by John Niven
Lee leapt out from behind the island in the middle of the kitchen and Leanne screamed.
He was wearing a black leather jacket and a black balaclava. Like rapists wear, her mind just had time to think before he was upon her, his hand slamming over her mouth, silencing her screams, as he wrestled her to the floor, pressing something hard into her side.
‘Shut it!’ Lee said. ‘Shut yer fucking mooth!’
The pressure on her side stopped as he brought something up to her face. It was a gun. ‘If ye make a fucking noise ah’ll fucking kill ye. Right?’
Leanne was shaking, on the edge of fainting, she could feel the wine churning in her stomach, nausea rising. Her pupils were tiny, her eyes bulging out of her head like golf balls. Please, God, let me live, Leanne thought.
Lee got up, keeping the gun pointed at her, and reached into his pocket. He took out a big roll of duct tape and started tearing off a long strip.
38
GARY WAS LYING ON HIS BED IN THEIR ROOM AT THE B&B. Still wet from the shower, a towel wrapped around him as he listened to Stevie, who had taken his place in the shower, tunelessly singing ‘What You Do to Me’ by Teenage Fanclub.
Eight over par he’d finished. One of the worst rounds of the day and the worst score he’d shot since the accident. How? Apart from the atrocity in the bunker at the eighth he hadn’t really felt like he’d done much wrong. A few whiffed putts here and there and a couple of bad bounces–just half a dozen shots, but still the difference between a half-decent round and a living shithouse. The course had played tough, dry and hard, and running fast and unpredictable–like ’62 all over again Auld Bert said–with Drew Keel posting the best opening round; a three-under-par 69.
Stevie came padding out of the bathroom, a towel around his waist and another turbaned around his head. ‘Christ,’ he said, looking the catatonic Gary up and down. ‘Ah’ve left ma razor out on the sink. Just try and not get blood all over the floor when ye slash yer wrists.’
‘Eighty, Stevie. Fucking eighty.’
‘Ach–we couldnae buy a putt and you were unlucky at the Postage Stamp. That’s all.’
‘Game over.’
‘Over?’ Stevie said, lifting his towel and spraying deodorant into his crotch now. ‘Did you say over? Nothing is over until we decide it’s over! Was it over when the Germans bombed Pearl Harbor? No and–’
‘Oh shut it. I’m–hoor–finished. We won’t even make the cut.’
The Cut: out of the field of 156 players who began the competition only the lowest seventy scores from the Thursday and Friday rounds would qualify for third and fourth rounds on Saturday and Sunday.
‘So?’ Stevie said.
‘Eh?’
‘So whit the fuck? What did ye think was going tae happen here this week, pal?’ Stevie cracked open a can of beer. ‘Did you think ye were going to come here and win it? This is the Open. No the Ravenscroft Monthly Medal. Never mind making the cut, the fact that we’re here at all is a miracle. Have ye forgotten something? Two months ago you were celebrating–fucking celebrating–when you broke ninety!’
‘Aye, but–’
‘“But” ma fucking erse. Just you listen to your Uncle Stevie. Now c’mon.’ Stevie threw a pair of trousers at him. ‘Get dressed and let’s go over to the bar and get the pints in.’
‘Go out drinking? Surely I should get an early night?’
Stevie sighed. He came over and sat on the edge of Gary’s bed. ‘Gary, this is what I’m talking about. Listen to me–you are probably not going to make the cut. We might very well only have two nights of our lives as player and caddie in the Open Championship and you want to get an early night? The place is hoaching with golf groupies, TV celebrities, professional golfers. Aw manner o’ bams ripe for having the utter piss ripped out of them and you want to watch the fucking telly and have an early night?’
They looked at each other.
‘Well,’ Gary said, ‘a couple of pints couldn’t hurt…’
Lee ran from one bedroom to another, randomly pulling out drawers and emptying them all over the floor. He pocketed the odd bit of jewellery, some cash he found in a bedside cabinet. His heart, amplified by the card-edge of cocaine he’d snuffled up while waiting in the woods, was pounding and his mouth was dry.
