The Blade Artist

by Irvine Welsh

  — No, Elspeth says with stony finality. — Do you remember the last time we played Monopoly as a family? At my ma’s that Christmas?

  Franco is suddenly taciturn, as the boys come through from their rooms. — What happened? George asks.

  — Never you mind, says Elspeth.

  Franco recalls how they had placed a bottle of the Famous Grouse whisky in the middle of the board, the idea being that when somebody landed on Free Parking, they would have a nip. He seemed to land on it a lot. Then Joe had cheated, claiming he had rolled a ten instead of an eleven, thus positioning himself on Park Lane, intending to add it to the Mayfair he already had. Frank had picked up the bottle and sent it crashing down over his brother’s head, to the shock of Elspeth, June, Joe’s ex Sandra, and their mother, Val. They’d taken Joe to the hospital, where he had received twelve stitches. This recollection makes Franco change his mind. He pulls out Mousetrap. — No seen one ay them for years, he says, opening the box.

  — You used to hate that game, Elspeth recalls. — You eywis said that it was a lot of work to go round the board, just to set the thing off, and it didnae always work.

  — I quite fancy a wee game, but, for auld times’ sake, Frank suggests. — This is posher than the one we had. I don’t mind of the man in the bath, and he looks at the plastic accessories, which George and Thomas are already eagerly assembling on the board.

  8

  THE INCIDENT

  The next morning Franco rises early, looking out of his window to the end of the street and the small bridge, which crosses over the Water of Leith, leading to the rugby stadium. It is strange that the river winds all the way out to Leith and the Firth of Forth, down by the docks. Once again, his perception of the neighbourhood shocks him. With its cheap, shoddy, pebble-dashed dwellings, this is one step above a council scheme.

  Picking up his US cellphone, he notes that the battery is running down and realises that through packing in haste, he’s only brought a US charger. Nonetheless, he calls Melanie, taking a chance that she might be up late. She answers immediately. — Hey, you!

  — Hey, honey, how’s things? Franco feels his accent bland out. — How are my girls?

  — We’re all good. It’s just tough to know what to tell them. I settled for ‘an old friend of Daddy’s is ill’, I couldn’t think of anything else.

  Franco considers this, acknowledging, — Good move; it’s probably for the best.

  Melanie spills into an anecdote about Grace, and then Frank tells her that they’d been playing Mousetrap. When it seems as if his phone is going to give up, they say their goodbyes, and he goes to the kitchen to make breakfast.

  Elspeth is surprised to come through and find him in her domain, making an egg-white-and-Swiss-cheese omelette, sporting an apron depicting the body of a fat woman in her underwear. She has never seen him so much as boil a kettle before. — New talents, she remarks.

  — Can I interest you guys in any of this? he says, that slight American affectation still in his voice.

  Elspeth declines, but Greg, trying to smooth down a tuft of hair as he enters, enthusiastically takes up the offer. Bolting back his food, Franco then briefly vanishes, only to re-emerge in a zipped sweater, ready to go outside.

  — So where are ye off tae this early? Elspeth asks.

  — Thought I’d take a wee stroll intae toon, then maybe head doon tae Leith, see if there’s any old faces kicking about.

  Elspeth remains silent, issuing him with a spare key. He can see that trademark intense activity buzzing behind her eyes as she processes the potential ramifications of this.

  When Franco departs, Greg comments, — Your brother is like a completely different guy! Had a great chat with him about his creative process.

  — You see the best in people, Greg, Elspeth says coldly. — You don’t know what he’s really like.

  Franco sets about trying to piece together Sean’s last days. His first port of call is the flat in Gorgie where his son met his demise. It is tucked down a sunless, tenemented side street at the back of Tynecastle Stadium. Canals of moss grow between its cobblestones and a deathly stillness and silence pervades. The stair door is on an entryphone system, but he pauses, disinclined to start harassing neighbours for information, until he’s learned more about the broader facts of the case.

