6.1.
‘We’ll take your car,’ Joe said. ‘The heater’s still broken in mine.’
As instructed, I’d drifted back to the office at about half past five.
Joe was waiting for me, smelling of single malt. It was easy to guess how he spent his afternoon. Directly across the road from the office was a fairly decent pub and a bookies. With such wonderful facilities less than a hundred yards away, it was a wonder that he ever bothered to go home.
Because it was my car, and because Joe was probably not fit, I drove, which was exactly what Joe had intended. He told me to head for Giffnock. Progress was slow. Everybody in Glasgow wanted home.
‘Good afternoon?’ I asked.
Joe patted his inside pocket. ‘Troubled Youth. Came second in the Three-fifteen from Kempton at nine to one. Excellent afternoon.’
‘Your dedication knows no bounds.’
‘What’s the point of owning your own business if you can’t play hooky every once in a while?’ Joe didn’t wait for an answer. ‘What about you?’
‘I drove over to Audrey’s place to see Mark.’
‘How did it go?’
‘He wasn’t there.’ I decided not to tell him what had happened.
‘That reminds me. I think I’m getting a new phone.’
‘Why?’
‘It’s on a free trial or something,’ I lied. ‘She phoned while I was driving, so I couldn’t really talk. Anyway, what’s the plan?’
‘The usual. We’re going to sit outside in the cold and try to catch people with their trousers down.’
‘You’d think millions of years of evolution would have come up with a better system of catching people out.’
‘I hope not. We’d be out of a job.’
That was Joe’s biggest fear, that the rampant advance of technology would make guys like us redundant. I suppose it made sense, what with his almost phobic dislike of anything with buttons. I said, ‘So what did I miss in your little meeting with Mrs Sloan this morning?’
‘Nothing much. The husband’s name is Ian, and the sister is called Maureen. We’re off to Maureen’s house. Apparently the two of them sometimes spend the evening together doing “paperwork”.’ He waved a buff-coloured file at me. ‘Everything we need to know is in here.’
‘So what do you think? You think there’s something in it, or you think she’s your average paranoid wife?’
Joe took his time. ‘I think there’s probably something in it. You know what it’s like in this job. They only come to us as a last resort, and by then it’s just a question of us confirming what they already know.’
‘Have you ever found a case where the person you’re following is completely clean?’
‘Oh, yeah. It’s rare, but it happens. I remember one job, the husband was completely convinced that his wife was screwing around on him. Turned out, she was working as a Samaritan but hadn’t wanted to tell him. He went mental. He was a total arsehole, thought that any kind of charity work was a waste of time. I think in the end she eventually left him.’ He looked at me sideways. ‘What about you?’
‘What about me what?’
‘You think that a man and a woman should commit themselves to the same person for the rest of their lives?’
‘If you’d asked me that two years ago I would have said yes.
Nowadays, I’m not so sure.’
‘Were you ever unfaithful to Audrey?’
‘No. What about you and Becky?’
‘No. I’ve always talked a good game, but that’s as far as it goes.’ Joe replied. ‘We’ve been together for nearly thirty years. I’m not saying I don’t window-shop, but I wouldn’t screw up what I have for the sake of some bimbo.’
‘Fair enough.’
He grinned at me. ‘But I could be tempted by the lovely Mrs Sloan.’
‘I think she’s more in my age group, Granddad.’
‘She’s about ten years older than you, son. Mind you, they do say that there’s nothing better than an older woman.’
‘I’m sure you’re right,’ I said. ‘Although when you get to your age, they must be bloody hard to find.’
6.2.
Maureen Black lived on a quiet little cul de sac in Giffnock. I knew the area quite well. Until the mid-eighties most of the houses had been owned by the local council. Right-to-buy clauses caused the property values to appreciate wildly, and now it was the kind of place that estate agents described as being “Ideal For the Growing Family”.
