Ian Rankin - The Beat Goes On

‘That’s good, Mr Jeffries,’ Clarke had said. ‘And we appreciate your help.’

‘I hate my voice,’ she said to Rebus as she listened.

‘Hush,’ he chided her.

‘I was in the Abilene,’ Jeffries was saying. ‘It’s a nightclub on Market Street. I don’t go often, but sometimes the boredom gets to me. Ever since Margaret passed away, I’ve found my life... not withering away exactly. Squeezed into a box maybe. Just the telly and the computer, you know. Used to go to the football, but I lost interest. Stopped returning friends’ calls. Bit pathetic really.’

Rebus’s voice: ‘Why the Abilene in particular?’

‘I suppose it’s handy for the train back to Falkirk. You can sit at the bar and sometimes people talk to you. Even if they don’t, you can watch them enjoying themselves. I used to reminisce about clubs me and Margaret went to. Duran Duran was her thing. Simon Le Bon. Even in the living room, I’d come home and find her shimmying around the place.’

There was a pause. A plastic cup of water was being lifted, sipped from, placed with care back on the table. A chair creaked as the lawyer shifted slightly, trying to get more comfortable.

‘I only meant to have a couple of drinks that night, but then she was standing beside me. I told her I liked her perfume. She laughed. Really nice white teeth. So then we got talking. Gin and tonic she was drinking. With a slice of lime rather than lemon, and not too much ice. After the third round, they brought us some peanuts and pretzels. She didn’t like pretzels.’

Clarke: ‘What did you talk about?’

‘My job... her job. She’d dumped her husband — that was the word she used, “dumped” — and found herself a nice flat near the river in Newcastle. I said I’d been through it on the train to York and London but never stopped. She said I should. “It’s full of life.” She was full of life. It was like sparks were coming off her. Deep dark eyes and a nice husky voice. A couple of times I thought she was losing interest — she would scan the room, smiles for everybody. But then she would turn her attention back to me. I was... flattered.’

Rebus: ‘Whose idea was it to leave?’

‘Hers. I think she saw me glance at my watch. Horrible thing to say, but I was thinking of last trains. “You’re not leaving?” she said. She sounded aghast that I might be. “It’s Friday night, you need to live!” Then she mentioned her hotel and how it had a bar that would be getting lively. I honestly thought that was where we were heading.’

Another pause.

‘No, I’m lying. I hoped that after the bar there’d be an invite to her room. I was tingling all over. Feelings I hadn’t had in years. But as it turned out, the bar wasn’t the destination she had in mind.’

Clarke: ‘You paid for the drinks like a gentleman?’

‘I nearly didn’t, though. I got my PIN wrong twice.’

Rebus: ‘Footage from the hotel entrance shows you a few seconds behind Ms Stokes...’

‘Yes. I thought I’d lost my phone. I stopped to check my pockets. By the time I caught up, she was already in the lift. So that was that.’

Rebus: ‘But you’d come prepared? A condom, I mean?’

‘That was hers. She had it in her bag.’

‘You flushed it afterwards?’

‘Yes.’ Another pause for water. ‘After I’d got dressed. We’d fallen asleep. I mean... I was sure she was asleep. I woke up feeling awful. Pounding headache and everything.’

Clarke: ‘We need you to tell us what happened, Mr Jeffries. Not just the before and the after.’

‘Oh God...’

There was a short interjection by the lawyer, but Jeffries started to make noises. Then: ‘No, I need to say it. I need to!’ Sniffling, nose-blowing, throat-clearing.

‘I need you to know it wasn’t me. I’m not the adventurous sort. I’d never even heard of it. I know now, though — auto-erotic asphyxiation. She said she liked it, said she wanted it. My hands around her throat while we had sex. “Squeeze tighter. Keep squeezing. Your thumbs. Harder...” Oh Christ.’ Another loud sob. ‘And this look on her face, her eyes tight shut, teeth clenched. I thought she was enjoying it, getting into it. So I kept pressing down, pressing, pressing. And then I collapsed on her, rolled off, even said a few sweet nothings... And passed out.’

Clarke: ‘And when you woke up?’

‘I got dressed as quietly as I could. Didn’t want to wake her. I thought... well, cold light of day and all that. She might hate herself or me.’

Rebus: ‘You didn’t check she was breathing?’

‘She looked so peaceful. I still can’t believe she was dead. It was an accident. A terrible, terrible accident...’

Clarke: ‘Why didn’t you come forward, sir? Why did we have to fetch you?’

‘I knew how horrible it would sound. The whole thing. And I didn’t think.’ A further pause. ‘Just that, really — I didn’t think...’

Clarke stopped the recording and leaned back in her chair, staring across the desk at Rebus.

‘You’ve had a chance to read it?’ he asked.

She nodded and took the copy of The Driver’s Seat from her drawer, flicking through its pages.

‘It’s a sort of nightmare,’ she said. ‘A woman travels to a strange city looking for someone to kill her. Not because she has cancer, but... well, I’m not quite sure why. To create a sensation at the end of a mundane life?’

‘Maybe.’

‘The book gave Maria Stokes the idea?’

Rebus shrugged. ‘The story doesn’t turn out the way Maria’s life did.’

‘She was in the driving seat, though — is that what we’re saying? With Robert Jeffries as her passenger — meaning we should feel sorry for him.’

‘You don’t sound as if you do.’

Clarke started gathering up all the loose sheets of paper on the desk, as if putting them in some sort of order were suddenly important.

‘A single ticket,’ Rebus said into the silence.

‘Sorry?’

‘She didn’t buy a return because she wasn’t going home. Yet she paid for three nights at the hotel — three shots at getting it right.’

‘Her head was pretty messed up.’

‘And she’s messed up Robert Jeffries’ head pretty good now too.’ Rebus rose to his feet. ‘Let me buy you a drink,’ he said, reaching across the desk for the book.

‘Anywhere but the Abilene.’

‘Anywhere but the Abilene,’ Rebus agreed.

Clarke placed the paperwork in a drawer, stood up and lifted her jacket from the back of her chair. She crossed to the window as she slipped it on. There was a whole city somewhere out there, waking to another night of possibility and accident, chance and fate, pity and fear.

The missing man’s car was found on the third day.

It was a gloss-black Bentley GT, parked in a bay two floors up at Edinburgh airport’s multi-storey car park — a businessman had recognised it from the description on the news. When police arrived, they found the Bentley unlocked. No key, no parking chitty.

‘So we’ve no idea what time it was left there,’ Siobhan Clarke explained to Rebus on the way to the man’s home.

‘He took a flight?’

‘We’re checking.’

‘Was the business in trouble? That’s why people usually run.’

‘According to the wife, things had picked up after a lean couple of years.’

‘P.T. Forbes — I’ve been past the showroom many a time.’

‘Me too. There was a red E-type in the window one time...’

‘You were tempted?’

‘Until I saw the price tag. Plus: no power steering in those old models.’

‘What does the P stand for, by the way?’