by Tony Black
Chapter 21
I played over what sid had told us. It almost made sense. Maybe it made too much sense. If Mark Crawford was smart enough to hype up the young crew to do his dirty work — on the promise of a sizeable pay-off — then maybe he never needed to get his own hands dirty.
Mac spoke: ‘You’re sure the Crawford kid’s our best bet?’
‘What do you mean? He’s got the motive, we have him in the right place at the right time.’
‘Aye, right enough…’
‘No, come on, you don’t agree?’
‘I’m just not sure… I mean why would a kid in that situation — so set-up, from a good background and everything — go and off Moosey?’
‘They say Moosey killed his sister.’
‘That was years ago.’
‘You think it doesn’t fester?’
Mac ran fingers through his hair. ‘I just think we’re missing something… Something’s not right.’
I knew exactly what he meant. There was much more going on than I’d been able to uncover; there was something sinister beneath the surface. ‘Sid’s covering up for someone,’ I said.
‘Himself, probably.’
‘You think he’s got the balls to off Moosey and take fifty Gs off Rab?’
Mac found the low gears as we got back into the city centre, pulled onto North Bridge. ‘He’s a sleekit wee bastard. If the opportunity was there, I wouldn’t put anything past him.’
‘We need to keep an eye on him. He’s rattled, so his next move might be interesting.’
‘Hod’s your man for that. You need to go burst a few heads with the young crew because time’s running out.’
I agreed with him, I couldn’t rely on Sid to bring us any names. I had a plan for that, though.
‘Pull over here.’
We were outside the old Royal High. One of the most impressive buildings in the city, it had been cited as the home of the Scottish Parliament, but we’d opted instead for a half-billion-pound version of a Spanish airport, so now the place was empty, falling into dereliction. I could empathise with that.
‘What you up to?’
‘Off to see a man about a dog.’ I jumped out the van and waved Mac off with a slap on the door.
I followed Regent Road round to the steps of Calton Hill. A bus party of Japanese tourists made the schlep heavy work; I slowed down to a crawl behind them as they pointed to the dome of the Observatory. It had been stripped of its copper for the second time in six months — all that was showing was the wooden support underneath. Thought: What a place.
Up here you can see the whole city. Just about. It’s not big by any means. Do a three-sixty and you can take it all in. But from here I always feel part of the history of the place: the grey buildings, the grey skyline — makes me forget we’re in a new millennium. The National Monument just adds to it. Reminds me how Scotland’s reach has always exceeded its grasp. Think of the Parthenon: that’s what they were going for, but ran out of cash. What the city got left with was twelve stone pillars, looking decidedly out of place on a hilltop. Fitting tribute to those who died in the Napoleonic Wars I don’t think. Fitting tribute to flawed ambition? You bet.
That’s us Scots all over. We have ambition in spades; what we don’t have is confidence. The ambition only takes us so far, then we fold. Cosy up to our larger, stronger neighbour. Our history is littered with sell-outs.
When I was younger I used to come up here to get wasted. It’s a national obsession: get blootered drunk on Buckfast, or some cheapo lager, start bumping your gums about how shit the place we live in is.
When I got older, I came up here with a proper carry-out. Scotland had one decent beer of its own then — Gillespie’s. What did we do with it? We dropped it. Stopped making it for no apparent reason. It could wipe the floor with Guinness, and Murphy’s too. And we dumped it.
The thing with Scotland, the root of it all, is that we’re a defeated nation. The Scots are the Australian Aborigines of Europe. We’re the Native American Indians of round here.
I used to wish we could be more like the Irish. They did okay. Never got into bed with the English. Never caved. It’s said the difference between the Scots and the Irish is that we moan about all this kind of crap: about having the worst health record of any civilised country in the world, the worst rates of alcoholism, suicide; about being the only country to discover oil and get poorer.. Whereas the Irish, on the other hand, take action. And fair fucks to them. I mean, at least they’ve still got the knackers to fight for their country. We just handed ours over. Gave it away.
I looked out to the crags and the castle. We gave this away. We just gave all this away… for nothing.
