by Tony Black
I felt the menace of his words.
Chapter 6
On the way out of the factory, the young girl on reception was taking dog’s abuse from what sounded like an irate former employee. He was what the Scots call ropeable, had the sweaty brow, bulging eyes, the lot. Every now and again he’d fling back his head, put on a glower then regain his rant, slapping the desk for emphasis.
‘I’m owed money, wages, not the peanuts they pay you cunts!’ He leaned over her, his face lit red as he showered the hate. ‘What you gonna do about it? I want fucking paying…’
He caught sight of us as we appeared in the foyer, started to wave his hands about. He had a wage slip that he slammed on the desk. ‘This place went to shit the moment they started hiring your lot. No understanding of the workplace — just cheap fucking trash!’
I shot a sideways glance at Mac: he had a swagger on, the kind bouncers wear before throwing folk down the stairs. I’d been on the end of a few like it. I thought about hauling him up, putting in a word to the wise, but this bloke was arcing up big time. I thought there might be an interesting response coming if I let it go.
The girl got out of her chair, cowered behind the phone and dialled for assistance. Mac strolled over, put a hand on the bloke’s shoulder. ‘What’s your problem?’
‘Eh?’ The guy’s face turned to a grimace; his lower lip drooped to reveal two prominent teeth poking up like a bust wicket.
Mac moved his hand from the bloke’s shoulder to his chest, edged forward. Mr Angry took a few steps back, said, ‘It’s got nowt to do with you, pal.’
‘Maybe I’m making it something to do with me.’
I had to laugh, couldn’t get enough of Mac in badass mode. I checked the girl was okay: ‘You all right there?’
She nodded. Seemed a bit shaken.
‘Have you called for some back-up?’
She didn’t catch my meaning, words falling behind the language barrier.
‘Is there someone coming out?’
‘Yes. Yes.’ Her speech came staccato. ‘The foreman from the shop floor, he is on his way.’
As she spoke the doors behind us were flung open. Two big biffers in overalls ran through, trailed by a little baldy bloke in a white dustcoat. The big lads took over from Mac, who had the furious worker pinned on the wall by a forearm. ‘All yours, lads,’ he said.
‘I just want my fucking wages… I just want what’s fucking owing to me.’ Soft lad got carted off, raised on his elbows. He didn’t know what was good for him, wouldn’t shut up. ‘You’re a bunch of wankers… I’m owed wages. Think I don’t know what’s going on here? I know the fucking score!’ I reckoned he’d be getting paid in a currency he hadn’t bargained on, probably out the back. I was interested to see how they did business around here — was nothing like I expected. I caught Mac staring at me. We were on the same wavelength: he leaned over and pocketed the wage slip the bloke had put on the desk.
Dustcoat sat the young lass down, patted her on the head as though she was a spaniel. ‘You sit yerself down, hen. I’ll get you a nice cup of tea, eh.’
‘She going to be okay?’ I asked.
‘Anna, oh aye — they’re hardy, these Czechs. Isn’t that right, hen?’
She looked up, put heartmelter eyes on the old fella. He smiled at her, in a fatherly way.
Mac checked out her rack, said, ‘I think you’ll live, love.’
I shook my head, got a wha’? wha’? stare in return. I turned to the young lass, crouched on my haunches at her side. ‘So you’re a Czech?’ I said. ‘How long have you been in Scotland?’
She crossed her legs away from me, shifting her weight uneasily. ‘Not very long.’
The old boy hovered, turned attention to me. ‘I don’t know you, do I?’
I looked up at him. ‘You tell me.’
‘Are you after something?’ He wasn’t used to front-of-house duties, checked himself. ‘I mean, is there something I can help you with?’
The place seemed strangely quiet without the shouting and roaring. Even the air seemed stilled, calmer. I played a long ball: ‘You’ve got a lot of Czechs working here…’
‘Yes.’ He was abrupt, brusque even.
‘That causing trouble with the locals?’
Now he bit, nostrils flared: ‘No. Look, I don’t think this is a discussion I should be having with you, Mr…’
‘Dury. The name’s Gus Dury. My brother used to be a partner here.’
