The Job (Novella #10)

by William Meikle

  And even as they dragged Kerr’s body away and started to clear up the mess I could still hear it.

  Rustling. Paper rustling as pages were being turned.

  * * *

  I was left alone for a good twenty minutes. George took charge while I went and had a change of shirt; the one I was wearing had gone a bit red. While I was upstairs he had two of his lads, Murray and Brown, dispose of the body. It was only after they’d gone and the blood spatter was all cleared away, that I went back down and joined George at the bar.

  “What the fuck happened?” he said, pouring himself a drink. “You know better than to pull a stunt like that.”

  “I don’t know,” I said, and I was telling the truth as much as I knew it. “He came for me, I hit him with the bottle and he went down.”

  “You did a bit more than just hit him, son. You took his fucking face off. His own mother wouldn’t know him now; not that she’ll ever get to see him.”

  I had no answer beyond holding the rustling to blame, and if I spoke to George about that right then, I was likely to end up in the same place that Murray and Brown were taking the body; somewhere that nobody would find for a long time to come.

  So I kept my mouth shut. George seemed to be treating it like an argument over my debt gone wrong, so I wasn’t about to argue the toss about it, especially if he could make it all disappear and keep the cops off my back. I had few worries on that score. George had plenty of fingers in plenty of pies, and paying cops to look the other way was something he’d been doing since way before my time in the bar. I let him keep me supplied with whisky and tried to wash away the remorse.

  But it didn’t work. The long night wore on, we talked, about debt, about Kerr and about what our story would be if anybody asked, but I still felt disassociated from the actual deed, as if it had been someone else that had done it.

  And I was still hearing that bloody rustling, louder than ever.

  George was smart enough to see that I wasn’t in my right mind.

  “It was that fucking job going south, wasn’t it?” he said. “Well, stop worrying. We’ll tell everybody that you paid Kerr off yesterday; nobody’s going to know any different now, are they? So the debt is gone, poof, see?”

  He snapped his fingers for impact and smiled, but I couldn’t raise one in reply. I’ve done violence before; I beat some kids up that George needed to teach a lesson. But I’d never done it so coldly or casually.

  And I’d never killed anyone.

  Until now.

  The paper rustled in my ear again, and again George spotted there was something wrong.

  “Get away to your bed, son. Thing’s will look better in the morning. They always do.”

  I tried to stand down off the barstool and almost lost the legs from under me. I’d had more whisky than I realized and what with that, and the shock starting to hit me, I had a struggle making my way back upstairs. I nearly fell backward twice. But George had come up behind me to prevent that happening, and he got me on a straight path into the small bedroom.

  The old guitar rang in greeting, George slammed the door behind me, I fell, face down, on top of the sheets, and that was it for me for a blessed few hours of quiet dark.

  It was to be the only rest I got for a while.

  * * *

  I woke to sunlight on my face and the sound of rustling paper in my ears. I tried to make myself busy to avoid it. I went downstairs and washed up the glassware that we’d left out the night before, then checked around the bar to make sure all trace of blood was cleared away. All that achieved was to make me remember the casual brutality with which I’d murdered Kerr the night before. I put some rock on the juke box and turned it up loud, but no matter the volume, I still heard the rustling, distant, but insistent.

  The day refused to get any better, even after breakfast, a smoke and a walk down the side of the Kelvin to try to clear my head. The rustling was getting worse, steadily, and as I passed the gothic spires of the Kelvingrove Museum the sound seemed to take on tone and timbre. At first I thought it must be a performance inside the old building, but as I turned my head, trying to pinpoint the source, I realized it was all inside my head. It wasn’t singing as such, but it resembled chanting, like a group of monks at prayer, in the distance, in a strong wind. I even started to hear words in the wall of sound. I knew enough to know it was Latin but I had no idea what it might mean.

  Rorate caeli desuper, et nubes pluant iustum.

  Peccavimus, et facti sumus tamquam immundus nos, et cecidimus quasi folium universi.

