A long mahogany bar ran the length of the far side of the room, high stools spaced along its length. Between me and it sat an array of tables of different shapes, sizes and ages, some Formica tops, some mock burnished copper, some scratched and stained wood. The chairs stacked on the tables were the same mish-mash, plastic, pine and padded leather. Along the three walls ran a leather bench, ticking escaping in places, other rips badly patched with black tape. The wallpaper had at one time been floral flock, but was now stained yellow with nicotine and the windows, over a hundred years old and inlayed with adverts for long defunct breweries, hadn’t been cleaned in living memory. The place was quiet; four old men in a corner playing dominoes and three big-bellied, broad chested guys at the bar getting as much beer inside them as they could hold.
Back when I’d first met him George had been one of the few publicans who would never allow anyone under age anywhere near his bar. I’d tried to sneak under his radar several times, but he was too wily, and I always ended up getting shown the door, usually with a well-aimed boot in my backside. Even then we teenagers knew that the Dugs was where the dark side of the town did its business, a place away from the University where real life happened. And George was at the hub of it all, the man who knew what was what.
Grey hairs showed at his temples now, and he carried a bit of extra bulk around the waist, but he still knew more about what went on in town than anybody else. He made a nice sideline in tipping off both cops and criminals, and he ran the biggest card game for miles around in the quiet room in the back.
"Derek. Good to see you. The usual?"
"Just a pint of heavy," I replied sadly. "I’m working."
"A word not often used in your vocabulary," he said, laughing. "So where have you been hiding? The lads have had nobody to fleece for a couple of months."
"I’ve been out of funds," I said, "But I’m not here to play poker. I’m in trouble."
Over the next twenty minutes I gave him the story. He'd heard enough, seen enough, over the years to know that I wasn't taking the piss, and he only had one question at the end.
"What can I do to help?"
"To be honest, I'm not sure. All I know is I need to find MacMaster. But even if I do, what are the chances of me convincing him to head out to Balloch? What do I do if he just laughs in my face?"
"I could have him brought here?" George said quietly. I knew what he was offering; a quiet room in the cellar, a chair, some rope and some guys handy with their hands. It was an offer he'd made before, and one I hadn't yet taken him up on.
I didn't intend to start now.
"Just put out some feelers for me, can you, George? Right now? The clock's ticking on this one."
"Playing Devil's advocate here but... couldn't you just walk away from this? You've been paid for what you promised to do. If the three of them choose to sit inside yon wee circle and wait, that's their problem, isn't it?"
Part of me agreed with him. But that wasn't the part that would have to live with itself in the wee dark hours of long nights to come.
"Please, George? Just help me find MacMaster. I'll get him to the house if I can, and then that's when I'll walk."
"It's your funeral," George said, and went to make some calls on my behalf.
"I hope not," I muttered into my beer.
It was past eleven o'clock, I'd finished my beer a while back, and I knew I should be out hustling, chasing MacMaster. But all I could think about was the swirling black silk, and the flames that had engulfed poor Kelly. He might have been a first class tosser, but no man, especially a soldier, deserved to go out like that. I sat there at the bar, nursing an empty glass, wishing I had some of McDougall's fine scotch to hand, and feeling bloody sorry for myself, despite the two grand in my pocket.
George saved me from making an arse of myself. He came back to the bar just as I was about to order a double, and handed me a card with an address on it, a house up in Kelvinside.
"Your man's home. I had somebody do a drive by to check. Do you need anybody with you?"
"No, I've got this one," I replied. I took out the envelope from my pocket and handed it over to him. "Hold this for me though. I wouldn't like to lose it."
George looked inside and whistled.
"I thought you were too skint to play poker?"
"No, just too smart," I replied.
I checked the address on the card again, and went outside where George had a taxi waiting for me.