Except that Maureen’s family wasn’t growing but shrinking. Joe filled me in on what Sophie Sloan had told him. Eighteen months ago Maureen’s husband of ten years had left her. There were no kids, and divorce ensued. She bought half of the house from under him and he invested the money in a convertible. It was so tragic it was almost Greek.
Joe summed up Sophie Sloan’s fears about her sister rather neatly.
‘You know what they say about recently divorced women. They’re so eager to prove it was a fluke they’ll seduce anything in trousers.’
All day long it had been overcast and gloomy, and with no blue sky to help eke out the daylight, darkness fell quickly. We reached our destination just after half past six. ‘Just cruise by,’ Joe instructed me.
‘See if anybody’s home yet.’
The house itself was a neat little semi, with a living/dining room and a kitchen on the ground floor; two, possibly three bedrooms plus a bathroom upstairs. A driveway extended down one sandstone wall, ending in a fence that presumably lead to a back garden. The front garden was neat, with little in the way of flowers. Estate Agent parlance would describe it as “Low Maintenance”. It would bloody well have to be, now Maureen was on her own and working full time.
No car in the driveway.
‘The living room light’s on,’ I said.
‘She might have left it like that. Make people think she’s already home when it gets dark.’
I turned at the bottom of the road, found a space about fifty yards away that wasn’t directly underneath a street lamp, turned the engine off. We settled in to wait.
‘I have a question.’ I said.
‘What?’
‘If Sophie Sloan’s a qualified nurse, why isn’t she the. . . whatchma-callit. . . clinical matron type thingy at her husband’s home?’
‘She gave up her nursing registration when she had a kid. Wanted to be a full time mum.’
‘She didn’t strike me as being the mumsy type.’
‘The kid died. About six months ago. Leukaemia, I think. I didn’t want to pry.’
‘Poor woman.’
Yet another person with a shrinking family.
Joe turned to face me. ‘I remember reading that something like fifty percent of couples who lose a child under the age of five go on to split up. You have to admit, all the triggers are there. Losing the kid will have left this incredibly raw wound, so Sophie and Ian are possibly not getting along as well as they should. Throw into the equation a recently single sister-in-law… it’s like all the planets lining up in a row. It’s inevitable that something’s going to give.’
‘It’s shitty.’
‘I agree. But the world’s a shitty place.’ Joe reached out and switched the radio on, started pressing buttons randomly. ‘How the hell do I get this thing tuned to Radio Scotland?’
‘You don’t. It only gets Radio Two.’
‘You mean I need to sit and listen to Terry Bloody Wogan?’
‘Hopefully not.’ I said. ‘He does the breakfast show.’
‘Can’t you change it?’
I assumed he meant the station the car stereo was tuned to and not the BBC’s daytime line-up. ‘There’s an instruction manual in the glove compartment.’
Joe started rummaging around. He withdrew a book the size of a paperback novel. ‘Is this it?’
‘That’s the owner’s manual. The manual for the stereo’s bigger than that.’
‘Bigger? How can it be bigger?’
‘I guess the stereo’s more complicated than the car.’
Grumbling, he gave up. I covered a grin. We settled in to wait. The minutes ticked by. Lights went on in the surrounding houses as families came home from work. It was damp, but that didn’t stop a few kids starting a game of football at the end of the street, using a street light for one goal post and some poor sod’s car for the other.
Joe and I chatted quietly, our eyes on the house. Joe thought that Glasgow Rangers were spending too much money on outside talent and failing to foster home-grown players. I feigned an interest as best I could. I’m not much of a football fan, but to Joe it was a religion. I wasn’t expected to agree, but not to have an opinion was sacrilege.
Tired of his moaning, I fiddled with the radio, eventually pressing enough buttons to find Radio Scotland just in time for the seven o’clock news bulletin. An investigation was to be launched into the cost of the investigation into the cost of building the Scottish Parliament. A body had been found dumped in a bin behind a notorious Paisley strip club called Diamonds and Pearls; police were investigating. We both pricked our ears up at that one; Paisley was less than six miles away from where we were parked. Five years ago it was the kind of case that we might have been assigned to.
