2007 - A tale etched in blood and hard black pencel

by Christopher Brookmyre

  First off he does his rounds. Up and down the rows, always picking out the same poor bastards for special attention: those unlucky enough to have big brothers or sisters, because otherwise you won’t have come to his notice and he doesn’t have a clue who you are.

  “Aaaah, Michael. Michael Garvie, how are you doing?”

  Michael is at this point trying to burrow into his desk, that’s how he’s doing.

  “Are you working hard?”

  Aye. Working hard to understand anything that comes out of Momo’s slabbering gub. He talks really weird, not like anybody from Braeside or Paisley, or even Glasgow. It’s a totally different accent, but not like the priests talk, because they’re all Irish, apart from Father Neeson, who’s from the moon. Scot’s ma said Momo was from ‘the islands’, but she never said which islands they were. Scot reckons wherever they are, these islands must be quite far apart and only have one inhabitant each, because Momo always talks like he’s shouting long-distance into a high wind.

  “Yes, sir,” Mick squeaks, keeping his heid doon, but no luck: Momo sends in the banana-grapple. Mick’s mouth now looks like the end of a tied-aff balloon with his lips all squinty from Momo’s huge hand squashing his cheeks.

  “Good boy, Michael. Good boy. Your brother Thomas is a good boy. He works hard. You work hard.”

  Then he’s on to Alison Taylor in the next row. Mick got off light, as it looks like his jaws are still just about connected.

  “Aaah, Alison. Alison Taylor. Taylor mend my coat.” He thinks this is funny. Nobody’s laughing, and not just because they’ve heard the same ‘joke’ every time he lumbers into their class. Nobody laughed the first time, because then, as now, there is a tension in the air like the whole class is holding its breath and won’t let it out until the mad old monkey-walking bastard leaves.

  “And are you working hard, Alison?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Good girl. And tell me, is your brother David still living?”

  Seriously, that’s what he says, every time. Is your brother still living? He went up the hill to St Grace’s Secondary, not on a solo canoeing expedition down the fucking Amazon.

  Stephen Rennie gets the same question about his big sister Charlotte, as will Zoe about her big brother Daniel. Anybody who’s left the school needs their survival verified before Momo can ask after them, which always leads Scot to imagine these islands must be right fucking dangerous places.

  They all get the squashed face. That’s what he does if Momo likes you. And now Richie Ryan is about to undergo the standard ritual for when he doesn’t. Everybody’s sitting in the same rows as back in their old classroom, but the door is on the opposite side, so Momo’s getting to him sooner than usual. This is probably a good thing, as Richie knows it’s coming and this gets it over with. It must be worse watching the other regulars get it when you know it’s coming to you next.

  “Ry-an,” he says, his voice getting that bit quieter, thon breathy way. “Ry-an. Ri-chard Ry-an.”

  Richie tries his best to look up at Momo but he’s finding it hard to take his eyes off the five-fingered wrecking balls dangling by the ape-creature’s sides.

  “And have you been a good boy?” he asks. This is a more evil trick question than any shite you’ll hear out in the playground. Both possible responses produce the same result; it’s just a matter of which wrong answer Richie will choose today.

  “Yes, sir,” he says.

  At which point Momo skelps him on the top of the head and shouts, “Liar!” You can hear the rap of Memo’s giant knuckles on Richie’s heid. It’s not loud, and makes quite a high-pitched sound, but the fact that you can hear it at all makes everybody wince. “Bad egg,” he says, or shouts is more like it. “Bawd igg,” is what it actually sounds like. It took a few hearings before Scot clocked it properly, never having encountered the phrase before, but unfortunately Momo has provided ample opportunities for him to suss it. “Bawd igg. Your sister is a bawd igg. You’re a bawd igg.” And all the time he’s either dishing out more knuckly grief or, worse, grinding them against Richie’s heid. Folk do it out in the playground, getting their fist tore into somebody’s scalp. They call it a Jaggy Bunnet. It can be quite sore if it’s somebody with strong arms, and nobody can do it like Momo.

  Richie’s face screws up but he doesn’t greet. Richie never greets. He’s the best fighter in Primary Three, and that’s a fact. Okay, truth is nobody in Primary Three’s ever fought him, but that tells its own story, and besides, he battered Greg Yuill at the swingpark, and he’s in Primary Four at Braeside.