8
Kelvinside is only a couple of miles and a couple of hundred thousand pounds away from my office in Byres Road. I always feel underdressed in the environs of big bulky sandstone houses, long driveways, sleek black 4x4s and exotic trees and shrubbery. MacMaster's house was no different to the others in the area; an ostentatious 'fuck you' to the poorer parts of the city, and a wee bit of Glasgow trying too hard to be Edinburgh.
His place was protected by a high wall topped with iron spikes, and a locked gate with an attached radio unit. I pressed the big red button and spoke when it buzzed excitedly back at me.
"My name's Derek Adams," I said. "I'm here about..."
I never got to finish.
"I know why you're here," a voice hissed back at me. I wasn't sure whether the sibilance came from the unit or the man at the other end of the line, but either way it sounded less than human, almost reptilian. "Come on in. I've been expecting you."
The unit honked at me as the lock on the gate disengaged with a clunk. I nearly did myself an injury pushing all that iron open, but it swung back into place easily enough, and with another resounding clunk I was on the other side, on a long curving gravel driveway that led up to the house itself.
Although the intercom had promised a modicum of modernity, the gardens, and the house itself, had seen their best days many years before. The shrubbery was lank and tangled, weeds had long since choked the raised flowerbeds, and although it was dark, I saw enough by the light from the streetlights to see that the windows and doors hadn't seen a lick of paint in my lifetime. The glass in the panes seemed grimy and made me feel like I needed a wash after looking at them.
There was another intercom unit fixed, unsteadily by a single rusty screw, to the side of the main door. It wheezed at me when I pushed the button.
"I'm here," I said.
The lock clacked and the door swung open to reveal a dark hallway beyond.
"Come into my parlor," the sibilant voice hissed from the unit.
I stepped up into the darkness.
The decrepit, faded glory shown by the exterior was mirrored inside. The hallway was barely lit, just a single old, naked bulb hanging high over the foot of a long staircase to my left. The carpet felt thin, almost like tissue, and the wallpaper was thick, purple and flowery, a flock effect that looked like black mold in the gloom. I heard a creak from the door to my right and headed that way.
A doorway opened into a book-filled room, but I couldn't call it anything as grand as a library, more of a book dump. They sat in piles along the walls, were stacked high on every surface, and racked two or three deep on long sagging shelves that struggled to take the weight. The only light once again came from a single bulb high above, but it was enough to show me that my host wasn't in any better straits than the three men I'd left in the house in Balloch.
There was a magic circle here too, although MacMaster hadn't stretched to expensive marquetry, but rather had improvised with white gloss paint on top of a bare patch of old floorboards. He'd only just made it big enough to sit inside on a kitchen chair. He sat, perched on it as if afraid to put his whole weight on the narrow legs, a thin, almost skeletal man in a badly fitting suit, staring at me pale faced and haggard. He had an intercom unit in his lap on top of a book, and a bottle of vodka in his left hand that he waved at me to motion me forward.
"You'll be Adams," he said.
"And you'll be Hugh MacMaster?"
He nodded.
"You find me in somewhat dire straits," he replied. "But do
come in, and try to make yourself comfortable."
I found another rickety kitchen chair near the bay window at the front. The light from outside diffused through the grime of years appeared more of an amorphous glow, like a yellow moon seen through thick cloud – but I'd have preferred to stand and look at that than to have to turn and face my host. He gave off a sickly air that was almost palpable; I could only hope it wasn't contagious.
"You can smoke if you like," MacMaster said as I sat. "Just be careful where you drop the ash. This lot could go up with the slightest provocation, and I'm in no hurry to get to anywhere that hot."
"Not until tomorrow anyway," I said, and he laughed grimly.
"Today, now," he replied, and somewhere in the house a big clock chimed to denote midnight.
"You came to see if I could help with the other four," he said. It wasn't a question. But at least I could correct him in answer.
"Three now, or at least it was a couple of hours ago."
"Jordan didn't make it in time?"
I should have been asking how he knew about Jordan when he'd obviously been sitting in this chair for a while, but that was a ways down the list of the questions that were mounting up to be asked.
