by Irvine Welsh
Sometimes punching and kicking the bags helped. Sparring with the gloves. Building up the strength, speed and confidence that came with it. Earning the swagger, knowing other men sensed that it wasn’t empty, that there was something behind it. Sometimes, though, when something really bad happened, only talk helped. But in Edinburgh you only talked in drink and cocaine helped you drink and talk longer. The Britney Hamil case was that something bad. Soon he was struggling at NA, scrambling and sweating half-heartedly at the gym. Every time he flipped through the register with all those nonce faces to deal with he wanted coke more than ever.
— C’mon, honey, Robyn says, cutting to the chase in frustration, — I wanna fuck, her savage desperation reminding him of the stripper in Fort Lauderdale, or Trudi, even. — Does that sound so bad? So selfish?
Lennox thinks: aye it does, ya fuckin hing-oot, your wee lassie’s in the next room. — No. But I don’t want to shag you. I mean, he stalls, grimly savouring the power of rejection for a beat, — I can’t, I’ve had too much coke.
Robyn steals a fearful glance at Lance and Starry, locked in a flirtatious Latin dance. With their swampy grimaces and scornful whispers, they seem to be conspiring to destroy them both. Meanwhile, Johnnie sits in the armchair, broody and splenetic, his eyes bulleting out bad vibes. Lennox looks at Robyn’s shrunken, haunted face. — Let’s just go next door and lie down a little, she whispers in an undisguised plea. — I need to be with someone, Ray. I’m fucked, my life’s going to shit. I don’t know what I’m going to do. If it wasn’t for Tianna … she’s the only good thing I’ve done in my goddamn miserable fucked-up life …
She hasn’t realised that her voice has picked up and that the others have been listening to the exchange. — That sounds like real fun, Starry mocks, — A professional victim and a guy who can’t fuck her!
— You lil’ sweet-talker, you, Lance rolls his eyes and Johnnie laughs heartily. It’s now officially a house divided.
— Why, Robyn squeals as she tugs Lennox on his bad hand, compelling him to follow her to the door, — do people have to be mean like that? Why?! It’s fucking cruel!
— Oh spare us, Starry snaps in disdain. Lennox hears her laugh, — She’ll be back when she needs more blow.
— I reckon ’bout twenty minutes from now, Lance adds, in sagely mocking tones.
Lennox finds himself being led away from the bag of coke, the source of his power. How we love what kills us. He is still everywhere but where it matters as Robyn drags him on to the bed, her skirt ridden up, revealing a flesh-coloured thong emblazoned with the slogan: I HAVE THE PUSSY, I MAKE THE RULES.
She tears this garment to the side, exposing a thick tuft of pubic hair like a punk mohawk, and kisses him on the mouth. He catches the dirty, foul stale tobacco on her breath, feels his own jaw clamping. Robyn pulls away from his tight, unyielding lips, and lies back on the bed. By the light he sees her jawbone sink into her face, melting into the obscene bloated flesh of her neck that seems to have appeared from nowhere, making him think of that exotic frog with its shocking instantaneous expanse of throat. Lennox is frozen, an insect in the proximity of those hypnotic, bulging eyes. So she springs back up and she’s on him, unzipping him, her hand inside his trousers and pants, her urgent fingers asking the same question repeatedly, without getting the reply they crave.
A yawn of exhaustion bubbles up through the cocaine rushes. Lennox tries to stifle it but it tears free from his face, almost sending his jaw into a spasm. He can hear Robyn panting desperately, — Sexy … sexy boy …
It’s probably not that long after midnight, yet he can sense the next morning’s dawn spinning relentlessly over him from space.
A glance at Robyn reveals her eyes still protruding like a mad scientist’s. — I can get you going, Ray. I know what you guys like!
She lurches over to the bedside locker and produces a pair of fur-lined handcuffs from a drawer. — We can do anything you want. You wanna fasten me to the bed? You can do anything you wa—
Robyn is cut short as a terrified shriek fills the air. It doesn’t stop. Lennox’s first thought is that it sounds like a child. Then both he and Robyn realise it’s her daughter. She’s screaming. Lennox zips up and runs towards the noise, with Robyn following. He pushes the door of the kid’s bedroom open. Johnnie is in there, on top of the struggling child, trying to get his hand over her mouth. The covers are pulled back and his other hand is inside her nightdress.
