Random

by Craig Robertson

  It wouldn’t need her man to come down and sort him out. In a square go, my money was on Maw. Straight knockout in the first round, no problem.

  The drunk was drunk enough not to have worked that out though.

  ‘For fuck’s sake. Get him doon here then,’ he came back. ‘Ah’ll tell him how sorry ah ah’m for him, being married tae you and that.’

  Mrs Broon breathed in an indignant harrumph and I was sure she was just about to deck him when the number 40 swung round the corner and pulled up in front of us.

  The drunk threw her a lopsided smile and stood aside, letting her on first with an exaggerated bow and a low sweep of his arm.

  She stormed past without looking at him and took up residence halfway up the bus, her handbag pulled tight to her formidable bosom.

  The drunk pulled himself into the first empty seat and let his head smack off the window as it lurched off, feeling no pain.

  I sat four rows behind Mrs Broon and had a quiet look around. There were maybe twenty people on board the 40. Glasgow in miniature that bus. All human life was there. White and Asian. Young and old. Shoppers and office workers. Crooks and cops. Prods, Papes, Poles and Pakis. Enough racist opportunity for everyone.

  Wee boys in bad suits heading for call centres. Neds in tracksuits heading for street corners. Guys heading for the bookies and the offie.

  A couple of kids were pushing and shoving at each other. The first one slapping the second round the head, the second calling him a fud and the pair of them giggling. The wee bastards should have been at school.

  A mother with two kids and two big bags of shopping. The five of them squeezed into two seats, her on the outside and them and the messages trapped between her and the window. Weans wriggling like eels, shopping bags bouncing. Trapped but trying to escape.

  Another mother. This one no more than mid-twenties and with three kids. Every person on that bus soon knew their names. Chloe. Chantelle. Candice. Chantelle in particular was a real charmer, swinging on the post at the front of the bus, drawing daggers from the driver and shouts from her mother.

  Fuck. This was getting harder. So much harder. Had been from the moment that Wallace Ogilvie died.

  There was a hard case in a torn leather jacket. His face torn too, an old knife wound scarring him from ear to lip. He was staring at the back page of the Daily Record and shaking his head. The front page had the latest on The Cutter but all he was interested in was who Celtic were supposed to be signing.

  Two rows behind him was a junkie, no more than seventeen and off her face. Her scrawny arms tugging at her hair, head twitching. She was bouncing in her seat, bouncing more than the two kids. Energy was bursting out of her. Life leaking out. She must have been good-looking once.

  Two guys in white overalls, painters maybe. One of them sleeping on the other’s shoulder. His mate looking out the window at every bit of passing skirt. Knocking on the glass at a couple of them. Winking. Waving with the free arm, the one that wasn’t squashed in by his pal.

  Glasgow in miniature. Didn’t look much like a city living in fear, a city living in the shadow of The Cutter. Though it should have done. This bus more than anywhere else. I had already decided it would be the first person who got off at the Viking on Maryhill Road. No particular reason.

  The mother had already got off two stops earlier, pulled and pushed down the stairs off the bus by the weans and the shopping. I was glad to see them go. The kids who were plugging the school were still on but I was sure they were headed all the way into the town. Hoped they were. Had to be.

  Approaching the Viking. Any time now. I could feel the tension in me. Could feel my heart rate pick up. Any one of them. Anyone.

  The hard case in the leather jacket moved in his seat and my eyes turned to him. He’d do. But he was just turning the inside sports pages, settling himself again. Wasn’t him.

  One of the two boys stood up and my heart dropped a foot. My breathing stopped. He skelped his pal on the back of the head, got his own back and sat down. Wasn’t him.

  My breathing had just started again when a woman brushed past me. She was getting off at the next stop. All I could see was her back. She was as wide as she was tall, just squeezing between the seats. Short and round, thick legs perched on sensible black shoes. A dark raincoat and a scarf. All topped off with a bowl of reddish hair.

  She was getting off at the next stop. She was the one.

