‘Eh, not that I’m aware of.’
‘Oh.’ Jackson was smiling. ‘Well, I know of a number of individuals who’re going to be very disappointed to hear that.’
Ally totted up the logic.
‘You mean, you thought, the bad guys thought …’
Jackson began nodding. ‘It appears somebody somewhere has got their wires very badly crossed,’ he said. ‘And I don’t think they’ll be very pleased when they find out.’
‘So you cannae see them just packin’ up an’ apologisin’ for the inconvenience?’
‘Not likely, no. And unfortunately I can’t see them believin’ it, either. It would be like a mugger believin’ a victim who said he left his wallet in his other coat.’
The restaurant area went from the front of the building all the way to the rear, with full-length, floor-to-ceiling windows affording the hypothetical diners a view of either the sea or the rest of the resort. The intended layout of the tables and decorative furnishings was marked on the floor with blue electrical tape, the furniture itself still in flatpacks piled at one end of the room. Jackson delegated several groups to lift the packs and barricade all stairways one level down, giving them an elevated angle of fire on the area that intruders would need to breach.
While the rest got on with that, Jackson assembled his neophyte gunmen to teach them a little more about how their weapons worked. It was Ally’s estimate that few crash-courses had ever been so head-on.
‘Do they know about us yet?’ Ally asked him.
‘No, but I’d guess that we’re down to minutes. I’ve been monitorin’ Connor’s radio channel. He’s the guy you spewed on. It’s his ball and he wants it back. They’ve just spotted a light on in one of the third-floor bedrooms and they’re checkin’ it out. If Hutchison’s in there, the search parties’ll be back downstairs as soon as they’ve nabbed him. Even if it’s just one of the women, they’ll have to bring her down to join the other hostages. Then the fun starts. Who are they, by the way? Do you know?’
Ally shrugged. It had been a wee bit hectic for calling roll, and after everything that had happened, he could hardly remember who was here in the first place.
‘Simone, Gavin’s wife was one of them,’ Lisa McKenzie said. ‘But I’m not sure your boss’s head count was right. He said one man and two women, but we’re also missing a guy called Matt Black. I saw him and Simone leave the ballroom together and I haven’t seen either of them since.’
‘When was that?’ Ally asked, trying to think when he’d last seen Matt himself.
‘During Gavin’s speech. I know this is hardly the time for prurient speculation, but, well, maybe I wasn’t the only one who noticed – maybe Gavin went off to look for them, if you see what I mean.’
Potter was shaking his head. ‘Nah. Mr Hutchison went off lookin’ for Miss O’Rourke. He called me, askin’ if I’d seen her, not long before everythin’ went off, so that probably means she’s missin’ too. And the bloke she went to check on, which would makk your head count even less accurate.’
‘What bloke?’ Lisa asked.
‘Oh God,’ Potter said, grimacing. ‘I’m pretty sure he was on the third floor. That’s bound to be the light they’ve seen.’
‘What bloke, Jamie?’
‘Bollocks,whatwashisname?AMrMullen?Murtaugh?’
Ally felt his stomach lurch and his eyes widen. To his surprise, he realised the emotion he was feeling was hope, daft as it seemed. It wasn’t as though the man could make much difference in a situation like this, for God’s sake, but for some reason the notion reassured him. Possibly it was the thought of the scariest person he’d ever met being on his side, inside the tent pissing out. But it couldn’t be – it was impossible. He hadn’t even been there tonight. Had he?
‘Murdoch?’ Ally asked.
‘That was it.’
‘David Murdoch?’
‘Aye, that’s right: Murdoch, David, Mister. Room 322.’
‘Jesus fuckin’ Christ,’ gasped Charlie. ‘Davie Murdoch. He’s here.’
‘Who’s here? Who is he?’ Jackson asked.
‘He’s a rather celebrated reformed criminal,’ Lisa stated, pre-empting Ally’s own, more colourful description. ‘And former fellow pupil of ours.’
‘What kind of criminal?’ Jackson demanded. Lisa stared at Ally in admonishment, but her silence deferred him the floor.
‘Think of the most mental psychopath you ever met in your life, then multiply that by the hardest bastard you can imagine,’ Charlie said, beating him to the punch.
