“He snapped at Coughing John,” I said. “Jimmy saw it and he told you and now you’re scared if he could attack Coughing John like that, what’s to stop him doing the same to his friends.”
She looked at me wide eyed, almost amazed by my powers of deduction. “Aye,” she said.
“What happened? What did Jimmy tell you, precisely?”
“They went back on the Saturday like I said. The wee tramp was there, hacking and coughing away like usual. He started tae shout as they walked past, but I think Marty looked at him and he shut up. That should have been the end of it, but Marty had a wee knife with him.”
“What kind of Knife?”
“Wee flick knife.”
“Still pretty deadly,” I said. ‘And illegal.”
She looked at me like I was stupid. “That’s why he has it. He’s fond of saying that no fascist dictatorship is going tae tell him what he can and can’t do.”
I sighed. I’d heard that line before from a lot nastier than little Marty.
“He just went for Coughing John?” I said. ‘And no one tried to stop him?”
“What were they meant tae do?”
“So now everyone’s just keeping quiet? Why? Are you all that afraid of him?”
“No,” she said. A tear welled in one eye. The cigarette dropped from her mouth and landed between her feet on the pavement.
“Then why?”
She wiped her face with the back of her sleeve, dragging some black eyeliner away from her eyes and across her skin. “He’s a mate. You’ve got tae stick up for yer mates.”
I stood up.
“What’re you doing?”
“I’m not calling the police,” I said. “For that, you’d better be bloody thankful.”
***
Marty was the first one to speak when I walked back to the overpass, Anna walking a few steps behind me looking sheepish and ashamed. I recognized him from her description. He was a small lad, but built like a brick wall; probably he owned his own weights. His hair was streaked blond and blue.
“What did you say to him?” Marty asked Anna, ignoring me.
I stepped in anyway. “She told me about Saturday night,” I said.
“She wasn’t there.”
“No,” I said. “But Jimmy was.”
Marty turned to the other boy, staring at him with incredulity.
‘Arsehole,” he hissed, and Jimmy shrunk away. Marty turned his attention back to me and said, “So what are you going to do about it? Call the police?”
“No,” I said. I walked right up to him, drew back my hand, bunched it into a fist, and punched him square in the centre of his face. There was a crack and he drew away from me, his nose gushing blood.
I could feel everyone draw breath. They all stepped back, looking ready to bolt for it if they had to. I knew that it wasn’t fear of me. It was fear at what Marty’s reaction would be to my punching him in the face.
I didn’t care. I’d faced idiots like him in the past; young and old, they were all the same, little messed up arseholes who had an unresolved grudge against the whole human race.
The hardness in his eyes masked something that looked like fear.
“Gonnae mess you up,” he said. He reached inside the folds of his jacket and took out his wee flick knife. Probably he thought it was going to be as easy as taking down Coughing John, a pathetic, defenceless old man. Maybe I was an old man to someone of Marty’s age, but I wasn’t defenceless, and I knew how to fight. And Marty was nothing more than an amateur with an attitude problem.
I kicked out with my left foot, catching his wrist with force enough to spasm his hand. His fingers opened and the knife fell to the ground, the clatter echoing off the clear plastic walls of the overpass. He spun away, losing his balance long enough for me to regain my own once more. I grabbed him in a headlock, using my own momentum to propel us against the wall. The crown of his head rammed against the plastic, a resounding shake echoing along the walls of the suspended corridor. I let go and he stumbled backwards. He toppled over, landing on his arse in an incredibly undignified manner. Under other circumstances, I’m sure some of the others would have laughed. As it was they just stood there.
“No one cares,” I said to Marty “that you killed a tramp, is that it?”
“Aye,” he mumbled. He couldn’t stand up again. You could see the confusion in his face; he was probably hearing bells.
You took a man’s life, you little bastard’!”
He wasn’t dead when I left him.
“As good as,” I said.
“He attacked me!” His tone took me by surprise: he was whining like a five year old complaining that the game wasn’t fair.
I looked at Marty and I saw before me a young boy with blood on his hands, caught somewhere between the games of childhood and the uncomfortable morality of adulthood. Each time they said, “Bang-bang, you’re dead,” the joke was less and less funny, as they began to realize that any one of them could die.
Revenge is a child’s weapon; honour is a game that children play. For them the world is black and white. Someone hits you and you hit them back because it’s not fair. And if you hit them back harder, then it’s their own fault. After all, they deserved it.
I looked at Anna. Her eyes were wide, but they were different than they had been five minutes beforehand, when we were sitting on a bench talking about the death of an old man who had lost everything life had given him
She was realizing what it meant to leave childhood and childishness behind. It was a lesson I doubted someone like Marty could ever learn.
