Dark Side of the Moon

by Les Wood

  Campbell resisted the urge to ask him if he’d lost his memory. ‘Of course I do sir,’ he said, though, in truth, he didn’t have a fucking clue who the hell he was.

  ‘Excellent!’ said the man. ‘So we understand each other then?’

  Campbell failed to see what there was to understand, but knew that this guy wasn’t going to go away until he got what he so obviously thought he deserved. Any attempt to dissuade him could lead to trouble. There was only one thing for it. Campbell flashed his smile again and winked at the man. ‘Understand completely sir,’ he said, raising his forefinger. ‘Please wait one moment and I’ll sort this out.’ Campbell scanned the room. A short distance away he spied Murray and Malloy, two of the other security officers. He waved them over.

  Murray and Malloy were typical security material – heftily built, military moustaches, small, piggy eyes. Campbell and the drunk watched as they marched over to join them. ‘My colleagues here will see to your request sir,’ Campbell said.

  He gave Murray and Malloy a sharp, business-like nod as they came up.

  ‘Hello Orr,’ said Malloy.

  ‘Mr Murray, Mr Malloy, this gentleman has asked for some preferential treatment with respect to the Dark Side of the Moon. I think we should be able to accommodate him.’ Murray and Malloy turned to the man and each gave a curt bow of the head. ‘I wonder,’ Campbell went on, ‘if you could make sure to be discreet and take the gentleman to the level zero concourse?’ Campbell held out his arm, gesturing for the man to follow his two escorts.

  The man beamed at Campbell and swayed slightly as he stepped between the two security guards. ‘Well, thank you,’ he said. ‘Thank you very much.’

  ‘Oh, and sir,’ Campbell said fishing the tenner from his breast pocket. ‘There’s absolutely no need for this. We’re happy to be of assistance.’ He handed the money back to the man who looked up at Malloy towering above him on his right and then Murray on his left. ‘Onwards men,’ he said. ‘And thank you again,’ he called over his shoulder to Campbell.

  Campbell gave a small smile in return. You won’t be thanking me when you find out the level zero concourse is the fucking pavement, he thought.

  ***

  Campbell had taken some time to get used to his and John’s alter ego – Johnny Orr. They’d decided on sticking with John’s first name, mainly because Campbell didn’t feel John could be trusted to answer to anything else. If the whole double-act thing was going to work, they had to be secure in the knowledge they wouldn’t blow it by getting their name wrong. Campbell remembered the scene in The Great Escape, where poor old Gordon Jackson is tricked into answering the German guy in English just as he’s about to get on the bus to Switzerland. He could envisage John falling for some idiotic mistake like that. Better to leave nothing to chance and avoid any risk of John forgetting who he was supposed to be. But Campbell had almost flunked the test himself in those first couple of days. He’d find himself being addressed as ‘Johnny’ and returning a blank stare to whoever was talking to him before cottoning on he should be saying or doing something in response.

  It all settled down after a week. He and John would turn up to work on alternate days, just as planned, clocking in, sharing a joke or two with the other guys in the security office, patrolling the store, noting the routines and patterns of the different shifts. They would feed back to the other at night, filling in the details of what had happened that day, who had been late, any incidents on the shop floor and, more importantly, all the trivial chit-chat that had passed between the security guys that day. Conversations ranged from the usual football stuff, to politics, to the most recent example of hot tottie spotted in the store. All inconsequential drivel, but important for Campbell and John to maintain a sense of continuity when they took their alternate turns on the job. For the most part it worked, and any slip-ups were forgotten or dismissed as the effects of a shitey memory. John and Campbell quickly built up a familiarity with the ins and outs of the job and none of their workmates suspected anything.

  The only problem was Miss McKinnon. She was the head of store security services – a manager rather than a hands-on supervisor – all power-dressed super efficiency. She had a reputation as a ball-breaker; no sufferer of fools or slackers. ‘Johnny’ had already had a few run-ins with her – stupid, petty instances: ties not done up properly, missing scheduled stops on the ‘tour of duty’ around the store, taking too long on a lunch break.