  Eleanor Fenwick is up next. Her oldest brother is up at St Grace’s, but Momo doesn’t ask if he’s still living. He only asks after the good ones. She gets the bawd-igg bit but not the knuckles. He doesn’t do that to the girls quite as much, though Scot has seen it once or twice, so it’s probably not restraint that’s keeping his paws off; more likely reluctance to get too close to Eleanor’s minging mane. It’s not nice to say it, but there’s no getting away from the fact: the lassie smells, same as her big brothers. Scot wouldn’t slag her to her face like some of the others, but he doesn’t feel a lot of sympathy for her, either. Eleanor is a horrible lassie who reminds Scot more of a rodent than any human being really ought to. That said, there’s not much she’s ever done that Momo’s liable to be aware of: she’s getting the bawd-igg bit in respect of the crimes of Fenwicks past.

  The weird thing here, though, is that Robbie gets spared. Robbie. Would you credit that? Robbie’s got two big brothers, both heid-the-baws, which would normally be reason enough for Momo’s knuckles to be powering through Robbie’s noggin like a North Sea drill. But Robbie also has a big sister, Siobhan, who, according to Scot’s big sister Heather, Momo rates as: “a lovely girl, Siobhan. A lovely girl. Not like those brothers of yours. Bawd iggs.”

  It could be that Siobhan’s loveliness cancels out her brothers’ bawd-iggiosity; or it could be because Robbie doesn’t look much like the other Turner boys (or act much like them: being a sleekit wee nyaff compared to their blatant bampottery). Either way, he’s been jammy enough to lurk in Momo’s blind spot. He gets neither the cheek-squeezes nor the jaggy bunnets, which is just plain unfair, because he’s the one child everybody else in the class would love to see on the receiving end.

  Not every child with an older brother or sister gets Momoed, right enough. Scot’s big sister Heather is in Primary Six, but she’s obviously never made much of an impression on the heidie for good or ill, and for that he is enormously grateful. And, to balance it up, there are two kids without older siblings who regularly feature on the hitlist. Momo always pauses for a fistful of Zoe’s face, throughout which he refers to her as Paula, which is her wee sister’s name and probably who the mad old bastard thinks he’s talking to. Zoe is always too terrified by the ordeal to open her mouth and put him right, but it wouldn’t matter: Clarke usually does it for her, only for Momo to come in the next time and call her Paula again. And then there’s wee Jamesy, whom Memo’s heading for right now. Jamesy’s got a wee sister, too. She’s only four, goes to Braeview Nursery and has probably never set eyes on Momo, but the poor lassie is already doomed to official bawd-igg status whenever she makes the jump to St Lizzie’s and the great ape hears her surname.

  “Doon,” Momo says. He’s looking all round the class with this stupid grin on his face. “Doooooon.” Everybody’s supposed to laugh here at how funny Jamesy’s surname is. It’s nearly as funny as the ‘Taylor mend my coat’ line. “Doon is where this one is going. Jaaames Doon.” It sounds like jams. “Jaaames Doon. Bawwd igg.” Wallop. “Baaawd, baaawd [grind, grind] igg. Vee-lan. Vee-lan. Do you play with matches, James Doon? Do? [Grind.] You? [Grind.] Play? [Grind.] With? [Grind.] Matches? [Wallop.]”

  “No, sir,” James manages to squeak.

  Momo looks round the class. “Do you think James Doon, the vee-lan, started the fire?” he asks them all. Nobody commits either way, apart from fat Joanne, who’s nodding like a wee
dog on the back seat of a motor, looking fucking delighted.

  A lot of stories are going round Braeview about the fire, most of them shite, probably. The one that’s getting the most mileage is that Robbie Turner’s brothers were involved, mainly on the basis of reports that Wullie Secular got a panelling off Joe Turner and his mates for talking about it. That Wullie Secular got a panelling from Jaggy Joe and his nutter pals is in no doubt, but Scot knows the reason is as likely to be that Wullie looked at them funny’ as that he was spreading ill-founded rumours or giving away their secrets. The end result, however, has been to give the rumour running shoes while at the same time ensuring nobody mentions it around anyone close to the Turners.

  For his part, Scot reckons Colin’s dad’s theory is the likeliest explanation. Which makes it all the more ridiculous that Momo’s acting like he thinks a Primary Three burnt down the Infant Building. Does he chook. It’s just an excuse.