Sometimes, when I come up here now, I’m amazed by the beauty of the city. It’s as though my memory of how the place looks gets sealed off and I’m seeing it for the first time again. It holds me. All those old turrets and spires, the hotchpotch of the Old Town, buildings leaning into each other: it seems like another city entirely.
‘God, that would be nice,’ I whispered.
Debs and I had honeymooned in Paris. I winced to remember. Back then we hadn’t two ha’pennies to rub together but after the wedding farce we needed to get away. Carded it. Good old Visatabulous. We really couldn’t care how long it took us to pay it off. It was an escape.
I caught sunlight hitting off the Observatory building, shifted focus. More and more now, I knew, I was living in the past. I knew why that was. Anniversaries will do it every time. I didn’t want to think about this anniversary. When you have one dark moment from the past that haunts, even when your past is as dark as mine, you lock it away. Hide from it.
I’d been reading a lot of Fitzgerald lately. Wasn’t a fan of his prose style, but I could identify with his Crack-up. Perhaps more than I wanted to admit. I’d read this: ‘In a real dark night of the soul it is always three o’clock in the morning, day after day.’ I checked my watch: it was approaching midday, but I knew, like Fitzgerald, it was always going to be three o’clock in the morning for me.
I pulled out my mobi. Debs’s number was on the top of my contacts list. I felt I’d put this off long enough. Pressed the call key.
Ringing.
‘Hello…’
Knew at once she’d not checked her caller ID; or worse, she’d deleted my number.
Softly, I said, ‘Hello, Debs.’
Silence.
She didn’t hang up, probably thought about it though, tried, ‘I need to talk to you.’
Her voice had a familiar timbre. It was the tone a mother uses to talk to a child who’s disappointed her time and time again. ‘Gus… that’s not a good idea.’
She caught me blindsided. I felt a flicker in my eyelids, said, ‘Hang on — I thought that’s what you wanted. You said in the cafe you wanted to talk about, y’know, stuff.’
Her voice raised: ‘That was before you were carted away by the police.’
A skirl of bagpipes started on the street below. A cloud passed over the sun and a shadow covered the ground where I sat. ‘But you sounded eager to talk. I thought you had something to get off your chest.’
Silence once more.
The gap on the line stretched out. I wondered if I should speak up.
Then, ‘Gus, that was before I had to watch you being thrown in the back of a police van… again.’
My nostrils flared, I don’t know why. Likewise, a spasm shook my head quickly. I knew my anger was ramping up. It was the injustice; it’s always the same. It’s what fires me. I could do nothing about any of what had happened and here was Debs persecuting me for it.
I felt trapped, said, ‘Not my fault, I’m-’
‘Innocent,’ she cut in, ‘yeah, I know.’
Was she being sarky? Down the line I heard a kettle whistle. Movement, cups being rattled on a kitchen surface. I didn’t think I had her full attention. I felt like I was talking into an empty phone, or to a call centre maybe, a foreign one where the people on the
other end of the line sound as if they’re reading a script in a language they don’t understand a word of.
‘Debs, this isn’t a joke.’
‘Gus, I know.’ Her voice raised on the last word, then, with almost a hint of laughter creeping in, ‘Jonny told me.’
I felt like I’d been punched in the guts, a sucker punch I didn’t see coming. Said, ‘I suppose you think your new man is quite a catch.. Don’t be fooled, Debs.’
‘Gus, he’s not the one facing a murder charge.’
‘ Trumped-up murder charge — that’s the phrase you missed out.’ I felt my pulse quicken, gone in sixty seconds, that’s the hold I have on my temper these days. ‘You don’t seriously believe I could have killed a man, do you?’
A sigh. Loud enough to get that extra inflection in there, one that says ‘Are you for real?’ or, worse, ‘I don’t give a shit’.
‘Gus, I have to go.’ She was curt.
I snapped, ‘Debs, answer the fucking question.’
Another pause.
A deep breath.
She was forcing herself to concentrate on her words, but she was distracted. I wanted to ask if Jonny Come Lately was there with her.
