by Heleen Kist
Later, when Dave came to pick up his keys, I asked him to stay. We pussy-footed around my predicament, talking about his day and deciding on what to have for dinner, but it was a topic that could not be avoided for long.
‘I have a plan,’ I announced, as we chopped vegetables side by side. ‘But I sort of feel I should get your permission.’
‘How so?’
‘These guys are dangerous. You said so yourself. So I want to get rid of them. Make the whole thing go away. I want to pay the wholesaler off and keep my fingers clean.’
‘I see. How much are we talking?’
‘A lot. And this is where you come in ... I need to use what I’ve saved up for the flat.’
He dropped the heavy knife onto the chopping board and took a step away. ‘Shit Grace, that money’s important. We’ll be back to square one.’
‘Well where else will I get it? I won’t touch the laundered money,’ I said, stopping midway through a courgette. ‘Don’t look at me like that. Even if I wanted to, I can’t access the accounts. I’ve only got the shoe box that hasn’t been through the books. That’s him basically getting her cut back. It’s peanuts. The rest will have to come from me. It might not be as much as he would get if I did what he wanted, but it would be clean money, free, through the bank. That’s got to be attractive for him.’
I’d mulled the transaction over a whole day: the amount, the motivations, what to say. But I was clearly failing to convince Dave, who stood watching me prepare our meal with his arms crossed.
‘Why is this your problem? Why do you need to be the hero?’
‘If you can’t understand why I need to save my dead sister’s family from misery, you don’t know me.’ That accusation felt unfair even as I said it. I’d never told him about the day Glory almost died. The day that triggered a childhood anxiety it had taken years of practice in emotional repression to overcome. ‘I saved Glory’s life once ... and there’s this Chinese expression, “if you save a life, you’re responsible for it.” Well that’s me.’ I grinned apologetically.
He cocked his head. ‘What happened?’
‘It was the summer I was twelve. It was really warm and our friend Alice’s parents had taken us to Moncrieffe Island for the day to swim. Mum never liked going there because it was too visible from town to be in our swimmies. It’s right across the bridge from one of the main streets; a little island right in the middle of the river. Anyway, this is the Tay, so it’s cold and you have to be careful. But it’s shallow if you stick by the main bit where other families were, too. At one point, this boy starts splashing Glory and, as far as I can tell, she thinks it’s fun. She’s giggling; saying, “Stop it,” but in that way I could tell she didn’t mean it.’ I took a sip of water before continuing, cooling the heat in my temples brought on by troubled memories. ‘Then next thing I know, I see the boy returning to land to retrieve his ball, but not Glory. And the panic rises. I don’t see her. I call out her name and everyone starts to pay attention. The current was strong further up, but I didn’t hesitate and swam on. I caught her around the first bend of the river as she was being dragged away. I managed to grab hold of a thick branch with one arm while clutching the shoulder strap of her costume with the other. I thought I was going to be torn in two. And Gi was screaming my name ...’
‘Oh my God, you must have been so frightened.’
‘The grown-ups got us out. Dragged us to shore. Glory was shaken but okay. Probably loving the drama. Me, I threw up then walked over to that boy. And it was like I was a big ball of energy that needed to explode, you know? So I punched him.’
‘You punched him?’ Dave asked, laughing and looking horrified in equal measure.
‘Yes, and hard too. I wasn’t sure what he’d done, but the little fucker must have deserved it.’
‘Woah. Remind me never to mess with you.’
‘Oh, ha ha. So now you know ...’ I tossed him an onion, hoping he now understood, hoping I’d attracted him on side. ‘Here, there’s work to be done.’
A moment later, he asked, ‘So what is it you want to do?’
‘I want to pay the wholesaler off so we can be done with this. No-one will find out. It will be over, and you and I will manage. I don’t need your blessing to spend my money. I just hoped you would give it.’
‘Okay, fair enough. I understand that. And it might work. But if you think he killed Glory, isn’t that like letting him get away with it?’
