A Snowball in Hell

by Christopher Brookmyre

  It seems like everybody present takes up the boyfriend on his largesse, save a shy-looking young couple at a table on the raised area near the back – content to enjoy the show but maybe not comfortable accepting drinks from strangers – and a solitary male sticking to mineral water and paying the majority of his attention to his mobile phone.

  Zal breaks the seal on a fresh bottle of dark rum and checks his watch while his wrist is turned to pour shots into three glasses he has lined up on the gantry. He’s off in two hours, and there will be no hanging around after closing tonight. He’s got a flight booked for the morning, though he’s still not sure he’s getting on it. He’s told Franco, the bar owner, he’ll be gone for three nights; he hasn’t said anything about possibly not coming back. He doesn’t wish to ponder what that might tell him about his own plans, expectations or even fears.

  He’s in a bar in the medieval part of Palma. It’s just gone eleven, twenty-five hours short of marking one year to the day since he robbed the Royal Scottish & Great Northern Bank. One year to the day since he met Angelique de Xavia, and commenced this impossible but inescapable Escher painting of a relationship that had lasted only a couple of weeks but dominated and confused his thoughts thereafter.

  After what went down in Glasgow, there was no question they both had to go their separate ways, nor that it was unwise for either of them to stay in touch with the other, but Zal had offered a means of marking the anniversary, just a way of leaving the door open.

  Half the time, he found himself wishing he hadn’t, that he’d just cut and run, done what he was best at. But in the lonely darkness of any night he found himself lying awake, he knew that this was something he couldn’t let go. Not yet, at least. The idea, the possibility was not merely a comfort to cling to in an empty bed, but the closest thing he had to a purpose in his life. However, that purpose, or deferred option upon a purpose, was due to expire. This Escher painting, this Möbius strip that seemed to offer two discrete realities, was about to unravel itself unalterably, leaving only one or the other. He had a choice to make, one further clouded by the knowledge that Angelique’s own choice could render his moot. At least there was little chance of her forgetting the date: it was her birthday, after all.

  It’s not expired yet though, and maybe that’s why he’s booked the flight. He made a date, kind of. He conveyed an intention, and at this point, he’s intending to keep it. He’s going to follow this intention as far as he can. He’s getting on that plane, he’s going to Paris, and he’s checking into that same Cubist hotel where they first spent the night together. But whether he’s going to walk into the Musée d’Orsay, he still can’t say. An impossible relationship, no less impossible one year on, so far as he’s aware. But inescapable? To a man of Zal’s experience, very few things could claim such status. Extricating himself was what he did best: the sacred art of leaving. It was the art of staying that he was yet to master.

  It’s been a quick year, a very quick year. A good year, a strange year, full of months that passed in a blur but days and mere moments that held him in their own stasis, seeming so distant from each other and from now that they felt as though they must have been decades apart.

  He ‘did’ Europe, blended in with the tourists, stayed on the move. There was no way of knowing whether anyone was trying to trace him – the Estobals, Hannigan’s mob, the RSGN, the cops – and though he had taken care to cover his tracks, it felt safer to remain in this fluid state, this permanent transience. Travelling hopefully, never arriving: that’s how this year had passed. After prison and everything he had been through in recent times, it was a convalescence, a sabbatical: time to recover and repair, to drift, to simply be. Time to contemplate, time to think. Just not enough time to reach any understanding.

  He found himself in Palma late in the autumn, as the peak tourist season was winding down. He was tired of travelling and wanted somewhere to cool his heels for a while, that date in December looming not so far ahead. He chose Mallorca for a number of reasons, one of which had proven laughably moot: that he spoke Spanish. That said, it did throw some more dust over his footprints given that anyone trying to track him down would most likely be looking for an Anglophone. Again, this might have been a needless consideration, but better to be safe; thus another reason for the choice of the Balearics was that an island was a logistically tricky place from which to forcibly abduct someone. No protection ultimately if it was the law who came calling, but that was only one potential threat.

