by John Niven
‘Oh aye? Making an arse of maself is mair like it,’ Masterson said, although really he was flattered. The TV ads hadn’t run for a couple of years, but a surprising number of people still recognised him from them. He’d been dressed up in a robe and crown for them–‘the Carpet King of Scotland’. Stupid idea. Dreamed up by a couple o’ benders from that ad agency in Glasgow he’d hired. Still, folk seemed to have liked it.
‘And you have a lovely home,’ Pauline added.
‘Aye, it’s no bad fur a boy from Wilton Terrace.’
This was true: a big house like this up in the bloody Meadows for a boy from the hardest street in the town? A boy who left school at fifteen without an O level to his name? Findlay Masterson had taken his dad’s wee carpet firm and built it into the west coast of Scotland’s biggest carpet-clearance business, making himself a millionaire by the time he turned forty.
She had been sweating a little from whatever she’d been doing to entertain the kids, her brown hair sticking to her forehead. She was a fucking wee honey right enough. Stonking. And the arse on it? Ye could sit yer pint oan it, so ye could.
‘Ye look parched, hen,’ he said. ‘Are ye wanting a wee drink?’
They’d talked for a while in the kitchen while her assistant loaded all their stuff back into the silly wee jeep they’d parked next to his Mercedes. From a distance, with kids running around and having their hair ruffled, and guests coming in and out, it would have looked innocent enough. But, in Masterson’s experience, the experience of a wealthy, robustly priapic man, it never was. Sure enough, after a while–with him on his third vodka and Coke and her on her second bowl-sized glass of Chardonnay–she was laughing a little too hard at his jokes and holding his gaze a little too long. He’d been talking about how he had taken Masterson’s Carpets from eleven people in a small industrial unit to a turnover of eighteen million last year. She was talking about her own experience as a small businesswoman. It was perfectly logical that she accepted his offer–given sotto voce, when he could hear Leanne’s voice coming from far away in the house–of lunch. To discuss, in her words, ‘marketing techniques’. Ways to ‘grow the brand’.
Aye, ‘grow the brand’. She still came out wi’ shite like that now and again. But, on the other hand, here she was now in room 411, letting his prick spring out of her mouth and turning away from him, getting on all fours and pushing that incredible arse towards him, a strip of late-afternoon sunshine not quite blocked by the drawn curtains burning across her bare back.
Afterwards they lay breathing in the rented room, listening to the sounds the hotel made around them. Masterson scratched his thick moustache and sneaked a peek at his Rolex–just gone four. Did they have Sky Sports here? They did. Probably some football on the go, but would it piss her off if he turned the TV on? Birds could be funny like that. She was bound to go to the bathroom soon enough. Natural window.
He’d told Leanne he was driving over to the Ayr showroom. Stock problem. Back in time for dinner. He was starving now right enough. Could really go a toastie or something. The beasting always gave him the munchies. She pressed back against him. Surely she couldn’t, not already. But no, she was just stretching, her back was wet from where he’d…she’d said she was on the pill, mentioned it twice now, but he wasn’t taking any chances. Not Findlay Masterson. Big FM? No way, man. Negatori. No fucken danger. He’d be getting off at Paisley as usual and nae mistake. Right wee fiend for the boabby this one. Then again, Masterson reflected, weren’t they all at first? Look at his Leanne. When they first started seeing each other? Daft for cock so she was: swallowing, touching herself up while they were doing it, even, that one time, in that hotel in Edinburgh, offering to let him…But nowadays? Ye’d need tae coat the thing wi’ sugar-covered fucken diamonds just tae get it intae the cow’s mouth.
A tremor ran through his arm as Pauline’s jaw tightened into a yawn. What was she thinking about? Not about ham-and-cheese toasties and Rangers–Aberdeen, that’s for sure. Probably about her husband, the poor cunt. Ah well, Masterson thought–if he was taking care o’ business, ah’d be oot o’ business. Right, when she goes to the toilet, double whammy: room service and Sky Sports. Magic.
Such were the thoughts of carpet millionaire Findlay Masterson–a man who had never cooked a meal, read a book, relished an aspect of nature or knowingly enjoyed a piece of music in his life.
