10.1.
Joe was waiting for me in the car park, behind the wheel of the Jag he had owned for the past thousand years. He watched me climb into my seat, noticing the smile on my face. ‘You know, for a man who lost his home and all his possessions in a fire less than twelve hours ago, you seem awfully chipper. Who is she?’
‘She’s just a friend.’
‘Who is she?’
‘She’s just a friend.’
‘Who is she?’
‘She’s. . . just. . . a. . . friend.’ I repeated. ‘Is this how you used to question suspects? Hammer away at them until they finally cracked?’
‘Who is she?’
I tried to distract him. ‘What the hell happened between you and Harper?’
‘Who is she?’
‘Joe, I swear to God, let it drop. Or I’ll kill you.’
‘Don’t do that. You might get blood on your fancy new outfit.’
Joe keyed the ignition and the Jag started with an unhealthy grinding noise that he had previously assured me was completely innocent.
‘Correction. My fancy new outfit. Now. . . who is she?’
I sighed. ‘Her name’s Liz. She’s a nurse.’
‘Christ, that didn’t take you long.’
‘She lives. . . lived. . . up the stairs from me. She spent the night at my place. I helped her to get out, but she hurt her leg.’
When I had first told Joe about my escape, I had carefully edited Liz out of the story, still under the illusion that I might have a private life. This time, I told him the complete version.
Joe looked impressed. ‘She must be quite a lass to climb down a rope,’ he told me. ‘Especially being registered blind and all.’
‘Ha ha.’
He put the car in gear and pulled out of the parking space. ‘It’s just a shame that her guide dog got barbecued.’
I ignored him, staring moodily out of the window, oblivious to the passing scenery. Joe drove as if there was a glass of whisky balanced on the dashboard, which up until a few years ago, there probably had been. We headed east, through the city’s industrial heart, making our way to Newton Mearns, where the people who owned the city’s industrial heart lived. Joe clicked the radio on to Clyde Two FM and seventies music – Bread, Supertramp, Pink Floyd – provided a sound-track. When he next spoke, Joe sounded almost humble. ‘I’m glad you’re OK, mate.’
I found myself absurdly touched. ‘Thanks, boss.’
‘I can’t afford to train a new assistant.’
10.2.
Unlike her husband, Becky Banks was warmth personified. She enveloped me in a hug the second I stepped through the front door.
‘Cameron. You must be so upset.’
I hugged her back. She was tall and slim, dressed in a cerise silk blouse and flowing skirt. Her blonde hair was elegant but looked natural, and her face was smooth with baby blue eyes. It was no wonder her publishers loved her; if you asked the average romantic fiction reader to describe an average romantic fiction novelist, they would have come up with someone like Becky. Completing the image was a pair of granny glasses that dangled from a string around her neck. It was easy to imagine her sitting at a typewriter and sipping herbal tea as her busy fingers breathed life into her fictional creations.
When I saw the two of them together, I often wondered what they saw in each other. Becky was cultured and graceful, a glass of wine in the garden in a summer breeze. Joe was the opposite: whisky and cigarettes, greyhounds and pubs with sawdust on the floor. Yet they had been together for nearly thirty years, with four lovely, well-adjusted daughters. Their oldest daughter was married – happily, it went without saying – and lived in Kidderminster, propagating the eagerly awaited first grandchild. The twins were about to finish University (both in the top five percent of their classes), and the youngest seemed to be as likeable an example of a ten-year-old girl as one could reasonably wish for without seeming greedy.
Even the house Joe lived in seemed to reflect his luck. It was a four bedroomed bungalow in one of Glasgow’s more expensive suburbs, all whitewashed walls and well-trimmed hedges. Inside it was just as nice: dark wood, light rooms and high ceilings. Joe once told me that he’d lived there almost all his life, inheriting it when his parents passed on.
Reading this, you might think I was jealous of Joe. Nothing could be further from the truth. He was the first to admit how lucky he was, and I knew that luck alone hadn’t bought him the comfort and security that he enjoyed. All his life, he’d grafted, putting his heart and soul into everything he took on board. The snide rumours about his days as a supposedly corrupt cop were nothing more than groundless gossip spread by people who didn’t have his ability or charm. Although he occasionally showed poor judgement (Derek and Gary were just one of many such examples) Joe had been one of the best cops in the division. His conviction rate was one of the highest in the country, and he had refused promotion on numerous occasions, preferring to stay a detective. He had little use for the bullshit politics that seemed to grow ever more abundantly the higher you climbed the tree.
Becky finally let me go. ‘You can stay as long as you like. It’ll be nice to have a little company now the girls have gone back to university.
How about a cup of coffee?’
Coffee sounded good.
‘Why don’t you go into the lounge, then?’