Marty was on the floor, bleeding from his nose and sulking like he couldn’t understand why the adults were punishing him like this.
I could have turned him in. I suppose I should have turned him in, but he cut such a pathetic figure that I could not bring myself to do it. He was going to suffer enough through his whole self-centred life without my making things any worse for him.
I turned my back on him and walked away. The others didn’t move. No one said a word.
As I walked back out into the night, I felt tears in my eyes. I waited until I was out of sight of the gang, and I wiped my eyes with the back of my sleeve. I took a deep breath and walked back home, feeling a weight in my heart that only became heavier with each step I took.
***
When I arrived home, the lights were off. I looked in on Ros who was asleep in bed. I let her sleep and went through to the living room. I opened the window and took out a cigarette. Ros doesn’t approve of me smoking indoors, but it barely seemed to matter that night.
I’d finished two cigarettes and was sitting on the sofa when the door opened. I looked up, fully expecting Ros to reprimand me. She opened her mouth, but then her expression changed. She gently took the cigarette from my fingers and stubbed it out on the glass surface of the coffee table. She climbed onto the sofa beside me and laid her head on my chest. Neither of us said a word.
REGRETS
(Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine, December 2005)
“How long ago did you say this photo was taken?”
Across the desk, Mrs. Archer thought about the question and then said, “Nineteen-seventy-five, I think.” She smiled. “The seventies, at any rate. I can’t really remember.”
In I975, Mrs. Archer would have been thirty-two Now she was in her mid-sixties. Her once-dark hair was now grey, with streaks of black peeking through, refusing to let her youth fade entirely. Her eyes were pale, and her skin was stretched tautly over her bones. She was not frail, but it was easy to mistake her for being so.
The man in the picture was in his mid-thirties, his dark hair greased down tightly on his skull. His thin, spiv moustache lurked above a cheeky smile. His eyes twinkled with mischief and his grey suit was perfectly pressed. I could hear his cockney, happy-go-lucky accent without ever having met him.
‘And Mr Darren was your lover?”
Mrs Archer smiled, her eyes sad. “Fiancé,” sh
e said. ‘And then he disappeared”
I nodded. “It’s a long time to wait before deciding to search for him,” I said.
Mrs Archer sighed, and closed her eyes like she was remembering something from long ago. “It hurt me at the time,” she said. “It hurt so badly I thought I couldn’t go on living.” She opened her eyes again and smiled. “Mr. Bryson, you don’t look so young you don’t know about love.”
I nodded. “I’ve been in love.”
‘Are you married?”
I showed her my hand. “No,” I said. I waited for a moment before finally deciding to be honest. “But I’m in love.”
“How long?”
“I’ve been with her for two years now. Before that we were on and off for about another seven.”
“That’s when you know it’s love,” she said. “When you keep coming back.”
“You and Mr. Darren?”
“Whirlwind,” she said. “A whirlwind romance.” She closed her eyes again. “So fast, so passionate, like we were stuck in a film.”
She opened her eyes, locking her gaze on mine. “We’d go dancing, and every time he’d sweep me off my feet.”
“When did he propose to you?”
“After a few months,” she said.
“And then he disappeared?”
Her eyes grew sad, the blue paling. “Aye,” she said. “Gone, just like that. I tried to find him but there was nothing, no sign.”
I nodded.
‘And then,” she said, “it became hopeless. Have you ever just been hit by the realization that nothing you do can make any difference? That’s how it was with me. Maybe I sank into what these doctors are now calling a depression.”
I looked again at the photo of Mr Darren. He was handsome, but there was something about him I didn’t like. Maybe it was that mischievous glint in his eyes, that air of recklessness. Part of me wondered how many other women like Mrs Archer had been duped, conned, and dumped by this cocky little charmer.
I explained my price scales to Mrs Archer. She dismissed me with a wave of her hand. “You seem an honest man, Mr Bryson,” she said. Then, with a thin little smile, she said, “You’re not as sleazy as I thought you’d be. Whatever it costs I will pay. I can afford it.” Her smile dropped. “I have to afford it,” she said.
***
“It’s sweet,” Jamie said when I told him about Mrs. Archer. “A love story, you know?”
I shook my head.
He laughed. “Christ, why does Ros go out with you? No romance in your soul!”
“I give you a few years,” I told him. “Then you’re going to be a cynical bastard like me.”
“Not on your nelly,” he said. He looked at the photo of Mr. Darren. “We’ve got an address, right?”
“Sure,” I said. I passed him the information. He’d logged onto the Internet and I could see he was flexing his fingers in preparation. Sometimes I wonder how I’d survive these days without Jamie’s help. I’m no technological slouch, but Jamie’s immersed in the world of computers. He knows what to do and how to do it, and sometimes that knowledge seems almost instinctual.
