The Man Who Loved Islands

by David F. Ross

  ‘That’s when she did tell me!’ says Hammy. ‘Made it more excitin’, like.’

  ‘Aye, an’ look at how excited ye are now, ya balloon,’ says Bobby.

  ‘So what’s happenin’ now? Is he headin’ up here for ye?’ asks Joseph.

  ‘He had tae go tae the mainland an’ file the reports an’ take the body back an’ that. He’s gonnae be back in two days an’ then he’s comin’ for me,’ wails Hammy. ‘Whit the fuck ah’m ah gonnae dae, Joey?’ he says, appealing to whom he considers the most balanced person in the room.

  ‘What’s he comin’ for, Hammy? He cannae arrest ye for havin’ affair wi’ his missus! It’s no’ against the law, is it?’ says Joseph.

  ‘He disnae gie a fuck aboot the law, man. He’s comin’ wi’ bruisers. Ah’m gonnae get taken oot on a fishin’ boat an’…’ Hammy tails off as if he can’t contemplate what Juan Soler’s men will actually do to him.

  ‘…ye’ll be made tae walk the plank?’ whispers Bobby.

  ‘Shut the fuck up,’ says Joseph. He notices his right hand is trembling. ‘Yer no’ helpin’ here.’ Joseph scratches his chin to hide the hand tremor. ‘Ah’ve got an idea, but we need tae act quickly. Ye got a printer here?’ he asks.

  Hammy nods.

  ‘Right, well … we’re in business then.’

  Two days later the plan has been thoroughly rehearsed. Two flights back to Glasgow have been booked. Bobby is remaining on Ibiza for a month or so and then returning to Scotland early in the New Year. He needs to sort out storage and then the repatriation of their belongings, and also to square the circle with the terminally ill Laurie Revlon and her demanding son and business heir, Laurence. Joseph and Hammy have packed and are waiting at the house until the last possible minute before heading to the airport. If Juan Soler is in fact on the hunt for Hammy and potentially heading this way, Joseph’s plan will only work if they are cornered at the house. Hammy is still holding out hope that Juan Soler’s flight back from Alicante that morning has been delayed or that he’s missed it. A flashing light on his phone quickly dispels that notion:

  Hamma, yo need go now. Juan he back. He’s on you!!!! You care take. I luv yo!!!! I hope see you agin. Esta XXXXXXXX

  Hammy holds the mobile telephone screen up to show Joseph.

  ‘Joey, ah’m fuckin’ shitin’ myself,’ Hammy admits.

  ‘Aye. Me too,’ says Joseph. ‘But let’s just play it cool, right. We’ll be fine.’ Joseph pats Hammy’s arm. ‘Okay, go and get the cuffs,’ says Joseph.

  Hammy rolls off to his bedroom. He returns some minutes later with a pair of handcuffs wrapped in fluffy pink fur.

  ‘Ye might’ve fuckin’ mentioned that!’ Joseph takes the cuffs and throws them to Bobby. ‘Scrape that feathery shite off them. Christ, they would get us a doin’ on their own.’

  When Bobby returns, they fit the handcuffs on Hammy. Their travel bags are already in the car outside.

  The buzzer sounds.

  It’s Juan Soler and his men.

  ‘Fuck sake, look at these two cunts here wi’ Boss Hogg,’ says Bobby.

  Hammy and Joseph advance to look at the screen. The buzzer rings again. Juan Soler is getting impatient.

  ‘Fuck!’ Hammy exclaims. The smaller, fatter police chief is bookended by two giant Peter Howson subjects, who seem to have peeled themselves away from one of his canvases and are now intent on battering the fuck out of someone before their painted flesh dries. ‘They’re no’ fuckin’ polis … they’re intae human waste disposal!’ Hammy shivers.

  Joseph’s heart is thumping. He feels that it must be visible, like he is a love-struck Bugs Bunny. He breathes deeply and slowly, in and out, to control the rising anxiety. The buzzer rings again, this time for longer.

  ‘Eh, hullo. Can ah help ye?’ says Bobby.

  ‘Open please. Policia.’

  ‘Em, what’s it aboot?’ says Bobby nervously.

  ‘Open please. We need speak to Señor Ham May,’ replies Juan Soler. He isn’t dressed as one might expect of a local police chief. He acknowledges this and shows his badge to the security camera above his head.

  Bobby ponders whether the thugs will look normal-sized when he lets them in, or be even more distorted than the fish-eye lens of his security camera is currently making them. It’s a frightening thought, either way.

