A Good Hanging - Rankin: Short 01

  They introduced themselves in turn. Sitting on the stage was Pam, who acted. Beside her was Peter Collins, who also acted. On a chair in front of the stage, legs and arms crossed and having obviously enjoyed tremendously the one-sided bout he had just witnessed, sat Marty Jones.

  ‘I don’t act,’ he said loudly. ‘I just design the set, build the bloody thing, make all the props and work the lights and the music during the play.’

  ‘So it’s your scaffold then?’ commented Rebus. Marty Jones looked less confident.

  ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I made it a bit too bloody well, didn’t I?’

  ‘We could just as easily blame the rope manufacturer, Mr Jones,’ Rebus said quietly. His eyes moved to the man with the spectacles, who was nursing a bruised jaw.

  ‘Charles Collins,’ the man said sulkily. He looked towards where Peter Collins sat on the stage. ‘No relation. I’m the director. I also wrote “Scenes from a Hanging”.’

  Rebus nodded. ‘How have the reviews been?’

  Marty Jones snorted.

  ‘Not great,’ Charles Collins admitted. ‘We’ve only had four,’ he went on, knowing if he didn’t say it someone else would. ‘They weren’t exactly complimentary.’

  Marty Jones snorted again. Stiffening his chin, as though to take another punch, Collins ignored him.

  ‘And the audiences?’ Rebus asked, interested.

  ‘Lousy.’ This from Pam, swinging her legs in front of her as though such news was not only quite acceptable, but somehow humorous as well.

  ‘Average, I’d say,’ Charles Collins corrected. ‘Going by what other companies have been telling me.’

  ‘That’s the problem with staging a new play, isn’t it?’ Rebus said knowledgeably, while Holmes stared at him. Rebus was standing in the midst of the group now, as though giving them a pre-production pep talk. ‘Trying to get audiences to watch new work is always a problem. They prefer the classics.’

  ‘That’s right,’ Charles Collins agreed enthusiastically. ‘That’s what I’ve been telling — ’ with a general nod in everyone’s direction, ‘them. The classics are “safe”. That’s why we need to challenge people.’

  ‘To excite them,’ Rebus continued, ‘to shock them even. Isn’t that right, Mr Collins? To give them a spectacle?’

  Charles Collins seemed to see where Rebus’s line, devious though it was, was leading. He shook his head.

  ‘Well, they got a spectacle all right,’ Rebus went on, all enthusiasm gone from his voice. ‘Thanks to Mr Jones’s scaffold, the people got a shock. Someone was hanged. I think his name’s David, isn’t it?’

  ‘That’s right.’ This from the attacker. ‘David Caulfield.’ He looked towards the writer/director. ‘Supposedly a friend of ours. Someone we’ve known for three years. Someone we never thought could ...’

  ‘And you are?’ Rebus was brisk. He didn’t want anyone breaking down just yet, not while there were still questions that needed answers.

  ‘Hugh Clay.’ The young man smiled bitterly. ‘David always said it sounded like “ukulele”.’

  ‘And you’re an actor?’

  Hugh Clay nodded.

  ‘And so was David Caulfield?’

  Another nod. ‘I mean, we’re not really professionals. We’re students. That’s all. Students with pretensions.’

  Something about Hugh Clay’s voice, its tone and its slow rhythms, had made the room darken, so that everyone seemed less animated, more reflective, remembering at last that David Caulfield was truly dead.

  ‘And what do you think happened to him, Hugh? I mean, how do you think he died?’

  Clay seemed puzzled by the question. ‘He killed himself, didn’t he?’

  ‘Did he?’ Rebus shrugged. ‘We don’t know for certain. The pathologist’s report may give us a better idea.’ Rebus turned to Marty Jones, who was looking less confident all the time. ‘Mr Jones, could David have operated the scaffold by himself?’

  ‘That’s the way I designed it,’ Jones replied. ‘I mean, David worked it himself every night. During the hanging scene.’

  Rebus pondered this. ‘And could someone else have worked the mechanism?’

  Jones nodded. ‘No problem. The neck noose we used was a dummy. The real noose was attached around David’s chest, under his arms. He held a cord behind him and at the right moment he pulled the cord, the trapdoor opened and he fell about a yard. It looked pretty bloody realistic. He had to wear padding under his arms to stop bruising.’ He glanced at Charles Collins. ‘It was the best bit of the show.’

