by Tony Black
Loss
( Gus Dury - 3 )
Tony Black
Tony Black
Loss
Chapter 1
Calls in the middle of the night rarely bring good news. There’s a drill folk go through before dialling a number at 1 a.m. — usually, if it can be avoided it will be. If it can’t, expect a jolt.
The first ring woke me but I let it get to double figures before I shifted arse, reached for the receiver. The glare of the digital clock stung, nearly burned the retinas out me.
‘Yeah, what?’ I blurted, my voice rougher than ever on the red Marlboros, poked me into manners, ‘I mean, hello.’
Formal tones. A youngish woman, but serious as the clap: ‘Is that Mr Dury?’
‘Yeah, it is.’
‘I’m calling from Lothian and Borders Police… Sorry to wake you so late, but I’m afraid it’s an important matter.’
The pay-off. Christ, I thought, here it comes; went with: ‘It is?’
A pause. Lip-biting perhaps. ‘Would you be able to come down to the station, Mr Dury?’
I sat up. A shiver passed through me as the duvet slipped — it was another cold night. I rubbed my eyes, lifted the alarm clock. ‘Do you know what time it is?’
No pause this time, a shuffle at the other end of the line, the scrape of a chair: ‘Gus, Gus, is that you?’
This voice I recognised — it was Fitz. We hadn’t spoken for near on a year. Even when we were speaking, he never used my Christian name. If Fitz the Crime was talking nicely to me, it must be bad.
‘Look, Gus, I was going to call myself, I just didn’t want to have ye slam the phone down at the sound of me.’
I was lost for words, couldn’t fit the puzzle together: any borderline friendship I’d once shared with him, I’d well and truly blasted, with both barrels. ‘You what?’
Fitz’s tone came low, calm, almost unrecognisable from his usual bluster. The Irish was still there, but this was like Wogan in his eighties heyday — tons of schmaltz: ‘Gus, I think you should come down the station… Can ye manage it?’
I heard Debs stir behind me: ‘What’s going on?’
I turned, flagged her down.
‘Gus, I’ll send a car, okay? You can be ready in ten or fifteen, yeah?’
Debs sat up, tugged at my arm.
I reined in the confusion of being woken from deep sleep, of having the filth call me in the wee hours, and of Fitz being nice about it. ‘Yeah, okay. I’ll get dressed.’
Debs stared at me intently as I placed the phone back on its cradle. ‘What’s going on?’
‘Go back to sleep.’
I felt an uneasy turn in the pit of my stomach. Was it fear? I didn’t think so, didn’t feel like fear, or even confusion. It was almost preternatural, a deep instinct of bad hurt to follow. Foreboding.
Debs got up, walked round to face me, a bed-head thing happening with her hair as she spoke again: ‘Tell me what’s going on.’
I shook myself. ‘I have absolutely no idea.’
Looks askance, a neck-tilt filled with ‘do I button up the back?’ derision written all over her. ‘Oh, come on…’
I looked her squarely in the eye. ‘That was Fitz.’ The name was enough to wipe away any doubts that I was keeping something from her.
‘Fitz… What the hell did he want?’
I placed my hands on her shoulders; she felt cold. ‘Get back to sleep. I have to go out.’
‘No way, I’m coming too.’ She spun past me, went to open the wardrobe.
I got up and slammed my palm on the door, held it shut. ‘Go back to bed, Deborah… I mean it.’
She sensed the tone in my voice wasn’t there for show, folded her arms and cricked her jaw to one side. ‘I don’t like this, Gus… Police ringing in the night. It might be-’
‘Yeah, well, I’ll find out, won’t I?’
I got a finger pointed at me. ‘Gus…’
I said, ‘Look, as soon as I know, I’ll call… okay?’
She thinned her eyes, returned to bed. I took my 501s off the chair; the white T-shirt and the black trackie top on the floor would have to do too. I dressed quickly.
‘Do you want me to make you a coffee?’ said Debs.
‘No thanks, they’re sending a car.’
I pulled on my Docs and stepped out of the bedroom. The dog had been woken and was prowling about. He clocked me but seemed to doubt his eyes, gave a sniff at my leg.
‘Back to bed, boy.’
Eyes widened, an almost insulted expression, then a slow return to the living room.
