The Blood is Still

by Douglas Skelton

  Scott cocked his head to one side. ‘So, what was all that about down there, eh?’

  Nolan gave him a sideways look. Scott was scrutinising him, his now perpetual smile irritating as usual. He couldn’t pinpoint just when Scott started with that bloody smile but one day someone would wipe it off. If he kept going the way he was, it was a coin toss who would do the wiping – McClymont or Nolan.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘The wee huddle with that reporter bint in the hall.’

  ‘I didn’t “huddle” . . .’

  ‘Aye, you did, man. At the door. Wee whispers.’ Scott made a series of sibilant sounds with his tongue and lips. ‘Secrets, man, secrets and whispers.’ He made the psss, psss, psss sound again.

  Nolan stared deep into his brother’s eyes, saw the slightly unfocused glaze. He’d been sampling the goods again. That was becoming more common too. Nolan had spoken to him about it in the past and even Maw had pulled him up, but Scott didn’t care. Blood and gear. That was Scott’s life now.

  ‘Don’t know what you’re talking about,’ he said. He knew Scott wouldn’t buy the evasion, but he wasn’t going to fill in the details.

  ‘What were you and her whispering about, eh? You making a date or something?’

  Nolan felt something quicken in his blood. Did Scott know he’d been with Rebecca the previous night? He had wondered if going to Barney’s was a mistake, but there was risk no matter where they went in Inverness. Nolan was a face, and all it would take was for one person – someone who knew him, someone who knew Scott, someone who knew their mother – to clock them and report back. Barney’s was dead most nights, apart from Friday and Saturday, and deemed off limits to their immediate circle in order to keep the licence secure, so he’d thought it the safest place to go.

  He decided to bluff it out. ‘Well, even if I was, can you blame me? She’s fine looking.’

  Scott pulled the corners of his mouth down. ‘Ah, she’s no bad. No my style, though.’

  Nolan wondered what his brother’s style was. Certainly, he’d never known him to have any kind of relationship with a woman beyond a fumble at a party or, at most, for one night. Scott didn’t forge long-term friendships. His circle of buddies was fluid and comprised mostly of young men who shared his need for violence. Nolan couldn’t fault him for lack of friends, though; he had few himself, and none of them were close. Friendship was a luxury he couldn’t afford, not with the life his family led.

  That was another reason to get out.

  He wanted to have a normal life. Maybe get a job – although doing God knows what. Have a family of his own. Not have to worry about a tap on the shoulder from the law or a rival. Not have to keep changing his phone and his number. Not have to take circuitous routes in order to ensure there was no one at his back. Not have to sit in a corner table with a full view of the room or, as he had done the night before because that stranger had taken the best table, with his eye on the mirror. He wanted to be able to take a woman out for a drink and not be hassled by arseholes.

  He wanted all of that, but in his most honest moments he knew he would never have them.

  Scott must have sensed something. He scrutinized his brother, then said, ‘What is it with you these days, bro?’

  ‘How do you mean?’

  ‘You’ve no been yourself, you know? You’ve been quiet and kinda strange. As if your heart’s no in this any more.’

  Nolan knew his question related to the family business, but he decided to evade it.

  ‘Scotty,’ he said, his right hand flicking to the doorway behind him and, by extension, downstairs, ‘my heart’s never been in all of this. You know that. This business tonight is just asking for shit to happen.’

  Scott smirked. ‘I’m no talking about the night, bro, and you know it. I’m talking about our business in general. There’s something no right about you these days and I cannae quite put my finger on it. But I will, bro, I will.’ He stood up. ‘I’ve always got your back, bro. Don’t forget that.’

  Nolan knew that on the face of it his brother was showing him filial love, but he knew Scotty better than that. It wasn’t a show of family loyalty. It was a warning.

  35

  A movement overhead caught Rebecca’s eye.

  Dalgliesh was spouting his usual vitriol in a tone that was casual, cultured and cultivated but using it to enflame the crowd. She had to admit he was smooth and accomplished at making outrageous ideas sound reasonable.