‘I don’t think he killed Glory, I know he did. But I can’t prove it. I’ll never have proof. There is no CCTV, no nothing. It kills me, but I’m resigned to the fact we will never get justice.’ Suppressing a sob, I placed my mountain of cuttings into a sieve and held it under the tap, my face cooling above the spray. ‘Babe, I’ve spent a lot of time on this. There is no way to make him go down without dragging us with him. Let me at least try this. Worst case he says “no” and we consider our alternatives again.’
‘But you’ve done nothing wrong. Stephen’s done nothing wrong. So why is going to the police so bad? You can explain you weren’t involved. It was all her. Your accountant chap can vouch for you. You’re a lovely white lady from Perth with no previous convictions. The police would believe whatever you say. Trust me, it’s only Gorbals scum like me they don’t give a fair hearing.’
He wiped his teary eyes and sniffed. It was the onions. But seeing him cry made me wonder how he’d coped when they’d locked him up for two weeks. What had he called it when he first told me about it? ‘A harshly punished error in judgement.’ Him only a teenager. His one and only time thieving, he’d assured me. Straight as an arrow ever since.
‘Even assuming that’s the truth,’ I said. ‘I haven’t told you this yet, but Stephen granted her landlord planning permission against the rules. If they figure that out, he could lose his job and what does that do to the boys? Would that be fair?’
His eyes widened. He shook his head and frowned. ‘No, of course not.’ He seemed to mull over this new piece of evidence. He pointed his knife at me. ‘Fine, we’ll do it your way. But I’m coming with you.’
‘Good.’ I lowered his utensil-cum-weapon. ‘I’m scared. I’ve been threatened enough and, lest we forget, he murdered Glory because she wanted to expose him.’
‘You don’t know that for sure.’
‘Ah, but I do.’ I wiped my hands on the tea towel and fetched the phone from beside the sofa, opening the saved album as I pressed the mobile into his hands. ‘Why else would she be taking these pictures? Look. Glory took all these photos of his guys moving boxes. She was documenting his dealings. These could all hold money. Don’t you see? She must have planned to hand this in. Maybe she’d gone to the cops after all, and they’d asked for more evidence. Maybe she hadn’t gone yet. We can’t very well go in and ask.’
He studied the photos, zooming in on a few to explore the detail, but when the last, couply ones appeared, his demeanour changed. ‘Or she was helping him.’ His voice dripped with contempt. ‘This doesn’t strike me as someone afraid for her life.’
‘He’s a monster. How can you even suggest she’d have anything to do with him?’
‘Because your sister liked attention. Correction. She liked attention from men. And from what I can see, she’s getting plenty of it.’ He held the device to my face, Glory and Mike’s smiles amplified by a reflected kitchen spot light. I swatted it away, irritated that I still didn’t understand what the hell Glory had been up to; irritated that she’d let herself be photographed in such a compromising way; irritated this was sabotaging my perfectly logical case.
‘That’s disgusting.’ I tried hard to unsee Mike’s hand resting on her knee.
‘Sweetheart, I know you don’t want to hear it. But think about it. It’s conceivable, isn’t it?’
For a split second, I considered the possibility that my sister had been a gangster-banging slut, leading a criminal double life in which she deviously implicated me— her loving sister—to keep her own fingers cl
ean, while plotting to fund her escape from domestic boredom with ill-gotten gains. This fantasy brought a strange sense of relief: for that small moment, I was off the hook. I could drop her. I could move on with my life. But I shook my head. No. She was a victim, after all.
Dave sighed and placed his arm around my shoulders, still holding the phone, and gave me a gentle squeeze. I thought it was to commiserate on my ordeal, but he was preparing me for the next blow. ‘I wasn’t going to tell you, but she even tried to seduce me once.’
‘What? No. That’s not true.’
‘Okay,’ he acceded. ‘She wasn’t really interested in me. She was only persuading to get me to tell her what happened between me and Stephen when we were kids. She saw me here once and was all flirty, like, batting her big blue eyes and playing with her hair. Desperate to find out.’
‘She’s not the only one.’ I humphed and wriggled out from under his arm. ‘So what did happen with Stephen?’