  ‘Look, are you part ae this ongoing operation tae?’ says Bobby. He has now shifted into the script that Joseph outlined. Juan Soler looks genuinely puzzled. He turns and mouths something to his expressionless associates. Bobby can’t decipher it.

  ‘Open please … or we will be force to break your door,’ says a now clearly aggravated Juan Soler.

  After a few seconds, Bobby presses the button, and the wooden door slides back into its concealed housing in the wall. Bobby watches the two burly henchmen’s impressed expressions.

  It takes them a minute or two to work their way from the top of the house down to the living level, by which time Joseph is wheeling Hammy outside in the handcuffs and pushing him to the large black car, with the blacked-out windows that they have borrowed for this purpose from Laurie Revlon.

  ‘Hold sir,’ shouts Juan Soler. ‘That man is wanted by local Policia,’ he proclaims.

  Joseph and Hammy stop at the gravel base at the bottom of the steep slope down to the car-port.

  ‘Stay there you,’ Joseph says loudly to Hammy.

  ‘An’ where the fuck dae ye think ah’m likely tae go?’ he replies theatrically.

  Hammy is dressed in a beige suit with a clean white shirt. Joseph has his black Calvin Klein suit on with white shirt and black tie. His shoes are gleaming. His hair is Jehovah’s-Witness-perfect. A manufactured bulge in the upper jacket, fashioned out of a pair of Hammy’s old braces, make him look like he’s carrying. Joseph spots both of Juan Soler’s associates scanning the bulge as if they have x-ray vision.

  ‘And who are jou?’ says Juan Soler.

  ‘What business of it is yours?’ replies Joseph, trying to sound as intimidating as possible, but getting the order of the words wrong. English not being their first language, he gets away with it.

  ‘This man is wanted…’ says Juan Soler unconvincingly. He is still trying to size up the situation.

  ‘Yes, I know … and we are extraditing him back to the United Kingdom right now, so please don’t curtail this serious investigation.’

  Juan Soler is temporarily flummoxed. He has imagined driving up here, picking up the cripple and dropping the bastard – still chained to his metal chair – off a boat out in the Med. This unexpected shift is making him lose face.

  Joseph recognises that this is his chance. He steps closer and reaches into his jacket. The thugs visibly tense. He pulls out a card. It has his face and name on it, together with the stamp ‘MI5’ in the top corner.

  ‘Special Agent Joseph Miller,’ he says. ‘Hamish May has been on the UK Government’s Most Wanted list for more than four years. He is a principal suspect in the ongoing Operation Yewtree, which has identified him as the leader of a group of men who are actively trafficking young girls from Europe … from the Spanish mainland … over to the UK. We finally tracked him to here, and he has now been apprehended.’ Joseph quickly flashes another letter as they all gravitate out to where Hammy sits. ‘This letter exchange between our governments has agreed the terms of his extradition.’ Joseph’s fluttering stomach is in knots, but Bobby Cassidy – an ineffective observer to all of this – has to tip the hat to his convincing performance.

  Juan Soler has no answer.

  ‘So,’ Joseph continues. ‘Whatever he is wanted in connection for on the island, it will have to wait. You will have to contact your own security officials and take your case from there.’ Obviously, that isn’t going to happen.

  Bobby steps towards Hammy and slaps him hard across the face. ‘Ya dirty kiddy-fiddlin’ bastart, ye!’ he shouts. ‘Livin’ under my roof an’ runnin’ a child sex exploitation business fae yer bedroom? Ye deserve a
w that’s comin’ tae ye, ya filthy perverted cunt!’ Bobby slaps Hammy again, harder.

  This is taking the method acting too far. Hammy determines to get even with Bobby for this.

  ‘Bastardo!’ shouts Juan Soler, and he swings a dull punch into Hammy’s jaw. A big, circular sovereign ring acts as a de facto single knuckle-duster. Hammy slumps, howling in pain.

  ‘Okay, that’s enough,’ says ‘Agent’ Miller. ‘I hate this scum for what’s he’s done, but I don’t want him gettin’ off on a police brutality technicality.’

  Hammy is then briskly bundled into the back of the car, Juan Soler eyeballing him constantly. Joseph gets in the driver’s side and the window slides down.

  ‘Thank you for your assistance and cooperation in helping capture this man, Mr Cassidy,’ says Joseph. ‘I’ll make sure your country knows how much personal danger you put yourself in.’ And with that, the car screeches away, throwing gravel chips backwards as it accelerates up the steep driveway.

