by Ian Rankin
He ignored my man-to-man admission. ‘Got the receipt by any chance?’
I laughed again. ‘Threw it away.’
‘What line of work are you in?’
‘I’m a photographer.’ I am too: there’s an SLR in the boot of my car. One thing about travelling around the country, I get to take some wonderful photographs. Twice now I’ve won my camera club’s annual prize.
‘For a company?’
I shook my head. ‘Freelance. I can show you my portfolio.’
‘Don’t be disgusting,’ someone called from across the room. The Inspector smiled at that, and I smiled, too. We were beginning to get along just fine.
‘There’s been some sort of mistake,’ I said. ‘Check my hotel room, my car.’ I gave him my most honest look, dewy eyes and all.
‘Why were you in such a rush?’
‘Sorry?’
‘On Queensferry Road.’
‘I wasn’t in any hurry. But when that road’s quiet… you can build up a head of steam without noticing.’
‘Lucky you,’ the same voice called.
‘So you’ve no objections to us searching your hotel room or your car?’
‘None.’
He nodded again. ‘So where’s the stuff stashed?’
Bluff! my brain yelled. I stared him out, made sure my smile wasn’t wavering. ‘Look, Inspector…’
Someone had answered a phone. Now they called across the room. ‘John, someone called Masson for you.’
My heart dropped like a stone.
The Inspector picked up his receiver, pushed a button, and leaned back in his chair. ‘Mr Masson? What can I do for you, sir?’ The way he spoke, I knew this Masson had clout to spare. Rebus’s face hardened as he listened. ‘What?’ He began writing on his notepad. For the moment, I’d been forgotten. ‘A pet? When was this?’ He listened some more, scribbling furiously. ‘Why didn’t you come to us straight away? What make of car?’ His writing was appalling, but I read the words ‘Volvo’ and ‘car park’. ‘And there was no note? Where’s your wife now? Can I speak to her, please, sir?’
He put his hand over the mouthpiece. ‘Be with you in a minute.’
I nodded, feeling like my head might actually fall off. Mrs Masson was coming to the phone! Her husband was bringing her! So she hadn’t been in the van. She was nothing to do with it. What had he said about a pet and a note…? My hand went to my jacket pocket. The envelope was still there.
‘Mrs Masson?’ Rebus said now. ‘How are you? Yes, must be terrible. They were supposed to leave a note? Have you seen these men?’ He listened, started scribbling again. ‘You’ve only spoken to one man? But he spoke in the plural? Well, it might be important, Mrs Masson. When was this?’ He began writing again. I could feel sweat trickling down my back. ‘No, it’s serious all right, I just wish you’d come to us right at the start. I’d like to come out there and see you.’ He listened again, scribbled–by now the top sheet of the pad looked like a blackboard at the end of a school day. When he put the receiver down he did so slowly, still writing. Then he got up abruptly and went to talk with someone at the far end of the room.
I slipped my hand into my pocket and felt the envelope. It hadn’t been stuck down. I felt inside. Sure enough there was a sheet of paper there. I eased it out, my face blank, unfolded it on my knee and read the pencilled capitals.
£2,000 TO GET THE BITCH BACK. GET MONEY READY, WE’LL CALL.
The squeal I’d heard had been human, but it had been the roadie’s voice. He’d just been bitten by Mrs Masson’s pet dog: You won’t do that again, you bitch! Maybe he’d muzzled her, tied her up, knocked her cold. Maybe he’d done worse. If there’s one thing I abhor more than the cruelty we inflict on each other, it’s cruelty inflicted on animals.
Especially dogs.
It was as clear as day now. Mrs Masson had been instructed to leave her car in the car park, and to return some time later, when she’d find a ransom note on the passenger seat. Only I’d chanced by and lifted the bloody note. So now she didn’t know what was expected of her and was going up the wall. And her husband, driven by this, had at last called the police–perhaps against her wishes. All she wanted was her dog back. Meantime, I had the note and a description of the dognappers. I had more than any of them.
And I was stuck here.
