When the Devil Drives

by Christopher Brookmyre

  Jasmine reached to his hand and pulled it away from her.

  ‘I think that’s enough,’ she said.

  ‘I’ll decide what’s enough,’ he growled, throwing off her grip and replacing his hand on her breast.

  ‘Actually, I think you’ll find it’s a third party who’ll decide it’s enough. More than enough.’

  She had spoken clearly but he didn’t hear what she was telling him.

  ‘Third party? You still arenae listening, are you, hen? Your word against mine, remember, and who are they gaunny believe? I’m an ODA, been here twenty-odd years. You’re in the door five minutes and you’re just a clinical support worker.’

  Jasmine allowed herself a smile.

  ‘That’s where you’re really quite disastrously wrong,’ she told him brightly.

  She could see the change of tone provoke first surprise, then confusion and then, as she went on, true, exquisite horror.

  ‘I’m not a clinical support worker, I’m a private investigator, and the reason I’m giving a running commentary is for the benefit of your employers who are listening in. Hence you’re profoundly mistaken about your own job status too: trust me on this, maggot, you were an ODA.’

  King of Shadows

  The tallest trees stand like Greek columns, making a proscenium of a Highland glade, grass lush and soft beneath bare feet. A felled trunk lies at the centre like some minimalist modern sculpture, an ancient thing of indeterminate purpose: climbing frame, picnic table, bench and even bower. There are human figures curled before it, feigning sleep. The moon hangs impossibly above like a glitterball, a globe rather than a mere disc of light, shadows and contours rendering it perceptibly spherical. It looks mere miles away, and thus too solid to simply sit there unsupported, not like some wispy cloud that can plausibly drift upon the air. It appears thus because though it is evening, the sky is not yet dark. All above the trees there is clear blue, minute by minute more tinged with the magenta promise of another summer’s day.

  It may seem an incongruous setting for a malign conspiracy, but the hour is later than the light would indicate, and even the prettiest arbour hides secrets in its shadows.

  A demon and a god stand either side of the felled trunk, malice in their souls, but neither is the darkest spirit lurking amid the woods this midsummer’s night.

  ‘Captain of our fairy band,’ the demon addresses the god. ‘Helena is here at hand, And the youth, mistook by me, Pleading for a lover’s fee. Shall we their fond pageant see? Lord, what fools these mortals be!’

  ‘Stand aside,’ his lord replies. ‘The noise they make Will cause Demetrius to awake.’

  ‘Then will two at once woo one; That must needs be sport alone; And those things do best please me that befal preposterously.’

  The audience observes from three rows of tiered seating atop an articulated trailer, one end of which is hitched to a tractor. There is no need of a curtain nor of slides or backdrops, as each change of scene is effected by the audience being relocated to another part of the castle grounds, where their champagne flutes are replenished silently and solicitously by waiting staff in black tie and cocktail dresses. A susurrus of fizzing greets each new act like quiet applause, giving way to occasional whispers, a resultant modicum of shushing, the low buzz of phones on vibrate and, as the performance draws on, in one instance light snoring.

  The sleeper apart, most of the audience are enjoying the play; or at least telling themselves that they are enjoying the play, for not to would be to admit to lacking in culture. Some would have preferred seats for Murrayfield, or even seats for Mamma Mia if theatre was the theme, but they know that this is a privilege. The greater part of its worth is in simply being able to say that you were there, that you were invited, as this trip is regarded as a cut far above the corporate hospitality the bank ordinarily proffers. It says something about your standing if you are taken to Cragruthes Castle: not merely your worth as a client, but the class of individual the bank perceives you to stand among. This is no mere dramatic spectacle either: the play is bracketed by dinner in the grand hall and overnight accommodation in rooms fit for (and in some cases previously used by) royalty.

  Among the audience there are those whose appreciation of the evening is less equivocal, and they are as distinct in this as they are in their dress.

  One is the man in trews. He is as relaxed and content as he has been since this time last year, though there is just a tiny shade of melancholy running through his reverie: of regret at a different life never led. His pleasure is twofold. He is the Laird of Ruthes, owner of the castle that has been in his family for four centuries, but none of his forebears were so challenged by the burden of its upkeep. Even before the predations of the credit crunch upon his portfolio, he had been forced to look for ways in which the castle and its policies could pay for itself, and corporate entertaining has proven its saviour. Cragruthes was not big enough, not of sufficient historical importance nor stuffed with the requisite treasures to attract the level of what the consultant called ‘footfall’ required to make it worth opening its doors to tourism. However, as a venue for select events it had what he was told was ‘high-end niche value’. Thus businesses could hire it to conduct top-level meetings amid aristocratic luxury, or to reward their executives – or perhaps their clients – with a few days’ private and exclusive hunting and fishing. These activities proved lucrative, but by their nature they tended to be sporadic and unpredictable. For eight years now, the most reliably consistent revenue stream on the calendar has been the midsummer plays staged in the grounds. The troupe are, strictly speaking, amateurs, but their company does get paid, and handsomely. This engagement goes a long way towards funding whatever else they choose to produce throughout the year.

