35

‘I think you’ve had enough, sir.’

Charlie McWhinnie, clutching a napkin filled with ice-cubes to the side of his face, looked at the fat-necked man behind the bar of the Hilton and asked, ‘Have I been aggressive? Have I been insulting to your other customers? Can you honestly say –’

‘No, sir,’ said the barman, who had a bright red face and long sideburns. ‘You’ve been generally well behaved. It’s just that you keep falling off your stool –’

‘Gravity is the drunk man’s enemy,’ McWhinnie said. He scooped a palmful of peanuts from a little silver dish and tossed them towards his mouth. Mostly they went shooting past his face. ‘A question. Are you happy in your work?’

‘Aye. It has its moments.’

McWhinnie belched. His perceptions were unreliable. The room was turning in a slow circle. He felt he was a passenger on a precarious carousel. He narrowed his eyes and looked at his little notebook, which lay open on the bar. The pages were wet with booze and his fountain pen lay in a puddle of spilled drink. Dear Diary, life is shit. When I was six years of age I fancied playing rugby for Scotland, heroics in the Murrayfield mud.

‘I’m working on a story,’ he said.

‘You a writer then?’

‘More a keeper of records,’ said McWhinnie. ‘This barkeeping lark, you think I’d be good at it?’

‘Requires social skills,’ the barman said.

‘Those I have in abundance.’

A hand fell heavily over McWhinnie’s shoulder. ‘What are you doing to yourself, my young pal?’

McWhinnie turned, saw Lou Perlman. ‘Lou? What brings you here?’

‘You did. You phoned.’

‘Fuck me. Did I?’

‘And the Good Samaritan came running. You’re pissed as a newt, son. What happened to your face?’

‘My face is irrelevant, Lou. Listen. Listen to me. A question. Am I or am I not cut out to be a cop? Honest opinion, Lou. No fluff. Straight answer now.’

‘You don’t want any kind of answer in your present state of mind, Charlie. Why don’t you let me just drive you home, eh? What do you say? Come on.’

McWhinnie felt his stool listing to one side. ‘I don’t wanna go home, Lou.’

Perlman said, ‘You look like hell. You need to lie down. What are you drinking for anyway? You feeling sorry for yourself?’

‘I’m questioning my purpose, Lou.’

‘Usually better to ask the really deep questions when you’re clear-headed, Charlie. Just lean against me and we’ll get you out of here. Okay?’

McWhinnie stuffed notebook and pen into his pocket and stepped down from his stool. He lurched towards Lou Perlman, missed and fell over. Perlman and the barman hauled him to his feet, then Perlman moved him a few steps in the direction of the exit, but it was a struggle.

‘I do not want to be a fucking solicitor, Lou. Uh-huh. Not on your life.’

‘What’s biting your arse, Charlie?’

‘My hands are dirty.’

‘Is that a metaphor?’

McWhinnie planted a slobber of a kiss on Perlman’s cheek. ‘You’re my best pal, Lou. The very best. You’re a great man.’

‘Right, I’m a fucking hero,’ Perlman said, and guided McWhinnie down a short flight of steps. ‘So your hands are dirty, and you’re feeling worthless and your life has no direction?’

‘Spot on,’ McWhinnie said.

‘And you want to quit the Force, eh?’

‘You see into my soul.’

‘No, I’m only remembering what you told me on the phone. Let me tell you what I see, Charlie. One weary cop plastered to the gills. You need sleep.’

‘And dreams.’

‘Aye, good ones.’

‘Fucking Caskie,’ McWhinnie said. Cashkey. ‘That fucking Caskie gives me shite jobs to do. He thinks he’s God.’ He stumbled into a wall. Cubes of ice spilled from the napkin and cascaded over his blazer.

‘He is God, Charlie. He invented your world, didn’t he?’

‘Bastard,’ McWhinnie said.

‘Steady there, son.’ Perlman steered McWhinnie towards the exit doors. ‘Caskie’s got no supernatural powers. He’s just an ambitious turd with a black heart.’

‘I want to be inside a murder investigation, Lou. I want to be right at the heart of a hurricane.’

‘Don’t let Caskie get you down. The time’ll come when you won’t be spinning in orbit around him. You’ll have moved on. Patience, laddie. There’s no fast-track to happiness, in love or work.’ Lou Perlman nudged McWhinnie out of the hotel. The sky over Glasgow was clear, a great star-show. ‘Me, I’m a lucky sod, I love my work. It’s the only thing in my life, Charlie. Do you think it’ll ever be that way for you?’

‘Suffering Jesus,’ McWhinnie said, and tripped. He sat on the ground and smiled and looked up at Perlman. ‘Not if I can bloody help it.’

Lou Perlman helped McWhinnie to his feet. ‘By tomorrow you’ll think you dreamed all this, Charlie.’