GUILT TRIPPER

by Geoff Small

  “Hold on…heroin? Rex Macleod doesn’t go near drugs, he bloody hates them!”

  With what sounded to Judith like exasperation at Danny’s simplicity, Bob affected a sneering laugh. “What was it Shakespeare wrote? ‘Methinks the lad doth protest too much.’ Macleod hates drug dealers like Roy Cohn hated homosexuals. The anti-heroin persona? That was just a smokescreen for one of Europe’s biggest drugs barons. The street corner dealers he used to shop? They were actually banging out his gear, but didn’t even know it — stupid wee bastards! Just like I never knew he was buying all my records.”

  “So where did my money come from?” There was a panic in Danny’s voice now.

  “Definitely not from song royalties, put it that way. When you blackmailed me I begged Baxter to help find a solution, but he deserted me as a Rex McLeod reject. Until, that was, I explained the painting scam. He put it to the Big Man, who then lent me seven hundred and sixty grand on the express understanding that he recouped a million within twelve months, or else. Mercifully, my brainwave was a success, otherwise I’d be couriering packages every other month and ending up in the same prison cell the whole scheme was designed to keep me out of in the first place.”

  “What do you mean, painting scam?”

  “The kebab house man who bought all your work at the exhibition I set up in London was in the loop. He bought the paintings from me with money which Rex was already laundering through his takeaway shop tills. Then, having established a phoney market for your work, he sold them for real and got over a million quid, all of which went straight back to the Big Man, netting him a handsome two-hundred and forty grand profit on the original seven hundred and sixty he’d lent me in order to pay you off. The rich get richer my friend, but then you already know that better than anyone, after all, it’s pretty much all you’ve ever droned on about these past twenty-five years”

  “You mean this college is courtesy of the plague that’s ravaged our city? Oh please God…no! Kids have died in their hundreds, been made homeless or lost limbs so that I can play with paints and drink fine wine? You bastard! You knew what you were doing all along didn’t you? You’ve deliberately made me complicit in that which I despise…compromised my soul and will no doubt destroy my mind in the process. All that crap about me having ‘won’, it’s just your bitter sarcasm. You’re the winner. Now, till the day I die, I’ll be more miserable than you ever could be.”

  “You’ve only yourself to blame Danny. You relinquished the right to moralise once you entered the world of blackmail. Besides, it’s your own vanity that’s making you miserable…your romantic need to be perceived as ‘the good guy’. No one leaves this world with a clean sheet Danny boy, so why the hell did you think you were going to be any different?”

  “You should have told me! You should have let me know you were broke! I’d never have shopped you anyway!”

  “I couldn’t take that chance…not with your friggin’ morals! I may have made the most of my time-out in Barlinnie Prison to think, but I certainly had no intention of going back there.”

  Danny, who was muttering insanely now, sounded like he was crying. “Oh-please-God-no! Please, please, please God - no!”

  “Oh grow up man! Surely you of all people must be aware that all money’s filth. Our city, the one you’re so passionate about, was built on tobacco and slavery. And now, your college is built on heroin. Just like the National Health Service is built through taxes imposed on smokers with lung cancer and drinkers with liver disease, not to mention the oil guzzling, kid killing car drivers for whom, as you never ceased banging on about, half of Glasgow was demolished to provide a motorway. It’s the great paradox of life Danny — happy birthday son!”

  Danny made no response.

  “Anyway, I have to be up early so I’ll bid you adieu.”

  The sound of Bob making his way upstairs to spend the night in Danny’s room, just across the landing, made Judith feel physically ill.

  CHAPTER: 15

  The morning after Bob’s revelation, Judith woke to loud arguing. Running down to the kitchen in her nightshirt, she found the whole college standing over Hamish, who was lying unconscious on the flagstone floor, after trying to prevent Ryan from assaulting other students. Overnight, while they’d all been sleeping outside the byre, someone had taken the young author’s computer and the back-up discs containing his book, leaving him to suspect, accuse and then physically attack those closest.

