The long knives, p.14
The Long Knives, page 14
He pushes into her, watching her quickly turn red under his thrusts. She makes no noises but seems to be coming as her breathing changes and her eyes water. Then the tension spills from his own frame as he climaxes, as demented rage suddenly flows through him, coming from nowhere, something he has never experienced with Trudi or any other woman.
As they lie in each other’s arms, he can feel the unease mounting in her body. It reaches critical mass as she twists away from him. Hopes she experienced his bizarre anger purely as passion. The darkness of night takes hold, swamping the room, and he feels her falling into a slumber. He lies awake, not knowing whether to stay or go. Watches her stick-thin figure, as if miles away from him in the king-size. It barely makes any impression on the contours of it. She seems already asleep, and although she’s turned from him, he senses belligerence in her expression. Succumbing to tiredness, he allows himself to fall into a pit of sleep.
The mound in the bed next to you … who is it … does it even matter? You tether yourself to one person, to one city, like the dock of a port. But it could be any dock, any port. And you see them all slide past, the faces of women you’ve made love to and men you’ve put away to be locked up forever … and you realise that it all has nothing to do with them, it’s all about yourself …
… the light is thin … you can see her face … it’s big, chunky, manly, unshaven … it turns to you with a brutal sweetness and rasps in a West Midlands accent: Noice boike!
Panic: the thrashing heart in his chest as he furiously blinks awake into a strange room and bed. A diffuse life shoots back into his head from all over the world, reassembling in his brain in two seconds. Drummond. Lying next to him. Turned away from him. Dread creeping through his veins. She’s slept in the very same position, as if she hasn’t moved at all.
Registers an intermittent bleeping sound: his phone on the floor. Struggling with the thin light spilling in through the shutters, he swings his legs out the bed. The word ‘Trudi’ on the screen now appears so macabrely unreal that it already seems to be a signal from beyond the grave. A vain thought: maybe her phone has been broken too …
He rises and moves through the murky room towards the door. — Trudi … he croaks, as he looks at the thin figure in the bed, a vague disturbance in the duvet now rendered a seismic force.
— I’ve just come from the Royal Infirmary, she flatly tells him. — It’s my dad. He’s dead.
17
Where did all this madness start? For her, in the French Alps. For me, even earlier. My very last happy memory of my home city of Tehran took place during Muharram, the celebration of Imam Hussain, the grandson of the Prophet. He was killed by Yazid, the Islamic ruler of that time. Occurring in the first month of the lunar Islamic calendar, Muharram is a serene celebration. As Shias, we Iranians tend to be more contemplative in our enjoyment of this festival than the majority of the Arab and Muslim world. Black-cloth-clad mourners walk, often for kilometres, to mosques outside of their locale. They pray, lighting candles for Hussain’s memorial, asking God for their wishes.
Nowadays Tehran is too often engulfed in haze. The peril of pollution permeates many city districts, with the stench of chemicals and putrid decay destroying the scents of saffron, sage and blossoming trees. Every year when the air grows cold, on those windless days the fumes disgorged by cars and factories are trapped between the peaks of the spectacular Alborz mountain range which embrace the city like a crescent moon. This thick blanket of smog reduces the setting sun to a yellowish coin. Now on some days, from the burned-out site where our old home sat, you can see only the blurred outlines of high-rise buildings and the Milad Tower in the distance.
This was not the case when I was a twelve-year-old boy. As I child I always loved Muharram, due to the sense of togetherness; rich and poor, old and young. Families who had the means, like our own, would cook large pots of food, offering it to the poor of the neighbourhood. At my last observed Muharram, I was known as Arash Lankarani. My sister, Roya, fourteen, and I were part of a group of young people in our street who did our customary thing at that time of year, offering our sholeh zard, sweet saffron rice pudding, a traditional Persian dessert on which the names of our Prophet and leaders are written in cinnamon, to passing mourners and old ladies.