  The woman stood at the front waiting for the bus to come to a halt and copped some chat from the drunk that had already chanced his luck with Maw Broon. I couldn’t hear what he said or what she replied but there was no doubt who had won. The roly-poly snapped something at him and he turned to the window, wrapping his arms round his ears and his head in exaggerated protection. Just wasn’t his day. Slayed by two of Glasgow’s finest within twenty minutes.

  I waited until the bus had stopped before getting up from my seat and making for the exit. By that time a couple of people were trying to get on and I earned a bit of a glare from the driver. It was worth it though, the roly-poly was off and waddling down the street without ever catching sight of me.

  As soon as she got off the bus, she’d reached into her handbag and took something out. Whatever it was, she moved it from hand to hand and then seemed to put it back in the bag. She went just a few yards then repeated the exercise.

  Maybe ten yards further, just as she’d passed the Viking itself and crossed the road, she was back into the bag again. She took out whatever it was and this time huddled over it for a few moments before walking on. She’d lit a cigarette.

  I was still on the other side of the road, watching her turn right and head back in the direction we’d come. Watched her charge purposefully ahead, fat but fast, rolling like a battlecruiser in stormy seas.

  Then suddenly she took a sharp pavement left and turned into the Tesco on Maryhill Road. I followed, grabbing a basket for cover. Cameras saw me enter the store but it wouldn’t matter. I was one among hundreds. Hundreds today and thousands this week.

  I walked up and down the aisles but couldn’t see her anywhere. Fruit and veg, toiletries, dog food, tinned foods, all the way to the butchers and bakers without sight of the roly-poly. I started to walk quicker, doubling back, scanning the heads of all the shoppers.

  Nothing.

  Fully five minutes, up and down, back and forth, getting desperate, had to find her. Surely she couldn’t have gone in and out so quickly. Had to still be there. Panicking a bit.

  Then I saw her. Not in any of the aisles but sitting behind a till. Ten items or less. The roly-poly had been on her way to work at Tesco.

  I picked up enough things to make it look like I had actually been shopping then joined a queue already three deep at her till. There were shorter queues but not so many that it would have looked odd that I chose this one. Just like a once a month shopper who didn’t know any better. Women were probably shaking their heads at me and smiling patronizingly.

  She looked up and saw me standing there, another impediment to an easy day. She exhaled noisily and shook her head at my stupidity. Keep shaking it, I thought. She was maybe fifty-five although I had the feeling she wasn’t as old as she looked. She’d made herself old. She’d smoked her face old and scrunched it up into a meaner, harsher version than her God had intended. If she looked fifty-five then she was forty-five tops. Her podgy face was framed by that bowl of red hair and set off by a pair of practical specs and a permanent scowl.

  You wouldn’t want to take a burst pay packet home to this one.

  Her name badge said she was called Fiona. Then the young girl on the next till called her Mrs Raedale. Fiona Raedale. Welcome to my world.

  She was unpleasantly plump and dressed older than she looked. Which meant she dressed at least ten years older than she was. Fiona Raedale was someone in an eternal bad mood. She didn’t like people. Maybe she thought people didn’t like her.

  The woman being served had a wee girl with her, maybe three or
four years old. She was hanging near the till and obviously wanted to help. She was reaching for the food as it came off the conveyor belt and a couple of times she made a grab for it before Mrs Frosty Drawers had the chance to pass it across the machine that reads the bar code.

  If looks could kill. Raedale snatched a packet of HobNobs out of the wee girl’s hand and treated her mother to a glare that could fry eggs. The woman looked back at the queue with raised eyebrows and I shrugged in some sort of sympathy.

  They moved on and it was soon my turn. Raedale didn’t look up but surveyed the contents of my basket with a cold glower. She didn’t take anything out but just looked at it, her small eyes flitting across the milk, bread, and processed foods that I had picked up. She was counting them. She was actually fucking counting them, the bitch.