  The rudimentary details garnered from June badly needed supplementation. Heading up to George IV Bridge and the Edinburgh Library, he reads the newspaper reports of the incident. Then he calls Gayfield Square police station, on the assistance number listed in connection with the case. To his surprise, the receptionist immediately puts him through to the officer responsible for the investigation. The policeman introduces himself as Detective Inspector Ally Notman. Expressing sympathy for Franco’s loss, he says that he wants to see him personally, asking when he can come in. Franco tells him he could be down there within the hour, to which Notman is agreeable. Following this call, he expects the power bar on his iPhone to indicate the charge is spent, but it hangs on resolutely.

  He walks through the city with a peculiar, detached buoyancy. When he comes to the top of Leith Walk, his pulse kicks up further; this is the gateway to where he is from. Despite his positive reception on the phone, it is a strange feeling walking voluntarily into the Gayfield Square police station. On his last visit, many years past, he’d been dragged through those doors into a holding cell, semi-drunk, raging and covered in the blood of Donnelly, another rival, after a knife fight outside the Joseph Pearce pub across the street. This had taken place in broad daylight. What, he wonders, had he been thinking? Fucking kamikaze pilot. He stops, steps back from the glass station doors, looking from the step of the Georgian square back over to the pub. It would have been less hassle to have simply walked into the station and plunged the desk sergeant.

  Now the officer greeting him has a welcoming smile, this continuing sympathetic treatment further knocking Franco out of kilter. The detective he’d talked to earlier is summoned and promptly appears. DI Ally Notman is a tall, dark-haired man, thin, but with an expanding drinker’s waistline. Notman shakes Franco’s hand, conveying condolences at his loss, as he ushers him into a quiet room. Only then does the detective dispense with the soft soap, going systematically through the details of the case. — Sean suffered multiple stab wounds to the chest, stomach, abdomen and thighs. The lacerations on just one arm indicate that he was only able to put up token resistance, probably due to his extreme intoxication. The blow that killed him was a wound that severed the femoral artery in his leg. He would have bled to death inside a minute. Notman raises his dark eyebrows, looking for a reaction from Franco.

  — Seems like the boy who did this was in a rage, and got lucky, Franco considers. — It’s no exactly the work ay a stone-cold assassin.

  Notman keeps his face poker-straight, though Franco thinks he can see a flicker of acknowledgement in the cop’s eyes. Then the detective shows him a copy of the toxicologist’s report. — This indicates that Sean was heavily drugged.

  Franco scans the document; amid the technical jargon the words heroin, ecstasy, cocaine, amphetamine sulphate, cannabis, valium, amyl nitrate and antidepressants jump off the page. Whoever came intae that flat and plunged the poor wee cunt never exactly had their work cut out. — And some, Franco observes. — What was he no on?

  — As I said, it’s unlikely he would have known much about the assault in that condition.

  It was extreme liberty-taking, Franco decides. — Any suspects?

  — Our investigations are ongoing, Notman says blandly. — We’ll obviously keep you and your ex . . . Sean’s mother . . . informed of any developments.

  — Sound, Frank Begbie says. He knows the drill. The polis wouldn’t be going the extra mile to find the guilty party here. To his dismay, he now finds that he can scarcely blame them. Sean, like himself, had probably long been lost, and would have gone on creating havoc around him. Why indulge people like that when they would simply take each oth
er out if you left them to their own devices? Despite our limited and grudgingly unenthusiastic lip service, the truth is that we’ve moved beyond democracy, universality and equality in the eyes of the law and, de facto, embraced a hierarchial, elitist world view. Those at the bottom aren’t important, as long as they only threaten each other, rather than those at the top, or revenue streams like tourists. His own children, Sean, Michael and River, his ex-girlfriend Kate’s son (whom he’d practically forgotten about as he had commenced his long stretch just before the kid was born, splitting with her when he was inside): they are of no consequence to him. How can they be compared to Eve and Grace, born to an educated mother in advantaged circumstances? You always bet on the sleek thoroughbred rather than the Clydesdale. If he differentiates his own offspring in this manner, how can he condemn the polis for their lack of interest, when some poor tourist is probably getting their bag nicked up the town?

  — One thing, Franco says, — who found him?

  — Somebody made an anonymous 999 call to the ambulance service, said there had been a bad accident, then hung up.