  The plays run for two weeks, accommodating twelve performances, weather permitting. This traditionally includes a ‘dress preview’ for guests of the cast and the castle staff, but thereafter each night is sold as a package to a different corporate sponsor, minus a few house seats for the laird and his guests. The laird attends most nights. This year he has taken in five of the eight performances so far, but this one is particularly savoured, for falling on the twenty-first of June itself.

  The second and greater part of his pleasure is in simply watching the actors work. He is their host and their patron, so it gives him a glow to feel part of their enterprise. The first couple of nights he will allow himself to become lost in the story, but after that the thrill for him is almost Brechtian in appreciating the artifice. It takes him back decades, to his student days: lets him revisit a time that was far from responsibilities, a time when he got to be somebody else.

  He only gets to watch now. It is enough, but there still burns inside him an unquenched desire to participate. He knows he couldn’t, though. It wouldn’t do, for one thing, and besides, he’d be too self-conscious. The rehearsal schedule might also be a problem, and he’d hate to let anybody down.

  He knows they would accommodate him if he asked: they wouldn’t turn him away even if he was rubbish, and he knows that would be wrong. This is not rubbish. It never is. It’s not the RSC either, but these corporate packages wouldn’t be selling out if the plays were not beautifully staged.

  He smiles at the weaver’s words:

  ‘First, good Peter Quince, say what the play treats on, then read the names of the actors, and so grow to a point.’

  They are school teachers and GPs, housewives and IT consultants. They are the rude mechanicals of their day, but they are not shambling fools here to be patronised and indulged. He’d call them accomplished amateurs, but they’re raised above that by a certain guiding hand. There’s a touch of genius in there, and no matter what base stuff dilutes it, the essence remains.

  Alongside the laird is a man in a kilt. He has frequently watched the finest of actors, their performances shaped by brilliant directors, framed amid the craft of visionary designers, and yet he is transported too. He loves the setting, loves not just th
e staging of theatre outdoors, as it was first performed, but of this beautiful outdoors as a theatre. He senses the pure joy of performing from the cast, knows they’ll live off this thrill for months to come. They don’t know and wouldn’t care whether the audience is half cut, half asleep or half engaged with texting their friends.

  He notes with approval that the actor playing Theseus is also playing Oberon; and how Hippolyta is similarly doubled with Titania. He thinks of Peter Brook’s production at Stratford in 1970, though surely Brook was far from the first. So many small companies of players down the centuries must have done likewise as they calculated which characters must be on stage at the same time. Few, however, could have anticipated the sexual resonance this casting gave in Brook’s production, amid its trapezes, scaffolds, ramps and metal trees.

  At his present age, it is the sexuality between these older pairs that the man in the kilt finds himself relating to, far more than the four young lovers being tormented by Robin Goodfellow.

  ‘Then will two at once woo one.’

  As the demon spoke these words, the man in the kilt would have to admit he thought not of Helena, but of Titania.

  The actress playing Titania and Hippolyta is in her fifties, like him, which some might say is a little old to be counting down the days and nights as her nuptial hour draws on apace. She looks younger than that, though, and not just because of the dimming light, the make-up or the distance. It’s stage presence. It’s grace. In the vulgar modern coinage, she might be described as a MILF. To the man in the kilt, who has a more elegant frame of reference to draw upon, she is an heir of Madame Vestris. He knows Vestris understood that neither sex appeal nor sex itself was the preserve of the young. She went from opera to burlesque before taking to the popular stage and ultimately ruling the roost at the Lyceum. Men paid for plaster casts of her famous legs, and she always made sure her costumes showed them off. When Vestris staged this play she cast herself as Oberon, and in playing a man paradoxically accentuated her femininity, invoking the ambiguous, fetishistic sexuality that is now familiar to every young male who sits wondering why he feels strange stirrings watching the pantomime’s principal boy.

  Mostly, however, Vestris understood the power of spectacle: that the audience wanted to be transported, to see before them a different world. That is what the laird’s guest is enjoying most tonight. He is far from cares, from work, from worry, from the stress, the angst, the fears and the disputes of recent times. Like the laird, he is elevated in reverie: times past, different selves he once was, and reminded of different selves he might have been.

  There is another observer who is similarly qualified to appreciate the play on a level far higher than the corporate visitors. He does not sit among them, however, for he is no one’s guest. Instead, both spectacle and audience are magnified for his vision courtesy of Carl Zeiss optronics.

  Like the man in the kilt, his thoughts alight on various stagings of this play that he has witnessed personally or read about in books and, coincidentally, one of those is Peter Brook’s. In his case, though, he is thinking with regard to tonight’s audience rather than its players. To them, Ben Kingsley is at best Gandhi, at worst a Hollywood villain, while Patrick Stewart is the captain of the Starship Enterprise or the leader of the X-Men; not, respectively, Demetrius and Snout.

  Pearls before swine. They are treated as though they are cultured because they are in the higher echelons of finance and commerce, two areas whose denizens, in his experience, have consistently proven more synonymous with philistinism.

  Despite his distaste for the audience, this uninvited observer is transported too: taken back in time to another highland estate and another Shakespeare play.

  A thin smile makes its way across his lips as he recalls it. Act One, Scene One. A desert place.