  She looked up and saw the white underbelly of a gull floating like a ghost. It made no sound as it glided over the heads of the gathering, its feathers glowing white as they caught the light from below. It drifted against the dark sky, its wings barely moving, assisted by the breeze. And then it was gone, a silent visitor that had observed and found the scene below not to its taste.

  As Rebecca lowered her eyes to Dalgliesh again, she knew how that gull felt. He had paused to take breath, to come up with some new lie or mangled half-truth, and was looking towards the edge of the crowd. Rebecca followed his gaze and saw Chaz as he wandered the periphery, very like the gull overhead, his cane under his arm as he snapped off some shots. Then the Spioraid leader’s eyes found Rebecca standing at the very back under a streetlight and she knew he had a new subject to broach.

  ‘Friends,’ he said, ‘and then we have the media and the way they blindly follow the dictates of the ruling elite. They do you no favours with their coverage. They spout lies on screens and print lies in the pages of their newspapers – not that anyone reads those now.’

  There was laughter and Rebecca saw some of the crowd begin to take note of Chaz and his camera. No one had looked at her. Yet.

  ‘We have to be very clear about this. The media is not your ally, not in this issue or any other. Its sole intention is to spread the agenda of the liberal elite. The middle classes who sit in their detached homes in their detached communities and defend the rights of the immigrants and the sexual deviants who they see as the underdogs in our society. And they chatter about it at dinner parties and bemoan how terrible life must be for the poor migrant who comes here to find a better life. They promote sexual perversions as somehow the norm. And they influence their fellow liberals in the media to present such perversions as a valid way to live and to ensure that they show different races on our screens. Diversity, they call it. Who here hasn’t watched a drama in which homosexual couples have been presented as a normal family unit? Where black actors have been given roles that should have gone to white people, even to the point of manipulating historical fact?’

  He stopped to look around. ‘Now, there are people who say I am racist. There may even be some here.’ He nodded towards a few people who had shuffled their feet when he took this particular tack. ‘Let me assure you, I’m not.’

  He’s going to say ‘Some of my best friends are black or gay’, Rebecca thought. But he didn’t.

  ‘Although I can understand why people may believe it. I have nothing against anyone, no matter what their race, colour, gender, sexual predilection or religion, as long as they obey our laws, pay their taxes and don’t try to inflict their beliefs or morals on the people of this country. I don’t wish to see anyone harmed in any way. I do not condone violence.’

  Yeah, right, Rebecca thought, but you have people at your back who do. And you give them a voice.

  She studied the crowd closely, looking for anyone who might be a Spioraid plant, but despite the street lighting it was too dark and the problem was she didn’t really know what she was looking for. These people looked just like everyone else.

  ‘But what I ask is this – what about people like you? While the migrant and the immigrant, the homosexual and the transsexual are all given priority, are all given a voice, what about you? While the black experience and the gay life is dramatised and analysed and normalised, what about your experience? Why isn’t the media talking about you, the ordinary, hard-working, hard-pressed Scottish men and women? Do you think the cou
ncil would even consider placing this deviant in the midst of a community that is predominantly black or Asian? No, they wouldn’t. And why? Because there would be an uproar. They would be accused of prejudice. But it’s all right to dump him here, among you good people. And why? Because you are expected to take everything that they throw at you. And the media backs them all the way.’

  Rebecca was growing increasingly uneasy and beginning to regret coming to the Ferry. Maybe Les had been right, with his risk assessment and his corporate responsibility. The focus of the demonstration was changing, Dalgliesh was seeing to that. He was savvy enough to have realised that the council plan to relocate Lancaster to the street – if they ever had intended to do so – had been abandoned. That meant he needed a new target. These people had come here in a common cause but, with time passing, that was being snatched away. With nothing tangible on which to focus their anger and hatred, he needed something else to bind them. And he had found it. Rebecca stared at Chaz as he snapped away, willing him to pay attention to what was being said and not what he saw through his lens.

  Dalgliesh’s smooth, cultured voice, with just enough smoker’s grit to give it what Alan called graveltas, continued.

  ‘Now, I won’t go as far as to say that they are the enemy of the people. That would be wrong. But let me ask you this: when was the last time anyone in the media cared what happened here in the Ferry?’

