Good News, Bad News

by WHS McIntyre

  It was almost surreal. There was Freddy, so terrified of Jake that for the past year he’d put a thousand miles between them, now sitting at the same table having breakfast with the man who wanted to kill him. And then there was Ellen, once desperate for Freddy’s return, now shacked up with Jake, the man who’d not only wanted to kill her husband, but was at least partly responsible for the death of her brother.

  The only constant factors in the whole business were Ellen’s lies. She’d lied to me from day one. Did she really have blood cancer? She was the healthiest leukaemia victim I’d ever seen. If she truly had only three months to live I’d have expected more symptoms than the occasional cough, holding of her side and pained expression.

  ‘It’s about Bouncer,’ I said.

  ‘Who?’ said Jake.

  ‘The dog.’

  ‘What about it?’

  ‘I wondered if Ellen might like to keep him. Just for . . . a while.’

  ‘What’s the matter with the dog, Robbie?’ Ellen asked. She tossed Bouncer a scrap of sausage

  ‘Nothing,’ I said. ‘He’s great, but I’m not going to have any room for him in my new place. I thought he might be company for you.’

  ‘I’m company for her,’ Jake said.

  ‘I mean for when you’re not here.’

  Jake made Ellen’s mind up for her. ‘It’s not happening.’

  ‘Come on, Jake,’ I said. ‘It’s only for a few weeks until I can make other arrangements.’

  ‘Not even for a day. If you want me to get rid of it, leave it. If not, take it with you.’

  Whether Jake was being conned again was fast becoming a matter of complete indifference to me.

  Bouncer padded through the back door and over to Ellen. What should I do? Let him take his chances at the pound? There was no way I was leaving him for Jake to deal with.

  ‘He’s a lovely wee dog, right enough,’ Ellen said, patting Bouncer’s head.

  ‘Munro, you’ve already been told about the dog,’ Jake said. Ellen pulled the sleeve of my shirt. ‘Come on, Robbie. I’m needing a fag break anyway.’ Leaving the frying pan sizzling, she walked to the back door. I followed, Bouncer tagging along. Once outside, Ellen put her hand into the big pocket in the front of the apron and removed a single cigarette and a match. She gave the latter to me. I sparked it off the door post and held it to the end of her cigarette.

  She took a couple of quick puffs. ‘The food will be ready in two minutes.’

  ‘When did you start smoking?’ I asked.

  ‘I’ve got cancer. I thought I might as well see what all the fuss is about,’ she laughed. ‘It can’t do much harm and I shouldn’t have any trouble stopping.’

  ‘Everything okay, between you and Jake, is it?’ I asked.

  Ellen took another quick puff and then threw the cigarette away. It lay smouldering on the slabs, a thin ribbon of smoke spiralling upwards. Bouncer went over to investigate. Three draws from a cigarette? She hadn’t come out for a smoke.

  ‘Why are you here?’ she asked.

  ‘The dog.’

  ‘That so?’

  ‘And to find out what you and Freddy are really up to. Please tell me you’re not trying to con Jake. Not again.’

  ‘What makes you think that?’

  ‘Are you?’

  She looked at her feet for a second or two. ‘What do you know?’

  ‘I know that Jake has signed over to you and Freddy one-third of the development rights to what he thinks is a piece of worthless land. I also know that the head of planning isn’t a tall redhead with great legs. However, your former nurse is.’ I walked over, squashed the still burning cigarette with the sole of my shoe and came back. ‘What I don’t know for certain is if this land is worthless, or if there’s anything actually the matter with you.’

  She went to put a hand on her side.

  I took a hold of her wrist. ‘Don’t bother for my sake.’

  She stood up straight. No sign of pain in her face. ‘You won’t say anything, will you?’

  ‘Why shouldn’t I?’

  ‘Do you trust me?’

  I laughed.

  ‘Just this once, Robbie. Trust me, everything will be made clear later.’ She bent down to scratch Bouncer’s head. ‘I’ll even look after your wee dog for as long as you like.’

  I released my grip on her arm. ‘I’m warning you, Ellen, Jake’s a dangerous man. He would have killed Freddy if he’d managed to find him the last time. Don’t think he’ll have forgotten all about that, and don’t think you’re bomb-proof either. You might have him besotted for now with your long lost love routine, but Jake’s first love was, and always will be, money.’