She said, ‘Gus, I don’t know anything any more.’
‘You seriously believe what he’s feeding you…? Fuck me!’ I’d lost the plot. Gone postal. ‘Deborah, I thought you were better than that. Can’t you see he’s an utter cockhead?… He’s a cheesy little shiny-arsed bastard with his nose sniffing the K-ladder to the top office…’ I vented. Full on. Way out of control. ‘Fucking hell, Deborah, I thought you had more sense… falling for such an utter wanker.’
Finished, I waited for a response.
None came.
I looked at the phone. The time and date flashed beside the battery charge level. She’d hung up.
Said, ‘Och, shit.’
I knew I’d blown it. The situation with Debs was worse than I’d thought. I felt panic. If Jonny Johnstone could work such a number on someone like Debs, someone with her head screwed on, someone who actually knew me, someone who shared history with me, then I was seriously up to my neck in the brown stuff.
I put the phone in my pocket. Tipped back my head. The cloud covering the sun had been joined by more. Great black jobs. A wind began to blow. Cold one. The sky was turning purplish at its edges. Threatened rain.
Chapter 22
I knew I should call Debs back, say sorry, but I couldn’t. I scrolled my phone’s contacts and hovered over the green call key again and again but it just wouldn’t happen. Couldn’t happen. It seemed beyond senseless after all we’d been through together. But so much of that was getting to me now. Kept flooding back…
The priest started it, but now everyone’s at it. Seems the whole city knows. Wherever we go people stop, stare, shake heads.
‘What’s your problem?’ I say, but Debs wants none of it. My blood’s curdling, but she looks the other way. Even when the fag dowps are thrown at us in the street and the name-calling starts.
‘Leave it, Gus, just leave it… It’ll be over soon.’
‘No way, Deborah, I’m not having it. What right have they got? We’ve done nothing wrong… we’ve broken no law.’
I wonder, how long will this last? How long will it be before I am locked up for banjoing someone, or worse? But Debs sails high, holds her head up. I’ve never admired another soul more. She floats above all the scorn and hate.
Only one thing, the sight of young children pulled to their mothers, gets to her. Brings tears when she remembers, at night, when we’re alone.
The bigger kids calling out names she handles, even lets me kick the arse of any who are old enough to know better. But then it all gets too much, even for her, when the word DAMNED is scrawled on our doorstep.
‘It’s too much, Gus. It’s all too much,’ she says.
‘It’s just kids messing,’ I say, but she’s buying none of it.
‘No, it’s what they think of us now. We’re nothing; we don’t exist.’ She goes out, gets on her knees. The whole street can see. It’s what they want. She rubs and rubs at the step with her coat sleeve.
‘Stop, Debs. Come away in.’ A crowd forms to watch as her tears fall on the step and get smeared into the jagged letters. ‘Debs, you’re only putting on a show,’ I say.
‘Is that what you think I am now?’ she says. ‘A show?’
‘No, Debs.’ She’s better than all of them; she’s borne the taunts with dignity until now. It’s scalding my heart to see her brought to her knees before them. What have they done to her? She was once so full of life, more full of it than anyone. It strikes me deep to see her this way, but I think no less of her for it, only more. She is worth more than I deserve.
‘You’re ashamed of me as well, aren’t you?’ she says.
‘No. No… Now stop!’ I grab her arm. ‘This is what they want — to see you broken.’
She pulls away. ‘Well, let them look.’ Debs keeps rubbing. Her coat sleeve wears to a hole, her palm bleeds on the step as she forces it back and forth, back and forth. ‘Let them see me broken if that’s what they want. Are they happy?’ She turns to them, yells, ‘Are you happy now?’
I put my arms under her and lift her back indoors. She screams out, ‘No! No!’
‘Debs, it’ll be over soon, like you say.’
