Ian Rankin - Beggars Banquet

After visiting the toilet, I wandered back into the living-room, took the crowbar from my holdall, and left the house, closing the door after me. Checking that no one was around, I attacked the door jamb, splintering wood and forcing my way back inside. It didn’t make any noise and looked pretty good. I closed the door as best I could, tipped the telephone table in the hall on to its side, and returned to the living-room. His face was on the floor now, deathly pale as you might imagine. In fact, he looked worse than a few of the corpses I’ve seen.

‘Not long now,’ I told him. I was all but done, but decided maybe I should take a recce upstairs. I opened his bedside cupboard. Inside a wooden box there was a wad of folded banknotes, tens and twenties. I slipped off the rubber band from around them, chucked it and the box on to the bed, and stuffed the money in my pocket. Let’s call it a tip. It’s not that I wasn’t being paid enough, but I knew damned fine that if I didn’t pocket it, some dozy young copper first on the scene would do just the same.

It was a pretty sad little room, this bedroom. There were porn mags on the floor, very few decent clothes in the wardrobe, a couple of empty whisky bottles under the bed along with an unused pack of vending-machine condoms. A transistor radio lying on a chair with some dirty laundry. No framed photos of family, no holiday souvenirs, no paintings on the walls.

He’d been on medication. There were four little bottles of pills on the bedside cabinet. Nerves, probably. Informers often suffer from nerves. It comes of waiting for that monster to jump out of the bushes at them. OK, so after they’ve given their evidence and ‘Mr Big’ (or more usually ‘Mr Middling’) has been locked away, they’re given ‘protection’. They get new identities, some cash up front, a roof over their heads, even a job. All this comes to pass. But they’ve got to leave the only life they’ve known. No contact with friends or family. This guy downstairs, whose name was Eddie, by the way, his wife left him. A lot of the wives do. Sad, eh? And these informers, they do all this just to save themselves from a few years in the clink.

The police are good at spotting the weak ones, the ones who might just turn. They work on them, exaggerating the sentences they’re going to get, exaggerating the prizes awaiting under the witness protection scheme. (‘The Witless Protection Scheme’, I’ve heard it called.) It’s all psychology and bullshit, but it sometimes works. Often though a jury will throw the evidence out anyway. The defence counsel’s line is always the same: can you rely on the evidence of a man who himself is so heavily implicated in these serious crimes, and who is giving evidence solely to save his own skin?

Like I say, sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn’t. I went downstairs and crouched over the body. It was a body now, no question of that. Well, I’d let it cool for a little while. Ten or fifteen minutes. Now that I thought of it, I’d broken open the door too soon. Someone might come along and notice. A slight error, but an error all the same. Too late for regrets though. The course was set now, so I went back to the fridge and lifted out what was left of a roast chicken. There was a leg with some meat on it, so I chewed that for a while, standing in the living-room watching through the net curtains as the sun broke from behind some cloud. Want to know what blood smells like? It smells like cold chicken grease. I stuffed the bones into the kitchen bin. I’d stripped them clean. I didn’t want to leave behind any teeth-marks, anything the forensic scientists could begin to work with. Not that anyone would be working too hard on this case. People like me, we’re seldom caught. After a hit, we just melt into the background. We’re as ordinary as you are. I don’t mean that we seem to be ordinary, that we make a show of looking ordinary, I mean we are ordinary. These hit men and assassins you read about in novels, they go around all day and all night like Arnold Schwarzenegger. But in real life that would get them noticed. The last thing you want to be if you’re like me is noticed. You want to blend into the scenery.

I’m running on again, aren’t I? It was just about time. A final lingering inspection. Another visit to the toilet. I checked myself in the bathroom mirror. I looked fine. I took my clothes back out of the holdall and stripped off the overalls, gloves, trainers. My shoes were black brogues with new soles and heels. I checked myself again in the mirror as I knotted my tie and put on my jacket. No tell-tale flecks of blood on my cheeks or forehead. I washed my hands without using soap (the fragrance might be identifiable) and dried them on toilet paper, which I flushed away. I zipped the holdall shut, picked it up, and walked back through the living-room (‘Ciao, Eddie’), into the small hallway, and out of the house.

Potentially, this was the most dangerous part of the whole job. As I walked down the path, I was pretty well hidden from view by the hedge, the hedge Eddie must have considered a comfort, a barrier between him and prying eyes. At the pavement, I didn’t pause. There was no one around anyway, no one at all, as I walked briskly around the corner to where I’d parked my car, locked the holdall in the boot, and started the engine.

Later that afternoon I returned to the house. I didn’t park on a side street this time. I drew right up to the kerb in front of the hedge. Well, as close as I could get anyway. There were still no signs of activity in any of the other houses. Either the neighbours kept themselves to themselves or else they all had places to be. I gave my engine a final loud rev before turning it off, and slammed the door noisily after me. I was wearing a black leather jacket and cream chinos rather than a suit, and different shoes, plain brown rather than the black brogues. Just in case someone had seen me. Often, witnesses saw the clothes, not the face. The real professionals didn’t bother with hair dyes, false moustaches and the like. They just wore clothes they wouldn’t normally wear.

I walked slowly up the path, studying the terrain either side, then stopped at the door, examining the splintered jamb. The door was closed, but suddenly swung open from inside. Two men looked at me. I stood aside to let them pass, and walked into the house. The telephone table in the hall was still lying on its side, the phone beside it (though someone had replaced the receiver).

The body was where I’d left it. He’d been so surprised to see me at his door. Not wary, just surprised. Visiting the area, I’d explained, thought I’d look in. He’d led me into the living-room, and I’d asked to use his loo. Maybe he wondered why I took the holdall with me. Maybe he didn’t. There could have been anything in it, after all. Anything.

There were two men crouching over the body now, and more men in the bathroom, the kitchen, walking around upstairs. Nobody was saying anything much. You can appreciate why. One of the men stood up and stared at me. I was surveying the scene. Bottles and glasses everywhere, cushions where I’d dropped them, a carpet patterned with blood.

‘What’s happened here?’ I asked unnecessarily.

‘Well, sir.’ The Detective Constable smiled a rueful smile. ‘Looks like someone got to Eddie.’

I used to be a road digger, which is to say I dug up roads for a living. These days I’m a Repair Effecter for the council’s Highways Department. I still dig up roads – sorry, highways – only now it sounds better, doesn’t it? They tell me there’s some guy in an office somewhere whose job is thinking up posh names for people like me, for the rubbish collectors and street sweepers and toilet attendants. (Usually they manage to stick in the word ‘environmental’ somewhere.) This way, we’re made to feel important. Must be some job that, thinking up posh names. I wonder what job title he’s given himself. Environmental Title Co-ordination Executive, eh?