  Vee-lan. Everybody else is just a bad egg, but wee Jamesy’s a villain as well. Pure pish. Villain. Jamesy wouldn’t hurt anybody, apart from himself, but that’s accidental, if alarmingly frequent. Predictable and usually avoidable, but accidental all the same. Scot doesn’t know why the hell Momo’s got it into his giant skull that Jamesy’s a bad yin, but as far as the big eejit’s concerned, it’s written in stone, which is what the wee man’s heid better be made of if it’s to survive four more years of jaggy bunnets.

  Scot had felt a wee surge of optimism the other day when that Primary Six boy said Momo had died in the fire, but at the same time he was sure it wasn’t true. That really nice deputy head, Miss Grainger, had left halfway through Primary Two, to be replaced by Harris, and the class had been forced to part company with Mrs Murphy at the end of the same year, ending up with Clarke. That was how it worked: the good teachers were only around a wee while but you got stuck with bastards like Momo for ever.

  Besides, as they say, shite doesn’t burn.

  §

  James feels like he is coming up from underwater at the baths when the playtime bell rings and Miss Clarke says they can go. He was glad when Momo finally left the class, but his leaving wasn’t enough to make him feel better. It wasn’t so much his head—Momo’s jaggy bunnets were sore at the time but the pain didn’t last, not like a boot in the balls or a punch in the belly. It was thon churned-up way he felt inside, and a whooshing noise in his head that made everyone else’s voices seem like they were coming from a telly with the sound turned down. He always felt like his cheeks were pure glowing as well, and wished he could disappear so that nobody could see him.

  It wasn’t fair. James was hardly ever in trouble. There was just that one time, and that wasn’t right, either. Lanegan wouldn’t listen when he was trying to tell her the truth, and she must have told Momo about it, and with Momo, he only needed to know one thing about you and it didn’t matter what else you did from then on. Lanegan hadn’t listened, and in James’s experience there were a lot of times teachers didn’t listen, but Momo was the worst. It didn’t matter how many times Miss Clarke told him Zoe’s name wasn’t Paula, and maybe that was why Miss Clarke never stuck up for James and said he wasn’t a bad boy. He couldn’t blame her, really. It was one thing saying he had somebody’s name wrong, but if she disagreed when he was dishing out the bad-egg stuff, maybe she’d get a jaggy bunnet herself, or even the sack.

  He walks quite slowly despite the need to be out of the room; he wants to let everybody else pile through the door and down the corridor so that nobody talks to him for a wee minute. Then when he’s ready, he can go and join in a game or something, and that way they’ll be too busy to bring up the subject of Momo’s visit. He particularly wants to avoid Martin, even though they’re good pals and Martin’s always really kind. It’s sort of weird, but Martin being sympathetic and asking if he’s all right makes the churning worse than somebody like Robbie giving him a slagging.

  His strategy doesn’t quite pay off. As he’s emerging into the corridor, Scot appears from nowhere and walks alongside.

  “You’re a vee-lan, Jamesy,” Scot says, and James feels himself break into a smile, feels everything get lighter immediately. “A vee-lan and a bawd igg.” It feels this way because they both know Scot is slagging Momo, not him. “And is your brother dead yet?” Scot adds, and they both crack up laughing.

  “How does he talk like that?” James asks. “Where’s he from?”

  “Ma maw says he’s fae one of the islands.”

  “Aye,” James, says, remembering the comic-book classics he liked to flick through in the library. “The Island of Doctor Moreau.”

  They make their way through the Main Building and exit at the door nearest the Infants’ playground, minimising their route through Primary Four-to-Seven infested territory. When they reach home turf, they find Martin, Richie, Gary, Paul and Robbie gathered round Colin, who is standing with his back to the fence, holding something.

  “Scot, Jamesy, check this,” Martin says, and they move in closer.

  Colin is holding a wee red plastic device in both hands. “It’s a killertine,” he tells them. “Watch. Somebody gie’s another cheese puff.”

  “Fuck off,” Gary objects, “I’ve gave up half the packet.”

  “Aw, come on, don’t be moolsy,” insists Richie.

  “S’awright, there’s wan on the ground that’s big enough,” Gary points out, rightly clutching his poke of the tuck shop’s rubbishy attempt at crisps.

