by Louise Welsh
A careless observer might have thought us old friends having a casual conversation. I mirrored his calm pose and waited for him to get to the point.
Sam skirted the dance floor, keeping clear of the boisterous bevy of men and inserted himself into the booth beside Bill. He nodded towards The Divines.
'Very Tales of the Unexpected.'
Bill turned towards him.
'A bit arty for me.'
Sam raised his eyebrows in mock exasperation.
'There’s a surprise.' His face grew serious. 'Have you asked him yet?'
Bill paused like a man trying to make up his mind. I half expected Sam to cajole him, but there was a silence between the three of us almost as loud as the beat of the music and the laughter of the policemen. At last Bill sighed and put his cigar in the ashtray.
'There’s something I’d like to know.'
He played with his glass, not taking a sip from it, just looking into the brown liquid as if the answer might lie amongst the bubbles. Curiosity and the dangerous faint hope of an easy score kept me in my seat.
'Go on.'
'I’d like to know what Inspector Montgomery had on my dad.'
The sentence hung in the air, a bridge between Bill’s world and mine. A bridge I wasn’t sure I wanted to cross.
Eventually I said, 'So why don’t you ask him?'
'It’s not as simple as that.'
'Sorry to hear it.' I reached for my jacket. 'I’m in the entertainment game. Complicated isn’t my scene.'
'Hasty.'
Bill raised his index finger and I found myself hesitating.
Sam said, 'At least hear him out. If you don’t like what he says then no hard feelings.'
My half-finished drink sat on the table before me; the cigar Bill had given me still stretching tendrils of smoke into the air. I sighed.
'OK, go ahead.'
Bill’s smile was dry.
'Policemen and businessmen: it’s no secret that sometimes one hand washes the other.'
'Yet somehow no one gets clean.'
He shrugged.
'It’s ancient history now. My dad and Inspector Montgomery had an arrangement, as I said, Monty helped my dad out at a very difficult time; he owed him and old loyalties die hard.'
'So?'
'My dad died three months ago.'
'I’m sorry for your troubles.'
Bill took a sip of his drink.
'He was only sixty-eight. It was unexpected.'
'Natural causes?'
'You’re not in murder central now, Jock, this is civilisation. He had a heart attack. It was instant.'
'So where do I come in?'
Sam’s smile was tense. 'It’s really just a matter of…'
Bill interrupted him.
'You save me the unpleasantness of laying my hands on an elderly policeman.'
Bill ordered more drinks. Out on the dance floor the music had changed to an R’n’B
beat. The girls still had their stockings and panties on, but now they’d each equipped themselves with high heels and were stalking around the men waving purses in front of them, getting the audience to pay up if they wanted them to go further.
In the booth Sam said to Bill, 'William’s straight up. Tell him the whole story and he’ll help you out. Won’t you, William?'
I shrugged.
'See?' Sam smiled. 'I told you he was the boy for the job.'
Bill shook his head.
'What does it matter? We’ll be gone soon.' He took another puff of his cigar and resumed his story. 'I said that Monty and my dad went way back?' I nodded. 'Well, they didn’t like each other. In fact, I’d go as far as to say they hated each other’s guts, but they helped each other out. I asked my dad why once and he changed the subject. I assumed it was just business.' Bill gazed out over the dance floor, but I got the feeling he wasn’t seeing the half-naked girls still teasing the drunken policemen. 'Last week Monty shows me an envelope and says my dad paid a lot of money to keep its contents quiet. If I keep up the payments I can keep it quiet too.'
'So what was in it?'
Sam interrupted. 'He didn’t say.'
Bill gave Sam a stern look.
'He was enjoying himself. Said it was something my dad wouldn’t want me to know, but now that he was dead it was up to me to decide whether I wanted to or not.' Bill took a swig of his drink. 'My dad was no angel, but…'
'But you don’t think there would be anything diabolical in his past.'
Bill shrugged.
'We all do bad things. Who knows? But I don’t think so, no. He straightened out a lot after my mum went. He did what he had to do,' Bill glanced over to where Montgomery had Shaz on his knee. 'But my dad always knew where to draw the line.'
I looked for a telltale drunken glaze in Bill’s eye, but his grey gaze looked clear. I wondered why he was telling me all this.