Rebus came back and tore the sheet from his pad, folded it into his pocket. By now the other note was safe in my pocket. He looked at me for a long time, as if trying to place me. I went dewy-eyed again.
‘I’ve got your licence plate, your name and your address,’ he said quietly. ‘I’ve got everything I need–for the moment. I’ll want to talk to you again tomorrow. Be here at ten-thirty, understood?’
Two choices: stick with innocent bewilderment, or nod. I nodded. Not that I’d be here tomorrow morning: I’d be packed and gone by midnight.
He gave me another long stare. ‘Your car’s outside, get the keys from the desk.’ He moved away, but paused and turned. ‘See you tomorrow, Mr Croft.’ He made it sound like a threat
It didn’t bother me, I knew I was off and running. That was the only sensible course, I kept telling myself. And I believed it, too.
I sat in my car, hands trembling as they ran over the steering-wheel. I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. In the end, I think I did both simultaneously. I leaned down and felt beneath the passenger seat. The envelope was still there. Everyone deserves a lucky break, I thought, starting the engine.
I’d go back to the B&B, pack my things, and never come back.
Wouldn’t that be a callous ending?
But as I drove, I thought of the two men and wondered what kind of dog Mrs Masson owned: something small and snapping, or a big, hearty beast fit for walks across the golf course? I hoped for the latter, for something like the blind man’s Labrador. I heard the squeal again. It could have been a dog squealing. And the thump I’d heard: had the roadie smashed its head? My hands tightened on the steering-wheel and, first pub I saw, I pulled over and went looking for another phone book.
This time I had a whisky–a good-sized one. Well, they weren’t going to stop me twice in the same night, were they? And I needed the courage. I looked up Masson’s address and took down his telephone number. I couldn’t call from the bar: too noisy. But there was a box fifty yards along the road, and I used that. A man answered, Masson himself I presumed.
‘Inspector Rebus, please.”
I heard the man say ‘someone for you’ as he handed the phone over. ‘Hello?’
‘Just listen. You’re looking for two men.’ I gave my descriptions, eyes squeezed shut as I tried to make them as accurate and telling as I could. Then I described the van and the BMW. ‘And they want two grand. They’ll probably be phoning later.’
Rebus had listened to this in silence. Now he spoke.
‘Mr Croft, is that you?’
This time my heart sank like something altogether more massive than a mere stone. A block of city granite maybe.
‘Was it your car Mr Masson saw?’ Rebus went on.
I licked dry lips. ‘Yes,’ I said.
‘Are you mixed up in this?’
‘Only as a… well, I saw the van. I thought I heard something. I was worried, so I went back tonight.’
‘You found the note?’ He sounded amused.
‘Yes.’
‘Why didn’t you come forward?’ He caught himself. ‘No, stupid question. Thanks for your call.’
‘Do you still want me at the station tomorrow?’
‘Were you planning on coming?’
‘It doesn’t really fit with my schedule.’
‘Get out of the city, Mr Croft. Don’t ever come back.’
‘Inspector, one question–what breed is she?’
There was a pause while the detective checked. ‘Persian Blue,’ he said at last.
‘What?’
‘Persian Blue.’
‘But that’s a cat.’
‘Sorry?’
‘A cat.’
‘That’s right.’
‘I hate cats!’
I slammed the phone down, went back to the B&B and packed my suitcase in a blind fury. I had paid till noon Sunday, so there was no problem. I just left my key behind, got back into the car and drove.
I was heading down Dalkeith Road, making for the city by-pass, when I saw the van. I blinked, shook my head, but it was definitely the van. I knew not only from the black roof, the missing wing-mirror, but because it was being shadowed by a black BMW. They were going around a roundabout as I approached it. I watched them turn off, then followed. Cameron Toll Shopping Precinct. They were driving into the car park, the only vehicles around at that time of night. I switched off my lights and hung back, watching as they came to a stop.
