Bred in the Bone

by Christopher Brookmyre

  The guard seemed strangely apprehensive about giving this order. It wasn’t as if Glen could refuse.

  He put down the smashed computer printer he had just lifted and made his way towards the fire doors that led outside to a partially covered courtyard. This was where the empty hoppers and bins were returned to once the reprocessing firm had dealt with their contents. The big hoppers ran on castors, but various colours of wheelie bin were used for collating smaller items, such as discarded circuit boards and, in this case, lengths of wire and cable.

  Glen was ambushed moments after the doors swung shut at his back. They converged from behind as he entered a narrow channel between two rows of skips full of unsorted plastic, appearing all at once, as though from nowhere.

  Glen recalled his first real kicking at the feet of a young team in Gallowhaugh. ‘Polis boy,’ they had called him, in reference to his dad. They were led by a sadistic wee piece of work called Joe McHaffey, whose oldest brother ended up one of Stevie’s trusted lieutenants.

  He remembered lying on the ground, cowering in a ball, the repeated impacts of his forearms being driven against his head. That wasn’t satisfying Joe, though.

  ‘His nose isnae burst yet.’

  Glen would never forget those nasally wee words, as he instructed his mates to grab his arms and expose his face.

  Joe wanted to see blood.

  These guys were after much more than that.

  Last Man Standing

  Jasmine was led through the restaurant, conscious of a drop in the volume of discussion as those gathered noted the new arrival. She felt almost every eye in the place take her in, and from this rapidly deduced that everybody here knew everybody else. They were all similarly over-dressed for the time of day, though the women’s colours were generally sober. It looked like a wake, but she knew that Fullerton’s body would not yet have been released. This was some kind of informal memorial that was being hosted in the meantime.

  Despite the upmarket décor and the name of the award-winning chef boasted on the menu she still couldn’t picture her mum in this place, even in its present incarnation. To put it politely, these were not her mother’s kind of people. It was a strangely paradoxical effect that to put a suit or a posh frock on certain individuals only served to emphasise the less presentable elements of their appearance. It was like prefixing the term ‘businessman’ with the word ‘legitimate’.

  There were women drinking glasses of wine and men downing pints, and it wasn’t yet half-ten in the morning. Jasmine could smell the alcohol off the spillage traps on the bar and felt queasy. She recalled Josie’s voice whenever she encountered jakeys on the street supping Special Brew or Buckfast while she was still digesting breakfast: ‘I can’t say the sun’s quite over the yardarm.’

  The mum who brought her up belonged to Josie’s world. How the hell did she ever end up in this one?

  She was led to the brasserie’s compact but high-ceilinged private dining room, where several mirrors contributed to an artificial sense of space around the single long table. It was a neat trick, important not to make a group paying through the nose for the VIP treatment feel like they were being shoehorned in. Nonetheless, Jasmine feared she was going to be feeling pretty claustrophobic in here before the end.

  Sheila pulled out a chair for her, significantly on the other side of the table from the exit, then sat down opposite. David, or ‘Doke’ as Sheila called him, remained standing against the wall, close to the door. Jasmine got the unmistakable impression that she was very much under scrutiny, and quite possibly under their guard.

  Jasmine produced the photograph of her mum with Sheila’s late husband.

  ‘I believe you took this,’ she said, placing it on the table and turning it around to face her hosts.

  She watched Sheila place a hand over her mouth at this ancient artefact that had found its way to her here and now as though through a wormhole in time. Doke leaned over to examine the photo also, letting out a surprised chuckle.

  ‘Jesus. I remember her right enough,’ he said, a tinge of pleasure creeping into his voice. ‘That’s Stevie and Nico.’

  Sheila looked a little more haunted by the image, the sight of her late husband in his youth perhaps cutting a little too deep right then.

  Her eyes lifted from the picture to regard Jasmine once more.

  ‘You don’t look like her,’ she said, but it sounded more like an observation than a scorn upon her claim.

  ‘She often said that. I’ve seen pictures of her as a younger girl: there’s more of a resemblance in those. People would sometimes say I must look like my father, but to be honest that usually led to her getting off the subject.’

