The Blade Artist

by Irvine Welsh

  He is feeling this now with Arbie.

  Agnes Duncan has a decent hand in her game of trumps with Rita Reilly and Mary Henderson, but she throws it in, having grown bored and exasperated with the activity. This is a condition repeated card games tend to induce in her. Instead, Agnes opts to resume her knitting. She is sure she had left six needles out, but there are only five. Your memory did that when you got older, it played those annoying pranks on you.

  21

  THE OLD ACCOMPLICE

  Franco had a fruitful conversation with Arbie, and then headed to the boxing club. He completed a series of lunges, squats, burpees and push-ups, staple fare from the days in his cell, then undertook some punishing routines on the medicine ball which he knew he would feel tomorrow. Then he climbed into the ring for three rounds on the pads with Mickey. After that, he pummelled the bags for another six cathartic rounds.

  Some of the boys said people were looking for him. People being Anton Miller. So he was going to let himself be found. He’d heard enough about Miller, the guns, the drive-by shootings, to believe that if the young gangster really wanted him dead, he would probably already have joined his firstborn. It was time to meet Anton.

  He walks into a watering hole in Canonmills, well known to a certain crowd, but usually avoided by the general public. It is an understated pub, hidden down a cobbled side street, and one which several generations of Edinburgh villains have drifted in and out of over the years. It is still early afternoon and the place is deserted, save for two older men playing dominoes for coins, and a barmaid in her early twenties. She gives him a soda water and lime, refusing to charge for it, but he leaves a pound on the bar anyway.

  The pub TV features the bland, posh, public-relations man, who has been re-elected. He talks in a conciliatory manner, of one nation, while planning massive cuts in public services for the poor, repealing the Human Rights Act, and bringing back fox hunting for the rich. People were deferential to power. You just had to make the right noises.

  He nods to the older guys. They have the tight, studiously neutral, seen-it-all faces of retired cons, and Franco definitely knows one, but can only place the eyes in his generic aged countenance. He winks and gives them the thumbs-up, receiving a similar response back.

  Sure enough, a familiar figure with an almost bow-legged gait struts into the bar. Nelly hadn’t even spoken to him at the funeral, but he’d intervened to eject Cha Morrison. Now he is sitting next to Franco on the neighbouring bar stool. He is bigger and heavier than before, Frank Begbie can see that in the mirror, as his old friend removes his leather jacket. A steroid-munching, iron-pumping pit-bull terrier of a man. — Franco.

  — Thanks for coming tae the funeral. Frank Begbie turns to face his seasoned comrade. — Sorry I had tae abscond early before we had a chance to chat. And thanks for getting rid of Morrison. Water off a duck’s back tae me, but it upset some ay the family.

  — He’s aw mooth. Eywis wis.

  Franco isn’t interested in discussing Cha Morrison, or much else with Nelly. It’s Anton he wants to meet. — Listen, mate, it’s good tae see ye n aw that, but ah’m no really in the mood tae socialise.

  — Neither am ah, Nelly grimly replies. — Tyrone wants tae see ye, Frank.

  — Aw aye?

  — We kin dae this the easy wey or the hard wey. Nelly stands up, rippling with muscle, as the barmaid takes a couple of discreet steps back towards the till.

  — Tell ye what, Frank Begbie says, raising his hands in a surrender gesture, — lit’s dae it the easy wey, ah’m way past the cowboy stuff these days. Besides, he laughs, squeezing Nelly’s biceps, — ah dinnae really fancy ma chances. Lookin good, buddy boy!

  — Top man, Nelly grins. — Aye, ah’ve been takin care ay masel. He flushes with pride. — You n aw, he says with an appreciative once-over at Franco. — Nae hurry though, and he looks at the barmaid and orders a pint of lager. – You no drinkin?

  — Sacked the peeve a while back. Helps ye tae see things a bit mair clearly, Franco smiles, then nods in the direction of the toilets. — Back in a minute, got tae get a pish.

  — Nae sneakin away, Nelly chides.

  — Ye’d only find me, Franco chuckles, pointing at him.

  — Count on it.