  Campbell wasn’t entirely sure if she suspected anything, but she had initially questioned how ‘Johnny’ got the job in the first place. She didn’t recall any unfilled position coming up for interview. Campbell had fobbed her off with the stock answer Boddice had fed him: that he was employed by the agency, that they’d had a request for an extra body in the run-up to the exhibition, and he was it. Campbell felt uneasy giving this answer. He had no idea who Boddice’s insider was, the one who’d arranged for ‘Johnny’ to get the job. Christ, McKinnon was supposed to be the head of security, surely she would have been kept informed of something like that? She seemed satisfied with his answer though, which was a relief. He thanked God the question hadn’t arisen when John had been on duty. She might not have been so willing to believe such a story if it had come out as a rambling, stuttering string of unrelated facts and figures, finally getting round to the point of the question five minutes later.

  Campbell could see her now, walking towards him, skilfully manoeuvring across the crowded floor, avoiding contact with any of the jostling, heaving mass of people. She looked different out of her normal business suit. She had avoided the ubiquitous black and was wearing a long, red dress, a little badge identifying her as one of the store staff and a walkie-talkie clipped to the opening of her handbag. Campbell guessed she was between thirty and thirty-five, neat short hair, just the right amount of make-up. She had certainly made an effort tonight, appearing as glamorous and chic as any of the so-called celebrities on the invitation list. It was all part of the store image of course – look, even our on-duty staff are as hip and trendy as our customers, that’s the kind of shop we are.

  She walked over and stood at his side surveying the crowd, biting her bottom lip in concentration as she scanned the room and upper galleries for any sign of anything untoward. She kept her eyes on the assorted glitterati as she spoke to him. ‘I saw how you handled that guy, Orr,’ she said.

  ‘Oh aye?’ he replied. He wondered what was coming.

  ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘It was well done. Very judicious.’ She turned to look at him. ‘You’re not as daft as you appear are you? Or as you act sometimes.’

  Campbell stiffened. ‘What do you mean?’

  She brought out a pocket mirror, checked her lipstick. ‘Oh, nothing really,’ she said. ‘Just that occasionally you can seem… what’s the word…? Distracted. Not quite connected to planet Earth.’

  ‘Well, I…’

  ‘And at other times, like just now, you’re absolutely on top of the situation.’ She dabbed the corner of her mouth and put the mirror back in her handbag. ‘That little incident had the potential to become just a tad unpleasant. Of course, you probably wouldn’t know, but he’s Jim Burns – writes Juicy Jim’s column in the Evening Echo. A man who must have had major cosmetic surgery to disguise the rather large penis that usually grows out of his forehead.’

  Campbell laughed. ‘He was just a wee bit drunk that’s all. But a dickhead nevertheless, Ah suppose.’

  ‘Yes, a wee bit drunk now, but nasty drunk later on. Nevertheless, you sorted it out without it becoming messy. Well done.’

  ‘No problem,’ said Campbell.

  ‘Okay,’ she said. ‘Just try to keep up that standard instead of dicking around as you sometimes do. I could be forgiven for thinking you’ve got some sort of split personality.’

  Campbell felt his stomach muscles tighten. He said nothing.

  ‘Anyway,’ she said. ‘Must get going, see what’s happening upstairs. Don’t want it getting too crowded up t
here.’

  McKinnon checked her watch, adjusted her earrings and headed back out into the crowd, smiling and nodding to various punters.

  Campbell watched her thread her way through the masses. Halfway across the floor, she was stopped by Mr Tennant, the store’s Director of Operations, who exchanged some words with her and motioned her to a group of four or five men in full evening suits clutching glasses of no-doubt-expensive malt whisky. Campbell didn’t recognise any of them, but they looked like the real thing; Vee-Eye-Pees, as the dear departed Jim Burns might have said. She did some gladhanding, smiling politely as she listened to what the men were saying. After a few moments, she guided the group over to a lift in the corner. She inserted a key in the lock beside the lift and the doors slid open. She shepherded the group inside and Campbell caught a last glimpse of her over a trail of streamers from a party-popper just as the doors closed.

