Ian Rankin - Set in Darkness

These days, dancing did that for him. He fell on to the sofa. Three records and he was knackered. Rolled himself a joint and switched on the TV, knowing there’d be nothing worth watching. Jayne was working a double shift, wouldn’t be home till nine, maybe ten. That gave him twelve hours to wash the dishes. Some days he itched to be working again, sitting in an office maybe with suit and tie on, making decisions and fielding phone calls. Nic said he had a secretary. A secretary . Who’d have thought it? He remembered the pair of them at school, kicking a football across the cul-de-sac, pogoing to punk in their bedrooms. Well, Jerry’s bedroom mostly. Nic’s mum had been funny about visitors; always a frown on her face when she opened her door and saw Jerry standing there. Dead now though, the old cow. Her living room had smelt of the Hamlet cigars Nic’s dad smoked. He was the only person Jerry knew who didn’t smoke cigarettes, had to be a cigar. Jerry, TV remote busy in his hand, chuckled now at the thought. Cigars! Who did the old sod think he was ? Nic’s dad had worn ties and cardigans... Jerry’s dad had worn a vest most of the time, and a trouser-belt that came off whenever there was justice to dispense. But Jerry’s mum, she’d been a treasure: no way he’d have swapped his parents for Nic’s.

‘No bloody way,’ he said out loud.

He switched off the TV. The joint was down to the hot bit near the roach. He took a last draw and went to flush it down the bog. Not that he was worried about the pigs; it was Jayne didn’t like him doing the wacky bac. Way Jerry looked at it, the wacko kept him sane. Government should put the stuff on the National Health, way it kept the likes of him from going off the rails.

He went to the bathroom to have a shave: little treat for Jayne when she came home. Still humming ‘Captain Kirk’. Brilliant record, one of the best. He was thinking about Nic, how the two of them had become pals. You could never tell, could you, people you’d end up liking. They’d been in the same class since age five, but it was only when they went up to secondary that they started hanging around together, listening to Alex Harvey and Status Quo, trying to work out which lyrics were about sex. Nic had written a poem, hundreds of lines long, all about an orgy. Jerry had reminded him about it recently, and they’d had a good laugh. That was what it was about, at the end of the day: having a laugh.

He realised he was staring into the bathroom mirror; foam on his face and the razor in his hand. He had bags and lines under his eyes. It was catching up with him. Jayne kept talking about kids and ticking clocks; he kept telling her he’d think about it. Fact was, he didn’t fancy himself as a dad, and Nic kept talking about how it ruined a relationship. Guys in the office who hadn’t had sex since their nipper was born — months, sometimes years. And the mothers letting themselves go, gravity working against them. Nic would wrinkle his nose in disgust.

‘Not a pretty outlook, is it?’ Nic would say.

And Jerry would be bound to agree.

After school, Jerry had assumed they’d get jobs in the same place, maybe a factory or something. But Nic had dropped a bombshell: he was staying on an extra year, doing his Highers. It hadn’t stopped them seeing one another, but there were all these books in Nic’s room now — stuff Jerry couldn’t make head or tail of. And after that there was Napier for three years, and more books, essays to hand in. They saw one another some weekends, but almost never through the week — maybe Friday night for a disco or a gig. Iggy Pop... Gang of Four... the Stones at the Playhouse. Nic hardly ever introduced Jerry to his student pals, unless they met them at a gig. Once or twice they ended up in the pub. Jerry had chatted up one of the girls, then Nic had grabbed him.

‘What would Jayne say?’

Because he was seeing Jayne by then. They worked in the same factory: semiconductors. Jerry drove the fork-lift, got really good with it. He’d show off, do circuits around the women. They’d laugh, say he was daft, he’d get someone killed. Then Jayne came along and that was that.

Fifteen years they’d been married. Fifteen years and no kids. How could she expect them to have kids now, with him on the dole? His only letter this morning: dole people wanted him in for an interview. He knew what that meant. They wanted to know what he was doing to find himself a job. Answer: sweet FA. And now Jayne was at him again, ‘The clock’s ticking, Jerry.’ A double meaning there: her body clock, plus the threat that she might walk out if she didn’t get what she wanted. She’d done it before, packed her bags and off to her mum’s three streets away. Be as well bloody living there anyway...

He’d go mad if he stayed in the flat. He wiped the foam from his face and put his shirt back on, grabbed his jacket and was out. Walked the streets, looking for people to talk to, then into the bookies for half an hour, warming himself by the heater, pretending to study form. They knew him in there: highly unlikely he’d place a bet, but he sometimes did, always losing. When the lunchtime paper came in, he took a look. Page three, there was a story about a sexual assault. He read it closely. Nineteen-year-old student, grabbed in the Commonwealth Pool car park. Jerry flung the paper down and headed out to find a phone box.

He had Nic’s office number in his pocket, called him there sometimes when he was bored, holding the receiver to the stereo so Nic could hear some song they used to dance to. He got the receptionist and asked for Mr Hughes.

‘Nic, man, it’s Jerry.’

‘Hiya, pal. What can I do you for?’

‘Just saw the paper. There was a student attacked last night.’

‘The world’s a terrible place.’

‘Tell me it wasn’t you.’

A nervous laugh. ‘That’s a sick kind of joke, Jerry.’

‘Just tell me.’

‘Where are you? Got any mates listening in ?’

The way he said it made Jerry stop. Nic was telling him something, telling him someone could be listening in — maybe the receptionist.

‘I’ll talk to you later,’ Nic said.

‘Listen, man, I’m sorry—’ But the phone was dead.

Jerry was shaking when he left the phone box. Jogged all the way home, fixed another joint. Put the TV on and sat there, trying to get his heartbeat down. Safer here; wasn’t anything could touch him here. This was the only place to be.

Until Jayne got home.

Siobhan Clarke had asked Register House to run a search for Chris Mackie’s birth certificate. She’d also begun asking around about Mackie, concentrating on Grassmarket and the Cowgate, but spreading out to take in the Meadows, Princes Street and Hunter Square.

But this Thursday morning she sat in a doctor’s waiting room, surrounded by pale and sickly sufferers, until her name was called and she could put aside the women’s magazine with its alien articles on cookery, clothes and kids.

Where, she wondered, was the magazine for her, one that concentrated on Hibs FC, hashed relationships and homicide?

Dr Talbot was in his mid-fifties and wore a weary smile below his half-moon glasses. He already had Chris Mackie’s medical records laid out on his desk, but checked that Clarke’s own paperwork — death certificate; authorisation — was in order before beckoning for her to move her chair in towards the desk.

It took her a couple of minutes to substantiate that the records only went back as far as 1980. When Mackie had registered with the surgery, he’d given a previous address in London and had stated that his records were held by a Dr Mason in Crouch End. But a letter from Dr Talbot to Dr Mason’s address had been returned ‘No Such Street’.