He ran into the bathroom–bigger than his fucking living room–and stood there, thinking for a second. He opened the medicine cabinet and ran a gloved hand along the shelves, sending toiletries and medicines clattering into the sink and onto the floor. ‘Mrs L. Masterson. Valium 10mg.’ He pocketed it and looked up. On the wall was a family photograph, the hoor from downstairs, her husband and a couple of weans. The husband cunt had a big Magnum PI-style tache. He looked vaguely familiar to Lee.
He ran back downstairs, looking at his watch. The whole thing had taken less than ten minutes. Breathing hard, Lee skidded back into the kitchen.
Leanne was duct-taped to a wooden chair he’d dragged in from the dining room. A strip of silver tape across her mouth too. It was a hot night and she was covered with a sheen of sweat. Lee was sweating too under the balaclava as, with trembling hands, he flipped the small revolver open and checked the chamber.
Six bullets–gold nuggets of death the size of peanuts.
Three grand–for him, Lisa and the weans.
One obstacle–squirming in a chair in front of him.
He snapped the gun shut and walked up to Leanne.
‘Ah’m sorry about this,’ Lee said as he brought the gun up to her forehead. His voice was cracked and broken and his hands were shaking. Leanne was really struggling now, her eyes bulging like mad and muffled, desperate noises coming from beneath the tape as she tried to talk, her cheeks puffing rapidly in and out and her nostrils flaring.
Lee tried to press the stumpy barrel against her forehead but she was writhing and twisting, turning away, trying to shout something, trying to tuck her head into her chest, trying to shrink, to disappear. Lee stepped back and pointed the gun at the crown of her head. He pulled the hammer back with his thumb. He rested his finger on the trigger. An ounce of pressure would do it.
A long moment passed, Leanne crying, Lee’s head pounding as he fought to clear it of a barrage of images, one in particular recurring and recurring, impossible to shake.
‘I’m really sorry,’ Lee said.
DAY TWO OF THE OPEN CHAMPIONSHIP
39
SOMETIMES IT SEEMS LIKE GOLF JUST DECIDES AND IT has nothing to do with the player. Sometimes you can do all the preparation in the world–hours of practice with every club in the bag, fine-tuning every aspect of swing, body and mind–and you step onto the course and spray the ball all over the place.
Then, on other days, you turn up tired and rusty, stumbling out of bed just in time to make it onto the first tee as your name is called, and the ball goes where you want it to every time. The pitches check where they should and the putts drop.
Today was turning out to be one of those days.
‘Christ, look what the facking cat dragged in…’ Coffey had said as Gary stumbled bleary-eyed onto the tee. He’d been right: a ‘couple o’ pints’ hadn’t hurt at all. Neither had the two bottles of wine with dinner in the clubhouse. Nor the whisky and Cokes they’d moved onto afterwards. Nor the tequila slammers…
Gary could feel his brain tapping against the inside of his skull as he moved his head. Make the cut? He only cared about playing the first few holes without fainting. Birdies? He was just thinking about surviving each swing of the club. As anyone who understands the psychological intricacies of golf will tell you, this is just about the perfect mental state in which to play the sport.
He birdied the first, second and third and–just to be different–eagled the par five fourth, hitting a towering 230-yard three-iron onto the green and holing a slippery, downhill thirty-footer.
Five under par for the round after four holes. Down to three over for the tournament. Word got around the course that the local boy was playing so
me golf and by the time they got to the seventh green, his loyal gallery–Cathy and Sadie, April, Dr Robertson and Bert–had been swollen by a couple of dozen golf fans.
Among them was Nick Parr, one of the BBC’s on-course reporters. Parr had been roaming the fairways with his hand-held mike and cameraman, looking for anything interesting happening before the big guns teed off in an hour or so. When Gary’s birdie putt on the seventh also smacked straight into the centre of the cup, taking him to six under for the round, Parr looked at the name on the red bib Stevie was wearing. ‘IRVINE’ it said. He ran a finger down his player sheet. ‘Irvine, Gary (A), Ravenscroft G.C. Ardgirvan.’ A local boy then.
‘Excuse me,’ Parr said to the small woman in the blue sweater who was jumping up and down and cheering, ‘do you know that lad?’
‘That’s my son!’ Cathy shrieked delightedly. ‘That’s his fourth birdie so far! And an eagle at the fourth!’
‘Really?’ Parr said.