I followed Joe into a room at the front of the house, collapsing in an settee that seemed to be larger than my car. It was like being enveloped in a large, leathery marshmallow, and as I shifted my position, the thing squeaked and squalled beneath me. Eventually I was comfortable – too comfortable. A lot had happened in the last couple of days and I could feel my eyelids drooping underneath the weight of it all. From the direction of the kitchen, I could hear Becky humming to herself as she clinked mugs and boiled water. There was a picture on the coffee table. I picked it up and studied it, finding myself looking at a group of women. Three rows of ten, to be exact, tallest at the back, the front row seated so that nobody obscured anybody else. They were all young, and their faces were a mixture of expressions: ambition, hope, relief. I turned the picture over, wondering if there was a list of names. Instead, there was a hand-written note: Me and the gang – Rotten Row, Class of ’78.
I looked at Joe and raised my eyebrows.
‘It’s Becky’s graduating class from nursing school,’ he said. ‘I think she’s in the back row, on the left.’
Becky swept into the room, carrying two mugs of coffee. ‘Oh, for goodness sake, you’re not looking at that old thing, are you?’ She passed out the drinks and took the picture from my hand, turning it so that she could examine it. ‘That was taken about a hundred years ago.’
‘Joe said that it was your nursing class.’
She shot her husband a vexed look. ‘Not my nursing, but my mid-wifery.’ She pointed with a nail that had also been painted a light shade of cerise. ‘That’s me there. The two women on my left are my friends Myra Dollar and Bessie Longfellow. . .’
Something rang in my mind and I looked at Joe, surprised that he hadn’t heard the same set of bells. ‘Didn’t Sophie Sloan say that she used to know Becky? Back in the day?’
Joe nearly dropped his coffee cup. ‘That’s right! I completely forgot.’
Becky was looking from one of us to the other. ‘Sophie Sloan?
What’s going on?’
Joe explained. ‘Sophie Sloan. She’s a client. Used to be a nurse at the R.A.H. She said that she used to know you.’
‘I don’t remember her.’
‘Her husband runs a local nursing home. Inch Meadows.’
‘I’ve heard of the place.’ Becky sat where she was, her fingernail still touching the glass of the photoframe. ‘Was she in Cardiology?’
‘I don’t think so. I don’t know how she knew you.’
‘I’ll try and remember her.’
But the expression on her face wasn’t hopeful.
10.3.
I spent a little time napping and drifting around the house, the events of the past twelve hours catching up with me. Joe wasn’t much better; after another long night of drinking, he’d finally locked the Harald and Ginsel people into a deal. He popped out for an hour in the afternoon and returned with five hundred cash, which he gave to me. I tried not to take it, only to be rebuffed.
‘Shut up. I was going to give you a bonus anyway. It should tide you over for a couple of weeks.’
Later in the afternoon, I borrowed Becky’s car – a smart little Mini convertible that was a huge amount of fun to drive but made me feel like a male hairdresser – and made my way to my flat, or rather, what was left of it. Apart from the ceiling of the unoccupied flat below, the rest of the tenement was undamaged, although a vile smell of burned plastic filled the landings. I passed Crazy Cat Lady on the stairs; she harrumphed and gave me a look that I suspect was intended to stop my heart in its tracks. By the time I had made my way up both flights, I was breathing heavily and wishing for Nurse Harriet’s oxygen. I guessed it would take a couple of days to flush the smoke out of my lungs.
There was a policeman standing outside the blackened ruin that had been my front door. He told me that the fire investigators had left.
Because the fire had burned so quickly and fiercely, it had consumed what there was for fuel before dying out almost as rapidly as it began.
After some sweet-talking, he let me have a look inside.
It was pretty fucking grim.
Just about everything I owned had been destroyed. I floated through the rooms, hardly hearing the warnings about being careful I didn’t fall through the floor. My CD collection had been reduced to a pile of melted plastic, with the occasionally recognisable scrap of casing. I picked one up and gave a hollow little laugh: Dan Reed Network’s ‘The Heat’. My books were nothing but a pile of ash, the settee a blackened husk. It seemed like a lifetime ago that Liz and I had laughed and made love on that very same sofa. Next to it was a charred lump that was out of place with my memories. It took a few seconds before I realised what it was: my denims. Liz had helped me out of them less than twenty four hours ago. I picked the remnants up. They were sodden from water the fire brigade had sprayed into the place, and it took brief seconds for them disintegrate into a soggy mush. As they fell to pieces, I was left holding what remained of my wallet. On the outside, it was badly damaged, but it had been made of good quality leather. Maybe I had been lucky. I peeked inside, handling it as gently as I had ever handled a piece of physical evidence, ready for the contents to dissolve the way the jeans had, hoping against hope that my photograph of Mark had survived.
It had.
I drew it out with steady fingers, surgeon’s fingers. It had been taken on his fourth birthday, him sitting on my knee and stuffing his face with cake. Audrey hovered in the background, the very top of her head missing because she had misjudged how long she had to position herself before the automatic timer made the shot. I have – had – many pictures of him, but this one was my favourite because it was one of the three of us together, and every time I looked at it I was reminded of better days. After the accident, the press had somehow got hold of a copy of the picture, and it had been featured in several of the national newspapers.
