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.
Talk Show – AN INSPECTOR REBUS STORY
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.
Rebus knew that there were men in his own station who would try to take a break between ten-forty-five and eleven-fifteen just to listen. The people who phoned the show knew what they’d get, of course: that was part of the fun. Rebus wondered if they were masochists, but in fact he knew they probably saw themselves as challengers. If they could best MacDiarmid, they would have ‘won’. And so MacDiarmid himself became like some raging bull, entering the ring every morning for another joust with the picadors. So far he’d been goaded but not wounded, but who knew how long the luck would last…?
The other ‘personality’ – always supposing personality could be applied to someone so ethereal – was Penny Cook, the softly spoken, seductive voice on the station’s late-night slot. Five nights a week, on her show What’s Cookin’, she offered a mix of sedative music, soothing talk, and calming advice to those who took part in her own phone-in segment. These were very different people from those who chose to confront Hamish MacDiarmid. They were quietly worried about their lives, insecure, timid; they had home problems, work problems, personal problems. They were the kind of people, Rebus mused, who got sand kicked in their faces. MacDiarmid’s callers, on the other hand, were probably the ones doing the kicking…
Perhaps it said something about the lowlands of Scotland that Penny Cook’s show was said to be the more popular of the two. Again, people at the station talked about it with the fervour usually reserved for TV programmes.
‘Did you hear yon guy with the bend in his tackle…?’
‘That woman who said her husband didn’t satisfy her…’
‘I felt sorry for that hooker though, wantin’ out o’ the game…’
And so on. Rebus had listened to the show himself a few times, slumped on his chair after closing-time. But never for more than a few minutes; like a bedtime story, a few minutes of Penny Cook sent John Rebus straight to the land of Nod. He’d wondered what she looked like. Husky, comfortable, come-to-bed: the picture of her he’d built up was all images, but none of them exactly physical. Sometimes she sounded blonde and tiny, sometimes statuesque with flowing raven hair. His picture of Hamish MacDiarmid was much more vivid: bright red beard, caber-tossing biceps and a kilt.
Well, the truth would out. Rebus stood in the cramped reception area of Lowland Radio and waited for the girl on the switchboard to finish her call. On the wall behind her, a sign said WELCOME:. That colon was important. This seemed to be Lowland Radio’s way of greeting the personalities who’d come to the station, perhaps to give interviews. Today, below the WELCOME:, written in felt tip were the names JEZ JENKS and CANDY BARR. Neither name meant anything to Rebus, though they probably would to his daughter. The receptionist had finished her call.
‘Have you come for some stickers?’
‘Stickers?’
‘Car-stickers,’ she explained. ‘Only we’re all out of them. Just temporary, we’ll be getting more next week if you’d like to call back.’
‘No, thanks anyway. I’m Inspector Rebus. I think Miss Cook’s expecting me.’
‘Oh, sorry.’ The receptionist giggled. ‘I’ll see if she’s around. It was Inspector…?’
‘Rebus.’
She scribbled the name on a pad and returned to her switchboard. ‘An Inspector Reeves to see you, Penny…’
Rebus turned to another wall and cast an eye over Lowland Radio’s small display of awards. Well, there was stiff competition these days, he supposed. And not much advertising revenue to go round. Another local station had countered the challenge posed by Hamish MacDiarmid, hiring what they called ‘The Ranter’, an anonymous individual who dished out insult upon insult to anyone foolish enough to call his show.