They moved him to a general ward after a week, among frail old men clinging to their last breaths of life, their grey skin marbled with blue veins. His morphine dosage was reduced and he wondered how the others survived in so much pain. He couldn’t eat. He couldn’t sleep. Pissing and shitting mostly blood into a bag. Locked inside himself. Mute. Immobile. He felt like he was eighty years old. He was broken. Broken into tiny pieces that could no longer fit back together.
“You need to try and get better,” the doctor told him. “If you go on like this you’re going to make yourself ill. Really ill. The bones will mend,” she reassured him. Paul could see in her eyes, in her lapses into silence, that she wasn’t speaking of the other things that wouldn’t mend. The sunlight reflected off the pretty gold cross around her neck, sending gold dots around the room. He barely heard her when she spoke.
He closed his eyes, tears running down his cheeks. There was nothing left in him. He was empty, just a receptacle for pain and fear. He didn’t want to survive. At times he wondered if he was already dead and was actually living in hell. The police came to see him but he told them nothing. He was well versed in the Glasgow code. The doctor nodded and they left him alone.
No one else came to visit until the third week. By that time he’d begun to eat without assistance, through a straw. At first he could manage only liquids the consistency of water, but slowly he was able to take things that were more substantial: milkshakes, yoghurts, working up to pureed vegetables. The bruising and swelling had gone down. The wiring in his jaw remained and his leg was still in a cast, but with each day that passed, another tube was removed. He was beginning to appreciate the bed – its warmth and the fact he couldn’t smell himself. His undernourished body was being replenished with the nutrients it had been missing. He always knew where the next meal was coming from.
Sometimes the doctor stopped and talked with him, told him about her brothers and sisters, some of whom were his age. He noticed that she was very pretty when she smiled. He tried not to look at her in case it made her hate him. She told him she had contacted some charities that could help find him a flat; on account of his age, she thought he would be seen as a priority case. It sounded like a fairytale for nice people like her to believe in. He sank beneath the warm covers and prepared himself for nights on cardboard.
On the day his visitor arrived, the doctor came to see him with a furrowed brow. “You’ve got a visitor, Paul. Your uncle?”
Paul pushed himself up in bed. He didn’t protest that he had no uncle, and nodded.
She left and returned a few minutes later with a man. Paul watched him approach.
“I only just got word you were here, son,” the man said, beaming. “Glad to see you looking so well.”
His clothes were different. Smarter, the kind of clothes you wanted people to notice. Not like the last time. Paul stared in horror at his face; not one he would forget easily. It had kept him awake ever since that night in the park. The doctor gave Paul a curious look, but he didn’t raise the alarm. She walked away and the man scraped a chair across the floor, pulling it close to the bed.
“Didn’t expect to see me again,” the man said under his breath.
Paul looked at him, lost for words even if the wire hadn’t been holding his mouth shut.
“I’m just here to check it out in the flesh. That it’s true. You’re still alive.”
He said it in a way that made Paul want to apologise for the fact. Paul searched the faces of the other people in the ward, sitting with family members. But they were smiling, laughing. They didn’t notice him sitting mere feet away, weak with fear. He felt like he was in a dream, one where something bad was chasing him but his screams were silent, his limbs were rubber.
“Thought we might celebrate together,” the man continued, his tone menacing.
Paul nodded and mumbled through the wire.
“Ssh, ssh. Don’t try to talk.” The man held up his hand to quiet him.
Paul sank into his pillow, paled by the effort; saliva dribbled from the corner of his mouth.
The man leaned forward in his chair, a hand on one knee, elbow on the other. It was how Paul’s grandfather used to sit. He found it strangely comforting – he’d liked his grandfather. He was a decent enough old bloke.
The man looked Paul up and down, shaking his head slowly from side to side. “You’ve been left in a right mess. That’s a shame. That is a shame.”
Paul watched every move closely.
The man laced his fingers together and snapped them backwards, crunching the knuckles. “Still, I don’t have to worry about the polis knocking down my door to arrest me for beating a rent boy to death in the park.” He barked the last words as if they were the punch line to a joke. “That would have placed me in a very awkward situation. You and your friend… Paddy… nearly placed me in a very awkward situation.”
Paul flinched at the mention of his friend’s name. He had a sudden image of his friend strung out in the street, trusting anyone who offered to give him a tenner. He wondered how long it had taken before Paddy had given up his name.
The man clasped his hands together in front of him. “He’s not going to be talking to anyone soon. Fucking coward. What kind of lowlife runs off and leaves a friend to take a beating?”
Who was this man? There weren’t many could walk into a ward full of people and casually talk life and death. There weren’t many who could so brazenly threaten someone mere inches away. He was someone, this man.
Paul suddenly started to see, in the light of day, what he hadn’t seen under the cover of darkness. The man’s dead-fish eyes stared at him. Somewhere a spark of recognition ignited and he realised he’d seen them even before the night in the park. Staring out from black-and-white pictures in tabloid newspapers, staring out from underneath headlines. Gangland. Murder. Torture. The dawning realisation registered on his face.
“You know who I am?” the man asked.
Paul nodded his head, slowly.