I held it up to the light, the detritus of my life forgotten. Sure, the edges were scorched and black, but everything else was fine. In it, we were smiling. It had been a good day. Audrey and I seemed to have managed to put our differences to one side, and were joking and laughing the way we had when we first met. Mark had been a joy, delighting in his presents and the sense of occasion.
We’d taken him to Edinburgh zoo to see the penguin parade.
I looked at it for a long time before I realised that I was crying.
10.4.
I found one other thing before calling it quits. My keys had been in the lock of the front door when the whole thing went up in flames.
Although the door was destroyed, the fitting for the lock appeared to have survived. The key-ring itself – a leather swatch that Mark had
‘given’ me for Father’s day – was nothing more than a dried out scrag of dust and ash, but the keys themselves looked to be alright. I took the key for my car and the key for the office. The rest I abandoned. I had no use for them. My only regret was that I was unable to use them to close the door on this part of my life.
10.5.
I caught up with Jason Campbell in the pub.
Actually, that wasn’t not quite true. Jason lived Jordanhill, a part of the city that was too posh to be classified as the West End and too affluent to count as a suburb. It was less than three miles from what remained of my flat in Craghill, but just as the river divided the two areas in a geographical sense, wealth – or the lack of it – illustrated the differences between the two neighbourhoods. Jordanhill was rich.
Craghill wasn’t.
I checked his house first. Apart from the time he spent in the secure Psych unit, Jason had grown up in his mother’s three story mansion on Jordanhill Road. Except it wasn’t so much on the road as back from the road, directly in the middle of two acres of grounds. In a city where a goddamn parking space recently sold for more than sixty-eight thousand pounds, two acres was more than just a garden.
It was a fucking republic.
I’d expected there to be some form of controlled entry, but there had been nothing; just an open front gate, which I breezed straight through.
A driveway of white gravel – at least, it looked like gravel to my untrained eye, but for all I knew might have been the pulverised bones of paupers – crunched underneath the tyres of my Golf as I cruised slowly up a gentle hill toward the house. Surrounded on both sides by tall hedges the driveway was slightly curved, making me conclude that it eventually looped back on itself and led back to the main entrance.
Soon I was out of sight from any passing traffic. Good. I brought the car to a halt in the shadow of a beech tree and decided to walk the rest of the way.
The Mercedes was parked diagonally outside the front door of the house, buried up to the wheel rims in white stones. Whoever had last driven it had stopped in a hurry. As I passed the windows of the dining room, I kept my eyes peeled for any sense of movement, but saw nothing. I climbed a short flight of stone steps, stepped into a vestibule and rang the doorbell.
Nothing.
I listened carefully, hoping for a sign there was somebody home, hearing only the hum of traffic from the main road and the breeze as it shuffled the leaves on the trees. I bent down and gently pushed the letterbox open, pressing my ear to it, unconcerned that I was committing a grievous invasion of privacy. If somebody were to open the door now, there could be no justification for what I was doing. I would look like a tawdry little snooper.
Never mind. They do say that the best form of defence is offence.
If Jason had opened the door, I planned to go in hard and fast, striking first with no intention of asking questions later.
Even as I stood there with my ear pressed against the cold metal, I heard nothing. No music, no running water, not even the settling noises old houses like to make at the end of the day. After thirty seconds I was pretty sure that nobody was home.
But that didn’t mean there was nothing to learn. The vestibule was small, really nothing more than an alcove for visitors to shelter from the rain while they waited for the front door to be answered. I was standing on a dusty mat that might have once been a deep vibrant red, but over the seasons had faded to a wan shade of pink. Tucked in the corner was an empty umbrella stand, and because I was bending down, my back cricked and my ear against the cold metal of the letterbox, I could see directly behind it, which is something a less inquisitive person would not have been able to do.
Tucked behind the umbrella stand was an envelope. Quickly, I fished it out and opened it. Jason’s handwriting was small and almost impossible to read, the ink frequently blotching then fading. It was as if a dozen spiders had run across the page, and for the first time in my life I wondered if there was something in the theory that penmanship was indicative of character.
Betty
I’m writing this now because I’ll probably be too bladdered to remember to write it when I get home – I’m going to watch the game in the Anchor. Please would you spend your time in the kitchen, dining room and living room, and don’t use the Hoover or washing machine because I need my rest! Here’s your monthly ‘bonus’, and as always, I appreciate your discretion.
Jason.
Clipped to the note were five twenty pound notes, which I slipped into my wallet, figuring the bastard owed me for what he had done to my flat. ‘Betty’ was obviously some kind of cleaning woman, and I wondered how much discretion she needed to display to earn such a substantial monthly bonus.
I hesitated on the doorstep, planning my next move. It would be easy enough to break into the house and wait for Jason to come home.
I could spend my time sniffing through his underwear drawer. Not tempting, but if he owned a secret stash of kiddie porn, underneath his stained boxers was an obvious hiding place. I also wondered what I would learn if I was to mess about with the computer that I would almost certainly find; no doubt it would be the kind of thing the police would be interested in. Guys like Jason never change their spots, developing instead more and more ways to camouflage their activities. Even if I didn’t find anything, I could always hook up to the Internet and spend a while downloading the kind of images that would send Jason straight back to Barlinnie. Go directly to jail, do not pass go, do not stop to admire your collection of dirty pictures.