Lennox bounds over and grabs his lank hair in both hands, his weakened grip first struggling to fasten with the grease in Johnnie’s hair, then feeling the sting of pain in his bad hand, as he yanks him off both the girl and the bed. Johnnie screams out, his cries joining Tianna’s regular car-alarm shrieks, as Lennox pulls him along the floor, laying into him with his feet.
Then Lennox feels his left arm being twisted up his back, followed by a blinding, searing pain that spreads out from his shoulder to bruise his soul with sickness. His heel swings back and cracks into a kneecap and the grip weakens. Lennox tears free and is face to face with a grimacing, limping Lance Dearing. — Enough now! he warns, pushing Lennox’s chest, jostling him back into the lounge as Lennox shakes his arm, trying to get some feeling back into it. He turns side-on, putting his weight behind his shoulder, to lock in and stand his ground, his arm, still useless, dangling in front of him. — Get that cunt out of her fucking bedroom! he shouts, and he can hear the girl crying and her mother and Starry arguing hysterically as he springs forward, pushing past Lance Dearing. Dearing grabs him, attempting the armlock again, but Lennox knows what’s coming and the feeling is surging back into his left arm. He slips Lance’s grip and they wrestle, staggering forward, crashing through the glass coffee table.
— My fuckin stash … Starry shouts as the coke and broken glass spill into the rug and on to the wooden floor.
Both men, miraculously uncut, stumble to their feet. Lennox is up first, running back into the bedroom. He smacks Johnnie in the side of the jaw with a right hook, which burns his damaged knuckle. Robyn is pursuing Starry, shouting, and catching a plea on the face of the screaming girl, Lennox takes her by the hand, running into the bathroom and locking the door behind them.
— Keep them away from me! the girl, Tianna, howls at him, sitting cowed on the toilet seat, gripping her hair in balled fists.
— It’s okay, doll, it’s okay, Lennox coos as his right hand throbs and his left arm stings, — everybody’s just had too much to drink. Nobody’s gaunny hurt you.
— He tried to … I told him to lemme alone! Why won’t they lemme alone!?
— S’okay … Lennox tries to deploy soothing tones as he can hear the arguments raging outside; Robyn’s shrill hysteria, Starry’s bullying sneer. Then Lance Dearing’s voice from behind the door, cool and authoritative: — We all gotta calm down. You come outta there now.
— No! Tianna screams.
— Tia, honey, Robyn bleats.
Lennox puts his face up to the door and shouts through: — Listen, youse, get that fat fucker out of here. I’m telling youse, now!
Perhaps the odds with the both of them and that psycho Starry are a little too steep. And he doesn’t want the kid to see any more of this. He’s keeping the door locked.
Tianna looks at this man who is protecting her. Perhaps, though, he’s just like the rest. Wants to do something bad with her. He was full of that crazy powder they all took. She turns away, and looks at the plastic parrot sitting on the tiled window ledge. The one she got from Parrot World, with Chet and Amy. If only they were on the boat now, away from this terrible place.
From the snakepit outside Lennox hears Johnnie dumbly protest something that sounds like, — I just like the taste of young pussy.
— GET HIM THE FUCK OOT! he roars against the door, briefly looking back at the girl sat on the toilet.
Then Dearing’s voice again: calm, conciliatory, in control. — Okay, okay. We do it your way, Ray. We do it your way. We all got a lil’ car
ried way on the silly stuff. Don’t wanna make things worse. Johnnie’s on his way out. I’m taking him away and I’m gonna get the girls some coffee round at the twenty-four-hour diner. Jus takin a lil’ bitty time out to let us all simmer down. Y’all hear?
— Aye. Get him out.
Some negotiations and the front door slams. Outside: sounds of multiple feet on the steps of the tiled staircase.
Lennox is aware that his heart is thrashing in his chest. He sits on the edge of the bath. The girl, trembling on the toilet, weeps soft and wretched. A kid shouldn’t have to put up with all this shit. — You okay?
She nods miserably, pinched features just visible through strands of hair.