  Jasmine tried to picture Doke as a younger man, searching for a sense of what her father might have looked like.

  ‘We had no idea Yvonne was pregnant,’ he said. ‘She just disappeared.’

  ‘Aye. “Just disappearing” was catching back then,’ Sheila said pointedly, though Jasmine couldn’t tell whether the jaggy end was aimed at her or Doke.

  There was a light knock at the door, and a waitress appeared carrying coffees for the three of them. Jasmine took a sip in silence, wondering whether her cheeks were as red as they felt, with two pairs of eyes still examining her so intently. She had little doubt that they believed her, but knew that wasn’t the biggest question on their minds.

  ‘She needed to get away,’ Jasmine said, aware there was no point in sugar-coating this. ‘She didn’t want Jazz knowing she was pregnant. She wanted a clean break from her life in Glasgow.’

  ‘Where did Yvonne go?’ Sheila asked. She glanced down at her side, where Jasmine guessed her phone sat in her right palm.

  ‘Edinburgh. Not exactly the ends of the earth, but far enough.’

  ‘And she raised you herself, or . . .?’

  ‘On her own, yeah.’

  ‘Did she work?’

  ‘She was a drama teacher.’

  ‘And what is it you do yourself?’

  Sheila’s eyes narrowed just a little more as she spoke, and Jasmine couldn’t help but feel she had just been checkmated.

  ‘I have my own business. I’m a private investigator.’

  Sheila sat back in her chair and sighed with a grim satisfaction. She held up her iPhone, on which a web page was visible.

  ‘Private investigator, Jasmine Sharp. You’re the one who helped put away those bent polis who were working for Tony McGill.’

  ‘That’s right.’

  Doke’s face darkened.

  ‘You’re the lassie that was cuttin’ aboot with Glen Fallan when he showed up back from the dead two years ago?’ he demanded, his voice low, like storm clouds rolling in. Jasmine could tell it wouldn’t take long for them to break. ‘The same bastard that just shot oor Stevie? The bastard that . . .’

  ‘Doke,’ Sheila cautioned. ‘Keep the heid. The lassie’s no’ done nothin’.’

  ‘Do you have any idea who Glen Fallan is?’ he asked, incredulous. ‘Did he tell you about the good old days?’

  ‘He told me enough,’ Jasmine replied. ‘I know he killed people, but—’

  Doke leaned over, slapping a hand on the table.

  ‘He killed your fuckin’ father. He killed Jazz. Did the cunt fuckin’ tell you that?’

  Jasmine looked up at the boiling anger in his face, then at her coffee. She picked up the cup and had a long pull at it, swallowing slowly. She wasn’t trying to look nonchalant, she just needed something to physically occupy herself for a few moments while his anger receded, as she feared any kind of immediate verbal response would be incendiary, regardless of the content.

  She didn’t answer his question, reckoning her lack of surprise was answer enough.

  ‘Nothing about this is straightforward,’ she said. ‘Yes, he killed my father. And yet, when my mother was in her last days, she had Fallan tracked down so that she could see him again before the end. That’s what brought him “back from the dead”. Was it to forgive him?
I don’t know. Was it to ask him why he did it? I don’t know. I want to find out what happened back then. Like it or not, we’re related, all three of us, but unlike you, I’ve never seen my father’s face. I’ve never even laid eyes on a photo.’

  Doke let out a very long sigh, the sound of a storm blowing itself out, if perhaps only temporarily. He sounded frustrated, like this would have been a lot easier to deal with if it fitted into the paradigms he understood. Sheila remained harder to read, still shutting herself inside and assuming the weather outdoors was bad.

  ‘There’s not many pictures of Jazz,’ Doke said, sounding more reflective. ‘At least, not from around the time he was seeing Yvonne.’

  He looked at Sheila as he said this. There was clearly something unspoken in his latter remark.

  ‘Didn’t like getting his photo taken,’ she agreed. ‘He had this scar, right the way down his face, from forehead to jaw.’

  She touched her own face as she spoke, looking away as though she could see Jazz in one of the mirrors.

  ‘How did it . . .’ Jasmine inquired tentatively, feeling she was on delicate ground.

