Terms of Restitution

by Denzil Meyrick

  ‘Don’t bother with coffee or anything,’ said Maggie.

  ‘I’m afraid I’ve nothing as fancy as green tea or soda. So many people now are giving up coffee; I couldn’t live without it.’

  ‘Och, I’ve not given it up. No, I need something stronger. Some of that brandy you’re so fond of would go down a treat, right now.’

  He poured her a large measure and handed it to her in a balloon glass.

  ‘This is like a football.’

  ‘It allows the spirit to breathe. Helps you to catch the aroma.’

  ‘I’m going to drink it, not spray it under my oxters.’

  As he laughed, he tried to remember the last time he had done so. Perhaps at a comedy on the wireless, or maybe something he’d read in a book. But Maggie Finn always made him laugh in a way nothing else could.

  ‘No laughing for me today.’ She stared into the glass like a fortune teller. ‘In fact, I’ve not had much to laugh about for a while now.’

  ‘I know life has been hard. But everything is sent to test us.’

  ‘Aye, tell that to Malky Maloney’s wife and wean. I’m quite sure they’re not laughing either.’

  ‘It is tragic.’ He paused.

  ‘But he deserved it. That’s what you really think.’

  ‘No one deserves this fate, whatever their sins. Sin breeds more sin. The world is weighed down by it all. But there is little we can do but pray and help where we can. We can live our lives under our Lord as purely and honestly as our existence permits. It is not for men – or women – to judge, to punish. That is the Lord’s business.’

  ‘So me and you will be up in the front of the queue when the big day come, eh?’

  Father Giordano smiled. His past sins flashed before his mind’s eye, like a film being played at high speed. The faces, people, places all spiralling into one great black pit of despair. It was strange, he thought, how this woman could awaken such emotion in him. These were feelings, memories he normally kept under control. But not with her; no, never with Margaret Finn. It was impossible.

  ‘He’s been here, I take it?’ Maggie asked. ‘Since he came back, I mean.’

  ‘Yes, he has been here.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘What do you want me to say?’

  ‘What do you think? Is he better or worse? I’m buggered if I can tell.’

  ‘He is neither better nor worse; he is merely himself.’

  ‘I’d forgotten about all the riddles. What on earth does that mean?’

  ‘When he was persuaded to leave here, he became a different man – a better man. But now that he is back, his sins have multiplied. However, he is still the same man. He – like us all – does what he thinks is best. I believe he came back for the right reasons. It’s just these reasons have consequences – like everything in life.’

  Maggie glugged back the brandy. It tasted good and already she felt more at ease. That could have been the mollifying effects of the alcohol, or just being in this place with this man – maybe a mixture of both. But she had sought solace and it had been found. ‘Things are going to get worse. You know that. Especially after what has happened to Malky.’

  ‘I told your son as much when he visited.’

  ‘My son?’

  For moments, they just stared at each other.

  ‘I don’t want to see Alexander hanging off a bridge somewhere. I’ve lost too much already.’

  ‘No. None of us want to see this.’

  ‘So, I shall leave it all in your capable hands?’

  How long had it been? He realised now how much he still missed her. ‘I will do my best for his soul, Maggie.’

  ‘I know you’ll do what’s right, Father.’ Maggie Finn downed what was left of the spirit in one gulp. ‘Here, that was good, eh?’

  ‘I’m pleased you liked it.’

  She held out her glass. ‘I wouldn’t say no to a refill.’

  ‘So you don’t want to confess?’

  ‘I will if you will,’ Maggie replied, with a smile.

  *

  Donnie had gone, leaving Finn alone again. He had opened another bottle of whisky and already a quarter of its contents were gone.

  He knew he had to think, to give himself time. Suddenly he felt tired, really tired.

  He was lying on his bed now. It felt warm, the same brief feeling he’d experienced on wakening that morning. He felt light, as though all his cares, and sadness, had disappeared. His body was like a freed spirit. He moved easily from the bed across to the long wardrobe. Finn stood, staring at himself in its mirrored door. He was an old man. He saw grey hair and wrinkles he didn’t recall noticing the last time he’d looked.