‘First he terrorised our school,’ Ally explained, ‘then he grew up and terrorised the Scottish prison system. In his heyday, Satan would’ve shat it from Davie.’
‘And then, as I said, he reformed,’ Lisa interrupted, shooting both of them a chastising glare. ‘He became a painter, highly acclaimed. He’s a different person. He’s got a family now.’
‘Well, if he wants to see them again,’ Charlie observed, ‘he might have to regress a wee bit.’
Jackson looked sceptical. ‘It doesn’t matter how tough this bloke is, or was. He’s not gonna do much against a bunch o’ guys with machine guns.’
There was a short burst of static from Jackson’s radio, followed by a voice bidding him to respond. This is it, Ally thought: the game begins. All of them exchanged apprehensive looks as their leader held the device to his mouth.
‘Jackson here,’ he answered calmly.
‘This is McIntosh,’ squealed a frantic voice. ‘It’s Gaghen. He’s fuckin’ dead. Electrocuted. Some bastard wired a door handle to the mains. Connor’s gone ape. He’s on his way down.’
‘Received.’ Jackson clipped the radio back on to his belt.
‘You were saying?’ Ally asked.
22:11 majestic room 105 missing the war
There’s nothing quite like a man covered in blood to cool your ardour, unless perhaps you’re Robert Mapplethorpe. The vision of Matthew returning from his contraceptive quest, his terrified face, hair and shirt dripping with red, had initially made Simone fear she was suffering a hallucination induced by the residual guilt of her long-abandoned Catholicism. The one time she’d dared to do the wrong thing, she was being confronted by this gory chimera, reminding her with gruesomely overwrought symbolism that the wages of sin is death. Maybe she’d mingled too long with Brendan and Mary-Theresa earlier on.
Not that her ardour’s temperature hadn’t already taken a swallow-dive, anyway. As soon as Matthew exited the room, the matronly chaperones of conscience and responsibility had taken his place and commenced their prudish tutting.
Left alone to contemplate her actions and intentions, Simone reflected that the unrivalled prophylactic properties of the condom might be based less on barrier-method contraception than the intermission their use necessarily imposed, during which one or both parties could capably have a volte-face. It was the Windows dialogue-box of human sexuality: ‘Are you sure? Yes No.’ Matthew’s ex-tended absence therefore took her well past changing her mind, beyond worrying how she’d tell him when he came back, and on to the further, harsher terrain of wondering whether he was coming back at all.
She couldn’t blame the champagne, empty stomach or not. She hadn’t had that much, as evidenced by how instantly the aforementioned chaperones were able to sober her up. No, the fault lay with something far more intoxicating. Despite all her calculated detachment, she’d fallen under the spell of nostalgia tonight as much as anyone else.
What was this power, she asked herself, this aura that was visited upon people simply because you once sat in a classroom with them? It could strip you bare, magnify your vulnerabilities, shout your secrets to the rooftops. It rendered beauties of the plain, heroes of the mediocre, legends of the spent; and, mercilessly, it made its martyrs of the unfulfilled.
Simone wasn’t yearning for Matthew Black: she was yearning for her own youth, and his presence merely promised to reconnect her to it. What she saw in him, what he saw in her, wh
at so many of the people at the party saw in ‘best friends’ they’d barely ever known was a glimpse through younger eyes at a world still full of opportunity. Not the people they were now, nor even the people they were then, but all the people it once seemed each of them could become.
What she saw in Matthew was a distant reflection of the many possible selves she’d thought she might be by now. They reintroduced themselves like it was her own, personal reunion party, and seeing them again after so long was an emotionally charged affair. They all still looked like her, and the happiest among them still had Rachel and Patricia around, but not one was a mousy housewife married to a man who didn’t love her. Not one was dependent upon anyone else.
Given that, Simone reasoned there couldn’t be anyone on the rig tonight who was more susceptible to the lure of the past.
But she was wrong.
‘Do you believe in second chances?’ Matthew asked her.
They were sitting on the floor, their backs against the bed, not knowing what else to do or where else to go. It was after the horror and confusion parts were exhausted; after the gibbering and the stupid questions, uselessly enquiring what it was all about.
‘Who are they?’ Simone had asked, stupidly, uselessly.
