Ian Rankin - Beggars Banquet

I could do all of this, and still have room in my head for candles and music and animal skins.

Until Maxwell came along. Within a week, he’d fixed a date with Donna, and the first date was followed by a second. One day, I hurried to the pub only to find the manager on reluctant duty.

‘She’s buggered off,’ he informed me. ‘Took another job.’

A job Maxwell had found for her, convenient to his own office. When he told me this on the phone that evening, told me while Alice played TV roulette with the remote and ate another packet of crisps, I knew I had to do something. The living-room seemed stuffier than ever, chip fat and salt, blue noise from the television and a sofa full of wife. My life felt horribly scripted, badly acted, its scenes decided long before I’d been cast for the role.

Splice and edit, I thought. Splice and edit. I might not be the director, but I could still save the movie…

Just one of those things, I thought to myself. Just one of those crazy things. I couldn’t get those two lines out of my head as I stood there over Maxwell’s body. I was reassuring myself that I’d only come to his place to talk. To talk about what? That’s what the police would ask. To talk about Donna, whom he was dating and I fancied. So you were jealous then, sir?

Officer, I spend most of my life in a state of jealousy.

He’d only fallen down the stairs of course. I’d been apologising as I walked down after him. But he’d lain there very still, and when I hauled him up by the shoulders his head swivelled wildly, neck obviously broken. I checked his pulse anyway, and found nothing.

Only a fall down the stairs… except that I pushed him. Oh yes, we’d been arguing. Or rather, I’d been arguing and Maxwell had been laughing at me. We hadn’t even got as far as his living-room. I’d been arguing on my way up the stairs, arguing ever since he’d let me in the door. In the hall at the top of the stairs I fairly vented my spleen, until I could feel myself emptying, the anger lessening. Catharsis, I suppose. Or exorcism. But he was still laughing, rocking back on his heels. So I stood there and blinked and then gave him a mighty shove. I only just managed to stop myself tumbling after him. Gripping the banister rail, I watched him sail backwards and begin the thumping descent. It’s a steep staircase, uncarpeted, the wood stripped and varnished. I remember the varnish was expensive, but it meant the wood only had to be redone every five years or so.

Just one of those things, I thought to myself. It was lucky Maxwell lived in a mews. Those places are like morgues at the best of times. This one even boasted a dead end, no through traffic. Ground level was all doors and garages, with living-room windows above. Nobody was looking as I dragged Maxwell out of his own door and into the boot of my car. His keys slipped from his trouser pocket, along with some loose change. I scooped it all up and pocketed it.

I was supposed to be fetching fish and chips for our supper. My excuse to Alice for taking so long was car trouble. I used Maxwell’s change to buy the food, parked outside my own flat, and checked the boot was locked. Over supper I’d have a think what to do with Maxwell. Since Alice slept like a horse, I’d have no trouble sneaking out in the dead of night to get rid of the poor bugger. I’d seen enough crime movies to know that I mustn’t panic and I must take care. Each take had to be a perfect take, had to be what directors called ‘a wrap’. On the way upstairs I unwrapped a hot package and pulled out a chip, dropping it into my mouth. It had a new and vivid flavour.

Not that Alice noticed. If a thing wasn’t behind glass and wrapped in Japanese plastic and changeable with one press of the remote, she tended not to see it. She didn’t see my heightened colour, or the way I stared at my smeared plate. So passive was she, I almost wanted to blurt out a confession. Just once to surprise her. I resisted the temptation of course. As soon as it’s out of your mouth, it’s in the public domain, and this had to be kept strictly private, strictly between me and God.

It would be interesting, too, to see if I possessed such a thing as a conscience.

By the time we got to bed, I felt I’d explode. I wasn’t much nearer working out a plan, my head full of sitcoms and advertising jingles. I cleared my throat.

‘Alice, what do you really think of Maxwell?’

She was lying on her side, her back to me, one hand supporting her head and the other holding a paperback book.

‘Maxwell’s all right.’ I didn’t say anything. ‘I feel sorry for him actually.’

‘How do you mean?’ I was startled. She felt sorry for him? She couldn’t have surprised me more if she’d said she was carrying his child.

‘All that bravado of his, the macho stuff.’ She left the explanation at that and returned to her book.

‘I don’t understand.’

‘That, Kenneth, is because you never see things. You and the rest of your cronies.’

‘What don’t we see?’

‘You don’t see anything, you don’t see anything at all. Now shut up and go to sleep.’

I lay on my back compliantly, wondering whether it was best to feign sleep and wait it out till the wee small hours, or try to get some sleep and trust to my internal alarm clock. I needed to be clear-headed, which suggested sleep. So I closed my eyes and dreamed of a long beach on which I walked for hours and hours, while friends kept swimming ashore as though from some shipwreck.

Alice woke me with a mug of tea and a couple of biscuits. I sat up sluggishly. It had been a long, exhausting night. I looked at the clock: five minutes to eight. My body was stiff, arms aching.

‘You look rough,’ Alice agreed, starting to dress. I planted my feet on the cold floor and ran fingers through my hair. It took me a while to admit that I’d done nothing about the body in my car-boot.

I’d slept the whole night away.

Over breakfast, I pressed Alice about what she’d said in bed. Her face was grey and puffy like an inmate’s. She’d given up looking for a job a year or so ago, and filled her days with shopping, gossip and TV. She gossiped at the shops, often discussing the doings in one or other daytime soap. Her life too was an eight-track cartridge. The sofa had taken her shape, so that I no longer felt comfortable sitting on it. Usually I sat on a beanbag on the floor, reminding myself to get it refilled one of these days. I even ate breakfast (a bowl of cereal) on the beanbag, while Alice sat on the sofa, both of us staring towards breakfast TV with its little onscreen clock in the corner, telling us it would soon be time for work or, in Alice’s case, for yet more television.

She ignored my question, so I repeated it.

‘What did you mean last night about Maxwell?’

‘He’s gay.’

‘What?’

‘Gay.’

I hooted disbelief. ‘Who told you that?’

‘He did. Well, not in so many words, but women just know. The way he talked to me one day…’

‘When?’

‘I don’t know, a few months back. He came round, and you’d been kept at school by some meeting.’

‘What did he say?’

‘He didn’t say anything. He sort of talked around it. You had to read between the lines.’

This from someone who didn’t even read a newspaper.

‘He goes out with loads of women.’

‘Exactly,’ she said. ‘Because he’s scared to admit the fact. I bet the reason he’s so successful at dating is because his dates are so safe with him.’

‘You’ve been watching too many of those problem-airing programmes.’

She shrugged. But Alice, bless her, had given me an idea. There was a run-down cemetery in the city known to be frequented after dark by gays. What a fine ironic place to dump the body. Then I thought of Donna. If Maxwell was gay, I’d killed him needlessly. The whole thing was crazy.