Our house was not quite the biggest but certainly one of the most beautiful in our district, which at this time of the year was full of street vendors. At the front of our home, a huge, bushy Persian ironwood tree, which seemed to dance sensually in the slow breeze. A magical and spiritual atmosphere permeated the air. We were largely removed from the stink of death that choked many adjoining streets: a bubble of joy in what often seemed a sea of anguish. I was always big for my age and at twelve already had stubble on my chin. Even though the war was over, and I could not be put on one of the buses and taken to the killing fields as a human sacrifice, my size troubled my mother, Fariba, a college teacher of English, and my father, Mazdak, a journalist who worked for an Arabic news agency. They still feared I’d be conscripted into the guards, and insisted I always carried a photocopy of my birth certificate.
My parents were liberal intellectuals, and Father’s reports were critical of the fundamentalist clerical regime. On one occasion, police and green-baseball-capped Revolutionary Guards came to our home, taking away several Iranian and Western books and video films. They looked at Father’s ornate, wine-coloured laminated cocktail cabinet, but opening it revealed none of the whisky and gin he would illicitly bring back from his travels. Those were secreted under the floorboards. It seems he had been made aware that he was on the list for a potential visit. All that was stored inside the cabinet was his collection of five bone-handled Arabian knives, sitting in their display case, picked up from a bazaar in Khartoum. They had the distinctive, classically medieval Middle Eastern scimitar look, curved-bladed daggers broadening towards the tip, varying in size from four to twelve inches.
I recall voices being raised, and my mother taking Roya and me out into the back garden at my father’s request. We were scared, but the guards and police left shortly afterwards, and Father, his face strained but smiling, beckoned us back into our home.
Thankfully such incidents were rare. My mother kept a beautiful, fragrant house, constantly patrolling the hallway and living room, polishing the delightful wood inlays and of course Father’s pride and joy, the cocktail cabinet. But the most regular recipients of her shining and waxing efforts were the grand mahogany table where we would sit and eat, a contented family quartet, and the shelves in the drawing room, where sat the real treasures of the house. Those gateways to other worlds we prosaically referred to as books. I read prodigiously from an early age, as did Roya. My sister and I were always encouraged to discuss matters beyond what I sensed were the normal parameters for our years. I loved nothing more than to sit in that glorious room and read. At the time, I had just started Balzac’s Cousin Bette, having been encouraged to learn English by my parents. Father preferred books in that language. — Those clowns, he said, pointing outside, obviously referring to the green-shirted Revolutionary Guard, — barely understand Farsi, never mind English.
As the sun fell on this Muharram, we dutifully packed up our stalls, preparing to follow the mourners headed towards the mosques, where we would listen to noha, our quotes of mourning, and eat the Nazri food. It was the part of the day I loved best. Nothing is more truly divine than when the mosque lights are turned off, and people start praying and saying the dua. I did what I had done the last few years and sat contentedly, thinking about my life and what I might achieve. Perhaps write great works of literature, like the ones in Father’s library. I was transfixed at the time by Cousin Bette, the vengeful spinster who destroys all around her, and the dishonest Valerie. On that day, sitting in the mosque with my sister, I never thought I would know anything other than peace.
Of course, I was wrong.
On our road home, we heard the distant but ominous rustle of a crowd. We looked up to see smoke billowing into the air. It seemed, at the same time, both inevitable and inconceivable that we would be affected. But it was true. We pushed through the crowds in mounting dread to find our house was burned to the ground with our parents dead. I felt physically sick, as though I might wilt in the chaos of neighbours dancing in horror in the street around us, shouted at by sneering guards. This, in a place that only a few hours earlier had been so full of joy. I looked up to the star-filled sky. It had once brimmed me with rapture. Now, in its gleam, I detected only treachery. My sister grabbed my hand tightly and screamed: — NO! THIS CANNOT BE … so loudly and resonantly that everyone in our vicinity briefly fell silent. Then her grasp eased and she fell heavily to the asphalt pavement.
Day Four
* * *
FRIDAY
18
He can’t take her hand. It’s the path. It’s too narrow for anything other than single file.
Would she let me?