In the end, though, I decided against it. Jason might not be alone when he returned from the pub. Just because I wanted to have a little chat didn’t mean that I wanted to involve any third party in our little quarrel. Plus I knew where he was; the Anchor was less than three hundred yards away. I made my way quickly back to the car, suddenly deciding that I deserved a pint. It had, after all, been a rough day.
10.6.
The Anchor was on the corner of Jordanhill Road and McTeague Street, and was a fairly typical Glasgow pub. Its full name was John’s Anchor, and although the bar had been there since the late thirties, it had absolutely no connection with Glasgow’s shipbuilding history.
Instead, local legend claimed that it had originally been named Kinniver’s, after the first landlord, John Kinniver. All his life John had wanted to emigrate to America, but his wife Florence persuaded him to remain in Scotland and open a pub. She got her way in the end, selfishly dying of influenza just after John had ploughed their entire nest-egg into the bar. He always planned to sell up when the place showed a profit, but the depression and the war put paid to that. He tried to find a buyer, but nobody was interested. In the late fifties, he gave up on his dreams of a new life abroad and changed the name of his bar to John’s Anchor, in reference to his late wife – as in, ‘The fucking bitch hung an anchor around my neck.’
Of course, now it was owned by one of these chains that strive to make their pubs all things to all people, and in doing so manage to suck dry any charm and individuality a place once had. A chalk-board on the wall inside the door advertised the different theme nights. Ladies Night. Karaoke Night. Seventies Night. And let’s not forget the Family Afternoon, where if you bought a main course you could have a child’s course absolutely FREE!
Tonight was Football Night, and the place was packed. Two men for every girl, and the girls could be subdivided into actual fans and ones that had tagged along with their boyfriends. Every table and barstool was occupied, and those that couldn’t find a seat had to stand. As well as the projector screen, there were numerous plasma televisions scattered throughout the bar, meaning that wherever you looked you could enjoy the antics of twenty-two overpaid little upstarts who would earn more in a week than I probably would in my life. Every touch of the ball and run for position was criticised and commented upon by the audience. Opinions were freely offered and rejected. I had no idea who was playing who, and cared even less. I took my time as I shouldered my way through the crowd, keeping an eye out for my quarry. If he spotted me and panicked, that was fine. If he remained oblivious to my presence, even better.
In the end, I nearly tripped over him. It was nearly three deep at the bar, but suddenly the crowd did an unpredictable little shuffle, leaving me standing less than two feet from his back. I tried to keep my distance, but as people ebbed and flowed around me, I was forced behind him. If he looked round, he would see my face six inches from his own. Although a confrontation at this point was not part of my plans, it would be entertaining to see how he would react.
His head was tilted to the right, fixated on the nearest television screen. His hair was secured in a tight little pony-tail that made him look like a photographer that specialised in porn-masquerading-as-art. In his right hand was a half empty bottle of beer. A friend once told me that the reason beer manufacturers placed labels on the necks of their bottles was so that their brand name wouldn’t be obscured by the hands of the consumer as they held the bottle. I wondered how the advertising people at Budweiser would feel if they discovered that Bud Ice was the beer of choice for the discerning paedophile arsonist.
Probably not very happy.
I sidled round to Jason’s left, managing to place a buffer between us without losing my place at the bar. Catching the bartender’s eye, I ordered a pint of Guinness, trying to pitch my voice low enough to avoid attracting Jason’s attention and loud enough not to force the bartender to ask me to repeat myself. Sixty seconds later, a drink was placed in front of me.
Guinness is important. Every man likes to receive a bit of head from time to time, but there is such a thing as too much. This was one of those times. The bartender – a speccy, spotty student who looked like he might be studying social sciences en route to a deeply productive career as a social worker – had poured at least two inches of foam on the top of my pint. Had I not been acutely conscious of causing a scene and attracting unwanted attention, I would have said something. He banged the till and handed me my change, ignoring my dirty look, already concentrating on the next order. Defeated, I made my way over to the quietest corner of the place I could find that still had a view of Jason, and sipped my pint.
The damn thing tasted like it had been watered down.
10.7.
An hour later, the football was over. Somebody won. Somebody else lost. I didn’t care; most of my attention had been focused on Jason. It was gratifying to observe that in a bar full of friendly faces, he seemed completely alone. Nobody talked to him, nobody looked at him, and nobody clapped him on the shoulder or commiserated with him when one of the players scored the winning goal. I wondered if people subconsciously knew he was an unpleasant person; if he somehow exuded a fundamental sense of wrong that kept him separate him from the rest of the world, the same way that a pack of dogs can sense when one of their own has turned rabid.
Nobody spoke to me either. Perhaps Jason wasn’t the only person who seemed out of place.