‘You ever miss it? Being a copper, I mean.’
‘Sometimes,’ Joe grunted. ‘Mostly not. It’s all politics now. Politics and budgets. What about you?’
‘Yeah.’ Every day. ‘I mean, no offence and all, but sometimes I wish I hadn’t left.’
‘None taken. You could always go back.’
‘I doubt it. I’ve made my bed. Now I’ll probably die in it.’
‘Maybe you should move. Head for the east coast. A change of scenery would do you good.’
‘I’m a Glasgow boy, Joe.’
‘Alright then, don’t leave Glasgow. You could live in the city and work somewhere else. Become a community copper for one of these villages that tie four sheep to a lamp post and call it a leisure centre.’
‘Nah, you’re alright.’ I reached forward and turned up the volume, hoping to distract him. ‘I’ve not heard this song in years.’
‘Who’s it by?’
I didn’t know. It was one of those one hit wonders that dominates a season before disappearing forever. ‘Can’t remember.’
‘It’s shite.’
It was.
A car pulled into the driveway of Maureen Black’s house. It was impossible to tell the colour; darkness makes everything the same shade of grey. I could see it was a hatchback, maybe a Ford Fiesta. Joe leaned forward as I turned the radio down again.
‘Aye, aye.’ There was the sound of pages riffling as he flipped through his file. ‘Margaret’s supposed to drive a blue Three-Oh-Six.’
‘I could tell it was a Peugeot.’ I lied.
We lost sight of the car as it parked at the far end of the driveway, hidden from view by the house. A few seconds later a woman appeared and let herself in through the front door. I got a glimpse of dark hair, pale skin. The hair wasn’t as long as Sophie’s, but there was a resemblance. ‘Hello, Maureen,’ I said, softly.
‘No sign of the husband.’
‘He might be following. She’s left enough space in the driveway for another vehicle. What did Sophie say Ian drove?’
Joe flipped through his notes. ‘BMW. She said they had one each.’
Of course he drove a BMW. He was, after all, the boss.
We watched in silence. The front bedroom light came on for about five minutes, then went off again, then back on for another five. Then off. It was easy to imagine what was going on. Shower, then change.
Now she would be downstairs, maybe preparing something to eat, maybe reaching for a takeaway menu as she slumped in front of the television, or maybe. . . just maybe. . . opening a bottle of wine and making sure that she had two clean glasses.
Joe nudged me. ‘Look.’
A saloon car was approaching the house. ‘That’s a BMW.’ I said.
The left indicator came on and the car slowed as it approached the house. ‘Oh, Matron,’ I said in my best Kenneth Williams voice. ‘What a naughty girl you are.’
Except that she wasn’t. The Beamer pulled into the driveway of the house next door. Doors slammed. Mum, Dad, two kids. Plus a whole load of shopping. We both sat back in disappointment.
‘I suppose we should be glad,’ I said.
‘I suppose. The longer we sit here, the more we earn.’
‘You’re such a cynic.’
6.3.
At ten to eight, Joe’s mobile phone rang. I kept my eyes on the house, eavesdropping, pretending not to, trying to figure out what was being said from Joe’s side of the conversation alone. Eventually he hung up. ‘That was Sophie Sloan. She was calling to say that her husband had just arrived home. They’re sending out for a curry. There’s no point in us sitting here all evening.’
‘And here was me just getting comfortable.’
‘Take me home, Jeeves.’
I started the engine. ‘You want me to take you back to the office so that you can drive home yourself?’ Inwardly, I hoped that he would say no. I had my doubts over whether or not he would pass a breath test
‘Nah. I’ll get a taxi in the morning. You can drop me at the house.’
‘No problem.’ It was only five miles out of my way. Five miles there, five miles back. But then, he did give me the afternoon off. I had nothing to complain about.
Curry sounded like a damn good idea. I decided to make a detour.
6.4.
