Tartakower, surrounded by this army, said, ‘Issy is popular. He’s a hero to these boys.’
‘And you’re what, Fagin?’
One of the kids said, ‘Issy’s the fuckn greatest,’ and picked up the ferret, smothering it in an embrace. The creature looked alert suddenly, pink tongue dangling. The kid kissed the ferret on the mouth.
Perlman addressed Tartakower over the bunch of hoods. ‘Why the hell do you keep a ferret?’
‘You’d prefer I kept a caged parrot? Curtail the movement of living creatures. Lock them in cages, throw them in jails. This is what you love.’
The big kid who’d tried to provoke Perlman said, ‘You’re yella.’
The others laughed and stamped their feet. ‘Yella bassa polis,’ they shouted.
Perlman looked at Tartakower, lord of this urchin legion. ‘Can you discharge your warriors, Ben? All I want is to talk.’
Tartakower gestured at the pale faces surrounding him. ‘I don’t control them, Perlman.’
‘Come on,’ Perlman said impatiently. He didn’t enjoy the idea of a serious confrontation with these kids and the possibility of concealed weapons appearing. He tried to get closer to Tartakower but the phalanx of hoodyheids stood firm. A bloody preposterous stand-off, blocked by a circle of adolescent scoundrels. What has the world come to? He had an urge just to shove them aside, assert authority, get Tartakower all to himself. The kids stared at him grimly. All these faces that should have been innocent. What happened to childhood. What happened to street games. He remembered peever and girls’ skipping ropes and singing, and he had a memory of playing ring-bell-skoosh or mooshie – marbles!
The ferret was being passed around like a beloved gang icon, stroked, caressed, kissed.
Perlman took his mobile phone from his coat. ‘I’ve had enough of this nonsense. Clear these kids away, Ben, or I call for some assistance. I can have backup here in minutes.’ Pure bluff. Nobody from Force HQ would come to assist him even if he was in a gutter, dying with a blade in his ribs.
‘Some solution,’ Tartakower said. ‘More cops.’
‘Bring em on,’ one of the kids said.
‘Aye, bring yer polis pals here,’ another said.
The kid who’d called Perlman big baws laughed. ‘We don’t move. Right boys? We don’t fuck off.’
A chorus of agreement. Right, we don’t move.
Perlman sighed. They were ready for war, patrol cars and black marias, and a fresh entry in their juvenile records.
‘Is this what you want, Ben?’ he asked.
‘Like a root canal.’
‘Then tell your enforcers to scatter.’
‘We don’t fuckn move,’ the enforcers chanted.
In another age they might have been choirboys, Perlman thought.
Tartakower plunged a hand into a coat pocket and pulled out a fistful of coins and notes and held them up in the air. ‘Boys, listen to me. I need a little time with this polis. OK?’
The kids formed a huddle, and conferred. ‘We take Issy,’ one of them said to Tartakower.
‘For one hour only,’ Tartakower said.
‘The whole day. Look at her, Tarty, she needs a shampoo, and a fuckin good brushin. You neglect her, so you do.’
Tartakower considered this. ‘Until tea time.’
‘You let us have him the whole day a coupla times. Even overnight wan time.’
‘Not this time, boys. Seven o’clock. Plus a few coins.’
Tartakower thrust money into the hands of the big aggressive kid. Somebody scooped up Issy and that was it – a collective whoop, an army jubilantly demobilized. They ran off along the street like they’d been blown by a sudden wind, shouting words that were incoherent to Perlman, a private slang, a personal language. And then they vanished round a corner, but not before a couple of them had pounded fists into the bonnet of Perlman’s Ka.
Tartakower passed his grocery bag from one hand to the other. ‘OK. Talk.’
‘When did you form the army?’
‘Issy’s their talisman. He’s a symbol. A wild animal in a city. You don’t think they connect with that?’
‘So you give them some money and the occasional ownership of Issy and they become your Praetorian guards. And sometimes they ferret-sit a whole day. Or all night.’
‘What can I do? They adore her. They wash her and clip her nails, things I don’t have energy for.’ Tartakower started to walk in the direction of his close. ‘A loose arrangement I have with these boys. I tell them surgical tales. They enjoy uplifting yarns about some schmuck leaking to death on an operating table. Amputations also they’re fond of. And vivid descriptions of gunshot wounds. I keep their attention half an hour or so, which is more than their teachers.’
