Loss gd-3

by Tony Black

  I was, but only just. ‘I want to meet.’

  ‘I don’t think that will be poss-’

  ‘Don’t jerk me off, Fitz. I want to see you, today.’

  His tone rose: ‘I have a desk full of paperwork in front of me. There’s no way I can get-’

  I didn’t listen, broke over him: ‘Round the back of the parliament there’s a place — Beanscene.’

  He snapped, ‘What’s that, some fucking dyke hangout?’

  For a copper, he wasn’t very community aware. ‘It’s a coffee shop.’

  He wasn’t pleased by the proposal, but I could tell he was thawing. ‘Beanscene… by the holy…’

  ‘One hour.’

  Hung up.

  I put on the radio as I dressed. Prime Minister Hash Brown was on the news, promising to do everything in his power to protect the stability of the banking system. I almost laughed. There was fuck all stability in the banking system — it had gone tits up. And the rest of us weren’t that far behind. The man’s arrogance astounded me: there he was strutting the world stage, talking up his role in the great economic rescue of the world and forgetting totally the part he and the swinging dicks in the City had played in getting us here.

  ‘The jobless figures are now greater than two million,’ said the newsreader. ‘And now to other news…’

  Other news! There was no other fucking news. Try putting food on the table without a job. I flicked the switch to off. The standard of reporting on this financial storm had been piss poor; as a trained hack it terrified me. Worse, got me ranting. ‘I could do his job,’ I roared, ‘read the fucking news! Christ, I could write it as well.’ I sounded like Yosser Hughes, wondered how far I was from the ‘Giz a job’ speech.

  I dressed in a pair of grey cords from Next, and a black Stone Island top that Debs had bought me. The top fitted like a dream, definitely a touch better than I was used to wearing. I played with the zip on the front a few times; the noise it made was poetry, could never get used to that. My Docs looked decidedly down at heel. If I had the Gene Tunney I’d have sprung for a new pair by now; Debs had offered to get me some Caterpillar boots but I’d said no. She’d even suggested a pair of pointy numbers that wouldn’t have looked out of place on Donald and Davey Stott, but I declined. I’d be sticking with the Docs, no matter what was in fashion.

  Suited and booted, I took a quick delve beneath the cistern in the bathroom, got out my wraps of speed. I had a quick blast on a couple and sealed up the bag again, returned it into hiding beneath the cistern lid. I knew if Debs found this it was lights out. But I also knew she wasn’t as suspiciously minded as me.

  I had to leave Usual behind. Chucked him a couple of Bonios and said, ‘Mind and behave… No digging on the couch!’

  Arthur’s Seat was covered in snow as I schlepped down to the half-a-billion-pounds parliament. It was our national shame; well, one of them. The cost had been the cause of massive anger and political recriminations, but none of the main players had lost their hats. I’d read in the paper recently that, at night, the forecourt of the place had been taken over by skateboarders. I saw their tracks now: wheel marks, skids and doughnuts on the concrete. A half-billion skate park — money well spent.

  Out the back of the parliament a Marks and Spencer food van was being unloaded. Christ, this got my goat — did those bastards deprive themselves of nothing? Fucking Markies food deliveries whilst half the country is on bread rations. It boiled my piss.

  I saw Fitz up ahead, outside Beanscene. I wondered why he hadn’t gone inside. As I drew closer I saw the place had been shuttered. Another victim of the economic catastrophe.

  ‘This place gone to the wall?’ I said to him.

  He seemed pleased. ‘I didn’t like the sound of it anyway… Beanscene: fucking hell, amn’t I in the wrong get-up entirely without the dungarees?’

  For a man in his exalted position, I was amazed at his lack of political correctness; I thought it had pervaded every hierarchy in the country by now.

  ‘Come on, then, up to the Mile.’

  We stationed ourselves in as near as you got to a greasy spoon on the city’s main tourist thoroughfare. Fitz ordered a coffee for me and a pot of tea for himself. ‘God, I used to fooster my days away in these places when I was on the beat.’

  We both knew those days weren’t so long ago — Fitz had ascended the ranks rapid-style with my help. I’d handed him clean arrests aplenty. I’d turned his success to my own advantage more than a few times, though.

