Beggars Banquet

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.

It all seemed a long way from the Light Programme, a long way from glowing valves and Home Counties diction. Was it true that the BBC announcers used to wear dinner jackets? DJs in DJs, Rebus thought to himself and laughed.

‘I’m glad somebody’s cheerful.’ It was Penny Cook’s voice; she was standing right behind him. Slowly he turned to be confronted by a buxom lady in her early forties – only a year or two younger than Rebus himself. She had permed light brown hair and wore round glasses – the kind popularised by John Lennon on one hand and the NHS on the other.

‘I know, I know,’ she said. ‘I’m never what people expect.’ She held out a hand, which Rebus shook. Not only did Penny Cook sound unthreatening, she looked unthreatening.

All the more mysterious then that someone, some anonymous caller, should be threatening her life…

They walked down a corridor towards a sturdy-looking door, to the side of which had been attached a push-button array.

‘Security,’ she said, pressing four digits before pulling open the door. ‘You never know what a lunatic might do given access to the airwaves.’

‘On the contrary,’ said Rebus, ‘I’ve heard Hamish MacDiarmid.’

She laughed. He didn’t think he’d heard her laugh before. ‘Is Penny Cook your real name?’ he asked, thinking the ice sufficiently broken between them.

‘Afraid so. I was born in Nairn. To be honest, I don’t think my parents had heard of Penicuik. They just liked the name Penelope.’

They were passing studios and offices. Loudspeakers placed in the ceiling of the corridor relayed the station’s afternoon show.

‘Ever been inside a radio station before, Inspector?’

‘No, never.’

‘I’ll show you around if you like.’

‘If you can spare the time…’

‘No problem.’ They were approaching one studio outside which a middle-aged man was in quiet conversation with a spiky-headed teenager. The teenager looked sullen and in need of a wash. Rebus wondered if he were the man’s son. If so, a lesson in parental control was definitely needed.

‘Hi, Norman,’ Penny Cook said in passing. The man smiled towards her. The teenager remained sullen: a controlled pose, Rebus decided. Further along, having passed through another combination-lock door, Penny herself cleared things up.

‘Norman’s one of our producers.’

‘And the kid with him?’

‘Kid?’ She smiled wryly. ‘That was Jez Jenks, the singer with Leftover Lunch. He probably makes more a day than you and I make in a good year.’

Rebus couldn’t remember ever having a ‘good year’ – the curse of the honest copper. A question came to him.

‘And Candy Barr?’

She laughed at this. ‘I thought my own name took some beating. Mind you, I don’t suppose it’s her real name. She’s an actress or a comedienne or something. From across the water, of course.’

‘Doesn’t sound like an Irish name,’ Rebus said as Penny Cook held open her office door.

‘I wouldn’t make jokes around here, Inspector,’ she said. ‘You’ll probably find yourself being signed up for a spot on one of our shows.’

‘The Laughing Policeman?’ Rebus suggested. But then they were in the office, the door was closed, and the atmosphere cooled appropriately. This was business, after all. Serious business. She sat at her desk. Rebus sat down on the chair across from her.

‘Do you want a coffee or anything, Inspector?’

‘No thanks. So, when did these calls start, Miss Cook?’

‘About a month ago. The first time he tried it, he actually got through to me on-air. That takes some doing. The calls are filtered through two people before they get to me. Efficient people, too. They can usually tell a crank caller from the real thing.’

‘How does the system work? Somebody calls in… then what?’

‘Sue or David takes the call. They ask a few questions. Basically, they want to know the person’s name, and what it is they want to talk to me about. Then they take a telephone number, tell the caller to stay by his or her telephone, and if we want to put the person on-air, they phone the caller back and prepare them.’

‘Fairly rigorous then.’

‘Oh yes. And even supposing the odd crank does get through, we’ve got a three-second delay on them when they’re on-air. If they start cussing or raving, we cut the call before it goes out over the ether.’

‘And is that what happened with this guy?’

‘Pretty much.’ She shook a cassette box at him. ‘I’ve got the tape here. Do you want to hear?’

‘Please.’

She started to load a cassette player on the ledge behind her. There were no windows in the office. From the number of steps they’d descended to get there, Rebus reckoned this whole floor of the building was located beneath ground-level.

‘So you got a phone number for this guy?’