  It was off-season, but the visiting population was still a reassuringly large – and reassuringly diverse – throng to be drifting within. There were a lot of ways to be nobody in particular on an island such as this, and he found old-town Palma to be just his speed.

  Maybe it was passing easy time in so many bars throughout the year, maybe some vestigial prison-time daydream, but the idea of owning a little joint of his own had begun to take root. Perhaps not merely a bar, more like a cabaret club: somewhere with a dais just big enough for a baby grand and a microphone, somewhere for a little blues, a little soul, and – the growing kernel of a yearning he had to admit to himself – a little magic.

  But shit, yeah, every guy in Folsom talked about owning a bar: that’s what they’d do when that one big score came off. What they really meant was that they just wanted to be in a bar, and when you’re banged up in Walla-Walla, who doesn’t? But who the hell was planning robberies just so that he could end up working his ass off keeping a legitimate business concern afloat? Nobody lay awake at night and fantasised about arguing with city officials and licensing boards, or about negotiating with breweries and making kickbacks to suppliers. Thus Zal took the sensibly gradualist step of merely working in a bar for a while.

  He didn’t make a conscious decision to begin performing tricks. He’d been working at the Dracon Rojo for a couple of weeks when one night there was a middle-aged English couple playing cards at the bar, just passing slow time, long drinks and gin rummy, keeping score on the back of a beermat. As the place filled up, Zal noticed a young buck pestering them for a loan of their deck, with which he proceeded to try impressing a trio of adolescent German chicks. He was arrogant to the point of obnoxious; once he had the cards, he acted like the people he’d bummed them from no longer existed, the shy English couple left in a state of mild humiliation as they helplessly waited for the return of their cards. This pissed Zal off, but not as much as the fact that the German chicks were failing to shine the guy on. He didn’t exactly have them eating out of his palm, but long as he was the only show in town, they were happy to let him entertain them – thus prolonging the older couple’s discomfiture.

  Some people feel naked or lost if they leave the house without their mobile phone or their watch; with Zal it’s a deck of cards. He broke out a pack of his own and handed them to the couple as a replacement, but not before executing a couple of deliberately ostentatious shuffles in order to grab the attention of the German chicks and their performing monkey. As he intended, having passed his own deck to the gin-players, the girls insisted the current act hand Zal the first pack and leave the stage to the next performer.

  ‘Let him show us a trick,’ one of them said, and Zal was happy to oblige.

  Monkey boy must have slipped away at some point over the next half hour, but Zal didn’t notice him leave; nobody did, especially not the German chicks.

  They came back the next night with some guys they had met, and insisted he show the new arrivals some of his stuff. Night after that, the three girls didn’t show, but friends of their friends did, and so on.

  Zal was enjoying himself. He worked the evenings and practiced by day; not necessarily stuff appropriate for the bar, just practice, practice, practice: sleights and subtleties, shuffles, false cuts, drops and palms, vanishes, transpositions, penetrations. There were a few other staples he worked on, definitely not for the bar, which made him ask himself how far he might really want to take this.

  He practised even more th
an he used to in Folsom, and was only seldom reminded of how that felt as a means of whiling away those otherwise useless hours. It was easy to block the association, standing at a table in the courtyard outside his apartment’s patio doors with the mild autumn sunshine on his back. No, it wasn’t thoughts of prison that came flooding back as he felt the cards and coins between his fingers, but the bittersweet nostalgia of learning at his father’s knee. He could lose himself in the repetition and concentration, barely aware of his surroundings, enough to become immersed in the most vivid recollections of that simplest, most innocent time. And though sometimes it threatened to be overpowering, and always it hurt just a little, he embraced it as a way to remember the best of his dad, the father as seen in the eyes of an entranced seven-year-old boy, before it all went alcohol-sour and his outright rejection of magic as a career was the best way Zal could think of hurting him back. The man he wouldn’t forgive, no matter how much the old man tried to earn it; and now he couldn’t forgive himself for withholding that blessing until it was too late.