  ‘This sneaky wee cunt Stanley Beattie slashed him one night in a club, out of nowhere,’ said Doke. His voice was tinged with an anger that still sounded raw, decades after the fact. It drew a warning look from Sheila: keep a lid on it.

  ‘Jazz was a looker, and he knew it,’ she said. ‘He had a face that would get a jelly piece at any door, as my mammy used to say. Always had women wrapped around his pinkie, and he took a few liberties.’

  She and Doke traded a look, Sheila telling him not to bother denying it.

  ‘Aye, he flung it aboot,’ Doke admitted. ‘He was different after the slashing, though. Quiet. He’d calmed doon.’

  ‘He wasn’t calm, he was angry,’ Sheila countered. ‘Suffering in silence.’

  ‘Either way, he did change,’ Doke said. ‘Yvonne wouldn’t have went near him before that. Not that way, I mean: she’d known him for years, like, but she knew he was too much a Jack the lad to get involved with him. She must have thought he was calmer.’

  ‘Some women are drawn to a damaged man,’ Sheila said. ‘They think they’ll be able to put him back together in a way they prefer. Doesnae work out like that, though. We all thought Jazz was calmer. Truth is, he was just bottling it all up and eventually it was gaunny explode.’

  There were a few seconds of quiet, which in this context Jasmine knew not to mistake for a moment of calm. Something hung in the air between these two that was not precisely blame or accusation, but definitely a cousin of both. Sheila seemed to be leaving it to Doke to continue, but he remained silent, his eyes straying to the photograph and back to Jasmine.

  ‘Jazz killed Stanley Beattie as soon as he got out the jail,’ Sheila said.

  ‘He didnae mean to kill him,’ Doke stated adamantly. ‘He went to slash him and the guy put up his arm; Jazz ended up opening his wrist. It was an accident.’

  Sheila said nothing, just gave Jasmine an arch look as though to say, ‘How do you respond to that?’

  It was a first glimmer of a different alliance that might emerge here, between the two women against a male mentality rather than between Stevie’s two relatives against the interloper.

  ‘He never moved on from the slashing, that’s the point, Doke. We thought he had changed but the whole time he was just waiting to even up the score. It’s why he’s no’ here any more. It’s why Stevie’s no’ here any more.’

  ‘Naw, that cunt Fallan’s why they’re both no’ here any more,’ Doke thundered, glaring at Jasmine.

  ‘Aye, because none of you can ever move on,’ Sheila retorted. ‘Look at this photo: what does it tell you? Nico, Stevie, both gone. You should be happy, Doke: under these rules you’re the winner if you’re the last one left standing.’

  ‘Fallan’s still standing,’ he reminded them darkly.

  ‘Why did Fallan kill my father?’ Jasmine asked quietly, almost apologetically.

  ‘What did he tell you?’ Doke replied.

  ‘Nothing. Only that my father’s death made it easier for my mum to escape. He wouldn’t tell me why he actually did it.’

  ‘Nobody knows for sure,’ Sheila said, ‘but it happened after Jazz battered her.’

  She gave Doke a look, warning him against any denial based on misplaced filial loyalty.

  ‘He thought she was swithering about being his alibi,’ Doke admitted.

  Finally Jasmine was seeing something other than defiance and anger in his expression when talking about his brother.

  ‘She had been with him when he killed Stanley, but she told the polis he was with her somewhere else at the time. The polis were leaning on her because they knew she was lying and she was the weak link.’

  ‘So he thought beating her up would engender a deeper loyalty?’ Jasmine asked, barely masking her outrage.

  ‘He wanted her more afraid of him than she was of the polis,’ Sheila explained. ‘But Fallan found out, and it never went well whenever Fallan found out about a guy beating up a lassie.’

  ‘Well, you would know,’ Doke muttered. ‘You’ve nae problem with evening the score when it suits you, eh Sheila?’

  Sheila stared down at the table for a moment, then continued as though Doke hadn’t spoken.

  ‘Fallan’s da used to leather his maw,’ she said. ‘Used to leather everybody in the hoose. But because his da died before he could stand up to him, Fallan was always looking for surrogates, you know?’