‘Only it turned out to be a phone box in some housing scheme. We didn’t know that at the time. We never usually take calls from phone boxes. But it was one of those ones that use the phone cards. No beeps, so nobody could tell.’ She had loaded the tape to her satisfaction, but was now waiting for it to rewind. ‘After he tried getting through again, we phoned his number. It rang and rang, and then some old girl picked it up. She explained where the box was. That was when we knew he’d tricked us.’ The tape thumped to a stop. She hit the play button, and sat down again. There was hiss as the tape began, and then her voice filled the room. She smiled in embarrassment, as if to say: yes, it’s a pose, this husky, sultry, late-night me. But it’s a living…

‘And now we’ve got Peter on line one. Peter, you’re through to Penny Cook. How are things with you this evening?’

‘Not so good, Penny.’

She interrupted the tape for a moment: ‘This is where we cut him off.’

The man’s voice had been sleepy, almost tranquillised. Now it erupted. ‘I know what you’re up to! I know what’s going on!’ The tape went dead. She leaned back in her chair and switched off the machine.

‘It makes me shiver every time I hear it. That anger… such a sudden change in the voice. Brr.’ She reached into her drawer and brought out cigarettes and lighter. Rebus accepted a cigarette from her.

‘Thanks,’ he said. Then: ‘The name’ll be false, of course, but did he give a surname?’

‘A surname, an address, even a profession. He said he lived in Edinburgh, but we looked up the street name in the A to Z and it doesn’t exist. From now on, we check that addresses are real before we call back. His surname was Gemmell. He even spelt it out for Sue. She couldn’t believe he was a crank, he sounded so genuine.’

‘What did he tell her his problem was?’

‘Drinking too much… how it was affecting his work. I like that sort of problem. The advice is straightforward, and it can be helping a lot of people too scared to phone in.’

‘What did he say his job was?’

‘Bank executive. He gave Sue the bank’s name and everything, and he kept saying it wasn’t to be broadcast.’ She smiled, shook her head. ‘I mean, this nut really was good.’

Rebus nodded. ‘He seems to have known the set-up pretty well.’

‘You mean he got to the safe without triggering any of the alarms?’ She smiled still. ‘Oh yes, he’s a real pro.’

‘And the calls have persisted?’

‘Most nights. We’ve got him tagged now though. He’s tried using different accents… dialects… always a different name and job. But he hasn’t managed to beat the system again. When he knows he’s been found out, he does that whole routine again. “I know what you’ve done.” Blah, blah. We put the phone down on him before he can get started.’

‘And what have you done, Miss Cook?’

‘Absolutely nothing, Inspector. Not that I know of.’

Rebus nodded slowly. ‘Can I hear the tape again?’

‘Sure.’ She wound it back, and they listened together. Then she excused herself – ‘to powder my nose’ – and Rebus listened twice more. When she returned, she was carrying two plastic beakers of coffee.

‘Thought I might tempt you,’ she said. ‘Milk, no sugar… I hope that’s all right.’

‘Thank you, yes, that’s just the job.’

‘So, Inspector, what do you think?’

He sipped the lukewarm liquid. ‘I think,’ he said, ‘you’ve got an anonymous phone-caller.’

She raised her cup, as though to toast him. ‘God bless CID,’ she said. ‘What would we do without you?’

‘The problem is that he’s probably mobile, not sticking to the same telephone kiosk every time. That’s supposing he’s as clever as he seems. We can get BT to put a trace on him, but for that you’d have to keep him talking. Or, if he gives his number, we can trace him from that. But it takes time.’

‘And meanwhile he could be slipping off into the night?’

‘I’m afraid so. Still, apart from continuing to fend him off and hoping he gets fed up, I can’t see what else can be done. You don’t recognise the voice? Someone from your past… an ex-lover… someone with a grudge?’

‘I don’t make enemies, Inspector.’

Looking at her, listening to her voice, he found that easy to believe. Maybe not personal enemies…

‘What about the other radio stations? They can’t be too thrilled about your ratings.’

Her laughter was loud. ‘You think they’ve put out a contract on me, is that it?’

Rebus smiled and shrugged. ‘Just a thought. But yours is the most popular show Lowland has got, isn’t it?’

‘I think I’m still just about ahead of Hamish, yes. But then Hamish’s show is just… well, Hamish. My show’s all about the people themselves, the ones who call in. Human interest, you could say.’

‘And there’s plenty of interest.’