  Frank Begbie thinks about this. The caller is obviously implicated in some way. A straightpeg would have called the cops, as well as the ambulance service, and not described what happened to Sean as an accident. — Could it have been the caller that did him?

  — It’s possible. Or a friend or accomplice who witnessed the murder, and knew both him and person who did it. Perhaps had an attack of conscience later, Notman says, — but we don’t know.

  Franco ponders this, feeling that it’s about as much as he’s going to get from the cops.

  — You seem to have turned your life around. I hear that you’re doing well for yourself in the art world, Notman half smiles.

  — Can’t complain. I’ve had a wee tickle, Franco says, now fully realising that they would do fuck all about Sean. And he’s also worked out that their main reason for agreeing to see him so readily was to tell him that he should do fuck all as well.

  — I appreciate that you must be upset, Mr Begbie, Ally Notman states, his tone now professionally grave. — But it goes without saying that you have to leave this to us. Are we clear on that?

  — I’m happy to let you boys do what you do best, Franco smiles, then adds darkly, — and leave me to do what I do best.

  Notman’s face drops.

  Franco breaks into a beaming smile. — Which, of course, is painting and sculpting.

  9

  THE DANCE PARTNER 1

  They found themselves at the club’s outside veranda area to the rear of the building, drawn by the dance beats spilling from the sound system, courtesy of a DJ in the corner. After the drab, near-deserted interior, this proved to be an oasis: people were dancing, sitting at tables drinking and smoking, or loitering in small groups. Melanie and Jim immediately registered that they were two of the very few non-Latinos present; another white couple gyrated with some style and proficiency, while two black men leaned on the banister, alternately looking down into the street then turning back to appreciatively scan the crowd. At Melanie’s prompting, she and Jim took some seats positioned against the wall and opposite the bar area. As they looked out onto the polished wooden dance floor, the table’s red cloth brushed against their legs.

  They hadn’t been settled long when two strikingly beautiful women, dressed to kill and with matching attitudes, strutted out onto the patio. One was entrancing and sleek, with a slender figure and almost implausibly angular curves. She has to be a model, Melanie thought out loud. The other, with her smouldering lips and long black hair, had a lioness prowl that drew a reaction from everybody present. Jim and Melanie were not the only people to exchange glances; something was going on, with the innuendo of much more to follow.

  Seconds later, behind both of the strutting interlopers, a young man in a light blue suit walked in. He was handsome and lithe, slick but easy in his movements. Smoking a cigarette, he surveyed all with an air of haughty, but jovial, disdain. When his eyes fell on first the two black men, then Jim and Melanie, he cracked big smiles, as if acknowledging new guests. Then he waved over to the DJ, and joined the two women at a table, where they ordered a bottle of white wine.

  Melanie had tried not to stare, but something about this trio absolutely sparkled. The aura from them resonated across the space, and they emanated a total connection to the music and the atmosphere. They seemed important, but for a deeper reason than how they looked. It was as if they belonged there; had an almost divine purpose in the proceedings.

  As half an hour elapsed, Melanie and Jim were disappointed that the impressive trio had not joined in the dance, as almost everybody else seemed to be up. At Melanie’s urging, she and Jim rose and struggled through the steps, being met with kindly, if slightly pitying looks. Then the DJ put on a song with a faster beat, and the blue-suited man rose, nodding to the thin, model-type woman, who was sipping her drink. Taking one deep puff of his cigarette, before crushing it into the ashtray, he took her hand, and they walked towards the dance floor. At first she appeared only half interested, but his look seemed to ignite her, and they started to dance to the music.

  Melanie could feel her heart begin to race. She looked at Jim, who was totally transfixed by the duo. They instinctively made for their seats, to better appreciate the performance. It was a remarkable one, as the dancing couple seemed to embody sound into human movement: rhythm, flair, style, grace, and an incendiary passion. Neither Jim nor Melanie could take their eyes from them. The man ran his hands softly through the woman’s hair, caressed her face, and then suddenly, as the beat violently exploded, grabbed her waist, thrusting her body down, her head lashing back.