  I’m not a religious man, or at at least I wasn’t back then at the start of this business. I grew up Church of Scotland, with R.E. classes at school, then both church and bible lessons on Sundays. It didn’t take. I never expected it to. It was all too much Onward Christian Soldiers and not enough goodwill and peace. Maybe if we’d got some Presley or Cash or Aretha singing the big guy’s praises I might have paid more attention at the time. But as I said, it didn’t take, and once our Lord of Peace saw fit to give my grandparents, then parents, years of pain and abject misery after they’d prayed to him all their lives, I was done with the big bearded sky fairy for good.

  I’d hardly given the matter another thought, certainly not in recent years. But right then, in bright daylight, with the old museum at my back and the rolling river to my right, I felt something swell inside me at the sound of the chanting, something that promised me greatness, if I would only give myself to it; if I would only believe.

  Everything suddenly looked sharp and shiny, full of promise, and I felt like a kid at the beginning of a long summer holiday. Dew glistened on the trees, the river tinkled musically, the sky arced overhead as blue as fine porcelain, a solid dome holding a golden jewel inside and I remembered I was alive for the first time in many a long year.

  A small dog, a wee hairy terrier of some kind, bounced over to say hello to me. I heard the owner call for him. Charlie was his name, but I ignored that, bent down, picked him up, broke his neck and threw him into the river.

  I think I was smiling as I walked away, and if there were screams at my back, I didn’t pay them any heed. The Latin chant looped continuously in my head, and my paces marked the beat.

  Rorate caeli desuper, et nubes pluant iustum.

  Peccavimus, et facti sumus tamquam immundus nos, et cecidimus quasi folium universi.

  I didn’t have a care in the world as I walked round to the foot of Byres Road, heading back to the bar. And I didn’t see the SUV until it was too late. It hit me just hard enough to knock me down, not hard enough to break any bones, and before I could stand two burly guys bundled me into the trunk, slammed it shut on me, and we were off and away, slick as shit off a shovel.

  I kicked and thrashed at first, but this was no old banger. I was locked inside the best that German SUV engineering could provide, and I wasn’t going to be getting out until they opened up from the outside. I was in the back of that vehicle for a while, choking on the stench of oil, wet dog and several varieties of windscreen wash. It was a bumpy ride, over rough roads, and by the time we came to a halt my carefree attitude had vanished as quickly as it had come, and I was in sore need of both a cigarette and a drink.

  Neither was forthcoming.

  * * *

  I recognized the house as soon as they heaved me out of the confined boot. Even in daylight the bleak stone, clumps of rhododendron and magnolia bushes, and overgrown lawns were instantly identifiable. I was back at the scene of the crime from the night before; we both were, for even as I managed to stand upright I saw Carlson getting dragged out of the back seat of the SUV. He’d fared worse than I had; his face was scraped raw down the left side, as if he’d been dragged along a road for some distance. He seemed dazed, barely conscious, and was certainly too far gone to take any note of me as we were dragged up the steps and in through the main door of the house.

  The goons manhandled me, back into the same library we’d attempted to rob the night before
and dumped me in an armchair by a roaring fire. Carlson was almost thrown into the seat to my right, and he slumped there, moaning piteously. He still hadn’t acknowledged my presence, and I wasn’t quite enough of a fucking idiot to let on that I knew him.

  I kept my mouth shut. We were obviously in enough trouble as it was without compounding it. There was another chair to my right, even closer to the fireplace, one that was currently empty. There was also a small table containing a bottle of whisky and three glasses, but I wasn’t about to make a move for them, not with two heavies, each of them the size of a gorilla, on either side of me.

  One of the small logs in the fire split with a crack that made me gaze in that direction. When I looked back there was now someone sitting in the third armchair. I hadn’t heard or seen him enter, and my head had only been turned for a matter of seconds, but he already seemed relaxed in place, with a glass of whisky in one hand and a thin cigarillo smoking in the other. I’d heard, and even used, the word urbane, but this was the first time I’d ever felt able to apply it to someone in my presence.