‘Suffering is always interesting, isn’t it? It appeals to the voyeur. We do get our fair share of crank calls. Maybe that’s why. All those lonely, slightly deranged people out there… listening to me. Me, pretending I’ve got all the answers.’ Her smile this time was rueful. ‘The calls recently have been getting… I don’t know whether to say “better” or “worse”. Worse problems, better radio.’

‘Better for your ratings, you mean?’

‘Most advertisers ignore the late-night slots. That’s common knowledge. Not a big enough audience. But it’s never been a problem on my show. We did slip back for a little while, but the figures picked up again. Up and up and up… Don’t ask me what sort of listeners we’re attracting. I leave all that to market research.’

Rebus finished his coffee and clasped both knees, preparing to rise. ‘I’d like to take the tape with me, is that possible?’

‘Sure.’ She ejected the tape.

‘And I’d like to have a word with… Sue, is it?’

She checked her watch. ‘Sue, yes, but she won’t be in for a few hours yet. Night shift, you see. Only us poor disc jockeys have to be here twenty-four hours. I exaggerate, but it feels like it sometimes.’ She patted a tray on the ledge beside the cassette player. The tray was filled with correspondence. ‘Besides, I have my fan mail to deal with.’

Rebus nodded, glanced at the cassette tape he was now holding. ‘Let me have a think about this, Miss Cook. I’ll see what we can do.’

‘OK, Inspector.’

‘Sorry I can’t be more constructive. You were quite right to contact us.’

‘I didn’t suppose there was much you could-’

‘We don’t know that yet. As I say, give me a little time to think about it.’

She rose from her chair. ‘I’ll see you out. This place is a maze, and we can’t have you stumbling in on the Afternoon Show, can we? You might end up doing your Laughing Policeman routine after all…’

As they were walking down the long, hushed corridor, Rebus saw two men in conversation at the bottom of the stairwell. One was a beefy, hearty-looking man with a mass of rumpled hair and a good growth of beard. His cheeks seemed veined with blood. The other man proved a significant contrast, small and thin with slicked-back hair. He wore a grey suit and white shirt, the latter offset by a bright red paisley-patterned tie.

‘Ah,’ said Penny Cook quietly, ‘a chance to kill two birds. Come on, let me introduce you to Gordon Prentice – he’s the station chief – and to the infamous Hamish MacDiarmid.’

Well, Rebus had no trouble deciding which man was which. Except that, when Penny did make the introductions, he was proved utterly wrong. The bearded man pumped his hand.

‘I hope you’re going to be able to help, Inspector. There are some sick minds out there.’ This was Gordon Prentice. He wore baggy brown cords and an open-necked shirt from which protruded tufts of wiry hair. Hamish MacDiarmid’s hand, when Rebus took it, was limp and cool, like something lifted from a larder. No matter how hard he tried, Rebus couldn’t match this… for want of a better word, yuppie… couldn’t match him to the combative voice. But then MacDiarmid spoke.

‘Sick minds is right, and stupid minds too. I don’t know which is worse, a deranged audience or an educationally subnormal one.’ He turned to Penny Cook. ‘Maybe you got the better bargain, Penelope.’ He turned back to Prentice. So that’s what a sneer looks like, Rebus thought. But MacDiarmid was speaking again. ‘Gordon, how about letting Penny and me swap shows for a day? She could sit there agreeing with every bigoted caller I get, and I could get stuck in about her social cripples. What do you think?’

Prentice chuckled and placed a hand on the shoulder of both his star DJs. ‘I’ll give it some thought, Hamish. Penny might not be too thrilled though. I think she has a soft spot for her “cripples”.’

Penny Cook certainly didn’t look ‘too thrilled’ by the time Rebus and she were out of earshot.

‘Those two,’ she hissed. ‘Sometimes they act like I’m not even there! Men…’ She glanced towards Rebus. ‘Present company excluded, of course.’

‘I’ll take that as a compliment.’

‘I shouldn’t be so hard on Gordon actually. I know I joke about being here twenty-four hours a day, but I really think he does spend all day and all night at the station. He’s here from early morning, but each night he comes into the studio to listen to a bit of my show. Beyond the call of duty, wouldn’t you say?’

Rebus merely shrugged.

‘I bet,’ she went on, ‘when you saw them you thought it was Hamish with the beard.’

Rebus nodded. She giggled. ‘Everybody does,’ she said. ‘Nobody’s what they seem in this place. I’ll let you into a secret. The station doesn’t keep any publicity shots of Hamish. They’re afraid it would hurt his image if everyone found out he looks like a wimp.’

‘He’s certainly not quite what I expected.’

