‘You tried a few times.’
‘He’s slippery as a rat in a drainpipe.’
‘You should see his digs. Penthouse luxury. He invited me for dinner at his upmarket bistro. And oh – check this: he’s got himself a guru, a certain Baba Ragada.’
‘Guru.’ Perlman emitted an involuntary scoff at the word.
‘Chuck seems to rate him.’
‘He’s probably donating a bunch of money. Thinks he can buy anything, enlightenment included.’
‘If I drilled his head to a wall with a twelve inch nail that might enlighten him quick.’
‘It would get his attention.’
The organist played ‘Abide With Me’ and then struck a bum chord, at which point he segued into a couple of Jerry Lee Lewis boogie riffs before he stopped, leaving a silence that vibrated.
‘Cool,’ Perlman said. ‘Whole Lotta Shakin. God allows rock in His house. I like this place.’
‘I don’t think God heard. Since we’re talking about Chuck, here’s a sad wee story for you.’
‘Och, gimme something to cheer me up,’ Perlman said.
‘I’d like to, believe me. Guy called Samuel Montague, bank manager, was brought into Pitt Street earlier this morning. His house in Bearsden was invaded yesterday by a gang of three Neanderthals breaking stuff, abusing his wife. They wanted a favour.’
‘Funny way of asking,’ Perlman said.
‘Brutal. In return for his wife’s safety, he was obliged to provide the password to a bank account in Aruba. Montague’s understandably desperate, steals the info, then goes home expecting to find his wife safe and free …’ Sandy Scullion paused.
‘Do I want to hear this, Sandy?’
‘You’re going to. The poor bastard finds her naked, hanging by a black leather strap in the attic. He’s hysterical, out of control, calls the local cops who can’t get a coherent statement out of him. Paramedics shoot Montague with enough dope to fell a giraffe. When he comes round hours later, he’s still disoriented, so they shunt him over to HQ. They assume we’re better equipped to handle him.’
‘Where does Chuck come in?’
‘Getting to that. Montague supplied these intruders with the password to a bank account in Aruba which was the property of the recently dead Jimmy Bram Stoker. Now who’d want access to Bram Stoker’s money?’
A penny rolled swiftly down a chute in Perlman’s head. ‘Whoever seized the badlands and couldn’t find Stoker’s stash.’
‘Could be Chuck.’
‘Lots of luck proving it.’ Perlman tipped his chair back to the wall. ‘That rumour about Stoker’s hidden zillions has gone round Glasgow so many times it’s developed a serious case of vertigo. The tax gestapo had a season ticket to. Jimmy’s anus, and they were up there regularly with microscopes, but even they couldn’t find it.’
‘Well, somebody’s trying to find it now, and I’m praying Montague remembers some little detail. Maybe a name, or a peculiar accent. Or he might just recognize somebody when he’s rational enough to go through the mug shots – although these bastards wore scarves over their faces. But they might have left something behind. They usually overlook a little thing.’
‘Or we’d never catch them,’ Perlman said.
Scullion glanced at his watch. ‘I need to get back.’
Perlman accompanied him out of the cathedral, where clouds had begun to drift across the formerly clear blue sky. Glasgow darkening: rain by noon. Count on it.
‘Bram the bampot,’ he said, and stuck his hands in his pockets, swaying a little on his heels as he stared back up at the spire. ‘He had a thousand mourners at his funeral. All those thicknecked thugs and their stout wives in black gear weeping for this piece of human schmatta.’
Scullion said, ‘Gangster glamour.’
‘Is that what you call it?’
Perlman shook his head in despair. A thousand mourners for a monster. In this disaffected world, criminals attained the status of superstars and developed an obedient following. Jimmy Stoker might have been a minor pope, for all the pomp and grief of his burial. Pope Bram the First.
Scullion walked to his car. ‘I’ll be in touch.’
‘What made you want to meet here?’
Scullion smiled a little. ‘Faith, Lou. I’m in constant danger of losing mine, and I need a reminder every now and again.’
‘What faith?’
‘A simple one. That there’s an order in the world.’
‘And you get that here?’
‘You’d be surprised.’
