Dark Side of the Moon

by Les Wood

  He fell asleep, the words swirling around his brain, losing their meaning by repetition, becoming nothing more than an abstract electrical buzzing as he slipped into unconsciousness.

  ***

  And now Prentice sat on the bus. With business to attend to.

  He’d made the call first thing, forcing McLean out of his bed, and requesting – no demanding – a meeting with Boddice. Prentice could picture McLean’s raised eyebrow at the other end of the phone, his smug amusement at Prentice’s audacity.

  Then, eight minutes later, the text: Boddice at the Palace – now.

  Yes, the Palace – it would be there wouldn’t it, Prentice thought. Where the whole sorry-arsed saga had started. And where it would end.

  The bus rattled along the road, rocked by the occasional bone-crunching jar as the driver skilfully managed to avoid avoiding the potholes in the road. Prentice stared blankly at the buildings, the tenements and high-rises, the shuttered shopfronts.

  The bus passed a newsagent and Prentice read the board for the Daily Record on the pavement outside – Massive City Centre Fire! Death Toll Mounts. No Trace Of Moon Diamond. He turned in his seat, craning to see out the rear window, watching the sign recede in the distance.

  No trace…

  It suddenly slammed home; why Boddice had agreed to the meeting. It all made sense now, how easy it had been to get Boddice to show his face, to crawl out from wherever he’d been hiding last night.

  Boddice thought the plan had worked. The stupid bastard actually thought Prentice had the diamond, that he’d left the others to die in the fire and made off with the stone, and here he was, calling to organise a handover. The loyal forelock-tugging servant, seeing the job through to the bitter end, no matter what. Prentice laughed. Boddice was so self-obsessed, so certain the world turned for him and him alone; the deaths of the others meant nothing to him as long as the success of his schemes was guaranteed. Why give a shit if someone fell along the way? It was all just natural selection to Boddice. Just move on. Oh, and thanks very much for the diamond. Hope it wasn’t too much trouble.

  Fuck him.

  The bus lurched to a halt at the stop before the Palace, and Prentice scrambled down the stairs and off onto the street. The day was hot; the sun hammered down on his head as he waited for the bus to move off, causing his scalp to prickle and itch. He watched the bus lumber down the road, belching thick diesel fumes into the still heat of the morning.

  He bowed his head and stared at the pavement. His shadow lay at his feet, a formless puddle of nothingness; an absence of light. Atonement and redemption were alien concepts to Prentice: as barren and meaningless as the religions they sprang from.Yet he felt them beat softly in his soul, gently insisting that what he was about to do was not only right, but necessary.

  He walked down the street and round to the back of the Palace where he found an open door, the sign above it marked Exit Only. He stood quietly for a moment amongst the long grass, letting the sun warm his back, smelling the bitter aroma of the weeds and ferns which struggled from the baked soil in tangled, serpentine knots. He listened to the sound of his own breathing, the dry, papery rustle of his lungs; the slightness of it. The fragile ebb and flow.

  ‘Okay,’ he said aloud. He went through the door and began climbing the stairs to the auditorium. With each step he felt the familiar feeling return to him; the mantle of his persona gradually descending on him like a blanket laid over a sleeping body. Emotion and sentiment seeped from him, cooling, hardening in a dark corner of his mind. His eyes, expressionless, impassive, stared straight ahead at the steps in front of him. His heart settled, wound down to a steady pace; unhurried, constant.

  Prentice reached the top of the stairway and stood at the door which led to the auditorium. His business was on the other side.

  There would be no ceremony. No fuss.

  He put his hand in his jacket pocket, felt the weight of the cold metal, and pushed open the door.

  Boddice and McLean stood in the centre of the room.They turned in unison as Prentice strode across the floor towards them, his pace swift and unfaltering. McLean, frowning, took a single step forward before he dropped to the floor, his forehead a flowering rose, deep red oozing from the hole Prentice had put there. Boddice gaped, a frown corrugating his brow. He raised his right hand. A desperate gesture of reconciliation, or a plea for mercy? Prentice didn’t wait to find out. He levelled the gun and fired a second shot, sending a bullet into Boddice’s belly. Boddice’s knees folded and he buckled to the floor. He moved his lips, made to say something, but Prentice stood over him and brought the gun up to Boddice’s head and fired. Boddice’s body slumped where he knelt and pitched forward onto the floor.

  No ceremony. No fuss.

  Prentice hesitated for the smallest instant, before raising the gun to his mouth, registering the heat of the muzzle against his lips.

  He knew this gun. Knew it well.

  The pull weight. The break point of the trigger.

  All he had to do was squeeze a little bit more.

  A bit more.

  A bit…

  Under The Bridge

  There was laughter, easy and relaxed. Clinking of glasses and cigarette smoke drifting. The girls in their summer dresses. Hot sun and the smell of spicy food. The low hum of conversation against the background city sounds. Boag watched the crowd seated at the pavement tables on Buchanan Street, envious of their casual carelessness, their safe, cosy lives. Untroubled.