His eyes hardened. ‘He got used and betrayed by a woman. Like now.’
He tossed the phone onto the worktop in disgust, freeing his hand to pull at his neck in a stretch. I stood motionless while he seemed to consider his options.
‘Have you got any beer?’ he said.
Was he finally going to tell me?
‘Sure, let me get one.’
Chapter Thirty-Three
He settled at the breakfast bar while I grabbed two drinks and rummaged in the drawer for the opener. I didn’t drink often, but I joined him. He looked nervous and I wanted to create a safe space. After his first sip, he seemed to relax and his gaze met mine.
He nodded.
He was ready.
‘We were in fifth year. Stephen was in the other class. We weren’t friends, but we’d never had a problem with each other either. Other guys would pick on him and the other more studious boys. To be honest, he was an easy target among the rougher crowd, but for the most part he was okay. So that year I’m seeing him more often because he starts going out with this girl called Lynda, my sister’s best friend.’
As I listened I tried to picture his sister Danielle. I’d met her once at a birthday party. A year younger, she lived with a balding plasterer in Cumbernauld and their two teenage kids. She was pretty but had succumbed to the West Coast fashion of slapping on lashings of make-up and wearing short, tight dresses that turned you into a sausage no matter how fit you were. I tried to imagine her aged fifteen.
Dave continued. ‘Lynda always hung out at our place. She hated going home. Apparently, her parents fought all the time and her father had a temper. Then the girl gets pregnant. She’s fifteen and with her dad and all, she doesn’t want to keep it.’
‘How do you know this?’
‘Because I caught Danielle crying one morning and she told me everything. She’d been very upset for her friend but also felt really conflicted and was struggling to keep the secret. She thought the adults should be told but confided in me instead. I promised to keep quiet. Anyway, young girls were getting banged up left, right and centre, so it was no big deal to me.’
The condensation on the beer had loosened the label, and Dave picked at the edges, rolling thin paper tatters into soggy balls that he lined up onto the counter. The thought of the counter top sputum distracted me but not enough to veer off mission. Was this where the feud with my brother-in-law would come in?
‘Did she tell Stephen?’
‘Yes. At first I didn’t know how or when she’d gotten rid of the baby. Danielle hadn’t discussed it with me again. Then one day, I’m working with my dad after school, helping him with the plumbing at the local. This was before I set up on my own to get out from under him. Anyway, I’m in the pub and I see Stephen all alone. He’s clearly been there a while, and he’s definitely had a few too many. It was close to exam time so him being drunk during the day seemed very odd. He was the one kid expected to get all As.’
Dave flicked the line of mushy balled-up label bits into the void with his fingers, one by one, as he spoke. Every take-off made me flinch inside, and I memorised the exact location of each projectile, for later retrieval. I removed the vandalised bottle and offered a fresh one, even though the first wasn’t finished.
‘Thanks,’ Dave said. ‘Now because I know what’s happened, I decide to go sit with him.’ Oblivious to my compulsion, his hand was quick to destroy the next label. ‘I remember the expression on his face. A man in need of a friend. I go sit next to him. He doesn’t say much. But after a while I ask whether it’s about the baby. He looks up all surprised and breaks down. He tells me how he wanted to keep it. That it was the right thing to do. But Lynda was scared to tell her dad. And besides, they didn’t have any money to take care of it. Stephen’s all angry, like, and starts smacking his own head real hard, cursing how poor he is, cursing his dead parents, vowing he’s going to make something of himself so that money won’t ever determine his fate again.’
‘God, that’s awful. The poor guy.’
‘It gets worse.’ Dave took another swig. ‘He tells me he skipped school the week before to go to the abortion clinic with Lynda. How he pleaded with her one last time and even offered to marry her because he wanted to be an honourable man. But she went through with it anyway. And then he cries how now, all of a sudden, she doesn’t want to be with him anymore. She says he tried manipulating her and he reminds her of her Pa.’
‘Wow, that’s so unfair. That must have crushed him. He was being such a good guy.’