  ‘But,’ said Rebus, ‘the scaffold could easily be rejigged to work properly?’

  Jones nodded. ‘All you’d need is a bit of rope. There’s plenty lying around backstage.’

  ‘And then you could hang yourself? Really hang yourself?’

  Jones nodded again.

  ‘Or someone could hang you,’ said Pam, her eyes wide, voice soft with horror.

  Rebus smiled towards her, but seemed to be thinking about something else. In fact, he wasn’t thinking of anything in particular: he was letting them stew in the silence, letting their minds and imaginations work in whatever way they would.

  At last, he turned to Charles Collins. ‘Do you think David killed himself?’

  Collins shrugged. ‘What else?’

  ‘Any particular reason why he would commit suicide?’

  ‘Well,’ Collins looked towards the rest of the company. ‘The show,’ he said. ‘The reviews weren’t very complimentary about David’s performance.’

  ‘Tell me a little about the play.’

  Collins tried not to sound keen as he spoke. Tried, Rebus noticed, but failed. ‘It took me most of this year to write,’ he said. ‘What we have is a prisoner in a South American country, tried and found guilty, sentenced to death. The play opens with him standing on the scaffold, the noose around his neck. Scenes from his life are played out around him, while his own scenes are made up of soliloquies dealing with the larger questions. What I’m asking the audience to do is to ask themselves the same questions he’s asking himself on the scaffold. Only the answers are perhaps more urgent, more important for him, because they’re the last things he’ll ever know.’

  Rebus broke in. The whole thing sounded dreadful. ‘And David would be on stage the entire time?’ Collins nodded. ‘And how long was that?’

  ‘Anywhere between two hours and two and a half — ’ with a glance towards the stage, ‘depending on the cast.’

  ‘Meaning?’

  ‘Sometimes lines were forgotten, or a scene went missing.’ (Peter and Pam smiled in shared complicity.) ‘Or the pace just went.’

  ‘“Never have I prayed so ardently for a death to take place”, as one of the reviews put it,’ Hugh Clay supplied. ‘It was a problem of the play. It didn’t have anything to do with David.’

  Charles Collins looked ready to protest. Rebus stepped in. ‘But David’s mentions weren’t exactly kind?’ he hinted.

  ‘No,’ Clay admitted. ‘They said he lacked the necessary gravitas whatever that means.’

  ‘“Too big a part for too small an actor”,’ interrupted Marty Jones, quoting again.

  ‘Bad notices then,’ said Rebus. ‘And David Caulfield took them to heart?’

  ‘David took everything to heart,’ explained Hugh Clay. ‘That was part of the problem.’

  ‘The other part being that the notices were true,’ sniped Charles Collins. But Clay seemed prepared for this.

  ‘“Overwritten and messily directed by Charles Collins”,’ he quoted. Another fight seemed to be on the cards. Rebus blew his nose noisily.

  ‘So,’ he said. ‘Notices were bad, audiences were poor. And you didn’t decide to remedy this situation by staging a little publicity stunt? A stunt that just happened - nobody’s fault necessarily - to go wrong?’

  There were shakes of the head, eyes looked to other eyes, seemingly innocent of any such plans.

  ‘Besides,’ said Marty Jones, ‘you couldn?
??t hang yourself accidentally on that scaffold. You either had to mean to do it yourself, or else someone had to do it for you.’

  More silence. An impasse seemed to have been reached. Rebus collapsed noisily into a chair. ‘All things considered,’ he said with a sigh, ‘you might have been better off sticking to Twelfth Night.’

  ‘That’s funny,’ Pam said.

  ‘What is?’

  ‘That’s the play we did last year,’ she explained. ‘It went down very well, didn’t it?’ She had turned to Peter Collins, who nodded agreement.

  ‘We got some good reviews for that,’ he said. ‘David was a brilliant Malvolio. He kept the cuttings pinned to his bedroom wall, didn’t he, Hugh?’

  Hugh Clay nodded. Rebus had the distinct feeling that Peter Collins was trying to imply something, perhaps that Hugh Clay had seen more of David Caulfield’s bedroom walls than was strictly necessary.

