The Last Darkness (41 page)

‘What does that mean?'

‘You know what it means.
Jealousy
, wee brother. Jealousy that's eating your heart out. I got the looks. I got the brains. I got the girls. What did you get? Our father's melancholy turn of mind? What a gift. Thanks a lot,
Tata
. Fuck, ever since you've been a kid, you've resented the hell out of me, and now you see a chance to get back at me by pulling me into this bloody investigation. I'm not going down that avenue with you, Lou. You want to punish me, I say fuck you. I say get some treatment. Go for counselling. You need help, and you need it fast.'

Perlman felt his face flush, and wondered if he looked red. Where was all this bile coming from? What quarry was Colin digging in to produce this explosive outburst? ‘I don't believe I'm hearing this.'

Colin said, ‘Better believe it. It's not just the fact I'm rich, is it? It's not just my success, is it? No no no no, oh no. It's more than that.'

‘Colin, stop there, just stop right there.' Stop before what? Before you go too far? But the door of Colin's mind was wide open and Lou found himself looking into a room he'd never visited before, and it wasn't very well-lit in there, and odd shapes stirred in the murk.

‘You think I'm blind and don't notice, Lou? You drool like an idiot every time you see her. When you're in her company you're like some fucking eunuch anxious to obey his empress. You wear that big sick sloppy heart of yours on your bloody sleeve, Lou. You think I don't see? It's written all over you,
bruder.
'

‘I like her, fine, I admit –'

Colin Perlman wagged a finger so firmly that his whole arm shook. ‘No, no, you
love
her, Lou. You can't wait to get me out of the way so you can move in on her. Here's a laugh. She wouldn't want you. She finds your doting attention amusing. You're quaint, she says. Isn't Lou quaint? Isn't it funny to see a grown man so smitten?'

‘Oh, Christ, Colin, give me a break, I don't want you out of the way. And I don't want Miriam. I like her. Maybe I love her, okay, maybe I do, it's possible. But I'd never
dream
of stealing her.'

‘Stealing her? You're dreaming. Even if I wasn't around, do you think she'd fall into your arms? She wouldn't look at you twice. Unless it was to have you light her cigarette or scurry to freshen up her drink. You're a joke, Lou. You're like the cuddly toy every kid grows out of and abandons in some dark corner where the spiders live. You are pathetic.'

Lou Perlman fell into silence. He gazed at his brother. They locked eyes, and suddenly Lou felt all their shared history was rubble, like a town bombed by crazed pilots, and howitzers randomly discharged. He wanted to reach out and touch his brother's hand, but he understood that something had changed for ever between them. In one short rant of crazed accusation, Colin had razed their relationship, fragile and uncertain as it was at times, to the ground. Nothing after this could be the same. Everything in the future would be clouded by Colin's harsh discharge. The room had the tense atmosphere of an electric storm, or that menacing aftermath when you think the lightning has passed away, but you can still hear thunder and you know the heavy sky will crackle with light again.

‘Your IV,' Lou said. His voice sounded flat and unfamiliar to him. His words meant nothing. They were just sounds. He got up and walked round the bed. ‘It's popped out of your vein. I'll stick it back.'

Colin Perlman didn't speak.

Lou caught hold of the plastic tube and looked for the entrance in Colin's arm. He slid the needle into the vein and then found himself gazing at the space between the edge of the pyjama jacket and the bandage. A strip of bandage, perhaps disturbed by Colin's agitated movements, had come undone, and was peeling from his chest. Colin Perlman, his mind elsewhere, made no move to adjust it.

Lou stared until his eyes felt dry: some things dawn on you badly. Some perceptions come through warped glass, and you're not sure you're seeing them properly.

‘I'll fix that,' Lou said, and he reached for the bandage.

Colin Perlman pushed his hand away. ‘No, call Rifkind, that's his job.'

‘I can do it,' Lou said. There was a small tremor in his voice.

He reached out again and the dry bandage looped down over the back of his hand, and he caught his brother's eyes, which were the colour of iron. The bandage unravelled another couple of inches and Lou held his breath and listened to the way his heart motored. Colin put his hand over Lou's and gripped it tightly. The bandage, as it unspooled a little more, draped the hands of both men.

