33

On the phone, Billy McQueen told the nurse he couldn’t come to see his father. It was inconvenient, he had business meetings, he plucked excuses out of the air. The call-girl, Leila, was dead asleep on the floor. She’d passed out here a dozen times.

Thelma said, ‘Look here. He’s your father. Your dad. He was wandering around in his pyjamas in the street. In the street, mind you. That’s serious. God knows what the neighbours are thinking. I’ve given him something to help him relax, but he’s going on about a TV delivery and somebody called Giovanni and I can’t follow him. I strongly suggest you make an appearance, because if you don’t, well, I can’t be responsible if he decides to go walkabout again. I do have other patients, Mr McQueen.’

Billy McQueen thought: I have had better days.

The deal is fucked.

Gurk gets maced.

And now Larry is wandering the streets in his pyjamas. Plus this Giovanni – who the hell was he?

He said, ‘It’s difficult for me, Thelma. I’m up to my neck.’

‘Neck? You’ll be in over your head if you don’t get here, because I’ll phone Social Services and tell them your father needs to be hospitalized for his own safety –’

‘Thelma, I pay you to deal with all this –’

‘I have other patients, Mr McQueen. I’m already late for a Parkinson’s in Bearsden.’

‘Right, right, I’ll be there as soon as I can.’

‘It better be quick,’ she said.

Billy put down the handset. Fuck you, Thelma, he thought. He limped to the window and looked out. Darkness and orange lamps. I don’t want to go out there. I don’t fancy the streets tonight. Climbing in a taxi, take me to Hyndland, no way José. Bloody Larry in his pyjamas.

Leila turned over in her drugged sleep and muttered, ‘On an ocean liner sure.’ Night trips, Billy thought. Seagoing escapes under cover of darkness. He wished he was inside Leila’s dream and the big propellers of a ship were churning. Destination Tahiti, oh aye.

He picked up the cordless, punched in the number of Gurk’s hotel room.

‘Yeah?’ Gurk said.

‘I was wondering … are you all right?’

‘Rinsed my eyes out a few times with Evian,’ Gurk said. ‘Sight has been restored. Lamps working, happy to say.’

‘Glad to hear that … Look, I was curious to know if you wanted to step out, have a bite to eat, a drink, something? I know a nice place in the West End.’

‘Kind of you. Have to decline, sorry.’

It’s not your company I want, Billy thought. It’s the safety of your presence. Be my bodyguard, please. ‘It won’t take long, Tommy. Half an hour mibbe. I’ll send a car down for you.’

‘No can do, me old son. I been talking with some of my people. Options are being discussed. People are openly worried. Money is out there, to say nothing of vanished articles. Makes me wonder about other dimensions, Billy. Can things disappear into alternative realities? Are there diversions along the everyday continuum? Anyway, I’m stuck here waiting for the sodding dog to ring again.’

Billy said, ‘But –’

‘Tell you what. Gimme a bell later.’ Gurk hung up.

Billy phoned the number in Hyndland. Thelma answered on the first ring. ‘I hope to hear you say you’re on your way, Mr McQueen.’

‘Even as we speak,’ Billy said.

‘Your dad’s ranting.’

‘Fifteen minutes,’ Billy said.

I should have stuck him in a home. He’s dead weight, he’s lumber I have to carry on my back, he’s my cross. All I wanted was his affection. You’ve worked at that, and you’re still not getting it, Billy. He put on an expensive black silk shirt, then black trousers and shoes. Camouflage. Creature of the night. He covered Leila with a cotton sheet then phoned his usual cab company for a taxi.

While he waited, he thought about Gurk’s dark-red eyes. Beyond bloodshot. Like Halloween contact lenses, the colour of terror. He remembered how Gurk had come stumbling out of the tenement in Ingleby Drive after his visit to Joyce Mallon.

Why hadn’t he tried harder to persuade Gurk to keep him company? The Dreadlocked One was obstinate. He made up his mind and that was that. Phone calls, associates, outstanding debts, a transaction gone all to hell: the pressures were stacking up. Gurk managed to escape into meditation and fanciful questions about diversions along some continuum.

Billy’s questions were less esoteric but just as mysterious, such as: who shot Jackie Mallon and why did this sweet deal go all wrong? Sometimes the stars were light-years out of joint.

He sweated. His stump chafed against his prosthesis. He needed a splash of industrial-strength moisturizer. Go to Hyndland, appease Larry, stuff him with more medication. Why can’t I just wash my hands of you, Larry, you bitter old sod?

His buzzer sounded. He pressed the button on the wall.

‘Taxi, Mr McQueen.’

‘Is that you, Alec?’

‘Aye.’

‘I’ll be down in a flash.’ Alec McGroaty. One of his regular drivers. He didn’t want strangers. He turned the lights off, left his penthouse, descended in the lift where the mirrored interior reflected a multitude of Billy McQueens dwindling to infinity. I feel that tiny, he thought. A dot in a frozen eternity of silvered glass.

