57

‘Wotcher, mates.’

Haggs turned towards the door. He hadn’t heard it open.

The man who stepped in kicked the door shut behind him, and smiled a big white-toothed smile. His bald brown scalp shone under the electric light and he carried himself in an easy manner, as if he had the ability to slough off all life’s problems.

‘Who the fuck are you?’ Haggs asked.

‘Tommy Gurk.’

‘Gurk?’ Haggs asked.

‘Got it in one. Pardon my bad manners, if you will, but I been eavesdropping your conversation. It seems to me I can save you all kinds of problems, providing you do everything my way.’

‘And what way is that?’ Haggs asked.

Gurk had a gun in his hand. Out of nowhere, conjured up like a magician’s prop, there it was, steel enclosed in a firm brown hand.

Twiddie said, ‘He’s fucking armed.’

‘Bright boy,’ Gurk said.

‘You’re not going to use that,’ Rita said.

‘It all depends, my beauty,’ Gurk said.

‘Depends on what?’ Haggs asked.

‘What do you know about my business with Jackie Mallon?’

‘Sweet fuck all,’ Haggs said.

Without expression, Gurk turned away from Haggs and shot Twiddie in the head. It was done so quickly, so casually, it was seconds before Haggs or Rita registered the fact that a gun had been fired and Twiddie had buckled like a beast shot in a slaughterhouse and lay sideways on the floor, and blood was flowing in little streams around his skull. Rita slumped to her knees beside Twiddie and covered her open mouth with her hand. She was terrifyingly mute.

‘Now,’ Gurk said. ‘Have I got your attention?’

Haggs had a falling sensation, as if his internal organs had slipped inches inside him. He wondered if Billy McQueen had felt like this on the high-rise when he looked down the dark shaft. ‘Very definitely. What do you want to know?’

‘I hear you’re looking for a certain cargo that was the basis of a business agreement involving the late Jackie Mallon, the just as late Billy McQueen and my good self.’

‘I expressed an interest,’ Haggs said. ‘Mallon wouldn’t give me the time of day.’

‘And so you had him snuffed. And then you had Billy the Stump snuffed as well because he couldn’t tell you jack shit.’

‘Let’s say there was, ah, a breakdown in communication.’

‘But you’re still looking to get in, aintcha?’ Gurk asked.

Haggs said, ‘Aye, but I’m tired banging my head against a shithouse wall.’ Was there a way out of this? he wondered. Could he ever walk away from this building and get in his car and go home? He was conscious of Rita bent over the dead Twiddie, and how she’d started to sob, and he imagined his life flushed down a toilet and swirling away, all the good things he’d accumulated sucked into sewers. He wanted to say Spare me. But he’d never begged in his life and he wasn’t about to begin now. Note to self: Never ask for mercy. It lacks dignity.

Gurk looked at Rita and said, ‘Here, love. Stifle that snivelling, eh? It’s giving me the willies.’

Rita looked up at Gurk. Mascara ran down her face like ink spilled carelessly. Her hands were locked in upraised fists. ‘You fucking killed him, you fucking pig, you fucking cunt.’

‘Well, yeh. I did. I can hardly deny it, can I? So now you’re lonely, is that it? Horrible being on your tod. Tell you what, love, I’ll fix it for you. Cheerio, dear.’ Gurk smiled and fired the gun and Haggs saw Rita’s head split open like a squash that had dropped from the back of a vegetable lorry screaming down the motorway, and, sickened, he looked away from the sight.

Gurk said, ‘You were saying, Haggsy.’

Haggs had a hard time regulating his voice. ‘I was saying Mallon told me nothing.’

‘He didn’t mention the whereabouts or the nature of the cargo?’

‘He never discussed any of that,’ Haggs said. He might have had an old sock stuffed in his throat, so thick did his voice sound. He stared at Gurk’s gun until it expanded and filled his vision entirely and then beyond even that. It was bigger than the world. His hearing had somehow been heightened – a tap dripped once every thirty seconds into the sink, a moth trapped and dying beat quietly at the metal roof, and something wet slid down the wall behind Rita but he didn’t want to look.