The girl got up, patted down her skirt front, seemed to mumble breathlessly in Czech, then ran off down the hallway.
Dustcoat calmed, watched the girl stumble a bit on the carpet tiles, then, ‘We, eh, all heard. I mean there was an announcement, before the police came… I’m sorry for your loss.’
I breathed deep. Looked away.
‘He was a good man, always very… fair, with everyone.’
I drew back my gaze. I still had the speed firing and my thoughts ran from one end of my mind to the other. I knew this wasn’t the place for a beat-down; hadn’t worked with fat Davie. I said, ‘If you think of anything that might be worth my looking into, maybe you could give me a bell.’ I picked a Post-it note off the desk, scribbled down my number.
Dustcoat snatched the piece of paper from me, buried it in his pocket. ‘Yes, of course.’ He quickly turned, went off in the same direction as the girl.
I hollered after him, ‘Wait a minute. What’s your name?’
He stopped still, cricked his thin neck to face me, said, ‘Andy.’ It was almost said too quietly for me to hear.
‘Andy what?’
‘… Just Andy.’
He’d disappeared round the corner before I had a chance to weigh up what I’d just seen.
‘What you make of that?’ I said to Mac.
He shrugged, thinned his eyes. As we went for the door, he said, ‘That Anna, though… Think I’m in there?’
‘Mac, I don’t think she’d give the likes of you a date on a calendar.’
He clutched at his heart. ‘So cruel.’
I gave him a wee reminder: ‘You’re married.’
‘What she doesn’t know can’t harm her.’ He actually smiled as he said it.
I gave him another dose of reality: ‘You’re deluded too.’
‘Well, there is that. But still, I can dream.’
He had me there. ‘We can all dream, mate. Though I’d say our Anna’s dreams are turning into nightmares.’
Mac trudged through the slush of the car park to the car. The dog jumped about on sight of us. ‘How do you mean, nightmares?’ he said.
‘Couldn’t you tell?’
‘What, being dug out by…’ He produced the wage slip belonging to the mentaller. ‘… Ian Kerr of, where’s that?… Pilton.’
‘Yeah, but there was more than that. I got the impression that was a regular occurrence. See the way yer man Andy fired through those doors with a couple of lumps? He had a routine. That was all a little too practised for my liking.’
I turned the key in the car door; the central locking was slow in the cold but got there in the end. Usual was sitting in my seat. As I got in he jumped first into the passenger’s side then over to the back again.
Mac got in and frowned at me. ‘Those boys were hardy, deffo. I think they’re just off the shop floor, though. Andy probably just grabbed the biggest going.’
I reached for the seatbelt. The inertia-reel stuck a bit, gave it a good tug, said, ‘Well, maybe our man Ian fae Pilton will fill us in.’
Mac grunted, ‘If he can still speak after he’s been filled in!’
I punched the engine, spun tyres. Gave a last glance to the factory: thought I might rumble Davie at a window but he was nowhere to be seen. The place looked so ordinary it unnerved me.
On Newhaven Road I sparked up a Marlboro, chucked the pack in Mac’s lap. He still looked deep in thought, cogs turning like Windy Miller’s gaff. ‘Are Czechs legal here?’ he said.
‘Oh yeah. Don’t ge
t so many of them as the Poles, that’s all.’
‘Still, legal or no’, times are hard and nobody likes to see their job being taken by a foreigner. See all those protests on the telly, barricading in those Italian workers?… Mental.’
I nodded, wound down the top of the window to let some smoke out. ‘They’ll be undercutting the wages. By how much, though — that’s the question. I don’t deny anyone a job, but if they’re getting below the going rate then everyone’s getting ass-fucked.’
‘Except the boss man.’
I wound up the window again. It was too cold to let any air in. ‘Michael wouldn’t go for that.’
Mac swivelled on the seat, ‘I wasn’t trying to say-’
‘No. I know… I wasn’t having a go either. What I’m saying is, Michael wouldn’t go for that kind of racket, I know it.’
Mac’s mind ground out an answer: ‘But fat Davie might.’
‘Bang on.’
Chapter 7
I drove Mac back to the Wall.