Tartakower’s Hoodie Army. Perlman said, ‘That was my money you gave them.’
‘I remind you, mister, that was money we negotiated for information.’
‘Information that was pure shite.’
Tartakower took an apple from the bag, bit a chunk, offered the fruit to Perlman, who declined.
‘Let’s talk about Jackie Ace – you fucking knew what he was. You knew he was a transvestite. You misled me by failing to say this—’
Tartakower had apple bits in his beard. ‘You come, you ask me for a boy not so right in the head. So I give you one. You saw him. He’s not strange enough for you? In my estimation he’s cracked all right … Plus he’s no transvestite.’
‘I saw him. Her.’
‘You saw Jackie Ace, sure. You just got your terminology wrong. He’s going all the fucking way, Lou. Imagine that.’ Tartakower was simmering with glee. Saliva dripped from his lips. ‘This is sex-change we’re talking. This is the big transformation, Mister Smart Polis.’
‘Is this another fable?’
‘Take it, leave it. One day years ago he says he’s never felt he was a man. Always a woman inside, he says. I’m his priest? He’s saving his money for a series of operations that don’t bear thinking. My guts turn over. They’ll cut off his schlong. Castrate him. A vagina they’ll dig him out. Uh … This sounds to you sane behaviour?’
He watched Tartakower’s face, all bearded guile. ‘Are you lying again?’
‘And tell me what I gain by lying?’
‘More fucking amusement.’
‘You deserve a kick up the arse now and again, Perlman. I sat four years in jail with all the scum of Glasgow, you think I’m jack-in-the-box eager to help you? So I throw you a body-swerve. Jackie Ace. You think a man. Then you find a transvestite. Now I tell you he’s on some other evolutionary stage. I amuse easy at my age.’
Perlman said, ‘The hand was cut from somebody living.’
‘Somebody living? You sure?’
Perlman caught Tartakower’s arm. ‘No more silly fucking games, Ben. No more daft jokes to inconvenience me, OK? I want a name or else you can get in my car and I’ll drive you down to HQ and you can explain why you’re impeding a police investigation into possible murder.’
‘I’m allergic to cars. Small spaces in general.’
‘I’m waiting.’
A pleading sound entered Tartakower’s voice. ‘How many years now I knew your family in the old Gorbals. Your mother and father. One time I took your Aunt Hilda across the Govan Ferry to Partick. A journey that takes a minute, for her a transatlantic crossing.’
‘Ben, this is a woman who crossed God knows what rivers to escape the Nazis? She’s going to think the Clyde’s a transatlantic crossing? It’s a pish of a river.’
Tartakower ignored this point. ‘Tartakowers and Perlmans, neighbours. Did we not exchange sugar in rationing times, buckets of coal, this and that, an easy flow between families. But you grow up, become a polisman and you dismiss history with a cruel stroke …’
Perlman said, ‘Get over it. I want a name. You don’t give me one, fine, my car’s over there. We’ll go now.’
‘Wait … just wait.’
‘For what? More bullshit?’
&
nbsp; ‘Look, I got other possibles. I had this kid who loved cadavers, loved to get his fingers way deep inside the kishkes—’
‘Save the gory stuff for your gang of commandoes.’
Tartakower clutched Perlman’s sleeve. ‘Also I had a girl about twenty I just remembered. Short-sighted, ugly as one of the Cinderella sisters, a wallflower, tells me amputation is her thing, she’s done a couple of gangrened limbs in Africa or somewhere … this is one deranged shiksa, Perlman—’
‘Your chop-shop was chock-a-block with headcases,’ Perlman said. ‘I’m tired of listening. Just get inside my car.’
Tartakower looked tearful. ‘OK, wait. Maybe I go over the top. Suddenly I remember another boy, skinny kid, all fingers and thumbs, big glasses, he comes to the surgery, he hangs around, he’s checking this, checking that. He’s keen to cut, I never saw anyone so keen. Maybe some potential skills but he’s no Jackie Ace with the blade.’
‘So?’