  Franco heads off to the toilet. He drains his bladder and thinks about the old days with Nelly. They’d always had a rivalry, sometimes friendly, sometimes not so, since they were boys back in Leith. Then, after that, even working together as enforcers for Tyrone hadn’t quelled the competitiveness between them. Well, he was now out of that scene. That field was all Nelly’s.

  At the bar Nelly is settling into his pint of Stella, enjoying the first couple of cold swallows. Something stings his back, like an insect bite. It burns deeper and then he can see the terror in the eyes of the barmaid in front of him. He tries to rise, but an arm has locked round his neck, and the pain grows more intense, ripping into the core of him. As the grip relaxes, Nelly’s head swims and he crashes to the floor, his blood oozing onto the tiles.

  Frank Begbie pulls out the bloodied knitting needle, with its sharpened point. — Changed my mind, he sneers at the prostrate, bleeding figure. — Let’s dae it the hard wey.

  He looks to the terrified girl behind the bar. — Phone the ambulance, no the polis. Hurry, cause ah spiked his liver, he says, thinking about how easy precision made things. It astonishes him just how much of an amateur (albeit a highly enthusiastic one) he’d been in his previous life, getting through on sheer aggression rather than calculated design.

  Then Frank Begbie waves a fifty-pound note in front of the two old guys and winks, placing it in the pocket of the more familiar of them. — Right, Franco, the old villain says cheerfully, as if he’d just purchased a few sweep tickets.

  Yes, he wanted to be found, but not by Tyrone, and he glances at Nelly, now semi-conscious and groaning at his feet. — Adios, amigo, he says, then quickly steals out the door and heads down the cold, grey street.

  22

  THE SELF-CONTROL

  After dropping off Melanie, Grace and Eve that morning, Jim had driven straight back to the beach. He had Guns n’ Roses Appetite for Destruction on the car stereo, preferring it to Mahler. Their truck was parked in the same spot, and he pulled up about twenty yards to the rear of it. It was unoccupied. Then, scanning down the shoreline from behind the stone-built observation deck, he spied them, down on the still-deserted beach. They were heading away from him, towards the rocky promontory of Goleta Point. Instead of immediately following them, he headed back to their beat-up Silverado pickup truck. He took the Alaskan Alpha Wolf hunting knife from his denim jacket, stuck it in his belt, then removed the garment and rolled it round his hand, smashing through the truck’s side window.

  As the glass shattered, he looked over at the cluster of buildings, only about fifty yards away. Melanie had told him that they housed the university’s marine biology facility. But it was Independence Day weekend and they were empty, with no vehicles parked outside. He let himself into the truck. It was full of junk; old wrappings, empty cans of beer and soda. But in the glove compartment there was a handgun. Jim thought that he knew little about firearms, had only once held one in his hand, but realised from his prison training in the library’s True Crime section that it was a Glock semi-automatic. It was lighter than he thought. He pulled out the magazine. It was loaded with eight bullets. He pointed it at the dashboard, pulled back the safety catch. Then he placed the gun in his jacket pocket, also putting the knife back in with it.

  The leg, that wrecked limb that hadn’t healed right, not since the accident when he’d been hit by the car, storming after Mark Renton, held him up as he stole along the clifftop towards the rocks at Goleta Point. By approaching them from above and behind, he’d be able to ensure that the coast was clear of both beachcombers and solitary student stragglers before he engaged. Timing was all. They had turned the corner around the stony headland, and the tide was coming in quickly. Jim wa
lked faster; it seemed that the fleeter he got, the less he noticed the leg. From his vantage point on the cliff above he tracked them moving between two of the bigger rocks at the end of the jagged peninsula, which reached out to the Pacific Ocean like a small, broken quay. It provided perfect cover, shielding them from any eyes above, as the sea swirled in.

  He hurried down the beach and along the top of the rocks, until he was standing over them. Jim quickly glanced back above him to the cliffs, then down the beach towards Devereux Slough; all clear, and then his attention was fully on the men, as he stepped forward into their view. They were preoccupied as the blond one had a crab on his knife; he had stabbed it through the shell and it wriggled in its death throes. It looked like a red rock crab, with its brick-coloured top and rusty blotchings on the white underside. He’d taken to identifying the different types of marine life on these trips with the kids. — Think it knows it’s going to die? He pointed at the crab.