  Remembering that Danny had told a certain somebody about Ryan’s work, Judith rushed back upstairs and burst into the room where Bob was supposed to be staying, only to find an empty, undisturbed bed. Heart sunken, she put on a grey hooded sweat top and jeans, then jogged back downstairs, herding Danny and Ryan to the minibus, which she drove at high speed towards Glasgow. Virtually catatonic with depression from the previous night’s bombshell, Danny sat on the farthest back seat, saying not a word until they arrived five hours later and then only to mutter something about Bob’s parents living in Bearsden.

  Bearsden is an affluent, residential suburb on the northwest outskirts of the city, containing a significant number of million pound mansions along its leafy avenues. The Fitzgerald’s home, however, was a more modest affair — a whitewashed bungalow, beyond a low, granite stoned boundary wall and a small rectangle of lawn. The family had escaped here from the council tenements of Maryhill back in the nineteen-seventies, thanks to Mr. Fitzgerald’s earnings as a welder on the North Sea oil rigs. In accordance with her new middle class status — achieved by working class means — Mrs. Fitzgerald had sent her only child to Glasgow Academy, the city’s oldest public school, in the West End. Mixing among the real middle classes hadn’t come naturally to Bob though, and, despite achieving decent exam results, he’d grown into a self-absorbed teenager. But for meeting Danny, he’d probably still be hiding in his bedroom to this day, writing stories only for himself.

  Unfortunately, there was no sign of Bob’s car when they pulled up outside the bungalow, and Ryan’s frantic banging on the front door didn’t even get a response. While he investigated the back of the property, Judith stayed in the minibus, trying to elicit more information from Danny. .

  “Danny! You’ve got to think. Is there anywhere else that bastard might be?”

  “I don’t know!” he yelled back, at his wits end.

  On Ryan’s return, Judith drove aimlessly, suppressed tears of frustration twinkling in her eyes. She’d only gone about a mile, when she suddenly spotted a grey Datsun parked up ahead, outside a black, iron security gate. Either side of the gate was an eight-foot high, brick boundary wall overhung by sycamore trees, with CCTV cameras peeping out from steel poles among the foliage. Judith and Ryan jumped out the minibus, but before the former could press the buzzer on the intercom in the wall, Danny had caught up, snatching her hand away.

  “What the hell are you doing woman? This is Rex McLeod’s place.”

  “And? You’re quick enough to condemn others for not standing up to the capitalists. Well, here’s your opportunity to show us all how it’s done…oh, I’m sorry, I forgot, you’d rather paint his portrait wouldn’t you?”

  Just then, the intercom crackled and a whining, nasal, Glaswegian voice seeped out.

  “Tut. Tut. Tut. Is that you causing a song and dance outside my property Danny White?”

  “Aye Rex, it is.”

  “Ha, ha, ha,” McLeod had a surprisingly genial laugh. “You and your pals had best come on in.”

  The gate slid open with a humming noise, revealing a white, eight-bedroom mansion, set back beyond a small field of manicured front lawn. Across this bowling green, five barking Dobermans came bounding, before a middle aged blonde woman in a peppermint green, velvet jogging suit appeared, calling them back. Rex McLeod’s wife, Janine had heavily lined sun-bed orange skin and lank, peroxide hair, but she conveyed the arrogance of an aristocratic supermodel, surveying her visitors with disdain. In a dry, boozy voice she directed them to an oak panelled lounge
where three men stood around a large granite-stone fireplace, drinking whisky beneath one of Danny’s portrait paintings of the gangster. To the left — as viewed by the visitors on entering — Fergus Baxter was in full tartan splendour, while on the right, a shaven headed Bob looked conspicuously uncomfortable in his shabby, navy-blue Adidas tracksuit. In the middle was a dumpy, pug faced, squinty eyed, smirking fellow in his late fifties. What remained of his grey hair was combed back over a red pate and his jowls were hanging either side of a triple chin. He wore a yellow Lyle and Scott polo T-shirt — tightly stretched like cling film round his paunch — brown trousers and matching golf shoes. Judith actually laughed when he introduced himself to her as Rex McLeod. She couldn’t believe it. The legendary ‘Big Man’ was even smaller than Fergus Baxter, who could only have been five-foot seven, if that.