My Crombie hung in the hall. I sparked up a tab on my way out the front door. Some jakey had taken a Pat Cash in the tenement’s stairs. The rank smell of pish made me hold my breath on the way down. Let me catch the bastard next time.
Outside I exhaled — my breath came white against the freezing air. It was sub-zero. The city was in the grip of the worst winter for twenty years. I certainly couldn’t remember a colder one, and I had a bit more than twenty years on the clock. I turned up my collar, chugged deep on the Marlboro. There seemed to be a hollowness in my chest — the apprehension? The unknown? I kissed the tip of my cigarette, cupped in my hand prison-yard style, hoping the burn in my lungs would dislodge the feeling. It didn’t.
I saw the white Audi, flashing blue lights in the grille, long before I heard it coming down Easter Road. I moved out to the kerb, dropped my tab in the gutter. It landed in a tinfoil container half full of boiled rice and frozen curry sauce. The car pulled up. A uniform got out, said, ‘I could do you for that.’
I stretched out my arms, wrists together. ‘Wanna cuff me?’
He said nothing, pushed past me and opened up the back door, pointed inside.
We drove up to the lights — they burned red. The driver halted short of the hill-crest, next to the Italian tailor. I sat reading the one-hour alterations promise, then the lights changed and we pulled onto London Road, some movement of the back tyres confirming the iciness of the road.
‘Which station are we going to?’ I said.
Uniform turned round, spat, ‘Fettes.’
It wasn’t the closest, but it somehow tied in with the scenarios I had playing in my head. I’d never been on the Chrimbo card list at Lothian and Borders plod. There were more than a few down there who’d like to see me banged up. Christ, they’d went for it enough times already: trying to hang a murder rap on me was their last effort. I’d narrowly wriggled out of that thanks to Debs’s evidence; I’d promised to chuck poking about into other people’s problems, just for her. I wondered if she’d still be there when I got home. If I got home.
‘Any idea what this is about?’ I said.
Uniform again: ‘Haven’t a scooby.’
I picked up the Maccy D’s coffee cups littering the floor at my feet, tried to play it chatty: ‘Busy night?’
‘Same old shite — cold keeps the jakeys quiet.’
‘Behaving themselves for a bed at the doss.’
‘Nah… drink themselves paralytic then cark it up some close.’ He spoke of people dying in the cold of the street like it was something to be thankful for. I shook my head; driver caught me in the rear-view. Like I cared. I slumped back and vowed no more chit-chat with the filth. It was too soul-destroying.
‘Oh, there was a wee incident out at the Meadows, though,’ said Uniform. He turned round to make sure I was listening, that he had my full attention. ‘Some bloke got plugged. They found him about ten bells, got to be a radge walking there at that time. Looks like he was mugged… Be some wee schemie with his first shooter — all got them now.’
The uniform guffawed, set his mate off; he slapped the dash then the pair of them high-fived. They laughed me up, but I wasn’t in on the joke. Hoped, by the kip o
f them, I never would be.
My heart thumped as we reached the station. I saw Fitz standing at the glass-fronted doors, his hands stuck deep in his coat pockets. He looked more like a university lecturer than a copper. It had been a while since I’d seen him and he’d collected some grey streaks at the sides of his hairline. More than a few pounds had been added to the waistline as well.
The flatfoot changed his tone before Fitz: ‘This way, Mr Dury, please.’
‘Please… You found the charm manual on the way in, then,’ I said to him. Fair bust his little act.
Fitz removed a hand, held it before the lad. ‘Jaysus, has this little tool been giving ye a hard time, Dury?’
I shook my head, said, ‘As if.’ I was delighted to hear Fitz revert to my surname. Things couldn’t be so bad then, could they?
He flicked back his head. ‘Don’t think about getting yerself down the cannie, Wallace. The city won’t patrol itself.’
The uniform slunk off, his driver coming in at his back and removing his hat at the sight of Fitz, who sparked up again: ‘Go on, the pair of ye… Won’t ye be tucked up in your wanking chariots soon enough.’
I watched them retreat, prodded: ‘You been jumping the ranks again, Fitz?’