  Raedale must have recounted the stuff in my basket because I saw her eyes go over them again. By this time I had counted them myself and knew there were ten items. She seemed disappointed to find I wasn’t attempting an illegal till transaction.

  She raised her eyes slowly and they settled on mine. Lucky, she was saying, lucky for you. Her fat, painted lip turned down at one corner in a barely-hidden sneer.

  She didn’t look at me again. Picked up the ten items, one at a time, scanned them and dropped them onto the belt.

  Roly-poly Fiona Raedale. Fat fucking bitch.

  A voice raged inside my head. I am the scariest man in all of fucking Glasgow. Everyone in this city is living in fear of me and you sit there and fucking sneer at me. You fat fucking bitch. Bitch. Count my fucking shopping? You fat fucking bitch.

  I could tear your fucking head off right now. I could strangle you with my bare hands. I could take those scissors that are at the side of your till and rip a hole in your throat.

  I didn’t do that of course. I smiled quietly, put the items in a carrier bag, paid in cash and left.

  CHAPTER 41

  Raedale was a forty-a-day woman trying not to be.

  I watched her. To Tesco, from Tesco, in Tesco. To the multi where she lived in Gilshochill in Summerston. To her mother’s house in Shiskine Drive. To regular Friday nights out with girls from work. To the one night a week with her mother to County Bingo across the road from her work.

  Time and again I saw her take out cigarettes and thrust them back into the packet without smoking them. She needed to touch them, be reassured that they were there. The roly-poly bitch would play with the packet, turning it over and over in her hands, moving it from one to the other, slipping it back into her pocket then out again. She was desperate to smoke and desperate not to.

  She had more reason than most to quit the cancer sticks. She was asthmatic. The first couple of times I saw her pull the inhaler from her bag and draw deep on it I thought it was one of those nicotine inhalators that people use when they are trying to give up. Then I saw her heaving air back into her heavy lungs and knew what it was. Smoking and asthma. Smart combination, fatty.

  Fiona Raedale was trying to give up. It struck me that I could help her give up for good.

  I watched her. Carrying staff-discounted bags of shopping to her mother’s. Scowling at people from her till to the bus stop to the bingo. Her life was limited and so were my opportunities.

  There were times I wished I hadn’t painted myself into a corner with the whole finger thing. It made life – and death – so much more difficult.

  Killing Fiona Raedale, even with the method I had in mind, was not difficult. Strange to say maybe but killing her was easy.

  Killing her and cutting off her little finger was a bit more difficult. Killing her, cutting off her little finger and getting away without anyone knowing anything about it was much, much more difficult.

  My own fault of course.

  The plan had required it. Demanded it. But Jesus Christ it made things complicated. I knew how to murder her. I knew a way that could make the front page of newspapers and yet I could be on the other side of Glasgow when it happened. She would die a horrible, shocking death and I could have any alibi I wanted in the unlikely event anyone asked me for it.

  Oh I was clever as fuck. I could kill this woman almost by remote control.

  I couldn’t deny that the cleverness of that made me feel a right smart arse. And yet I was way too clever and therefore nowhere near clever enough.

  Because I had to be there. I had to be with her so that I could cut off that finger and dispatch it safely to Rachel Narey. Shit, shit, shit.

  It was further complicated by the fact that I knew I had settled on the way to kill her and I couldn’t be shifted from the thought. It suited her and it suited my purpose but it didn’t make things any less difficult.

  Once the method came to mind it stayed there. Lodged right at the front. I did consider other ways but I knew, right from the moment the thought popped into my head, I just knew. OK, maybe it was the tail wagging the dog but that was the way it had to be. I had spent long weeks playing with the plan in my head. Seeing avenues and every time coming up with a dead end. They were dead ends for Fiona Raedale that wouldn’t work for me.

  There was a hole in every plan, too many loose ends, too much risk. I had to be somewhere I could cut the finger off, somewhere without people around, somewhere without risk. But the places without risk were places without opportunity.