  A couple of months pleasantly passed. Business was good, tips were good, and Franco, the bar owner, was quietly pleased. Late autumn moved into the early stages of what passed around here for winter, but the Dracon Rojo was as busy some nights as might be expected in mid-August. Zal was aware, in some pragmatic vigilance substation in the back of his mind, that he was garnering attention, and that with this came considerations. (He didn’t always want to admit so much to himself as calling them ‘risks’.) But he had to play the odds: it wasn’t like he was executing a few neat card pulls then saying: ‘For my next trick, I’ll show you how the principles of misdirection can be applied to bank robbery!’ Realistically, what was the chat? There’s a barman at the Dracon Rojo who puts on a little magic show: that’s it.

  Nonetheless, people talked about the price of fame, and sometimes fame itself was the price. Jack Nicholson once remarked that when people said they wanted to be rich and famous, he’d suggest they try just being rich, and see how that works out for them. When it came to entertainment, to showbiz, you couldn’t expect all the attention to remain directed at the stage once you had left it. All he was doing was performing tricks at the bar, and yet soon after he started it, all of a sudden everybody wanted to know him: people hung around to talk to him on his break, invited him out to clubs, parties or just back to their place when the bar was closed (though he never went). People would nod in the street: not just the nod of polite recognition and acknowledgement, but a knowing grin, like a shared secret. It made him a little nervous. There were, as stated above, considerations, but other considerations superseded them. Hard to tell Franco and the other bar staff that the golden goose was just going to quit laying, for one, but in the main, truth was he couldn’t give up the juice he got from performing. How the hell did his old man end up an alcoholic when he had this to get high on every night?

  Zal walks the short distance to his apartment along the narrow streets, lanes and alleyways that look so peaceful. The tour guides just don’t mention that they once literally ran with blood, when the Holy Inquisition oversaw the slaughter of every Moorish man, woman and child in the city. Slaughter on that scale, and yet the same buildings, the same cobblestones today look like something out of a fairytale. So much for ghosts.

  He lets himself into the rented apartment on the ground floor of a four-storey block constructed when the average tourist carried a scimitar. The place has weathered the centuries pretty well, but at some point in its more recent history, maybe a hundred years back, a few iron pillars have been added for internal structural support. Well, Zal figures that’s what they’re for, but the one in his bedroom feels like it was made specifically for him to lean against with one hand, a beer in the other and unanswerable questions about the future streaming through his head. It’s close on one in the morning. His flight leaves in nine hours. He hasn’t packed a bag. He finds himself trying to interpret his own subconscious with regard to what this might suggest, comes up neutral: packing a bag will take all of five minutes. He pours himself a glass of water and heads for the bedroom. As he comes through the door, he sees his ticket and passport waiting for him on the nightstand. He’d normally not leave such items lying out in full view. Interpret that, he thinks: left visible because the trip means so much, or left vulnerable in case a burglar whips them and takes the decision out of his hands? Except, he’s pretty sure he can’t remember taking them out of the drawer before he—

  He feels an explosion of pain across his back and nothing but white fills his vision before a second explosion sears the backs of his legs, which promptly buckle beneath him. As he drops to his knees, he catches a glimpse of something coming towards his head at speed, then all is white again.

  Zal sprawls on the floor, the room spinning. He tries to roll on to his back, and as soon as he does so, he feels a blow across his midriff, then another to his face, this time partially blocked – at considerable pain – by a flailing arm. A further blow to the face causes his head to crack back against the tiled floor, making everything swim and his body go limp. He doesn’t fully lose consciousness, but feels like a helpless ragdoll as he is hauled backwards against the iron pillar. His hands get pulled behind him and cuffed, then his feet also, leaving him slumped on his knees. His vision lurches like the drunken spinning that heralds the big spit, but he feels it steadying. He looks up, sees the figure of a man holding a nightstick.

  Christ. It’s the guy from the bar tonight, fucker who was just drinking mineral water and making calls on his mobile.

  ‘You sitting comfortably there, my son?’ he asks in a Cockney accent, filled with a cheeriness incongruously close to genuine warmth.