Perlman watched him drive away.
Scullion’s faith: in all the years he’d known the man, it was the first time he’d ever heard Sandy mention any. The things you don’t know about the people close to you. He studied the spire for a while and wondered about the faith of the men who’d built it. The higher you rose, the closer you got to God.
It must have seemed a good idea at the time.
24
Treading water at the deep end of his glass-walled rooftop pool, Reuben Chuck said, ‘Run that again. The woman’s what?’
Ronnie Mathieson, who stood at the edge of the pool in a black suit, spoke quietly. ‘Dead, Mr Chuck. Hung herself.’
Reuben Chuck stared through his streaky goggles. ‘Hung herself by the neck, is this what you’re sayin?’
‘Big Rooney says she was going round in her nightie, flashing her tits, groping the lads.’
‘Are you tellin me this bird was actin the hoor? This was a respectable woman, a banker’s wife, not some five quid bint workin a street corner.’
Mathieson looked unhappy. ‘Yeh, but she was making herself available so, ah … so they sort of took turns at her. More than once.’
‘She screwed the crew, eh? And why do you suppose she hung herself, Mathieson?’
Mathieson shrugged. ‘Guilt. Shame. I’m guessing, Mr Chuck.’
Chuck dismissed this. ‘What I think is they gang-banged her stupid and then hoisted her themselves so she can never tell anybody what we did. A buncha gorillas would’ve behaved better.’
Mathieson said, ‘I’m only the messenger, Mr Chuck.’
‘I laid down the law on this one. I was specific.’
‘I gave them your instructions word for word, Mr Chuck.’
Chuck snapped off his goggles and stared at Mathieson. It was the killer stare, the one nobody liked to see. ‘I count on you, Mathieson.’
‘I wasn’t at the scene to prevent this.’
‘Mibbe closer attention to these vermin and this wouldn’t have happened.’
‘I can’t be everywhere at once, Mr Chuck.’
Chuck scratched his wet hairy chest. Mathieson was loyal insofar as you could ever be certain about any man’s fidelity. But he’d taken his eye off the ball, that’s what he’d done. He sent the wrong crew. When it called for a modicum of finesse, he’d sent brainless hooligans who couldn’t follow instructions even if they’d been written in bold crayon by five-year-old kids.
Chuck’s fingernails dug the flesh of his palms. Disobedience was first cousin to disloyalty. He’d been very specific, no more blood. Don’t lay a finger on anybody unless absolutely essential. No more polis fuel. Possible ammunition for the polis, even if Chuck didn’t fear them, was not a bright idea. He wanted at least a semblance of calm after all the blood that had been spilled. One day he wanted to open a newspaper that didn’t have the word Gangland in it. Let me sail my boat in quiet waters and enjoy this life.
‘Big Rooney – and who else was on the team?’
‘Stipp and wee Vic.’
‘Wee Vic? He’s a perv. He’d stick his willie into a cup of maggots. Why did you send him?’
‘I let Rooney choose the team.’
‘Why did you let that scrote choose? He’s a stick of gelly waitin for a match. Your judgement’s out the window, Ronnie. I telt you, pick men you can rely on. Do I have to do everythin myself? Do I?’
Mathieson had the pale look of a man whose parachute r
emained stubbornly closed at five thousand feet and dropping.
‘And where’s the husband, Ronnie?’
Mathieson stroked his chin with an unsteady hand. ‘I hear he’s in polis custody, Mr Chuck.’
‘Answerin questions, is he?’
‘He can’t identify anyone.’
‘How do you know that? How can you be sure of that?’
Mathieson was silent, chewing the inside of his mouth. He looked down into the pool where water was disturbed, foamed by Chuck’s movements. He took a few steps back from the edge. Because he was a non-swimmer, pools made him wary. And the fact that Glorianna was stretched out on a lounger at the shallow end and hearing Chuck’s anger, added to his discomfort.
Now Chuck fell into a fulminating silence, and looked past Mathieson at Glorianna, whose face was hidden behind a magazine. She wore a cream bikini and a gold bracelet, and she had one leg raised, angled suggestively.