Five minutes after the final whistle, Jason was on the move. He finished his drink and left the pub. Thirty seconds later, I followed, keeping to the shadows as much as possible. It had started to drizzle, and my jacket – one I had purchased from a nearby supermarket that very afternoon – turned out to be as waterproof as toilet paper. Before long I was soaked to the skin, and the chill of the night quickly set in. If Jason was out for any length of time, I was probably going to catch pneumonia. Liz would get the afternoon playmate she claimed to want.
I had thought that Jason would head straight home, but I was wrong. Instead of turning right when he stepped out of the pub, he turned left and started to head further up Jordanhill Road. The streets were quiet but not deserted – a few late night voyagers wandered the streets, and the occasional taxi splashed through the shallow puddles at the edge of the road. I kept my distance, making no particular effort to be quiet and somehow managing to be quiet anyway.
I was going to hurt him. I needed to hurt him.
I needed him to understand just how angry I was, to look into my face and know fear. I wanted him to look into my eyes and know how it was to be seconds from death.
I wanted him to suffer.
It wouldn’t be enough, of course. In those desperate minutes before escaping the flat I had been frightened not just for myself but for Liz as well. Jason had nobody, so he had nobody to lose. And even if he did, I had no intention of putting them in harm’s way, the way Jason had with Liz. I might be a petty, vindictive bastard, but I’m not completely without a conscience. Whatever happened between Jason and I was strictly between the two of us.
I had no idea what I was going to do.
We made our way through the sleeping streets, past the silent houses and late night travellers. Jason walked at a reasonable pace, but he seemed aimless, zigzagging up one sidestreet and down the other, his attention focused on his mobile phone as he tap-tap-tapped a text message. After twenty minutes, I estimated that we had covered just over half a mile as the crow flew, heading in the general direction of the city centre. I half-expected him to flag down one of the many passing taxis, in which case everything would be over. He didn’t. He just kept cruising the streets, a man with no particular place to go and all the time in the world to get there.
After another five minutes, he turned onto Dumbarton Road.
Kelvingrove Park was on his left. His pace slowed even further, and I could see his head bobbing as he glanced around. I was about fifty yards back, so I crossed the road and ducked behind a parked car. Not a moment too soon, either. I barely got myself under cover when he did a complete three-sixty, taking his time about it. For a second I thought he saw me anyway. I dipped my head out of sight, convinced that he would panic and run. After a slow count of ten, I popped my head back up. I was just in time to see him climb over the wall that surrounded the park and disappear into the shadows.
In seconds, I was up and across the road. The wall was high, about six feet, but there was a small energy substation that served as an ideal starter platform for the would-be intruder. I climbed on top, managing to hook my arms over the top of the wall, scrabbling with my feet to find purchase. It was easier than I had expected.
Some of the stones themselves had eroded, creating small footholds, and it took only a few seconds for me to scramble over.
I stood where I had landed, in complete darkness, feeling the earth beneath my shoes, smelling the soil and the air. It was different, somehow. Cleaner. I like to think that parks are separate from the rest of the city, somehow existing in their own place and time. The traffic and the noise and the kebab shops were behind me, and I was alone with nature.
And Jason, of course. I didn’t intend to forget about him.
10.8.
I listened intently. The undergrowth was heavy, and if I didn’t get a fix on my target I would lose him. After a few seconds I was able to tune out the ambient noise of the traffic and focus on other things. . .
the soft hoot of an owl, the skittering of some small animal running for cover. . . and footsteps, in front and slightly to the right, fading into the distance. I moved quickly, the wet earth quickly soaking through my cheap trainers as I bulldozed my way through the shrubs and the trees and the long grass. Before I had gone twenty yards I burst onto a small path. The going was easier now, and I broke into a jog, my trainers squishing softly as the first few paces forced the worst of the moisture out of the soles. Before long, I was able to make out Jason, a darker silhouette flitting among the shadows. My hip was starting to ache, and I slowed my pace slightly.
There were no lights, but I didn’t need them. As my eyes adjusted to the dark I was able to see more and more. The path curved in a shallow loop as it climbed a slight incline. The trees were thinning out, and as we got higher, more and more of the city became visible.
In the middle ground, I could see the river Clyde as it picked its way across the landscape winding through the warzone that was Craghill.
The redundant shipyards with their idle cranes were a reminder of better days. Further upstream I could make out the Merchant city, expensive flats for rich people who would piss and moan about having the destitution and dereliction of the defunct industrial belt on their doorstep, unaware that the very things that made them rich also gave birth to such poverty. For them, Craghill was just a shortcut to pass through in their Audi’s and BMW’s; a convenient route to somewhere else where they could dispose of their disposable incomes; cappuccino bars and frapaccino lounges and retail outlet stores where they could buy cut-price designer handbags for fifty times the amount a child in the third-world earned making the damn things in the first place.
Further south was the suburbs: Castlemilk and Clarkeston, Giffnock and Graemestone, rich and poor, chalk and cheese. I couldn’t tell where one district ended and another began. The view was beautiful: softly glowing lights shimmering in the darkness. If I hadn’t known the city like an ex-lover, I would have been impressed.