The roadie got out of the van, and was joined by Mr Smooth, who checked his watch. There was a wall-mounted telephone close by. The roadie opened the back of the van and got in. After checking his watch again, rocking on the balls of his feet, Mr Smooth got in too, closing the doors after him. I kept my lights off and lifted my foot from the brake, rolling down the slight incline towards them, keeping going until my front bumper touched their rear. My car’s a big old Merc, same axle-height as a transit. They felt the impact and tried opening the doors, only they were jammed shut by my radiator grille. I got out and jumped up onto my bonnet, my face close to the inch-wide gap in the transit’s rear doors.
‘A female cat isn’t called a bitch!’ I screamed at them.
I might have screamed it more than once actually, before getting down and going to the telephone.
Talk Show
Lowland Radio was a young but successful station broadcasting to lowland Scotland. It was said that the station owed its success to two very different personalities. One was the DJ on the midmorning slot, an abrasive and aggressive Shetland Islander, called Hamish MacDiarmid. MacDiarmid hosted a phone-in, supposedly concerning the day’s headlines, but in fact these were of relatively minor importance. People did not listen to the phone-in for opinion and comment: they listened for the attacks MacDiarmid made on just about every caller. There were occasional fierce interchanges, interchanges the DJ nearly always won by dint of severing the connection with anyone more intelligent, better informed, or more rational than himself.
Rebus knew that there were men in his own station who would try to take a break between ten-forty-five and eleven-fifteen just to listen. The people who phoned the show knew what they’d get, of course: that was part of the fun. Rebus wondered if they were masochists, but in fact he knew they probably saw themselves as challengers. If they could best MacDiarmid, they would have ‘won’. And so MacDiarmid himself became like some raging bull, entering the ring every morning for another joust with the picadors. So far he’d been goaded but not wounded, but who knew how long the luck would last…?
The other ‘personality’–always supposing personality could be applied to someone so ethereal–was Penny Cook, the softly spoken, seductive voice on the station’s late-night slot. Five nights a week, on her show What’s Cookin’, she offered a mix of sedative music, soothing talk, and calming advice to those who took part in her own phone-in segment. These were very different people from those who chose to confront Hamish MacDiarmid. They were quietly worried about their lives, insecure, timid; they had home problems, work problems, personal problems. They were the kind of people, Rebus mused, who got sand kicked in their faces. MacDiarmid’s callers, on the other hand, were probably the ones doing the kicking…
Perhaps it said something about the lowlands of Scotland that Penny Cook’s show was said to be the more popular of the two. Again, people at the station talked about it with the fervour usually reserved for TV programmes.
‘Did you hear yon guy with the bend in his tackle…?’
‘That woman who said her husband didn’t satisfy her…’
‘I felt sorry for that hooker though, wantin’ out o’ the game…’
And so on. Rebus had listened to the show himself a few times, slumped on his chair after closing-time. But never for more than a few minutes; like a bedtime story, a few minutes of Penny Cook sent John Rebus straight to the land of Nod. He’d wondered what she looked like. Husky, comfortable, come-to-bed: the picture of her he’d built up was all images, but none of them exactly physical. Sometimes she sounded blonde and tiny, sometimes statuesque with flowing raven hair. His picture of Hamish MacDiarmid was much more vivid: bright red beard, caber-tossing biceps and a kilt.
Well, the truth would out. Rebus stood in the cramped reception area of Lowland Radio and waited for the girl on the switchboard to finish her call. On the wall behind her, a sign said WELCOME:. That colon was important. This seemed to be Lowland Radio’s way of greeting the personalities who’d come to the station, perhaps to give interviews. Today, below the WELCOME:, written in felt tip were the names JEZ JENKS and CANDY BARR. Neither name meant anything to Rebus, though they probably would to his daughter. The receptionist had finished her call.
‘Have you come for some stickers?’
‘Stickers?’
‘Car-stickers,’ she explained. ‘Only we’re all out of them. Just temporary, we’ll be getting more next week if you’d like to call back.’
‘No, thanks anyway. I’m Inspector Rebus. I think Miss Cook’s expecting me.’
‘Oh, sorry.’ The receptionist giggled. ‘I’ll see if she’s around. It was Inspector…?’
‘Rebus.’