Pauline looked at the green digital numbers below the TV screen. Plenty of time–he wasn’t expecting her back until eight. An image of Gary, patting the bed shyly that morning, came back to her. Guilt. When she thought about Gary’s nature–his grinning decency, his total lack of guile–guilt was still capable of running through her. Then she thought of the extent of his ambition; to fill a house slightly bigger than the one they had now with children. The past couple of years with Kiddiewinks–with the stumbling, drunken toddlers and the screaming primary-school kids–had brought something forcefully home to Pauline. She hated children. A part of her, she thought, still loved him. And the cliché was on the money because it really did feel like a part. A component. One that was becoming increasingly redundant in the new person Pauline was setting about becoming.
She untangled herself from Masterson. In the shower she could hear the TV–football–and Masterson’s voice, him saying ‘cheese and ham’. Not his wife then. Pauline looked down and watched as warm soapy water containing tiny pearled globules of semen cascaded across her feet, between her toes and gurgled down the plughole: her adultery washed away and quickly gone, swallowed up as though it had never existed, like raindrops falling far out in the middle of the ocean.
Around the same time as Pauline stepped out of the shower, the manager of the Glasgow Argyll Street branch of Oklahoma Dan’s Discount Golf World signed for his delivery. He checked the pallets of boxes–now being loaded by two employees onto a forklift truck (inevitably a Henderson’s forklift truck)–against his inventory of ordered items and slapped a hand down on a crate just as the warehousemen went to lift it. ‘Haud on,’ he said, ‘put those over there. The Ardgirvan shop is needing baws.’ Deep within the case as it was roughly hauled from the pallet the Spaxon rolled forward in its cardboard sleeve.
It was a number 3.
8
‘SO AH SAID TAE HIM–“HO, CUNT, AH’LL BREAK YOUR fucking jaw if you speak tae me like that again. Ah don’t gie a fuck if you ur a fucking doctor.” Ah’m no kidding, Lee, ah wis raging so ah wis.’
‘Aye, he’s a fucking wank that Dr Murray,’ Lee replied with authority. Lee, a prolific and creative benefit cheat, was on intimate terms with most of the members of Ardgirvan’s medical profession. Lee suffered from facial tics, insomnia, ME and chronic fatigue syndrome. He endured bouts of migraine and disabling, non-specific fevers. He was also incontinent–a ruse that brought in an extra twenty-odd pounds a month in laundry payments.
Lee and Sammy were in a dark corner of the Bam, swapping stories. Hard men, swapping hard stories: jaws that had been/should have been/were going to be tanned. Jobs that were going to be pulled. Who was doing what to whom in the world of Ardgirvan’s underclass. Lee cast an eye around the place as Sammy talked on about the latest threat to his incapacity benefit. A couple of minor villains looked up from their pints and their tabloids and nodded respectfully to Lee, who returned the nods with a barely perceptible inclination of the head, enjoying feeling like a tuna or a barracuda amongst a shoal of sprats. Lee was afforded this measure of respect in the Bam because he was widely rumoured to have murdered the Kilwinning speed dealer Tits McGee. It was rare for someone to be tactless enough to bring the subject up but, when they did, Lee remained tight-lipped, perhaps, if it was some young bam, going as far as to say, ‘Shut yer fucking mooth. Are ye wantin’ tae get me the jile?’
Maddeningly, he’d arrived at the bar just before Sammy, so convention had dictated that Lee bought the first round. ‘Go and grab that table, wee man,’ Lee had said. The boy kind of looked up to Lee, he felt. It wouldn’t have done to let Sammy
see him picking through a pile of shrapnel to buy the drinks. They were onto the second pint now and Lee was feeling the golden glow of the lager, but with an undercurrent of sadness–this might well be the last pint until the broo cheque arrived.
‘Listen, Lee,’ Sammy said, leaning forward, moving his pint closer, indicating that the small talk was over with. ‘The boys are getting a bit fucking anxious. Ye said a key was no bother.’
‘It is nae bother, Sammy. Fur fuck sake, whit’s the fucking rush aw o’ a sudden?’
‘They’ve got that big rave through in Edinburgh coming up. They’ve got tae get it aw weighed out and cut and bagged up an aw that. It’s a fucking kilo, that’s…’ Sammy thought for a second, ‘a thousand grams.’ Sammy pictured his Glasgow pals, wee Flakey and Alan Trodden, sitting in their flat folding a thousand speed wraps. Lot of fucking work that. ‘It’s a lot of fucking work that,’ Sammy said.