From a distance, I guess that anything can look good.
10.9.
Two minutes later, I realised that Jason wasn’t out to appreciate the scenery. The path opened out into a small parking area, lined with trees and trash buckets. A car was parked at one end. A crowd of onlookers surrounded it. There were four of them, one at each window, noses pressed to the glass, hands forming a pair of blinkers on each side of their faces to cut down on ambient glare. When I figured out what was going on, I was simultaneously disgusted, amused and intrigued.
Doggers.
Of course, I’d heard of it. I’d read the disapproving articles in the Daily Mail with my tongue firmly in my cheek, somewhat sceptical that such a tawdry practice could have managed to insinuate itself in our culture. The idea of providing a free sex show for the entertainment of strangers was fundamentally weird, and even with the dubious thrill of having an audience I really couldn’t see the appeal of having sex in a Fiat Punto. Most of my teenage sexual encounters had consisted of an uncomfortable grope in whatever car my mother had owned at the time. It didn’t matter if we used the front or the back seat; there just wasn’t enough room for my six-foot five inches of spotty hormonal lust. In one memorable incident I managed to persuade my willing partner to bend over the bonnet of the car. I was busy giving her the business when the handbrake cable snapped. The car rolled forward, nearly flattening us both and killing the mood outright.
I watched as Jason walked to the car with a spring in his step. One of the watchers looked up and raised a hand in recognition before shifting a few inches to one side, creating a space. As Jason slipped in next to him, the man – he was fat and short and looked like a Star Trek fan – patted him on the shoulder. They were friends, or at least acquaintances. That explained Jason’s compulsive message checking: he’d been waiting for information on his rendezvous.
I drifted into the shadows behind a tree and watched the show. The passenger side window was open just a crack, and from it came a variety of sounds: thumping, creaking, the occasional moan and muttered curse. I wasn’t close enough to see much more than the rocking of the suspension and the occasional outline of a flailing limb, like a drowning octopus, and I honestly can’t say I regretted it.
After about ten minutes, the moans and thuds ceased. The engine started and the car drove away into the night. I wondered who they were. A married couple desperate to spice things up but too cautious to try swinging? A couple cheating on their respective partners, the whole thing giving them an even bigger thrill? I decided that I was happier not knowing.
Now that it was over, I half expected the watchers to linger, perhaps analysing the performance the way people discuss a movie. It didn’t happen. The tail lights had barely disappeared into the night when three of the men started walking – two in the same direction the car had taken, the other simply disappearing, presumably along a path similar to the one on which I had followed Jason. The park was a rabbit warren of tiny little trails and tracks. In less than two minutes, all that was left was Jason and his tubby little friend. They seemed to be talking about something, so I kept my head down and duck-walked a little closer, keeping a tree between us. Unless I did something stupid like stepped on a dry twig or a hedgehog or something, I would remain undetected. I strained my ears to make out what they were saying.
Turned out, I needn’t have bothered.
‘. . . doesn’t light properly. I’ll need to get it replaced, but I’m holding off until after the summer.’
‘I had a combi-boiler installed last year.’
‘Are they any good?’
‘They’re alright. Make a lot of noise. . .’
What a disappointment. It was depressing to learn that sexual deviants are just as boring as the rest of us.
10.11.
Ten minutes of suicidally dull chit-chat later, they said their goodbyes. By then, I had learned that Star Trek fan’s name was Liam and he lived with his mother. I could probably have figured out that particular detail on my own.
Liam started off in the same direction as the car. Jason went back the way he came, passing perilously close to my hiding place. Luckily the tree was one of those oaks that grow to about ten thousand years old and looked big enough to house an entire army of Ewoks. As he passed, I sidled around the trunk. The light drizzle that I had cursed was now my ally; the leaves underneath my feet were damp enough not to rustle as I shuffled through them. In seconds, he was thirty yards away. I fell in behind him, closing the gap quickly. Now was the time to make my move. It was the middle of the night, and given that the park was supposed to be closed to the general public, the only people in the immediate vicinity were unlikely to be fine upstanding citizens. Jason would have to shout very loudly and run very quickly before finding anybody that would help him.
I had no intention of allowing him to do so.
He hummed as he walked, some tune that I remembered Daryl Hannah whistling in a Tarantino movie a few years back. In the movie, she’d been dressed as a nurse, on her way to give a lethal injection to Uma Thurman, who was in a coma in some hospital.
Daryl had looked damn fine, and Uma had made the sexiest coma victim I’d ever seen.
Talk about irony. It should have been me singing the song, because I was the one playing the Daryl Hannah role. Instead of a lethal injection, all I had was my fists, but it didn’t matter. By the time I was done, Jason was going to wish he was in a fucking coma.
Or dead.
