2007 - A tale etched in blood and hard black pencel

by Christopher Brookmyre

  “Ah-ha-ha. Check the colour of Karen’s pants. They’re all bluey. They’ve been washed wrang. Ah-ha. Bluey pants. That’s a pure slaggin. Karen’s mammy doesnae wash her pants right. That’s a pure slaggin. Imagine wearin pants that havenae been washed right. Probably means they’re smelly as well. Poo-ee.”

  “Right, you’re not playing this game any more,” decides Michelle, even though it’s Helen’s game. “Go on, get. You’re bein horrible to Karen. Away and play with somebody else.”

  Joanne doesn’t contest this, nor is she likely to see it as any great loss, as she’s not getting Alison to herself anyway. She stomps away in search of, Karen is sure, a more receptive audience for this monumental piece of news.

  “Just ignore her,” Michelle says, echoing the advice Zoe received a few minutes ago.

  Karen nods and says she will, but she can’t get Joanne’s look of triumph out of her head, can’t shake the fear that this time she’s got something she can really work with. Anything that gets your underwear on to the playground agenda is potentially damaging, but add the issue of cleanliness and, well…Truth was you didn’t add the issue of cleanliness in these things—you multiplied by it. And while it didn’t have any impact on Karen’s standing with Helen, Michelle or even the coveted Alison, it wasn’t Karen’s friends that Joanne was hoping to influence.

  Sparring

  It’s last night. He’s in the Railway Inn to meet Scot, to catch up; on each other and in Martin’s case on twenty years of Noodsy. The Railway was Scotty’s call. Martin is checked into the Sheraton in Glasgow and would have preferred to meet somewhere in town. Scot was working in Paisley, however, and anyway still lives in Braeside, though not exactly in his old neighbourhood. Not in the ‘new hooses’, either, but in one of the big Victorian places right up on the brae itself, bordering farmland. The Haunted Mansions, they used to call them when they were weans, because few dwellings in the town predated the Second World War, and not even the private modern houses had any such imposing stature. Martin is kind of curious to see round the place, but figures he might have some making up, never mind catching up, to do before Scotty is likely to extend an invite. He is curious to see Helen, too. He missed the wedding because he was on holiday in Australia at the time, and that was fifteen years ago. He’s never seen the kids, the oldest of whom must be—Jesus—thirteen.

  He actually thought Scot’s choice of the Railway might be part of his penance for the other night. Martin has only ever been in it a couple of times before, having left town by the time he was old enough to go drinking. Indeed, being of a legal age to drink would have made him a comparative coffin-dodger among the Railway’s contemporary clientele. It was the place everybody boasted about getting served in when he was at St Grace’s; basically a school disco with a licence. Staff must have been under orders not to bother about ID and the polis must have been on back-handers. It was a garish kaleidoscope of metallic colours inside, the surfaces thus presumably easier to mop clean of blood and sick. Wall-to-wall with blootered underage neds and blootered underdressed lassies, clutching glasses of Pernod and blackcurrant as they danced under a glit-terball to the latest Stock, Aitken and Waterman prole music. There was a special shuttle service to Paisley at closing time, straight to the Royal Alexandra, blue light all the way.

  From where he’s sitting now, it’s hard to believe it’s the same place. Brass pumps stand proudly along the lacquered hardwood bar. The floorboards are stripped and polished, broad beams once hidden beneath floor tiles and lino, and thus protected from the indignities of a thousand teenage spews and as many burst noses. The vinyl-upholstered benches are gone, high stools hugging shallow wooden shelves around the walls, framed black-and-whites of Braeside past hung a few feet above the pints and ashtrays. Not only is it difficult to imagine how the same room used to look; it’s hard to imagine it ever looked different from this in the century since the inn first opened for business.

  He normally drinks bottles of Dos Equis or, at the scruffiest, Becks when he’s out in London, but he orders a pint of Eighty Shilling because it seems appropriate. It goes down quickly, partly because it’s good and he’s well ready for it under the circumstances, and partly because he’s on his own and there’s nothing else to do. He’s about finished it when his mobile rings. It’s Scotty, to say, redundantly, that he’s running late at work. Martin finishes the pint and is about to get up for a refill when one is placed down on the table in front of him, along with a glass of red wine.