Lou thought:
The world is inverted
. It had become a somnambulist's universe, a place of spectral images. Truth was crucified in this world. Everything was shadow play.

Everything was the work of the
kuntzenmaker
.

‘How did you think – how in hell did you even
think
you could get away with this, Colin? Jesus
Christ.
'

‘I lie here. It's perfect. I'm immobilized.'

‘It's not perfect,' he said. ‘It's flawed, Colin. Because now I know.'

‘I'm your brother, Lou.'

‘And that makes a difference?'

‘It has to.'

‘After what you said?'

‘I spoke out of turn, I'm sorry, I really am sorry, believe me, I lost control.'

‘What are you sorry for? Which particular act? Which particular
fucking act
?'

Lou Perlman lowered his head. He was burning up, seized by a sudden fever.
I am falling sick
, he thought.
This world is sicker still
. Sham, everywhere you looked. Dishonesty. You were surrounded by deception and its master practitioners. He looked at the exposed area of his brother's chest.

No cuts, no stitches. The bandage was dry and free of bloodstain. He felt a strange drift in his mind, druggy.

‘Was there ever a better alibi?' Colin asked.

Lou wasn't sure he heard the question. He was burning, his brain dry timber. He looked into his brother's eyes and for some reason he remembered how Colin would occasionally deign to play lead soldiers with him on the black and yellow chequered lino in the kitchen. Little men at war. Bam bam. Highland regiments. Cannon. Riflemen. Cavalry. Battles were fought.

Colin's men always won. Colin still wanted to win. Always.

‘You set that kid up,' Lou said. ‘You brought him here.'

‘Passport. Money. Created a phony clandestine organization to smuggle him into Europe. He was so pumped-up with hatred he was just waiting to be hooked and reeled in.'

‘Why have three men killed, for Christ's sake?'

‘What we think are complicated questions often have really simple answers, Lou.'

Lou repeated his question. ‘
Why have three men killed
?'

‘They couldn't be trusted.'

‘Why couldn't they?'

‘You want a catalogue?'

‘The whole thing.'

‘That silly old fart Wexler was having dangerous attacks of conscience that I attributed to the premature onset of senility. Couldn't sleep at night. Jittery. Coming undone. As for Lindsay, he was under investigation by the Scottish Law Society for certain improprieties unrelated to Nexus, and he was ready to confess
all
his wrongdoings as a bargaining tool to keep his practice. Poor fool.'

‘Bannerjee?' Lou asked.

‘He was angling for sainthood, and we all know saints can't be trusted to stay silent. Not when heaven is within sight. He'd talked about making appeasing overtures to the tax authorities concerning some of his hitherto undiscovered misdemeanours. Wipe the slate clean, start afresh. Shiv had had a sniff of the sweet narcotic of good works, you see, and he was stoned on the buzz of charitable acts, and no man is ever quite the same after that. He'd stopped seeing the world clearly. He wanted to sup with the Gods, Lou. He thought he'd found a way to freedom from his past. But it isn't that easy.'

And they had to die, Lou Perlman thought. ‘Who did you hire to do the killings? Tell me.'

‘Who did I
hire
? I went to a shop called Rent-a-Killer, of course. Where else do you go in Glasgow?'

‘Don't do this, Colin.'

‘Lou, Lou, little brother, you're not getting it. It's not coming through to you loud and clear, is it? There must be some static in the air. Or else you just don't want to believe.'

‘Believe …?' Lou felt a slowing down inside, a languid rearrangement of his thoughts.

‘I had a little help now and again,' Colin Perlman said.

It struck Lou with the force of a jackhammer. The heart of the conspiracy was cold and twisted. This hospital charade, this ‘operation', allowed Colin Perlman liberty to move in the city after dark, to slip away from the Cedars and do what he felt he had to, then come back to his sick-bed. No nurse would enter his empty room, because Rifkind, certainly an accomplice, would have issued instructions:
Patient not to be disturbed
.

But the patient was elsewhere.