He smiled; a roll of meat spilled beneath his chin. ‘Holy Mother of God, ’tis a sight for sore eyes ye are, Dury.’ He thrust out a hand, I took it and his other tapped my elbow. It was all a bit of a show. I felt the hollowness in my chest return, shoot up my throat and freeze my jaw. ‘Get away in, Dury.’ He turned. ‘Come on, follow me.’
We moved towards the back staircase. I read signs indicating routes to the morgue and various offices. Fitz yakked away about this and that. Mainly that. It was all avoidance chat, the kind of clatter that I usually switch off to. None of it bore any relation to my current predicament. None of it raised even the slightest amount of interest, except for his uncharacteristic gratitude for my handing him yet another collar from my last case, allowing him to put one over on his number one rival on the force.
‘But still, Dury, that was some name ye made for yerself there, was it not… You must have had a power of offers come yer way since grabbing that killer.’
That case had nearly been the end of me. ‘Fitz, I’m out the game.’
‘You’re what?’ His lip curled up — his teeth seemed whiter than I remembered; he’d either had them bleached or been fitted with veneers.
‘I’m out that racket for good. Look, I’m back with Debs and… we’re happy.’
Fitz blinked, pushed through swing doors to a small office, sat on the corner of a desk. He took a pewter hip flask from his pocket and unscrewed the cap. ‘I don’t believe it.’
‘Believe it.’
He slugged deep, flashed his teeth again, offered the flask.
‘No thanks.’
‘You what? ’Tis Talisker, Dury.’
I shook my head.
‘Fuck me, you’re not off the sauce as well!’
I nodded. ‘Six months without a drop.’ I still carried a quarter-bottle of Grouse in my pocket, but that was to test my mettle, not for emergencies.
I fired up: ‘Look, Fitz, what the fuck is this about? I’ve been hoicked out my pit in the middle of the night. If I’m on a charge, or there’s something else, it’s time to shit or get off the pot.’
He rose. ‘Okay, okay.’ Fumbling about, fidgeting, hands in and out of his pockets, until he found a packet of smokes, B amp;H Superkings. He lit up and offered me one. I waved it away. ‘You’re not off those too.’
I took out my Marlboros. ‘I’ll smoke my own.’
‘Suit yerself.’ He paced over to the other side of the desk and removed a black folder, looked inside and then turned back to me. He sighed, closed the folder, then picked it up, tucking it under his arm. ‘Shall we?’ He indicated a doorway marked ‘Morgue’.
Fitz started chattering again, some bullshit about the bigger picture and most of the force’s young hotshots wanting to walk before they could run. ‘’Tis the world we live in, everyone wants something for nothing. They see those feckin’ bankers with their bonuses and the celebrities and footballers and the idea of graft goes out the window… Graft, feckin’ no clue of it.’
He had a key for the morgue. Inside there was a strip light that took what seemed like for ever to flicker into life, then the grey sterility of the place dominated.
‘We’re heading for the feckin’ abyss this recession, ’tis only the starter — we haven’t brushed the cuff of this feckin’ credit crunch bollocks.’ Fitz fiddled with the black folder again, turning over pages. I saw fag ash falling on the floor; it seemed like sacrilege.
I felt my heart quicken again. My spine grew rigid and a cold line of sweat formed on my brow. I was getting twitchy, then I spotted the stainless-steel table, holes punched in the metal, heavy legs supporting a long drip-tray underneath. On top was a blue-grey cloth: it was clearly draped over a corpse.
Fitz caught me staring, stopped talking.
‘What’s that?’ I said.
Silence.
I dragged my gaze away from the mortuary slab, said, ‘Fitz, what is this? Why am I here?’
He fumbled — for the first time since I’d known Fitz the Crime he fumbled his words. I had a moment of clarity. Suddenly everything became clear. The call. The uniform jokers. Fitz’s fucking stupid avuncular manner.
I walked over to the slab, my hand trembling for a moment. I watched my fingers hover over the blue-grey cloth that hid the face of a corpse. My thoughts danced. I jerked my hand away, wiped at my mouth. I was shocked to feel my lips so cold, so dry. I felt the cigarette fall from my other hand and I looked to the floor to see the head of ash collapse in a million pieces, followed instantly by a shower of orange sparks.
