Deal or No Deal? (The Midnight Eye Files, #0)

by William Meikle

  "We messenger boys get around," I replied, and blew more smoke at him before getting to the point.

  "McDougall says he can help with that."

  "And how would he know? I've got nothing to do with forestry or coal."

  "This hasn't to do with business. It's to do with a night thirty years ago tomorrow, it's to do with MacMaster, the Union Bar, and something you gave away for three pints of heavy and a packet of crisps."

  "That nonsense about selling our souls? That's what all this commotion was about? They got me out of bed early for this crap?"

  "Don't feel so bad. They took all my filing system too."

  "That wasn't filing, and it wasn't a system," he replied. "We've done you a favor and burnt it before the taxman saw it."

  And with that it seemed my interview was over. He stood, intending to leave.

  "McDougall wants a meet," I said. "Tomorrow night, in Balloch. He says he can help."

  "I don't give a shit what McDougall wants."

  "To be honest, neither do I. I'm getting paid to tell you. Now you're told. Can I go?"

  He cocked his head to one side again, then grimaced.

  "Bloody tinnitus, that's all it is."

  If he was trying to convince either of us of the fact, he wasn't doing a very good job. But I wasn't here to persuade him of anything. My role in the matter was done as far as I was concerned, and when the gorillas returned to show me out, I left meekly and without another word.

  I'd hoped to be driven all the way home, but they weren't that obliging; I got taken into Beith and let out at the bus stop in the town center. I had an hour to wait for the Glasgow bus, and filled it by heading into The Saracen's Head for a pint for old time's sake. Although I was born in the town, I'd been away for too long; nobody spoke to me, nobody recognized me, and I didn't hear any calls from the graveyard down the road from ma and pa.

  The bus journey home seemed interminable and it was late afternoon again by the time I got back to the office. I called McDougall and got his voicemail. I told him I'd been in touch with the three men and hung up.

  Job done.

  Of course I knew better.

  Any case that has so many different guys all hearing the same singing monks wasn't going to let go of me that easily; in recent years I've become a magnet for all the weird shite that goes on in any big city. And Glasgow has more than its fair share of that.

  At least I managed to convert a large proportion of McDougall's payment into fresh supplies of smokes and liquor, and started making headway into the stash before he returned my call.

  It was somewhere near midnight of the same day, I'd been drinking for some hours, and thinking of old days, Beith, dead parents and roads not taken, so I wasn't in much of a mood to take any shite.

  "Will they come?" he asked with a tremor in his voice I hadn't heard there before.

  "You didnae pay me for coercion," I said. "I told them, and Brown at least seemed interested. Kelly might come to his senses too. But I wouldn't hold out hope for Jordan. He's not a believer."

  "I think he will be soon," McDougall answered. "It's getting worse. We might be too late even now."

  "Too late for what?"

  "If you want an answer to that, you'll have to be here tomorrow night."

  "No thanks," I replied. "Army reunions aren't my style."

  "I'll make it worth your while," he replied. "Your expertise might come in handy. How about another two grand, cash in hand when you get here?"

  The booze spoke for me.

  "I'll see you at seven."

  5

  Another day, another hangover, although it wasn't as bad as I'd expected, probably due to being able to afford a better quality of scotch than usual. I showered at my leisure, and sat at my desk with a pot of coffee and some smokes while catching up with the news on my laptop; the gorillas had left that with me. I'm guessing it was because they already knew what was on it through some kind of devious surveillance shite. They were welcome to my porn collection and my emails; if it bored them as much as it bored me it would be a job well done.

  I half-expected to find a news report about another dead member of the Union Bar soul team, but the prospect of war in the Middle East was blanketing almost everything. My emails held no promise of fresh cases, and no one came up my stairs all day. By the time it came round to five o'clock I let my curiosity – and the promise of more booze money – get the better of me.

  Suited up and with ample provisions of smokes, I headed down to the bus station to catch a coach to Balloch.