  The two men looked up as one, saw him standing over them on the large rock. Took a step back as Jim jumped down, landing in front of them on the soft sand.

  — What the fuck? said the smaller, blond man, Damien Coover. — Look, we don’t want no trouble . . .

  Jim Francis pulled out the gun. — Too fucking late for that, and he lurched forward and squeezed the trigger. A shot rang out, then a crack, the gulls taking to squawking flight, as Coover toppled over, tumbling to the rocks and sand. He screamed out in agony, against the sound of the sea, the waves dashing on the rocks. Jim gazed out across the ocean; no boats, just Holly, the oil platform, way out on the horizon to his right. The other man, Marcello Santiago, was moving back against the huge black rock face, as the tide swarmed around his shins. — C’mon, man . . . look . . .

  Jim ignored him, glancing briefly behind him, still all clear, then back to the men. Coover was moaning softly, clutching his leg. Jim saw he had managed to shoot him above the kneecap. Blood seeped through denim, onto rock and into sand and salt water.

  — Never shot anybody before, Jim Francis said. — It’s as I thought it would be. No pleasure in it. A fucking shiteing cunt’s weapon. He shook his head, looking at Coover in abject disappointment.

  — My fuckin leg . . . Coover groaned at Santiago, who kept his eyes on Jim.

  Jim pulled the knife out of the crab. Placed the creature on a flat rock, and crushed it under the heel of his boot. Santiago continued to look at him in confusion, trying to evaluate how this might play out.

  — Sport, Jim said, reading his thoughts. He placed the gun on top of the rock, by the wreckage of the crab. He looked at the smooth long blade of the knife. — Nice, he said, then took his own weapon from his pocket. — Mine is an Alaskan Alpha Wolf. No quite as long a blade as your boy, but it’s got a great grip on the handle, and that convex edge reduces drag. Let’s do this, and he threw Santiago’s knife onto the sand in front of him, compelling him to move forward.

  — No, man, wait –

  But Jim was bearing down towards him. Santiago fought through his fear and grabbed the weapon, lifting his head as Jim swept upwards in a blow, opening up his face at the jawline, skin flapping on bone. Santiago swiped at him, but unbalanced himself and Jim barged into him, knocking him over, jumping on him, sinking the blade into his thigh and his teeth into his adversary’s wrist, as blood spurted from two limbs and Santiago dropped his knife. With the Alpha Wolf stuck in the man’s thigh bone, Jim seized the free weapon and smashed it into his combatant’s throat. More blood shot into the air, then Jim’s second stab thrust the blade through the man’s skull. He had to stand on Santiago’s head to try and retrieve the knife for a planned third strike. Again, it wouldn’t come, and he turned to see Coover hopping across the rocks, making towards the gun, and he was over in pursuit. — Gimpy’s comin . . . he leered, as he gained on his prey. Crouching, without breaking his stride, he picked up a rock and smashed it over the back of Coover’s head.

  Damien Coover fell prone onto the flat stones, dazed, but managing to roll around, holding up his hands as Jim straddled him, the rock raised.

  — Please don’t . . . he begged, eyes half shut, waiting for the next blow.

  — When you hurt some cunt, Jim said, his face set in a grave scowl, nodding at the still figure of Santiago, who was bleeding into the sand, — it’s your duty to enjoy it. Otherwise, you’ve done it for fuck all. It means nothing.

  — Please . . .

  The rock came crashing down onto the bridge of Coover’s nose, shattering it in a crack of bone and an explosion of blood. Coover let out a high-pitched yelp, followed by a long, sad whine.

  — Would you have enjoyed hurting my wife and kids? Jim asked, looking above him, up to the top of the small cliff, then glancing to his left, down the beach. — What would you have done tae them? Tell me!

  — No, we were . . . we were . . .