Fitz came over. ‘Gus, I–I…’
I turned to look at his face. His brows made an apse above his eyes. He was the image of inscrutability; a shrill scream for answers. I looked back to the corpse and removed the cloth.
My mind filled with mist.
Nothing could have prepared me for this. Nothing in the world.
I drew the cloth further.
The body was white, clean. Not a mark. Except a small grey hole beneath the heart, barely half an inch wide, where the bullet had entered, and taken a life away.
I felt Fitz’s hand on my shoulder: ‘Is it?’
I realised my breathing had stilled. I felt dizzy, drew a gasp of air. ‘This is Michael… This is my brother.’
Chapter 2
There’s a phrase, I was a million miles away. Were it possible, I was two million miles away. My head felt as if it had been used as a battering ram. Thoughts raced in and out, questions, assumptions. And anger. Fitz spoke at my side, words, all words. I couldn’t access the part of my being that processed communication, it was all sensation to me now. Feelings. The predominant one, hurt.
I saw Fitz out the corner of my eye gesturing to a chair. I didn’t move and he wheeled it over to me, tried to cajole me to sit. I lowered myself into the stiff, hard-backed, office-issue plastic and tried to regain composure. I looked up towards the ceiling; the strip lights hurt my eyes. Fitz offered me some water. I shook my head, tried to say ‘No’, but it felt as though someone else was in charge of me, my somatic nervous system in the hands of a puppet master.
There was a moment, a memory sparking:
I’m about seven or eight, in the school playground and someone has ran up behind me and slapped my ears like a clash of cymbals. My hearing’s distorted, like being underwater but I’m not, I know where I am. There’s kids everywhere laughing. I’ve seen this happen before, it’s been a craze around the school, slapping ears and watching. I strike out, there’s a face to hand and I feel my knuckle hit bone. We fight, roll about on the ground. I can feel my knees tearing on the tarmac. There’s blood in my mouth from a cut lip. My ears hurt. Everything feels strange to me. Like the world is cruel…
‘Gus, is there anything
…?’ I heard Fitz again.
I found some words: ‘I was just…’
Fitz stared at me but I couldn’t comprehend the expression. He turned to the side, walked out to the water cooler in the hall and filled a cup. He held it out. I watched him but couldn’t take it. He crouched, left it on the floor beside me.
‘Gus, I don’t know what to say, it must be an awful shock for ye. I know, I know that.’
I looked up at him. I hardly recognised the face, my mind was still in the schoolyard. ‘I can see it clear as day, y’know… I can actually remember it, where I was, how it felt,’ I said.
‘What’s that, son?’
‘I could only have been eight at most, I was only young. I’d ripped the knees out my school trousers in a scrap but nobody said a word. Nobody said a thing.’
I felt Fitz place a hand on my shoulder, ‘I’ll get ye home, Gus. I’ll get a car.’
‘It’s the day he was born — Michael — I can remember it as clear as if I was there. I tore the knees out my trousers, but nobody even noticed.’ I started to laugh uncontrollably. The laughter shook me on the chair, I moved up and down with it.
Fitz left me. ‘I’ll go call a car. Sit tight.’
I laughed harder. I rocked in the chair, to and fro, the high of a great craic upon me. I was in such mirth I hardly noticed the tears begin to roll down my cheeks. Slowly at first, then faster. I cried for my dead brother, laid before me on a mortuary table. I jumped up. The chair skated behind me on the hard floor as I ran to Michael’s side.
I clawed back the cloth again. He looked so cold and pale, his lips blue. He wore no expression I’d ever seen on his face before. It hardly seemed like him at all. I touched his hair. It hadn’t changed, sitting high and wavy as he always wore it. I felt my throat convulse, my Adam’s apple rise and fall in quick succession.
‘God, Michael, what happened?’ I said. I touched his still, dead face and recoiled at the waxy texture. ‘Why?’
I saw my tears fall on his face and I wiped them away, straightened myself and felt a breeze of composure blow in. As I looked down at my brother I wanted to lift him up and hold him in my arms, but I knew at once it was futile. This wasn’t Michael. This wasn’t the brother I had grown up with, had fought and argued with, had watched soar far in excess of any pitiful achievement I had attained on this sorry earth. Below me now was merely the vessel that had once held my brother’s spirit. He was gone.