  He fumbled in his pocket, extracting the note from below the handkerchief. Brian Holmes, he noticed, was staying very much in the wings, like the minor character in a minor scene. ‘We found a note in David’s pocket,’ Rebus said without preamble. ‘Maybe your success last year explains it.’ He read it out to them. Charles Collins nodded.

  ‘Yes, that sounds like David all right. Harking back to past glories.’

  ‘You think that’s what it means?’ Rebus asked conversationally.

  Collins nodded. ‘You should know, Inspector, that actors are conceited. The greater the actor, the greater the ego. And David was, I admit, on occasion a very gifted actor.’ He was speechifying again, but Rebus let him go on. Perhaps it was the only way a director could communicate with his cast.

  ‘It would be just like David to get depressed, suicidal even, by bad notices, and just like him to decide to stage as showy an exit as he could, something to hit the headlines. I happen to think he succeeded splendidly.’

  No one seemed about to contradict him on this, not even David Caulfield’s stalwart defender, Hugh Clay. It was Pam who spoke, tears in her eyes at last.

  ‘I only feel sorry for Marie,’ she said.

  Charles Collins nodded. ‘Yes, Marie’s come into her own in “Scenes from a Hanging”.’

  ‘She means,’ Hugh Clay said through gritted teeth, ‘she feels sorry for Marie because Marie’s lost David, not because Marie can no longer act in your bloody awful play.’

  Rebus felt momentary bemusement, but tried not to show it. Marty Jones, however, had seen all.

  ‘The other member of ART,’ he explained to Rebus. ‘She’s back at the flat. She wanted to be left on her own for a bit.’

  ‘She’s pretty upset,’ Peter Collins agreed.

  Rebus nodded slowly. ‘She and David were ...?’

  ‘Engaged,’ Pam said, the tears falling now, Peter Collins’ arm snaking around her shoulders. ‘They were going to be married after the Fringe was finished.’

  Rebus stole a glance towards Holmes, who raised his eyebrows in reply. Just like every good melodrama, the raised eyebrows said. A twist at the end of every bloody act.

  III

  The flat the group had rented, at what seemed to Rebus considerable expense, was a dowdy but spacious second-floor affair on Morrison Street, just off Lothian Road. Rebus had been to the block before, during the investigation of a housebreaking. That had been years ago, but the only difference in the tenement seemed to be the installation of a communal intercom at the main door. Rebus ignored the entry-phone and pushed at the heavy outside door. As he had guessed, it was unlocked anyway.

  ‘Bloody students,’ had been one of Rebus’s few voiced comments during the short, curving drive down the back of the Castle towards the Usher Hall and Lothian Road. But then Holmes, driving, had been a student, too, hadn’t he? So Rebus had not expanded on his theme. Now they climbed the steep winding stairwell until they arrived at the second floor. Marty Jones had told them that the name on the door was BLACK. Having robbed the students of an unreasonable rent (though no doubt the going rate), Mr and Mrs Black had departed for a month-long holiday on the proceeds. Rebus had borrowed a key from Jones and used it to let Holmes and himself in. The hall was long, narrow and darker than the stairwell. Off it were three bedrooms, a bathroom, a kitchen and the living-room. A young woman, not quite out of her teens, came out of the kitchen carrying a mug of coffee. She was wearing a long baggy T-shirt and nothing else, and there was a sleepy, tousled look to her, accompanying the red streakiness of her eyes.

  ‘Oh,’ she said, startled. Rebus was quick to respond.

  ‘Inspector Rebus, miss. This is Detective Constable Holmes. One of your friends lent us a key. Could we have a word?’

  ‘About David?’ Her eyes were huge, doe-like, her face small and round. Her hair was short and fair, the body slender and brittle. Even in grief - perhaps especially in grief - she was mightily attractive, and Holmes raised his eyebrows again as she led them into the living-room.

  Two sleeping bags lay on the floor, along with paperback books, an alarm clock, mugs of tea. Off the living-room was a box-room, a large walk-in cupboard. These were often used by students to make an extra room in a temporary flat and light coming from the half-open door told Rebus that this was still its function. Marie went into the room and switched off the light, before joining the two policemen.

  ‘It’s Pam’s room,’ she explained. ‘She said I could lie down there. I didn’t want to sleep in our ... in my room.’

  ‘Of course,’ Rebus said, all understanding and sympathy.