  “So what can I do for you then folks?” the gangster asked, mockingly.

  Danny stepped forward from his position between Judith and Ryan.

  “As it happens, we’ve intruded upon you quite by accident. It’s Mr Fitzgerald we need to speak with.” He turned to face Bob. “Could I have a quick word in private please?”

  Bob smiled slyly. “There’s no need for that. Nothing you’re going to say will shock anybody here.”

  “Ok. In that case…err…how can I put this? Ryan here has lost a very important disc. You wouldn’t happen to know where that might…”

  “Just give us our things back you rat!” Judith exploded.

  At this moment McLeod stepped forward, placing a pacifying hand on her forearm.

  “It’s me you need to talk with about the disc darling. I own it now.”

  “Rex,” Danny implored, “the lad here has worked day and night on that book for the past two years. He’s only nineteen. It’s his way out – please don’t block him.”

  McLeod turned to face Danny. “Danny boy, if you’d come and asked for that disc two years ago, you’d already be walking out the door with it in your hand, and…and,” he pointed backwards over one shoulder with a thumb, towards Bob, “…that worm there would be eating out of a straw, for offending someone I respected.” He gulped the remainder of his scotch before continuing. “I actually liked you…worse, I trusted you…and I make it my business to trust nobody. I really enjoyed our little chats whenever I sat for you. We talked about Marx and Christianity, do you remember?” McLeod smiled nostalgically at this recollection. “I found you refreshingly naïve. I could see right through you, or so I thought, and there was absolutely nothing harmful there. I don’t think I could say that about a single other soul I’ve encountered. As a result, you became a little indulgence of mine…an escape from the cynical world I inhabit. That’s why I was always giving you painting jobs — so we could talk some more. So you can imagine how betrayed I felt, learning that you’re actually a scheming blackmailer.”

  Flushing, Danny cast a quick glance at Ryan, who was oblivious to the dishonourable means by which Gairloch College had come about. Desperate to avert an adverse revelation, he interrupted McLeod.

  “But this isn’t about me.”

  “Oh but it is. Everything I do these days is influenced by you. Thanks to your sublime disingenuousness, I no longer have faith in my own judgement. Consequently, I have to be ruthless with everyone in order to feel secure. So let’s hear no more about this disc. It’s mine, OK.”

  Judith erupted again. “This isn’t some crappy Squeaky Kirk album!” Bob raised his chin by forty-five degrees, head twitching indignantly. “It’s a really good book.”

  McLeod turned to Ryan. “We need this book on the shelves as quick as possible. If you want to sign up with us for three-hundred quid a week, so be it. It’ll save us the bother of having to find a front man and an editor to change names and places.”

  Judith was beside herself with rage now. “He’s got a London publisher ready to print — and you’re offering him three hundred quid a week!”

  “Darlin, the lad’s a drop in the ocean down there. If he’s really, really lucky, he’ll get a ten-grand advance against royalties. No matter how good a yarn he’s written, though, he’ll be at the bottom of the pile when it comes to promotion. The celebrity biographers and Oxbridge in crowd will eat up the entire publicity budget, and no one will even know he existed. Deemed a liability, he’ll be sacked on his debut and never entertained by another publisher again. But if he comes with me, he’ll get every piece of work published, have a guaranteed fourteen grand a year coming in and the Scottish press eating out of his hand. Sometimes the best way to take London is indirectly. If he creates a ripple up here, your big publishers will come sniffing, don’t you worry…and they’ll treat him with the respect he deserves if he’s already a proven earner.” McLeod turned to Danny, who was standing with his arms folded, shaking his head dejectedly. “You shouldn’t be pulling faces. You should be encouraging the boy to do the right thing. How many folk do you know who’ve been published in London?”

  “Quite a few,” Danny muttered.

  “Aye and how many of them are wealthy as a result? Honestly now.”