As Cathy and Sadie hurried off, following the others towards the eighth tee, Parr spoke into his headset microphone to his producer Debbie Reynolds, who was in the BBC’s mobile studio parked at the media centre. ‘Debbie? It’s Nick. You might want to have a look at the eighth. Local boy making a bit of a run of it. Six under after the first seven.’
‘OK, thanks, Nick.’
As Gary climbed the worn, wooden steps onto the Postage Stamp tee the black lenses of the cameras dotted around the green swivelled up to frame him.
‘Rowland? Bob? Have a look at this,’ Reynolds said into her microphone.
In the BBC commentary box overlooking the first and eighteenth fairways Rowland Daventry and Bob Torrent, the BBC’s stalwart commentators, jotted down a few notes as she filled them in–Gary’s score today, the day before, his home club, etc.
‘OK, Debbie, got it,’ Daventry said.
‘Let’s go then,’ Debbie said. ‘Cameras 14, 12 and 21.’ The red lights on the cameras around the Postage Stamp lit up and Gary Irvine made his first ever TV appearance.
‘Over to the eighth tee now, the famous Postage Stamp,’ Daventry purred on-air as a shot of Gary conferring with Stevie over the yardage book filled the screen. ‘Claimed many a victim over the years. Bob, you’ll remember Herman Tissies, the German player.’
In the control booth Reynolds heard the word ‘German’ and held her breath, thinking, don’t do the accent, don’t do the accent…’
‘Oh yes,’ Bob said.
‘Made a fifteen here, back in 1950 I think it was.’
‘That’s right. Out of one bunker, back into another…’
‘Und for him, ze war vas over!’ Daventry said.
Reynolds closed her eyes. ‘Oh shit,’ someone said as the control-room staff started taking bets on how many calls of complaint there would be–a favourite sport whenever Daventry was live.
‘Anyway,’ Daventry continued as Gary began teeing his ball up, ‘let’s see if this young fellow can do better than old Herman the German. Name of Gary Irvine–och aye, good Scottish name that–local lad, one of the very few amateur players who made it through the qualifying process, comes from Ardgirvan just up the road. Some wonderful courses between here and there, Glasgow Gailes, Prestwick…’
In his den up in the loft, with the Racing Post in his lap and a mug of tea in his hand, Ranta turned the volume up as a shot of Gary lining up his shot filled the huge flat screen.
‘…real golfing country,’ Daventry continued. ‘Now, I’m just reading that he made an eight here yesterday, not so good. But he’s going great guns this morning. Six under par through seven holes. Let’s see if he can keep it up.’
A hush now as Gary settled the clubhead–a nine-iron today, the wind stronger in his face and the pin at the back of the green–behind the ball.
He swung. Hard.
‘Smoke ma dobber,’ Stevie said, unaware that millions of viewers were hearing him, as the perfectly struck shot rocketed off dead on line. The camera swung up off the tee, tracking Gary’s ball as it sailed high into the blue.
‘He’s given that some,’ Daventry said.
The TV coverage cut to a second camera positioned at the side of the green. Two seconds passed and then the ball smacked down twelve feet past and a couple of feet to the right of the hole.
‘Sit down!’ Gary barked.
The ball bit hard into the turf and spun back and to the left, the moan of the crowd rising in pitch as it trickled back down towards the hole, tracking, tracking.
‘I say,’ Daventry said.
‘Come oan, come oan, ya fucking…’ Ranta said, on the edge of his seat now.
‘Shit, that’s close,’ Coffey whispered to Koon.
The ball grazed the hole and curled around it, finally coming to rest an inch from the lip.
‘OOH YA FUCKING HOOR YE!’ Ranta screamed, fist pumping.
‘Well, well, well,’ Daventry said as Gary, smiling, picked up his tee peg. ‘Must have had his porridge this morning…’
Ranta looked at Gary’s smiling face on his TV screen and felt a tingle between his shoulder blades, a sensation familiar to all gamblers.
A hunch forming.
Findlay Masterson pulled into his driveway and turned the engine off. ‘Right,’ he said, breathing in deeply.
He went through his strategy: go in, see the body, run out screaming and hysterical, find one of the neighbours, get them to call the police and take it from there. He’d come home from a trip to Glasgow to visit his son, he’d walked into the house to find that the place had been burgled and his wife had been shot dead. No, how would he know she’d been shot? He just found her lying there in a pool of blood. Don’t plan it too much. He had a rock-solid alibi. He’d be fine. Breathe deeply. Breathe deeply.
