by Tony Black
Fitz said, ‘It was a risky strategy, Gus, but that’s him — a risk taker, a high-wire operator.’
‘I don’t see how it’s worse for me to have Jonny off my back, though.’
‘Because, Dury…’ Fitz stepped away, put out his arms, spread-eagle, ‘now McAvoy’s on the job.’
The name meant nothing. I ran it through my mind again. Nah, only McAvoy I got was the bloke who tried to buy Celtic with Bono and Jim Kerr about ten years ago. Sure as hell wasn’t him.
I said, ‘Who the fuck’s McAvoy?’
Fitz had been waiting for me to ask, still leaning over me like a praying mantis. He got his bite, said, ‘McAvoy’s silk. He’s the kind of cop Jonny Boy would like to be, but can only dream of. With him leading the case, you’re dealing with one hard, smart bastard.’
My guts twisted involuntarily. The thought of Jonny Johnstone on my case was suddenly not such a bad deal.
I said, ‘Shit.’
‘You’re dealing with the best now, Dury.’
I’d never seen Fitz so impressed with anyone. I felt tempted to ask what this guy had done to float his boat, but I knew I needed all the friends I could muster, said, ‘Well, at least it can’t get any worse now.’
Uproarious laughter, ‘Ha! You think?’
‘Och, fuck me… what now?’
Fitz clapped his hands together. ‘McAvoy taught young J. J. all he knows. He’s like his… prodigy.’
‘Protege.’
‘Yeah, whatever… Thing is, my worry is Jonny Boy’s still gonna be feeding in to the case, unofficially of course, but feeding in nonetheless. He can likely be more of a menace off the case than on it.’
I had nothing to say to this. It was the kind of cruel blow I’d come to expect from life, but it stung like a bastard all the same. I brought out a quarter-bottle of Glenlivet, took a good hit on it.
‘Ah, the very stuff,’ said Fitz. He wet his lips as I passed over the bottle, took a swig. ‘Oh, yes…’tis a fine drop ye have there, Dury. Fine indeed. Not sparing any expense.’
I grabbed it back, belted it. Fitz watched, waiting for another slug, but I put it to my mouth and drained it.
‘Man, that’s a thirst for ye… Have ye always pelted it like yon?’
I stood up, walked the bottle over to the bin, said, ‘You’re a long time dead.’ This phrase is one hundred per cent proof Scots. Only a race like ours could come up with it. Its meaning is interchangeable with ‘Fuck it’.
I lolled back over to the bench. Sat down. Fitz joined me. His little piece of street theatre over, he calmed, said, ‘So what’s your plan, Dury?’
I knew exactly what I needed to do. I needed to get myself off the hook. Finding a cast-iron alibi for my movements on the night of 15 May, understood, was next door to impossible. More than ever, I needed to find Moosey’s real killer. It wasn’t about righting a wrong or restarting my stalled career any more; it was about avoiding being ass-fucked by Jonny Boy and this McAvoy character. I was beginning to wonder why I hadn’t followed Mac and Hod’s advice to split sooner.
‘Well… what’s it to be?’ Fitz pressed.
‘First off, tell me all they’ve got.’
‘A wino.’
‘Y’what?’
Fitz reached in his pocket, pulled out a little black notebook, read out, ‘Male, of indeterminate age, possibly late seventies, goes by the name of Tupac.’
Was he shitting me? ‘Tupac?’
He let me hang for a moment, till he was sure he had my full attention. ‘He’s a fucking tramp. He carries a pack on his back and one on his front, it’s what they call him.’
‘A paraffin lamp, with two packs… Brilliant.’
Fitz tucked away his notebook. ‘I can tell you this: yer Tupac fella there saved your bacon on the line-up. He as good as lives on Corstorphine Hill and he’s the man that spotted someone with Moosey on the night.’
‘Did he now.’
‘I’ll tell ye, he’s nobody’s fool either… J. J. plied the old soak with Buckfast all night before that line-up and he still never did as he was told.’
I liked the sound of this Tupac already. ‘A true gentleman of the road.’