‘It really as bad as you say in there?’ I asked.
‘Pretty much.’ It was a bad scene. I wondered what Hod had been up to with my old pub. ‘You should come and take a swatch at the place.’
I hadn’t ventured into the Wall since I sold up. Sounded like Hod’d turned it into — the worst of things — a style bar. Just the thought of trendies in Jimmy Choos laying waste to my memories of the place had me about chucking up, said, ‘Maybe later.’
Mac got out the car, bent over the door. ‘Move on, Gus. Stop living in the past.’
Felt content where I was, didn’t see anything so fucking great about the present, or any future to come for that matter. Went Judge Judy, said, ‘Whatever.’
‘I’m serious, mate… Come down later, Hod’ll be rapt to see you.’
I knew he was right. Hod was my oldest mate and I’d good as blanked him because of this pub. I still felt sore that I’d lost it — Col had left it to me in his will. I said, ‘Aye, okay. Soon, promise.’
Mac thinned his lips. Wasn’t buying any of it. He closed the car door. Usual jumped into the vacated seat.
The drive home was slow, the traffic ponderous as the endless Edinburgh buses struggled with the elements. Snow and freezing temperatures did not go with double-deckers, hills, and lazy lard-ass drivers, all looking for an excuse to piss off anyone that crossed their route. They were an almost perfect symbol for the modern Scottish workforce: why devote your time to making the customer happy when it’s far more satisfying to make them miserable?
I got parked across from the shop where they sold the aquariums and exotic fish. The drains reeked round here, real bad. I’d caught a bloke tipping a bucketful of dead little fish down there once. My powers of deduction told me that it wasn’t a first.
Usual chanked it up the street, sat at the door to the stairwell. I tugged his ears as I reached the step, put the key in the door. Some jakey had taken another slash on the wall. I held my nose and waved the dog on. As I took the stairs I saw the old woman from across the way. I’d seen her a few times before. Never knew her name — Debs and I referred to her as the auld wifey at number three.
‘Hello there,’ I said. She was struggling with a couple of Iceland carrier bags. ‘Want me to get those for you?’
She beamed. ‘Oh, would you, son?’
My heart went up a gear; I pressed out a smile. ‘Surely.’ She had a great hand-knitted scarf wrapped around her neck, I think the term is Fair Isle. ‘That’s a fine knit there. You do that yourself?’
She was still a bit breathless after the few steps she’d taken. ‘Oh no, my late sister did this for me, many a long moon ago.’
I immediately felt the tragedy of her life; it seared into me. I felt my own age too — I’d now lost a brother. I carried up the bags and listened to the old woman tell me about her sister’s great talent for knitting. ‘I’ve a flat full of her jumpers and scarves. Each one is a memory, and you can’t have too many of those.’
I had no words for her. She took the bags from me and disappeared into her flat and her reverie. I felt my hurt rising, but I fought it. I wouldn’t let myself weaken. I turned and went into my flat. Took off my Crombie and removed the quarter-bottle of Grouse. I placed it on the coffee table and sat before it, staring.
I knew it would be so easy for me to open the whisky, neck the lot. I tasted the fire of it, running over my throat. I sensed the burn in the pit of my stomach as it landed. I felt the hum in my head that would come soon after, the hum that made it all worthwhile. I knew I was a trouble drinker because of that hum. Other people — normal people — drink for the taste, for the pleasure of it. I drank for the sensation, the effect. I drank to attain the hum in my head that said the louder noise outside had been deadened. The sound of reality, the world of living and breathing was drowned out by drinking.
I stared at the bottle, the little Grouse on the front, the low-flying burdie that we call it in jest. Would you like a low-flying burdie, Gus?
God, yes, would I ever.
Just to whet my thrapple.
Just one or two.
Just the ten.
Just a bucket, then.
I knew there was no safe number, not after one.
But I was tempted.
I picked up the bottle, held the cap between my thumb and forefinger; all it would take was one quick twist.
I fought it.
That’s what I’d done for so long now. One drink was too many, and after that, a thousand wouldn’t be enough.
When Debs had taken me back in, when we’d set up home together again, I’d vowed not to drink.
