Danny Gillon over-revved his van on the road outside the doctors’ surgery on Cathcart Street. By the time he had reached the Tourist Information centre there was a cloud of black smoke following him onto the Sandgate. He didn’t care what the woman waving her hand in front of her thought as he passed, because the town of Ayr was nothing to him. Who were they? Old scrubbers and junkies. Streets full of mug punters rolling drunk to the bookie’s or the Bridges Bar. He despised them all; none of them were worth the steam off his piss. He believed that, because, in his world, he was an undisputed potentate. He was a small-town Stalin, or might well have been for all the opposition his girls could muster against his authority.
A Stagecoach bus heading for Kincaidston pulled out in front of the van and Gillon cursed the driver and every one of his passengers. ‘Bloody bunch of scruffs!’ He raised a single-digit salute. ‘Get out to your council rabbit hutches . . . Don’t know why you’re in such a rush, bloody sure I wouldn’t be.’
By the roundabout at the top of the Sandgate his blood had cooled a little, and he smiled at a pair of young girls standing outside the bus station. One of them had spotted him, but pretended to be wall-eyed. He rolled down the window as the traffic stalled.
‘Hello, darlings, and what are you lovely little ladies up to today?’
The girls were no more than fourteen or fifteen, and the sheen of their overtly straightened hair and heavily mascarad eyes belied their attempts to convince anyone of the contrary. They giggled as Gillon leaned a hand on the edge of the window and winked. They were bait – jailbait, of that he had no doubts – but fresh meat in the town always attracted big game.
‘And what brings you to sunny Ayr, eh?’ He scrabbled on the dash for a packet of Embassy Regal and offered the girls cigarettes.
‘Thanks.’ One was gamer than the other. She’d be full of lip, thought Gillon.
‘You sound like a wee handful.’ He smiled at them and the girls turned to each other and giggled.
A car’s horn sounded behind him, which seemed to startle the girls. They turned and headed back to the bus station at pace.
‘Aye, all right! All right!’ He smacked his hand off the steering wheel and pulled out from the roundabout. ‘Bloody scared the horses now anyway . . .’
As Gillon turned for Wellington Square he cast a backwards glance in the mirror, but there was no sign of the young girls. He shook his head and cursed but opted only to depress the cigarette lighter and clamp a king-size in his mouth; after all, girls were ten a penny in this town. The coast attracted them, the sea air and the holiday atmosphere, the hotels and pubs calling for fodder to pour drinks and wash toilet bowls. It was a move that soon turned sour: he knew that, and relied upon it. The service industry’s loss was his gain, because there was always work for young girls with Gillon. The trick was to paint it as something else at the start, fire them up, make them think life was one big party with him, and then once they were hooked, get them hooking. He smiled to himself because life was that simple: it was only square pegs and stupid lassies that made it complicated.
When he returned to the block of flats in Lochside where he had set up his working girls, he parked and stilled the engine. The exhaust rattled a little after he had stopped and he knew that it would soon be costing him money. He gnawed the tip of his cigarette and stepped out, looking towards the rear of the vehicle: a sooty black cloud was hanging in the air. The exhaust pipe was still in place but looked precipitously close to coming off. A bad speed bump or a clipped kerb and he’d be forking out for a new one. He scrunched his eyes and tried not to think about it. There was the payday from the hack coming; all he had to do was get Leanne prepared for the next stage in Sinclair’s wee plan.
As he walked through the empty car park, Gillon kicked out at a stray can of Export and sent it into the air. The can spun all the way to the pinnacle of its grand arc and then plummeted like a stone onto the tarmac. The shaken remnants of the can spilled onto the street in a bubbling foam that looked at home in the litter-strewn surrounds. When he reached the door of the flats, the pimp pressed the buzzer for Leanne’s apartment, but there was no answer.
‘Come on, Leanne . . .’
He pressed the buzzer again, but there was still no answer.
‘Come on! Come on!’
He stepped back and fastened his eyes on the kitchen window that faced out into the narrow courtyard: there was no sign of movement.
‘Where the bloody hell are you?’
He had another girl set up in the same block. He returned to the buzzer and pressed for Angela.
She answered quickly. ‘Hello.’
‘It’s me, Danny, buzz me in, eh.’
‘Danny?’
‘Aye, Danny . . . You wanting a picture sent up first?’
The buzzer sounded, the lock was released, and he walked through the door. The stairwell stank of urine and stale cigarette smoke. The combination was enough to put him off his Embassy Regal and he flicked it onto the ground. He grabbed the banister and loped up to the first floor of the flats.
Angela was waiting outside her door. ‘Something up, Danny?’
He grabbed her thin white face in his hand and pushed her back towards the door. ‘Who said you could come out?’
‘I was just . . .’
He pointed at her as he walked to the foot of the next set of steps. ‘You were just getting into that flat and getting on your back . . . I’ll be round after for my money.’
The girl turned her black hair behind her ear and retreated into the dim hallway of the flat. She peered out from behind the narrow gap between door and jamb for a second, but as Gillon hit his stride on the steps she disappeared.
‘Leanne . . .’ He battered on the door but there was no answer.