Home was a tenement flat in Craghill Road. Parking was on-street, in the first available space. Tonight, the first available space was nearly four hundred yards away, between a Vauxhall Astra with a cracked rear-windscreen and a transit van that looked like it had just been dragged out of a canal.
I got out of the car and made sure that the door was locked. It had been months since I had washed it and a heavy layer of dust was caked along the sides. That was good; if the local kids got the impression that somebody cared then the windows probably wouldn’t survive the night. I started walking, the plastic bag that contained my dinner in my left hand, my right hand buried in the pocket of my jacket, clutching a heavy, chain-link dog lead that I had tied a knot in, creating a borderline-legal, but potentially devastating weapon. Don’t believe what the politicians tell you; Glasgow may be a beautiful city, but like every beautiful city, it has a nasty side.
I just happened to live slap-bang in the middle of it.
No rain. I kept my pace up, ignoring the few pedestrians, making sure that I didn’t make any accidental eye-contact and provoke a fight – not just because my face was one of the most hated in the country, but because some of the locals would pick a fight for the hell of it.
Back in my days as a police officer, the area around Craghill Road was known as Little Bosnia.
Except that the conflict in Bosnia was long over, and this place still looked like a war-zone.
The streets were pot-holed and narrow, lined with tenement flats that seemed to absorb the small amount of light the night sky had to offer, enveloping everything in a depressing curtain of perpetual greyness. Every second lamp post was dim, destroyed by a well-placed half brick no doubt thrown by a local hero. Broken plastic and glass crunched underfoot as I negotiated the cracked and pitted pavements.
I had a theory that the street lights were vandalised because most of the locals actively craved the darkness, the better to hide their nefarious lifestyles and dirty deeds done dead cheap. Furtive-looking kids loitered on almost every street corner, hair unkempt, faces pale, eyes scanning the middle distance for their drugs connection, or the patrolling police car that would blow the deal.
I had less than fifty yards to go when I spotted them: two rail thin youths who looked as if they had last eaten some time about the turn of the millennium, loitering like stray dogs outside the off-licence that was directly across the road from my flat. Sportswear, baseball caps, and expensive-looking trainers. I paid no attention to them; they were always there, part of the local scenery, peddling small time drugs and buying alcohol for anybody that might look younger than eighteen.
Just a couple of aimless kids who would drift through life until it finally caught up with them. I was so used to the sight of them that I barely noticed them, if that makes any sense.
Big mistake.
I covered the last few yards to the communal door to my tenement, taking my hand out of my pocket, feeling for where I had attached my keys to the belt hook of my trousers. It didn’t register that both of them had started to cross the road just as I slid the front door key into the lock and pushed open the door. I made my way up the stairway that led to the individual flats, taking my time, blissfully unaware of the front door swinging slowly closed behind me.
Slowly enough for my two little pals to reach it before it could latch shut.
I was halfway up the first flight of stairs before I heard – too late – the gentle scuffing of rubber on concrete. As I began to turn, somebody grabbed the neck of my jacket and wrenched me back. I stumbled, my foot searching for solid ground and finding only air, my body twisting to the right, glancing off somebody else, a fist jabbing me hard in the kidney. My foot landed half on, half off one of the stairs, then slid off, the ankle turning underneath me as it hit the stair below, my knee buckling as my lower body tried to bend in three directions at once. All sense of balance was gone and I tumbled heavily back down the staircase, not far enough to break anything but plenty far enough to knock the wind out of me. I landed in a heap at the bottom.
They stood over me. ‘Give us your wallet.’
Struggling for breath, I made it to my hands and knees.
‘I said, give us your wallet.’ One of them swung a foot, kicking me right in the stomach. I folded, rolling on my side and going foetal, the cold stonework against my face, unable to inhale for the leaden pain in my abdomen. In a bizarre moment of clarity, I found myself thank-ing God that Reebok didn’t fit their trainers with steel toecaps. My back hurt. My shoulder hurt. My right leg felt as if it had been dipped in fire. Even my eyelids hurt.