Fitz tied his scarf round his neck, said, ‘More likely angling for a feckin’ barrel of the stuff. His type are always after something for feckin’ nowt.’ He stood up. ‘Right, I’m offski.’
I was still digesting this information, planning my next move. I almost forgot I had one more task for Fitz. I put up a hand. ‘Before you go, can you check something for me?’
A glower. Bite of lower lip. The saggy jowls started to tremble as Fitz stoked himself for another display of dramatics. ‘Dury, yer pushing yer feckin’ luck.’
I raised myself from the bench. ‘Can you run a search for a white Corrado, address likely as not in Sighthill?’
There was a bit of a nod. He didn’t look too fazed by the suggestion. I pressed my luck further. ‘If there’s a file on the owner, it’d be good to get a look at it too.’
‘Are ye off yer feckin’ head, Dury?’ His face coloured round the edges; his mouth slit into a crease. ‘I can’t go putting yer every hunch through the system without good reason.’
I moved forwards, faced him, said, ‘Here’s one, then — your wife’s lovely garden.’
He went white. ‘I’ll feckin’ do for ye one of these days, boyo. I swear, I swear…’
I put my hands in my pockets, spoke softly: ‘Fitz, pull your head in. You’re in your heart-attack years — don’t give yourself a coronary.’
He waved a fist at me. His knuckles were white now as well. ‘Dury, what I will do is give ye some good advice, for free, mind: watch yer feckin’ back!’
I smiled, said, ‘I do that anyway.’
‘I mean close to home… Your ex is on the other side now. Remember that.’
Chapter 24
I awoke in utter blackness. Beyond dark. Felt like Gregor Samsa from Kafka’s ‘Metamorphosis’. Remember the one? Gregor opens his eyes one morning to find he’s been transformed into an insect. His family outside are banging on the door telling him to get up, get out, get to work. Gregor, however, is too busy struggling with his numerous legs and new, hard, armour-plated bulk. When I remember this story, the part that strikes hardest is that Gregor’s room, his surroundings, the world he knows, remain unchanged. It’s him alone that’s been altered, fucked up. The world is indifferent.
As I lay staring into the darkness, I knew I was in a world of shit. And it was mine alone. A personal hell I’d devised for myself. I was trapped in my very own insect body. I couldn’t move. I felt swaying beneath me, all around, but I was paralysed.
Was it fear?
Was it panic?
Anger turned in?
Worse — it was all of the above. I felt trapped.
I’d read Kafka endlessly as a teenager. Right into my twenties and thirties I’d always picked up the latest biographies. He was a man who knew suffering. Not like mine, not self-inflicted. But suffering is suffering and I understood Kafka right from an early age.
I’d once read he had asked to have his stomach pumped, purely because he ‘had a feeling disgusting things would come out’.
I empathised with that kind of self-loathing.
I’d memorised these words of Kafka’s: ‘God knows how I can possibly feel any more pain, since in my sheer urgency to inflict it upon myself I never get round to perceiving it.’ I must have read that passage a thousand times. Always with a sense of sorrow and, dangerously, identification. I identified with Kafka’s pain. He knew he had an illness and it would kill him. I did too.
Lately I’d seen my thoughts go way beyond their usual angry depression. I was nudging despair. The kind that has only one conclusion. Like Kafka I thought, God knows how I can possibly feel any more pain…
I lay for an hour until light started to stream through the small windows of Hod’s boat. I’d made the decision to move out of the Holy Wall whilst plod had a tail
on me. I figured the boat would be the best bet. Hod had warned me about people having difficulties sleeping in the swaying berth. I’d set him straight on that score: when you’re an alcoholic, the swaying bed is something you get used to pretty early on. It’s when the bed doesn’t sway that you have difficulties.
I rose and showered in the small cabin. The water was tepid. Scrub that, the water was cold. The all-over shivers came afterwards, but again these were something I could live with. Another byproduct of my particular disease that I was well and truly used to.
