jacket hung from a hook on the back of the door, its inside pocket padded with cash. The plastic was in a brown A4 envelope–sealed–beneath my car’s passenger seat. Hotel and B&B rooms were public property. You never knew who’d come traipsing through, or how curious they’d be, so I preferred to keep the stuff in my locked car. The car itself was not worth stealing, not even worth breaking into. There was a yawning gap where a radio should be, and the upholstery was torn and frayed. There were times when it paid not to be showy.
I was reasoning with myself: there was nothing you could do; it would have been too risky; what if there’d been some innocent explanation? Do you want to see yourself in the clink? There was nothing you could do.
I kept coming back to that, trying to convince myself. You won’t do that again, you bitch! And he’d come out of the van wiping his mouth and sucking his wrist. Had he tried something and she’d bitten him? The squeal I’d heard had been the sound of someone in pain. Maybe the man. Maybe her.
Probably her.
The bath was cold before I got out.
That evening, I tried eating Indian, but couldn’t summon up an appetite. Instead I drove through the city, wishing I had a radio, something that might take my mind off things. A radio would have been cheap at the price.
I found myself back at the ‘retail park’. It looked different at night, eerie, otherworldly. The interiors of the buildings were well-lit, so you could see a lot of merchandise, only no one was buying.
The car park was empty, sodium lights overhead deterring ne’er-do-wells. But I drove into the car park anyway. These places used private security firms, but they’d be tucked up inside the stores, and probably wouldn’t venture out except in the direst emergency. I saw that there was a single car parked in the car park, a nice-looking Volvo, surrounded by a sea of spaces and the occasional island of metal trolleys. But there was no transit van. I stopped my car in front of where it had been, and, headlights full-beam, got out to examine the ground.
I didn’t know what I was doing, what I was looking for. Clues? Clues to what? Something that might put my mind at rest perhaps, but I wasn’t sure what would do that. There was nothing, of course, not the least sign that any vehicle had ever been there. Just a wad of gum lying next to the wall. I remembered the man in the BMW had been chewing something; this was probably his. Could I take it to the police? Look at this valuable piece of evidence, officers! Can you test the saliva for DNA? Will it lead you to a house of slaughter, an evil trade in sex-slaves?
Thank you,
sir, and could we have your name and profession…?
What was I doing? There had been a noise from a van. A man had yelled something and come out of the van. Another man had gone into the van. So what? I would be leaving town the following day. By tomorrow night, it would all be forgotten. I got back into my car and reversed from the scene.
But as I passed the solitary Volvo, I slowed, then stopped. If someone had been in that van against their will, then maybe they’d been abducted. Abducted from where? From this very car park perhaps. Which meant their car would still be here, unclaimed at the end of the day.
I got out of my car once more and walked around the Volvo. Could have been dumped by joy-riders of course, except how many joy-riders opted for Volvos? Again, I didn’t know what I was looking for. I glanced around, saw nobody, and took a closer look at the car. No keys in the ignition. Something lying on the passenger seat. What was it? Looked like a letter. I tried to read the name on the envelope, but couldn’t. Then I did something crazy–I tried the driver’s door. And it wasn’t locked. It opened with a soft click, no alarm. An unlocked Volvo: now I knew something was wrong. I took out the envelope and held it under lamplight. There was a man’s name on it–Mr Roger Masson–but no address.
The woman’s husband? The car didn’t seem about to yield any other clues. I heard a lorry revving, and closed the door to the Volvo, heading back to my own car. I was behind the steering-wheel before the lorry came into view. It seemed to be collecting rubbish from one of the other shops. I was driving out of the car park before I realised I still had the envelope in my hand.
I stopped at a pub on Corstorphine Road and asked for the phone book. Saturday night: the place was mobbed. Plenty of good-looking young women, a few giving me interested looks as I stood at the bar. Under normal circumstances, I’d have stayed for a drink, flashed around a bit of money. Maybe I’d have found someone for the night. But tonight, all I wanted was an address. Roger Masson: Barnton Avenue West. Back in my car I checked my A-Z, found the street, and drove there.
Ask me why. Go on, do it. I couldn’t give you an answer now, couldn’t have done then. It just seemed… it seemed a thing to do; maybe not the thing to do–certainly not the sensible thing to do–but a thing to do. And I did it.
Big houses next to a golf course. Very big houses actually, detached, modern, big gardens. Very nice, and completely silent. It wasn’t the sort of street where you’d nip next door for the loan of some coffee: you’d phone the stuff in instead. I stopped the car at the bottom of the drive. The gates were open, and I could see the house clearly. There were lights on inside. Someone walked across a window: a man. He looked worried. He was holding a portable phone to his ear. He held it away from his ear and broke the connection, then rubbed at his forehead. A very worried man. He let his shoulders slump. It was hard to tell from a distance, but he looked in his fifties, if well-preserved. Nice greying hair, open-necked shirt. He seemed to be staring into space, but I realised finally that he wasn’t. He was looking out of the window.
He was looking at me.
He turned and walked from the room. The anxious husband, wondering where his wife was. What could I tell him? Nothing. All he’d done was satisfy me that something was wrong. And now that I’d seen his home, I had the feeling that maybe the reason why Mrs Masson had taken her Volvo to the shops this afternoon and not come back was that she’d been unavoidably detained.
By kidnappers.
I watched the front door open, and Masson come running out. He didn’t have anything but socks on his feet, and consequently ran on tiptoe down the gravel drive.