  McDougall's place wasn't exactly a mansion, but it wasn't exactly small either, being a strange, architect designed amalgam of Scottish Baronial and Norwegian Chalet, all windows and wood and blocks of granite. It was set in extensive grounds of well-maintained lawn and clumps of magnolia bushes, the lawns running down a slope to meet Loch Lomond some hundred yards to the north.

  If he had any family, or even staff, there was no sign of them as the man himself opened the door to my knock. Before he spoke he took an envelope from the inside pocket of his suit jacket and passed it to me. I decided not to embarrass either of us by counting it on the doorstep, so put it away without opening it and shook his hand when he offered it.

  He showed me inside to a ballroom-sized front room. I already knew the two other men present, Kelly and Brown, huddled in a whispered confab in the far corner as if intimidated by the space. McDougall headed off across the expanse of hardwood floor that once again reminded me of a dance hall, and I followed, trying to avoid keeping in step with him. A single twelve by twelve rug lay right in the center of the floor, slightly worn, stained and decrepit and looking strangely out of place in an otherwise almost militarily cleaned room.

  When we approached the other men Kelly studied me with open contempt, but Brown, as he had been earlier, proved the more agreeable of the two. He handed me a glass, a stiff two fingers of scotch that felt like warm honey in my mouth and burned in a glow all the way to the pit of my stomach.

  "Any sign of Davie?" Brown asked, but McDougall shook his head.

  "There's not been a phone call or a note. Adams here thinks he won't be coming."

  "Is he hearing the bloody singing too?" Kelly asked. I saw, not in the slightest surprised, that the man was already three sheets to the wind, and helping himself to McDougall's scotch as if he was a thirsty man drinking down glasses of water.

  "He's hearing it," I answered, "but he thinks it's just ringing in his ears."

  McDougall clapped his hands, as if trying to get the attention of a class of unruly school kids.

  "It's time we talked about why we're here."

  "If it's more of that soul-selling bollocks, I don't want to know," Kelly said, already slurring badly.

  "You know it's not bollocks, Joe," McDougall said calmly. "You're hearing it too. You're hearing it right now, same as I am. Same as George here is. It's getting closer, isn't it?"

  Kelly knocked back another glass of whisky. He'd need help standing up soon at this rate, and not just because of his bad leg.

  "So what if we're hearing a bit of singing? Noise is all that it is. It canna hurt us." George Brown said. He cradled his whisky as if afraid to drink it, afraid to start on a road he knew could only lead to oblivion. I knew the feeling only too well.

  McDougall stepped up close to Kelly.

  "It's coming for us, Joe. We all know that now."

  "What the fuck are you havering about now, man," Kelly said. "Is it the devil that's got you feart? Because George and I know there's worse things out there than a wee pretendy demon. We've seen real monsters, faced them down, and walked away. So don't come greetin to us about your soul. I left what was left of mine in the desert with my leg."

  He turned to Brown for confirmation, but the other man had his head cocked to one side, listening.

  "It's getting louder again," he said, and McDougall nodded.

  "We don't have time to be standing around arguing about something
that's clearly on its way."

  He walked away from us to the center of the vast floor space and pulled back the large rug. Underneath it, inlaid in what looked like expensive marquetry, was a pentacle inside a series of concentric circles inscribed with what appeared to be Arabic letters. I'd seen its like before in old books but this was my first encounter in real life. I wasn't sure I liked it much.

  "George, come over here. I want you to try something."

  Brown looked over at the circles, then downed his scotch in one gulp before heading over to where McDougall stood. Kelly, meanwhile, took the opportunity to pour another large one. Given the vibe I felt coming off that diagram on the floor, I felt like joining him.

  The light was going fast from the sky outside the large picture window and shadows grew in the corners of the big room, but McDougall didn't make a move to switch on the lights. Instead he motioned Brown forward.

  "Do you hear it, George? They're nearly here. I want you to step inside, into the center circle."

  "Why?"