Manny Munroe smiled and nodded. “You fucked up.”
Paul gripped the sides of his bed.
Munroe’s face became deadpan. “So that leaves me with one problem.”
Paul choked back bile. Munroe continued, calmly; he was a man used to speaking to people in mortal fear. “So you understand what I have to do?” His voice was almost regretful.
Paul shuffled up the bed, trying to put as much distance between himself and Munroe as he could, but his leg kept that distance tight. A cold sweat laced his brow. His breath came out in bursts, his jaws fought to part, but the wires held them closed. He could taste blood in his mouth. Some heads in the ward turned towards them.
Munroe stood up and Paul shrank back. With unblinking eyes he watched Munroe root around for a glass and pour some water from the jug. Paul didn’t want it, but he took the glass, hands shaking so much he could hardly hold it. Munroe helped place the straw in his mouth and Paul choked it back. To anyone watching, it was the kind gesture of an uncle to his favourite nephew. Munroe smiled at the people around them and sat back in his chair. Deep creases in the skin around his eyes made them appear like black hollows. He waited for Paul to compose himself before he went on.
“I already know you didn’t talk to the polis,” he said evenly. “Or they’d’ve already been picking pieces of you from the rubbish heap.”
Paul shook his head and let the empty glass roll onto the covers beside him.
“It’s who else you might go blabbing to that’s a problem for me.”
With his head now resting on the pillow, he closed his eyes. There didn’t seem any point in trying to protest. What would it matter to a man like Munroe? Even if he offered the world, Munroe had probably heard it all before, and more. Such promises would be meaningless to men like him.
“The doctor said I’m the first to visit you.”
Paul opened
his eyes and nodded. It was true. No one to miss him if he were to suddenly disappear.
Manny watched him, measuring him. “No people?”
Paul shook his head.
“Do you have some place to go to when you get out of here?”
He shook his head again.
“Not had much luck, son, have you?”
Paul shook his head and almost laughed. To be pitied by the man who wanted to kill you. It was one way to twist the knife.
Manny’s face was dark and ugly. He stared fixedly at Paul. “It’s a shame you being so young…”
Paul did his best to meet his gaze. If Munroe was going to kill him, at least Paul could look him in the eye. One last fuck you, in the series of them that had made up his short life.
“It wasn’t a bad gig – one acting as bait, the other springing from behind. In the middle of nowhere, no witnesses, it would probably go unreported.” Munroe held up his hands matter-of-factly. “But you picked the wrong guy.”
Paul cursed his own bad, fucking luck.
There was a pause. Paul could look no more. His eyes fell to the floor, to the scuffed toes of Munroe’s boots. He ran his tongue over his tattered teeth. Munroe put a reassuring hand on the covers, over Paul’s knee, and shook. Then he stood up and pulled the curtain round them, the hooks clicking rhythmically against the rail. Paul’s spine tingled. He felt like he’d been left alone in the dark with a venomous spider bristling just inches away. This is it, he thought, it’s going to happen right here and now. He’d always imagined his death being something bigger. Some kind of fight to it, maybe some tragedy. Even if it was just defending his corner in a turf war. He didn’t want it like this. Anonymously. Silently.
Manny walked over and placed a strong hand on Paul’s injured shoulder. He pressed. Paul squirmed under his grip. Manny reached into the inside pocket of his jacket. Paul held his breath. He watched the hand come out. In it Manny was holding a folded-over sheet of A5 glossy paper. It floated down onto the bed and Paul read the name of a pool hall on the front.
“When you get out of here, I want you to come see me.” Still squeezing, Munroe leaned in and spoke very quietly. “You know who I am. But you don’t know what I’m capable of. Speak to anyone about what happened and you’ll be finding out.”
Munroe gave one final squeeze. Paul had to stop himself crying out.
“Don’t make me come looking for you,” Manny said, before disappearing behind the curtain.
Paul drew his hand along his sweat-streaked brow.
Three weeks later Paul was released. His wires were removed and he was able to walk out the front door on crutches. The doctor was true to her word and he was given a flat in the Anderston high-rises. A meeting was set up with the Job Centre. She told him to ask about taking a college course.
The first night he sat alone in his empty flat, a torn poster of Scarface the only thing left behind by the previous owner. He held the flier Munroe had given him in his hand and stayed up for hours, thinking. The next day he went down to the pool hall. Bucky and Dunsmore were waiting outside in the winter sunshine. Terry was just inside the door.
Would Manny really have come to find him if he hadn’t gone? At the time, it hadn’t felt like a choice. If he’d known then how things would turn out, would he have left, started a new life on his own? At what point did it become too late? If he’d never been born, would the people he killed still be alive?
*
Paul kept his eyes on Annie. “There were things between me and Manny. I tried to keep it from Lena.”
Annie’s face was impassive; her eyes flat, revealing nothing.
“After she found us together, it was a few months before I saw her again. I think you know what happened then.”
He watched for some kind of sign from her. He was bound and weary, his muscles sore, his chest tight. Her mouth was shut in a hard line.
“I remember,” she eventually said, though it seemed to pain her to do so.