Click.
I quickly forgot about my pain as I recognised the sound.
Flick-knife.
Opening.
A cool blade was laid against my cheek. A voice spoke softly in my ear. ‘Wallet. Now.’
‘OK,’ I gasped. ‘Just. . . just let me get up.’
They stepped back and I lurched to my feet, using the stone wall to prop myself upright. The world was fading in and out, the strip light that illuminated the close pulsating – bright, dark, bright, dark. I gulped air and worked hard on not passing out. When I was sure that I could remain upright, I risked a closer look at my assailants.
Wished I hadn’t bothered.
They were both skinny and ugly. Shaved heads, bad skin. The one that held the flick-knife had a Glasgow Rangers tattoo on the back of his knuckles; the other one was wearing a Celtic top. It was heartening to see the young people of Glasgow putting their differences to one side.
‘I’m gonny count to ten,’ said Flick-Knife. ‘After that, I’ll cut your bollocks off.’
Although unconvinced of his ability to reach such lofty numerical heights, I decided not to try and find out, slipping my hand inside my jacket and removing my wallet. ‘There you go.’
Celtic Bhouy took the wallet from my outstretched fingers and flipped through it. He held up a solitary five-pound note and looked at me in disgust. ‘This all you’ve got?’
I was beginning to get my breath back. It still hurt like hell, but I could feel the adrenaline flooding my system, possibilities opening as my brain finally stepped into gear. I had a choice: fight or flight. You would think that fifty billion years of evolution might have provided a third option.
I chose. ‘There’s two fifties in the wee compartment.’
‘Whit wee compartment?’
‘Behind the Donor card,’ I said. ‘It’s got a tiny zipper.’
Celtic Bhouy’s brow furrowed in concentration as he fumbled away with his thick fingers, turning the wallet this way and that as he tried to find the non-existent section I was talking about. I almost laughed as he ripped the Donor card from its mounting and tossed it to the ground.
‘It’s there! You had your hand on it.’ I told him, doing my best to stir things up.
It was all too much for Flick-Knife. He stretched out and grabbed the wallet from his hapless crony. ‘For fuck’s sake. You’re bloody useless, you are.’
Engrossed in the search, neither of them noticed as I slipped my right hand into my pocket. I gripped the dog lead, feeling for the nylon loop. I’d never used the thing in anger, but in theory, if I pulled, then the whole thing would come smoothly out of my pocket with no snagging or catching. I sagged against the wall, tilting the right side of my body away from them, breaking into a coughing fit in case the sound of the metal chain links sliding over each other tipped them off.
It didn’t.
As I slowly took my hand from my pocket, the chain fell down the side of my leg, loose, heavy, ready to do some damage.
And not a moment too soon. Flick-Knife threw the wallet away and brandished his weapon at me. ‘Lying bastard. You’re having us on.’
I waited, my left hand at my mouth, the chain still hidden by my body, my eyes on the knife. If he moved, I would have one shot, and one shot only. Whatever else happened, I had to take care of the knife.
He leapt forward, right arm a blur, aimed straight at my side. If I’d been any slower, he would have gutted me. As it was, I twisted just a fraction too late; the tip of the blade glanced off the side of my stomach but didn’t penetrate the skin. Instead, it snagged in the material of my jacket, tearing it with a harsh ripping sound. I swung my left elbow forward into his chest, an awkward, lumbering blow that probably hurt about as much a flea bite but caused him to stagger back. I brought my right hand up, swinging the chain as hard as I could, the angle completely wrong but it was all I could do. He must have sensed movement in the corner of his eye, raising his left hand to ward off the blow. The chain wrapped around his wrist and I pulled, hard, sending him reeling off balance, planting my foot in his backside and pushing, sending him pinwheeling into his companion.