"He made it. Kelly didn't."
If the man mourned the loss of a one-time friend, he certainly didn't show it, although he did take a prodigious swig from the vodka bottle. He saw me looking and waved the bottle at me.
"I can't break the circle," he said, "but if you want a drink, there's some scotch in the sideboard by the fireplace."
Finding it was easier said than done; piles of leather-bound books obscured both sideboard and fireplace, although I eventually found them, and the scotch, after a bit of rummaging. There were glasses in the sideboard too, but they were covered in the same greasy grime I saw on the windows, so I took my cue from my host and sipped out of the bottle as I sat back down.
"So, you're not willing to help?" I said when he showed no sign of speaking.
"I never said that," he replied. "It's not that I'm not willing. I'm not able. They made their deals, thirty years ago. It's cashing in the chips time."
"But they made their deals with you," I said.
He nodded.
"That they did. Then I sold their souls on to the big man, right here in this room. Do you have any idea the pleasures that can be bought for five – no, make that six – souls?"
I laughed and motioned around the room with the scotch bottle.
"Aye, you made the big time, right enough."
"I'm not talking about money, Mr. Adams," he replied, "I'm talking about pleasures of the flesh, bliss, if you like, delivered straight into the brain on tap; thirty years of bliss."
"Solitary bliss? Sounds too much like wanking to me," I replied, and held up the scotch bottle. "You'd have been better off with thirty years of this."
"You have no idea," he said, although there was something in his look that told me I'd struck close to home as he went on. "You were there when Kelly was taken. What did you see?"
I considered keeping my mouth shut in the hope of gaining some leverage, but I was coming to the conclusion that MacMaster wasn't going to be much help at all to the three men in Balloch. So I gave him the story, chanting monks, glowing circles, flame, smoke, shadow and all. He didn't take it too badly, although the vodka bottle took a beating, and he looked paler than before by the time I finished.
"It must have been a shock for the others, finding that their deal so blithely made could come and bite them on the arse all these years later," he said. "I hope it put a dent in their smug supercilious grins."
"I thought you were all pals?"
"You thought wrong. They were all pals. They allowed me to hang around because I could afford to buy drinks, and knew a man who kept us supplied in hash and weed. I was their bit of rough on the side. But I showed them."
Once again I waved the scotch bottle at him, and the circle where he sat.
"Aye, you showed them right enough. You're on easy street now, aren't you."
"I've had my time, and made good use of it, despite your mocking," he said. "And I know what's waiting for me. I'm ready to go."
I shook my head.
"No you're not. If you were ready you wouldn't have painted the circles; you wouldn't be guzzling down the juju juice. You're about as scared as any man I've ever seen. At least Kelly went like a soldier. You're going like a cornered rat."
My attempt to needle him fell on deaf ears.
"I see no sense in running towards what fate has in store," he replied, and knocked back some more of the vodka. As he lowered the bottle, he tilted his head to one side; I knew what was coming next.
"Do you hear them, Mr. Adams? Maybe not yet, but you will. They're getting closer, the damned and the damnable. The Collector is gathering his cohorts."
"You can still help," I said. "There's time yet. The other three don't have to die."
"They're dead already. They just don't know it," MacMaster said. "I have no way of getting back what they gave. I made my deal with their collateral. They're gone, into the belly of the beast both literally and figuratively."
"There must be something..."
MacMaster smiled thinly.
"The Collector likes making deals; it's his thing. Maybe you could make one on McDougall, Brown and Jordan's behalf if you're so concerned?" He cocked his head to the side again. "And here's your chance coming, right here, right now."
Distant Latin chanting filled the room, and something heavy banged, twice against the front door, then there was a slam as the door fell inward off its hinges. A cold wind blew through the stacks of books as a shifting shadow filled the doorway.
Collection time.