  His black wool suit looked like it was a second skin, his tie spoke of an old school too rich for me to identify, his hair, and beard, was black, immaculately trimmed and as smooth as any well tended lawn. His shoes cost more than I’d made last year, and his eyes as he looked over at me told me that he knew all of this shit already, and didn’t need to be told.

  “What are we to do with you, David?” he said, and I don’t know what scared me most; his voice, which was flat, and devoid of any emotion whatsoever, or the fact that he knew my name.

  I kept my mouth shut on the grounds that I might incriminate myself, and watched him smoke and drink with no small degree of envy, for it didn’t look like I was going to be offered either any time soon. I had a packet of smokes in my jacket, but I knew better than to reach for them; he looked like a man from whom you’d have to ask permission.

  This conversation was just getting started, but his opening gambit almost threw me completely.

  “You’ll have heard the turning of the pages. And the chanting.”

  It wasn’t a question, and even as he said it I heard the far off sound of the monks, praying into the wind. Once again calm acceptance washed over me and any worry I felt over my current circumstances fell away as if it had never been. I took out a smoke, lit up and smiled.

  The man smiled back.

  “First, we shall have the opening movement,” he said. “When you got in last night, it wasn’t an ‘inside job’ as you have imagined. No, I knew you were coming all along. You were both chosen for your particular talents. But I only need one of you for the task at hand, so this is by way of an interview. And it has already begun.”

  He turned his attention to Carlson.

  My partner in crime wasn’t faring so well in the insouciance department as I. He was a rabbit caught in the headlights, struck immobile by a crippling fear that only manifested itself in a wordless flapping of his mouth and sweat that ran down his cheeks from a furrowed brow.

  The smoking man laughed.

  “It seems Mr. Carlson is not singing from the same hymn sheet as the rest of us,” he said, then looked over at me again. “It looks like the choice has already been made. If you would do the honors, please?”

  I knew immediately what was being asked. I stood, but I didn’t take my smoke out of the corner of my mouth; this was only going to take a second. I stepped over to the middle chair and, ignoring Carlson’s fear-paralyzed stare, took his head between my hands and twisted, hard. The crack was loud in the quiet of the library, and the wee man was dead before I took another draw of the smoke.

  The monk’s chant swelled in my head.

  Rorate caeli desuper, et nubes pluant iustum.

  Peccavimus, et facti sumus tamquam immundus nos, et cecidimus quasi folium universi.

  “Welcome to the team, David,” the smoking man said, and we smiled at each other across Carlson’s dead, staring body.

  3

  And that’s how I came to be in Mr. Hugh Campbell of Stratheyre’s employ.

  I found out his name, and a lot more besides, when the gorillas took the dead body away and I was finally offered a glass of my host’s fine single malt.

  “My recruitment methods are somewhat unconventional, shall we say?” he said after introducing himself. “The honey trap kills more than it catches I’m afraid. But sometimes one of the trapped ones hears the song and is brought into the fold. And here you are now, in my house, under my protection, and kept safe by dint of my will.”

  I understood none of that of course; not then. But one thing I did know: I felt safe and more content right then in that chair than I had been for many a long year. If this was what the job entailed, I was more than happy to go along with any amount of unconventionality.

  As it turned out, there were not many terms and conditions. I would get bed, full board, and the run of the house and land. In return, I would do what I was told, when I was told, with no questions asked. I was so comfortable by that point I’d have agreed to almost anything, and I told him so, to which I merely got another of his smiles.

  I found out over the next week or so that he smiled a lot. On that first night I drank his whisky and sat by the fire while he spoke, of family history, of a quest, and of something he called the Great Game. There was also a book, The Concordances he called it, that was important; I got that much, even through the rapidly approaching fog that the whisky was bringing on.