  The drinks came. Fitz took the lid off his teapot, stirred. I spooned the froth off my coffee, said, ‘So, here we are.’

  ‘Here we are indeed.’

  There didn’t seem any point messing about. I went for the jugular: ‘The other day, when you told me to be careful.’

  Fitz played it cool, kept stirring. ‘Uh-huh.’

  ‘You told me Davie Prentice was connected.’

  ‘Did I?… I don’t remember.’

  I grabbed his hand. His eyes went to mine. ‘Fitz, put the fucking spoon down — it’s stirred already.’

  He lowered the spoon, replaced the lid of the teapot. ‘Stirred it is.’

  I had his attention now, said, ‘I had a visit… not the kind of visit I like to get.’

  ‘Now who would that be from?’ Fitz’s meaty neck quivered above his shirt collar. He tried to play it casual but his colour flushed a little too much to make the move convincing.

  ‘Ronnie McMilne.’

  He ran his tongue over the front of his teeth, spoke softly: ‘The Undertaker.’ He said the name all too casually, as if it had been one he’d batted about quite a bit recently.

  ‘The very same.’ I sipped my coffee, lowered the cup again. ‘Now, I’m taking a wild guess that when you told me to be careful, when you told me that fat Davie was connected, you were thinking of…’ I lowered my voice to Fitz’s level, ‘our man with the interest in coffins, the Undertaker.’

  ‘All right, Dury, we’ve heard the name, don’t think there’s any need to mention it again.’

  In the years I’d known Fitz, I’d been impressed with the way he had grown. The man of old would have been cursing and blasting me for presuming to have sussed him out like this. The mature Fitz had learned to keep schtum — he’d picked up a few tricks at all the meetings and seminars.

  ‘No need at all,’ I said.

  Fitz poured out his tea. We had a routine for the exchange of information. I gave him something, he gave me something and nothing. This time the rules were different. Fitz knew I wasn’t working an angle on him, he knew all I was after was peace of mind. I could see the years we’d known each other accounted for something with him; he felt for my loss.

  ‘I have taken control of the investigation myself,’ said Fitz.

  ‘You have?’

  He reached for the sugar bowl. ‘It’s, er, well, let’s just say it touches on another aspect of my current portfolio.’

  ‘Cut the shit, Fitz. I don’t want a PowerPoint presentation.’

  ‘Y’what?’

  ‘Gimme it in plain fucking words… minus the management speak.’

  He spooned in some sugar, stirred it up. ‘Our man — the McMilne fella — we have a task force that’s been following him about and they report to me.’

  ‘How did you make the connection to Michael?’

  ‘By chance… Isn’t it always the way.’

  ‘Go on.’

  ‘There were some reports of… intimidation of workers.’

  I’d seen the workers: couldn’t imagine any of them raising police complaints when they were living under a crime lord in a Leith kip house. I let this slide, wasn’t about to overburden Fitz with information when I didn’t know how he was going to use it. Plus, I wanted to keep his focus on the Undertaker: figured he’d have a better chance of success there than I would.

  ‘Intimidation of workers… reported to the force?’

  ‘After a fashion.’

  He had a snitc
h. Someone on the inside was talking. ‘Are these workers still employed by my brother’s firm?’

  He shook his head. ‘No. No. These are people that have moved on.’

  People like Ian Kerr. ‘You mean they were punted…’

  A nod. ‘That’s about the size of it.’

  They knew something that they shouldn’t, that was clear. ‘So, McMilne gave them a scare. Why?’

  ‘My information was that our fella was running a racket through the factory’s transport channels. Some of the drivers played along, some didn’t. In the end, they all did.’

  Until a few days ago, I’d thought my brother’s business was totally kosher. I couldn’t conceive of any kind of dodge, least of all one in league with the criminal underworld, one that had cost lives. ‘What’re you saying, Fitz?’

  ‘They were trucking in contraband in the company vehicles.’

  I couldn’t take it in. The Undertaker didn’t touch the drugs game in the city, I knew that. ‘Trucking in what?’

  Fitz took a sip of his tea. ‘You fucking name it: fags, booze, Tommy Hilfiger knock-offs… anything they could get their hands on. Black market’s exploded lately.’