Colin said, ‘Naturally, I was worried about exposure any one of those three morons might have caused. And Leo Kilroy, well, he's a private man. He doesn't like coming out in the light. Something had to be done, Lou. Something had to
give.
'

‘Did you have to …' He felt a catch at the back of his throat. His saliva was trapped there. What was he going to ask? Did you have to be so brutal, Colin? If you had to kill, couldn't you have murdered with stealth and compassion? A painless poison. Overdose of sleeping pills. But these matters were of no relevance. Cocaine forced into Lindsay, the sword used to slice Wexler, the screwdriver into Bannerjee's ear: it was as if these deaths had become abstractions, like sepia photographs of unidentified First World War soldiers dead in muddy trenches.

Colin Perlman seemed to have read the unfinished question. He said, ‘Yes, I had to. Everything had to appear truly brutal. Everything had to come back to the twisted psychology of the kid. He was filled with hatred and capable of anything, after all.'

‘God help you.'

‘God's not involved, Lou. He never is. You worry too much, wee brother.'

‘Christ. How did you ever
think
you could pull this off? Even if I hadn't seen your body, no marks, no stitches, nothing, what about Miriam? What would she say when she saw you?'

‘Do you want an answer to that question, Lou? Think of the implications first. If I tell you that she wouldn't be surprised, then it means she's implicated in the whole pantomime. Do you want to hear
that
kind of thing about the woman you love, little
bruder
?'

Lou said nothing. Sometimes truth was the last thing you wanted. Even if you'd given your life to discovering it, there were times you didn't want to hear it.

Colin said, ‘Relax, Lou –'

Relax? Lou Perlman wondered. What did that mean? How did you relax –

‘– we don't have a sexual relationship. The last time we fucked, it had to be eight or nine years ago. Some things lose their allure. We haven't slept together since then. I haven't seen her naked in all that time either. She hasn't seen me. But it's a comfortable marriage after a fashion. Separate bedrooms.' Colin adjusted his bandage. ‘What now, mon petit gendarme? Where do you go with all your little discoveries? Back to Force HQ? Talk them over with your superiors? Process warrants for my arrest? And Rifkind's too. Oh, and let's not forget Kilroy. He's an accomplice before and after the fact.'

Lou Perlman rose and walked across the room. It seemed to take a very long time. He wasn't sure if he knew where he was headed. He had no destination in mind. He couldn't quite recall where he lived or how to get there. It was somewhere in the eastern reaches of the city, a black house, a lonely house, he just couldn't bring it into focus. He had to get out of this hospital. That was all he understood. Get away. He clamped a hand over his mouth. He thought he was going to shed tears or throw up; some weight or fluid had to be released from his body, something to make him feel light again.

He thought of how damned his brother had become.

Colin said, ‘I'm betting you do nothing, wee brother.'

Was there a veiled threat in that remark? A hint of something yet to come? Lou wasn't sure.

Colin looked sad all at once. ‘Before you leave. I have something to say to you, Lou. I should have said it a long time ago. But somehow our family always had difficulty with emotional expressions. We stifled the things we felt. And you may not believe me now. But I love you, brother. That's all. No matter what I said to you a moment ago, no matter how deeply you despise me for what I've done in my life, that one fact doesn't alter.'

I love you
.

White-faced, Lou Perlman went into the corridor and then moved in the direction of reception.
I love you
. What was that supposed to be – Colin's lifeline to cheap redemption? Three easy words. The magician steps from the magic cabinet and says
I love you
and all the world is right again and sunshine melts the snow away?
I love you
.

Didn't he know? Didn't he see? Everything was damaged.

Lou's step was heavy. What to do now? What to do with his knowledge? Outside he walked to the middle of the car park and he stood very still. He took the icy city into his lungs, sucking deeply as if to cleanse himself. The air was tack-sharp in his throat and nostrils. And if it smelled of anything, it was of Glasgow, of cold sandstone and tiled closes, frozen ponds and brittle leaves in the city's black silent parks.

He was aware of a figure emerging from a parked car, some kind of antique vehicle. He glanced at the man, who was moving in quick short steps towards the entrance. A big man, fat, a coat down to his ankles, hands gloved, a long scarf slung round his neck and trailing both back and front. As he approached the entranceway the man began to glitter as light played on the silvery pendant that hung outside his coat.