  But there was something else. As he moved his face nearer the glass he could see the world reflected in his own eyes; first a round blue sphere with clouds scudding across its surface. Then he felt a sensation as though he was tumbling through the air, being pulled towards the earth. The rush roared in his ears, but he landed without sound, like a feather on stone.

  An old man shuffled into sight. He was pulling a tartan shopping trolley, like something Finn’s granny had used. The figure was walking away, a slow, deliberate, painful trudge, as though every step was a monumental effort. Finn could see that the bottom of the trolley had ripped open. Things – all this man owned, for all he knew – were tumbling onto the ground.

  ‘Stop!’ he shouted. And the old man did. He turned to face the voice that had called him to a halt.

  Just as Finn was about to speak, the old man’s face became visible; but it wasn’t an elderly countenance, the features were young: pink cheeks and youthful stubble, his eyes alive with hope for the future. It was the face of someone unencumbered by thoughts of his own demise, a damnation that plagued everyone the older they became. There were no visions of gravestones, pallbearers, cold earth or blazing funeral pyres. This was a face full of wonder, excitement at a world still to be explored, to be conquered.

  Finn reached out to touch him, but in that instant the face began to spark and was soon lost behind a mask of flame. Like a match it flared, soon leaving behind nothing but a blackened oval, a mouth moving with nothing to say, all signs of youth and hope burned beyond recognition, extinguished.

  The figure began to collapse on itself like a pile of black ash.

  He felt a tug at his leg. Finn looked down. ‘Sandra!’ He recognised the little blue dress he’d bought for her sixth birthday.

  ‘Come here, Daddy.’ Her tiny voice was insistent as she pulled at his sleeve. He watched as Sandra put her shoulder to the sliding door, pushing for all she was worth.

  ‘Darling, don’t,’ he heard himself say. But, as though she was pleased with her efforts, she stood and smiled, holding out her hand like someone welcoming a guest inside their home.

  With a rush, the long door of the big wardrobe slid fully open. He stood silent, then let out a scream, a scream that made the glass of the windows shatter.

  Looking at him was a corpse. His father was hanging from an oversized coat hanger, his face just as Finn remembered. The wooden hilt of a blade protruding from his stomach was slowly disappearing inside him. It was almost as though its blood-slathered length had been consumed by the very man who’d given him life.

  ‘Look,’ said the dead man, pointing.

  Finn’s gaze followed the direction of his dead father’s finger. A young boy was keeping up a football. The boy stared at him and smiled. But before Finn could move towards him, his head fell forward. It was the head of his son, Danny, a neat quarter of his face missing, bouncing up and down off the boy’s foot, as blood, brains and gore spread up his leg.

  A figure fell in front of his vision. Malky Maloney swayed in the air, staring at him through empty black eye sockets, from which black blood streamed like newly tapped oil. He was speaking, but not through his mouth; his voice issued from the gaping slash in his throat.

  ‘I’m glad you came back. This one’s on me, Zan.’

  Finn sat bol
t upright, scattering the glass from his lap and knocking over the whisky bottle, which glugged out its contents over the parquet floor.

  His phone was ringing.

  Still gasping for breath, sweat lashing from his forehead, he reached into his pocket.

  ‘Dad, it’s me. I’m sorry about Malky. I’m so sorry about everything.’

  ‘Gillian.’ Zander Finn’s voice was just a whisper. ‘Why didn’t you come to me? You wouldn’t even let me come and see you. How are you? Why did you try to kill yourself?’

  ‘Dad, I didn’t know what you would do.’

  ‘In what way?’

  ‘In any way.’

  ‘Listen, where are you? I’ll get someone to pick you up. I want you here with me, Gillian.’

  ‘I’m still in hospital but they’re going to discharge me soon. I’m going home, I’ll be fine.’

  ‘No, I need you here. Please.’