  When was the last time you cared, arsehole, Rebecca thought, other than now, when there’s something in it for you?

  She listened to Dalgliesh, she couldn’t help it, but she began to move around the fringes of the crowd, her focus on her friend, who was too intent on his craft to notice that he was attracting far too much attention. One man in particular – muscular, shaved head, tattoos crawling up the back of his neck like rising damp – was staring at him intently. Rebecca didn’t like the look of that stare.

  ‘Oh, they’ll report on how this place is like hell on earth. They’ll drag your names, or your children’s names, or your neighbours’ names, through their pages and online when they are unfortunate enough to end up in court. But they will fail to recognise that most of you are honest, law-abiding Scots. To them, you’re nothing but fodder for the legal industry – and a means of filling space so they can sell advertising or suck in your licence money.’

  More faces had noted Chaz, still oblivious as he edged nearer to Dalgliesh in his search for that perfectly framed shot.

  Damn it, Chaz, look the hell around!

  As she moved, Rebecca caught a few glances in her direction too. She thought – perhaps imagined – recognition flashing in a few faces. Perhaps people who read the paper had seen her photograph, like the stranger in the bar the night before. Perhaps someone had seen her in court. That last thought hit her hard. Shit! Was there some truth in what Dalgliesh was saying? Would that notion even have entered her head if she was in one of the better areas of Inverness, like the Crown? This wasn’t the place for soul-searching, though. She was still willing Chaz to give her as much as a fleeting look so she could somehow signal that it was time to go. To hell with the story. To hell with the Ferry. It was time to get out.

  Rebecca saw Dalgliesh nod towards the walking muscle that had been eyeing Chaz. It was barely imperceptible – no one else would have noticed. Rebecca only spotted it because she was on the alert. But it confirmed to her that the guy was a Spioraid plant. She didn’t have time to pat herself on the back because the man shifted slightly towards Chaz, who was still unaware of the attention being paid to him. Rebecca cried out his name and began to run, but she was hindered by too many bodies in her way and Chaz seemed deaf to her, his eye seemingly glued to his Nikon’s viewfinder.

  Rebecca inched her way between a man and woman cheering Dalgliesh on, bumping against them slightly. She apologised. They stopped cheering and stared at her. This time there was most definitely recognition. She heard the Chronicle being mentioned. This was not good. This was not good at all.

  Chaz finally became aware that someone was at his elbow. He turned, the camera in his hands lowering slightly. He frowned, said something as if in answer to a query.

  Rebecca only had a few feet to go. She shouted, ‘Chaz!’

  This time he looked towards her. The man swivelled too, just briefly, enough to take her in, then he reached out for the camera. Chaz caught his movement and stepped back, stumbled back really, one hand snatching his Nikon away, the other manoeuvring his cane from under his arm. It was instinct, but in the long run it was a bad move because the man also saw it and his hand snapped out to catch Chaz’s wrist and jerked it and the cane higher, as if he was preventing a downward blow.

  ‘Haw, take it easy, son,’ he shouted, his Glasgow accent strong, then glanced around as faces turned. ‘Bastard photographer was takin’ my picture without permission.’

  ‘I didn’t,’ Chaz shouted, struggling against the grip.

  ‘Then when I asked him to quit it, he tried to brain me with his stick.’

  Rebecca was beside them by this time. She reached out to Chaz to show support, to communicate calm. She stared at the man oozing self-righteous anger at his privacy being invaded. It was so obviously fake and yet she feared the people now clustering round them would buy it. Passions were high. Steam was building. It needed to blow.

  ‘Let’s just all relax here,’ she said.

  ‘Relax? I didn’t come here for the media to use me to help boost their profits.’ He looked at the circle of faces now clustered around them. ‘He’s one of they press photographers, like Finbar said. They’re only interested in us when it suits them. When there’s money in it.’

  ‘Aye,’ said a woman, nodding. ‘That’s right. The only time they pay a blind bit of notice to the Ferry is if it’s crime or whatever.’

  Rebecca heard agreement from all sides. The man and woman she had nudged closed in behind her.