  Boag shifted his weight from one foot to the other, straightening his back and squinting against the sun’s glare flaring from the office windows above. A couple, designer shades, sharp suits, white wine and bottled beer on the table, were staring at him. Boag could hardly blame them. He looked a state. His jacket was ripped and flayed; thin strips of cloth hanging like a leper’s skin from his sleeves. His face and hands were pockmarked and spattered, little studs of congealed blood cratering his features where the molten slugs from the exploding cigar tube had tunnelled into his skin. He tried twisting his mouth into a defiant grin, let the smug bastards see he was onto them, but the fragments of metal still buried in the muscles of his face grated and ground against each other, sending shards of pain slivering through his skull. He let out an involuntary moan and stumbled, tilted off balance by the spiking hell in his head. The couple at the table turned back to each other, began whispering conspiratorially, carefully pampering their prejudices and assumptions.

  Boag felt sick. The pain was one thing, but in time it would disappear. He wasn’t sure he could say the same for the wounds on his face and hands…

  ***

  After the blast in the store, he had come to lying on his back, grey clouds of smoke and dust billowing over him, ash and flakes of plaster tumbling from the ceiling above. At first he was too confused, concussed in all likelihood, to notice the stinging pinpricks on his face. As he got to his feet the pain hit him, hundreds of tiny laser-bright tines skewering through his skin, blazing points of agony, gnawing at him, devouring him. His hands jerked reflexly to his face, clawing; desperate to be rid of the white-hot torment. They, too, were covered in fresh blistering sores, blood seeping through his fingers. Boag screamed then, a guttural howl of anguish and fear. He lurched towards the wreckage of the door and scrambled out onto the fire escape and into the cool night air. Behind him, he felt the building shudder.

  Boag staggered down the fire-escape stairs, careening between the railings, grabbing the metal banisters for support, before taking the last few feet in a wild swing towards the ground. He crumpled to his knees, almost fainting with the pain. But he didn’t (couldn’t!) allow himself to slip into unconsciousness – his survival instinct kicked in, deep, hard-wired neural circuits which slowly raised him to his feet again, got his legs pumping, and carried him away from the danger.

  He ran like fuck.

  He finally came to rest in the shadows under the Kingston Bridge, sinking to the ground behind one of the giant pilla
rs supporting the roadway high above. As he allowed himself to be dragged down into a welcome oblivion, he became aware of a sound, a deep rumbling roar on the far edge of hearing, a distant but immense convulsion in the air. It was more than just the traffic on the bridge overhead. Much more.

  ***

  All that had been five days ago. Since then, he’d roamed the city in a stupor, only vaguely aware of his surroundings, sleeping in the bushes by the river in Kelvingrove Park, drinking from puddles, eating leftover sandwiches and fish suppers found in bins. Twice, he’d heaved it back up, his stomach turned by the rancid, congealed remains of the food. Pain and fever dazed him, sealing him in a sweat-soaked cocoon, unable to distinguish reality from the nightmares dancing inside his head. In a graffitied tenement close he’d found a discarded copy of the Metro and read in disbelief of the discovery of bodies in the Palace bingo hall, unsure if he was in a delirium when he saw Boddice’s name under the headline. What insanity was this? Was he the only one left?

  He wandered the streets, frightened and exhausted, uncertain what to do.

  Now, Boag found himself in the city centre, looking as though someone had taken a cheese grater to his face. His broken nose and cheekbone had subsided to a dull ache, but the wounds on his face had become infected, and the embedded chips of metal seemed to throb and pulse in hot waves. He needed to do something about this soon, get to a hospital, get some treatment. He could easily explain it away as an accident at a bonfire – Christ knew there were enough of them every night at various derelicts around the city, homing beacons for the vagrants and winos, the dispossessed and the crackheads.

  But that was for later. Right now, he had something else to do.

  A chapter to close.

  Boag turned his back on the tables and shuffled down towards St Enoch Square. He walked with his head thrust forward, defiantly moving through the shoppers like an Arctic ice-breaker, the lunchtime crowds separating and parting to either side, anxious to avoid any contact with this monstrosity.

  At the bottom of the street he paused. To his right, beyond the temporary barriers and the flashing yellow lights of the demolition and clear-up vehicles, Boag could see the twisted wreckage of the Bubble lying like a felled animal at the far end of the Heilanman’s Umbrella. A thin haze of smoke still hung in the air, drifting lazily from under the canopy of the railway bridge. Already the city was bored by the aftermath of the fire. A small group of onlookers were gathered at the barriers, the ruin providing little more than a temporary distraction on the way back to the office.

  Boag shook his head. It hardly seemed possible he’d been in there, caught in the inferno. It seemed even less likely that he’d survived. He crossed the road and carried on through St Enoch’s Square, skirting the entrance to the Underground and winding through the short back streets to emerge at the Clyde. He leaned on the railings at the edge of the pedestrian walkway. The river was a thick slab of silted sludge, dragging itself towards the sea. An earthy odour rose from the surface, the scent of hills and trees, warm fields and horses, carried down the long miles from the uplands to the centre of the city.