Tartakower drew Perlman closer. ‘He starts following Ace around like Ace is some kind of fucking god. This kid’s smitten. Thinks Jackie Ace craps gold bricks. Ace takes the kid under his wing and teaches him some rudimentary skills. I see them together, they whisper in corners.’
‘So what kind of relationship is this?’
‘He’s attached to Ace like Darwin to fossils, Marconi to radio waves—’
‘Did this boy have a name?’
‘Harry Houdini. He was with me six months, seven maybe. Then one day gone, pouf, like his namesake. He’s worth finding, Lou.’
‘And you’re saying Ace would know?’
‘He might.’
‘You could have told me this before.’
Tartakower coughed and hawked up a chunk of phlegm and expelled it through the obstacle of his beard. It hit the pavement.
‘I could,’ he said. Was that a sneak of a smile behind the enormous beard.
‘Fucker,’ Perlman said.
27
Ron Mathieson drove the six-seater minibus along Paisley Road West. In the passenger seat Big Rooney smoked a cigarette and told a joke about a drunk man who confused nuns with penguins, but Mathieson wasn’t paying attention. In the back of the bus Stip and Wee Vic laughed at the punch-line.
Take them to HiCon, Chuck had said.
Mathieson looked in the rearview mirror. Wee Vic was slugging a can of Tizer and mouthing down a sausage roll. His acne was particularly red and raw-looking today. A pustulated face, like a pitted blood orange. Stip, a quietly spoken man with one eyebrow that met above his nose, studied a racing paper and talked about a horse that was a dead cert at the Kelso National Hunt meet tomorrow.
Rooney, formerly an amateur boxer, looked out the window and said, ‘I fought a coloured boy somewhere around here. I hammered him half-deid in the second round. Hamid somebody.’
‘Hamid and eggs,’ Wee Vic said.
‘Scrambled eggs when I was through with him,’ Rooney said.
Stip closed his newspaper and said, ‘For any youse diddies interested, this nag’s called Yarrow Water. Two o’clock race. SP will be about four, but you can get him today at six or seven.’
‘The last tip you gied me is still running,’ Wee Vic said.
Mathieson turned on the radio. He preferred some brain-dead pop music to the clunkety chatter going on around him. He just wanted to get to HiCon and be rid of these morons who’d fucked up a simple job and landed him in the shite with Chuck.
Wee Vic said, ‘Here, that burd was gemme, eh?’
Rooney said, ‘I’ve had better.’
Wee Vic said, ‘Lying big tosser. You never get crumpet. No like her anyway.’
‘I’ve had more fucking crumpet than you’ve had sausage rolls, wee man.’
‘Aye, right, sure ye have.’ Wee Vic leaned forward and tapped Mathieson on the shoulder. ‘So how long did the Boss say we’d be outta town?’
Mathieson said, ‘A month, mibbe six weeks. Until things quiet down.’
Wee Vic said, ‘Fuckzake. Six weeks in Newcastle.’
Rooney said, ‘I know burdz in Newcastle.’
Stip rattled his newspaper. ‘Six weeks, long time.’
‘Orders is orders,’ Mathieson said.
He drove down a narrow industrial road between warehouses and haulage companies until he saw the wire fence that surrounded HiCon. A galvanized-steel building, surrounded by long brown stalks of weed, sat in the centre of a gravel compound. The building itself hadn’t been used for years. The sign HiCon was weather-battered and hung askew above the main door.
Mathieson got out, unlocked the door in the fence, then drove the minibus through the weeds. ‘This is where we get off, boys,’ he said. ‘You’ll be picked up here and taken down to Newcastle. You’ll get expenses, plus a bonus.’
‘Now you’re talking,’ Wee Vic said, rubbing his hands together.
‘I have the money right here.’ Mathieson patted the inside pocket of his jacket and then unlocked the door of the building. The three men followed him inside a large space filled with flattened old cardboard boxes which bore the company name.
‘What’s HiCon anyway?’ Rooney asked.
‘Used to make computer bits, I think.’ Mathieson strolled round the big room.
The three men explored. Wee Vic kicked at some of the cardboard slats and a couple of mice scurried out from under them. ‘How long are we meant to wait here?’
Mathieson said, ‘Five minutes, mibbe ten.’