‘Leanne . . . come on, open up.’ For a moment he had the notion that she might have collapsed. He leant down to look through the letter box but saw nothing unusual. The door to the kitchen was open, as it always was; the bedroom door was closed, but she never spent time in there unless she was on her back and there was no sign that she was with a punter. The place looked empty.
He banged on the door again. ‘Leanne . . .’
It was a futile gesture, and he knew that. But at least she hadn’t shot herself up and carked it on him. That would be messy: he’d have to take her to casualty and drop her at the door, or pay a cabbie, and that was never cheap these days.
Gillon punched out at the door again. The resounding sound of bone on wood rung through the empty hallway and brought a thin eye-slot to the neighbouring door.
‘Hey, hey . . .’ Gillon ran towards the chink of light that had appeared in the doorframe. He could see the outline of an old woman. He pushed himself towards the door and she shrieked.
‘Do you know where Leanne went?’ He kept his hand pressed firmly on the front of the door.
‘I don’t know.’
‘Well, when did she go out?’
The woman smelled like an old chip pan, all burnt charcoal and dripping fat. ‘We don’t speak.’
‘I didn’t ask if you were best mates, I asked you where she went . . . When did you last see her?’
She raised a thin hand, and the spotted flesh hung over the bulbous fingers as she gripped the buttons of her cardigan. ‘She went out last night, I think . . . I never saw her after that and I haven’t heard her today.’
‘What . . . Last night?’
The old woman nodded. She cast a glance into the stairwell as if looking for help. ‘Yes, that’s right . . . I haven’t seen her since.’
Gillon started to drum his fingers on the door, a rough percussion that signalled his growing impatience and dissatisfaction with what was being relayed to him. ‘And was she alone, or with someone?’
‘A man . . . A young man.’
Gillon stared at the woman. Her eyes were moistening and she looked ready to keel over. He slapped the door and stepped back. She had the wood in the frame and the mortise turned in the lock by the time he could blink.
None of it made any sense. The pimp felt a mix of emotions and thoughts flushing through him. As he descended the stairs, he tried to put the facts together. She was with a punter, surely. But where had she gone? If the punter had turned up on her doorstep then why hadn’t they just done the business in the flat? It didn’t make sense, unless he had a kink for the outdoors, but then she’d be back by now, would have been back last night, surely. He didn’t see anyone paying for an all-nighter with a skank like Leanne: she was strictly disposable.
Gillon rattled the knocker on Angela’s door once again. When she appeared, gripping a brown dressing gown around her thin shoulders, he felt the need to draw a fist. ‘Get inside . . .’
Angela gasped for breath as he pushed her inside. Her face indicated she would have preferred to scream, but she knew that wasn’t an option worth pursuing.
‘Right, speak . . . Where’s Leanne?’
‘What?’ She was trembling.
‘That tart upstairs . . . She went out with some guy last night.’
‘I–I don’t . . . I haven’t seen her for a couple of days.’
Gillon flashed his bottom row of teeth the second before he fired his fist into Angela’s belly. She folded like a hinge and then collapsed onto the floor.
The pimp crouched onto one knee and grabbed her hair. ‘Am I supposed to believe that?’
She tried to speak, but merely spluttered.
‘What . . . What are you saying to me?’
‘I–I said it’s true. Honest, Danny, I wouldn’t lie to you.’ She brought her hands together as if about to pray. ‘Danny, do you have anything . . . ? Just a wee bit, just to see me through.’
He smacked her head off the wall. As she yelped, her shoulders slid down the plasterboard.
There was a rage building in Danny Gillon’s head and heart as he stamped down the steps towards the entrance to the flats. In the car park, the sight of the can of Export sent him lunging with a kick once again, but there was none of the playfulness of his earlier shot. The can fired into the air and smacked off the side of the flats, dislodging some roughcast with the force of impact.
‘Bloody hell, Leanne . . . I will kill you for this.’
When he reached the van, Gillon removed his mobile phone from the inside pocket of his denim jacket and scrolled the contacts for Cameron Sinclair.
The reporter answered straight away.
‘Yes, what’s up?’ he said.
‘You’re not going to like it.’
‘I don’t think I do already and you haven’t even told me what’s happened.’
‘It’s Leanne . . . She’s jumped ship.’
‘What?’ Sinclair sounded incredulous.
‘You heard, she’s done a runner.’
There was a pause on the line. ‘I don’t believe this.’
‘Believe it, I don’t make up stories.’
He could hear Sinclair sighing down the line. When he spoke again, his voice had an angry quiver he hadn’t heard before. ‘You’ve done this . . .’
‘What’s that supposed to mean?’
‘You’re trying to bump your price up, aren’t you . . .’ He sounded like he was speaking through gritted teeth.
‘Wait a minute . . . I’m as pissed off about this as you, mate.’
‘I’m not your bloody mate.’ Sinclair ranted now. ‘And I’m not someone you can jack up for a few quid. I told you what the deal was, Gillon: now get me that girl or you won’t see a bloody penny.’
‘Now hang on . . .’
‘I mean it, Gillon. You think you can mess me about, you’re in for a shock.’
The line died before he had a chance to reply, but as he stared out of the dirt-scarred windscreen into the fast-darkening Lochside ghetto, Danny Gillon knew there was nothing to say anyway.