  My mind burned. Did Michael know about this? I couldn’t believe it. Sure, there were the red letters looking for payment, Jayne joking about straitened times… but cosying up to Ronnie McMilne? I just didn’t see Michael being capable of it. ‘If you know about this, why haven’t you shut it down?’ I said.

  Fitz looked to be clamming up again. ‘This is all, what you might say… recently acquired information.’

  I ran my hands through my hair. My head hurt. I felt blood rising in me. I squeezed my fingers; the pressure piled on my skull.

  Fitz sipped at his tea, lowered the cup and added some more from the pot. I felt tempted to smash the lot over his head, not out of any anger towards him but out of my desperation to know what he knew.

  ‘I want the name of your snout,’ I said.

  For the first time since we’d met up, Fitz lost his cool. His face inflated. ‘Are ye out of yer feckin’ mind?’ The Irish in him came to the fore: ‘I’m no feckin’ informer, Dury. Ye can forget it! Go way outta that!’

  I stood up so fast that my chair scraped noisily along the floor, attracted glances. ‘Okay, I’ll go it alone… But expect more blood.’

  I went for the door.

  He called me back: ‘Dury.’

  I halted.

  Fitz rose, walked to within inches of me. ‘Stay away from McMilne.’

  I tutted, ‘Shuh… thanks for the warning.’

  As I turned he grabbed my coat sleeve, ‘I’m not kidding: the man’s… lethal.’

  I snatched back my arm. ‘He’s not the fucking only one.’

  Chapter 15

  I tanked it up the Mile, each step on the cobbles an explosion. I held the Grouse bottle in my pocket so tightly that I thought it might shatter in my hand. I didn’t care. I would have blood on my hands soon enough. I was ready to kill for my brother. The Undertaker, fat Davie, some unknown fucking Czech crim working out of the factory Michael built up — I didn’t care.

  A car sounded a horn at me — I’d walked on the road, shouted, ‘Go fuck yourself!’ I turned to see a school-run mum in a Stockbridge tractor. She had the revs up too high, but that engine was way behind me in the burn stakes. I brought my fist down on the bonnet. She gasped at me, ready to raise herself and confront me, but something in her advised against it. She put the foot down and forced me to jump aside; I let out a kick at the back fender as she went. Called after her, ‘Fuck off, you snooty cow!’

  Eyes lit on me, all the way up and down the street. A daft-looking tourist in a tartan cape dropped jaw.

  ‘What? Anyone else fucking want some?’ I yelled.

  People took off in every direction. I got off the road, headed to the World’s End pub. I stormed through the door, straight to the bar. The place looked dead. Usually this deep in the heart of tourist central was stowed out.

  Barman came over. ‘Yes, what can I get you?’

  ‘Whisky.’ I said the word before I felt its consequence register on my mind.

  I watched the barman. ‘A blend or a malt?’

  I didn’t care. ‘Whatever.’

  He creased his brows, went to the wall behind the bar. I watched him put a glass to the bottle of Teacher’s, fill a measure.

  He placed it before me, gave me a price.

  I grabbed a crumple of bills and coins from my pocket, dumped the lot on the bar. He fished out the right amount and left me.

  I stared at the glass of scoosh. I didn’t need to raise it to my nose to pick up the aroma. I could have guessed this blend in a room of one hundred others. I felt the essence of it seeping into me. I was calmed by it. I knew this was my proper place. I knew I was home. I raised the glass and stared at it in the full light. One sip, that’s all it was going to take. One little, insignificant sip of liquid. One moment on the lips, in the mouth, and over the throat. One second in the stomach, and then…

  I lowered the glass.

  Picked up my money.

  The barman looked at me as if he considered calling for assistance.

  I turned away, left the bar.

  On the street a piper was playing now. The skirl of the pibroch attracted a crowd of tourists, but it left me cold. I wanted to be away from all things familiar. I wanted to be in a new place, where there weren’t memories on every street wherever I looked. I needed to escape my past, but my future didn’t seem to hold any alternatives.

  I put up the collar on my Crombie and schlepped up the Mile. At the Radisson Hotel I got in a taxi and gave the driver the address for the Burlington Practice. He checked me in the rear-view mirror; obviously the name registered. Edinburgh cabbies know better than to make conversation with nut-jobs — they have enough experience of ferrying them about in a city full of them. I was grateful for his silence.