  “This one is on the house,” says their bearer. “We don’t often have somebody famous in the place, so I thought we should make the most of it.”

  She pulls up a chair and sits down next to him. He’d been served by someone else, a bloke, and had only caught a side-on glimpse of her at the bar. He’d noted the skirt suit with some approval, though it was an approval he tended to accord to any woman who had managed to reach her mid-thirties without doubling the size of her arse; and within that there was an equally broad subset of those dressing at all more stylish than a char-woman going on-shift. Kara wasn’t wrong about him fucking anyone with a hint of fame and glamour; she’d just overestimated how much glamour was required to meet his minimum.

  She seems familiar, and is clearly very sure of his identity, but he can’t place her. She’s got long, straightened black hair, dyed but stylishly so, framing a face that he considers passably attractive but which nonetheless is pricking a more repellent instinctive response. She’s bringing him a drink, she’s smiling and he’s already cursorily given her the thumbs-up on his personal, semiconscious ‘would you?’ test. Yet something is telling him to be wary. Something is telling him he doesn’t like her.

  “Have you forgotten who I am, Martin?” she asks, enjoying her advantage. “Or do you know fine and you’re blankin me?”

  “A bit of both,” he says, poker-faced, his unease making him reluctant to turn on even the auto-charm. “I can’t quite place you. It’s been a long time.”

  “Tell you what, I’ll take it as a compliment.” She’s smiling still, but it’s not entirely warm, and nor is she in a hurry to give up what she’s dangling over him.

  He thinks of a cat playing with its prey. Then it hits him. “Jojo,” he says.

  She nods slowly, looking very pleased with herself, as well she might. No wonder he couldn’t place her. She slimmed down a bit in her teens, but he’d have expected her to blow up again later in life. Back when she was Queen B (for bitch) of the trendy crowd, he used to picture her a few years down the line with a couple of chubby kids at her feet, an arse wider than her garage and tits bouncing off her knees. She’s not skinny; she doesn’t have that emaciated over-compensatory look of the obsessive slimming zealot. Instead, she’s just well proportioned, allied to a confidence about her movement and poise suggesting her more streamlined shape isn’t something she has recently acquired. He remembers somebody saying she had the kind of face that would be pretty if she lost weight, but at the time he never bought it because he couldn’t divorce the face from the person. Now, he’d have to admit they had a point. There’s still a cruelty to her visage, however. Okay, maybe that’s too harsh, but an archness, at least, suggesting even if she wasn’t cruel, she wouldn’t be particularly merciful, either.

  “You’re looking…different,” he says, about as much of a compliment as he can bring himself to deliver.

  “Not the same you, either, is it? Look at this suit. Clocked the shoes, too. Quite the metropolitan these days, aren’t you? Of course, I suppose you always have to be at your best in case there’s a photographer about to jump oot and snap ye.”

  Christ. “Yeah. I also do a bit of legal work,” he says tiredly. “Yourself?”

  “Well, sorry to disappoint. I know you’d love to hear I’m a career barmaid, but I own the pub.”

  “Why would that disappoint me? What, are you still calling me a snob because I’m a brainy kid fae the bought hooses?”

  “Oh, come on,” she says, sta
lling the wineglass halfway to her mouth. “You tellin me you never have a wee smug thought to yourself about how much better you’ve done than all the folk who gave you a hard time?”

  “Cannae say it’s prominent in my mind when I’m locked in contract negotiations, no. That’s such a small-town way of thinking.”

  “Aye, I suppose. You couldnae wait to get oot the place, leave all us nobodies behind.”

  “When did I ever say…You know, Jojo, the irony is, I always got called a snob, when I never actually did or said anything snobbish. You were the one who looked down on me. You made simplistic assumptions, thought there was nothing more to me than being the brainy kid.”

  “And you assumed because you were brainy that everybody else was thick.”

  “I never looked down on anybody, Jojo.”

