Ian Rankin - Beggars Banquet

‘And the, er, material after that?’ said Inspector Claverhouse.

I raised my eyebrows and exhaled. ‘Looks like something home-made,’ I replied. ‘I know it’s said that couples will rent video cameras for a weekend so they can record… you know.’

‘But they don’t need to rent the camera if they already own one,’ said Claverhouse.

‘True.’

Claverhouse ejected the tape and examined it. ‘You couldn’t identify the participants?’

I smiled bleakly. ‘You didn’t exactly see their faces.’ Of course you didn’t, I’d made sure of that. But I’d also chosen models whose physical shape was at least similar to Maxwell and Alice. I didn’t think anyone would notice that part of the way through the male model actually changed identity. By that stage, all you could see was skin and hair. Claverhouse was looking at the spine of the videotape.

‘True enough, I just wondered. There’s some writing on here, just initials. MG and AB. What do you make of that?’

I stared at him, then at the detective sergeant, and laughed uneasily. ‘Come on,’ I said. ‘What are you trying to say?’

‘Nothing, sir.’

‘You know damned fine MG is Maxwell, and you’re implying AB is my wife.’

‘Your wife is on the tape, sir.’

‘Yes, but not…’ I nodded towards the machine. ‘I mean, it’s not them doing…’ My voice died away again. ‘It’s not,’ I said quietly. I did not tell a lie. The two detectives understood. Inspector Claverhouse sat down again.

‘There’s also a letter, sir,’ he said sympathetically. ‘It appears to be from Maxwell Gray to someone called Alice. Perhaps you’d care to take a look.’ He produced a photocopy of the crumpled sheet for me to read. I read through it twice.

‘Alice, there’s no easy way to put this. I want out, pure and simple. It’s not your fault, it’s mine; or maybe it’s neither’s fault. I don’t know any more. It would break Kenny’s heart if he found out, you know that. Not that he would find out, he’s too stupid, too guileless. But that just makes me feel all the more guilty. I hope you can understand. I hope we can still be friends. Maxie.’

Two notes jarred. He wouldn’t have called himself Maxie, but then the police weren’t to know that. It had just been devilment on my part. But neither would he have used a semicolon. Only people like me use semicolons in this day and age. I doubted CID would notice this either. I looked up at Inspector Claverhouse. There were tears in my eyes. Then I broke down altogether.

And still it dragged on.

With Alice under suspicion, I became her champion, protecting her from police and media alike. She didn’t understand any of it. How could there be a letter? How could there be a video? It wasn’t her on the video, she told Claverhouse. It wasn’t. I backed her up. I was sweating about that video. If the police watched it often enough – and I didn’t doubt it was required viewing between shifts at the station – maybe they’d begin to see discrepancies. Then again, all they’d want to watch were the dirty bits, and they would be watching for all the wrong reasons. I’d chosen the seediest, most amateurish tapes in Maxwell’s collection. They really did look home-made. The police meantime were interviewing more friends of Maxwell’s, and his colleagues. Again and again they called us to interview. It was a wearing process.

They knew they were dealing with manslaughter at least. The pathologist had been able to say that Maxwell had fallen with some force, almost certainly not of his own volition. What’s more, the body had been moved, then placed back at the foot of the stairs, as if someone had thought to dispose of it, but been unable to. A woman, for example, might not have the weight and power necessary to shift such a load very far.

It turned out, of course, that the police had wanted to prosecute at quite an early stage, but the Crown Office kept pressing for more evidence. At one stage, it seemed that the inquiry was turning more towards me. For a few days I looked like a chief suspect, but by then I was confident the police were just fishing (and sans hooks at that). When they’d wheelbarrowed enough information over to the Crown Office, someone must have decided something should happen. Everyone took one step forward. There was to be a trial. A trial not for manslaughter but for murder.

The police produced a witness, a neighbour of Maxwell’s who was sure she’d seen a woman of Alice’s description going in and out of the flat at irregular intervals. I took a deep breath, and began to view Alice for the first time with suspicion. What if the two of them had really been…? And all her talk to me of Maxwell being gay was just to throw me off the scent? Was there to be a brilliant twist right at the end of the film? I asked Alice, but she denied and denied. She’d lost some weight, a lot of weight actually. And the fire had disappeared from her eyes. She wasn’t the same woman she’d been. She was obedient to commands, compliant, weepily grateful for my many kindnesses. In other words, she’d been broken. I liked her more than I had in years.

I was almost determined that she should be found not guilty, and put up a firm performance in the witness box. But the looks I got from those in court were still understanding and sympathetic. I was the faithful husband, faithful right to the end. The jury seemed to ignore me altogether, and brought back a verdict of guilty.

The flat seemed so empty, but soon filled with my own choice of music and video viewing. I worked harder than ever at school, but every night I found some space for reminiscence, mostly of the trial. As a witness, I hadn’t been able to soak up much of it, but afterwards I’d made it a sort of hobby, a preoccupation. There had been much talk in court of Maxwell’s promiscuous lifestyle, his interest in illicit pornography, his affiliations with barmaids, waitresses, secretaries. A little black notebook was produced, detailing names and telephone numbers. Some of the women had appeared in the witness box. None admitted to having sex with Maxwell, but you could see the type of women they were.

I visited Alice when I could. It was always an interesting experience. I’d considered writing her a letter, explaining that I was a weak man who could not live with the shame and the guilty verdict (it was true that at school both pupils and teachers looked at me oddly), and telling her I’d be filing for divorce. I’d considered it, but rejected it almost as quickly. I don’t know why exactly. Maybe it had something to do with the evenings I spent going over old photographs of the pair of us, back in the days of foreign travel and fooling around. I still went for a drink some weekends with Andrew, Mark and Jimmy, and even a few times with Frank Marsh. But mostly I stayed home.

Then one night there was a ring at the doorbell. I got the shock of my life when I answered the door. It was Donna, blue-eyed blonde-haired Donna, looking exquisite and smelling of recent perfume. She just needed to talk, to talk with someone who’d known Maxwell like she’d known him. She missed him so much.

‘So do I,’ I said.

She collapsed into my gentle arms. I smoothed her hair away from one ear, shushing her. Like a friend. Like a friend.

Lowland Radio was a young but successful station broadcasting to lowland Scotland. It was said that the station owed its success to two very different personalities. One was the DJ on the mid-morning slot, an abrasive and aggressive Shetland Islander, called Hamish MacDiarmid. MacDiarmid hosted a phone-in, supposedly concerning the day’s headlines, but in fact these were of relatively minor importance. People did not listen to the phone-in for opinion and comment: they listened for the attacks MacDiarmid made on just about every caller. There were occasional fierce interchanges, interchanges the DJ nearly always won by dint of severing the connection with anyone more intelligent, better informed, or more rational than himself.