  Gillian wasn’t used to hearing a tremble in her father’s voice, but she heard it now. ‘Okay. I’m at the Queen Elizabeth. If someone is here in an hour, it should be okay.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  Gillian was sure she could hear her father sob as he put the phone down. She stared at the device for a moment. Was everything she’d been so sure of just a lie, a façade?

  At the moment, nothing made sense to Gillian Finn.

  30

  1986

  Paisley

  William Finn was in the Wee Howff. He liked the tiny bar; it made him feel safe. In such a confined space, what could go wrong?’

  Denny MacBride was prattling on as usual but, with the help of whisky and the thought of hard-earned cash in his pocket, all was right with his world. This feeling had grown in recent years, burgeoned like spring flowers. In the beginning it had all been much harder.

  He’d worked at Chrysler for a while, been a bouncer at a few clubs; he’d even tried his hand at welding. But for Willie Finn, very little seemed to stick; he either became bored, or his fondness for drink led to summary dismissal for the days he’d been late or hadn’t bothered to turn up at all.

  It became apparent to him reasonably early on in adulthood that a normal life was not the way he would roll. The alternative was to go to Australia or Canada. He had family in both places. But the more he considered this, the less enamoured he became of the prospect. And in any case, he’d just take his old problems with him. After all, someone who liked a drink and kept late hours was hardly going to be changed by a new continent.

  There was only one obvious way out: crime.

  Willie was big, tall and broad-shouldered. In his early twenties, when most of the men his age still bore the flimsiness of youth, looking painfully thin, pale and mostly undernourished, he was the opposite. He’d always been told that a man didn’t really become a man until he was thirty. Whatever the truth of this, he worked hard to make sure his ascent to manhood was accelerated.

  The fact of his height was an accident of birth. Many of his peers were short. They were the product of generations of the hard work, poor living conditions and malnutrition suffered by working-class families across Scotland’s big cities and towns. So, to be nearly six foot three by the time he was eighteen made him stand out. He’d augmented this with regular trips to a boxing gym. Subsequently, he’d broadened out, with arms like tree trunks, knotted with hard muscle.

  Work on the doors of nightclubs in Paisley and Glasgow had brought him into contact with the criminal fraternity. First he was employed as an intimidating figure to go and collect money. Then he graduated to administering the odd hiding or two. Soon, he was supplied with a gun and became an armed robber.

  He was lucky. He’d been arrested on numerous occasions, but charges never seemed to stick. Having a clever, if – in his opinion – overly pious wife, he’d managed to strike out into the world of legitimate business, though his main source of income was still derived from nefarious activities, despite his wife’s protestations.

  He’d started Chancellor Fabrications at Maggie’s insistence, with a few welders, strays from the declining ship-building industry on the Clyde, and some old acquaintances. Soon they were making garden fences, gates – even jobs for the council. He had a good man managing the place, and he was much better at being a boss than he had been a mere hombre. Though his wife kept nagging him to give up crime, the money was too good, and tax-free. What she didn’t understand was that it wasn’t all about the money, though that was a big draw. He liked the danger. Like any gambler, he was addicted to the thrill, whether it be battering somebody’s face against a wall or pointing a gun into the chest of another.

  They had a nice home in Renfrew, and his son was growing up to be a clever, if somewhat lippy, young man. That, he’d taken from his mother. He saw it in the boy’s eyes the day he’d been born, and Willie Finn had been right.

  ‘Come on,’ said Denny MacBride. ‘We’ll get a chippie at Tottie’s, then jump a cab to the Paddle Wheel. At least that way we’ll be near enough home to stagger back. Mind, we got a lock-in the last time we was in.’

  Willie Finn had to agree with this sentiment. They were already half pissed and he could feel the ‘drink hunger’ cloying at his empty stomach.

  ‘Aye, come on, we’ll neck these and get a fish supper and hit the Paddle Wheel. That was a wee cracker behind the bar, last week, eh?’

  ‘Aye. But mind you’re a married man, Willie. Maggie would have your balls as ornaments on the mantelpiece if you was to try it on with another bint.’