  I could maybe get into her flat somehow but then maybe I would be seen and I’d definitely leave DNA. I could arrange it so she died while she sat at her ten items or less till but then couldn’t get near her. I could chat her up, drop it into her drink but the finger, the bloody finger.

  I had this vague thought of getting it into the asthma inhaler I had seen her use. That was clever and I liked it. Getting it in there was doable, difficult but doable. But then how did I control when she used the inhaler? How did I control the situation so that I knew when she had used it? How did I make sure that I could then get to her, unseen or unnoticed and cut her fucking finger off and get away?

  Same thought with the nicotine substitute I had seen her suck on. The stuff was in there, all I had to do was get more of it in there and she would be dead in no time. I could do that. I just couldn’t clip her finger.

  I thought about killing her and letting them think it was some awful but natural death. Then later, when her mother had been called and identified the body and no one had any reason to think otherwise, get access to Fiona Raedale’s fat deceased person and snip the finger. Interesting but hospitals have cameras, lots of them, so hospital morgues will have cameras. It was a non-starter.

  Then finally I toyed with the notion of not cutting off the finger. Of finding some other way of letting Rachel know. That went against every element of the plan except one. The part where I didn’t get caught.

  It was my plan though, no one else’s. I could change it to suit me. I was in charge. I could do that. I would do that.

  In fact I liked it. It would work. Ha. Rachel’s face and fury came to mind and I laughed out loud. In the end I’d come to the conclusion that I was worrying too much. There was no way it wasn’t going to be risky. The risk had to be embraced not feared.

  I settled on it. The only question was where and when.

  Work and weekly bingo were the only constants in Raedale’s life but neither worked for me. Both were far too public and with far too many people. It would need to be one of the Friday nights out with the Tesco girls and they happened maybe three weeks out of four, depending, I guessed, on shift patterns.

  On the first Friday after I had established a plan of action and readied myself, a bunch of them headed into town after work and went into Bar Budda on Sauchiehall Street. It was time.

  I went into the Wetherspoons across the road, parked myself on a stool at a table by the window. I waited an hour with a pint in my hand and an eye on Budda. I gave them time to settle in and get a few drinks down their necks, gave it time for the place to fill up. If they left I’d see them, if they didn’t I’d find them.

  It wa
sn’t hard to imagine fat Fiona sitting there moaning about the music, the heat, young people today and the price of drink, bitching about colleagues who weren’t there and, as soon as their backs were turned, those who were. She’d have a face on her like a plate of mortal sins and her mouth pursed tighter than a midgie’s chuff. She must have made great company.

  I nursed my pint of shandy for the full hour I had promised myself, my eyes rarely straying from the door of Budda for more than a few seconds, whether looking at it directly or in the reflection of the window’s neon glare facing towards Holland Street. Many more went in but neither Raedale or any of the shop girls left. She was there, my window of opportunity lying at her feet or clutched to her fearsome bosom.

  The hour slipped past and I drained the last of the beer before leaving, crossing the road and going into Budda. The place was pleasingly mobbed and it took me a minute to see the Tesco crew crammed round a long table in the wooden pagoda-type effect to the back right.

  Dark, busy, perfect.

  I ordered another pint of shandy and took up a spot as near to them as I could without being openly in their view.

  They were a typical works night out crowd. Loud, laughing, drunk and happy with one notable exception. Fat, frosty Fiona had a look of disdain that would have turned milk. I was sure she was only there so that the rest of them wouldn’t be talking about her. It certainly couldn’t have been because she wanted to enjoy herself.

  Out of the corner of my eye I caught her waving her white handbag at them as a signal of some intent. She evidently wanted to go to the toilet.

  I watched with interest as she began to squeeze her way out of the padded grey and purple seats, ungracefully extricating herself from the wedge that had been formed between a short blonde girl on one side and a spotty student-type on the other. They both got a glare, as if the lack of room was their fault and not her excess lard. As she made the last unsteady movement between seat and table, she put her half-open handbag on the tabletop for balance. Jackpot, I thought to myself. Penalty kick. Open goal.