I yelled as I finally got a clear shot with the chain, swinging it as hard as I could, gravity adding momentum to the knot at the end. There was a thwack as it struck Flick-Knife’s right shoulder blade, the thin material of his shell-suit providing no protection whatsoever. He screamed in pain and leapt forward directly into his pal, the two of them landing in a confused tangle of limbs at my feet.
My turn.
I swung for them, again and again, not bothering to aim, not really needing to, just leaning forward and walloping away with all my strength. Shins, thighs, calves, buttocks– the chain made a thwopping noise every time it made contact. Flick-Knife howled in agony and his weapon skittered across the concrete, coming to rest at the bottom of the stairs.
I collapsed back against the wall, my exhaustion real this time, a dull throbbing pain in my shoulder. From somewhere upstairs, I heard a door open. One of my neighbours was taking an interest.
‘Help! It’s me!’ I called. Then I realised how meaningless that was.
‘Cameron! I’m in the Second Floor Left! Call the police!’
There was a slamming sound. Shouting my name had been a mistake. I was never going to win any popularity contests, not tonight, not in this city. Had I been on fire, most of my neighbours would probably break out the marshmallows.
I took my mobile phone out of my pocket and dialled. Instead of a soothing voice asking me the nature of my emergency, I got a hiss of meaningless static. Concrete might be great for building tenement flats, but it’s hell on telephone reception. Disgusted, I flipped my Nokia closed, only to look up to see Flick-Knife had rolled over and was watching me, a nasty cut bleeding away underneath his left eye.
God knew how that had happened; all my efforts had been concentrated on his back. His companion was still foetal, hands clenched between his thighs, a high-pitched wailing sound emanating from behind his clenched teeth.
Flick-Knife and I looked at each other balefully. ‘Little bastard,’ I told him. ‘What did you want to go and do that for?’
He shrugged. ‘Easy money.’
‘You’ve got to be kidding,’ I said. ‘Nobody round here has any.’
I wasn’t sure what to do. Although I had gained the upper hand, I was still outnumbered. Meanwhile, the adrenaline was leaving my body, making me feel shivery and ill. My head throbbed, and the lights seemed overly bright. If I had to stand there for much longer, I was probably going to throw up on my two captives.
Which would be an ideal way to defuse the situation.
Flick-Knife levered himself upright and grabbed his pal by the ear.
‘Come on, Shabsy. Time for us to go.’
I waved the dog chain feebly. ‘Don’t move.’
His lower lip twitched upward in a sneer; he knew I didn’t have it in me. ‘Fuck you, Stone.’
Shabsy lumbered to his feet. His pain tolerance must have been much lower than his pal’s; although there was barely a mark on him, silent tears ran down his face. His eyes burned into mine. I raised the chain. ‘Don’t even think about it.’
Flick-Knife bent slowly to where his blade lay on the ground, his eyes on me all the time. ‘I’m takin’ this back.’
Of course he was. Why leave evidence lying around?
Leaning on each other, the two of them trudged their way to the door. I let them go, too sore and nauseous to do anything else. They were just punks. Craghill’s a closed community, assault cases nothing more than an everyday occurrence. Even if their identities could be discovered, friends and relatives would swear blithely that on the evening of the ‘alleged’ attack, my assailants had been at bible class, or maybe volunteering at the local old-folks home. Without witnesses, it was an unwinnable case, and as an ex-copper, nobody understood that better than me.
After a few minutes, I felt slightly better. Well enough to cover the last few steps to my flat, where I planned to assess the damage in the privacy of my own bathroom. Moving like I had a damn good case of arthritis, I grabbed my wallet. The plastic bag that held my dinner lay where I had dropped it. I picked it up, surprised to find that apart from some minor seepage, the foil containers were still sealed. It was my first – and last – lucky break of the evening.
As I trudged up the stairs, it occurred to me; how had Flick-Knife known my name? Although my face had been plastered over the front page of every newspaper in the land, the accident had been months ago, and neither of my attackers looked as they had much interest in current events. They seemed more the type to dispense with the pesky front part of the paper and head straight to the sports pages at the back.