  ‘Ach, I’m thirty-eight years old, man. I can think for myself. Anyway, not as though it’s the first, eh?’

  They drank up and said their goodbyes to the other drinkers: a slap on the back here, a friendly rub on the head there.

  Walking out into the cool of a Paisley evening soon brought on the desperate need to pee in Willie Finn. ‘Here, you go up and place the order. I’m going doon the lane here for a pish. Mind and get me a single pie as well as a fish supper.’

  ‘You’re a greedy bastard, Willie,’ said MacBride, as he staggered further up the street.

  ‘Aye, and don’t forget to get plenty of salt and pepper, too.’ He turned down a dark lane and was soon leaning somewhat unsteadily against a wall with one hand while a flow of urine splashed off the wall. Finished, he shook himself dry and sighed with relief. Nothing better than a good pee when you’d had a few drinks.

  Willie Finn was zipping up his trousers when he heard movement further down the lane. ‘Hey, MacBride, is that you?’

  There was no reply. But all of a sudden the dark figure was upon him. The last thing he thought he saw was a flash of steel, before a blade was rammed into his stomach and jerked expertly upwards, scraping his ribcage.

  The world soon spun before Willie Finn fell in a puddle of his own urine.

  *

  Zander Finn didn’t know why he was thinking about his long-dead father so much these days. Perhaps it was just part of getting older. Tears came to his eyes when he recalled how badly Malky Maloney had taken his mother’s death. Again he saw the gruesome face swing before his eyes on the small screen on the police launch in the Clyde.

  His father had been cruel; he knew that. He was cruel to his mother, his employees, his family – just about anyone who crossed his path. But the blood was strong, he reasoned. Though, apart from his height, he and Willie Finn shared little in common. They could both do what had to be done, but for Zander it was a last resort. His father seemingly had taken great pleasure in dolling out a beating to one unfortunate or another.

  Even as a child he’d wondered why his mother was so clumsy. She regularly had black eyes, where her face had connected with a cabinet or door. She seemed to break her wrists a lot, too. Looking back, he’d known about his father’s brutality towards her long before he’d walked in on them when he was thirteen. He remembered desperately trying to pull his father off, hitting him as hard as he could on the back in the process. But it was like a wasp stinging a whale. His father ca
rried on, as though his son wasn’t there. Worse still, once he’d finished with his wife, Zander felt the force of his wrath, ending up with a broken nose for his pains.

  In those days, only Father Giordano could soothe his troubled soul. He was wise and kind. But as the youthful Zander Finn sat in front of him with the huge plaster across his nose, placed there by the doctor to protect it after being reset, he saw something else in the Italian. There was more than just compassion; there was sorrow too behind his large brown eyes. He saw what he thought was real anger.

  It was the first time he’d tasted brandy. His parish priest was a practical and pragmatic man. He’d calmed the panic and shame the young man in front of him felt by administering what was literally a medicinal measure.

  ‘Drink is one of man’s great pleasures, Alexander,’ he remembered Father Giordano say. ‘But it can easily turn into his worst affliction. Use it wisely.’

  Though Finn hadn’t adhered rigidly to this maxim, those words stayed with him.

  Now, looking round the mess of broken glass and empty whisky bottles, he realised that he better tidy up before his daughter arrived. He rushed to shower, brush his teeth. He was determined to make himself presentable for Gillian, despite the banging in his head and the rock in his stomach.

  After he towelled himself down and changed, he had a dash round with a large black bin liner. The place at least looked better, and he felt it.

  His phone rang: Davie Kelly. If anyone could find out who had killed Malky, he could. ‘Well?’

  ‘Not Big Joe – at least, none of his men. Our friend over there confirmed that.’

  ‘Can you trust him?’

  ‘Oh, aye. He’s shit scared since we poured that petrol over him the last time. Plus, I gave him a decent bung. It’s a double incentive.’

  ‘The Albanians.’

  ‘Looks like it, Zander.’

  ‘Retaliation?’

  ‘For the guy that wasn’t the guy?’

  ‘Aye, the man with the toilets.’