  On his left, the old suspension footbridge swung over the river, the delicate threads of red-painted cables and ties cradling the walkway in a graceful curve which swept down from the arched sandstone pillars at either end. He smiled. It was years since he’d last crossed it. He must have been just a boy. He remembered the slight unsteadiness under his feet as the deck bounced gently with the footfalls of the pedestrians.

  A sign under the archway of the pillar told him it was the South Portland Street Bridge. He thought of the crazed old woman in the amusement arcade. Had she mentioned that one in her rambling list? He didn’t think so. He walked onto the bridge feeling in his trouser pocket for her lighter (her lighter; he hadn’t been able to bring himself to regard it, even now, as his). It nestled, heavy and warm, amongst the oose and remnants of paper tissues which lived in the depths of the pocket. She’d said it was lucky, talismanic, but he questioned whether it had brought him any good fortune. Since he acquired the damned thing his life seemed to have gone from worse to worse still. But perhaps he was being unfair – surely luck could go either way; maybe he’d been lucky after all, but cursed rather than favoured.

  The more he thought about it, the more he convinced himself it was true. How else to describe the fact he found himself maimed and destitute, thrown into a pit of misery, yet with thirty million pounds in his inside jacket pocket? Thirty million pounds to which he had absolutely no access, no means to realise.

  The Dark Side of the Moon pressed against his chest, its angular hardness like a tumour on his ribs. It had fallen from the twin’s hand, whether by accident or by deliberate act he couldn’t tell, and he’d watched it drop, a tiny black pellet, to the floor of the store. He’d flinched as it struck the ground, expecting it to shatter, but instead it bounced and rolled through the flames towards him, coming to rest against a disembodied mannequin head. He’d limped over to it and looked up to the Arrow far above, rooted to the spot, horrified and sickened as he watched the twins’ final struggle and its awful end.

  Boag wasted no time then. He stooped and swept the diamond into his fist, stuffing it into his pocket and made his run for the grand staircase to the second floor.

  ***

  Standing in the centre of the bridge, Boag found himself breathing heavily, his legs weak and trembling, the memory of the last few days, the diamond in his pocket, both weighing him down.

  This fucking diamond, this bastard lump of rock that had cost so much and was now worthless. As valuable to him as a cut-glass trinket. No-one would believe that he, Alistair Boag, had walked away from the devastation of Trusdale and Needham with the most famous item on the planet stowed in his jacket. What was the point of thirty million pounds if he couldn’t even give the fucker away?

  Which was why he’d come here.

  He looked upriver towards Glasgow Green and the other bridges which crossed in the near distance. Close by, a cormorant stood on a wooden pile at the edge of the water, its wings spread and drying in the sun, forming a black ‘M’ against the mudbanks. The river lay thick and ponderous beneath his feet. For a second he was baffled by the eddies and currents; the river seemed to be flowing backwards, away from the city, back towards the countryside. It was a combination of the wind and tide, or something, an illusion of return, that somehow the water would flow uphill seeking out the source, perhaps even rising back to the sky as – what? Not raindrops. Rainjumps? The idea brought a smile. He liked the possibility that things could go back to where they came from. Start again. There was a sort of comfort there, a reassurance.

  Boag glanced to his right and left, made sure there was no-one else on the bridge. He reached into his jacket and brought out the Dark Side of the Moon, his fingers closing around it in a swollen fist. He didn’t look at it, didn’t give it a second glance.

  He held his hand out over the water and opened his fingers.

  There was silence.

  And then, below, the softest splash.

  The cormorant took to the air, wings beating furiously above the water as it flew in a wide circle to the other side of the river.

  Boag could feel it. He sensed the diamond sinking, falling through the murky water, coming to rest on the black mud of the river bed which closed over it, sucking it ever deeper, the thick ooze engulfing it, smothering it.

  Returning it to where it came from.

  ***

  Boag turned and headed back towards the city centre. He looked at the cables suspending the deck of the bridge. The thin red strands reminded him of something, a dim and distant memory.

  When he was just a kid.

  He dug and dug, mining the deep core of his brain, searching for the answer.

  Liquorice bootlaces. That was it. Red liquorice bootlaces. Christ, could you still even get them any more? God, he loved them when he was wee.

  He laughed for the first time in days, r
emembering when he was young.

  THE END

  Acknowledgements

  Thanks are due to Adrian Searle and everyone at Freight Books for making this all possible; to the excellent Russel McLean for editorial guidance, and for showing me how to cut deeply without spilling any blood; to Allan Guthrie who provided wonderful, detailed feedback on an early draft of the book; to all those friends and fellow writers who read early versions of chapters and first drafts, provided helpful comments and suggestions, and, of course, welcome encouragement.

  And, finally, to Marie, for every single day.