'Maybe you should sleep on it.'
'This is the last night this place is open. I’ve sold it.' He grinned. 'I’m getting out, bought a yacht. Me and Sam are going to have a taste of the easy life before we decide what to do next. Tonight was meant to smooth the way. My dad had to duck and dive to make a living, but he gave me a good education and a good inheritance. I’m cutting old ties and that doesn’t mean sending some copper hush money every month, no matter how far him and my old man went back.'
'So buy it from him and burn it.'
'That’s one option.'
He looked at me.
Bill’s plan started to dawn but I said, 'Where do I come into all this?'
Sam said, 'It’s in the inside left-hand pocket of his suit jacket.'
I remembered Montgomery’s smile, sharp as a broken razor-blade and reached for my coat.
'I’m sorry gents, you picked the wrong conjurer.'
Sam’s voice was injured.
'Come on, William…'
Bill silenced him with a look.
'Leave it out Sam. He does it voluntary or not at all, that’s what we agreed.'
'But…'
Sam shot me a glance like a man betrayed, but Bill put his hand gently on top of his lover’s. His voice was soft.
'Get William a bottle of Moët from behind the bar would you, Sam? Help compensate him for his extra time.'
I said, 'There’s no need.'
Sam gave it one last try.
'Go on, William. I’ve seen you do harder than that. Think of it as a bet.'
Bill’s voice was harsh.
'Just get the champagne will you.' He paused and smoothed a bit of finesse into his tone. 'Please.'
Sam got to his feet and left the table without looking at me.
'Thanks for the drink and the cigar.' I pulled on my jacket. 'I don’t need any extra compensation. Good luck with your new life. I’d like to help, but I’ve got worries of my own.'
Bill glanced towards the bar, making sure Sam was out of earshot, then he reached into his pocket and pulled out the bundle of IOUs it had taken me months of hard losing to accumulate with my bookie. His voice was low and sympathetic, like a nurse about to stick a needle into a particularly tender portion of flesh. He said, 'Are any of them financial?'
Pick-pocketing is not as easy as some people would have you believe. The greatest defence is a crowd, where a little bit of physical contact won’t be unduly noticed, a packed subway or a busy lift. The second-best defence is distraction. Luckily for me the biggest distraction in the world was right in front of the inspector’s eyes, sex. Jacque made her way up to our booth, there was a slight stagger to her walk and I could see a glaze in her eyes that might have been drink, drugs, an attempt at detachment, or maybe all three. She shook the full-looking bag in front of us. It was all notes.
Bill said, 'Leave it out, Jacque.'
But I took out my wallet and dropped in a fifty.
'I’d like to buy Mr Montgomery a retirement present.'
Jacque tucked my fifty in tight with the rest.
'You could have saved your mo
ney, that lot out there have already paid for him.' She looked back over her shoulder. 'Ta all the same.'
Back on the dance floor there was a cheer as the girls peeled off the remnants of their costumes. They were shaved and vulnerable in amongst the suits and studied casualness of the men. Bill said, 'I guess this is where I leave you to get on with it. Sam and me’ll be upstairs in my office when you’re ready to deliver.'
Jacque and Shaz were on the floor, the men crowding round them now, shielding them from my view.
I asked, 'Will they be OK?'
Bill said, 'They’re whores. OK doesn’t come into it.' A second cheer went up. Jacque was standing in front of Montgomery, loosening his tie. The men beside him had pulled back. I watched the men’s eyes as Jacque worked her way down the Inspector’s body, sliding his tie between her legs. I finished my drink and made my way towards the bar as if in search of another. When I passed the knot of men I reached over and grabbed Jacque by the waist, pulling her towards me.
'Any chance of a private dance, doll?' Montgomery got to his feet as I’d hoped he would, pushing me to one side. I lurched to the right, still holding the sweat-slicked girl in my grip, and dipped his pocket, feeling the envelope, sliding it out quick and sure, tucked between my thumb and index finger, then crabbed it in my hand and conveyed it to my own pocket, pushing the naked girl towards him as I did so. 'Hey, no harm meant pal.' Making my accent thick and drink-addled.