I dressed in a grey marl T-shirt, one of Gap’s finest. It had the little pocket on the breast just perfect for a pack of smokes. I finished the look with a pair of navy Dockers and my Docs, which I’d scrubbed clean of Tam Fulton’s blood. There was a bit of a nip in the air so I borrowed a Berghaus windcheater from the back of the cabin door whilst I heated up the stove and got some coffee going. It was instant but better than I was used to. It tasted like the three-pound-a-cup jobs from up the road. In this part of the city, by the marina on the shore, it was millionaire central.
When I was a lad, kicking about in Leith, my brother and I thought a millionaire was someone you read about in books. The thought of my actually meeting a millionaire back then was on a par with meeting a Tyrannosaurus rex. To look around now at the number of yachts and Porsches in our small city numbed my mind better than a bottle and a half of Wild Turkey. Some people were doing very well out of the gang rape Thatcher, Major, Blair and Brown had inflicted on this country. The flip side, of course, was some were headed exactly the opposite way.
I knew I was close to home and I felt a pressing need to check on my mother. She was older now, and looking frail the last time we had met. I didn’t think she was handling my father’s death well; she should have been relieved, singing from the rooftops. I knew I was. But my mother was a very different person to me: she could forgive.
I made a phone call.
Ringing.
A young male voice: ‘Aye-aye.’
‘Who’s this?’ I demanded.
‘Barry. How, who the fuck are you?’
It was my nephew. I recognised the name but it had been more than a few years since I’d seen hide or hair of my sister’s boys. They had always been spoilt; it didn’t sound like the years had improved this one any.
‘Gus. What are you doing using language like that on your grandmother’s phone?’
He slammed the receiver down on the table. I heard him banging on a door and hollering at my mother. I was beyond enraged. ‘Hello… hello…’
It took several minutes for my mother to come to the telephone.
‘Hello,’ she said. Her voice was strained, bereft of emotion, energy.
‘Mam, you sound terrible.’
A cough. I heard her reaching for her asthma inhaler. ‘I’m fine.’
‘Clearly you’re not… Are you back on the inhaler?’ She hadn’t used it for years; I knew she was stressed.
‘I just had a wee turn there and-’
I did not want to hear this. Pelted her with questions: ‘Mam, are you okay now? Should I come round?’
She was quick to respond. ‘No, no… I’m fine, Angus.’
‘Is Catherine with you?’
‘Och, no… just the boys, I’m looking after the boys.’
The boys were old enough to look after themselves. Christ alone knew what they were doing there. ‘Catherine’s lads must be sixteen now, Mam.’
Silence.
I worried about that.
‘Mam, I’m staying nearby… I’ll pay you a wee visit soon.’
‘No, Angus.’ She sounded fearful. ‘Don’t do that.’
I heard her reach for the inhaler again. I didn’t want to upset her any more. ‘Okay, okay. Just look after yourself, Mam.’
She calmed. ‘I will. I will.’
‘Okay, Mam. Be well.’
I cried off, feeling nothing but deep misgivings about the call. I needed to pay my mother a visit soon. Whether she wanted me to or not.
I was rattled, checked about the boat for a stowaway bottle of scoosh to top up my coffee. I found some empties, but nothing I could put to use.
I had a habit to feed; my nerves were jangling. I tanned the coffee and hit the street.
The scaffies were out, hosing down the pavement. I liked the aura of early morning — it felt like the end of the world, which suited my mood. Orange streetlights still fizzed away overhead; occasionally a whole street of lights would go out and jolt my senses. Though the roads were empty, every now and again white van man came rattling over the cobbles as he went to drop off the morning papers. In days gone by you might have seen a postman… how things have changed.
I knew a pub off Constitution Street that opened at six in the a.m. It was a tradition for the dockers to come off the night shift, get a pint on the way home. Now it was full to bursting with jakeys and addicts. Boys just off the boat looking for a bit of Dutch courage before assessing their first move in a new city.
I put in an order: ‘Pint, chaser — double it.’
The pint was poured in quick time, no standing period, slung before me by a heavyset barman who had all the sympathy of a contestant on Runaround.
I put the double to bed smartish, let the pint go down slower. When it hit the halfway mark I downed it and left the bar. I could have stayed till closing but I had a different mission today — to find Tupac.
