Slammer

by Allan Guthrie

  A repeated high note on the piano merged into a thin spear and the point slid into his finger, made him cry out.

  He smacked his knuckles into the driver's window.

  The road moved from side to side.

  He clicked the radio off again. Quiet was better. He could live in the quiet. But there was no longer any quiet. The noise of the engine separated into sharp slices that rammed themselves into his ears.

  He dug the tape out of his pocket. Slid it into the cassette player. That fucking pop song. Ebeneezer Goode. He ejected the tape, tried the other side. More shite.

  Too much to have hoped that the tape was the one Horse had made. Didn't matter though. Didn't make any difference now.

  He wound down the window, tossed the tape out.

  He wiped his nose with his hand. Wiped his mouth. Wiped his eyes.

  He didn't have far to go.

  It was just over there. Over that way. Home was close.

  *

  Lights in the garden. Cars, other vehicles. Bustle. People. Too much to take in.

  He pulled up twenty feet away, jumped out of the car. Broke into a run.

  A man in uniform shouted. Glass ignored him, carried on running, ran right past him.

  'Hey,' the guy said, chasing after him.

  Glass bumped into someone. Bumped into someone else. Sent him sprawling.

  'Stop him!'

  A hand on his shoulder. The good one. Firm grip. Something ripped. Not firm enough.

  Fuck that.

  Then another hand grabbed him.

  He pulled the gun out of his waistband.

  Shouts and cries.

  'It's him,' someone said.

  He ignored them. Ignored them all. Walked into the house, gun drawn, made his way through a hushed cordon of cops and upstairs.

  The landing and bathroom were crammed with people in white suits.

  'Get out,' he shouted.

  They looked at one another.

  'Get the fuck out.' He raised the gun.

  They left in a scurry, squeezing past him, hands held aloft.

  He looked around. The bathroom door stood open. He stepped towards it.

  The shower curtain was pulled all the way back.

  Lorna was lying in the bath in her nightdress. Caitlin was on top of her, face pressed into her mum's neck, a purple blanket tucked round them.

  'Thank Christ you're okay.' He dropped to his knees on the floor. 'Thank Christ.'

  Lorna stared at him.

  'What?'

  She said nothing.

  'Talk to me,' he said. 'Please talk to me.' He looked at Caitlin. 'Caitlin, babygirl. Say something.'

  'Drop the weapon,' Lorna said. Her voice sounded deep.

  Glass didn't mind how it sounded. 'Of course,' he said and placed the gun on the floor.

  'Kick it over here.' Her voice came from behind him.

  He shoved it with the side of his foot and it slid along the bathroom floor towards Lorna's voice. 'Don't worry, Caitlin,' he said. 'It'll be okay. I can tell you a story if you like.'

  'Shut the fuck up.' A man with Lorna's new voice walked into the bathroom. He was dressed in a uniform and holding a gun. Another man crouched behind him. 'Get on the floor,' the first man said. 'Face down.'

  Glass did as he was told. No sooner was his cheek touching cold tile than he felt something dig into his back.

  'What I don't understand,' Lorna said, 'is why the fuck you came back.'

  'I couldn't leave you,' he said.

  'Fuckhead,' she said, and something exploded in his skull.

  PART THREE

  COGNITIVE DISSONANCE

  TUESDAY, 16 FEBRUARY 1993

  'Run that past me again, would you?'

  'Again?' Glass looked at Riddell. Scotland was a small place. Riddell was everywhere. He'd been at the Hilton. Now he was here. In fact, he'd always been here. This was his base and he'd only visited the Hilton on Mondays. Here he had a proper office with a carpet and window (barred, admittedly) and bookcases lining the wall.

  Apparently this was the perfect spot to ask Glass to go over the story again and again. Day after day after day.

  Glass was tired of it.

  'Just the end. From where you arrive home.'

  Pressure built in his head, like it always did, as if he was being choked. He felt that rope round his neck again. 'I can't.'

  'But you just did.'

  That was true. He'd never got that far before. But he couldn't go back.

  'Try again.'

  'It's like trying to reverse a car into a wall.' He'd described it like that before.

  'Give it a shot. Maybe you've dislodged a few bricks and that wall will come tumbling down.'