— Did he hurt you?
Tianna tersely shakes her head, obviously in shock, he reckons.
She lets her hair fall in front of her face, watches him from behind its shield. He has those crazy eyes that they all have. It might be the liquor and drugs. But he looks strong: maybe even as strong as the likes of Johnnie or Tiger.
They wait for a while. He is almost convinced that everyone has gone, but he suddenly hears a cupboard door slam, then a solitary set of steps followed by the front door closing.
Lennox cagily opens the bathroom door. As he goes out he hears it snib shut behind him. He looks around the apartment. — Nobody’s here. They’ve all gone, he tells her. After a couple of minutes, she warily emerges from the bathroom. — Your mum’ll be back soon, go to bed. Go on, he urges, — I won’t let anybody else back in the house. Only your mum.
— You promise? Only Momma?
— Yes, Lennox insists. — Please, go to bed.
As she heads tentatively for her bedroom, Lennox goes through to the front room and tries to tidy up the broken glass. Perfect Bride lies amid the wreckage, the saccharine smile on the white bride of the cover picture now spectacularly incongruent in the surroundings. Starry has obviously undertaken a salvage job on the coke but there is still evidence of some on the rug. For a second he considers trying to hoover it up through a dollar bill, but then he kicks and stomps it into the tread with his boot.
Lennox goes to the hall, bolting the front door shut. Anybody who wants in, they’ll have to get past him first. Back in the lounge, he sees the couch and, drained, gratefully slumps on to it.
7
Edinburgh (2)
DESPITE YOUR EXHAUSTION, you tiptoed out of your Leith flat that Friday morning like a novice burglar, guilt-laden at having expropriated a few hours’ sleep. Outside it was taut and crisp with the October leaves turning brown, and you stopped off for a double espresso at the Stockbridge Deli, knocking it back before crossing the road and heading for Police HQ. The police personnel called it Fettes, but for the general populace, it never really wrested that mantle from the old private school across the road. As birds chirped in the growing light that spread thinly across the grey pavements, you thought how that little section of Edinburgh defined not just the city, but the UK in general. The grand educational institution for the wealthy, standing over Police HQ, as if supervising its own elevated observation of Broughton, the state comprehensive for the masses.
Britney Hamil had been missing for two days, but it took the staff at Forbidden Planet bookstore on the South Bridge just five minutes to shatter Gary Forbes’s Britain’s Most Evil Man fantasies. They testified to Amanda Drummond that he was browsing in there, as he did almost every day, when Britney vanished. He was, as you predicted, charged with wasting police time after dragging two uniformed officers around some woods in Perthshire for half the evening.
Ronnie Hamil was a different matter. Still nothing was reported from the observation of his Dalry flat. Locals testified to his erratic wanderings, and a consensus emerged that he was a gruff, dirty-looking character who lived a marginal life and habitually stank of baccy and booze. You knew he’d surface soon, was probably holed up drunk somewhere, and you hoped beyond your expectation that it would be with his granddaughter: alive and well.
Britney’s disappearance hit the national media. In the small, claustrophobic room the investigation team shared, a siege mentality was kicking in as tight faces gaped at Angela Hamil on Sky News, making a tranquillised but emotional plea for her daughter’s safe return. Gary Forbes was always a non-starter but your team’s disappointment was still evident. With the possible exception of Amanda Drummond, they looked at you like a bunch of heavy drinkers are wont to when one of their posse orders an orange juice. They had blood around their mouths. They weren’t going to stop feeding. You couldn’t tell a pride of hungry lions that they had just brought down the wrong zebra. You’d never been in such close proximity to Gillman since the Thailand holiday. Found your fingers tapping your nose nervously on a few occasions.
But the man everyone wanted remained undetected. Accompanied by Amanda Drummond, you’d gone to visit Angela Hamil. Desperation, and your guilt at being less than enthusiastic about the obvious candidate, compelled you to play hardball. You sat on Angela’s worn couch, a cracked mug of milky tea in your hand. — Your dad’s unemployed and you work all day. But he never helps you out with the kids?
In response to your promptings, Angela had lowered her tired, shadowed eyes. — He’s no good with kids, she mumbled, taking another comforting pull on her cigarette, then stubbing it out.