‘Hey, you!’ he was shouting. ‘I want to talk to you!’
I started the car and moved off. ‘Wait a minute! Help, somebody! Help!’
I tore away from there like I had something to fear. Up onto Queensferry Road and back towards town, missing at least one red light in the process and decidedly ignoring the speed limit.
Which is why the cops caught me.
Flashing blue lights in my rearview, and headlamps flicking to full-beam to tell me to pull over. So what else could I do? I pulled over, easing two wheels up onto the pavement to make room for passing traffic–ever the courteous driver.
I can wing this, I thought. I’ve not been drinking, and I’ve no unpaid fines. I can wing this.
‘Step out of the car, please, sir.’
I stepped out of the car. There were two of them, uniformed, one–the elder–talking to me, the other walking around the car like I was planning to sell it.
‘Something wrong, officers?’ The elder blinked at me like I’d been watching too many films.
‘Does a red light mean “go faster”?’ he asked, while his partner smirked. I tried a shy grin.
‘It was on me before I saw it.”
‘Been drinking this evening, sir?’
‘Not a drop.’ The younger cop was peering in through the front passenger window. I was all too aware of the plastic in the envelope under the seat. But the envelope was sealed: they couldn’t open it even if they found it, not without reasonable suspicion. That might not stop them opening it, of course, but at least my lawyer would have a stick to beat them with.
‘No?’
I shook my head, breathed out hard, remembered I’d tried eating a curry.
‘Was that a madras or a vindaloo?’ the older cop asked, not bothering to wait for an answer. His car had a computer on board; a lot of them do these days. Depends where you are; whether the regional force has had enough money in the kitty. He could go and put my licence plate through his machine: it would come up clean. Never buy a dodgy car.
‘Just wait there,’ the youngster said, going to join his partner. So I stood by my car, arms folded, trying not to look guilty as a parade of motorists slowed to watch. The old guy was on his radio. I had a sudden thought: Masson has called a 999 with my description. Would he do that? No telling what a man will do when he’s desperate. The cops were looking at me through their windscreen, maybe trying to sweat me, get me to run for it. No way, not with the envelope under the passenger seat.
So I stood and waited, and at last they came back, both of them.
‘We’d like you to come down the station,’ the elder said.
‘What? Am I being arrested?’
‘Just a routine matter.’
‘For not stopping at a red light?’
‘Routine, sir. If you’ll come with us.’
I tried to look disgruntled, appalled–it wasn’t hard. ‘What about my car?’
‘My colleague will drive it, sir. If you’ll come with me…’
I sat mute in the passenger seat all the way to the cop shop.
Police stations are not designed to make you feel like the driven snow, even if the worst thing you’ve done in your life is try peeping at your sister while she was in the bath. They are like black holes. Once you’re in there, to the outside world you’ve ceased to exist, and the outside world itself ceases to have meaning for you.
That can be frightening. It can loosen tongues. Suddenly you remember about your sister, and blurt it out, dredging up a memory from ten or twenty years ago. You’d tell them anything, these quiet listeners, these stone faces. You’d tell them you once waded through her underwear drawer too, even if this were a downright lie.
I don’t have a sister. I wasn’t about to tell them anything.
The CID office was big and needed a lick of paint. There were large cracks snaking across the ceiling towards the flickering lengths of centred strip-lighting. There were six desks, big old bulky things, like school surplus from the Billy Bunter era. And there were detectives, wearing suits and ties and looking like they couldn’t wait to knock off. I was seated in front of one of the tables. There was no one sitting across from me. I’d been asked if I wanted a cup of coffee. I’d declined. They didn’t want to breath-test me, that much was clear. Nothing else was.
Then the detective came and sat down, pulling his chair in inch by inch
till he was happy with the arrangement. He lined three ballpoint pens in a row in front of him. There was a clean pad of paper below the pens.
‘Do you know why we’ve asked you here, Mr…’ He looked at a slip of paper in his paw. ‘Mr Croft?’
He was not especially tall, but had bulk and confidence. His temples were turning grey; the rest of his hair looked like it would follow soon enough. His eyes were dark, sceptical. He watched me shake my head, then searched his in-tray, at last pulling out a sheet of paper.
‘“Six feet one or two”,’ he read, ‘“dark hair, well-groomed, well-dressed, blue eyes, squarish face, good teeth. A nice manner”.’ He looked up. ‘Sound familiar, Mr Croft?’
‘I might know a few women like that.’
He allowed a smile. ‘It could be you, Mr Croft.’
‘Could be a lot of people, Sergeant.’
‘It’s Inspector. Inspector Rebus.’
‘Look,’ I sat forward, ‘what is this all about?’
‘It’s about someone lifting purses out of bags, Mr Croft.’
‘Ridiculous.’ I half-laughed. ‘Good God, where’s this supposed to have happened?’
‘All over the city. You live here, Mr Croft?’
‘Visiting.’
‘When did you arrive?’
‘Yesterday evening.’
The detective nodded to himself. ‘Two women came up with this description, Mr Croft. Two women in two different supermarkets, two different areas of the city.’
‘I did go to one supermarket this afternoon.’
‘Which one?’
I shrugged. ‘Cameron Toil, was that it? Somewhere near my hotel.’
‘Foot of Dalkeith Road?’
I nodded.
‘What did you want?’
‘Razors, deodorant…’ I lowered my voice. ‘Contraceptives.’