‘So how come you’re no taking us to Newcastle?’ Rooney asked.
‘I don’t have the time, Rooney.’
‘The Boss keeps his boy jumping,’ Stip said. ‘So where’s this bonus?’
Mathieson took three envelopes from his pocket and handed one to each man. Rooney ripped his open immediately, and counted. ‘Five thou. Nice.’
‘Plus your hotel’s paid for,’ Mathieson said. He looked at the wire mesh that had been erected inside each window. ‘Stay in the hotel, lie low, don’t make a public nuisance.’
‘And what if we do?’ Wee Vic asked.
‘I’m passing down orders, boys. That’s all.’
Rooney said, ‘Stupid cunt hung herself and we have to take a hike to England.’
Wee Vic was pissing in the corner. With his back to the room he said, ‘This is gash. Newcastle. Fuck that. They talk funny doon there.’
Mathieson said, ‘It’s not like you’re going to jail.’
‘My girlfriend’s pregnant,’ Stip said.
‘Away tay fuck,’ Wee Vic said. ‘What do you want kids for? Always under yer feet, always greeting and then they need clothes and shoes and you’re handing out money all over the place. Nappies. Bibs. Clothes. What the fuck else?’
‘We fancy having a wean,’ Stip said quietly.
‘Who’s the daddy,’ Wee Vic said, zipping up. ‘You better hope it has your eyebrow.’
Stip said, ‘Ha bloody ha.’
A vehicle drew up outside. Mathieson heard the wheels crunch gravel and then the sound of two doors opening and closing. He went outside.
‘Here, where the fuck’s he going?’ Wee Vic asked.
Rooney looked through a window. ‘He’s talking to a couple of guys who just got out a minibus.’
‘Two drivers?’ Wee Vic approached the window. ‘Who needs two drivers to take us to Newcastle?’
‘Mibbe only one of them’s a driver,’ Rooney said.
‘So who’s the second punter?’ Stip was at another window, peering out. ‘Anybody know them?’
Nobody did.
Stip said, ‘Mibbe one’s a minder.’
Mathieson reappeared in the doorway. ‘I’m off, boys. Have a good trip. Stay out of trouble, mind.’
‘Aye, I promise,’ Wee Vic said, putting his hands behind his ears and making them stick out like donkey flaps.
Mathieson walked back to his minibus. He climbed in behind the wheel. He watched the two newcomers go inside the building. They were a hard pair with Fife accents. The taller
of the two wore a flat bunnet, the other was bald and one side of his face swollen the size of a golf ball from a gumboil.
Imported talent.
Mathieson heard one of them shout, ‘Right, boys. Ready for the big journey, are we?’
Followed by three gunshots in rapid succession.
Mathieson closed his eyes until there was silence again. Then he got out of the bus and went back inside the building. The two Fifers were checking the bodies for movement. There wasn’t any. Mathieson went around gathering the envelopes. The one he took out of Rooney’s limp hand was streaked with blood. Wee Vic lay alongside Rooney, face turned away. The side of his head had caved. Stip had a look of displeasure.
‘Swift,’ Mathieson said. He stuffed the envelopes back in his inside pocket.
One of the gunmen said, ‘We come, we go.’
The one with the swollen face said, ‘We aim to please.’
Mathieson said, ‘If I ever need you again, I’ll know where to find you.’
The bald gunman said, ‘Any time you’re in the East Neuk, pop in and say hello.’
The other one added, ‘But don’t sneak up behind us if you know what’s good for you, eh?’
The two killers laughed, and high-fived each other.
‘I’ll make a point of knocking first,’ Mathieson said.
28
Perlman went back to Egypt. He didn’t expect Betty to be there, but he called her name anyway when he entered his house. No answer. She was probably with close friends and family, seeking solace. The drab silence disappointed him just the same. He picked up his post from the floor and sifted through it; a bank statement, a Concern appeal, an invitation to an opening of something called The Furniture Depot: BUY THAT BEDROOM SUITE YOU ALWAYS WANTED. PRICES SLASHED DRASTICALLY!!!!
I need a futon, he thought.
The last item of mail was a postcard from Miriam.
He tossed the other crap back on the floor and went inside the living room to read the card.
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