Jamie called up the Friends Reunited site. It’s a godsend for finding information on people. Most users don’t even think about the information that they’re entering. Even those people who don’t want to be found can be tripped up by the site, lulled into thinking it’s safe for them to boast of their achievements online because, what the hell, it’s not real and no one will be able to trace them.
He typed in Darren’s name and the street he lived on back in 1975.
Nothing.
Jamie smiled. “Okay, he’s not an idiot, we know that much, he said. He put his hands behind his head and swivelled round in his chair. I had to back out of the way a little. Jamie’s office is little more than a large cupboard. He doesn’t mind; he’s got everything he needs. I’ve always promised him, however that when we start to make better money I’ll move us into a bigger place.
“Look, man,” he said. “If you want to go and get a coffee or something, I’ll keep working his name and all this information. I’ll get something, man. If you’re alive, there’s something about you on the Internet.”
I smiled and said maybe I would pop out, grab a drink. As I closed the door to his office, I thought to myself that for all its wonders, the Internet was a terrifying tool; all that information waiting for someone to come along and find it and put it to a use only they could know.
***
“Two days,” Ros said, stirring her hot chocolate. We were in a Starbucks cafe on the upper level of the Overgate shopping centre. Around us, the hum of consumerism filled the air. A pigeon that had sneaked into the centre through one of the automatic doors perched on a metal rafter above us.
I looked up. “What?”
“I’m reminding you now, so you don’t forget, hon. Two days.”
I thought about it a moment. I couldn’t even remember the date. Then, it came to me and I smiled broadly. “I won’t forget. I haven ‘t forgotten.”
She shook her head. “You’re a man. Personal dates, they tend to slip through your head.”
“One year,” I said. “I forgot one year.”
“Sure,” she said. “But it was after we started counting again, so it’s one year out of two, right?” She smiled, cheekily. She finished stirring in the sugar and took a short sip of the chocolate. The thick liquid stayed on her lips when she put down the cup. Her tongue darted out, finding and retrieving the remnants.
I took a sip of my coffee. “Honestly,” I said. “I haven’t forgotten.”
“I’ll believe it, babe,” she said, “when I see it.”
I made a mental note to do something about it in the afternoon, when I had some time. She was right, of course; I had forgotten. Things had been going well with the business lately, and I guess my personal life had started to slip from my mind. It wasn’t as if I was ignoring Ros; it was just that she’d become a little more a part of the scenery. Maybe it was time to start making that lack of attention up to her just a little.
“How are things going at the university?” I asked her. “Your students behaving themselves?”
“More or less,” she said. “There was a big party the other night at the Union. Those that deigned to turn up today were hungover to hell.”
I smiled. “These wacky university kids,” I said.
“You missed out on all of that,” she said. “It’s a shame. University’s not just about learning. It’s about not becoming too serious for a few more years. The undergraduate years are the best years of your life.”
I shrugged. I wouldn’t know. I could have gone to university, I guess. Somewhere along the line, however, I figured getting a job and making myself useful to society was a better way to go. Joining the police force had been, in my mind, a noble decision. Even after all these years I still think it was pretty noble. It was just a pity the resulting—and short-lived—-career hadn’t followed that same sentiment.
“There’s a dinner next week,” Ros said. “In Glasgow. A lot of boring doctors and professors talking about morality, epistemology and all that other stuff you love.”
“For Dr Denner and partner, I assume?”
She nodded. “It would mean a lot to me, babe, if you could make it.”
“I guess I can be nice to the academics for a while,” I said.
“Great.” She sipped at her hot chocolate. Her eyes looked over my shoulder at something I guess only she could see.
***
“George Darren disappeared,” said Jamie. We were sitting in Deacon Brodie’s, a local pub in the converted basement of an old church that’s just a hop, skip, and stumble from the office. A few businessmen sat around the central bar, drinking, mostly alone, and trying to chat up the young barmaid with varying degrees of success. Jamie and I were sitting at a table at the far wall, sipping from pints and talking in hushed tones.
“Disappeared?”
“Aye. Piff-paff-po
of, gone Just like that.” Jamie took another drink. “Nineteen-seventy-five marks the last record I have of him. He was living in Dundee and then he just upped stakes and left. Christ, I even managed to get in touch with his old landlord, who’s now retired but kept every single record from all the years he was running the building. Darren didn’t pay his month’s rent before buggering off. But the landlord couldn’t track him down. Darren had no living family, no next of kin, no one who knew where to find him.”
“The thing is,” I said, “this has all the marks of a con job. But from what Mrs Archer told me, that doesn’t fit
THE SAM BRYSON COLLECTION Page 7
