But, as a promotional gimmick, there was a fifty-pence refund on Camelot, so Rebus did buy it, and sat at home that evening drinking the vile stuff and listening to Penny Cook’s tape. Tomorrow evening, he was thinking, he might go along to the station to catch her show live. He had an excuse after alclass="underline" he wanted to speak with Sue, the telephonist. That was the excuse; the truth was that he was intrigued by Penny Cook herself.
You’re not quite what I was expecting.
Was he reading too much into that one sentence? Maybe he was. Well, put it another way then: he had a duty to return to Lowland Radio, a duty to talk to Sue. He wound the tape back for the umpteenth time. That ferocious voice. Sue had been surprised by its ferocity, hadn’t she? The man had seemed so quiet, so polite in their initial conversation. Rebus was stuck. Maybe the caller would simply get fed up. When it was a question of someone’s home being called, there were steps you could take: have someone intercept all calls, change the person’s number and keep it ex-directory. But Penny Cook needed her number to be public. She couldn’t hide, except behind the wall provided by Sue and David.
Then he had an idea. It wasn’t much of an idea, but it was better than nothing. Bill Costain at the Forensic Science Lab was keen on sound recording, tape recorders, all that sort of stuff. Maybe he could do something with Mr Anonymous. Yes, he’d call him first thing tomorrow. He sipped his coffee, then squirmed.
‘Tastes more like camel than Camelot,’ he muttered, hitting the play button.
The morning was bright and clear, but Bill Costain was dull and overcast.
‘I was playing in a darts match last night,’ he explained. ‘We won for a change. The amount of drink we put away, you’d think Scotland had just done the Grand Slam.’
‘Never mind,’ said Rebus, handing over the cassette tape. ‘I’ve brought you something soothing…’
‘Soothing’ wasn’t the word Costain himself used after listening to the tape. But he enjoyed a challenge, and the challenge Rebus had laid down was to tell him anything at all about the voice. He listened several times to the tape, and put it through some sort of analyser, the voice becoming a series of peaks and troughs.
Costain scratched his head. ‘There’s too big a difference between the voice at the beginning and the voice when hysterical.’
‘How do you mean?’ Costain always seemed able to baffle Rebus.
‘The hysterical voice is so much higher than the voice at the beginning. It’s hardly… natural.’
‘Meaning?’
‘I’d say one of them’s a put-on. Probably the initial voice. He’s disguising his normal tone, speaking in a lower register than usual.’
‘So can we get back to his real voice?’
‘You mean can we retrieve it? Yes, but the lab isn’t the best place for that. A friend of mine has a recording studio out Morningside way. I’ll give him a bell…’
They were in luck. The studio’s facilities were not in use that morning. Rebus drove them to Morningside and then sat back as Costain and his friend got busy at the mixing console. They slowed the hysteric part of the tape; then managed somehow to take the pitch of the voice down several tones. It began to sound more than slightly unnatural, like a Dalek or something electronic. But then they started to build it back up again, until Rebus was listening to a slow, almost lifeless vocal over the studio’s huge monitor speakers.
‘I… know… what… you’ve… done.’
Yes, there was life there now, almost a hint of personality. After this, they switched to the caller’s first utterance – ‘Not so good, Penny’ – and played around with it, heightening the pitch slightly, even speeding it up a bit.
‘That’s about as good as it gets,’ Costain said at last.
‘It’s brilliant, Bill, thanks. Can I get a copy?’
Having dropped Costain back at the lab, Rebus wormed his way back through the lunchtime traffic to Great London Road police station. He played this new tape several times, then switched from tape to radio. Christ, he’d forgotten: it was still tuned to Lowland.
‘… and mmm… it tastes so good.’
Rebus fairly growled as he reached for the off button. But the damage, the delirious, wonderful damage, had already been done…
The wine bar was on the corner of Hanover Street and Queen Street. It was a typical Edinburgh affair in that though it might have started with wine, quiche and salad in mind, it had reverted to beer – albeit mainly of the ‘designer’ variety – and pies. Always supposing you could call something filled with chickpeas and spices a ‘pie’. Still, it had an IPA pump, and that was good enough for Rebus. The place had just finished its lunchtime peak, and tables were still cluttered with plates, glasses and condiments. Having paid over the odds for his drink, Rebus felt the barman owed him a favour. He gave the young man a name. The barman nodded towards a table near the window. The table’s sole occupant looked just out of his teens. He flicked a lock of hair back from his forehead and gazed out of the window. There was a newspaper folded into quarters on his knee. He tapped his teeth with a ballpoint, mulling over some crossword clue.
Without asking, Rebus sat down opposite him. ‘It whiles away the time,’ he said. The tooth-tapper seemed still intent on the window. Maybe he could see his reflection there. The modern Narcissus. Another flick of the hair.
‘If you got a haircut, you wouldn’t need to keep doing that.’
This achieved a smile. Maybe he thought Rebus was trying to chat him up. Well, after all, this was known as an actors’ bar, wasn’t it? Half a glass of orange juice sat on the table, the ubiquitous ice-cube having melted away to a sliver.
‘Aye,’ Rebus mused, ‘passes the time.’
This time the eyes turned from the window and were on him. Rebus leaned forward across the table. When he spoke, he spoke quietly, confidently.
‘I know what you’ve done,’ he said, not sure even as he said it whether he were quoting or speaking for himself.
The lock of hair fell forward and stayed there. A frozen second, then another, and the man rose quickly to his feet, the chair tipping back. But Rebus, still seated, had grabbed at an arm and held it fast.
‘Let go of me!’
‘Sit down.’
‘I said let go!’
‘And I said sit down!’ Rebus pulled him back on to his chair. ‘That’s better. We’ve got a lot to talk about, you and me. We can do it here or down at the station, and by “station” I don’t mean Scotrail. OK?’
The head was bowed, the careful hair now almost completely dishevelled. It was that easy… Rebus found the tiniest grain of pity. ‘Do you want something else to drink?’ The head shook from side to side. ‘Not even a cup of coffee?’
Now the head looked up at him.
‘I saw the film once,’ Rebus went on. ‘Bloody awful it was, but not half as bad as the coffee. Give me Richard Harris’s singing any day.’
Now, finally, the head grinned. ‘That’s better,’ said Rebus. ‘Come on, son. It’s time, if you’ll pardon the expression, to spill the beans.’
The beans spilled…
Rebus was there that night for What’s Cookin’. It surprised him that Penny Cook herself, who sounded so calm on the air, was, before the programme, a complete bundle of nerves. She slipped a small yellow tablet on to her tongue and washed it down with a beaker of water.
‘Don’t ask,’ she said, cutting off the obvious question. Sue and David were stationed by their telephones in the production room; which was separated from Penny’s studio by a large glass window. Her producer did his best to calm things down. Though not yet out of his thirties, he looked to be an old pro at this. Rebus wondered if he shouldn’t have his own counselling show…