  Ellen replied with a smile and a wink. She patted my cheek, and, drawn by the smell of fried food, and with Bouncer at my heels, I followed her into the kitchen.

  59

  It was only about twenty minutes since I’d left Joanna and Tina. Definitely no more than half an hour. They’d be ages at the wedding. Women loved that sort of thing; even five-year-old ones. There was plenty of time for me to stay and have brunch, just so long as in doing so I didn’t give Jake the impression that I was in on whatever plan Ellen was hatching. I didn’t want any repercussions later.

  I looked to my right at Freddy. I didn’t know what to make of him. Was Ellen’s rejection of him for real? How had she found out about his woman in Prague? Did he have a woman in Prague? I’d never told anyone after he’d confessed to me. The whole thing between Ellen and Freddy and Jake was built on layer upon layer of lies and deceit, so much so that I wanted to cut through it all with the knife Jake was spinning around on the table top.

  Ellen brought over two plates of food, set one in front of me, the other in front of Jake and stepped back to accept our praise. Bacon, sausage, black pudding, a slice of haggis, fried mushrooms, a grilled tomato and a round of buttered toast cut in triangles. Ellen had already offered to open a tin of beans, but it was Jake’s opinion, with which I wholly concurred, that the baked bean had no place on a Scotsman’s breakfast plate.

  I started in on mine straight away. Jake sat back, knife and fork at the ready, while Ellen refilled his mug from a big brown teapot. Having done so she whisked up a couple of eggs in a bowl, poured the mixture into the frying pan and, bringing her own mug of tea with her, took a seat at the table while Freddy’s omelette cooked.

  ‘How do you fancy a wee dog to keep you company, Ellen?’ I asked. ‘Plenty of room for it here.’

  Jake answered for her. ‘She’s got company, and you’ve been told. Now shut it.’ He cut the end off a link sausage, dipped it into the yolk of a fried egg and, balancing the morsel on the corner of a slice of toast, shoved the whole lot into his mouth.

  Ellen watched him, admiring him eat. ‘Jake likes a fry-up,’ she said. ‘Never starts the day with anything else.’

  Up until then I’d always assumed Jake Turpie ran on ill-will and red diesel.

  ‘How’s my omelette doing?’ Freddy asked.

  Ellen got up and prodded the edges of the egg mixture with a fish slice. ‘Won’t be long. Do you want anything in it?’

  ‘How can I have anything in it?’ he asked. ‘My IBS is bad enough without stuffing my gut with slices of fried offal.’

  ‘There are some mushrooms there. Full of goodness, as you well know,’ I said, harking back to his lecture on the nutritional benefits of fungus, as delivered to Joanna and me in Prague.

  Freddy glanced over at the few remaining mushrooms on the chopping board. ‘No, thanks, I’ve gone off mushrooms.’

  Freddy took out a pack of cigarettes and put one in his mouth.

  ‘You’re not smoking in here,’ Jake said, mouth full of sausage, egg and toast.

  Without a word Freddy and his cigarette went outside. Bouncer came over and sat beside my chair, looking patiently up at me, not begging but happy to deal with anything that might happen to fall from the table.

  There was a scraping sound somewhere above my head.


  Ellen looked up at the ceiling. ‘Birds on the roof again.’

  ‘Sounds like they’re wearing hiking boots,’ I said.

  Bouncer started to bark. Ellen came across and patted his head. ‘I know. You hear everything through the felt. Sooner it’s finished and all the slates are on the better. Go on, Robbie,’ she said. ‘Give the dog one of your sausages.’

  From what little knowledge on dog training I possessed, I knew it wasn’t good to teach a dog to beg at the table. And, apart from that, the sausages were excellent.

  Ellen removed a chocolate digestive from the pack. She broke it in half and threw a piece to Bouncer who devoured it in an instant. She was about to throw him the other half, when I remembered Joanna’s warning about the dangers of giving chocolate to dogs. The words weren’t out of my bacon-filled mouth before the rest of the biscuit was mid-air, snapped up and gone. Oh, well. It was just a bit of chocolate. How poisonous could it be? Did it matter for a dog whose days were numbered anyway? I speared a mushroom, lifted it to my mouth and stopped. I pulled it away and looked at it. Freddy was off mushrooms? What happened to mushroom omelettes being as much fun as food got for him? What about Ellen not having cancer, that Jake had taken out a joint life policy with the Fletchers, and that a lot of mushrooms were highly poisonous?