  Glass doubted it, but he concentrated, pictured a wall in his head and took a sledgehammer to it. Light appeared through chinks in the mortar, but when he struck the wall again, the hammer bounced off the bricks and he felt sick. The harder he struck the bricks, the sicker he felt. He shook his head, turned away, glanced round the office, hoping he might find the answer in the room's familiarity.

  But the room told him nothing. It was just an office. Neat, tidy.

  'Shadows in the dark?' Riddell asked him.

  Glass had explained it that way once or twice too. He couldn't be bothered explaining about the wall.

  'There's something there but you don't know how to turn on the light?'

  And he'd explained it like that too. Different images for different days. It all amounted to the same thing. There was something he couldn't see and trying to see it made him physically ill.

  Riddell fiddled with his pencil, pushed a sheet of paper around on the desk. 'But this is good, Nick,' he said. 'You've managed to piece events together from the start to the end. Twice is maybe pushing it.'

  The nausea came back again and Glass swallowed. 'The drugs,' he said. The medication switched him on and off. Sometimes so fast he could feel himself flickering. Sometimes he buzzed as he flickered. 'I'm better. I don't need them.'

  'We already cut down your dosage. I'm going to cut it further.'

  A sharp pain bore through Glass's right temple. He wanted to be angry, knew he should be. He didn't want to do drugs; they were dangerous. 'Take me off them.'

  Riddell adjusted his specs.

  Glass said, his head throbbing, 'I'd remember better if I could think straight. I know I would. They don't help any more.' He got to his feet. 'I don't want drugs. You know the damage they can do to you. People get up to mental shit when they're on drugs.'

  'Sit down,' Riddell said. 'Sit down, please, Nick. This is prescribed medicine, you know that. Not illegal drugs you buy on the street to get high. I'm a doctor.'

  'You're a shrink.'

  'Okay. And how does that make you feel?'

  Glass didn't laugh like he was supposed to. Or at least he thought he was supposed to. A layer of fuzz had covered his brain. It happened like that. One second he was fine, the next he could hardly remember a thing. Made concentration almost impossible. He had a book in his room, Pilgrim … Pilgrim on the Hill, that was it. He must have started it fifty times and never got beyond page ten.

  'I've forgotten the question,' he said.

  'Take a seat, Nick.'

  He was still standing? So he was. He put his hand on the back of the chair, moved it, sat down. He said nothing. Saying nothing seemed like a good tactic.

  Riddell turned his pencil upside down and scratched the back of his hand with the eraser. 'Do you mind if we go over something you were talking about before?'

  'Can't we move on?' Glass had had his fill of this. He'd thought enough about the past. He'd been here for three months and every day for the past couple of weeks they'd talked about the bloody past. What was wrong with the present? The past was over. Nothing anybody could do to change it. Why did it matter if he recalled exactly what happened or not?

  'Remember how you were when you first arrived?'

  Yeah, he remembered that. The blow to the
head had knocked him out. Apparently they'd been worried about internal bleeding. But he came to, no problem, just groggy and confused. Until he remembered what he'd seen in the bath.

  Then he'd gone berserk. Tore up the hospital room. Broke everything that would snap and shatter. Ripped everything that would tear. Including his own wounds. Once that was done, he smashed his head off the wall hard enough to make it bleed. Rocked him backwards and he fell on his arse but it didn't knock him out. Maybe the bone in his skull had hardened since the whack in the bathroom with the policeman's gun. He'd scrambled back up and was aiming for a second attempt when a couple of male nurses rushed into the room and pinned him to the floor.

  He didn't resist.

  But, still, they moved him here, a secure psychiatric hospital. A prison, like the Hilton. But unlike the Hilton, this wasn't a modern building. It was Victorian. Dark and cold and gloomy. Full of ghosts. He could see them and hear them and sometimes he could feel them.

  Riddell had asked him a question. He'd forgotten what it was, though.

  Sometimes he saw … shit, he couldn't remember their names. His wife. His daughter. How pathetic was he now? He saw their faces. Lorna? Yes. Caitlin? Yes. Flames lit inside his skull, burned his brain clean. It hurt and it felt good, felt deserved. He saw them lying in the bath. Lorna's voice. No, not hers.

  'She sounded different,' he said aloud.