  Jasmine thought of the place she had first found him, at a domestic violence refuge where he was handyman, gardener and courier, among other services. Rita, the woman in charge, had alluded to what happened when abusers turned up at the place. The police would warn the blokes off, escort them from the premises, but once they knew their wives or partners were there, they always came back; except when Fallan was around.

  ‘When he warns them off,’ Rita told her, ‘they never come back.’

  ‘Jazz just went out one night and was never seen again,’ Doke said, his lips thin, eyes narrowed too. ‘That bastard killed him, dumped him somewhere and then lied to us about it. We never got to bury him, never had a proper funeral. That’s what Fallan did to your father.’

  The waitress who had brought the coffees returned looking for the empty cups and perhaps to see if anyone wanted anything else. She got as far as popping her head into the doorway and very swiftly read the atmosphere, hurriedly turning on her heel.

  ‘He told me he owed me,’ Jasmine said, feeling like it was incumbent upon her to respond, though she didn’t know who appointed her Fallan’s spokesperson or apologist. ‘He said he owed me a debt.’

  ‘You’re not the only one he felt he owed something,’ said Doke. ‘It just wasnae so much settling a debt as payback.’

  ‘For what?’

  He and Sheila shared a look, like he knew she wasn’t going to be happy but he couldn’t be bothered with her disapproval any more.

  ‘Fallan tripped himself up, for once. He told us he helped Jazz pack and fly away to Spain to lie low. Problem was, Stevie had contacts in the polis, and he found oot that Immigration had no record of Jazz leaving the country. That’s how we knew he’d killed him.’

  ‘What did you do to him?’ Jasmine asked, steeling herself.

  Doke rolled his shoulders, his posture straightening. All of a sudden he looked like he was answering in court.

  ‘What happened after that, I cannae say for sure, because Stevie was fly, a born schemer. Unlike Jazz, he didnae just blaze in and worry aboot the consequences later.’

  Doke’s face shone as he warmed to the tale.

  ‘There was a few of us he knew he could rely on. He gave each of us an envelope, which we werenae to open until we were alone. In it was a message telling us a time and a place. Some folk turned up to wherever it said and found one other member of the crew. Their instructions were just to stay there until they got the shout that it was done. Other boys
had instructions for getting Fallan.’

  ‘What did they do to him?’

  ‘I was one of the folk that ended up just sitting around, so this is second hand. They ambushed him. They put a sack over his head and arms, and pinned him like that with a rope, then they got into him with hatchets and hammers and all sorts. I heard even a sword. They assumed he was deid when they left him, and for two decades that’s what everybody assumed.’

  ‘Why the business with the envelopes?’ Jasmine asked.

  Sheila looked down at the table, evidently not sharing Doke’s pride in her late husband’s resourcefulness.

  ‘It was in case the polis ever tried to get somebody to turn. Only the folk who were there knew who else was involved, and the rest all had cast-iron alibis. I never even knew for sure whether Stevie was one of the ones that went – until Fallan turned up again and shot him.’

  He gave her a look of contempt as he said this, like she had cheapened him by forcing him to explain all this to her. He also seemed to think it was the last word, the irrefutable clincher. If so, Jasmine was still missing something.

  ‘I spent a lot of time with Fallan,’ she said, ‘and he never talked about grudges or settling scores. He had left that all behind for twenty-odd years. Why would he suddenly decide to kill Stevie now?’

  ‘Beware the vengeance of a patient man,’ Doke replied. ‘That’s what Stevie always said. Didn’t he, Sheila? Well, now we know whose vengeance he was afraid of.’

  Blunt Instruments

  There were four of them. Two had stepped in from behind, cutting off his escape route to the recycling workshop. Two more had emerged from between the big skips, standing in front of what was anyway a dead end.

  He didn’t recognise them. As anticipated, they had not previously made themselves known, and the bloke who had threatened him directly was not among them.

  They all had improvised weapons. They had blades. They had clubs.

  They had no chance.

  He had chosen his first target and struck before any of them were even sure he’d noticed them. He collapsed the guy’s windpipe with a fingertip blow to the throat, disarmed him and used his falling body to block off the man next to him as he stepped sideways through the narrow channel.