  ‘What’s wrong with you?’ Jake demanded, clearly wondering why I was sitting staring at the button mushroom on the end of my fork.

  I reached across and, with a sweep of my arm, propelled his breakfast plate off the side of the table and across the room. It smashed, scattering food everywhere.

  Jake, knife and fork in hand, stared down in disbelief at where his food had once been and then up at me with a face that matched his nice red shirt.

  Ellen folded Freddy’s omelette expertly, laid it on a plate and brought it over to the table. ‘What was all that about, Robbie?’ she asked, calmly.

  I ignored her, not taking my eyes off Jake, talking slowly to him as I backed my way out of his immediate strike-zone. ‘You need to listen to me, Jake,’ I said, when I thought I’d reached a safe distance. ‘I’ve got some good news and some bad news.’

  Slowly and deliberately, Jake set down his cutlery.

  ‘The good news is that there’s nothing the matter with Ellen . . .’

  He closed his eyes, shook his head and opened them again. ‘What?’

  ‘She’s not got cancer, it’s all a con. The bad news is that she just tried to kill you for the insurance money.’

  Another ‘What?’ though louder, was all Jake could manage.

  ‘The mushrooms,’ I said. ‘Ellen was trying to poison you . . .’ Even more worrying was that she’d also tried to poison me.

  Ellen set down the omelette where Freddy had been sitting. Jake was standing now, white knuckles pressing down on the table, and looking very much as though he was ready to leap across it at me.

  Ellen showed Jake the palm of her hand, as though she were stopping traffic. Staring straight at me she used her other hand to pick up my fork with the mushroom still impaled on its prongs. She ate it. Then one by one she picked up every single mushroom from my plate and ate those too.

  Jake edged his way around the table towards me. Bouncer, who had been making a good job of clearing the mess on the floor, sensed something was amiss and started to growl; almost as loudly as Jake.

  Ellen’s raised hand was now firmly in the centre of Jake’s chest. ‘Sit down,’ she said to him. ‘Robbie just made a mistake.’

  ‘A mistake!’ Clenched fists by his sides, Jake’s eyes measured me for a coffin.

  Ellen laughed. ‘I think he’s been watching too much telly. Now, go outside and cool off and tell Freddy his omelette’s on the table. I’ll sweep up in here and make you some more food. There’s plenty left. I can cook it up in no time. Go on, Jake,’ she said, when he showed no intention of moving. ‘I want a word with Robbie, in private.’

  How did she do it? I’d seen brave men quake in the face of Jake Turpie’s anger, and yet Ellen treated him like a misbehaving schoolboy.

  Jake grunted and eventually sauntered grudgingly towards the kitchen door. Sneering viciously, he feigned a kick at Bouncer. The dog had a good memory. It bolted, but once at the door, it turned to face him, snarling, blocking Jake’s exit.

  ‘There’s a lot of things you don’t know,’ I called to Jake.

  He stopped in the doorway. ‘I know all I want to know. Now move the mutt before I kick its head in.’

  A single flake of slate fell from the roof and landed beside Bouncer. The dog lowered its head to sniff it.

  ‘Bouncer!’ I yelled, and, cautiously, man and dog passed each other in the doorway.

  ‘Oh, Jake . . .’ Ellen called sweetly.

  Now outside the kitchen door, Jake turned around, cracking a smile at the sound of her voice. ‘Yeah?’ Two more flakes of slate, larger than the last, floated down like black snow and landed on the shoulder of his bright red shirt. Sometimes X marks the spot. This time I was certain red was intended to spot the mark.

  If I’d thought about what I was going to do next more carefully, I might never have done it. I’d already riled a man who really did not like being riled and, if I was wrong, he was going to like what I was about to do even less.

  Stamping on one of Bouncer’s paws as I did, I sprinted forward. The dog yelped as I yelled and hurled myself at Jake, hitting him dead centre of his nice new shirt.

