47

In his room at the dosshouse in Duke Street, Tommy Gurk stood at the sink and plugged an electric razor into the wall-socket and, concentrating on his reflection in the mirror, ran the razor across his skull. His dreadlocks dropped like newborn minks into the sink. He thought of the young geezer at the railway station. I want to have a word, you don’t mind. I was out of the Zone, Gurk thought. I wasn’t in a place of peace. I wasn’t in the garden. Where was calm? More locks fell into the sink.

Take your hand off me, chief.

A word, won’t take a minute. You have some ID?

Never carry any. Don’t need it. Free country, ennit? You a copper?

Could I take a wee peek inside the briefcase?

What’s in this briefcase is private, mate. For mine eyes only.

I’d like to just check that, sir.

You’re not listening to me, are you, copper?

Zzzzzz. Tommy Gurk switched off the razor and leaned forward over the sink until his face touched the mirror. He put his hands into the pile of dreadlocks that lay nestled in old brown porcelain. Strip the identity down. Change. You can’t go around this city looking the way you did. You can’t do what you’ve come to do unless you alter your appearance. He pulled his lower eyelids down. Underneath, the pink tissue was pale and looked unhealthy.

He stepped back from the mirror. There. Bald now. Shaved to the skin. He gathered the thick lanks of cut hair and put them in a wastebasket, then ran water into the sink until all trace of stray hair was gone. The room smelled of old cigarettes and piss and disinfectant and the stale flesh of all those men and women who’d come and gone. A dosshouse. In the lobby downstairs he’d paid his money at the desk and the clerk in the cage hadn’t even looked at him and the people who sat in beaten-up leather chairs paid him scant attention, they just shuffled newspapers or played draughts or snoozed and twitched in their wino dreams. He’d felt invisible. That was what he wanted.

He remembered, saw it clearly, how the gun came out of the briefcase.

Wait a minute, think, put away that weapon, sir.

All the faces in the crowd at the railway station had receded like people suddenly diminishing in size, the sky pressing down, the planet wobbling on its course through space, all topsy-turvy.

Just give it to me.

You want it, you got it, china.

The explosion jarred his hand but he didn’t have time to feel the kick because he’d stuffed the gun back in the briefcase and then he’d run, he’d fled down side streets, this way and that, lost, not caring, needing to be beyond reach and recognition, then he’d found an underground station in Buchanan Street and gone down the escalator to the platform and boarded a train that carried him into the sweet anonymity of a black tunnel, and he’d come up into brassy sunlight in another part of the city and bought the razor in a second-hand shop and boarded a double-decker bus and after he disembarked he walked a few blocks until he found this dump, this great drab Victorian building where rooms were cheap and the clientele cheaper.

Catch your breath. Find the place. Enter the Zone.

He ran a hand over his hairless head. He felt bumps in his skull, and tiny crevices his dreadlocks had hidden. He couldn’t find the calm. He was a long way off and his compass fucked. He was tuned to static. He thought, I’ll phone Kaminsky, I’ll tell him what happened, unforeseen circumstances – but Kaminsky never wanted to know about failure. The word wasn’t in his vocabulary.

Down in the street an ambulance raced and screamed, an auditory explosion, how could you reach out for tranquillity in such a place? He had a flash of Tibet, the placid shadows of the monastery, monks in saffron robes, the gong that echoed in the arched passageway, wind-chimes, unflavoured cooked rice in his mouth. He’d go back to that if he could. Like a fucking shot.

He emptied the briefcase on the bed. The gun. The toothbrush and tube of tea-tree toothpaste he always carried in the event he couldn’t get back to wherever home base might be. Healthy gums, very important. A disposable razor. A small phial of Total Shaving Solution. A bar of hemp soap in its original box. That was all.

The ambulance faded but now there were police cars and sirens and all hell. The city was a cauldron of jarring noises. He had to get the whole job done successfully and go back to Largs and collect his gear from the hotel – if that was possible, if the place was safe – and then head south, maybe by bus, he’d decide later. He walked to the window and pulled the net curtain back a little way and his fingers penetrated the dry moth-eaten material. He looked into the street and thought how a simple business deal – let’s shake hands on it, Mr Mallon, or can I call you Jackie? – could go so easily to ruin.

He tossed his few belongings back into the briefcase and left the room. Punter’s name on the paper, what was it, why was he panicked into forgetting simple things?

Too much chaos, too much swirl. Rise above it.

Begins with an ‘H’. Higgs?

No, Haggs. Spot on. Got it.