  Colin picks up a length of cheese puff from the concrete and places it through the lower of two holes in the killertine, then sticks his index finger through the other.

  “There’s the blade. You see it?” he asks Scot and James. There is a thick white strip across two pillars of red plastic, poised above the two holes.

  “Aye,” they confirm.

  “Right. Check this.”

  Colin plunges a handle down and drives the blade to the bottom of the killertine. It chops the cheese puff in half but incredibly leaves his finger unharmed.

  “That’s fuckin amazin,” Scot declares.

  James is so impressed he can’t even find the words at first. He just laughs with delight. “Dae it again, dae it again,” he pleads.

  Robbie walks away, followed by Paul, and then Gary. They must have seen it enough times already, though in Gary’s case it might simply be to preserve his cheese puffs.

  §

  Noodsy lifts his head from his knees and looks at the walls so tightly enclosing him, the grey steel door and its narrow observation slit closing off all contact with the world. He feels sick. He hasn’t eaten, hasn’t felt hungry. He hasn’t slept since they brought him here, and not much in the nights preceding, either. He keeps thinking he’s going to throw up, so it’s probably just as well there’s nothing down there.

  He’s scared, really fucking scared. He wants out of here like he’s never wanted anything before.

  He’s been in this nick—this cell and others just like it—so often it’s practically his second home, but on this occasion it’s different; on this occasion it’s creeping him out. It reminds him of the first time, except that it’s far worse than that. Sure, he was scared back then, too, just a boy, really, but full of bravado and a determination not to let anyone—polis or fellow inmates—see his fear. Today he’s wearing it all on his sleeve; can’t help it. It reminds him of the first time, aye, but that’s not the feeling that’s creeping him out. What’s got him spooked, his guts churning and his eyes unable to close is the feeling like it’s the last time. All those other arrests were for kiddy-on stuff compared to this. Fines, service, the odd jakey sentence. Occupational hazards. But what he’s up for now, you’re talking about the big picture. Twelve o’clock Mass.

  Life.

  They say it doesn’t mean life, but the folk who say that have never stared down the barrel at it. Look at the best-case scenario, for fuck’s sake: he’s gets out in twelve, maybe fifteen—about fifty years old—and to what? No house, no wife, no kids, nothing
. He’s thirty-seven next birthday. Time, he knew, was running out to get hold of himself, and that was before…this.

  Christ, what was he thinking? Well, he wasn’t, that was the problem. That was always the problem, but he’d never screwed up as badly as this before; not even close. Life, for fuck’s sake. He never thought about that when he was doing it, when he was in the midst of all that madness, did he? That’s what the politicians and journalists who are always banging on about tougher sentences being a deterrent all completely fucking fail to understand.

  No cunt ever thinks he’ll get caught.

  The Cabaret

  “Line up neatly and quietly at the door, boys and girls. We’re going to the gym hall for an assembly.”

  Aw naw.

  Scot suspected this was coming, right enough. Clarice’s been eyeing the clock every five minutes since they got back after lunchtime. Assembly does get you out the class and away from the jotters for a wee while, but it’s not exactly playtime. In fact, along with school Mass, it’s about the only thing that makes Scot wish he was back at his desk doing long division. It’s hellish: St Lizzie’s version of the Black Hole of Calcutta. Everybody from Primary Three upwards gets stowed into the gym hall to compete for the last few oxygen molecules as their arse-cheeks gradually go numb from sitting cross-legged on the hardwood floor. Numb, aye, but not quite numb enough, because something about that position seems to bring the farts out in folk; and not big raspers that you can at least get a laugh at. It’s always the silent-but-violent variety, so nearby and thick in the air that they actually smell warm—and that’s just what your nose has to put up with if you don’t end up sitting close to Smeleanor.

  All of which is to say nothing about the cabaret, which usually takes one of two standard forms, or if you’re really unlucky, both. The less frequent of the two is presided over by Harris, and begins with a wee lecture about whichever patron saint is blowing out their candles today up in heaven, concentrating mainly on the horrific manner in which they met their holy end. She usually works herself up into a mighty temper while delivering this, with the result that Scot reckons she’s trying to imply that it was somehow their fault. This, however, is merely a preamble to her principal enthusiasm, which is to lead a marathon, unaccompanied hymn practice, by the end of which Scot is usually convinced the bloody martyr had it easy.