  ‘Bloody right,’ said the man, still holding Chaz. ‘And when I stand up for myself, for my rights, this bastard tries to pan my head in!’

  ‘I didn’t . . .’ Chaz began, but he was shouted down.

  ‘I saw ye, ya bastard!’ said another voice, male. Rebecca sought out the source, found another burly individual whose broad face was lined with belligerence and whose forehead went all the way to the nape of his neck. He could have been the first man’s twin. She suspected he was another Spioraid stooge.

  ‘They think we’re scum,’ said the woman, and Rebecca wondered if she was part of it too.

  Dalgliesh had stopped speaking and was pushing his way through the crowd towards the disturbance. So that was it, Rebecca realised: start a commotion, defuse it, become a hero.

  ‘What’s the trouble here?’ Dalgliesh said, a flick of his eye telling his man to relinquish his grip of Chaz’s arm.

  ‘This guy was taking my picture. I asked him not to. He tried to take my head off with his cane.’

  ‘Aye, and I saw him,’ said the second stooge.

  ‘Thinks we’re scum,’ the woman chimed in.

  ‘This true, friend?’ Dalgliesh oozed oily charm. ‘Were you taking this man’s photograph?’ He touched the man’s arm lightly. ‘I’m sorry. What’s your name?’

  ‘Andy,’ said the man. Yeah, and I’m Meghan Markle, Rebecca thought.

  ‘Thank you,’ Dalgliesh tilted his head in Chaz’s direction again. ‘So, were you taking Andy’s photograph?’

  ‘I was taking general shots of the demonstration,’ said Chaz. ‘We’re in a public street and I’m legally entitled to—’

  ‘Did you take Andy’s photograph?’ Dalgliesh brushed the legalities off and stuck to the main point.

  ‘Not him specifically, but—’

  ‘When he objected, did you try to strike him?’ Dalgliesh kept going. When selling a lie, don’t let the facts muddy the waters. Retain control of the narrative.

  ‘No . . .’

  ‘Lying bastard, I saw you,’ shouted the second man, the one who claimed to have witnes
sed Chaz raise his cane. He jutted forward but was stopped by Dalgliesh’s raised hand. Rebecca could tell this powerful personality act was playing well with the crowd.

  ‘Thinks we’re scum!’ The woman was now addressing everyone around her. And everyone around her agreed.

  Rebecca pulled Chaz away, but found her backward path blocked.

  ‘Okay,’ she said, more to Dalgliesh than anyone else, ‘the point has been made. No one was hurt and there’s a difference of opinion.’

  ‘Oh, a difference of opinion, was it?’ Andy’s voice was heavy with sarcasm. He’d adopted a mock English accent. She didn’t know why – Chaz spoke with a Scottish accent. ‘This little bastard invades my personal privacy—’

  ‘I did not!’ Chaz interrupted, but Rebecca silenced him with a tug of the arm.

  ‘And I’m supposed to just let him off with trying to brain me? That’s no right . . .’

  ‘Now, now, Andy.’ Dalgliesh was all slick conciliation. The man in charge. The man of the moment. Cometh the hour, cometh the man. ‘Let’s just take it easy. As the young lady said . . .’ Rebecca bristled – at the tag and the way it was said – but felt this was not the time or the place to give him a lesson in gender politics. ‘There’s no harm done. Let them get on their way.’ He looked from Rebecca back to Chaz. ‘I’m sure if Andy is in any of the photographs, you will have the decency not to use them.’

  ‘Decency?’ said the woman. ‘They know bugger all about decency. They think we’re scum. They’re the scum! Muckraking bastards, the lot of them.’

  Rebecca felt the heat rising around them, despite the freshness of the breeze. She looked from face to face, seeking a friendly expression, but in the main found only hard lines and tight mouths made even more severe by the deep contrasts thrown by the LED streetlights. She finally landed on Dalgliesh, saw his half smile, the one that told her he knew he had the upper hand. She wished she could wipe that smile from his face somehow. She wished she could say something that would turn this entire situation around, but fear had frozen her tongue. She should never have come out here, not tonight. She could have reported on it from the safety of a telephone line. She should have listened to Les. She should have talked Chaz out of coming. She should have . . .