I lost interest the minute I reached the front door to my flat, where somebody – possibly my two pals – had left me an unpleasant little surprise.
6. 5.
Somebody had daubed the words BABY KILLER across my front door. The letters were large and looked like they had been made in a hurry. The paint had run in thick, messy drips. I stood and looked at it for thirty seconds, anger passing through my body like a wave, rising, peaking and then subsiding into a trough.
Actually, the paint was a very pleasant shade of red, although probably more suited to interior work. This wasn’t the first time it had happened. A couple of months ago, the message had been
‘MURDERER.’ If I recalled correctly, it had been in exactly the same shade.
Same paint shade equals same artist. I was glad to see that four months away from real police work hadn’t damaged my uncanny talent for deductive reasoning.
Including my own, there were eleven flats in the block. Two on the ground floor, three each on the first second and third floors. Bottom Left had been empty since I had moved in, but every other flat was occupied. There were families, singletons, couples, and of course, the obligatory little old lady with the scruffy cat collection.
I wondered who the culprit was. I doubted it was Flick-Knife and Shabsy. Anything more than a kicking was probably too imaginative for them. It was far more likely that the mystery artist was one of my own neighbours. Almost everybody in the block hated me. If Ian Huntley had moved into the empty flat, the little old lady on the top floor would have welcomed him by baking him a nice cake and warning him to stay away from the nasty fellow on the second floor. Even her cats gave me the evil eye when they passed me on the stairs.
I knocked on the door to the flat opposite me, folded my arms, and waited. After a few seconds, Lee opened the door. In his hand was an empty can of lager, crushed flat in the middle. Something – probably a ball point pen – had been used to punch a group of tiny holes through the side of the can, creating a convenient hash delivery system. I gestured at the paint on my door. ‘Know anything about this, Lee?’
The door opened wider as Lee stepped out, craning his neck to admire the artwork. He wore an unbuttoned Hawaiian shirt over a pair of stained Y-fronts, and an odour of skunk followed him about like cheap aftershave. Manky dreadlocks hung halfway down his skinny back. Music drifted from his open door, funky guitars and a saxophone. He told people he was a sociology student, but as far as I could tell, his days consisted of smoking dope and watching porn.
Maybe I was being unfair. A friend once told me that sociology was a Mickey-Mouse subject. It was always possible that drugs and self-abuse were part of the course.
He shook his head and smiled. ‘Man, somebody’s got a grudge against you.’
Thanks, Einstein. ‘Have you been out at all today, Lee?’
‘What’s it to you?’
‘Maybe you could tell me when it was done.’
He shook his head. ‘Jane was over.’ He winked at me. ‘Spent the day in bed, if you know what I mean.’
Jane was his “girlfriend” – supposedly. According to Lee, she was married, stunning, and wanted nothing more than an affair. Nobody had ever seen her, and everybody thought that he was full of it.
‘Is she still here? Maybe she saw something when she arrived.’
‘She left. About an hour ago. With a satisfied grin on her face.’
‘And you didn’t hear anything?’
‘A bit of shouting a few minutes ago. Nothing special.’
I resisted the impulse to kick the stupid little stoner in the balls.
‘That was me. Two kids tried to make off with my wallet. I’m talking about earlier. I want to know who did this.’
The stupid little stoner gave me a stupid little grin. ‘Still playing detective? Far as I remember, you’re not a cop anymore.’
‘I’m not a babykiller, either.’
Although, technically, I was. Just because it was an accident didn’t mean it didn’t count.
‘Whatever.’ Lee turned to go. I snatched a quick glance at his hands.
If he was the mystery message-leaver, maybe he had been too wasted to scrub the paint off his fingernails. But there was nothing in-criminating – a few months worth of grime, but no tell-tale paint residue. He went into his flat and shut the door behind him. The smell of hash lingered, not quite strong enough to overshadow the smell of cat urine.