  — You were nothing, Jim said coldly, bringing the rock down on Coover’s head with another crack. — WHAT DAE YE FUCKIN SAY, YA BAM?!

  — No . . . Coover groaned.

  — WHAT DAE YE FUCKIN SAY?!

  — Please, no . . .

  He whispered in Coover’s ear: — Begbie’s my name, then he sat up, and roared out to Coover, but above his head, as if addressing the ocean, those crashing waves: — FRANK BEGBIE!! He looked back at Coover. — SAY MA FUCKIN NAME! FRANK BEGBIE!!!

  — Frank . . . Frank . . .

  — FUCKIN SAY IT RIGHT! FRANK BEGBIE!

  — Frank Begbie . . .

  He knew it was stupid and could prove costly, but he let himself get lost. It took many blows before he was convinced the man was gone, mashing the bones in his face, obliterating him. It felt so different to when he was fourteen, the very first time, when that one effort had been so decisive. But back then there had been no pleasure in that act, no release, only fear and a sense of mercy which was presently beyond him.

  He stood over the pulped face, let his breathing normalise. The rage had been a beautiful treat, but it was self-indulgent, and no good at all to him now. He glanced down the beach, then out to sea. Nothing, bar Holly, looking like a black armchair out where the squally grey-blue sky met the choppy brine. Not even a distant boat. Then a solitary plane thundered above on its descent, heading for the nearby local airport, which lay on the other side of the university. The irony was that if he were to be discovered now, it would most likely be by a lone student, somebody who had stayed behind from the Fourth of July Independence Day celebrations, and who would have possibly ended up raped or murdered, if he hadn’t removed the threats. But there was no one. If he believed in all that shit, he reflected, he would have suspected a higher power was working with him. But the only power guiding him, Jim realised, was Frank Begbie. And now he had to get rid of him.

  Jim felt moved to address the pulped head of the corpse. — Ken what I thought, he said, looking down the empty beach. — You know what I thought, he corrected himself. — It would be great if some other cunt had been with youse. Two wisnae enough.

  Begbie was proving hard to shrug off.

  Then Jim stood up and stripped down to his underpants, laying his garments in a neat pile. He hauled first Coover, then Santiago, out by the edge of the jagged rock formation. Almost instantly, he got the knife out of Santiago’s skull by twisting it, but it took an agonising thirty seconds or so before he was was able to rip the Alpha Wolf free from the man’s thigh. Then he removed both men’s clothes, stacking them in a separate pile to his own. The inlet between the two big rocks would provide decisive cover, though what he was about to do next was the riskiest part. Jim climbed back up onto the flat rocks and looked down over the sandy beach, first left, then right. Still eerily deserted, not even a solitary beachcomber. He could see beyond it, to the edge of the town. Jim turned out to sea. Way, way out on the horizon, there was a boat, but he was lucky. It was heading in the other direction, and he watched it melt into the reverberating cloud and shimmering sea.

  Jim took the heavier man, Sa
ntiago, out to sea first, dragging him, relieved when the incoming tide took him up with its buoyancy, almost grabbing the body like a helping pair of hands. The water was cold, and he felt the air being squeezed from his lungs. He remembered the breathing. Steady. By breathing properly you couldn’t conquer any adversary, but you bought time. You gave yourself a better chance. He swam, pulling Santiago, for what felt like a long distance, but in reality couldn’t have been more than twenty yards out before letting him go. He watched the body float off.

  When he returned to do the same for Coover, he was tired and the current was stronger, with the waves hitting his face in provocative slaps, so he dared not go so far out. To his surprise, he heard a faint moaning from the man in his arms; Coover was still alive. This wouldn’t be the case for long. — Shh . . . he said, as tenderly as a mother would to an infant, holding him under the water, watching bubbles from his crushed nose and mouth rise to the surface. After letting Coover go, he swam back and put his clothes on over his wet body, then bundled up the dead men’s apparel. The beach was still deserted. In the distance, towards Santa Barbara, he could see a group of people, probably young, by the way they moved, heading down the sands. He ducked into a winding trail, onto the clifftop, where he gathered his breath and looked out to sea. The tide would have carried the bodies away.