  As I lay sprawled on the ground, trying to catch my breath, what stunned me most was not my body having thudded first into Jake and then onto the concrete slabs, not even the searing pain in my left ankle, but the noise of half a ton of finest Welsh slate exploding beside me. I tried to move. The pain in my ankle was excruciating. Somehow I climbed to my feet, the bottom of my jeans soaked with blood, I’d lost a shoe and one of my socks felt horribly squishy and warm.

  Whatever Jake was made of, it was resilient stuff. While I’d been rolling in agony, coughing amidst the clouds of slate-dust, he’d already leapt up and, having tramped over the hill of broken slates, was now standing in the kitchen doorway, confronting Ellen, blocking her exit, his face inches from hers.

  Ellen held his gaze defiantly and then, for the first time ever, I saw fear in her eyes. Her expression, previously so relaxed and confident, began to weaken and then crumble. Lowering her chin onto her chest, she began to shake and whimper.

  From the front of the house came the sound of a car ignition turning over, catching. I hopped to the side of the building to see Freddy in the driver’s seat of the hired hatchback, revving the engine. A woman alighted, holding a back door open. I recognised her, though she wasn’t wearing a green trouser-suit today. No, today her dress was different: a dark suit and blouse and stout sensible shoes. Only the hair was the same. Auburn. Who she was I didn’t know. Only that she was neither a nurse nor the head of West Lothian planning department.

  ‘Come on, Aunt Ellen!’ she yelled.

  Jake raised a hand. Ellen flinched. He put the hand on her cheek. Eyes squeezed tightly, she cowered from his touch.

  ‘Is that right, Ellen,’ he said softly. ‘Do you not have the cancer?’

  Ellen could only reply with a tiny, terrified shake of the head.

  Jake removed his hand. ‘Good.’

  Ellen raised her head, daring to look at him. ‘Jake . . .’

  Jake spat in the black dust at his feet and stepped back. ‘Just go,’ he said.

  And she did.

  60

  When it came to treating gaping leg wounds, Jake’s first aid training didn’t take him much beyond wrapping a tea towel around the bloody bit and making a cup of sweet tea.

  His considered opinion was that the laceration would scab over. Mine was that it needed immediate treatment at whichever hospital bred the fewest flesh-eating bugs.

  My phone was a shattered collection of plastic, glass and silicon chips. I managed to wring a call out of it and phoned Joanna to ask if she’d j
ump in a taxi, come to the cottage and drive me to A&E.

  No answer. She was on another call. I really hoped it wasn’t to her mother or I’d have as much chance of dying from old age as from my injuries.

  I put the phone down, and gently, very gently, removed the tea towel that was starting to adhere to the wound. Maybe it wasn’t as bad as it looked. The pain was gradually easing as my leg grew numb. I wasn’t convinced the creeping numbness was a particularly good sign; nonetheless, it did give me the chance to mull something over.

  I looked across the big oak table at the despondent figure sitting opposite. I’d never seen Jake this way before, and I’d known him for a lot of years. He was a cruel man, a man who lived by his own set of rules and who thought nothing of dispensing his own twisted, self-serving brand of justice upon those who broke those laws. Yes, Jake was a selfish, quick-tempered, irrational, violent individual, and yet to see him sitting, hunched over an ignored mug of tea, broken-hearted and emotionally traumatised, no more than a shell of a man, it made me think – what a perfect time to take advantage of the evil bastard.

  ‘How much do you want for this place?’

  He looked up at me as though coming out of a deep sleep. ‘Eh?’

  ‘This place. The cottage. How much?’ Short sentences seemed to work best.

  ‘You want to buy it?’

  ‘If the price is right.’

  ‘How right?’

  ‘Seventy-five.’

  He sat up straight. ‘I paid a hundred and fifty for it.’

  ‘No, Jake. You paid one hundred thousand and only because you thought you were going to make a million. You gave the other fifty thousand to Freddy for a finder’s fee – remember?’

  Jake stood up, came around the table and stared down at me. ‘Try again.’

  ‘How much are you enjoying being alive?’ I asked.

  He had to think about that. ‘It’s yours for a hundred grand.’

  ‘Seventy-five,’ I said. Grimacing in pain, I laid a hand on the bloody tea towel.