  ‘Fuck sake!’ Hammy complains. ‘Ye coulda stopped the cunt fae rattlin’ my jaw, Joey.’ He draws a breath sharply in through his teeth as if just reading an estimate for cosmetic dentistry. ‘An’ whit the fuck was aw that kiddly-fiddlin shite, eh? That wisnae in the script! Thought ah had sold secrets tae the Russians … like that Wikileaks tosser! Ah ken it wis just an act, but lumpin’ me in wi’ the Jimmy Savile brigade … fuck sake, man!’

  ‘Better that than sleepin’ wi’ the fishes, pal,’ says Joseph, looking in the rearview mirror.

  ‘An’ as for that prick, Bobby,’

  ‘Well, we’re ootae trouble now, eh?’

  ‘Ach, aye. Ah suppose,’ says Hammy, finally managing a relieved sigh.

  Suddenly, Joseph slams the brakes on. Hammy is thrown forward, the seatbelt snapping tightly and painfully across his chest. Joseph opens the driver’s door and staggers to the side, visibly shaking. He vomits loudly into the undergrowth.

  ‘Holy fuck, Joey, that wis sore,’ says Hammy. ‘An’ can ye take these fuckin’ cuffs off noo?’

  Joseph frees him, before starting the car again. ‘Ya ungrateful bastard, ye!’ he says.

  ‘Ah appreciate it, man,’ says Hammy. ‘Ah dae, ah really dae. Where did ye get the MI5 badge by the way? That even had me convinced.’

  ‘Ah worked out in Libya. We went out there as part ae a Tony Blair delegation aimed at bringin’ Gaddafi back intae the international fold, so we could buy the oil off him rather than the Russians. The sanctions got lifted, an’ the trade was goin’ tae be UK teams providin’ designs for schools an’ hospitals and aw kinds ae community shit. In order tae get full security clearance, aw the advisors got badges and citations. Ah just never handed mine back.’

  They are at the airport in less than twenty minutes. Joseph parks the car where Bobby can pick it up and return it later. Hammy gets into his chair. A reddish purple welt has formed on his jaw line.

  ‘Hamma … Hamma!’ It is Esta. She runs to him, leans down and hugs him.

  ‘Are jou okay?’ she asks him.

  ‘Aye … fuck it, ’Nam was much worse.’ He laughs.

  She doesn’t get it. ‘I have dis for jou,’ she says, handing him a long package. ‘I never forget jou.’ She kisses him tenderly.

  Joseph is touched. Their relationship was more than he’d assumed it to be. He feels for Hammy.

  At check-in, Hammy plays it straight. He admits having been given something to carry on and that it is a gift and he isn’t sure what it is. It gets unwrapped and cleared by security. A sobbing Hamish May boards the plane clutching one of Esta’s prosthetic legs. When he lands, he will text her that he will never sleep without it.

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  December 2014. Glasgow, Scotland

  He has been back in Scotland for almost a month and Hamish May is still struggling to come to terms with the many changes in his immediate environment. He is living with Joseph Miller in his fourth-floor, brownstone tenement flat. The lack of a lift in the old Victorian structure has confined his movements and has persuaded him that – although they are getting on reasonably well – this isn’t a long- or even medium-term solution. He can’t keep relying on Joseph to help him down four flights. That realisation is percolating. It needs attention and reasonably urgently. Hammy rolls his wheelchair the short but congested distance through deep slush from taxi stance to ticket office. The snow didn’t last long. Odds on a white Christmas had been slashed to evens by some bookmakers, but an upsurge in temperatures has saved them. All that remains is this dismal, wet, grey mush – which is still dangerous for people out walking and vehicles traversing the ungritted roads.

  Hammy is en route to Buchanan Bus Station and the bus back down to Kilmarnock. Hammy wishes he hadn’t left it so late. He regrets not taking the train. He is travelling on the last day of the year, and, as a result of not having phoned ahead, he has to get the more local service and not the express one. This means a journey of an hour and half, through countless stops on an extended circuit of the suburbs of Glasgow, as opposed to a forty-five-minute one straight down the M77. He will be staying with his old mum for a few days. She is a sprightly seventy-six-year-old; much of Hammy’s determinedly independent spirit comes from her. Having looked after himself – and to a large extent Bobby Cassidy too – for some years, requiring any form of assistance from Joseph to get down the stairs and get out and about seems like the start of a slippery slope. Hammy needs some alternative options. Joseph has suggested he buy a mobility scooter but Hammy argues that people who use such things are as likely to be obese and lazy as disabled, and he wants no such judgement cast on his own condition. Joseph can’t immediately see the logic in his argument. It appears to be based solely on the fat Americans Hammy has seen motoring around in a television programme about Disneyland.