Tired, bored, and cold, I decided that it was time to act. There wasn’t a soul around for five hundred yards, and it was unlikely I would get such a clear window of opportunity again. Jason was twenty yards in front of me. I broke into a jog, closing the distance rapidly. At ten yards I accelerated to a run, ignoring the yowl of protest from my hip. He heard me and started to turn. Too slow. He got halfway round before I hit him amidships in a savage tackle, burrowing my shoulder into the soft part between his waist and his ribcage. I ploughed straight through him like a bowling ball picking up a spare, hardly losing momentum, my feet getting ahead of me, running faster to compensate. The run turned into a stumble and then it all became too much; my knee buckled and I was sprawling, throwing my hands out to stop the fall, the tiny jagged stones chewing through the flesh of my outstretched palms like cheese in a grater. I ignored the pain, rolling to my feet and turning. Jason was behind me, head down, on hands and knees, coughing. I ran at him, driving the side of my foot into his stomach like I was punting a rugby ball and going for a world record in distance. His arms and legs collapsed and he went face down in the dirt. I straddled him, grabbing him by that stupid little pony-tail and jerking his head up, bending his spine in a backwards arch. He screamed and coughed, spraying saliva. There was dirt on his cheek. I screamed at him. ‘Jason, you bastard! Why’d you do it?’
‘I haven’t got any money! Don’t hurt me!’
‘You prick! That was my flat! My stuff! My girlfriend!’
‘What! What flat? What stuff?’
I turned his head halfway round, jamming his cheek into the soil, leaning forward so that he could see me. His eyes were crazy and wide.
But then, so were mine, probably. ‘You burned down my flat. You fucking burned up all my stuff.’
He started to shake his head from side to side. ‘I swear, I didn’t. I didn’t touch your fucking flat.’
‘You were there, you piece of shit. I fucking saw you!’
‘I was never anywhere near your flat! I don’t know where you live,’
he blubbered. ‘I don’t even know your fucking name!’
I pressed down on his shoulders, driving him further into the ground. He screamed. My mind was an abyss, filled only with the gladiatorial roar of conquest, the barbarian in me proud of my revenge. As it had been on the night of the accident, all my common sense was gone and only the adrenaline was left. I wanted to hurt him.
I wanted kill him. I wanted to make the cunt cry like a baby. I seized his arm and forced it up his back. He screamed again, but this time it wasn’t fear but pain.
‘Please! PLEASE!’
Something click/crunched in his shoulder and he howled. I eased off, just a fraction, leaning close into his ear. ‘I saw you, you turd.’
‘Saw me do what, ya fuckin’ psycho? I don’t know what you’re talking about. I swear. Don’t hurt me anymore.’
I was about a heartbeat away from an aneurysm. ‘DON’T
FUCKING LIE TO ME!’
‘I’m not lying. Whatever you think I did, I didn’t.’
‘Liar.’ I reapplied pressure on the arm, jamming it further and further toward his shoulders until I felt the bone itself bend, just the tiniest fraction, seeking a compromise I had no intention of giving. By now, Jason had quit screaming. Instead he was making a high pitched mewing sound, like a nest of starving chicks. He sucked air desperately, his eyes bulging with terror.
And then it broke.
And so did he. His eyes rolled like the tumblers on a fruit machine before coming up empty, his body going limp beneath me as he passed out from the pain.
10.12.
I waited and listened, planning to fade into the background if there was any indication that our scuffle had attracted anybody’s attention.
It hadn’t. The moon slid out from behind the clouds, and the silence, broken by the sound of anger and pain, healed itself. I made a slow count to a hundred, the only noise the patter of falling water.
It was just me, Jason and the rain.
He lay at my feet. I pressed my finger to his neck, feeling a faint but steady pulse. Still alive. How wonderful for society.
On the edge of the path was a brightly coloured yellow bin.
Grimacing with distaste, I rummaged for a few seconds, finding what I was looking for wrapped in a brown paper bag underneath an empty pizza box. I removed it from the bin and examined it. Mississippi Steamer. Pineapple flavour. High in alcohol content and low in price, the beverage of choice for the city’s homeless alcoholics and dis-enfranchised teens. Also known as Jakey Juice. There was still at least half a litre of fluid swishing around in the bottle. Wishing I had some gloves, I unscrewed the cap and sniffed. The stench of spoiled fruit juice caused my eyes to water and my stomach to grumble.
Jason was still unconscious at my feet. I rolled him onto his back and upended the bottle, pouring the contents over him, starting at the top and working my way down, making sure that not a drop was wasted. Then I reversed my grip on the bottle, holding it by the neck as I smashed it on the edge of the trash bin, leaving me with the world’s most popular makeshift weapon. Moonlight glittered as it bounced off the jagged edges.
Behind me, Jason moaned.
I turned to face him. His eyelids were fluttering. Both hands moved to wipe the stuff off his cheeks, but only one of them made it. The other flapped uselessly at his side, like a bird with a broken wing. He whinnied in pain. I got down so that his head was almost between my knees, the damp seeping through the material of my budget denims.
With my left hand, I pinched his earlobe as hard as I could, causing his eyes to spring open. They were muddy and confused. That would never do.