She gave him an ambiguous look. ‘No, well, you’re not quite what I was expecting either.’ There was a moment’s stillness between them, broken only by some coffee commercial being broadcast from the ceiling: ‘… but Camelot Coffee is no myth, and mmm… it tastes so good.’ They smiled at one another and walked on.

Driving back into Edinburgh, Rebus listened, despite himself, to the drivel on Lowland Radio. Advertising was tight, he knew that. Maybe that was why he seemed to hear the same dozen or so adverts over and over again. Lots of airtime to fill and so few advertisers to fill it…

‘… and mmm… it tastes so good.’

That particular advert was beginning to get to him. It careered around in his head, even when it wasn’t being broadcast. The actor’s voice was so… what was the word? It was like being force-fed a tablespoon of honey. Cloying, sickly, altogether too much.

‘Was Camelot a myth or is it real? Arthur and Guinevere, Merlin and Lancelot. A dream, or-’

Rebus switched off the radio. ‘It’s only a jar of bloody coffee,’ he told his radio set. Yes, he thought, a jar of coffee… and mmm… it tastes so good. Come to think of it, he needed coffee for the flat. He’d stop off at the corner shop, and whatever he bought it wouldn’t be Camelot.

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 all: 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…

Rebus chatted with Sue for ten minutes or so, and watched as the production team went through its paces. Really, it was a two-man operation – producer and engineer. There was a last-minute panic when Penny’s microphone started to play up, but the engineer was swift to replace it. By five minutes to eleven, the hysteria seemed over. Everyone was calm now, or was so tense it didn’t show. Like troops just before a battle, Rebus was thinking. Penny had a couple of questions about the running order of the night’s musical pieces. She held a conversation with her producer, communicating via mikes and headphones, but looking at one another through the window.

Then she turned her eyes towards Rebus, winked at him, and crossed her fingers. He crossed his fingers back at her.

‘Two minutes everyone…’

At the top of the hour there was news, and straight after the news…

A tape played. The show’s theme music. Penny leaned towards her microphone, which hung like an anglepoise over her desk. The music faded.

‘Hello again. This is Penny Cook, and this is What’s Cookin’. I’ll be with you until three o’clock, so if you’ve got a problem, I’m just a phone call away. And if you want to ring me the number as ever is…’

It was extraordinary, and Rebus could only marvel at it. Her eyes were closed, and she looked so brittle that a shiver might turn her to powder. Yet that voice… so controlled… no, not controlled; rather, it was as though it were apart from her, as though it possessed a life of its own, a personality… Rebus looked at the studio clock. Four hours of this, five nights a week? All in all, he thought, he’d rather be a policeman.

The show was running like clockwork. Calls were taken by the two operators, details scribbled down. There was discussion with the producer about suitable candidates, and during the musical interludes or the commercials -‘… and mmm… it tastes so good’ – the producer would relay details about the callers to Penny.

‘Let’s go with that one,’ she might say. Or: ‘I can’t deal with that, not tonight.’ Usually, her word was the last, though the producer might demur.

‘I don’t know, it’s quite a while since we covered adultery…’

Rebus watched. Rebus listened. But most of all, Rebus waited…

‘OK, Penny,’ the producer told her, ‘it’s line two next. His name’s Michael.’

She nodded. ‘Can somebody get me a coffee?’

‘Sure.’

‘And next,’ she said, ‘I think we’ve got Michael on line two. Hello, Michael?’

It was quarter to midnight. As usual, the door of the production room opened and Gordon Prentice stepped into the room. He had nods and smiles for everyone, and seemed especially pleased to see Rebus.

‘Inspector,’ he said shaking Rebus’s hand. ‘I see you take your work seriously, coming here at this hour.’ He patted the producer’s shoulder. ‘How’s the show tonight?’

‘Been a bit tame so far, but this looks interesting.’

Penny’s eyes were on the dimly lit production room. But her voice was all for Michael.

‘And what do you do for a living, Michael?’

The caller’s voice crackled out of the loudspeakers. ‘I’m an actor, Penny.’

‘Really? And are you working just now?’

‘No, I’m what we call “resting”.’

‘Ah well, they say there’s no rest for the wicked. I suppose that must mean you haven’t been wicked.’

Gordon Prentice, running his fingers through his beard, smiled at this, turning to Rebus to see how he was enjoying himself. Rebus smiled back.

‘On the contrary,’ the voice was saying. ‘I’ve been really quite wicked. And I’m ashamed of it.’

