Debaser

by Max Frick

combine with unpremeditated acts of sickening violence. His unflinching dedication to his chosen career, of which he was neither proud nor ashamed, gained him an introduction to the town’s criminal hierarchy and his big break came in September 1991 when he was offered the position of getaway driver in a series of armed robberies. Although the jobs were largely successful, one of the vehicles used was recovered by police before it could be properly disposed of and fingerprints found on the steering wheel led to Docherty’s arrest. A firm believer in honour among thieves, he refused to reveal the names of his accomplices and served a three-year term of imprisonment in Saughton prison, Edinburgh, returning, in March 1995, to all intents and purposes a hero. From then, until his untimely drug related death at the age of twenty-six, Docherty went from strength to strength, orchestrating, from his usual seat in the local pub, and with the unconditional backing of the old-school, an increasingly elaborate crime network, undetected in his lifetime. His reputation has continued to grow steadily since his death and his methods are much admired, and copied, by many of the town’s burgeoning young criminals.

  This reputation added to Daz a fourth dimension, something almost physical that made him appear taller and broader than he actually was. In reality he was not much to look at and a common misconception was that certain of his mannerisms – that walk, his surly taciturnity – were merely affectations, compensation for what he lacked in stature. A misconception that, time and again, wielding with unrestrained ferocity the carpet knife he forever carried in his pocket, he had been only too willing to correct.

  To those aware of his reputation these mannerisms, these ‘affectations’, evidenced an extraordinary self-belief, the arrogant demeanour of a man in little doubt of his capabilities. But, in fact, if they were evidence of anything at all, it was something akin to a deeply ingrained humility that veered towards self-loathing, which his rise through the ranks and the unqualified respect of his peers had done nothing at all to alter. Reputation didn’t matter to Daz. He did what he did out of necessity and genuine ill will. He walked the way he did because he had always walked like that, and if he said little it was because he felt he had little to say. Those who really knew him knew that his deeds spoke for themselves and were in no need of embellishment. But if, on occasion, the impression given was that of a hard man playing up to his reputation, what of it? It was a reputation thoroughly deserved, and besides, no one was about to criticize.

  For Tony, then, Daz was the genuine article, and he could not equate this music with the man. This was patchwork pop music, designed to be piled high on the stalls of the mass market. It was manufactured from the best bits of real bands and so poorly stitched that only the packaging held it together. Unscrupulous mass marketeers were hawking fake goods at full whack and passing them off as authentic. At a glance, but only at a glance, they could be more or less convincing replicas of the lovingly hand crafted originals they were modelled on, but the quality wasn’t there. And now it seemed even Daz had been fooled. For Tony this marked the watershed. The tide had truly turned. And the sea, the shifting iridescent sea, artificially swollen by the perpetual wind of advertising - in which not so long ago only besotted little girls had frolicked and splashed, attracted by the bouyant, lukewarm water - had finally surged over the floodgates and seeped down into (what Tony had believed until now to be) the watertight caverns of the underground.

  Even Daz’s heavyweight endorsement could lend this music no credence, and Tony’s hatred of it went undiminished. Instead, Daz himself was stripped, by its fraudulent strains, of his fearsome reputation and reduced momentarily to his purely physical dimensions.

  The Original Thread

  Apparently having lost his mind Tony was staring beetle browed at Daz’s chest.

  ‘So, eh, what’re you up to, Daz?’ asked Billy nervously.

  ‘Nothin,’ replied Daz.

  ‘And, em… where are you off to?’

  ‘Nowhere,’ replied Daz. ‘Is somethin botherin you, Drako?’

  These weighted words, innocently intoned, fell heavily onto Billy’s heart, and it sank like a stone to his stomach. Tony seemed not to hear them.

  Daz put his hands in his pockets.

  ‘Is somethin botherin you, Drako?’ He said again.

  This time, thankfully, Tony snapped out of it.

  ‘What?’ he said. 'Eh, no, Daz. No. I was just, em… Nice Walkman.’

  Billy never even thought about laughing.

  ‘Will you be in the pub the night, Daz?’ he asked.

  ‘I’m goin to the gig!’ said Daz curtly. ‘See you later.’

  ‘Aye, see you later, Daz,’ said Billy.

  ‘Aye, see you later, Daz,’ said Tony. ‘Mind and tell your alcoholic ma’ I’m askin for her, eh?’

  But Daz of course had already replaced his earpieces and was moodily walking away.