Paul watched her reclining onto the couch, sitting in judgement, her face a blank slate, neither smiling nor frowning.
Chapter Twenty
Nine years ago
Within a week of the relaunch party at The Low Road, Manny had moved Paul to another of his businesses, a nightclub called Limbo. Defeated and detached, Paul had relocated without protest. Soon after, he moved house as well.
Lena was gone – he hadn’t seen her for weeks, since the night she ran off, leaving behind only the watch. He’d searched for her, called her but got no answer, gone to her mother’s house to see if she knew anything. Nothing. It was like she’d disappeared off the face of the earth.
On his way home from his shifts at Limbo, it became his nightly habit to detour via the casino. He would pass away the small hours listening to the shuffle of razor-sharp cards, the snap as they were placed on green felt. Like a reliable friend, the casino was always there for him when he needed a lift. Sitting among like-minded people, he could make sense of the chaos. At daybreak, when the sun threatened, he’d roll out the door and walk home through the dewy dawn, his only brush with a day that he wouldn’t be a part of. Sometimes he had company, sometimes he didn’t. It didn’t matter. Women, like the drugs and the money, came easily to him since he’d started at Limbo. He’d sleep until evening, when he would get up and prepare for another night. It suited him, this hazy existence among light shows and artificial smoke, living only in the night, freed from continuity.
Manny had brought him in to Limbo on the understanding that it was for supervisory purposes. On paper it was his nephew Dario who owned and managed it. Son of Manny’s only sister, Dario had been Manny’s big hope since childhood. Manny had paid to put Dario through a number of private schools – from which he was repeatedly expelled. Also through a business degree at university, though after three years he was still on the first round of exams. Dario was now twenty-eight, with no experience or qualifications, but Manny still hadn’t given up on him. In the meantime, Paul had been brought in to babysit.
Dario’s management style included showing up when he felt like it, often drunk, to distribute free drinks to his ever growing entourage. It was Paul’s job to actually run the place while keeping checks on Dario, to make sure he didn’t pimp out all the profits on orgies with underage girls. For Dario, the chances kept coming. Some guys had rich and powerful uncles, some were born into families of lowlifes. But those were the breaks. Paul knew there’d be an opportunity to outmanoeuvre him – with people like Dario there always was – but he was going to have to be smart about it. Paul may have been the nephew Manny wished he’d had, but blood was blood.
The casino was quiet for a Friday night/Saturday morning. Some people crowded round the bar, a fair number at the roulette tables, but Paul had no problem finding a seat at one of the card tables and had managed to gather a few stacks of high-value chips not long after. Enough to get himself a nice suit. Straight to the jack. He watched the croupier slide across some more to add to the pile. Flush in hearts. With a little more luck, some nice cufflinks.
The overweight, middle-aged woman sitting beside him leaned over and clucked, “I know where Lady Luck’s residing tonight, and it’s not with me.”
Paul managed a thin smile. From the moment she’d sat down, Paul had identified her as a talker.
Full house! The croupier doubled his stack. Paul’s hands closed around the mound of black chips that appeared before him. He enjoyed the satisfying click as he rippled them up and down.
“Tell her to shift down one!” the woman squealed.
He just managed to stop himself from telling her to fuck off. Casino or not, a degree of respect was still called for towards women of a certain age.
“Walk away while you can, son, or you’ll regret it. The house always wins,” she cackled in his ear.
How many times had he heard that? He looked at her
roll of twenty-pounds, meant to last her the night, and then to the roll of fat around her midriff. At least playing cards might one day make him rich, he thought; chronic overeating was never going to make her thin. She was gambling every day with her health; he wondered why she couldn’t see that.
“I’m telling you, son, it’s a sickness.”
He nodded at the irony.
And that was the turning point. For the remaining hands, Paul played like he was hell-bent on throwing away all his money. There was a certain determination to his losing. Silently, he lost chip after chip until eventually he had only one left. He watched as the croupier beat his pair with a flush.
The woman flashed him a smug, satisfied smile. “Should have walked away.”
As he left the card table Paul had his head held high. True, he’d lost, but you’ve got to take the rough with the smooth, he thought; the yin and the yang. One day Paul knew he would hit the jackpot. Not that day, but some day. People like her never would. He gave her a cheeky wink as he walked away.
On the way to the exit he veered towards the spin of the roulette table. There was something drawing him there, he could feel it. The large table was just a few steps from the front door. A row of slot machines flashed and beeped beside it. Obnoxious tunes exploded intermittently, only one or two diehards feeding coins into the greedy mouths. More people were gathered round the roulette table. Cutting his way through the circle, he slid across the last of his notes to the croupier, who quickly replaced them with a stack of red chips. Paul began placing them down, letting his intuition guide him. When last bets were called he was satisfied with the spread he had on the table.
Trying to concentrate on the croupier’s spin, he found himself distracted. He knew she was there before he saw her. While everyone else focused on the spinning ball, Lena and Paul’s eyes met across the roulette table. A faint flush appeared on her cheeks. Her long hair was tied up in a tight, high bun; kohl-lined eyes smouldered beneath them. Her slim curves were fitted into an elegant black cocktail dress.
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