  Now, that’s unusual, he thought. Where was that little tour party heading? There had been nothing about this in any of the security briefings. Campbell knew that particular lift was the private transport direct to the manager’s office. Only those and such as those were allowed up there. What was going on?

  The thought was dislodged from his mind by the sound of breaking glass to his left. Some stupid old cow had stumbled over a display case and had been sent sprawling onto a table full of empties. He hurried over to help her.

  When he returned to his station and looked over the heads of the crowd to the lift, he played back the scene in his head. Just as the doors had closed, he could have sworn that McKinnon turned her head and stared directly at him, fixing him in her mind, holding his image till the closing doors cut him off. The more he reviewed it, the more certain he became.

  She was clocking him.

  He felt a shiver ripple through his belly. Could she possibly know? Did she suspect anything?

  It wasn’t till she walked in on the whole team in the Bubble exactly a week later that he got his answer.

  Leggett: Unfinished Sympathy

  They thought they were all so fucking smart. Thought they had everything tied up. Leggett sniggered.

  They knew bugger all. Oh yes, they were all a bunch of arseholes. So full of themselves, the smug, cocky bastards. He had seen the looks they gave him as Boddice humbled him on the street outside the Palace: the hard, cold stares, the surprised confusion, the pity.

  No, not the pity. There had been none of that. They had all been glad. Leggett could sense it. They had been dancing inside, whooping it up at his demise, his exit from their cosy little team.

  Wankers. They didn’t know who they were dealing with.

  As they drove away into the night he had felt a cool, calculated serenity descend on him, despite the hot tears that ran down his face. When Kyle and Prentice came round the next day to collect the money (his fucking hard-won earnings!) Leggett had been calmness personified. He didn’t flinch when Prentice laughed in his face, when Kyle shook his head at him, called him ‘sonny’. No, he sucked it up, quietly handed over the money and closed the door in their faces.

  They suspected nothing.

  They thought they had won. The idiots. They still thought they had the upper hand. But Leggett knew they had dismissed him altogether. Which was their big mistake. Oh yes, they had underestimated him.

  Big time.

  And Boddice, with his carefully stage-managed humiliation, his big speech, setting an example to the rest: who the fuck did he think he was? Making out he was paying back a favour by being so kind as not to shoot Leggett dead. Shoot him dead! The prick; Boddice should be paying him to stay in the fucking team, not looking to bump him off. As far as Leggett was concerned, Boddice’s debt to him was far from repaid. The big bastard had a short memory.

  Leggett’s entry to Boddice’s little group had been a classic case of right-time-right-place, back in the days when Hutchison had been Boddice’s man on the street; a grey, almost skeletal figure who lurked outside the pubs and bookies, endlessly shifty, one eye on the lookout for the polis, the other scanning the street for the next likely customer.

  Leggett had been vaguely aware of the drug dealing that had been taking place in the toilets of the local pub, but had steered clear of actually approaching Hutchison himself, knowing him to be one of Boddice’s goons and so to be avoided unless you were intending buying something.

  That was until one Friday night, waiting for the last bus home from the pub.

  It was late summer and there was still the last shimmering of light in the sky, aqua green on the horizon fading to deeper purple overhead, one bright star winking in the heat rising from the city. Further up the street, a gang of five or six neds was fooling around with a plastic picnic table nicked from someone’s back garden. Leggett prayed for the bus to hurry up before they got to the bus stop. He was roughly the same age as them and he could probably get away without any confrontation, but if they were sufficiently fuelled up on Buckfast or MD 20/20 then there was always the risk they would give him a kicking. Just for laughs.

  A scuffing sound across the street caused him to turn his head. He recognised Hutchison lurching unsteadily from lamppost to lamppost, outstretched arms waving in mid-air, seeking purchase on some imaginary support. Too much to drink, Leggett supposed. He watched Hutchison fall to his knees and attempt to get back up. When he finally got moving again, Hutchison stumbled into the gutter, skinning the heels of his hands and letting a small groan escape from his mouth. He got to his feet slowly and stood with his hands on his knees, swaying. He pitched forward again, his legs buckling under him, and he fell heavily onto the pavement, his head hanging off the edge of the kerb. He didn’t get up.