  “Perhaps not when you were at St Lizzie’s, Martin, but you did later on. By God, you did. You were just too right-on to admit it to yourself…”

  “Christ, free drinks and psychoanalysis. Service in this place is fantastic, though I’ll maybe just take a poke of crisps with my next pint.” He looks at his watch, cursing Scot for his choice of venue and doubly so for the bastard still not being here.

  “You here to meet Scot? Cursin him tae, I bet.”

  “How do you—”

  “Naebody else you could be meetin. I know why you’re here as well. ”

  “Bad news travels fast.”

  “Aye.” She nods. “Nae surprise that Johnny Turner got himself murdered. More a shock aboot Colin.”

  “Nae surprise aboot Robbie either, I guess. More a shock aboot Noodsy.”

  “Mmm,” she says, but she doesn’t look so sure. “I’ll tell you this: if that Karen Gillespie wants to know a thing or two aboot this toon, she should ask me. Cannae see it happenin, though, can you?”

  “You two were never exactly a mutual appreciation society. I don’t remember the details, I stayed well clear and took no sides.”

  “No sides, naw, but I bet you wish it was her instead of me sittin here the noo.” She grins, lapping up his discomfort.

  “So what should she be asking you about?” he says, just the first thing he can think of to head off where she’s taking this.

  “Anything. I’m a big Nosy Parker that runs a pub.”

  He laughs politely. “I think what you’ve done with the place is amazing, by the way.”

  “Aye, I’m very proud of it. Not in the same league as the swanky places you and your celeb mates hang out in doon in London, but it’ll do us small-town thinkers.”

  And that’s how it goes on. They sip their drinks and spar. There are polite smiles on their faces but neither of them says anything that isn’t laced with bitterness. Every statement is guarded, barbed, conceding no territory in a retrospective battle for the moral high ground. But it’s compelling too, a contest neither wants to lose or abandon.

  Martin doesn’t know how long has passed when his mobile rings again: this conversation could have been ten minutes that felt like an hour or vice versa. It’s Scotty again. Whatever’s up at work is no nearer resolution. He apologises, says they’ll meet tomorrow, which is Saturday, after all.

  Jojo needs to hear only one side of the call to know the situation. She’s looking at him when he hangs up. “So,” she says. “You for the off, or can I get you another?”

  Violence

  Karen considers it testimony to how highly Joanne values her new pure-slaggin material that she has relinquished first place in the line—even without competition today from Carol and Michelle—in order to spend more time spreading the big news. Her comparatively late arrival also affords her a spot in the queue better positioned to broadcast it further, as up front would have presented a buffer of unsympathetic parties between her and fresh ears.

  She doesn’t get a unanimous response, as plenty of the girls are doubtless also the shame-faced owners of twin-tub casualties and either uneasy or simply unconvinced about its stig-matic status. But there are still enough who are happy to latch on to it for the sake of their favourite bloodsport. Predictably, the most squealingly delighted is Geraldine. These days she has to endure far less taunting herself, since the discovery that her bulk could be a source of intimidation as much as ridicule, but she still knows how she is generally regarded and is therefore seldom slow to embrace anything that makes somebody else the target.

  Thus encouraged, Joanne is going for the ultimate test of a slagging’s substance by attempting to transmit it across the great divide into the boys’ line. This is an undertaking with a very low success rate, given that these are two cultures trading in entirely separate currencies, but she evidently reckons it’s well worth the risk of failure for the potential pay-off.

  “Have yous heard?” she asks, having finally grabbed some of the boys’ attention. “Karen’s pants arenae washed right. She’s wearin mingin pants, bad as Eleanor. Mibbe it’s actually been Karen that smells all along and we’ve been blamin Eleanor by mistake.”

  Karen wants to ignore it, let them assume it’s just the latest dribblings from Joanne’s incessant gub, but she senses the danger. The Eleanor comparisons are damaging enough, but putting doubt in folks’ heads as to who the source of the smells is could have long-term consequences.

  “She’s talkin mince,” Karen says, trying not to sound too angry, because it’s unwise to let your classmates sense your burtons have been pushed. “They just got a bit dyed cause they were in the twin-tub with a blue T-shirt.”

  “See?” Joanne responds triumphantly. “She’s even admittin herself her knickers arenae washed properly.”