‘We weren’t close, you know. We weren’t friends.’

‘Business involves trust, and me and my associates don’t trust you, Haggsy. We don’t like the idea of you looking under stones trying to find our property. We don’t like you swanning around this dandy old city looking for something that isn’t yours. I mean, what if you was to stumble over it, eh? You’d tell us, right? Yeh, sure, and I shit gold bricks. It would be gone in a flash, pal. And where would that leave me and my colleagues, eh? Out of pocket and no chance of recovering our goods.’

Haggs said, ‘Look, I’d like to help, honest –’

‘Oh, I’d like that too.’ Gurk glanced at the gun in his hand. ‘But my associates feel you’ve trespassed on their territory. You’ve been too fucking eager to muscle in on something that’s got nothing to do with you. In short, you’re out of fucking control, jack.’

‘I can make inquiries on your behalf,’ Haggs said. ‘I know people, I can ask questions –’

‘You been busy asking questions already, Haggsy. And it hasn’t worked out very well. We’re left with no cargo, and two dead associates. That’s not kosher, is it? We can’t have you giving us grief, squire.’

Haggs said, ‘Maybe I can help. I know my way round this city, I know people who knew Jackie, the guys that worked for him in his warehouse in Bluevale Street, aye, you could ask them, or you could talk to the people he drank with, they might know something. Then there’s his son Eddie –’ I’m begging, he thought. And I swore I never would.

‘Look at it this way,’ Gurk said. ‘This life is just a stage you’re passing through. Shadows on walls, mate. Everything is appearance. You’ll be back in some other form.’

‘Once around the block is enough for me,’ Haggs said. He couldn’t think of anything else to say, any plea he might enter on his own behalf that would persuade this cold smiling brown man he was worth sparing. He took one step back and Gurk, who defined the past, present and future of Roddy Haggs, popped off a shot which Haggs heard only for as long as it takes an eye to blink.

‘Fucking carnage,’ Gurk said, and wondered how badly he’d dented the thin brass-plating of his karma. Very badly, he imagined. In his next incarnation he’d be a bleeding aphid with a lifespan of about forty-five minutes. He surveyed the bodies and stuffed the gun in his waistband and went outside just as a black cab came into the parking area.

A man got out of the taxi. That fucker from the hotel in Largs, Gurk thought. The one who’d chased him through the train station. Gurk moved quickly towards his car.

The man shouted, ‘Gurk!’

Gurk fired off a single shot and it struck the door of the taxi and the man threw himself to the ground. Gurk opened the door of his green Fiat and got behind the wheel, aware of a second figure stepping out of the cab now, an older man who crouched low and was half-hidden by the cab door. The cabby had vanished, ducked down behind his wheel.

I finish them all off or I get the hell out of here, Gurk thought.

Did aphids fuck or did they procreate in some other way he knew nothing about? If he didn’t jump out of the Fiat and shoot these people maybe he’d get a break on the karmic ladder, skipping the fruit-fly step and coming back a few levels up, a bee, say, buzzing from flower to flower, or a snail sliming along some damp basement.

Or a lawyer, he thought.

He drove quickly past the taxi. The guy from the train station was down on his knees, shouting something. Gurk couldn’t hear what. The older fellow stood behind the open door, staring at the Fiat’s plate, memorizing it. Fat lot of good that’s going to do, Gurk thought. The registration was fake, no two ways, the car probably stolen. Gurk drove, tyres squealing, air dense with exhaust pall, through the streets of the industrial estate.

He didn’t look back.

Perlman helped Eddie to his feet. The taxi driver, a chubby man with a liver-coloured birthmark on his neck, stumbled out of the cab.

‘Fucking hell,’ the cabby said. He examined the hole left by the bullet in the side door. ‘Fucking hell,’ and he said it several times in amazement.

Perlman showed him his police ID, as if this might mollify him. ‘I’m sorry. That was unexpected.’

