Ian Rankin: Set in Darkness

‘Gone New Age on us, Hugh? Or is professional wrestling your new forte?’

‘Sod off, Cammo.’

Hugh Cordover had been a rock star of sorts back in the 1970s and ’80s. These days he was a record producer and band manager, and got less media attention than his brother Richard, an Edinburgh lawyer. He’d met Lorna at the tail-end of her career, when some adviser had assured her she could sing. She’d turned up late and drunk at Hugh’s studio. He’d opened the door to her, thrown a glass of water into her face, and ordered her to come back sober. It had taken her the best part of a fortnight. They’d gone to dinner that night, worked in the studio till dawn.

People still recognised Hugh on the street, but they weren’t the people worth knowing. These days, Hugh Cordover lived by his holy book, this being a bulging, black leather personal organiser. He had it open in his hand as he paced the restaurant, phone tucked between shoulder and cheek. He was fixing meetings, always meetings. Lorna watched him over the rim of her glass, while her mother demanded that the lights be turned on.

‘So damned awful dark in here. Am I supposed to be reminded of the graveyard?’

‘Yes, Roddy,’ Cammo drawled, ‘do something about it, will you? This was your idea after all.’ Looking around the premises with all the disdain he could muster. But then the photographers had arrived — one organised by Roddy, one from a glossy magazine — which brought Cordover back to the table, and fixed authentic-seeming smiles to all the members of the Grieve clan.

Roddy Grieve hadn’t meant for them to walk the whole length of the Royal Mile. He’d gone so far as to organise a couple of taxis which were waiting for them outside the Holiday Inn. But his mother wouldn’t have it.

‘If we’re going to walk, then for Christ’s sake let’s walk!’ And off she set, her walking stick seven parts affectation to three parts painful necessity, leaving Roddy to pay off the drivers. Cammo leaned towards him.

‘You always overdo things.’ A pretty good imitation of their mother.

‘Bugger off, Cammo.’

‘I wish I could, dear brother. But the next train to civilisation’s not for some time yet.’ Making show of studying his watch. ‘Besides, it’s Mother’s birthday: she’d be devastated if I suddenly departed.’

Which, Roddy couldn’t help feeling, was probably true.

‘She’ll go over on that ankle,’ Seona said, watching her mother-in-law moving downhill with that peculiar shuffling gait which attracted all manner of attention. Sometimes, Seona felt that it was affectation, too. Alicia had always had ways and means of drawing the looks of those around her, and of including her offspring in the spectacle. It hadn’t been so bad when Allan Grieve had been alive — he’d kept his wife’s eccentricities in check. But now that Roddy’s father was dead, Alicia had started compensating for years of enforced normality.

Not that the Grieves were a normal family: Roddy had warned Seona about them the first time they’d gone out together. She’d already known, of course — everyone in Scotland knew at least something about the Grieves — but had elected to keep her counsel. Roddy wasn’t like them, she’d told herself back then. She still said it to herself sometimes, but without the old conviction.

‘We could go look at the parliament site,’ she suggested as they reached the St Mary’s Street junction.

‘Good God, whatever for?’ Cammo droned predictably.

Alicia pursed her lips, then, saying nothing, turned towards Holyrood Road. Seona tried not to smile: it had been a small but palpable victory. But then who was she fighting?

Cammo held back. The three women were matching each other for pace. Hugh had stopped by a shop window to take yet another call. Cammo fell into step beside Roddy, pleased to note that he was still immeasurably better groomed and dressed than his younger brother.

‘I’ve had another of those notes,’ he said, keeping the tone conversational.

‘What notes?’

‘Christ, didn’t I tell you? They come to my parliamentary office. My secretary opens them, poor girl.’

‘Hate mail?’

‘How many MPs do you know who get fan letters?’ Cammo tapped Roddy’s shoulder. ‘Something you’re going to have to live with if you get elected.’

‘If,’ Roddy repeated with a smile.

‘Look, do you want to hear about these bloody death threats or not?’

Roddy stopped in his tracks, but Cammo kept walking. It took Roddy a moment to catch up.

‘Death threats?’

Cammo shrugged. ‘Not unknown in our line of work.’

‘What do they say?’

‘Nothing much. Just that I’m “in for it”. One of them had a couple of razor blades inside.’

‘What do the police say?’

Cammo looked at him. ‘So middle-aged, and yet so naïve. The forces of law and order, Roddy — I offer this lesson gratis and for nothing — are like a leaky sieve, especially when there’s a drink in it for them and one or more MPs is involved.’

‘They’d talk to the media?’

‘Bingo.’

‘I still don’t see...’

‘The papers would be all over it, and all over me.’ Cammo waited for his words to sink in. ‘Wouldn’t have a life to call my own.’

‘But death threats...’

‘A crank.’ Cammo sniffed. ‘Not worth mentioning really, except as a warning. My fate could be yours some day, baby bro.’

‘If I get elected.’ That shy smile again, the shyness masking a real appetite for the fight.

‘If ne’er won fair maiden,’ Cammo said. Then he shrugged. ‘Something like that anyway.’ He looked ahead. ‘Mother’s fairly shifting, isn’t she?’

Alicia Grieve had been born Alicia Rankeillor, and it was under this name that she’d found fame — and a certain fortune — as a painter. The particular nature of Edinburgh light had been her subject. Her best-known painting — duplicated on greetings cards, prints and jigsaws — showed a series of jagged beams breaking through a carapace of cloud to pick out the Castle and the Lawnmarket beyond. Allan Grieve, though only a few years her elder, had been her tutor at the School of Art. They’d married young, but hadn’t become parents until their careers were well established. Alicia had the sneaking feeling that Allan had always resented her success. He was a great teacher, but lacked the spark of genius as an artist himself. She’d once told him that his paintings were too accurate, that art needed a measure of artifice. He’d squeezed her hand but said nothing until just before his death, when he’d thrown her words back at her.

‘You killed me that day, snuffed out any hope I might have still had.’ She’d started to protest but he’d hushed her. ‘You did me a good turn, you were right. I lacked the vision.’

Sometimes Alicia wished that she’d lacked the vision, too. Not that it would have made her a better, more loving mother. But it might have made her a more generous wife, a more pleasing lover.

Now she lived alone in the huge house in Ravelston, surrounded by the paintings of others — including a dozen of Allan’s, smartly framed — and a short walk from the Gallery of Modern Art, where they’d recently held a retrospective of her work. She had contrived an illness to excuse her from attending, then had gone in secret one day, only minutes past opening time when the place was dead, and had been shocked to find that thematic order had been placed on her work, an order she didn’t recognise.

‘They found a body, you know,’ Hugh Cordover was saying.

‘Hugh!’ Cammo piped up with mock cordiality. ‘You’re back with us!’

‘A body?’ Lorna asked.

‘It was on the news.’