I remember when we were at each other like two cats in heat, Chuck thought. He had a surprise underwater erection, hard as Rothesay rock. Auld Lang Syne. He hadn’t felt this desire in a while. Celibacy was a killer.
‘Should you not be on your way somewhere, Glori?’ he asked.
‘Is it that time already?’
‘Close enough,’ Chuck said. ‘You know the address?’
‘Welded to my memory.’
‘You’ll need to take a taxi, doll. Charge it to the Fitness account.’
‘I thought Ronnie would drive me—’
‘I’m no finished talkin to Ronnie yet.’
She’d been looking forward to travelling in the Jag. It was the least Chuck could provide, considering she was setting out to do business on his behalf. But no, she was dismissed, get yourself a cab, charge it. Thank you, Reuben. Oh, thank you for making me feel like just another employee on the Big Man’s payroll.
She rose from the lounger and padded barefoot along the tiles. She took her magazine with her. She’d been reading an article entitled Five Sexiest Couples in Hollywood.
‘See you later,’ Chuck called out to her.
She snubbed him, didn’t look back to answer. She left the pool area and began to dress in Chuck’s spare bedroom where an ornately framed photo of Baba sat on the dressing-table surrounded by a few rose petals and some quartz crystals. A wee shrine to the guru: what’s happened to you, Reuben Chuck?
She put on her panties, then a black skirt and a pale blue blouse. She slipped her feet into low-heeled black shoes, applied a little make-up, brushed her hair. She reached for her black cashmere overcoat, tied the belt loosely. She checked her bag to make sure she had massage oils and scented candles.
She could hear Chuck continue to read the riot act to Mathieson. Somebody lets me down they hardly ever get a second chance, Ronnie. I wipe my arse with them. She hadn’t heard him so angry in a long time. Losing the plot, she thought. Remember the Baba’s teachings, Chuck.
Poor Ronnie, he always did his best. He deserved better treatment. He’d resent being made to feel like an eejit in her presence.
Sure, he’d survive because Chuck needed him, passably competent people were rare. But she wouldn’t bet money on the life spans of the three goons who’d done the banker’s wife.
25
She took the lift to the lobby. The uniformed doorman smiled at her as he held the front glass door. She blew him a kiss as she passed through and headed for the curb where a taxi was waiting. The cabbie, a man with a face like a red cabbage, smiled at her too. All men did. She could bring cheer to pallbearers shouldering a corpse.
She gave the driver the address and settled back to watch Glasgow flick past in a gallery of café lights, bars, small corner shops, the sullen bastions of the tenements. Out of the city, the taxi travelled close to the eastern housing schemes. Here was Cranhill, and beyond the yellow chemical lump of the Sugarolly Mountain lay the streets of Ruchazie. She’d been brought up in Drumchapel, and what she remembered most about The Drum was boredom, the endless grind of life, the drudgery of unemployment, the alkies who hung out on street corners and fell down drunk wherever they fancied.
It wasn’t life as she wanted it to be.
She was nineteen when she met Reuben Chuck in a city bar called Arta. She had a boyfriend at the time, naïve and sweet, a long way behind her in ambition. Chuck came on like a blast of gelignite, and tilted the axis of her world. He was the first man she’d ever met with the power to click his fingers and bring waiters scurrying. He got the best tables in restaurants, even when he hadn’t booked. He wore designer suits and shoes as soft as gloves and he moved through Glasgow as if it was a property he was thinking of buying. She learned to ignore the entourage of minders that always discreetly accompanied him: they became background, wallpaper. She hadn’t been entirely sure what Chuck did for a living, but she was sharp enough to realize quickly that his activities were on the opposite side of the street from legal.
He escorted her to parties in flash houses belonging to loud self-satisfied men like Stoker and Curdy, whose wives and mistresses wore tons of tacky jewels and tight sequined dresses. Splashy Botox-browed burdz with big mombassas and bagza glossy lipstick and shiny helmet-like hairdos and gutter Glesca accents. Chuck never gave Glorianna anything ostentatious. All his gifts were thoughtful, stylish. He took her to the opera, presented her with a cashmere stole and a small Celtic cross, and piloted her for romantic trips in his four-seater Cessna – Skye, the Highlands, London, Paris.