She scribbled the name on a pad and returned to her switchboard. ‘An Inspector Reeves to see you, Penny…’
Rebus turned to another wall and cast an eye over Lowland Radio’s small display of awards. Well, there was stiff competition these days, he supposed. And not much advertising revenue to go round. Another local station had countered the challenge posed by Hamish MacDiarmid, hiring what they called ‘The Ranter’, an anonymous individual who dished out insult upon insult to anyone foolish enough to call his show.
It all seemed a long way from the Light Programme, a long way from glowing valves and Home Counties diction. Was it true that the BBC announcers used to wear dinner jackets? DJs in DJs, Rebus thought to himself and laughed.
‘I’m glad somebody’s cheerful.’ It was Penny Cook’s voice; she was standing right behind him. Slowly he turned to be confronted by a buxom lady in her early forties–only a year or two younger than Rebus himself. She had permed light brown hair and wore round glasses–the kind popularised by John Lennon on one hand and the NHS on the other.
‘I know, I know,’ she said. ‘I’m never what people expect.’ She held out a hand, which Rebus shook. Not only did Penny Cook sound unthreatening, she looked unthreatening.
All the more mysterious then that someone, some anonymous caller, should be threatening her life…
They walked down a corridor towards a sturdy-looking door, to the side of which had been attached a push-button array.
‘Security,’ she said, pressing four digits before pulling open the door. ‘You never know what a lunatic might do given access to the airwaves.’
‘On the contrary,’ said Rebus, ‘I’ve heard Hamish MacDiarmid.’
She laughed. He didn’t think he’d heard her laugh before. ‘Is Penny Cook your real name?’ he asked, thinking the ice sufficiently broken between them.
‘Afraid so. I was born in Nairn. To be honest, I don’t think my parents had heard of Penicuik. They just liked the name Penelope.’
They were passing studios and offices. Loudspeakers placed in the ceiling of the corridor relayed the station’s afternoon show.
‘Ever been inside a radio station before, Inspector?’
‘No, never.’
‘I’ll show you around if you like.’
‘If you can spare the time…’
‘No problem.’ They were approaching one studio outside which a middle-aged man was in quiet conversation with a spiky-headed teenager. The teenager looked sullen and in need of a
wash. Rebus wondered if he were the man’s son. If so, a lesson in parental control was definitely needed.
‘Hi, Norman,’ Penny Cook said in passing. The man smiled towards her. The teenager remained sullen: a controlled pose, Rebus decided. Further along, having passed through another combination-lock door, Penny herself cleared things up.
‘Norman’s one of our producers.’
‘And the kid with him?’
‘Kid?’ She smiled wryly. ‘That was Jez Jenks, the singer with Leftover Lunch. He probably makes more a day than you and I make in a good year.’
Rebus couldn’t remember ever having a ‘good year’–the curse of the honest copper. A question came to him.
‘And Candy Barr?’
She laughed at this. ‘I thought my own name took some beating. Mind you, I don’t suppose it’s her real name. She’s an actress or a comedienne or something. From across the water, of course.’
‘Doesn’t sound like an Irish name,’ Rebus said as Penny Cook held open her office door.
‘I wouldn’t make jokes around here, Inspector,’ she said. ‘You’ll probably find yourself being signed up for a spot on one of our shows.’
‘The Laughing Policeman?’ Rebus suggested. But then they were in the office, the door was closed, and the atmosphere cooled appropriately. This was business, after all. Serious business. She sat at her desk. Rebus sat down on the chair across from her.
‘Do you want a coffee or anything, Inspector?’
‘No thanks. So, when did these calls start, Miss Cook?’
‘About a month ago. The first time he tried it, he actually got through to me on-air. That takes some doing. The calls are filtered through two people before they get to me. Efficient people, too. They can usually tell a crank caller from the real thing.’
‘How does the system work? Somebody calls in… then what?’
‘Sue or David takes the call. They ask a few questions. Basically, they want to know the person’s name, and what it is they want to talk to me about. Then they take a telephone number, tell the caller to stay by his or her telephone, and if we want to put the person on-air, they phone the caller back and prepare them.’