  I still didn’t understand any of it, but I was coming to realize that what mattered was that I heard it. Understanding would come when I was ready; at least that’s what Campbell told me as we parted in the hallway and he pointed up a long staircase.

  “You’re on the top floor. It’s only a small room, but the view’s a good one. You’ll take breakfast with the others in the basement in the back, then your time is your own until I need you. Understood?”

  I nodded, looked up the staircase, then back to where he had been in the hallway. He’d gone as silently as he had come; I was alone on the intricately tiled floor of the hall.

  The whole house fell silent and still as I went up the stairs passed three floors of closed doors, none with any light showing at the bottom. Overhead was a high domed skylight, but there was only blackness up there; if there was a moon it wasn’t showing its face here.

  There was only one door on the top landing, and I turned the handle to go in, expecting a room the equivalent size to my old bedroom back above the bar. But this was more like a suite in a top hotel. A king sized bed dominated an oak-lined room with bookshelves, a hefty armoire, a chest of drawers, bookshelves, a flat screen television built into the longest wall, and, to my right, a toilet and shower unit more opulent than any I had ever seen before.

  I was so overcome with the size of the accommodation that it took me a few seconds to spot the suitcase on the bed; it was my suitcase that I’d last seen above the bar in the Twa Dugs. And, lying beside it, there was my old guitar. It rang softly, as confused as I at this sudden change in our circumstances.

  Despite the booze, the days exertions, and the supremely relaxed mood I found myself in, I did not feel the slightest bit tired. The far end of the room was dominated by a large picture window, so I took my smokes and lighter over for a look at the view. The window opened out onto a small balcony and I stepped out, standing above a fifty-foot drop to the gravel driveway below. The night was dark and slightly damp, as if there was fog in the air, and I couldn’t see much beyond the darker shadows of the tall trees. They were the same trees in which Carlson and I had taken refuge, less than twenty-four hours before. Only a day ago, but one in which I’d lost my debt, found a job, thrown a dog in the river…and murdered two men, one of whom I had almost considered to be a friend.

  I figured that was enough to be going on with for one day.

  I showered, luxuriating in the gush of water and steam. It was as I was getting prepared for bed that I found I wouldn’
t need the rather threadbare clothes in my suitcase. The hefty armoire and chest of drawers were full of clothing: three suits, black of course, leather shoes, and high quality shirts, socks and underwear. Mr. Campbell obviously liked his staff to keep up appearances, and I wasn’t about to look a gift horse in the mouth.

  I slid between covers that felt as comforting as a cup of hot chocolate and fell quickly into a sleep that seemed to last forever.

  I didn’t dream, although I did hear, just as I slipped off, a choir of monks. Their prayers were now raised in a song that immediately became a lullaby sending me down into the soft dark calm.

  Rorate caeli desuper, et nubes pluant iustum.

  Peccavimus, et facti sumus tamquam immundus nos, et cecidimus quasi folium universi.

  4

  I settled into the big house’s routine quickly. I suppose an outsider would have called us heavies or even thugs, but Mr. Campbell had a far more polite word for us; he called us his bodyguards. And it was that function that saw me at his side or in the doorway watching over him, all the time he was at home in the house. On the frequent intervals when he was away I stayed in the house while he traveled with two of the others who were more experienced and more trusted. I aspired to join them.

  I was cleaner than I’d been since a teenager. I only drank occasionally, a sociable whisky with Campbell when he wanted the company, and never more than two, and even the smoking was down to less than a dozen tabs a day. I didn’t really miss them, just as I didn’t think about my old life, and when I did it was as if it had all been merely a dream from which I’d woken, freshened. Every so often I’d hear the Latin again, the chanting far off, almost lost in the wind, but it never bothered me, and I grew accustomed to its presence, even finding it in some way comforting.

  The only reminder I had of my previous life was the old guitar, but even that sat quietly in the corner, unused and discarded. If it was annoyed with me for the snub, it never showed it, apart from having ceased ringing every time I walked into the room.