  Melanie felt her mouth open wide, her spine tingle and her palms sweat. Then, under that hanging tablecloth, Jim’s hand was on her knee, then crawling like a tarantula up her thigh. Despite this, she couldn’t avert her gaze from the couple on the floor. Every beat of music was scored by the flash of a hand, the twist of an arm, the swivel of a hip, while each crescendo was powered by a spin . . . then two . . . then three . . . then four . . . followed by a pause, and Melanie could feel Jim’s fingers, up her skirt, inside her panties, probing at her wet pussy for her clit. And almost at the same time her hand was inside his zipper, undoing the top button on the waistband of his trousers, fastening around his brick-hard cock. She could hear his breathing, slow and ragged, as they remained fixated on the dancing couple. Jim’s inhalations grew shallower still, mirroring her own, as they got off on the dance and the style, jazz and sex appeal of the incandescent duo.

  The entire crowd, couple by couple, cleared the dance floor as the stars’ performance built in intensity. It was seemingly reckless, yet at the same time partnered with a technical perfection on every beat. A circle formed around them, as people just watched and clapped. This blocked Melanie and Jim’s view of the couple, and they too would have risen from the table had they not both been gripped by their own eye-popping climax. When the song finished, the entire room cheered, whistled and clapped. Melanie and Jim sat in a stupor, realising something significant had just happened. He whispered in her ear, — Do they do salsa dance classes in town?

  — Yes, Melanie said. — I’m sure we’ll find something.

  It had to be Harry the police department sent along. Lonely, sad-eyed Harry Pallister, whom she’d first encountered in seventh grade at Goleta Valley Junior High School. Melanie’s thoughts flashed back to those days. Some boys she could scent lusting after her, their pheromones filling the air. And with some of them, she’d reciprocated their ardour. But Harry lurked in the shadows pining silently, occasionally catching her with his sad, longing stare. Then, when Melanie began freshman year at Santa Barbara High School, as she stepped onto the campus of that Spanish colonial building, flushed with excitement, the first familiar face she saw was Harry’s.

  Her joy evaporated.

  Now he stands on the front porch, and even with the sun behind him making her squint, Melanie
can see his thin, sincere face, that quietly martyred expression of his, as if the world was too much for him, but he was nonetheless valiantly and uncomplainingly fighting on. Then, as now, it seemed to be the harbinger of great disappointment. — A bit of news, about those men you called about.

  Already she is wishing she hadn’t made that call about being menaced by those guys. Why had she? Jim had gotten revenge, of a sort, by blowing up the vehicle. She knew the real reason had been the rape ordeal suffered by her friend, Paula Masters, at the hands of two other men. The culprits weren’t drifters, they were students, but that didn’t matter. Men dangerous to women were just that. — Hey, Harry, come in, she forces herself to sing, stepping into the house. He follows her, looking blankly at the art on the walls, into the lounge and, at her behest, sits down on the sofa.

  Harry digs into his leather document case, producing two photographs, placing them on the table in front of her. — Was this them? The two men who harassed you?

  There is no mistaking the duo. The criminal mugshots make them look even more like who and what they are; they could have been taken yesterday. The dark one, silent and menacing: the fair one, his face still set in that sneer. Melanie swallows, wishing she’d taken Jim’s advice. Why, why, why had she made that call? But all he’d done was blow up their car . . .

  She nods in acquiesence. — Have they been causing more trouble?

  Harry acts as if she hasn’t spoken, going back into his document case, pulling out a typed sheet of paper. From where she sits, Melanie can’t make out what it pertains to, far less its specific contents. He lets the silence hang as he reads it. She interprets his behaviour as some kind of domin-ance statement.

  Melanie had never been frightened to embrace who she was. She saw no need to apologise for her beauty or her wealthy background. She simply acknowledged that her family’s liberal values had bestowed on her a magnanimity and concern for others who navigated life in less ostentatious comfort than her, understanding that this relative affluence had also given her the breathing space to indulge her calling. Aware that her good looks got her both positive and negative attention, she had learned, with a calm assertiveness, how to deal with jocks and nerds and everything in between. You didn’t get sucked into the agendas of others. Ever.