  “None that I know of.”

  “Exactly. They’re all doing shitty jobs during the day and then they’re too tired in the evenings to write anything decent. Ryan, on the other hand, will have a guaranteed income and all the time in the world to produce a masterpiece, if he wishes.” McLeod had grown quite passionate during this exposition. “Three hundred quid a week’s about a hundred pound more than this kid can ever hope to earn.” He turned to Ryan. “I’ll bet my balls you’ve got a criminal record, eh son?”

  “Aye, for assault when I was sixteen and two raps for shoplifting.”

  “Then you’re minimum wage, warehouse fodder till the day you die I’m afraid…just like I was at your age. No different to a black man in Apartheid South-Africa or an untouchable in India. I was forced to carve my own path, outside of the system.” He looked at Judith as if expecting admiration or sympathy, before returning his attention to Ryan, now nodding in accord with what was being said. “And remember, there’s nothing to stop you getting a day job if you wanted. You’d be on five hundred quid a week then, twenty-two, maybe twenty-three grand a year! When you walked in here you were underclass. I’m giving you the opportunity to leave middle class.”

  At this point Danny finally intervened. “Ryan, we have to have a word in private.”

  “Oh no,” McLeod interjected smugly, “there’ll be no whispering round corners. I like complete transparency when I do business, so if you’ve something to say, say it here.”

  “Complete transparency eh? In that case, he’s going to use you Ryan, as a vehicle to launder money…money from heroin dealing!”

  McLeod turned to Bob and glared, yellow teeth snarling like a rabid dog, eyes as dead as great white shark’s, before facing Ryan again and raising his voice impatiently.

  “Right son, it’s make your mind up time. If you’re interested Fergus will take you into town to sign the necessary documents. If not, get the hell out of here.”

  Ryan turned to Danny as if imploring his advice.

  “I’ve told you what I know,” Danny said, dejectedly. “Armed with such information, I personally wouldn’t get involved. But I can’t impose my principles on you…and I’m certainly in no position to judge.”

  Next, Ryan looked at Judith. She didn’t want to hurt Danny, but her maternal feelings towards the youngster won the day. Making sure he got credit and at least some reward for his work was her main concern, so she strained a smile of encouragement.

  “Don’t worry about what anyone else thinks sweetheart, just get on and do what’s right for you.”

  When Ryan agreed to accompany Baxter, Danny marched out, looking ashen. During the distraction, no one had noticed Bob slip away, escaping Rex McLeod’s wrath at his indiscretion over the money laundering scam. It transpired he’d received nothing for procuring Ryan’s book. His only reward had been the knowledge that he’d hurt Danny some more
.

  After being escorted off McLeod’s property, Judith found the minibus gone, leaving her all alone in Glasgow. She booked into a hotel for the night then returned to Gairloch by public transport the following day. When she finally arrived, after an eight hour bus journey, the kids told her there’d been no sign of Danny and that Hamish had packed his bags and left with Angie, citing Ryan’s assault as the final straw.

  All week, Judith agonised over whether to stay, but, in the end, decided it was futile. She knew Danny would never return, and Ryan worked for Rex McLeod now anyway. So, realizing that Gairloch College was over, she left Fin with the students and drove back to England, where she’d soon be working as an assistant curator again, only this time at Birmingham’s City Art Gallery.

  PART FOUR

  CHAPTER: 16

  The following summer, Judith took a well-deserved walking holiday in Iceland. To get there though, she had to catch a plane from Glasgow, where she arrived by train the day before her flight. While queuing for a taxi outside Central Station with her luggage, she spotted a familiar face approaching, smoking a roll up, accompanied by a shell-suited, teenage brunette, pushing a baby in a pram. It was Dickens. He stopped to talk, telling her that he was living back at the Great Eastern Hotel, but would soon be moving, with his girlfriend and nine-month-old child, to a brand new housing association pad in Possil.

  “That’s were Danny used to live,” Judith exclaimed, smiling genially towards the skinny young mother, who was either nodding at everything Dickens said or laughing nervously.