‘How the fuck should I know?’ Matthew had replied, chaos behind his eyes. ‘Taste vigilantes maybe. Judith Chalmers and Katie Wood with serious PMT: they’re here to blow the place up so they never have to report from it.’
He stood before her, trembling, shivering, bloody, the Uzi round his neck, the shotgun in one hand, a pistol in the other.
‘Have you had some kind of combat training?’ she enquired. ‘Some weapons-handling experience? Maybe in Hollywood? Was there an episode of the sitcom where you were in a siege or something?’
‘No.’
‘Then put all that stuff down before you blow both our heads off.’
Simone led him, like a zombie, to the bathroom, sitting him on the edge of the tub as she unbuttoned and removed his blood-soaked shirt. She was able to remain calmer than him at this point (all things, of course, being relative) because the reality had been driven home to Matthew a lot more, well, viscerally. He wouldn’t say how he’d managed to overpower his attacker, but the evidence suggested something with a sharper edge than one of his trademark put-downs. She dabbed a sponge gently about his face, during which he began to emerge from his daze and took over the ablutions for himself. After that he bent over the tub and held the shower nozzle behind his neck, rinsing the blood from his hair.
‘Christ, like fuckin’ Psycho,’ she heard him mutter, watching the dark liquid circle the plughole.
Simone handed him a towel. When he lifted his face from it she could see tears in his eyes.
‘I just killed somebody,’ he said with a shocked, humourless laugh. ‘Not bad for a professed pacifist, eh? Jesus Christ.’
She took hold of his hands. Further volleys of gunfire were audible from the Laguna. ‘Listen to it, Matthew,’ she said softly. ‘What else could you have done? Impose sanctions?’
He withdrew from her grasp and walked away, sitting down on the edge of the bed, his back to her. A voice issued from the walkie-talkie, which was sitting on the floor among the discarded guns and ammunition. Matthew slumped down to the carpet and picked it up.
‘Yeah, Booth here,’ he said.
‘That stray you retrieved,’ crackled the radio. ‘Please tell me it was staff and not our Mr Hutchison.’
‘Staff,’ he mumbled, staring at the wall.
‘Good man. Out.’
Simone sat next to him on the floor, again reaching out a hand and taking one of his. This time he returned the grip and gave her a half-smile of gratitude.
‘They think you’re …’
Matthew nodded. ‘Booth was his name,’ he said quietly. ‘Not much of an assassin, though.’
‘The man on the radio mentioned Gavin.’
‘Aye. Figures – it’s his gig. Whatever they’re about, they’ll want to deal with the boss. He must have given them the slip, though. They were worried I … he, Booth, the guy I,you know … had killed him, so the good news is they must want Gavin alive.’
‘They’ll be looking for him, though, won’t they? Everywhere.’
‘They think Booth’s still guardin’ this part of the complex, so until they suss otherwise, we’re probably safe here. Safe as anywhere else, anyway.’
Matthew dropped the radio back down among the weapons, then sighed and closed his eyes, as though trying to block everything out. He looked very, very tired. He swallowed then spoke again.
‘About a week ago,I was on the verge of killin’ myself,’ he said.
Simone’s back straightened: this she had not been expecting.
‘Went through the whole wringer,’ he continued, resting his forehead against one palm, elbow on his thigh. ‘Down in Mexico. Fuckin’ typical: I decide against it, an’ noo they’re queuein’ up to do the job for me.’
Simone was familiar with the cliché of the depressive comedian, but she would never have thought of it applying to him. There were plenty of comics who made endless play of their own such vulnerabilities, but Matt Black onstage was the savage antithesis of self-pity. She realised in retrospect that a little basic psychology ought to have tipped her the wink, and was therefore acutely aware that he was unlikely to have volunteered this admission under less extraordinary circumstances.
‘Suicide?’ she asked (stupidly, uselessly). ‘Why?’
‘Probably because it’s the ultimate act of self-indulgence and I’d already tried all the other ones.’
He turned his head to face her, and that was when he asked it: ‘Do you believe in second chances?’
‘I …’ Simone breathed in then out, searching for an honest answer, searching for the truth. ‘I’d like to,’ she said.