He entered the foyer, nodded at the night security man, Cutcheon, who’d once been a professional wrestler. He looked hard and bulky in his black suit. Alec McGroaty was standing at Cutcheon’s desk. A small man in a fawn cardigan and baggy tartan trousers such as a golfer might wear, McGroaty had a deferential manner.

‘Hot outside, Mr McQueen,’ Cutcheon said.

‘Aye, it’s like the Costa del Sol,’ McGroaty remarked.

McQueen didn’t feel like small talk. He followed McGroaty outside to the taxi. He climbed into the back.

‘Novar Drive,’ he said.

McGroaty said, ‘On our way.’

McQueen observed the streets. He had the feeling he was travelling through the veins of the city. At Charing Cross he saw the lights of the Mansions Café & Bar. Fun. Life as average people live it. He had the urge to instruct McGroaty to drop him off at the café where he could lose himself in the throng, have a couple of drinks, loosen up. Then he thought of Larry in his pyjamas.

Out west now, over the River Kelvin and buzzing along Dumbarton Road and then up into the dark red sandstone maze of Hyndland where Billy eyed the well-maintained tenements, the ornate cornices and rosettes and high ceilings you could see in rooms where curtains hadn’t been drawn. Comfortable lives. He longed to scratch his stump which had begun to itch seriously. He felt fevered.

Somebody will be watching the house. It’s a dead certainty.

He leaned forward to the driver. ‘Alec, go round the block.’

‘Awright,’ McGroaty said.

The cab completed a circle of the building. Billy McQueen glanced up at the windows of his flat. The light was on in his father’s room. The other windows were dark.

‘Go round again,’ Billy McQueen said.

McGroaty drove round the block a second time. Then he parked outside the entrance to the tenement McQueen would have to enter sooner or later. Billy peered from the cab at the security door. No sign of anyone loitering. But how could you tell if it was safe beyond the security door? How could you know there wasn’t an intruder waiting for you? And even if the close was empty, there were about a million cars parked along the street and a dark figure could be sitting in any of them, just biding his time until you got out of the cab.

Billy, Billy, this is no kind of life. He said, ‘Alec. Do me a favour.’

‘If I can, Mr McQueen.’

‘See if it’s all clear.’

McGroaty turned and looked back at his passenger. ‘Eh, how do you mean all clear?’

‘Go inside the building, see if there’s anybody loitering.’

McGroaty said. ‘Is there the possibility of danger here, Mr McQueen?’

‘There’s somebody I don’t want to see.’

‘Aye, but is there danger? Do I have a guarantee of my personal safety?’

‘I’ll make your tip excessive,’ McQueen said.

‘You’re scared, right? And you want me to test the waters for you?’

‘Scared? Not at all. Just a precaution, Alec.’

McGroaty appeared to consider this. ‘How much of a tip are you talking?’

‘Fifty.’

‘Could you make it an even hundred? I’ve got a kid –’

‘– at Eton, and the fees are high?’

McGroaty laughed. ‘Aye, they’re extortionate.’

McQueen said, ‘A hundred then.’

‘I’m to make sure nobody’s loitering in the building, zat all?’

‘Exactly. Here’s the key to the outside door.’ McQueen handed McGroaty a key-ring. ‘The big brass one opens the security door. Just go inside, see if anybody’s hanging around, then come back and tell me. Got it?’

McGroaty said, ‘Got it.’

McGroaty left the engine running. McQueen watched him walk up the path to the security door. McGroaty unlocked it, entered the building. The door swung shut behind him. Billy thought, I’m having a bad moment. I’m cut off from my lines of communication.

A man materialized in the driver’s seat. A black shape.

Billy banged a fist on the glass partition that separated him from the driver. ‘Hey, you, what the fuck? This is McGroaty’s taxi.’

The man said, ‘Just a wee detour, Billyboy.’

The cab moved slowly forward.

His heart scampering like a hot greyhound sprung from a trap, Billy reached for the door handle. I’ll step out, I’ll get away, I can do it, gammy leg or not. The door to his right opened and a girl jumped in beside him. She was big and wore black gloves with spiked attachments on the knuckles, and under the muted glow of a streetlamp Billy saw that her face was battle-hard and unforgiving and that her mouth was set in an expression of vicious determination.

‘What the hell’s this?’ Billy shouted.

‘Shut your fucking gob.’ The girl slammed him in the mouth with one of her spiked gloves.

Billy felt brutalized, his face lanced with buckshot.

‘Not another word out of you,’ the girl said. ‘Unless I say so.’

‘Right,’ Billy mumbled.

‘That was a word, diddy,’ and she backhanded him hard, and he felt the taxi turn upside down like a carnival ride that was making him ill.