I wanted – needed – Jason’s complete and undivided attention.
By leaning over him, I could encircle his throat with my left hand, driving my thumb and forefinger deep into the flesh. His good hand grasped weakly at my wrist. I ignored it. With my right hand I skimmed the remains of the bottle in front of his face and explained how I planned to use it to remove his eyeballs if he didn’t stop fucking around.
He got the point, going limp immediately. His eyes tracked the jagged glass. I waved the bottle at him, using it as a visual aid to underline my words. ‘I don’t particularly want to kill you, but I should warn you that doing so would not be the tragedy that you no doubt think it to be. I suspect that very few people would miss you.’ A thought struck me. ‘Although I’m quite sure that Betty the Cleaner would miss the regular bonuses. What is it you do that makes her discretion so appreciated?’
He didn’t answer quickly enough, so I sliced a tiny line into the skin of his forehead, quickly subduing his lamentable attempt to struggle. The shallower the wound, the more it bleeds, and this one was no exception. Within seconds, his forehead was smeared red. I used the sleeve of my jacket to wipe it away, wishing that I had thought to wear gloves. ‘Seriously, what’s the deal between you and Betty?’
When he spoke, his voice was low and choked. ‘She’s got a part-time job in the local secondary school.’
‘And?’
He looked past me, into the sky. I pressed the jagged sliver of glass into his forehead, the skin dimpling and then puncturing, a tiny bead of blood swelling from the perforation. ‘And?’
‘And she knows lots of girls.’ He saw the look in my eye. ‘Not kids.
The ones that are over sixteen. Sometimes I go and pick her up and she. . . introduces me.’
‘You’re kidding me.’ I found myself seriously considering cutting his face off. It was only the fear of finding something even less pleasant underneath that stopped me.
He shrugged. ‘You wouldn’t believe what these kids are like. Since the Internet was invented, all people want to do is have sex. I’m not committing any crime.
‘You are if they’re under eighteen.’
His eyes flickered left, and then right. ‘They’re not. All sixth formers.’
‘I guess that makes you a stand-up guy. I wish I had a sister so that I could give you her phone number,’ I said. ‘Besides, I know that you’re fucking lying to me. You said sixteen first of all. I bet you think that if the shit goes down and you end up in court you can argue that they looked eighteen. You can turn those big puppy dog eyes in the direction of the jury and explain how you’re actually the victim? How some nasty, morally bankrupt girl lied to a man no doubt grieving the death of his dear sainted mother, who made the mistake of turning to a comely young lady for comfort and emotional support. Is that about right?’
He said nothing. He didn’t need to.
‘Jason, you’re a scumbag. I hate to be so plain, but there you go.
When I spoke to you yesterday afternoon, I was just passing on what everybody thinks of you. There was no need for you to do what you did.’
‘What I did. . . I didn’t do anything.’
‘Yes, you did,’ I said patiently. ‘You followed me home and burned down my flat. Last night.’ I patted him affectionately on the cheek. ‘I don’t mind – it was a shithole, really – but I was in it at the time. As was a close friend of mine. Now I can understand why you might hold a grudge, but seriously, all you did was demonstrate the sort of stupidity and ineptitude that got you locked up in the first place, and by putting my friend’s life in danger you made yourself much more important to me than you originally were.’
‘I swear, I don’t know what you’re talking about.’
‘Jason, I saw you.’
‘You didn’t. I was at home last night. I had no where else to be.’
‘Bullshit. I suppose it was just a co-incidence that your car was parked down the street when my flat went up in flames.’
He tried to shake his head, but I held him down. ‘I don’t know. I didn’t burn your flat down. I swear it. I can’t be the only person in Glasgow who drives a Mercedes.’
‘You’re the only one who’s threatened to kill me in the past forty-eight hours. And that’s quite a coinkydink, isn’t it?’
We carried on like this for another five minutes or so. He kept denying it, and I kept pressing him. Eventually I dropped the matter, deciding that I had made my point. I found his mobile phone in his inside pocket and checked the display. Three bars; good reception. He wouldn’t have any difficulty phoning for an ambulance.
I told him that I was going to let him go – on two conditions. He nodded. Anything.
‘One. Move the fuck out of Glasgow. You’ve got money, so it won’t be a problem. If I don’t see your house in the property pages by this time next week I’m going to find you and break your other arm.
Alright?’
Alright.
‘Two. You might be entertaining some silly ideas about revenge. It’s alright to think these things, but to act on them would be very, very silly. There are so many things I could do to you. I have so many friends that can act on my behalf. I have friends in the police department, I have friends on the street. You got off easy tonight. Your arm will heal. I could have happily taken a hammer to your joints, but I like to think of myself as a kind person. Fuck with me again, I’ll do something you won’t walk away from. Understand?’
He understood. I tossed his mobile phone onto the ground next to him. ‘Phone an ambulance. Tell them that you tripped and fell. They won’t believe you, but that’s their problem and not yours. You mention my name, I’ll kill you. Do you think I’m kidding?’
He didn’t.