  ‘Of course,’ Holmes repeated. She signalled for them to sit, so they did, sinking into a sofa the consistency of marshmallow. Rebus feared he wouldn’t be able to rise again without help and struggled to keep himself upright. Marie meantime had settled, legs beneath her, with enviable poise on the room’s only chair. She placed her mug on the floor, then had a thought.

  ‘Would you like ...?’

  A shake of the head from both men. It struck Rebus that there was something about her voice. Holmes beat him to it.

  ‘Are you French?’

  She smiled a pale smile, then nodded towards the Detective Constable. ‘From Bordeaux. Do you know it?’

  ‘Only by the reputation of its wine.’

  Rebus blew his nose again, though pulling the hankie from his pocket had been a struggle. Holmes took the hint and closed his mouth. ‘Now then, Miss ...?’ Rebus began.

  ‘Hivert, Marie Hivert.’

  Rebus nodded slowly, playing with the hankie rather than trying to replace it in his pocket. ‘We’re told that you were engaged to Mr Caulfield.’

  Her voice was almost a whisper. ‘Yes. Not officially, you understand. But there was - a promise.’

  ‘I see. And when was this promise made?’

  ‘Oh, I’m not sure exactly. March, April. Yes, early April I think. Springtime.’

  ‘And how were things between David and yourself?’ She seemed not quite to understand. ‘I mean,’ said Rebus, ‘how did David seem to you?’

  She shrugged. ‘David was David. He could be -’ she raised her eyes to the ceiling, seeking words, ‘impossible, nervous, exciting, foul-tempered.’ She smiled. ‘But mostly exciting.’

  ‘Not suicidal?’

  She gave this serious thought. ‘Oh yes, I suppose,’ she admitted. ‘Suicidal, just as actors can be. He took criticism to heart. He was a perfectionist.’

  ‘How long had you known him?’

  ‘Two years. I met him through the theatre group.’

  ‘And you fell in love?’

  She smiled again. ‘Not at first. There was a certain ... competitiveness between us, you might say. It helped our acting. I’m not sure it helped our relationship altogether. But we survived.’ Realising what she had said, she grew silent, her eyes dimming. A hand went to her forehead as, head bowed, she tried to collect herself.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she said, collapsing into sobs. Holmes raised his eyebrows: someone should be here with her. Rebus shrugged back: she can handle
it on her own. Holmes’ eyebrows remained raised: can she? Rebus looked back at the tiny figure, engulfed by the armchair. Could actors always tell the real world from the illusory?

  We survived. It was an interesting phrase to have used. But then she was an interesting young woman.

  She went to the bathroom to splash water on her face and while she was gone Rebus took the opportunity to rise awkwardly to his feet. He looked back at the sofa.

  ‘Bloody thing,’ he said. Holmes just smiled.

  When she returned, composed once more, Rebus asked if David Caulfield might have left a note somewhere. She shrugged. He asked if she minded them having a quick look round. She shook her head. So, never men to refuse a gift, Rebus and Holmes began looking.

  The set-up was fairly straightforward. Pam slept in the box-room, while Marty Jones and Hugh Clay had sleeping-bags on the living-room floor. Marie and David Caulfield had shared the largest of the three bedrooms, with Charles and Peter Collins having a single room each. Charles Collins’ room was obsessively tidy, its narrow single bed made up for the night and on the quilt an acting-copy of ‘Scenes from a Hanging’, covered in marginalia and with several long speeches, all Caulfield’s, seemingly excised. A pencil lay on the typescript, evidence that Charles Collins was taking the critics’ view to heart himself and attempting to shorten the play as best he could.

  Peter Collins’ room was much more to Rebus’s personal taste, though Holmes wrinkled his nose at the used underwear underfoot, the contents of the hastily unpacked rucksack scattered over every surface. Beside the unmade bed, next to an overflowing ashtray, lay another copy of the play. Rebus flipped through it. Closing it, his attention was caught by some doodlings on the inside cover. Crude heart shapes had been constructed around the words ‘I love Edinburgh’. His smile was quickly erased when Holmes held the ashtray towards him.

  ‘Not exactly Silk Cut,’ Holmes was saying. Rebus looked. The butts in the ashtrays were made up of cigarette papers wrapped around curled strips of cardboard. They were called ‘roaches’ by those who smoked dope, though he couldn’t remember why. He made a tutting sound.