‘Why the hell are you bastards riding about in taxis anyway? I thought you had souped-up squad cars,’ the driver said. ‘And don’t even think about asking me to follow him, because I’m having none of that lark. Look at my hands, man. I’m shaking like a leaf. It’s a Valium I need,’ and he stepped back inside the cab and slumped chalk-faced behind the wheel. ‘Fucking hell,’ on and on, an incantation.

Perlman said, ‘It’s not worth chasing him. He’ll dump the car first alley he comes to,’ and he mentioned something vague and apologetic about reimbursement and repairs, then he walked towards the building. Eddie followed. He thought of the bullet that had slammed into the cab door, and Gurk’s face which, with dreadlocks gone, looked intense and luminously determined.

It was hot in the building and the air smelled of blood. Flies buzzed.

Eddie stood over Haggs, who lay face down, one eye gone, the other wide and open and blind. In death he seemed a few inches shorter than in life, as if he were dwindling.

Perlman sighed. ‘I wanted him. But not like this. No way.’

Eddie looked at the other two bodies. Violent death always unsettled him. He’d never quite developed the protective carapace he found so common among his colleagues.

Perlman said, ‘Allow me to introduce you, Eddie. The woman is – was – Rita Wright. Rita Wrong would’ve been more accurate. The other’s John Twiddie, something of an enforcer for our Roddy, and very very nasty. Rita was Twiddie’s helper and lover. They were not nice people, Eddie.’

Eddie gazed at the girl, and had an impression of safety pins and metallic studs and steely clasps covered with blood. There was nothing left that resembled a face. He turned to look at Twiddie. Bare bone was visible where flesh had been blown from the side of the skull.

‘Right piece of work, our Twiddie,’ Perlman said.

Eddie was shocked to hear a slight expulsion of air from Twiddie’s open mouth. He went down on his knees and listened. ‘Jesus, he’s still breathing, Lou.’

Perlman came closer. ‘Only just.’

Twiddie suddenly raised a hand and with enormous effort clutched Eddie’s arm. He whispered so quietly Eddie was obliged to bring his face level with the man’s mouth.

‘You … eh, a priest …?’

A priest. Eddie said nothing. Twiddie was functioning at a level where it was doubtful he’d have understood a response. How he’d managed to survive the wound to his head was one of those freak occurrences that depend on such circumstances as the trajectory of bullet or hardness of bone, or even something as unquantifiable as the sheer will to linger in the world a little longer. Eddie had seen shotgun victims survive bullets to the brain and stabbing casualties whose cerebra had been pierced without fatal effect.

‘I’ve done bad things, Father … I want to confess.’

Eddie looked into the man’s eyes. The glazed blue light was dulling rapidly and the pupils were tiny. ‘What bad things?’

Twiddie tried to focus on Eddie’s face. His eyes lacked coordination and his body convulsed. His hand slid from Eddie’s arm, leaving a streak of blood.

Twiddie spoke again, voice almost inaudible. ‘Rita … where are you, doll … doll, you there …’ And then he was silent and his dead eyes stared directly into Eddie’s face.

Perlman fingered Twiddie’s pulse. ‘He’s gone. Christ knows where a soul like Twiddie’s finds sanctuary. Look, get the cabby to drive you back to your sister’s place, Eddie. I’m going to have to call Tay and I don’t want you here when the heavy boys arrive. Tay’ll ask too many questions, and you don’t need to be involved.’ He took his cellphone from his jacket.

Eddie walked outside. He heard Perlman talk on his phone. The cab driver was still slumped behind the wheel.

‘Dennistoun,’ Eddie said.

‘You mind if we drive really slow?’

‘Drive any way you like.’

Eddie climbed into the back seat and looked at John Twiddie’s blood on his arm.

Twiddie, the enforcer. I’ve done bad things …

I want to confess …

Confess what? He wondered if it had been Twiddie who’d pulled the trigger on Jackie. If Haggs had ordered the slaying. Do the old man, Twiddie. Do it right.

He let the thought drift and stared out at the lamplit city and recognized nothing, street names, storefronts, bars. It was strange to him, and he had the feeling it always would be, a city he’d remember now and then, with diminishing clarity, when he was home in Queens.