  "Trust me, please? I've got a good reason."

  "Well, I suppose I owe you something for your booze," Brown said, and stepped into the circle. As soon as he was fully inside, a broad smile grew on his face.

  "It's stopped," he said.

  McDougall shook his head.

  "No, it hasn't. But the protection is working."

  'Protection?"

  "The circles. A trick I found in a book." He turned and motioned to Kelly.

  "Come and join us, Joe. It works. George will vouch for that."

  "He's right," Brown said. "It's like somebody switched off the radio in my head. First rest I've had from it in days."

  Kelly took the scotch bottle with him when he went over to join the others, and within seconds all three of the were inside the circle and even I had to admit they all looked calmer, happier even, than they had just a minute before.

  "So, what now?" I asked. "You can't stay in there forever."

  "There's room for us to sit down, and you can fetch and carry drink and snacks for us," McDougall said. "Or rather, my man can, he's on his way. I want you to work for that money I gave you."

  "How so?" I asked, but I already knew what he wanted.

  "Find Hugh MacMaster. Bring him here if you can. We need to have this out with him, one way or the other."

  That hadn't been our deal, but I didn't get time to argue the toss with him. Somebody banged, loud at the front door.

  "Fraser? It's Jordan. Let me in. It's in the trees. It's coming for me."

  None of the three men in the circle moved. McDougall looked at me.

  "If you would be so kind?"

  I downed my own scotch before walking, deliberately and as casually as I could manage, across the room toward the front door.

  The banging got louder, the shouting more frantic.

  "Fraser. I know you're in there. Come on, man."

  The man who fell inside when I opened the door bore little resemblance to the calm, precise one I'd met in Beith the day before. Wide-eyed and wild, hair tousled and jacket torn, he'd been in a fight with some shrubbery and lost by the look of it. He didn't even acknowledge my presence, just ran past me into the main room, shouting McDougall's name.

  I felt it coming as I went to close the door; a cold breeze, like a wind off the sea at the beach, and a sigh, softly sung words in the distance, then it was past me, it too heading after Jordan into the main room.

  I decided to leave the door open. Either it, or I, might want to make a hasty exit.

  6

  It was almost full dark now in the main room, but I had no trouble seeing; the marquetry pentacle gave off a faint light that glowed and pulsed, golden yellow.

  Jordan had only made it halfway across the hardwood floor and now, although he strained and pushed, he fought a swirling shadow that held him as if he walked against a gale. I heard chanting in the breeze, again distant and far off, but Jordan clamped his hands against his ears.

  "Make it stop!" he shouted, his face contorted in pain.

  The swirling darkness grew thicker, almost solid.

  Kelly was first of us all to react. He stomped out of the protective circle, listing as he compensated for his false leg; it didn't slow him much, he was at Jordan's side in seconds. He grabbed the smaller man and almost threw him back toward the circle, before standing to face the darkness, hands raised, ready for a fight.

  "Okay, fucker," he said. "Let's see what you've got."

  He reached forward, grabbing and tearing at the wispy swirl in front of him, ripping it into shadows and dust with his hands. Somebody, Brown at a guess, shouted, a yell of triumph from inside the circles.

  But any celebration proved to be premature. The darkness coagulated, clumping into black swathes of something that looked almost like silk in a wind. Now I heard it clearer, singing – no, chanting – no longer in the distance but from everywhere and nowhere at the same time, filling the room with an echoing hymn to despair and loss. The marquetry circles glowed, yellow, gold, then almost red, throwing darker shadows across a hellish floor where Kelly found he had a partner in the dance.

  Kelly's attack grew frenzied and he screamed with a wail of pain that cut through the chanting and finally got me moving. I stepped into the room, heading toward the man, but that one step was all I got to take.