One of the men gave me a shove, 'Stupid bloody Jock.' But the scene was quick to resume itself, Jacque flashing me a sharp confused look that might have spoken of suspicion or regret or perhaps just of disgust. I gave her the briefest of smiles, and then went to deliver my prize.
Glasgow
MY FIRST MONTHS back in Glasgow I never once let daylight touch my face. I slept more than seemed possible and woke groggy-eyed from half-remembered dreams. It wasn’t hard for me to hide during the day. Apart from those mornings when train timetables heaved me from my pit, unshaven and blinking, to stagger with my suitcase into the predawn, I’ve rarely ever left my bed before noon.
I perfected my practice method early in my career, around the age of nine, when I stumbled on The Boy’s Own Guide to Conjuring in the local library. I can still see the front cover of the book. A boy with dark hair cut in a side parting, dressed in a red school blazer and grey shorts, pulls a rabbit from a hat. On a table suspiciously swathed by a green cloth, reclines a copy of The Boy’s Own Guide to Conjuring. The boy on its cover is pulling the same rabbit from the same hat and the same book rests face up showing the same image, though it is more of a smudge now.
If I positioned the mirrors on my mother’s dressing-table at a particular angle I could achieve the same effect, myself repeated over and over into infinity. It gave me a strange feeling to see all of these other Williams shadowing my actions. I felt that when I stepped from the glass these other boys did the same and moved on in their own worlds where everything was an inverted image of mine and these Williams were the braves or bullies of their school.
It was a solitary pleasure. Every day when I got home I’d set the panes of the mirror at exactly the right angle, like a precocious teenage masturbator, then set to work. Under my command the army of other Williams stumbled through the same tricks until we had mastered one to perfection. I was the prince of illusion. And even though these doppelgängers might have been tougher or more popular in their worlds than I was in mine, in the world of mirrors it was my decrees that held sway.
In time, the reflection aged into a thirty-three-year-old trickster, standing before dead-eyed hotel mirrors murmuring the patter beneath his breath. Sometimes I’d forget to whisper and my voice would boom across the empty room and into the lifeless hotel corridor.
It was these practice sessions rather than companionship or money that I missed most in Glasgow, because, although I was used to making my fee stretch and sleeping alone in anonymous rooms, I never adjusted to abandoning the ritual of rehearsal.
The bedsit the taxi-driver had taken me to faced south; it would have got the afternoon light if it weren’t for the shadows cast by the building opposite. When I got there I resolved to stay put and think things out. But that very first night the walls started to close in on me like a torture chamber in a bad Hammer Horror movie and I found myself putting on my shoes and coat and setting out into the darkness.
I didn’t go far, a walk of a few blocks, counting the turnings, though I knew the way. I hesitated outside the Tron Theatre looking upwards at its spire, and for an instant thought I saw the form of a hanging man dangling from the window below its turret. It sagged there, still and dark beneath the pointed hat of the building. But perhaps I was just remembering that this was the district where they hanged criminals in the old days, because when I looked again there were nothing but shadows clinging to the walls.
I skirted the building, keeping my eyes on the pavement, then turned up a side street.
Across the road a tattoo parlour glowed iced-neon blue. I thought of my own tattoo. Four aces splayed above a laughing skull in a top hat. It had hurt like a napalm burn but I’d thought the pain worth it. Now I’d happily slice it off. I leaned against the aluminium grille that screened the door and reached into my jacket for my fags. Above my head a sign twirled Tattoo/Artist, Tattoo/Artist, Tattoo/Artist, then reached the peak of its revolutions, hesitated and twisted back in the opposite direction Artist/Tattoo, Artist/Tattoo, Artist/Tattoo.
Opposite, the glass front of the theatre bar shone into the street. I could see the audience crowding into the space. Even from here I could sense the halftime buzz, the disagreements and posturings as they discussed the show. For an instant I thought I glimpsed Sylvie amongst the crowd, but I’d grown used to such sightings and ignored the leap in my stomach. The girl turned and I saw the angle of her jaw was wrong, her face so different it seemed impossible I could have imagined any resemblance.
I was lighting my fag when a slim shadow edged into the doorway, blocking my exit. He was a thin spider of a lad, his jacket even older than mine, hair longer and danker; he stank of piss and neglect. We faced each other across the lighter’s glow and I wondered if I was looking at my future self, Old Scrooge meeting the ghost of Christmas future. I killed the flame and pulled out my cigarettes, offering him one to negate the image in my head. Then I ruined the effect by saying, 'Piss off son, I’m not looking for company.'