‘Well, that’s what I thought, too. So then I told him something. So that he would feel better. You know, forgive himself? Remember how I said my sis shared Lynda’s secrets with me? That she couldn’t keep them in?’
‘Uhuh.’
‘Well, turns out Stephen wasn’t the father.’
I jumped up and put my hands to my face. ‘Oh shit. You’re kidding me on?’
‘No, I’m not. Lynda had been seeing this other guy behind Stephen’s back. He was in sixth form. A real dick. So when she got pregnant, she chose to tell Stephen it was his, because he was nicer and would go with her, and all. And then I guess she now had an excuse to break up with Stephen—which was probably her plan all along.’
‘And you told him the baby wasn’t his?’
‘Yes. I thought he deserved to know. He deserved not to beat himself up for the remainder of his life. But he took it badly. Man, he was raging. He’s sitting there spitting, thinking everybody knows, calling Lynda and me every name under the sun. But I assured him it was only me and my sister who knew. Nobody else. He wasn’t having it. It was as if he blamed me for the whole thing. Somehow, I was the bad one; the one who’d made him look like a complete muppet. At this point I realise it had been a mistake to tell him. And I apologise. But the damage is done. He tells me to piss off and that he wants nothing to do with me ever again.’ Dave shrugged and brought his beer to his lips, placing the bottle on the table with an air of finality. ‘So now you know.’
‘Why haven’t you told me this before? All this time I’ve been wondering why he didn’t want you around. I had all sorts of visions of you as a teenage thug, or bully, or something horrible. I wasn’t sure I could trust you.’
‘I’m sorry. I never told anymore. It wasn’t my story to tell. And then when you and I got together, it was awkward. I mean, I could understand that having me there would be a constant reminder of this horrible experience. So when Glory informed me I was banished, I let it go. I didn’t want this to become a thing between you and her. So I made out like I didn’t mind.’
He sat hunched over his drink, sticky shreds of label wedged under his nails. It was as if the gradual unmasking of the glass had facilitated his own unburdening. I pulled him to my chest and stroked his hair.
‘You’re a good man. You let him have his dignity. And that is what I am doing too. Can you see why I don’t want him mixed up in Glory’s mess? Why he can’t find out?’
‘Yes, but why should I have my life messed up for his precious
reputation? What about me? What about our flat? I need to come first sometime, Grace.’
Guilt ravaged my insides. There was no fairness, not for him. I couldn’t pretend his situation was anything other than completely shit and I wracked my brain for ways to make it less bad.
‘I know. I’m sorry. You’re right. I can’t expect you to make another sacrifice. Not without me making one,’ I said. ‘So maybe we’ll be able to claw the money back from Glory’s missing account. I know that’s dirty money, and I’d be incriminating myself. But we’d only be getting back what we put in. Like a loan.’ Growing more comfortable with this line of reasoning, I added, ‘Call it an advance.’
He perked up a little. ‘What will you do with the rest of it?’
The image of my mother, infirm in her armchair, flashed across my mind. ‘I haven’t decided yet.’
Chapter Thirty-Four
D-day arrived. The morning’s shower and breakfast routine progressed in a fog, our two bodies manoeuvring to avoid collision. We’d argued about the plan until deep into the night. Scarred by a flurry of ricocheting accusations of patriarchy, foolishness, insensitivity and control freakery, we’d eventually gone to bed on a fragile compromise neither of us wanted to re-examine in the cold light of day.
After a silent embrace, we got into our respective vehicles. He followed me to Excelsior where he was to behave like a normal customer, only to step in on my signal. The distance between us grew as we neared the wholesaler, so I would have a few minutes to park and enter the building before he did the same.
The cashier inspected me in the usual unwelcoming manner, and I was interested to learn with Dave’s entrance that this act was reserved only for other women. She remained seated as I approached the desk. Grey roots paved a stripe across her black hair that reminded me of a skunk and, judging by the amount of perfume she was wearing, she may well have been hiding one. Her Kohl-lined eyes set on me. Would she remember me?