Matthew nodded. ‘I’d like to as well. I suppose that’s why I came here today. Tryin’ to remind myself of who I used to be and what the road looked like from the startin’ point.’
Tell me about it, she thought.
‘I know you must be thinkin’ what does he need wi’ second chances, he’s the guy who got his dreams, but …’ Matthew closed his eyes again for a second, laughing sadly at himself.
‘I was Mr Nice Guy way back when,’ he said. ‘Always such a good boy at school. I was never bad, you know? Never answered back, always worked hard, didnae break the rules. Didnae smoke behind the dinner hall like the bad boys; didnae drink Woodpecker down the swing-park. I was pretty quiet, too, really. Too shy, too geeky to get any interest from girls.’
‘Can I dissent here?’
‘Thanks, but you know what I mean. Then bang, just a few years down the line I was suddenly the wean who got the key to the sweetie-shop. Fame, notoriety, money, acclaim, women, booze, drugs, whatever you like. But do you know what happens to the wean who gets the key to the sweetie-shop? He becomes a fat, bloated, selfish bastard, with his teeth rottin’ oot his head, and he’s always ill because he never gets any decent nourishment. An’ the worst part is that he’s no happier than when he was outside, starin’ in the window at all the things he couldnae have, because at least back then he knew what he wanted – or at least what he thought he wanted.
‘I had all this success, all this money, all this talent, and basically all I did with it was pamper myself. No, compensate myself, compensate some fifteen-year-old for all the things he never got because he had to be a good boy. I used, devoured and discarded, whether it be drink, drugs, friends or women. Especially women. They were all just sweeties in the window. Couldn’t have them back then, so I wanted as many as possible once I had the keys.’
‘In that case, maybe you deserve to come back as me. A sap married to a philanderer. Faithful to a cheat, with an over-developed sense of responsibility.’
‘Don’t knock the last part, Simone. I could seriously use some responsibility. I’ve been livin’ in the land of do-as-you-please for so long, I’m sur
prised nobody else has noticed the fuckin’ donkey ears growin’ oot the top o’ my head. Oot my box every night, pissin’ a fortune up the wall with the good-time crowd, so-called friends who’re off like an electric hare if your star falls and your money runs oot. But they’re the only friends I can find these days because I’ve alienated all the real ones. And as for my career …’ He laughed bitterly and looked away.
‘I started out tryin’ to be Lenny Bruce – and I was even getting there for a while – then ended up turnin’ into Dennis Leary. I’m supposed to be a comedian and it’s two years since I was on a stage in front of an audience. I’ve been sellin’ cheap notoriety instead, like I’m a Disney-animated version of myself. It looks like me, but you don’t have to worry about it sayin’ anythin’ controversial – or funny.’
He turned to look at her again, holding her hand tightly as though afraid she’d abandon him.
‘I blew it, Simone. Totally fuckin’ blew it. I woke up – must have been five, six days ago – on a beach in the Baja California. I couldnae remember who I’d been with the night before, and I mean I couldnae remember their names or their faces, even though they’d been the best friends in the world a few hours before. I realised I had nothin’. I mean, yeah, there was still a bank account with a few Gs – well, a lot o’ Gs, actually – to spend on more sweeties, but nothin’ else. No friends, no wife, no “significant other”, no kids – nobody who would miss me if I decided not to be there any more. And that included me. I realised I wouldnae miss me, the person I’d become. I hated his guts for what he’d done with my life, and I wanted to kill him for it.’
‘But you didn’t.’
‘No,’ he said with a sad smile. ‘I couldnae – I’m a pacifist.’
‘How close did you come?’ Simone asked.
The smile became that bit more self-deprecatory. ‘Probably no’ that close. I will admit that the feelin’ of wantin’ to die might have been somewhat exacerbated by the extent of my hangover. But I knew I didnae want the life I had any more, that was for certain. I wasnae ready for a monastery either, right enough. I do like bein’ a comedian. I miss bein’ a comedian. I do like gettin’ drunk, too, but I decided maybe once in a while would be spiritually and physically healthier than every night. I also decided I should probably lay off the unregulated pharmaceuticals as well: coke, I have come to realise, was just my version of Woodpecker down the swing-park.
One Fine Day in the Middle of the Night Page 26