The boy took the cigarette impatiently, without thanks and slid it behind his ear. He reached towards me, gentling his nasal whine down till it was close to a keening. 'There’s a lassie round the corner does the business, thirty quid a time.'
'Fuck off.'
'She’s clean.'
His smell penetrated the nicotine. I took the lit cigarette from my lips and threw it to the pavement. Red flakes of ash scattered as it dropped towards the gutter. The junky watched it fall. I waited for him to bend towards the dowt, but he had the single-mindedness of a true scaghead. His eyes fixed mine; his hand touched the edge of my lapel in a tentative stroke.
'I’ll set you up with her for a fiver.'
'Fuck off.'
I shoved him away, but his hands were persistent, patting my body now with all the efficiency of a drunken border guard.
'Come on, mister.'
He was the first person to touch me in an age. His voice was soothing, coaxing.
Revulsion shivered through me, and this time my shove was harder. My only intention was to get him off me, but the boy was frail. He lost his footing and staggered backwards. For a second it seemed he might regain his balance, but then his heel slipped on the kerb, gravity won and he pitched backwards hitting his head against the cobbles with a gunshot crack that sounded across the street. I saw him lie still, felt a sickening realisation, then stepped towards him. My move was reflected across the road in the bright lights beyond the plate glass. In the mirror world of colour and warmth a girl stood up, pointing towards me. A man followed her aim, shook his head and raise
d his pint to his mouth.
I took a step towards the boy, leaned forward to feel his pulse, then heard a shout. The silhouettes of two policemen stood outlined against the bright lights of Argyle Street.
Suddenly I was on my feet and running, my boots clattering against the pavement. I glanced behind me just before I turned the corner, hoping I’d see the junky move, but seeing only one of the police bending over him and the other one haring towards me. I outran him so easily I guessed he wasn’t putting his whole effort into the chase.
For a week and a half I stuck to my room, only venturing down to the licensed grocers at the foot of the close for essentials. I lived on morning rolls, ham and crisps, washed down with milk or strong lager occasionally braced with blended whisky. The Evening Times was my oracle. I forced my way through drownings and arson, robberies and knifings. I knew of every murder and act of violence reported in the city. I dreaded sight of my crime, but was never relieved to find it absent.
Eventually the walls of my room started their old trick, shifting until they took on the proportions of a coffin. I decided there’d be more space in prison and ventured out, as nervous of a hand on my shoulder as a teenage shoplifter on their first spree.
It was a week before I saw him. A pathetic figure slumped in an Argyle Street doorway, the grey remnants of a hospital dressing still stuck to his head. He didn’t give me a glance until I shoved a tenner into his hand, then the look he gave me was pure love.
London
BILL’S OFFICE WAS three storeys up, at the top of the building. I gave a sharp rap at the door and Sam unlocked it, grinning. Bill was talking in a low voice to someone on the telephone. He motioned me inside and pointed towards a chair, still talking to whoever was on the end of the line. Sam locked the door behind me. I sat at one side of the desk, Bill at the other, one of his endless chain of cigarettes smouldering in the ashtray beside him. Sam leaned against the wall behind Bill, looking pleased with himself.
The office had probably last been decorated sometime around the coronation. There were hints of how the place had looked then in the bright rectangles around the walls where pictures had once hung. The wallpaper had been plain white intersected by regal bands of red flock. But the flock had darkened with age. It was balding in places, scored and chipped in others, and the once-white background had developed the faint toffee tint that old men and paper take on after decades of soaking up nicotine. The carpet had been chosen to match the walls, a plain red pile that had been good and might still be OK if someone took the time to run a Hoover around. Bill’s desk looked like you could take to sea in it, a grand mahogany structure too big for the small space. Bill had either recently been turned over or he was serious about moving. The room was pretty much stripped. What was left was a guddle of cardboard boxes, slouching half-full bin bags and discarded files. An empty safe yawned behind the desk. High above Bill on a set of almost cleared shelves was propped a picture of the young Queen Elizabeth in full sparkle mode, looking glam and only half horse.