The weather changes quickly as they traverse the long, curved trail ascending up a steep brae. The pathway rises and collapses dramatically, so that you might not see something coming until it’s upon you. Perhaps that blinds Ray Lennox and Trudi Lowe to the hazard from above. Perilous black clouds swooping in, blocking the light, now empty their guts on then. Nothing forecast: the couple caught without waterproof garments. Both are soaked through by the time they get to the village. Trudi doesn’t seem to care, almost catatonic as she trudges up the muddy path, rain plastering her hair to her scalp.
So fraught has been the walk that the onslaught of the elements strikes Lennox as inevitable. The words ‘Dean’ and ‘Amanda’ have burned on his lips for hours. The need to know about one is cancelled by the imperative of concealing the other.
Drum— Amanda … what the fuck …
Lennox tries to convince himself that his restraint is at least partly about being mindful of Trudi’s overwhelming upset. When she does talk, it’s all rambling, incoherent stuff about her father, followed by abjectly miserable tears.
Ahead: Jackie and Angus’s cottage, long and white, with its refurbished slate roof. They immediately decanted here, on the strange whim of two hurting, confused people. His desperate suggestion was that they go to a place where they can talk about her father’s death, perhaps get the relationship back on track. Broach those big silences. The ones like the brooding clouds above, which fill the vacancy when love is leaving town. However, it became something else; on this rambling walk, Lennox suddenly realised they were passing by the pile of Ritchie Gulliver’s family, and he excitedly mentioned this to her. At his insistence they stalled and got closer to look around, until they heard dogs barking, forcing them to beat a retreat. Trudi didn’t even appeared dismayed, and he took her resignation as acquiescence.
She has said little since, as the creeping awareness of just how spectacularly he has come up short thickens between them like gel.
She needs you and all you’re doing is letting her down.
You can’t fix this.
You can’t fix you.
They get back inside the drizzled dwelling intent on drying and warming themselves by the fire. But when Lennox goes out the back into a yard decorated mainly by a large wooden kennel with CONDOR painted above the entrance, the wood he finds, stored in a plastic bin with the unsecured lid blown off, is sodden. Sure enough, the firelighters burn out, failing to ignite it. Exasperation finally bubbles up through Trudi’s sullen depression. Arms wrapped around herself, snot trickling from her, she looks around the cold cottage. — Let’s go back, Ray. This isn’t working out.
Lennox doesn’t know whether she means the break or their relationship. Can’t bring himself to probe. A kind of stunned idiocy, sullen, belligerent, takes over. — But we were … eh, are you sure?
— Yes, she says in brutal coldness. Her eyes are like slits. Suddenly, her finger hammers at her own breastbone. — I want to go. Now.
— Okay, we’ll go back into town and get some lunch, Lennox concedes, noting that she has already started packing, throwing her things into a holdall.
Her father, Donald Lowe, was always a fit, strong man. He doted on her, his only child. Trudi, Lennox reasons, must be thinking about how he will never see her marry. Never know any children she might have. No wonder her heart is shattered.
And you … you dragged your feet so much. There was always something. Now it’s too late.
Watches her stuff into her bag garments she previously neatly folded up. He has felt her love for him, her Ray of sunshine, as she has called him. Though a tender, affectionate man when removed from the shackling imperatives of his investigations, she has learned such respite is fleeting. Forcing shut the zip on her bag, Trudi moves over to the kitchen area. Her eyes swivel to Lennox, now sitting in a chair looking out the window. Picks a tangerine from a bag of groceries they bought from the village shop earlier. It’s sour and she screws up her face and spits it out into the bin-lined bucket. Their eyes briefly meet at that point, then quickly avert.
When the love dims, it is replaced by a sense of duty and a nagging vexation. Lately, her most abundant emotion has seemed a saccharine pity, which galls him. But now a new one has surfaced: contempt. With Lennox continually exposing himself as a time-wasting emotional retard, one who will never get past his demons, Trudi has realised she is squandering her life waiting for him to shape up.