‘Aye, aye. Tell them we’ll have it next week.’
‘It’s just…it’s a good score for us this. Ah don’t want them tae go tae someone else if we cannae deliver.’
‘Fuck sake, Sammy! Whit did ah just fucking say?’
‘A’right! Fucking hell. Whit’s wrang wi you?’
‘Ah’ve just got a lot oan ma fucking plate the now, OK?’
‘You and me both, pal.’
The pub doors opened, a brief flash of sunlight spilling across the filthy tiled floor, and Alec Campbell walked in with Frank ‘the Beast’ Barton.
Shite, Lee thought.
There was nothing as obvious as an intake of breath, but the rhythm of the pub changed suddenly, like the collective flick of the tail a shoal of tiny fish makes when a large predator enters their lagoon.
Alec Campbell was in his early thirties and wiry, about the same build as Lee. There the similarities ended. Alec was casually, expensively dressed. Ralph Lauren. His trainers looked like they’d come straight out of the shop. He cocked a crisp twenty at the barman, who stopped serving someone else in the middle of their order to attend to Alec. The Beast leaned on the bar, the deep scar down his face visible even in the half-light, looking like he was listening to whatever joke Alec was telling the barman, but really, Lee knew, he was scanning the room, evaluating, categorising, grading threats. Not that there was anything in the Bam that would have posed much of a threat to Alec and Frank–two great whites in this lagoon.
Alec Campbell–the heir apparent. Only one man in Ardgirvan more powerful than Alec: his father.
Ranta Campbell.
Gangster No. 1.
If Alec and Frank were great whites, what was Ranta? He was a mythical beast, a deep-sea terror that rose up once a century from dreadful depths–depths few creatures could live at–to remind men that he existed and that they should fear him.
Ranta was the Kraken.
Lee quickly weighed up his options: skulk against the wall and nurse the last of his pint with his back to the door, hoping the pair would have a quick drink and leave, or brass it out?
‘Your shout. Get them in,’ Sammy was saying, shaking his empty pint glass at Lee like a collection tin. Fuck, it was his round. Impossible to stay now.
‘Naw, Sammy, ah’ve got tae be somewhere,’ Lee said, getting up. Brass it out. Brass fucking baws.
‘A’right, pal. Give me a call when we’re sorted, eh?’
‘Aye. See ye, Sammy.’
Lee walked towards the door, composing his features into a normal hard-man expression–something approaching a relaxed scowl. Alec Campbell turned as Lee approached and their eyes met. Alec’s were dark and saying nothing.
‘A’right, Alec?’ Lee nodded.
‘Lee! The very man! How’s it going?’
‘Aye, good, Alec, good. Ah wis going tae call ye.’
‘Is that right? Ye hear that, Frank? Boy was gauin tae call us. Whit did ah tell ye? Lee’s a’right. Ah don’t care what you say.’
Frank the Beast Barton smiled. A truly terrifying sight.
‘Aye, it’s aw sorted. Ah wis just having a wee meeting there.’
‘That’s magic, Lee.’ Alec took a sip of his pint. ‘Cause as you know, our sale-or-return terms are very strict–we require either the money or the return of the goods within thirty days.’
‘Aye, Monday, Alec. Nae bother. Ah’ll see yese.’ Lee went to move past them, towards the door.
‘Ye no stay for a pint?’ Alec said.
‘Naw, Alec. Ah promised Lisa ah’d be hame early.’
‘Oh aye. Ah know how that goes. How is the lovely Lisa?’
‘She’s fine, Alec. Brand new.’
‘Tell her ah said hello.’
‘Aye. Cheers. See ye, Frank.’
The Beast didn’t reply.
‘Ye wouldnae think he had it in him, would ye?’ Alec said to Frank after the door had shut behind Lee.
‘The Tits McGee thing?’ the Beast said, casting a baleful glare around the flyblown interior of the Bam, at the hushed conversations taking place in the shadows, at the crackpot get-rich-now schemes being hatched and fermented. ‘Who knows? There’s a lot of pish talked in this toon.’ He drained his glass. ‘C’mon, drink up. We’ve that cunt lying in the boot.’
Outside on the sunny street Lee checked the time on his fake Tag. It was 1.18. Piece of shit. He checked his mobile. (Pay as you go, all credit long exhausted, it served basically as a timepiece and a way to receive calls.) Nearly five o’clock. Baws. By the time he got home, collected his spade and got up to the woods he wouldn’t have any digging time left tonight. Have to leave it till tomorrow morning. The Beast’s smile was fresh in his head as he turned and headed up the high street, quickening his pace.