‘No. Gus, no… it will never be over,’ she wails. Tears roll over her face and then she buries her head in her bloodied and blackened hands. Her sobbing is silent, like all the noise is located deep inside her, wrapped up in her pain, unable to get out. When she removes her hands and tips back her head I look at her face, smeared in blood and dirt, and wonder what to do. Her mouth’s open, she’s trying to wail but is unable. Her screams stay trapped in her. She seems hollow, like there’s nothing left but the deepest misery inside. And I know it will never leave her.
Chapter 23
I closed my eyes.
Tried to think.
Wasn’t happening.
Then I heard, ‘Dury.’
The last thing you want to see when you’re lying with your head tipped over the back of a park bench is a man with a scarf covering his face. Mirror shades and shoulders wide enough to block out the sky.
I’d trouble adjusting to the picture, he was upside down from my perspective. I spun round, sat upright to front the source of the voice.
‘What in the wide world of-’
The scarf moved as he spoke. ‘Did you expect me to meet you out in the open, in the full glare of the world?’
‘With you, Fitz, I never know what to expect.’
He was dressed head to toe in black. With the shades he looked like Roy Orbison, said, ‘Don’t tell me… you drove all night?’
‘What?’
‘To get to me?’
‘You’re bollix mad, Dury!’
Like I’d give him any argument.
Fitz removed his scarf, sat. He took out some smokes, Lambert amp; Butler. As he sparked up, he looked out at the city. ‘I’d no idea you got such a view from up here.’
‘You’re not telling me this is your first time on Calton Hill?’
‘Och no, been up here once or twice of a night, mainly chasing off junkies shooting up, or some young heller with a bottle of Mad Dog in him who’s decided to have a go at the school hog-beast… Always turns nasty, that one.’
I was shocked Fitz had only been up the hill on police business. This was the spot on all the postcards, for Chrissake, said, ‘You never did the tourist bit when you first got here?’
He put his pale eyes on me, turned down the corners of his mouth. ‘Gus, I was an economic migrant back then. I had no feckin’ time or money for fannying about on tour buses and the like. Jeez, would ye ever get real there.’
I took the blast as it was intended. Moved on. ‘So, what have you got for me, Fitz?’
He turned sideways on the bench, an arm curled around my back. ‘Lesser men, in your boots, would get a good f
ong in the arse.’
‘That sounds uncomfortable — ’ I made a show of removing his arm — ‘and very definitely not my kinda thing.’
‘Feck off, Dury, don’t be trying to paint me as a spunk-farter, even in jest.’
I got the impression I was noising Fitz up here, so eased off, took out one of my own tabs. I was back on the Mayfair, sound expensive, but the cheapest tabs on the shelf.
Fitz lit me up.
I said, ‘Look, I don’t expect the file of anything, I’m just-’
A laugh, ‘I’m feckin’ well glad to hear it because ye have more chance of me joining yon Naked Rambler for a tour round the old country, with a feckin’ fridge ’n’all!’
‘But I do need some help here, Fitz.’ I put just enough edge in my tone to let him know I wasn’t going to be fucked over.
He lunged at me, pointed his cigarette like a dart. ‘You have no idea how things are stacking up in that station.’ He turned, shook his head violently. ‘No idea!’
For the second time I eased off. ‘Then tell me.’
Fitz jumped to his feet. I was surprised he could move so quickly for a big fella. He was animated now, flicked the barely lit cig onto the ground and leaned over me like some mad puppeteer. ‘For a kick-off, Dury, let’s just say Jonny Johnstone is well ahead of the game.’
I didn’t want to hear this. I told him as much, ‘What do you mean?’
Head shake.
‘J. J., smart little fecker that he is, has relinquished the case.’
‘You what?’
‘Right after your little chat. Said he only unearthed your relationship with his fiancee during the interview.’
I was relieved, but intrigued, said, ‘And this puts me where?’
Fitz laid a foot on the bench, crossed his hands. ‘Deeper in the shit.’
This was definitely not what I wanted to hear.
He explained Jonny’s aim was a quick confession, that he probably thought he could use the leverage he had with Debs to put pressure on me, force me to crack. It seems my reputation as a hothead went before me. The plan, however, hadn’t so much backfired as, well, not gone off at all.