‘I don’t want you to do it for me,’ she said. ‘It’s got to be for you.’
I understood. I saw where she was coming from. The change had to come from within. I’d done the one thing I had thought I never would. Went to the one place I had previously laughed off all suggestions I go: Alcoholics Anonymous.
Was I an alcoholic?
Did I know what it meant?
That’s what they’d asked me.
I read every description I could find. None of them seemed to fit me, but in every one of them there was something that fitted me. I admitted defeat.
‘My name’s Gus Dury and I’m an alcoholic.’ I said the words, but it was all meaningless to me. It was all ritual. I sat through their meeting, listened to their plaintive, whining tales of woe. Poor me, poor me, poor me a drink!
It churned my stomach.
I wasn’t like them.
They were weak. They were the societal chaff. The dregs. The limp-willed. Losers. All with a sob story of how they got into such a mess. How they just couldn’t stop themselves. How they needed AA to keep them on the straight and narrow.
My relationship with the sauce wasn’t about support. Or substitution. Or lassitude born of a hard life. I drank because I wanted to. And now I stopped because I wanted to, I told myself.
It was a simple pay-off. I could stop when I wanted and I could start again when I wanted. I controlled it; it didn’t control me. To admit the opposite was to give up on the game of life.
I put the bottle back in my coat pocket. I was exhausted. I thought to grab a wrap of speed, but I’d left the lot in the car. I knew I was too hyped for sleep. My mind was awash with thoughts of Michael and of the police investigation, of fat Davie Prentice and of a dose of Czech workers, and one Czech lodger.
I needed to unwind.
I ran a bath. Climbed in.
I was soon far enough gone to feel my mind pull up to its new preoccupations. Nothing was fitting into place. If this was a jigsaw, I wouldn’t have more than a couple of pieces stuck together. Sure, there was something going on at the factory — Davie’s denials, and the sight of Vilem lording it about, only confirmed my suspicions. That angry worker, Kerr fella, might turn up some answers when we gave him a knock but I wasn’t hopeful; had my suspicions he’d be given a good few reasons to keep schtum.
I leaned out of t
he bath, grabbed over my tabs that I’d sat by the sink. I lit a red-top, caught the familiar Marlboro stench.
Davie Prentice was, for sure, as wide as a gate. But I didn’t have him down as a killer. Taking up that kind of damage took bottle and fat Davie had none of that. The suggestion that he might even be mixed up with someone who had the cobblers required to put a bullet in a man didn’t square with the devout coward I knew him to be. If Davie Prentice was mixed up in my brother’s murder, he was being fucked over too, worse than any Calton Hill rent boy.
I turned the sum of my thoughts over to my subconscious, zoned out in the warm water. In no time I was comatose, dead to the world.
Had been crashed out for God knows how long when I got jerked back to reality. The bathroom was in darkness, the water freezing as Debs stormed in and pulled on the light.
‘What the fuck is this?’ she yelled.
She held something in her hand, but my eyes wouldn’t adjust to the sudden brightness. ‘What, what is it?’
She slapped the item into the bathwater; the little wraps of speed fell out of the baggie. I tried desperately to pick them up.
‘Gus, how could you?’ She started to sob. ‘I trusted you.’
She couldn’t look at me, turned and fled.
The wraps were a bust. No way back for them. Let the lot go down the plughole with the bathwater. When I dressed, Debs was sitting in the living room, there’s a phrase, stony-faced.
In the time I’d known her, I’d seen every expression there is to see on Debs’s face. I’d say there were some I would never want to see again, and prayed I never would, but this one was perhaps the expression I knew least how to deal with.
Said, ‘Sorry.’
Her look went up a notch in intensity, almost a wince — an ‘Are we here again so soon?’ God, it wounded me.
Added, ‘I am, truly.’
She stood up, raised her hands, dropped them again. ‘Gus, I can’t take this any more.’
This shithole flat of ours was too small to hold the tension. You couldn’t have a barney when there was nowhere to run off to, slam doors behind you. I went for the mainline: ‘Well, what do you want me to say or do? Tell me, I’ll do it.’