Less than a mile from the Bam, in a small pebble-dash council house, Billy Douglas was celebrating his sixtieth birthday. ‘Happy birthday, Papa!’ seven-year-old Anna said self-consciously as she handed her grandfather an envelope.
‘Aww, thanks, doll! Here, give yer papa a kiss.’ Anna did so and ran away while Billy balanced his whisky and lemonade on the arm of the sofa and tore open the envelope. He pulled out a £20 voucher for Oklahoma Dan’s Discount Golf World, the new golf place up by the new bypass. (Billy had lived in Ardgirvan all his life–everything was new to him.) ‘Aww, thanks, son,’ Billy said to his son, Billy Jr, the actual buyer of the voucher. ‘Ah’m needing some new golf baws…’
9
GARY WENT TO SEE STEVIE FOR SOME COMFORT. AS ever Stevie served it up ultra cold.
‘Your problem, pal, is that the beginning, middle and end of your existence is defined by the level of your performance at a middle-class indulgence. You have no concept of political reality. If you–’ He broke off, keeping a pudgy forefinger levelled at Gary, and turned to a young couple who had approached the counter, box in hand. ‘Sorry, that’s out,’ Stevie said. They went back to browsing the shelves and Stevie turned back to/on Gary. ‘If you woke up for even a minute to think you’d realise that, like cocaine, mini-breaks and training shoes, your silly wee game is just another of the many features of late-period capitalism which is built entirely on the blood of the poor.’ Stevie was small, fat and without a visible neck. In his own words ‘a pudding, a fucking cannonball’.
‘I think–’ Gary began, but he was interrupted by the couple approaching again with another DVD box.
‘Naw,’ Stevie said, barely looking, ‘our copy of that’s scratched. That box shouldnae be oot. Sorry.’ He took the box from them, the man sighing as they headed back to the shelves again. ‘I mean,’ Stevie continued, ‘do you know that when golf was first established a single ball cost more than twice what the average St Andrews farm worker earned in a week? Think about that.’ The couple approached the counter for the third time and the man handed Stevie a third DVD box. Stevie looked at it.
‘Is this,’ he asked the guy slowly, holding the box up like a barrister might show a murder weapon to a jury, ‘how you’re going to spend your Friday night?’ The film was called Love Again, and the cover showed a hands
ome middle-aged man in a pinstriped suit and an attractive younger girl in a short skirt eyeing each other seductively across a desk.
‘Is it no any good?’ the man, about their age and nervous now, asked.
Stevie sighed. ‘Without ever having seen it let me summarise the plot for you, pal. Some lanky streak o’ faux upper-class pish plays an Oxbridge Professor of Medieval History-cum-research scientist who meets a kooky working-class toilet cleaner played by some blundering hoor of a soap actress. Against all the odds they fall in love and together they find a cure for Aids. With a soundtrack by Wet Wet fucking Wet or some other shower o’ Thatcherite bampots.’
‘The Daily Standard said it was quite good,’ the girl offered timidly.
‘The Daily Standard?’ Stevie spat the words like a curse. ‘The Daily Standard? And what do you turn to for your literary criticism? The fucking Beano? Look, I’ve got the complete works of David Mamet in here. Every film David Lynch has ever made. Films that will shake and unsettle your entire belief system. And yet you want to watch Love Again? I wouldnae force a convicted murderer tae watch this as punishment. I’d rather go for a pint with a convicted murderer than watch this fucking pish,’ he concluded, tossing the box onto the counter.
The man shrugged and turned to his girlfriend. ‘C’mon, let’s go up tae Silver Screen.’ The couple left.
‘See what I’m saying?’ Stevie continued. ‘That pair have made a terrible political decision. They think they’re just renting a wee film to watch on a Friday night, curled up on the sofa with a bottle of some Chilean Cabernet pish water and a bag o’ sweeties. But, the minute they walk up the road and hand their money to those right-wing, fear-mongering, family-values, Christian fundamentalist bastards at Silver Screen, they’re rubber-stamping censorship, repression and artistic strangulation. They’re rubber-stamping nothing less than a return to the Inquisition.’
‘I think I’m over-swinging.’