I had no way out save through the big bay window, and I wasn't ready to make that leap of faith just yet. Besides, the shadow seemed more intent on the magic circle and its contents. As it came farther into the room the paint on the floorboards glowed, yellow, gold then red, lending a hellish cast of fiery shadows to the ambience.
The singing grew louder, a wailing cacophony, an almost solid wall of noise. The black shadows swirled in tine to the beat and, as before, solidified, now more like silk than shade, layer upon layer in ever shifting veils.
MacMaster shouted to be heard above the din.
"Take him. That's my deal here. Take him, not me. He's got blood on his hands, souls in his care. Take him."
It took me a few seconds to realize MacMaster was referring to me, and another second or so to admit he was right; since the Twilight Zone took note of me I've made enemies, lost friends, and caused the deaths of several, some of whom didn't deserve it.
Blood on my hands? Yes.
Ready to give up my soul for it?
No fucking way.
But I didn't need to plead my case; the Collector wasn't interested in MacMaster's deal. The darkness pressed forward against the circle. The paint on the floorboards flared, red as hot coals, and MacMaster stood up in fright, too fast, almost overbalancing. His chair swayed, almost tumbled backward, and he had to drop the vodka bottle to use his hands to steady it. He was so intent on the chair that he didn't notice the bottle roll, almost in slow motion, across the boards and come to rest straddling the outer line of the circle.
At the same instant the dark shadows swirled faster, the choir of monks roared in a crescendo, and a lance of golden flame ran from the darkness, right through the now still vodka bottle, and wrapped itself, a fiery lasso, around MacMaster's ankles.
He only had time to yell once, a formless wail that was almost lost amid the howl of the chanting, then he was tugged off his feet. His head hit the floor with a thud I heard above all the other noise, then, as quickly as Kelly had been taken earlier, he was burned, from the feet upward, the flame eating him as if he was little more than dry paper. A last scream rose to join the monk's chants, then, in a burst of hot, dry, air, the shadows were past me again and off out of the door.
The only thing l
eft where MacMaster had been was a charred kitchen chair and a burnt lump of metal and plastic, all that remained of the intercom unit he'd had in his lap.
One of the piles of books nearest the circle was smoldering, already taking flame. By the time I reached the doorway of the room more had joined it, fire licking at books, walls and floor.
I beat a hasty retreat, the heat rising at my back all the way.
The house was well alight by the time I reached the end of the driveway. I had to clamber over the wrought iron gates, feeling heat rise on my face as I looked back to see the big bay window pop out and flame reach up the exterior wall.
I almost shat myself as a voice spoke at my side when I climbed down.
"Insurance job is it?" The cab driver that had brought me stood at the side of the gate, smoking a cigarette. Given the amount of butts at his feet, he'd been there waiting the whole time. "George told me to keep an eye on you," he said. "Looks like you need a lift?"
Doors were opening up and down the street. The fire had been noticed. Fire engines – and cops – wouldn't be long in coming.
"Aye, it's time to go," I said. "Can you take me to Balloch?"
"I'll take you to bloody Inverness if it's what George wants," the man said. "Let's go."
I saw the fire burn in his rear view mirror as we sped off down the street; it looked like the whole house was going with its owner, down into a red, burning hell.
9
The driver kept up a flow of chatter all the way to Balloch. I let it wash over me as I sat in the back smoking a chain of Marlboro that weren't quite enough to keep the heebie-jeebies at bay. George's earlier suggestion of walking away while I was ahead of the game was big in my head, and several times I almost leaned forward to ask the driver to turn around and head for The Twa Dugs. But as I also said earlier, I was going to have to be able to sleep at nights in years to come, and I already have regrets aplenty without burdening my insomnia with any more.
So I let the driver tell me about his wife, his kids, and the 'wee jobs' he did on the side for George. I watched the night go past outside the window and wondered whether any of the shifting shadows might be the Collector, pacing us on its journey to the same destination.
Deal or No Deal? (The Midnight Eye Files, #0) Page 4