  When shall we three meet again.

  Tonight, as fate would have it.

  We three: one who authored a fell deed, one who was witness, and one who remains protected by ignorance of the truth.

  But the hurly-burly’s not yet done.

  The tractor moves thrice more, finally returning to its starting point before the grand avenue leading to the front of castle, which, as at the play’s opening, comes to represent Athens. The floodlights are on now, the moon merely one more shining disc, and the theatre space in front of the audience more truly resembles a stage for being picked out against the gathering dusk.

  The young lovers have resolved into their rightful couples, meaning Theseus and Hippolyta can look forward to their wedding in a spirit of harmony, reflected in the reconciliation of their shadow-selves, Oberon and Titania.

  It is time for the demon of the woods to have his final say.

  ‘Give me your hands, if we be friends, And Robin shall restore amends.’

  There is enthusiastic, if champagne-fuelled, applause as the players enjoy their many bows. Then the laird steps down from the trailer and bids his guest to join the gathering beneath the lights, announcing him with great fanfare, which makes the man in the kilt blush just a little, embarrassed that he might steal any of the limelight, for this is not his moment but theirs.

  He is handed a fresh flute of champagne as he steps down on to the ground and picks his steps carefully on the soft grass.

  ‘Give me your hands, if we be friends,’ he says, and the cast move to greet him. They seem giddy, almost over-excited, and predictable jokes are made about this being their big break due to the influence he wields in the world of the arts. He knows this excitement is not about him; he is merely its outlet. They are still buzzing and jangling from their performance.

  The actress playing Titania gives the laird a warm hug and a kiss on the cheek as she accepts his congratulations. The laird wonders at her accent, that trace of the Antipodes detectable in the odd word, despite her having lived the majority of her life here in Scotland. Some things shape you for the long haul, he reflects, no matter what twists and turns your life may take. Certain events, certain decisions, the marks of certain experiences are simply indelible.

  A man with a camera moves to the centre in front of the trailer and a picture is called for. The man in the kilt makes to step clear, but both the laird and the actress playing Titania insist he remain. He and the laird stand where they are while the cast assemble themselves into a practised tableau: Titania and Theseus pose on one knee, hands outstretched to touch each other’s shoulders, like they are about to embrace. They are flanked by Puck and Bottom, the four lovers lying at their feet, heads resting on palms above pivoted elbows.

  The photographer asks them all to smile.

  The man in the kilt has been photographed many times, though he has always been the man behind the scenes, the facilitator for more talented others. He knows to suck in his cheeks and close his eyes for a moment, which will help him hold his expression. He raises his champagne flute in a gesture of salute. The camera flickers, the red-eye-reducing pre-flash. The man with the kilt blinks in reflexive response, then his head bursts open and he jolts sharply backwards, as though reeling from a slap.

  He slumps down, the power gone from his legs, half his face torn away, liquid and matter spread around him on the grass.

  As the screams ring out, the demon of the woods spirits himself deeper into the darkness from whence he was summoned thirty years before.

  Easy Money

  Jasmine knew what she was looking at the moment the client walked through her office door. She was conscious that, at twenty-one and barely a year into working as a private investigator, she was probably a little young to be sounding hardboiled, but it wasn’t that she had become experienced and cynical enough to recognise a wide taxonomy of clients on sight: just this particular sub-genus, as she had seen a lot of specimens since last September.

  Jesus, had it really been that long she’d been doing this? The calendar said yes, though the date didn’t really resonate, mainly because the weather of late had felt nothing like late spring. It had been that long, though
: it was almost June. Wimbledon would be starting in three weeks, and that did resonate, because all through her school years the sight of tennis whites on the telly had meant the summer holidays were almost upon her.

  It had been at Jim’s funeral that his eldest daughter, Angela, took Jasmine aside and told her about the will. Jim had left Sharp Investigations to his family, not as a specific bequest but simply under a general directive covering a variety of things. The family had discussed it and decided it would be fitting to offer the business to Jasmine, not least because they were sure it was what Jim would have wanted. It was a kind gesture but not one so munificent as to make her feel duty-bound to accept. By Angela’s admission, the business was almost worthless except as a going concern and, having been a one-man operation prior to Jasmine’s brief recruitment, it wasn’t going to be going at all without her. The office was rented, so there was no property tied into it, and other than a van that might be worth two or three grand at trade in, the only material assets were barely worth liquidating. There was an ageing PC that most third-world charities would turn up their noses at, particularly given that it lacked an operating system due to the hard disc having been completely erased by the conspirators responsible for Jim’s death. There was a range of surveillance equipment and covert recording devices that had probably cost a few grand to amass, but for which the second-hand market was extremely limited. Like the business itself, they were only worth something if they were being put to use.

  Angela didn’t put her on the spot. She gave Jasmine a few weeks to consider the offer, aware of her truncated dramatic training and how heavily those years weighed in the vocational stakes against her brief few months as Jim’s barely – or rarely – competent assistant. Jasmine was equally decorous in saying she would take those weeks to mull it over, when her instinctive response was to tell Angela to terminate the lease on the office and stick all its contents on eBay.