  I fell into a state of high anxiety; figured Dr Naughton had sussed this tendency in me right from the off. I thought about my meeting with Fitz, what it meant. I was heading down a dark path. The Undertaker had an interest in my brother’s affairs — fucking hell, Michael, what were you thinking? I wished him alive so I could grab him by the shoulders, shake some sense into him. I saw his face before me, questioned what level of desperation drew him to get into such a racket of shit. Did he know what he was doing? Surely he did, my brother was nobody’s fool. I wondered how bad things had got for him, could see the escalation of the stakes as he got in deeper and deeper… and then what? I needed to know the how and the why and the who. I wasn’t giving up until I did.

  The taxi pulled up. I passed the cabbie a ten-spot, schlepped to the door of the practice. The path had been cleared of snow, but icicles still hung on the railings. Inside, my doctor was impassive, a bland, unreadable expression on her as she greeted me.

  ‘Don’t you want to take your coat off, Mr Dury?’ she said.

  ‘I thought you were going to call me Gus.’

  She didn’t respond to that. I kept my coat on and she brought me a bottle of water. I refused to take it and she placed it on the floor beside me. I acted like a child; I felt as helpless. Her hair looked wet. It smelled of apples; the thought of it made my eyes moisten, reminded me of a vague sensation from childhood. Scrumping for apples — how old was I when I did that? Where was Michael at the time? God, why did I have to think of that now? Was there a single moment in my past I could face again?

  I looked at the pine shelves with the doctor’s slim collection of books on them, tried to read the titles, distract myself. ‘I thought you’d have more books.’

  She smiled at me, grateful I was becoming more chatty. ‘Everything’s online now.’

  I hadn’t thought, said, ‘I see.’

  She put her hair back in a band. ‘I’m sorry: tried to cram in a trip to the gym…’

  That explained the wet hair, the smell of apples. ‘What shampoo is that?’

&nbs
p; She blushed — seemed out of place for her, ‘Palmolive.’

  ‘Oh, right… It smells familiar.’

  I calmed down a notch. Got up, removed my jacket. The cycle helmet and Karrimor still sat in the corner.

  As I returned to my seat, Dr Naughton spoke: ‘I wanted to ask you about the kind of people around you at present.’

  ‘Okay, go on.’

  ‘What are they like?… Affectionate? Impatient? Bad-tempered?’

  I shook my head. Who did she want me to think of? Debs, Mac, maybe Fitz? Said, ‘Some are, some aren’t.’

  The question wasn’t the opener she’d hoped for. She paused a moment, then tried again. ‘I was thinking about what we spoke of towards the end of the last session.’

  ‘Oh, yes.’ We’d spoken about Michael.

  ‘Would you feel comfortable telling me something about your brother?’

  I shrugged. I felt strangely drawn out of myself now I was here, said, ‘Guess so.’

  ‘Could you tell me about something that happened to you both?’

  ‘What kind of thing?’

  ‘Perhaps something from your childhood.’

  I remembered something. It was the smell of apples that reminded me.

  ‘I robbed an orchard when I was about twelve, brought home bags of apples. They were cooking apples and when my father came in from the pub, utterly blootered as usual, he tried to eat one. He spat it out and then threw the whole lot in the midden at the bottom of the yard.’

  Dr Naughton seemed interested. ‘Is there more to the story?’

  Was there ever. I went on, ‘The next day my brother, he was only young, about four, found all the apples spilling over the midden and I told him the fairies had left them… My mam had told me the midden was a fairy rath when I was his age, that’s where I got the idea.’

  Reliving the memory now, in front of the doctor, didn’t seem so hard. I felt a glow remembering my young brother. ‘So Michael must have spent the day digging in the midden, looking for the fairies, and about dinner time he appeared at the table in tears. He was covered head to toe in muck and carried a hell of a stench.’

  I could see him now, his face smeared black with soot and dirt. ‘My father stamped his fist on the table: “What is this you are bringing into my house?” His voice trembled so much that it seemed his next word might hurl the plates and dishes to the floor.’