  ‘I’m good, yeah,’ Zal manages.

  ‘Sorry about the tough love, but I didn’t fink just asking politely would do the trick, know what I mean?’

  ‘You could have given it a shot.’

  ‘Maybe next time, eh?’

  ‘Yeah. You wanna undo these cuffs and we can start over?’

  He dangles the keys between his fingers as though he’s thinking about it, then slips them into a pocket in his trousers. ‘P’raps not.’

  Zal coughs, takes a breath, aftershocks of pain pulsing through him every few seconds.

  ‘Who you working for?’ he asks.

  ‘Working for meself, mate. Each man is an island an’ all that.’

  ‘If you’re done quoting Donne, I’ll rephrase that. Who’s paying you?’

  ‘Ah, see, that all depends, dunnit? That venerable union of long-established and highly respected financial institutions, the Royal Scottish & Great Northern Bank, are apparently still feeling deeply aggrieved at the grave public offence and less than trivial financial injury inflicted upon them by some mysterious masked Yank with a flair for the flamboyant, ain’t they? And they’ve put a value on the salving of said injury and offence to the tune of one ’undred grand.’

  ‘So you’re a bounty hunter. Do I call you Bobba or Greedo?’

  ‘Greedy, more like. See, I ain’t so bothered about dealing wiv the bank. They’ve just rather conveniently helped set a price floor for a little bit of ’aggling. Cause I reckon whatever they’re offering, a certain Mr Bud ’annigan of Glasgow is gonna feel obliged to top.’

  ‘Hannigan’s in jail, or did his lawyer work his magic again?’

  ‘Nah, he’s all banged up, my son, but he still controls the purse strings, don’t he, and I reckon it’ll make those long winter nights pass that bit more pleasantly if he knows the reason he’s there has been suitably chastised. Maybe he can keep re-watching said chastisement on a little portable DVD player what he’s got stashed in his cell.’

  ‘Sure, I’ve been there. Anything to pass the time. So how’d you find me?’

  Greedy taps his nose and smiles. ‘Trade secrets, my son.’

  ‘And I take it another trick of the trade is gonna cover getting me off this island.’

  ‘Nah, no big secret, mate. Just ’
ope you don’t get sea sick.’

  ‘Figures,’ Zal says resignedly.

  Greedy grabs a drink from Zal’s fridge and downs the can in one go.

  ‘Cheers,’ he says. ‘Now, I’m just gonna go siphon the python and then we’ll be on our way.’

  ‘All that mineral water, good to flush the kidneys.’

  ‘Quite right, squire.’

  Zal watches him retreat and casts an eye towards where his passport and ticket sit, out of reach. This could sure make his mind up for him, but he’s not going to let it. He can’t guess how the guy tracked him down or whether his performing magic in the bar had anything to do with it, but he does know the asshole hasn’t done his homework on conjurors. Coins and cards are your bread and butter, that’s what his daddy taught him first, and as familiar objects, they can form the basis for tricks anywhere. But his daddy worked some big lounges in Vegas: you need more than close-up work when the audience gets larger, and it’s not all done with smoke and mirrors.

  Greedy emerges from the bathroom long enough after the flush as to indicate he’s washed his hands. Health and safety legislation must apply to even bounty hunters now. He returns to the bedroom with a canvas bag, from which he produces a clear glass bottle, looks about ten or fifteen mil capacity.

  ‘Right, me old mate. I’m gonna need to get you into the back of my van with the minimum of aggravation and maximum consideration of appropriate noise levels for the time of night in a respectable residential area. So this time, I am gonna ask you politely to please drink this, and then a little later you’ll wake up in a nice comfy cabin on the illy-alley-o. Alternatively, you can have more tough love from my business associate, Mr Spank, with the same result regarding your conveyance upon the briny deep, but a statistically larger probability of a fractured skull by the time you get there.’

  Zal coughs and sighs, defeated.

  ‘Tell Mr Spank to stand down. I’ll play Alice.’