Chris got out of the Uber, walked into the Park Bar, weaved through the crowd and bought himself a pint of Guinness, shouting and gesticulating to make himself heard. The pub on a Saturday night was packed; hard-faced men of all ages, from raw-faced twenty-year-olds fresh from juvenile detention and youth prisons in tracksuits and hoodies, to lined, balding guys, heavy with muscle and middle-age spread, favouring leather jackets or bomber jackets. Sexual equality was not getting much of a look-in – the women in there were very much either criminal groupies or there because they were being paid and the meter was running.
He saw McDonald almost immediately. He was sitting in a corner with a girl. She had short dark hair and heavy Goth-style make-up; she was very good-looking. Chris felt a stab of jealousy. He disliked women in general, apart from his mother. They usually treated him with disdain, stuck-up bitches all of them. What was wrong with him? He felt the familiar seething rage of envy rise within him when he saw a guy with a pretty girl. He also simultaneously felt the strong grasp of fear now he’d seen McDonald. He swallowed nervously. The guy was a killer. He’d put three bullets in Jordan, or so the rumour said, but he could have killed Jordan with his bare hands if he’d wanted. Chris knew he was out of his league. But what could he do? He was committed.
McDonald was drinking lager and staring pointedly away from the girl, the way you do if you’ve had an argument. His eyes were starting out of his head – he was Charlied to fuck, thought Chris. His coat was folded on the bench seat they were sitting on that ran the length of the wall. He was wearing jeans, trainers and a blue Guernsey jumper. When he moved his arm to pick up the pint Chris could see the biceps in his upper arms ripple under the knotted, heavy wool.
He also noted how the other customers kept a respectful distance from McDonald’s corner as if there some sort of invisible fence between them. McDonald was a well-known face and he scared people.
Chris stood in a corner near a pillar that had a shelf built around it at shoulder height so you could rest your drinks on it. From here he could keep an eye on his quarry. The gun in his pocket felt reassuringly heavy. Your muscles won’t do much against that McDonald, he thought. Or your street smarts. He weighed his options. The most attractive of which, almost overwhelmingly so, was to finish his drink and go, pretend he hadn’t seen him. No one knew he was here; nobody would know he’d chickened out. He knew he would stand no chance against McDonald in a fight, none whatsoever. Chris liked to pretend otherwise but in general, all he did was sell Millar’s coke to a network of small-time dealers and intimidate students from the Forth Valley College in Falkirk.
This was all much harder than he had anticipated. When he’d left the flat in Marchmont, so angry he could hardly think straight, what with Ray and Dougie’s shenanigans, he’d had this fantasy of marching into the bar with his scarf covering his face and shooting McDonald in the head. Then he would call Millar, who would reward him handsomely with coke, women, cash…
Nobody would try and stop him. If a fight breaks out in a pub, it’s amazing how your friends suddenly disappear, how much more so if the other guy’s got a gun. Nobody would lift a finger to stop him, or to try and apprehend him. And even if someone recognised him, this was the Park Bar, nobody would be talking to the police.
But in his imagination the pub had been virtually empty. McDonald had been sitting alone with his back to the door. In his imagination he was a brave, fearless killer; people said, ‘You don’t mess with Chris.’ The reality was very different.
For one thing, the bar was far from empty. There were nigh on, well, Christ alone knew how many people in the bar – you had to force your way through them. If he started shooting, there’d be mass panic, people running out of the door, bar staff maybe becoming have-a-go heroes, screaming, people throwing themselves on the floor to get out of the line of fire. Chaos.
Also, a big also, Chris had never shot anyone. It was unknown territory. He wasn’t sure this was the ideal place to start.
Killing time, searching for inspiration, he looked around the bar again, checking to see if he knew anyone, people he’d maybe done time with or worked with or been introduced to. The only person he knew was a dealer called Davie J and he looked really out of it, smacked out of his head, gauching away, head nodding, in a world of his own. He probably only had a very hazy idea of where he was, much less that Chris was there.
He tried not to stare too much at McDonald. McDonald appeared to be having a bad evening with his girlfriend. Chris knew a lot about arguing with women; he could recognise the signs. She was glaring at him furiously – he couldn’t hear what she was saying but you could tell by the way that her mouth was moving that it wasn’t friendly. McDonald would occasionally look at her in a kind of sneering way. He saw him roll his eyes theatrically. The girl had had enough. She suddenly stood up. She was in full indie-rock regalia, studded denim jacket, Slipknot T-shirt, short leather skirt, torn tights and Doc Martens. Pretty as she was, she was housing-estate trash, thought Chris, hanging around McDonald for his coke and his hard-man cachet. She said something to him. McDonald shrugged and she grabbed her jacket and stormed out.
Chris saw his chance as she brushed by him, her features furious under the mask of heavy make-up. She left the pub and he followed.
This was his opportunity. He’d never intimidated a man like McDonald, but he’d threatened a fair few women; he knew what he was doing with them. This one was prettier, but she’d be a pushover, they always were, particularly after he gave her a back-hander to show her who was boss, see the pain and fear in her eyes.
He felt exultant triumph rise within him. There was a park – park was putting it a bit strongly, a grassy area with swings for kids – more or less opposite. If it weren’t raining and so cold, it was the kind of place where the local Neds, non-educated delinquents as the acronym went – it was how more than one teacher had referred to him when he was a kid – would congregate to neck cider, smoke weed and harass the neighbours. As it was, at half nine in a chilly downpour in early February, it was deserted.
Chris had a small pocketknife on him as well as the gun. He opened the blade, ten centimetres of razor-sharp steel. He had a plan now. He’d slap her face, one, two, back and forth, get her attention, show her who was boss, drag her over there, make her phone McDonald, when he came running to rescue her, he would shoot him, simple as.
She stopped outside and lit a cigarette; he stopped too. Then she moved forward, slowly. He followed, invisible in the shadows. Now she was almost opposite the park. He stared at her. She was tall, taller than him – he’d hit her hard in the kidneys, that would knock the fight out of her, then pull her up by her hair, knife to throat, a wee jab just so she knew it was there, what it would do to her, ‘dinnae struggle or I’ll kill you,’ then into the park, behind the bushes. Aye, that’s the way it would be.
Then he smiled with delight – she was only crossing the road to the park. Sweet Jesus, this was going so well it was not true. He wouldn’t even need to force her into the park; she was there already. One less thing to go wrong. He followed her. The rain was heavy now, running down his face, cold, Edinburgh rain and a vicious northerly wind. She didn’t look back, probably pissed. She reached the park and walked in; there was only a low fence around it, an unlocked gate. He followed, left the gate open behind him, two steps down the path, closing on her, bushes to the left of him… then JESUS!
It felt as if he’d been hit with a baseball bat in the small of the back, like an explosion, then an agony of pain. As if he were on fire. He was too shocked to be frightened, didn’t really understand what was happening. He turned and the second punch smashed into the side of his face, like being hit by a rock, breaking his cheekbone and loosening a few back teeth, then another as his nose this time exploded in blood. His legs went and he collapsed to the floor, felt the sudden warmth as he pissed himself in terror and looked up.
Standing over him was McDonald. Looking down. Eyes and expression hard and pitiless. No mercy. It was the last thing he saw.