  'Who?'

  'Maybe it was the smack on the head. Maybe I'm remembering it wrong.'

  'Who, Nick? Who sounded different?'

  'She sounded like a man.'

  'Ah, Lorna.' Riddell spread his fingers.

  Glass put his hand to his head. Ran his fingers over his scalp. No lumps, no stitches. Didn't even hurt when he pressed down. He was getting used to the change. He had hair again now too.

  'I'd like you to answer some more questions,' Riddell said. 'Would you mind?'

  Glass shrugged. Every day, the same routine.

  It went like this. Alarm goes. He gets up. He has a wash. He gets dressed. He waits. Nurse brings his breakfast. He takes his pills. Waits. Nurse comes to take him for exercise round the yard. Then back to his cell. He waits. Different nurse brings him his lunch. He takes his pills. Waits. Nurse takes him to see Riddell. He talks about what happened. Riddell asks questions. Back to his cell. He waits. Another nurse brings him his dinner. He takes his pills. Waits. He watches TV with the zombies. He used to be a zombie. He doesn't really remember, but he's been told. It couldn't have been so bad. Sometimes he wishes he was still a zombie. He talks to the few who can talk. Nurse takes him back to his cell. Takes his pills. Reads a few pages of his book.

  Sleeps. Dreams. Wakes up. Sleeps. Dreams. Wakes up. Stays awake.

  In the morning the alarm screams and it starts all over again.

  It was his life, and he was coping with it.

  'Back at the Hilton that night,' Riddell was saying. He paused and Glass nodded at him to continue. 'Why did you take Caesar's finger?'

  That was easy. All of this was perfectly clear in his mind now. His brain was sizzling, all that fuzz burned off. That's how it happened. Sometimes he'd feel like his head was so heavy with shit that he was about to faint and then almost instantly he'd be fine again, all the crap burned away.

  'I'd lost mine.' Glass was aware that what he was about to say sounded crazy. He said it anyway. 'I thought somebody might be able to sew his one in its place.'

  'That's not possible. You know that.'

  'Of course. But at the time, I wasn't thinking too clearly. I just remember thinking that he was responsible for me losing my finger. Seemed right that I should take his.'

  'Do you still think he was responsible?'

  'Depends what you mean. I think I cut it off myself.'

  'Do you have any idea why?'

  'I don't remember.' Glass closed his eyes, puffed his cheeks.

  'Don't make yourself sick again.'

  Yes, once, he'd spewed. He looked at Riddell, sucked air into his lungs. 'I want to remember.'

  'I know.' Riddell glanced away. 'Let's change the subject till you feel better.' He clasped his hands together. 'Tell me about Jasmine and Horse and Caesar.'

  Glass paused. He'd shot them, but he hated saying it out loud.

  Still, he'd had his fill of self-pity.

  He was a murderer. No getting away from it. He went crazy. He was in a psychiatric hospital. And they wanted to understand why. Couldn't blame them.

  He wouldn't mind knowing himself.

  He blamed the drugs. They were nothing to what he was on now, though. He felt like a pair of dogs had dug their teeth into his shins and were shaking him. Just because he wasn't moving didn't mean it wasn't happening. He could feel it, just like the creatures were there, under the desk, chomping at him. He stretched his legs out, kicked the beasts away.

  Riddell asked, 'What about Mafia? Did you shoot him too?'

  Now that was a question he had never asked before. Normally he just listened, nodded, asked a question that helped Glass move the story along. Not that it had ever moved quite so far. But this? This was new.

  Come to think of it, the last couple of days Riddell had been asking all sorts of weird shit.

  Glass tucked his legs back in, away from the dogs' teeth. Stared at Riddell until the shrink leaned back, that milky smell still clinging to him. Glass said, 'That was Watt. Why would I shoot Mafia?'

  'Mafia strangled himself and then Watt shot him.'

  'That's right.'

  'Why do you think Mafia killed himself.'

  'Because he knew that as long as he was alive, he'd protect Watt.'

  'I see. And why did Watt shoot him if he was already dead?'

  'I don't know. Why don't you ask Watt?'

  'Good answer.' Riddell inched forward. 'If Mafia killed himself, then his body would've been in the flat, right?'

