Box 88 : A Novel (2020), стр. 39

‘Upset enough to encourage men to murder? Tell me, does anyone else share Comrade Cosmo’s intolerant view? Does it worry you that books are being burned in the streets of Bradford less than fifty years after the fall of the Third Reich? Does it concern you that a religious fanatic’s refusal to tolerate Salman Rushdie’s legal right to free speech led directly to the deaths of five men protesting against the Satanic Verses in Pakistan last week?’

Silence. Billy Peele is beginning to run out of steam. Unless somebody finds something interesting to say, he’ll be forced to abandon Rushdie and return to the death of General James Wolfe at the Battle of Quebec.

‘Tell me, Monsieur du Paul,’ he says. ‘Have you even read The Satanic Verses?’

‘No, sir. I’ve been too busy revising.’

‘I see.’ It is evident from Peele’s blank reaction to this excuse that he finds de Paul intolerably annoying. ‘Anyone else?’

Peele looks to the back of the room, where Kite is simultaneously enjoying the sight of de Paul wriggling on Peele’s hook, but aware that he could be asked at any moment to contribute to the discussion.

‘Mr Kite! Give us the Scottish perspective. Your thoughts, please.’

Billy Peele is one of several beaks at Alford who regularly mention Kite’s Scottish roots for purposes of comic relief. Kite is still known as ‘Jock’ and occasionally suffers someone making a joke about bagpipes or haggis or whether he wears boxer shorts under his kilt.

‘I think the ayatollah wanted attention and got it, sir,’ he replies. ‘If the story hadn’t been reported so widely, if the newspapers and television stations had just ignored Khomeini for what he is – a leader trying to look like a tough guy to whip up anti-western feeling – then the whole thing would have gone away.’

‘That doesn’t seem realistic.’ Peele’s response is instant, though his expression betrays some interest in Kite’s point of view. ‘One can hardly ignore a call from the leader of the largest Shia country on earth for all Muslims to assassinate a Booker Prize-winning British writer. Isn’t that censorship of a different kind?’

Kite sits forward in his seat and attempts to expand on his answer.

‘What I mean is it’s a great story, but everybody is overreacting. Nobody has actually read The Satanic Verses. Cosmo hasn’t. Maybe even Ayatollah Khomeini hasn’t. If Rushdie shaved his beard off, took a new surname and changed his address, I doubt if one in ten million Muslims around the world would be able to pick him out of a line-up.’

Peele is stopped in his conversational tracks. A broad smile breaks out on his face as he considers the ramifications of Kite’s response.

‘What about death squads?’ he asks.

‘What about them, sir?’ Kite replies, not really knowing what ‘death squads’ constitute in this context.

‘The Iranian intelligence service – the MOIS. They would be able to trace him, don’t you think?’

‘I don’t know, sir. Maybe. Depends if the police gave away his new identity or leaked his new address. But it’s not like all Muslims are trained assassins carrying around a rifle and a photo of Salman Rushdie hoping they suddenly run into him on the street so they can bump him off. Why should they even do as the ayatollah says? Rushdie’s probably perfectly safe. He could still live with his family. He could still write under the same name. Plenty of writers have …’ Kite loses his way. ‘What’s the word …?’

‘Pseudonyms,’ says Cosmo de Paul, looking pleased with himself.

‘That’s right. Pseudonyms. So let’s say Rushdie calls himself Rehan Raza, moves house, changes his kids’ schools. Nobody’s any the wiser. He could still go on holiday, just with a new passport. He could still meet his friends in the pub, as long as they remember not to call him “Salman”.’

Peele looks as if he doesn’t know whether to laugh, cry or applaud Kite’s chutzpah.

‘What about public appearances?’ he says. ‘What if Mr Rushdie wins an award and wants to go and collect it?’

‘No way he could do that,’ says Elkins. ‘That would blow his cover.’

‘Exactly,’ says Kite. ‘He just needs to be like J.D. Salinger. Nobody knows where he lives or what he looks like. But I bet he has friends and children and lives a pretty normal life wherever he is in America. If the ayatollah reads Catcher in the Rye and puts a fatwa on Salinger, apart from maybe changing his phone number and having his post sent to a new address, he can stay exactly where he is.’

Kite turned over on the hard bed, wanting to sleep but knowing that it would only be a matter of time before Torabi’s men came into the cell to wake him.

He reached for two of the codeine tablets he had placed under the mattress, swallowing them with the last of the water. He was still troubled by the voice in the dream. He sat on the edge of the bed and placed his head in his hands.

Who was Billy Peele?

William ‘Billy’ Peele joined Alford as a schoolmaster in the winter of 1986, just in time to assume responsibility for Lachlan Kite’s education in O-level history. Quick-witted, good-looking and seemingly a generation younger than the majority of his hidebound, fusty colleagues, Peele was soon worshipped by almost every boy with whom he came into contact. In a school which seemed to positively discriminate towards the recruitment of closeted middle-aged homosexuals, Peele was that rare thing: a bachelor beak who didn’t want to fondle teenage boys. Physically fit and a crack shot – he ran the Alford Shooting VIII – he had reportedly served in the Royal Marines before moving into academia. As a straight single man, rumours inevitably circulated about his private life. ‘Sex-A-Peele’ (as he was nicknamed) had been spotted dining in Chelsea with the married daughter of a retired housemaster. An American student had caught a glimpse of him outside a nightclub in the meatpacking district of Manhattan talking to a woman who ‘looked like Iman’. One