  “They’re washed fine. They just—”

  “Ah-haaa. Cannae be washed fine, you just said so yoursel.”

  In the main, the boys’ eye-rolling indifference is the standard indicator that the news hasn’t made the leap. Only one of them appears to be interested, though worryingly it is Scot Connolly, who has what Karen’s gran would call ‘a wicked tongue in his heid’. “So Karen’s knickers went funny cause they went in the wash with somethin else?” he asks Joanne, smiling and glancing along the line at Karen, too. She feels a lump in her stomach. “Well, at least naebody can say that aboot you, eh?” he adds.

  “Too right,” she affirms with a smug nod.

  “Naw. Cause your mammy can only fit your knickers in the machine wan at a time.”

  Karen now has a new hero. This decisively ends Joanne’s foray across the void and serves as a warning shot to Geraldine, too. Karen offers Scot a smile by way of thanks, but he has already turned away to lap up the laughter of his mates.

  Joanne’s response to this rebuff, however, is simply a renewed effort to consolidate her successes on the girls’ side. This one is too good to be allowed to slip away, and she looks fiercely determined—desperate, even—to capitalise fully. Everybody has heard Scot’s remark, which threatens to shift the focus, so she needs to act quickly, and she does. With the teachers still not back to take in the lines, she skips a few places along the queue and touches Eleanor on the shoulder. “Bugsy touch!” she whispers as she skips away, waving her right hand in the air.

  Bugsy touch is kind of like tig, where you have to touch somebody else to get rid of it, but whereas tig is just a harmless game, there is something nasty about bugsy touch, because it’s supposed to be Eleanor’s bugs that you’ve got. The spiteful element of it doesn’t stop there, either. Unlike tig, it tends not to take place in the wider range of the playground, but during the lines, where there is limited scope for movement, and with the added suspense that the teachers may appear at any second, at which point everyone must stand still, leaving someone with the bugs. That person then gets treated by the others as if they were truly smelly, and it’s an excuse to come out with things even the worst of them wouldn’t say directly to Eleanor, though she is likely to be in earshot.

  Joanne knows well that Karen is one of the girls who won’t join in. This sometimes leaves Karen with the bugsy touch because she
refuses to pass it on, but other times someone else will touch her in order to get the game going again among those who want to be involved. There is a cluster of such refuseniks towards the front of the line, causing the game to restrict itself to Joanne’s immediate vicinity and greatly reducing the chances that it will be Karen who ends up tainted. However, the very fact that Joanne does not seem frustrated by this is what really has Karen worried, something not eased by Joanne contriving to end up with the bugs when the teachers appear.

  It’s Mrs Cook and Mrs Henderson, who teach the Primary Fours. The Fives will therefore get sent in first, as the teachers will send their own classes in last and accompany them to their respective rooms. This means that there is no adult escort as they make their way inside and up the stairs to Miss O’Connor’s class. Consequently, Karen is able to continue chatting to Helen and Michelle, and has forgotten about the threat from Joanne by the time she reaches the classroom, already turning her worries to whether she’ll remember her Catechism answers that she tried to memorise last night.

  The Catechism is a wee green book full of things that are like prayers, in that they are all about God and Jesus and all that, except they come in the form of questions and answers, whereas prayers are a bit more like poems. Miss O’Connor assigns them three or four Catechism answers a week, to be tested on Thursday afternoon. The problem with this is that if you memorise them too early in the week, you can have forgotten them by Thursday, and if you leave it until later, you can forget to do it altogether. This has happened to Karen a couple of times, and it is an utterly horrible sensation when you realise as you walk in after lunchtime; but sometimes even though she has learnt the answers, she forgets bits when it comes to reciting them, because Miss O’Connor is quite scary and makes her nervous. Miss O’Connor asks at random, so you can be lucky and get asked after a few other people, which refreshes your memory. But if you get the answers wrong, you have to copy them all out ten times for the next day. This itself is not a particularly arduous sanction, but the tongue-lashing that comes with it is far worse. What’s on Karen’s mind as she approaches their class is that Miss O’Connor has been in a horrible mood all day, and that’s without anybody doing anything to make her angry.