‘And what is it you’re so ashamed of, Michael?’

‘I’ve been telephoning you anonymously, Penny. Threatening you. I’m sorry. You see, I thought you knew about it. But the policeman tells me you don’t. I’m sorry.’

Prentice wasn’t smiling now. His eyes had opened wide in disbelief.

‘Knew about what, Michael?’ Her eyes were staring at the window. Light bounced off her spectacles, sending flashes like laser beams into the production room.

‘Knew about the fix. When the ratings were going down, the station head, Gordon Prentice, started rigging the shows, yours and Hamish MacDiarmid’s. MacDiarmid might even be in on it.’

‘What do you mean, rigging?’

‘Kill it!’ shouted Prentice. ‘Kill transmission! He’s raving mad! Cut the line someone. Here, I’ll do it-’

But Rebus had come up behind Prentice and now locked his own arms around Prentice’s. ‘I think you’d better listen,’ he warned.

‘Out of work actors,’ Michael was saying, the way he’d told Rebus earlier in the day. ‘Prentice put together a… you could call it a cast, I suppose. Half a dozen people. They phone in using different voices, always with a controversial point to make or some nice juicy problem. One of them told me at a party one night. I didn’t believe her until I started listening for myself. An actor can tell that sort of thing, when a voice isn’t quite right, when something’s an act rather than for real.’

Prentice was struggling, but couldn’t break Rebus’s hold. ‘Lies!’ he yelled. ‘Complete rubbish! Let go of me, you-’

Penny Cook’s eyes were on Prentice now, and on no one but Prentice.

‘So what you’re saying, Michael, if I understand you, is that Gordon Prentice is rigging our phone-ins so as to boost audience figures?’

‘That’s right.’

‘Michael, thank you for your call.’

It was Rebus who spoke, and he spoke to the producer.

‘That’ll do.’

The producer nodded through the glass to Penny Cook, then flipped a switch. Music could be heard over the loudspeakers. The producer started to fade the piece out. Penny spoke into her microphone.

‘A slightly longer musical interlude there, but I hope you enjoyed it. We’ll be going back to your calls very shortly, but first we’ve got some commercials.’

She slipped off her glasses and rubbed the bridge of her nose.

‘A private performance,’ Rebus explained to Prentice. ‘For our benefit only. The listeners were hearing something else.’ Rebus felt Prentice’s body soften, the shoulders slump. He was caught, and knew it for sure. Rebus relaxed his hold on the man: he wouldn’t try anything now.

The Camelot Coffee ad was playing. It had been easy really. Recognising the voice on the commercial as that of the phone caller, Rebus had contacted the ad agency involved, who had given him the name and address of the actor concerned: Michael Barrie, presently resting and to be found most days in a certain city-centre wine bar…

Barrie knew he was in trouble, but Rebus was sure it could be smoothed out. But as for Gordon Prentice… ah, that was different altogether.

‘The station’s ruined!’ he wailed. ‘You must know that!’ He pleaded with the producer, the engineer, but especially with the hate-filled eyes of Penny Cook who, behind glass, could not even hear him. ‘Once this gets out, you’ll all be out of a job! All of you! That’s why I-’

‘Back on in five seconds, Penny,’ said the producer, as though it was just another night on What’s Cookin’. Penny Cook nodded, resting her glasses back on her nose. The stuffing looked to have been knocked out of her. With one final baleful glance towards Prentice, she turned to her microphone.

‘Welcome back. A change of direction now, because I’d like to say a few words to you about the head of Lowland Radio, Gordon Prentice. I hope you’ll bear with me for a minute or two. It shouldn’t take much longer than that…’

It didn’t, but what she said was tabloid news by morning, and Lowland Radio’s licence was withdrawn not long after that. Rebus went back to Radio Three for when he was driving, and no radio at all in his flat. Hamish MacDiarmid, as far as he could ascertain, went back to a croft somewhere, but Penny Cook stuck around, going freelance and doing some journalism as well as the odd radio programme.

It was very late one night when the knock came at Rebus’s door. He opened it to find Penny standing there. She pretended surprise at seeing him.

‘Oh, hello,’ she said. ‘I didn’t know you lived here. Only, I’ve run out of coffee and I was wondering…’

Laughing, Rebus led her inside. ‘I can let you have the best part of a jar of Camelot,’ he said. ‘Or alternatively we could get drunk and go to bed…’

They got drunk.