  They carried on homewards, Tony dumbfounded by this recent revelation. Where the Boulevard ended, a flyover began and a flight of steps led down to a path below. Tony stopped, and stood the cardboard Ryan on its base beside him, apparently absorbed in the view. Spread out before them was the town’s recreational heartland. Monuments to passing fads and good ideas at the time lined the river on either side. There was the BMX track and mini golf course (both deserted); the racetrack for remote control cars (rarely used); an area for open-air concerts, like a small cross-section of an amphitheatre (used once or twice) and the Trim-track (overgrown and vandalised). Only the skate park was still busy. Closest to them was the local night club, a squat octagonal building freestanding at one end of a large empty car park. Empty, that is, but for a few – actually, quite a few – fast food vans and the like already taking up their pitches in readiness for the evening.

  ‘Cunt never was and never fuckin will be just one of the lads!’ Said Tony suddenly, though more to himself than to Billy.

  ‘Who?’ said Billy. ‘Daz?’

  ‘Ryan fuckin Watson!’ said Tony. ‘How can he be so gullible?’

  ‘Who?’ said Billy. ‘Ryan Watson?’

  ‘Fuckin Daz!’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Fuckin Daz! Listenin to that shite!’

  ‘What shite?’

  ‘Ryan fuckin Watson!’ said Tony. ‘How can he be so gullible?’

  ‘Never noticed,’ said Billy. ‘Still, nice Walkman, though.’

  ‘What’s that supposed to fuckin mean?’

  ‘Nothin.’

  They descended the stairs, and the club's name, projecting diagonally up from the roof of the building in cold, handwritten neon, rose step by step higher and higher, above the backdrop of houses, into the now cloud-dappled pale-blue sky.

  ‘It’s all fuckin hype and image!’ said Tony, again more to himself.

  Billy tried hard not to roll his eyes.

  ‘Roll your fuckin eyes all you want, but it’s true! The music counts for fuck all these days! Most cunts these days are about as real as this cardboard cut-out! But I’m tellin you, man: hype has never made any cunt a rock star! Or looks! Or fuckin videos or whatever! Only the music can do that! A celebrity, aye. But a rock star? Never! How can he be so gullible?’

  ‘It’s where his heart lies,’ said Billy.

  ‘What?’ said Tony. ‘What is?’

  ‘Indie rock music,’ said Billy.

  ‘Whose heart? Daz’s?’

  ‘Ryan Watson’s.’

  ‘How the fuck do you know where his heart lies?’

  ‘Saw it on the telly.’

  ‘Where his fuckin heart lies!’ snarled Tony. ‘His heart’ll be lyin in the fuckin street if I ever get a hold of the cunt! And what’s this fuckin gig everybody’s talkin about?’

  The Poster Incident

  ‘HE’S PLAYIN FUCKIN HERE?’

  But that, in so many words, is what the poster indeed seemed to be saying, with infuriating, falsely modest de-emphasis:

  TONIGHT

  RYAN WATSON

  ‘BACK TO MY ROOTS’ TOUR

  T
ICKETS AVAILABLE AT THE DOOR

  DOORS OPEN EIGHT-THIRTY

  Two posters in fact, one behind each of the smoked-glass panels of the night club's double doors.

  Tony glanced up at the neon sign above him, as if to confirm that he was where he thought he was.

  ‘You’ve got to be fuckin jokin!’ he exclaimed.

  And he read the poster again.

  He dwelt on it for a bit, then his gaze melted through it, to where in the glass stood his vague, transparent reflection. And, while scrutinizing his own penetrating stare, as though asking if something could be done, he slowly faded into himself and virtually disappeared.

  He was, of course, still standing where he had been standing, and was, in effect, still staring at the poster, but he no longer saw it. He was totally self-absorbed. His state was trance-like, catatonic almost, his face blank, expressionless save for a very faintly discernible lowering of the eyebrows that was darkening his visage. But for this he appeared completely calm. Yet it was precisely this calmness, this statuesque immobility, that betrayed the terrible and violent currents surging and swirling beneath the surface. Dooly shied away from him half-barking nervously and skulked around to the safe side of Billy - an indication maybe of the pitch of Tony’s anger, that it had now risen beyond the normal human range to ultrasonic frequencies. A minute or two went by. Billy didn’t dare rouse him. Then gradually, by degrees, he returned. First, a look of tacit understanding, that quickly fused into firm resolve, passed between himself and his reflection; secondly, he re-checked the time on the