Her passive resignation irritated you, and you really had to fight not to show it. — Why don’t you trust your father to help out with the girls?
Angela’s breaths were short and tight as she lit up another cigarette; it was as if she feared that taking air into her lungs unaccompanied by tobacco smoke might just prove fatal. You could see her one day forgetting to have cigarettes on her and dropping dead through a seizure in the street, on her way to the corner shop. — He’s nae good at that sort of thing, she croaked.
— You’d think he’d be able to take them for a few hours, you’d pushed, briefly glancing at Drummond, her eyes saucer-like. — To help you out.
— Ma sister Cathy helps … he sometimes comes round … Angela Hamil fretted. She was not a good liar. Amanda Drummond looked sympathetically at her.
Your demands grew harsher. — Aye? When was the last time?
— I don’t know. I cannae remember!
You sucked down hard, trying to find some oxygen amid the fumes around you. — I’m going to be blunt with you, Angela. I’m doing this because your daughter is missing, and your father hasn’t been seen for a few days. Do you understand me?
The woman cooked in the silence that hung in the air. The hand holding her slow-burning cigarette went into a spasm.
— Do you understand me?
Angela Hamil nodded slowly at you, then Drummond.
— Has your father ever given you cause to believe that he’d behave inappropriately towards the girls? A brief pause. — Did he behave like that towards you when you were growing up, you’d added evenly, scrutinising the terrible stillness of the woman. Felt her crumbling slowly inside. — Please answer me, you pursued in a low voice, like a dog almost ready to break into a growl, — your daughter’s life could be at stake.
— Aye … she gasped breathlessly. — Aye, aye, aye, he did. I’ve never telt anybody before … Her cheeks buckled inwards under a massive inhalation of the cigarette. You could scarcely believe the speed at which it had burned down. She crushed the butt into a blue pub ashtray and lit another. Panic fastened to the surface of her sallow skin. You watched her wilt under its onslaught. — You dinnae think – and she broke down, — him and Britney … no Britney … no … and Drummond slid across on to the couch and put her arm round the woman’s thin shoulders. — If he’s touched her, her creased face threatened, — when ah git ma hands on him …
Those empty, impotent threats, you’d scornfully thought. — I know this is distressing. Amanda, will you stay with Angela? You nodded, but your sly wink at Drummond added: find out what you can.
You had no inclination whatsoever for the details. You headed outside, calling B
ob Toal. The boss was right, you were wrong. Ronnie Hamil was a nonce, and your hunt was now solely for him, forsaking all others. You dug out as much CCTV footage as you could find covering the Dalry area for the last few days, working forwards and backwards from the time of Britney’s disappearance. This time the difficulty lay in the abundance of material; Ronnie’s home was close to Tynecastle Stadium and there were cameras galore in the vicinity. Trying to identify an image of the grandfather from the crowds of football supporters, shoppers and drinkers was like looking for a polystyrene bead on a glacier.
What about the rest of your life? There was Trudi. Back in the office, you opened a locked drawer and pulled out the sparkly engagement ring that had lain there for around four months. There had never seemed to be a right time. Perhaps, you’d thought, it was best to do it at the wrong time, give you a lift you so badly needed. As you sat looking at the diamond, allowing it to mesmerise you, Dougie Gillman poked his head around your office door. — Nae sign ay Gary Glitter yet?
— Nope. Slowly shutting the ring box and placing it on the desk, lowering your head to your paperwork, you could feel Gillman’s eyes still on you for a few cold pulses before you heard him withdraw. The African violet seemed to have withered further. You put the box in your pocket, furious at Gillman’s intervention.
After a brain-bruising but fruitless shift, you went to the pub and had your first drink in a long time. The second compelled you to leave your car at Fettes and take a taxi to Trudi’s. On the way up, a radio station was broadcasting a tepid debate on what should be done to commemorate the tricentennial anniversary of the 1707 union of Scotland and England, some eighteen months away. Nobody seemed to know nor care. Your attention was diverted as you caught sight of Jock Allardyce walking up Lothian Road, and for a second you thought he’d seen your wave, but you were obviously mistaken as he gave no acknowledgement.