  A single wisp of smoke, a rope-like fragment of the dark, looped around his neck. The flame came out of nowhere; Kelly was looking in my direction so I got a front-row view as his face, hair and his whole torso burned. It grew so bright I had to close my eyes against it, although it was still there behind my eyelids, flaring and blooming like a horrible flower of reds and yellows and gold. Kelly only screamed once more and it wasn't pain so much as it was a plea for help. I forced my eyes open and took another step toward where he had been. There was nothing to see but more of the dark, dancing shadow, cavorting around a yellow fire that quickly burned down to ash. The darkness backed away, coming toward me; I leapt sideward, but it blew past me, hot now, like a desert wind, taking the chanting with it as it left through the open doorway, through the hall beyond and out into a suddenly quiet night.

  It let a breeze in as it left that whisked up the ash left behind and scattered it to the corners. By the time I reached the spot there was nothing on the floor but an almost circular fused and melted ball of plastic and metal, a tennis ball sized lump of all that was left of the man's false leg.

  There was nothing else; no blood or tissue, nor even a burnt fragment of clothing. Kelly was gone, taken so thoroughly as if he had never been. When I turned back to the others they had all huddled close together in the circle. The glow in the marquetry faded, down from red to gold to yellow and away altogether leaving us in darkness.

  "The light switch is by the door," McDougall said, with a hitch in his voice that could be fear or tears; possibly both.

  I walked over, fumbled around, and found the switch then, without looking back, went out into the hall and closed the outside door. The only thing that stopped me leaving right then was the fact that the thing, whatever it was, was out there in the night, and I didn't fancy meeting it on open ground.

  By the time I got back into the main room there was an argument going on. Brown struggled, held in the other two men's grip.

  "You canna keep me here against my will," he said. "I want no part in this fuckery."

  I bent and picked up the ball of plastic and metal to show it to him. It was still warm to the touch, but already losing the residual heat.

  "It looks like this fuckery wants part of you, though, George. I'd listen to McDougall if I were you. He's the only one here who kens what he's talking about, it seems to me."

  I showed the melted plastic and metal to our host.

  "Is this what you were expecting?"

  The hitch in his voice was definitely a sob when he replied.

  "I was hoping to maybe go quietly in my sleep."

  Jordan laughed bitter
ly.

  "This is Hughie MacMaster we're talking about here. When did he ever want anything done quietly?"

  Brown had stopped struggling. He couldn't take his eyes off the melted ball of plastic and metal in my hand.

  "Where is he? Where's Kelly?"

  It wasn't a question any of us were capable of answering, and I think he knew that, but he couldn't process the information and was in anger of going into shock.

  "You can't stay here," I said to McDougall.

  He shook his head.

  "I think here is the only place we can stay; right here, in this circle. You saw it glowing, right?"

  "Aye, and I heard the holy brothers singing too. That's as close as I ever want to get to them, thank you very much."

  "Then fetch us some drinks over here, then go and find MacMaster. He's the key. If anyone can stop that thing, it's him. But it's got to be done right now. Our deal runs out tomorrow night, and I doubt even these circles will stop what's coming then."

  I still wasn't convinced, but I had the man's money in my pocket and, a few minutes later, a goodly amount of his best scotch in my belly.

  I left them there in the circle, girded my loins, and headed out into the night.

  7

  In truth, I was more than glad to be out of the house and away from the madness. The walk through the grounds towards the main road wasn't the most pleasant I'd ever taken; I whistled loudly, and smoked two cigarettes before I stepped out into the brightly lit streets of Balloch and began to feel, if not safe, at least safer.

  I caught a cab and and headed back into the city, making for a place I knew I could begin my hunt for MacMaster, and where I would be as safe as I could be under the circumstances.

  At the bottom end of Byres Road are several bars that keep the flame of old Glasgow burning. George let me in to the Twa Dugs Bar when I gave the sign with my knuckles on the window.

  I’d been coming here since I was not long out of school, some twenty years before. The décor hadn’t changed much; the urinals still smelt of stale beer and piss, the carpet still needed a clean, and old George still had a cigarette dangling from his lower lip.