  He arrives in Kilmarnock. A kindly driver assists him to get his chair down a mobile metal ramp. He pulls on his gloves. He navigates a route from the local bus station through a sad and largely redundant Burns Mall, stopping at an RS McColl’s to pick up some flowers for his mum. Kilmarnock hasn’t changed much since he was last here. A Greggs has replaced an Olivers, and vaping shops and mobile phone stores have replaced virtually everything else. He laments the accessibility of these public spaces. They seem much worse in a Scottish town centre, with all its new DDA regulations, than on a tourist-orientated, steeply contoured Spanish island. But he also acknowledges that he is actively finding fault.

  Heading back up to the taxi rank at the base of the multi-storey car park on the Foregate, his wheelchair is stopped in its tracks. Literally.

  ‘Hammy?’ A blonde woman has stepped right in front of him.

  Out of context, he takes a minute, but then says, ‘Lizzie? Fuck sake, is that you?’ He knows it is. Unlike him, she has barely changed since the last time he saw her. But since Hammy pinned his colours to the mast regarding Lizzie’s newspaper betrayal twenty years earlier, he was simply hoping she hadn’t seen him.

  ‘How are ye?’ she asks, immediately realising the general stupidity of the question. ‘Sorry,’ she says, ‘ah didnae mean … Look, ye got a minute for a coffee?’

  ‘Ah’m headed tae see ma mam, Lizzie … ah’m a bit pushed for time, ken?’

  ‘It’s important. Please,’ she pleads, still blocking his route. ‘Just five minutes, eh?’

  ‘Aw, it’s good tae see ye, son. Ye look rerr,’ says Maggie May.

  Hammy hands a bag to his mum. It contains three packs of biscuits. Maggie May beams like a five-year-old being given a present from a department-store Santa. When BN biscuits were mysteriously banned in the UK, Hammy regularly sent packs of them home to his mum, who had developed a mild addiction to them. Legend has it that they were banned because of small quantities of cocaine being added to the chocolate filling. The biscuits’ sinister, smiling, winking faces merely reinforced this theory. Regardless, Hammy and his mum have both been hooked for life.

  A taxi has dropped him at the large semi-d
etached former council house in Kilmarnock where Hamish grew up. It is, of course, far less congested than it used to be then. Maggie lives here alone, apart from two ginger cats. Maggie’s husband, Stan, died from a heart attack in 2009. Hammy wasn’t well enough to travel home for the funeral but they were at least reconciled following his accident. Hammy’s brothers and sisters are scattered to the four winds. Two are in different parts of Australia, one is in New Zealand, another works in the town planning service in Orkney, and Glendale, his younger brother, is currently in jail in the American Deep South. The remaining two – his twin sisters, Dolly and Aretha – still live in Ayrshire, and will be visiting tomorrow. The fabric of the house has echoes of all of them, but Maggie doesn’t let their various absences drag her down. She is stoic and resolute. She’s glad her boy is back, but equally, now that he’s a fifty-year-old paraplegic, she doesn’t want to become his fulltime carer. In such a large and pioneering family, independence has always been important. Hammy knows it and he has been grateful for that legacy over the last twenty years. Such characteristics have helped him survive. There has never been time for self-indulgence or self-pity in the May household.

  Hammy’s mum has made a bed for him in the living room. All the other bedrooms are upstairs. He’s happy with this and he knows it’s only for a few days, but she returns to the pressing subject as they eat and watch the Strictly Come Dancing New Year’s Eve Special.

  ‘Jeezo, ah thought Bruce Forsyth wis deid!’

  ‘Naw, that’s just the guy that writes his jokes,’ his mum says.

  ‘Man, ah thought the Spanish telly was rubbish,’ says Hammy. ‘Ah’ve never ever heard ae these so-called celebrities.’

  ‘Most of them are soap stars or reality telly folk,’ says Maggie. ‘Ah hope the boxer wins … he’s lush!’

  ‘Lush? Where the hell ae ye gettin’ aw this?’ Hammy says, laughing.

  ‘What … are we no’ allowed tae have a wee bit ae slap an’ tickle at oor age?’