I unlocked my own door and stepped in the hallway. I would deal with the graffiti, but not this very second. Right now, I was going to eat the takeaway I had picked up on my way home. Chicken Jaipuri.
Hot, spicy, full of onions and mushrooms. The high point of a distinctly average day.
Except when I peeled the lid off the foil container, I found that they had given me Lamb Korma by mistake. Instead of chargrilled chicken in a sunset of red sauce, I had lumpy grey meat poking out of a glutinous yellow sludge that reminded me of bile.
I never had liked Mondays.
6.6.
Only one of my neighbours didn’t hate me. Liz. Top Left, the flat above and across from mine. I had almost removed the paint when she showed up an hour later, smelling of white wine and teetering along on a pair of improbably high heels that would have looked great on a six foot tall fashion model but just looked dangerous on her. She stopped on the landing and watched me as I scrubbed away with a rag soaked in white spirit. ‘What did it say?’
‘That I was a wonderful man and they hoped I would live here for ever and ever.’
‘You’d think they could have slipped a note underneath your door.’
‘Perhaps they didn’t have any paper available,’ I said. ‘You look nice.’
A black dress decorated with a pleasing pattern of flowers stopped just above the knee. Her complexion was always light, and she wore very little make-up. Her face was round and usually smiling, and her body was about a thousand times more attractive than the stick-insects that grace the covers of the fashion mags, possibly because there was nothing contrived in the way she carried herself. She wasn’t trying to be sexy; she just achieved it naturally. I would never mess up a good thing, but every once in a while I caught myself thinking about her in a way that you don’t normally think about your friends. It was the Irish accent that did it for me.
She sat down on the steps, pulling off the high heels to massage her feet. ‘Jesus, that’s better. I was on a date.’
‘Who was it this time?’
‘A junior doctor.’
I looked at my watch. Ten forty. ‘It can’t have gone that well.’
‘It didn’t. Turns out, he’s looking for a Barbara Windsor.’
She must have guessed by my face that I didn’t get it.
‘You know. A naughty nurse. A bit of slap and tickle in the linen cupboard.’
‘I thought you might have meant a seventy year old woman.’
‘Aye, well. He’s welcome to her. Halfway through the meal he leaned forward and started to lick my ear. Asked me what colour knickers I had on.’ She looked at me matter-of-factly. ‘You’re all bloody useless, you know.’
I scrubbed away serenely. ‘I know.’
‘I mean, for God’s sake, have you ever done anything like that?’
‘Not recently.’
‘I stood up and walked out.’
I clenched my fist in a gesture of female solidarity. ‘You go, girl.’
She laughed. ‘What have you been up to today? Apart from graffiti removal?’
‘This and that. Bit of the other. Went to see Mark.’
‘Really? How’d that go?’
‘Not well. He wasn’t there. I ran into his mother instead.’
‘Your ex?’
‘That’s the one.’
‘I thought you looked depressed.’
I shook my head. ‘I’m fine. I always look depressed.’
‘How true.’
‘She made a pass at me.’
God knows why that slipped out.
Liz stopped massaging her feet. ‘What did you do?’
‘I ran for the hills.’ I neglected to mention that it had taken a phone call to prompt my tactical retreat.
‘Good man. That’s crap you don’t need. I mean, what was she thinking? She uses Mark as a. . . a bargaining chip and then thinks you’ll drop your trousers the second she feels horny?’
‘Seems like it.’
‘Dirty bitch.’ She stood up. ‘I’m starving. I think I’ll make some toast. Want some?’
I shook my head. After the takeaway disappointment, I’d eaten an entire tin of spaghetti hoops. ‘I thought you went out for dinner.’
‘Yeah. To one of those places where they give you a lettuce leaf with a bit of grated parmesan on it and expect you to believe it’s a salad.’
‘There’s Korma if you want it.’
‘What’s wrong with it?’
‘It was meant to be Jaipuri. They gave me the wrong thing.’
She almost knocked me over on her way to my kitchen. ‘Not your day, is it?’