And the sex – oh, it was all thunder and lightning. He made her weak-kneed. They couldn’t get enough of each other. He made her feel she was important in his life, not just some young crumpet he was doing.
And now he was Captain Celibacy, keeping his pecker in his pants, and eating muesli and organic figs. Now she was told to grab a cab instead of his cock. She felt neglected. OK, she owed her rise in the world to Chuck, and he’d always treated her with respect and tenderness in the five years of their relationship, and he’d listened carefully to her dreams – Go for them, he’d say. Reach out and you’ll grasp them.
But she was still pissed off with him.
At times she wished he hadn’t been so encouraging, that he’d asked her to stay in Glasgow with him and forget this LA stuff … but he hadn’t.
Maybe he would. And then what?
She’d want her own Jag and chauffeur before she’d even think of staying. She was worth at least that.
‘Here we are,’ the driver said. ‘Spooky intit. Rather you than me.’
She peered through the window at a high grey brick wall surrounding an old house that looked like a manse. It was incongruous against a background of the four- and five-storey towers of a housing scheme. She gave the driver the Fitness Centre’s account number, signed a receipt to which she added a generous tip, then stepped out.
She heard ear-cracking music from the towers, boomboxes reverberating. A shotgun was fired, a single burst that echoed between the buildings. And something was on fire back there. Flames rose, and sparks scattered. She caught an oily stench in the air. A car aflame, maybe. Kids at their regular play. Let’s torch this jalopy. Let’s shoot a gun.
I should just have said no. Find yourself another girl for this fucking job, Mister Chuck.
She walked to a set of tall spiked metal gates cemented into the stone wall. A bell-button was buried in brickwork. She pressed it, waited. Nobody came. Dogs barked with savage intent. She hoped they were securely locked up.
She looked the length of the street. Dusk, a few lamps were lit, others broken. There was always a latent tension in this kind of neighbourhood, that persistent thud of music, the fire illuminating the cheerless facades of the towers, the proximity of guns, but no sign of anyone – although she suspected that dangerous figures, muggers, louts and the genetically violent, could materialize menacingly out of the shrubbery.
She pressed the bell again, holding her finger on it for about a minute. Hurry, hurry up. She stared up the long driveway at the house.
Time passed, nothing happened. She rang the bell again in short bursts – I’m leaving if he doesn’t come.
A porch light went on to reveal a man coming out of the house. He wore his long hair tied back in a ponytail.
‘Forget I was coming?’ she called as he approached. She used her good voice, like an actress enunciating her lines clearly in an accent that belonged to no particular geographical location. In the role, she thought. Masseuse extraordinaire.
The man looked at his watch and shook his head as he reached the gates. He took a big key from his pocket, unlocked one gate.
‘Dorcus, right?’ she asked.
‘Y-yes,’ he said. ‘But you’re early. You s-said seven-thirty. It’s only about six-thirty.’ He locked the gates behind her, slipped the key in his right pocket.
‘No, I believe I said six-thirty.’
‘W-well that’s not how I r-remember it.’
She heard the dogs again. ‘I can go away, come back again.’
‘No, you don’t have to do that.’
The client is always right. She said, ‘Dorcus is an unusual name.’
‘Some people s-say so.’
She assessed him fast as they walked up the drive. Weedy, bookish, coy. Easily flustered – as he was now. The glasses made him look glaikit. He wore silly brown corduroy trousers and a long-sleeved navy blue shirt, the kind you buy in Army & Navy stores. He was angular, and had a tentative quality in his movements. He couldn’t bring himself to maintain eye contact for more than a few seconds. He gave off a potent chemical smell, as if he’d just come straight from swimming in a pool of industrial-strength disinfectant and tried to disguise this stench with a spray of cheap deodorant. She thought that if he put a lot of work into himself – did something cool with his hair, got himself some modern specs, wore decent clothes, and didn’t smell like he’d fallen in a vat of undiluted Dettol – he’d be OK, and passably pleasing to look at. But he had a long way to go.
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