The drive to Edinburgh is undertaken in complete silence. Trudi, her hair drying in a frizz, stares out the window most of the way. They are driving south, the noon sun tepid. The fields bare and dark on both sides of the road. Frost still caps the furrowed ridges. Forlorn, dingy clouds streak towards the horizon. Around them grey seeps in. They can see the dulled city lights while still a long way off, tickling the low sky. Willing themselves to be there. To be out of his car. Aware of the mess of it, Lennox knows she’s registering this acutely too.
Does she look like she’s shagging some other cunt? How can you tell when she’s so bereaved? Surely not. Why the fuck did you – who the fuck is this guy who is comforting her when you ought tae have been daein that?
Some cunt fannying aboot wi the gas supply when you’re oot getting run doon by a fucking maniac while trying tae find oot who cut a racist prick’s baws off …
Dean Slattery, some inbred papish bastard two or three generations from a Connemara bog, waltzing aroond in an Armani Exchange off-the-peg, ehs shiny erse in the driving seat ay a BMW, working fir the fucking gas board and thinking he’s the shit …
… nah … stoap this … stoap this caveman pish, you’re better than that. Leave the racism and the jokes tae near-extinct losers like Gillman, who think we laugh with them but really laugh at them. Sitting with a wry smile, all the time thinking: you’re actually quite a sad, thick cunt, aren’t you?
Distracted by solving a murder and a papish cunt steams muh bird … cut that fucking gasman’s filthy livestock-shagging dick off … ha ha ha … this is mad … ah’m fucking losing my marbles … AH NEED A CUNTING PEEVE AND A FAT LINE AY FUCKING CHING.
As the city manifests in the form of one of the drab satellite shopping centres on its periphery, he asks, — Where do you want to go?
It’s all Trudi can do to shrug in response.
She’s depressed. She was close to her dad. The BMW papist took advantage. She’ll see that when the mist clears from her eyes. Then you pay that fucking Fenian bastard a visit. That smug fucking hobo Lochend Hibs cunt … stick one of those airm-scratching twats in a tin flute and call him an executive … executive director of spoon burning and choring …
Opening an app on his phone, he picks a restaurant in Victoria Street that they both like and books a table. When they arrive at the establishment, situated on two floors, a fawning waiter escorts them to a window seat on the ground level. His smile is literally sucked from his face by their brusque, rigid tones and body language.
The food arrives. It’s good but they eat in a desultory manner. Both want to leave as soon as possible, and it’s evident the waiter regrets seating them where they are on exhibition, advertising the vibe of the establishment. The silence between them is as dense as a black hole in space. Lennox asks her about her dad.
It’s important to let her to talk about him.
— I’m heartbroken, Ray, she says, engaging with him for the first time. — He was the kindest man I’ve ever known and he gave Mum and me so much love. It feels so painful inside. It’ll never repair.
This makes him think about the Repair Shop. He wishes he were there now. He considers his troubled relationship with his own mother. How it fell apart completely following his father’s death and her affair with his best mate, Jock Allardyce.
Fucking relatives. The good ones die young. The shite ones go on forever.
Trudi. She’s fucking somebody else. And she’s doing this because you’re never there.
All Lennox can do is squeeze her hand. But looking at her and thinking of her being with BMW Dean is too much to bear. So, he glances outside the window to the wet flagstones. But then, at the edge of his vision: a familiar figure in an unaccustomed setting. Rubbernecking to look intently, he sees Dougie Gillman across the street, going to his car.
That cunt is in pure stakeout mode!
— … Dad loved Mum with all his heart. He told me once: when I first saw your mum in the ballroom with her friends, I had never seen anything so beautiful in my life … they were devoted to each other … I’m so worried about Mum, thank God she’s staying at Aunt Cathie’s … I should go there soon …
But who is he spying on?
Then Amanda Drummond leaves the bar opposite, wearing a long coat and woollen hat. She walks across the street with a squat, dark-haired woman, whom Lennox at first thinks is Gill Glover but maybe isn’t. Gillman waits for them to pass, and then follows them. Lennox can’t believe what he is seeing: Is Gillman fucking stalking Drummond? No! Who is the other woman?