  Glass nodded.

  'And the police would've found it?'

  'I suppose, yeah.'

  'They found Watt. Unconscious where you left him.'

  'He was still out?'

  'Don't believe the books you read. Knock somebody out, they stay that way for a long time.'

  'Wish I'd killed him.' Glass sometimes dreamed that when Watt handed him the gun, he pulled the trigger. In the dream, Lorna would be tugging at his arm, trying to wrestle the gun out of his hand. 'Is there a date yet for the trial?'

  'No,' Riddell said. 'We'll talk about that another time.'

  'Will I be allowed to go?'

  'Not now, Nick.'

  'Just answer me that one question. It's important.' Riddell had no idea how important. But Glass had to be there. He wanted to hear Watt explain himself.

  'Yes,' Riddell said. 'You'll be at the trial. Can I carry on?'

  'Sorry, yes.'

  Riddell said, 'So the police found Watt. Curled up on the floor. Like you'd expect.' He paused. 'But there was no sign of Mafia.'

  That made no sense. 'What are you saying?'

  'What do you think I'm saying?'

  Glass thought about it. 'You're saying Mafia got up and walked?'

  'Am I?'

  'I don't know. Are you?'

  'That's not very likely, Nick. Dead people tend to stay where they are.' Riddell twiddled his pencil again, tapped it on the desk, tapped it on his chin. He'd grown his beard. There was a streak of grey in it that snagged the light. 'So if we're agreed that he didn't get up and walk, where did he go?'

  Took a moment before Glass realised the question wasn't rhetorical. 'How am I supposed to know? I wasn't there. I'd left long before the police arrived.'

  'Have a think, anyway. See if you can give me an answer, however far-fetched. Take your time.'

  Glass tried, couldn't concentrate. Saw Caitlin's face, heard her voice, she was crying: 'Where's Mo?' She'd lost her teddy. Then, an image from a different occasion, her face white and shocked, and the words: 'Don't argue.' A metal spike slammed into Glass's brain, as fast and solid as a bullet.


  Ignore it. Concentrate.

  Mafia's body. Riddell wanted to know where it had gone. Dead bodies didn't just get up and walk, so he said. He was right, of course. Even when Glass was a zombie, he couldn't remember getting up and walking.

  He swallowed a mouthful of saliva and said the first thing that came into his head. 'Aliens must have abducted him.'

  Riddell smiled. 'Any ideas that are maybe a little less far-fetched than that?'

  That was far-fetched? Well, maybe it was. What, then? Hmmm. 'Somebody must have moved him.' Zipped straight into his head. The spike had snatched the thought out of the air, a lightning rod for ideas that would otherwise have struck elsewhere, a chair leg, wastepaper basket, umbrella.

  Riddell nodded. 'Who'd move a dead body?'

  'Mad Will?'

  'You think Mad Will came back, got rid of Mafia, and left Watt lying there for the police to find?'

  'Maybe he ran out of time.'

  'Are you absolutely sure?'

  'Well, no, I've no idea. I'm just giving you my best guess.' Glass stretched his legs out again, asked, politely, 'Can you explain it?'

  'No,' Riddell said. 'I meant, are you absolutely sure about what happened to Mafia?'

  'Why wouldn't I be? I didn't get hit on the head till afterwards.' Glass wiped sweat off his eyebrow. 'Look, Mafia choked himself to death. And I saw Watt put a bullet in him.' He held out his left hand, clenched his fist. 'I can see the gun like it's here right now in my hand.' He straightened two fingers, formed the shape of a gun. Pointed it at Riddell.

  'You going to shoot me with that?' Riddell asked.

  Glass spread his fingers, let his hand fall down by his side. His brain flickered. Stayed on, a question stretched across the inside of his head, wrapped around the spike, touching both sides of his skull, curved at one end, a dot at the other. He tried to grab it but it crumbled to dust in his fingers and a wind rose and blew it away. Flickering. He was flickering.

  'I have one more question,' Riddell said. 'The day you woke up and found your finger missing and Lorna and Caitlin gone, why did it never occur to you that Watt had kidnapped them?'

  'I don't know,' Glass said. 'It just didn't.'

  'Don't you think that's odd?'

  'No.'

  'But Watt had made threats.'