If there were buses going down this end of town at this time, I didn’t see any. Blame the trams. Edinburgh had signed up for a?700 million new tram system, the installation of which entailed the ripping-up of Leith Walk. Traders were going out of business every day of the week. But they were sole traders. As if the powers that be gave a fuck about anyone that wasn’t one of their players.
I schlepped through the town. I needed the air anyway, but could have done without the exercise. Sure, I needed that too. However, whether I could handle it was another question. I got as far as the west end of Princes Street when I decided enough was enough, flagged a Joe Baxi and took the road out past the zoo to Corstorphine Hill. I had Fitz’s description of Tupac to go on, that and the fact that he ‘lived on the hill’ would make him easy to find. Surely.
I schlepped all over, through dub and mire. It felt unsettling to be back near the scene of Moosey’s murder. The place I once knew as a beauty spot had changed; more and more this city was revealing its true nature to me. In the most brutal ways imaginable. Try as they might to paint the place as a capital of culture, as ‘genteel’ Edinburgh, I knew the real deal. They could stick their tartan troosers, their tea towels with the castle on, and the Scott Monument shortbread tins, I knew what this joint was made of, and it was rotten through.
I thought of the absurdity of my situation. Corrupt police were putting me in the frame for a man’s murder — a man who was widely believed to have been responsible for a toddler’s brutal killing that the courts couldn’t make stick. And now, here I was, in city parkland, chasing down a septuagenarian witness who was living rough in one of the richest countries in Europe. If we’d had a Scottish Enlightenment in Edinburgh I missed that meeting. The state of the city made me want to spit bullets.
I marched on but by midday I was ready to jack it, then I found what in my boyhood would have been called a den. A rough shelter under a tree, an old bit of carpet laid down and a few sheets of chipboard to keep out the elements. I pulled a pile of newspapers down and made myself an approximation of a chair. I settled into a David Goodis novel that I was carrying, The Moon in the Gutter, and waited for Tupac to return.
I was rereading the last page of the book, skipping back and looking for the bit where the story gets wrapped up in a neat little bow and delighted to find it wasn’t there, when a figure loomed out of the distance. It was an old man, bent over with a heavy rucksack on his back and a smaller, though equally well stuffed, one on his front.
I stood up, crossed the ground to meet him and gave a wave. ‘You’d be
Tupac, then.’
Chapter 25
He was an old soak with a nose you could open bottles with and he must have been seventy-five if he was a day. His face was girded with burst veins, red patches and the kind of battered features you associate with a life on the road. Tupac ran a gnarled hand over his forehead, fingers yellow with nicotine, nails yellower yet, said, ‘Christ, I’ve never been so popular.’
I offered him my hand to shake. ‘I’m Gus… Gus Dury.’
He smiled, so wide his one tooth in the side of his gob got an airing. It looked like a tombstone dangling over his jaw. ‘The fella from the papers!’
I felt a warmth suffuse my cheeks. ‘Aye, that’s me.’
‘I saw your story, the murder thing.’ He waved his hand over the hill, like he was signifying his own estate, then removed his heavy packs and hid them behind the den, covering them with the chipboard and some branches. ‘I’ve followed a few of your stories over the years, but it’s been a while since I mind seeing you.’
Why I felt surprised to hear a tramp had been reading the papers, when his shelter was stacked with them, I’d no idea, said, ‘Yeah, well, sometimes it’s a long time between drinks.’
Tupac smacked his lips; I’d caught his attention. He spoke: ‘Sometimes it is that.’
I played up to him. ‘I was wondering if I could get you a pint.. It’s a chat I’m after really, but if you’ve got the time for a quick jar…’
He yelled, excited as a five-year-old, ‘I’ll take ye up on the offer, Gus Dury!’
The barmaid looked about eighteen, an age group I’d been paying a lot of attention to these days. Not perving, far from it. On top of the dog-abusing little bastards I had my eye out for, and the anniversary that Debs had reminded me was on the way — as if I needed reminding — there was also the lingering feeling of my own mortality creeping up on me.