  Leggett looked up the street. The neds had disappeared up some close or other and there was no-one else about. He crossed the road to where Hutchison was lying and crouched beside him.

  Hutchison’s eyes were closed and a thin layer of grit from the pavement crusted the side of his face. Leggett stood and prodded him with his foot. There was no reaction. He tried again, a bit harder. Still nothing.

  He knelt and turned Hutchison onto his back, his head making a hollow clonking sound as it bumped against the kerb. There was no reaction.

  Leggett saw an opportunity. He checked no-one was coming and unbuttoned Hutchison’s coat. A deep red stain leached out from a small nick on Hutchison’s polo shirt, a poppy blooming on the white fabric. Leggett examined the coat and saw a ragged gash at the same spot on the front.

  Leggett’s heart was racing. ‘Weehoo…’ he whispered. Man, oh man, some bastard had knifed him. Who had the balls to do that to one of Boddice’s men? Leggett lifted Hutchison’s limp form by the lapels of his coat and let him drop back to the pavement. The head whacked hard onto the ground, but Hutchison didn’t so much as flutter an eyelid.

  He was gone.

  Leggett scanned the street again. A light blinked off in one of the tenement windows and a warm wind ruffled the pages of an old newspaper in the bin by the bus stop, but there was no other sign of activity. He knew he had to act quickly now. If he were spotted crouching over Hutchison’s body he would have a hard job explaining that the body had fuck-all to do with him.

  He fumbled in the inside pocket of Hutchison’s coat, the smooth satin of the lining soft and cool against his fingers. He found what he was looking for – a package wrapped in a Kingsmill bread bag. He’d seen Hutchison pull this very bag from the depths of his coat many times in the pub, knew what it contained.

  He stuffed the packet under his shirt and stood, ready to sprint down the street, get himself to hell away from here. But something held him back, pulled him with an irresistible magnetism to the lifeless figure lying on the pavement. Leggett knew he was taking a risk, that he might be seen at any second.

  He knelt again beside Hutchison, bent close and let his gaze wander over Hutchison’s face, taking in the tiny details – the day’s growth of stubble, the little pits and pockmarks around his nose, the wayward eyebrow hairs,
the creases on his forehead. He leaned closer, brought his mouth to within a centimetre of Hutchison’s, and breathed in. He got a faint taste of cigarette smoke, and a sweeter whiff of alcohol underlying that. Nothing more. There was no sudden revelation, no secret whisper of the nature of death, only the stale halitotic remnants of Hutchison’s last breath.

  A dog barked in one of the close mouths across the street, and Leggett sprang to his feet. For a moment he felt dizzy, the street lights seeming to flicker and flare, and a low buzz thrummed in his ears. Stood up too quickly, he thought, although some part of him thrilled at the possibility that maybe he really had the essence of the dead coursing through his arteries, that he had absorbed some part of Hutchison’s departing spirit.

  A small titter began to bubble to the back of his throat and he quickly stifled it. Wiping his mouth on the back of his hand, he walked quickly across the street, slinking through one of the close mouths to the back green, where he navigated through flapping, fluttering sheets to a wall that led to an alleyway behind the tenements. He climbed the wall, jumped into the deserted lane and disappeared into the night.

  Back home, he checked the contents of Hutchison’s Kingsmill bag and smiled. There must have been a couple of grand’s worth of coke wrapped in little cling-film packets in the bag. They were his for the taking, for the selling on. But an insistent voice in his head told him to wait. Bide his time.

  He gave it three weeks.

  There had been a brief flurry of police activity investigating Hutchison’s stabbing, but this soon faded away as the cops lost interest and life returned to normal. It was then that Boddice’s goons began to reappear on the scene. Leggett clocked one of them – Kyle as it turned out – a sullen figure, hanging around the pub and outside the bookies, taking money from local neds and junkies and passing on the usual wee packets, re-establishing Boddice’s control.