He got out the car and walked to the front door. He put his key in the lock, his hand shaking badly.
He stepped into the hallway and put his bag down. It was quiet.
He walked slowly down the hall, glancing left into the living room. Nothing there. All neat and tidy. He swallowed, took a deep breath and turned into the kitchen.
There, on a kitchen chair, was his wife.
She was eating a sandwich.
‘Hi there,’ Leanne said. ‘Did ye have a nice time?’
Ranta was putting his jacket on and looking for his car keys when his mobile rang.
‘Aye?’
‘It didnae happen,’ Masterson barked.
‘Eh?’
‘That thing that was meant tae happen? That thing that cost me fifteen fucking grand? It didnae fucking happen.’ Masterson punched the roof of his car in frustration.
‘Is that right?’ Ranta said calmly.
‘Aye it’s fucking right.’
‘Well, I’ll have to look into that.’
‘You fucking better.’
‘Findlay?’ Ranta said, very, very calm now.
‘Whit?’
‘Ah’m sensing how upset ye are, and ah’ll find out what’s happened, but do yourself a favour, eh? Don’t forget who you’re speaking to here.’
Ranta hung up and dialled Alec. He got voicemail.
‘Alec? We’ve a wee problem. Phone us back on the mobile. Ah’m away over tae Troon tae catch a bit o’ the golf. Looks like this boy fae around the corner is playing up a storm.’
40
‘AND HOW MANY NIGHTS WILL YOU BE STAYING FOR?’
‘Ah, er, jist the wan, hen.’
The receptionist did her thing with the computer and Lee shuffled about uncomfortably. He wasn’t used to places like this. The Glasgow Radisson was a big modern hotel with a facade of distressed copper, airy open public spaces, neat, minimalist bedrooms and views over the River Clyde. None of these, however, were factors in Lee’s choosing the place. It had simply been the first hotel he’d come upon when he stumbled out of Central Station.
It had been an uncomfortable night for the elder Irvine brother. He’d scrambled his way down through the woods in the dark, tripping and fa
lling and cutting himself many times. He’d got back to his car to find that during one of these falls he’d lost his car keys. Cursing and swearing, his eyes still raw from the crying fit, he’d walked alongside the dual carriageway in the dark–jumping back into the ditch when the odd set of white lights came roaring by in the night–until he got to the big roundabout.
‘Newspaper in the morning?’ the receptionist was asking.
‘Er, naw, hen.’
He’d followed the main road down into town. Avoiding the mall and the town centre, he’d cut along the riverbank and over the old iron bridge, finally arriving at Ardgirvan train station just before dawn. Then a shivering hour in the icy waiting room before the first train to Glasgow pulled in at 5.30 a.m.
‘If I could just take an imprint of a credit card?’
‘Naw, ah don’t…ah’ll pay cash, hen.’ Lee flattened the notes on the counter with filthy, scratched hands.
‘You’re in 501 on the fifth floor. Just turn left when you come out of the lift. Oh, do you have any bags?’
‘Er, naw. Travelling light. Thanks, doll.’
Under the stinging, reviving needles of the shower Lee began to think.
He really was in deep shit now.
Out of the shower, wet, a towel wrapped around him as he smoked a cigarette, he sat down on the edge of the bed, picked up the phone and dialled Lisa’s mobile. She answered on the second ring.
‘It’s me, hen.’
He let her shout and scream and swear for a few seconds. When she paused for breath he said, ‘Listen tae me, listen,’ but she was off again.
‘Ya fucking bastard, where the fuck were ye last night, eh? Ah’m hame maself wi three weans while you’re oot doing fuck knows whit and no even a phone call tae l—’
‘LISA! FUCKING SHUT IT AND LISTEN TAE ME!’ The line went quiet. ‘Listen,’ Lee continued, ‘ah’m in trouble, right? Ah cannae explain now. Naw, just listen. Upstairs, in ma sock drawer, away in the back left-hand corner, there’s aboot a grand in there. Take the money and get the weans and go and stay wi your cousin May doon in Galashiels, a’right?’