by Stuart David
‘He ripped the shit out of the flat yesterday,’ I said. ‘Destroyed the place.’
‘Without a warrant?’
I shook my head. ‘Wired to the teeth. All the relevant paperwork in order and a team in uniform to help perform the carnage.’
‘That’s a fucking liberty,’ he said, and I breathed a sigh of relief, grateful that my gambit had paid off. ‘This is the kind of thing that gets me fuming, Peacock,’ he continued. ‘The persecution our community endures at the hands of these jumped-up busybodies is beyond a joke. And what recourse have we got? Fucking none. I take it they never even cleared up behind themselves?’
‘Not as much as a sock,’ I said, and let him carry on for a good ten minutes, uninterrupted.
‘The community’ he was referring to, by the way, was the haphazard collection of thieves, loan sharks, drug dealers and GBH merchants that he generally associates with on a daily basis. And it’s a particular bugbear of his that the police are continuously trying to get in about us, pushing their allotted powers to the limits.
‘Just about every other previously persecuted minority’s asserted their rights,’ he often says. ‘It’s time for us to stand up and do the same thing. It’s gone on long enough.’
Somewhat misguided you might say, and you’d be right, but my thinking here – going into stage two – was that if I could get him to unleash his darts aggression on somebody other than myself, then it would leave the way clear for me to put the final stage of my scheme into operation without risking the possibility of him just reverting to our earlier dynamic, and having a go at me again. He’d be drained, you see? He’d have got it all out his system, and I’d be well on my way to getting the data I’d come for in the first place.
Pretty nifty, eh?
And so I moved on to the final stage, and the thinking was this. Rather than just ask him a direct question, I’d bum him up a bit. Get him to boast his way into revealing the intelligence. So off I went.
What you want to do with the Jackster in an instance like this is make him feel like he’s some kind of genius, impressing you with the brilliance of his insights and the depths of his knowledge, which, if I have to be perfectly honest, isn’t the easiest thing in the world. The guy’s actual mental capabilities are so average to middling that you have to make yourself seem pretty much on the edge of brain damage to achieve the right effect, but needs must.
I took a deep breath and battered myself down to just about as stupid as I could get. ‘Here’s what I never understood about stealing a painting like that Pollok House one, John,’ I said. ‘I could never quite figure out what the fuck the point of it was. I mean, how on earth are you ever going to sell the thing? The whole world’s on the lookout for it – it’s hardly as if the numptie that buys it could ever display it. It seems to me it must be pretty much unsellable.’
He took the bait. He shook his head slowly as if I was a total eejit, and adopted the patronising tone of voice. ‘I worry about you sometimes, Peacock,’ he said. ‘Nobody’s nicking these things to sell them as paintings. Are you daft?’
And he gave me a slow lecture – as I pretended that I was finally seeing the light – about how these things are used as currency in the criminal underworld, as assets and standards to borrow against and used to set exchange rate mechanisms, much like gold in the slightly less shady economies. It was all standard stuff, but it did the trick, got him thinking he was a high priest and I was the impressed student, staring at him in awe as I learned at his knee.
‘That’s an eye-opener,’ I said, when he’d reached his climax. ‘I should get in on some of that myself sometime, John. It beats me how you know all that stuff. So how did you go about finding out who had whipped the painting? How would you even go about something like that?’
‘It was simple,’ he said. ‘I just worked backwards.’
‘From where?’
‘From who it was that’s got the painting at the minute.’
‘But how do you even work something like that out?’
‘I just put the word out that I was looking to buy it, and that I was wanting to find out how much the current holder was wanting for it. I claimed I was looking to do a cross-border deal where cash or precious stones would be too risky, and I was looking at the possibility of using the painting instead.’
I have to admit, I was actually quite impressed with this wee detail. I’m an ideas man – ideas appeal to me – and this particular one came across as elegant and simple. I didn’t even have to act impressed at that one.
‘So who had their mitts on it?’ I asked him. ‘Any word?’
‘A guy called Stanley Frazer,’ he said. ‘He’s mainly an importer. He bought it as a permanent asset he can borrow against in the future. Paid cash for it.’
Then he went into the whole history of how the painting had wound its way towards this Stanley Frazer character. How he’d bought it from another guy who had taken it as payment in a drugs deal with some guy called Chaz Anderson. It was clear Johnny Boy was getting a real buzz out of displaying his inside knowledge, much in the same way one of those nutters that collects Fabergé eggs or valuable old comics would get in a sweat laying out their prize possessions for you.
‘Chaz Anderson’s the real winner in this whole scenario,’ he said. ‘He probably paid about five hundred quid for the painting to be stolen in the first place – maybe a grand – and bought himself into business with it to the value of somewhere in the region of twenty grand, I’m guessing.’
He appeared to have reached the end of his narrative. I have to admit, I was wilting, but I put the bright face on it.
‘You’re some boy, John,’ I said. ‘Unbelievable. One of a kind, no question. So hit me with it, who’s the mug this Chaz Anderson paid to do the dirty for him? Who’s the genius behind the scenes with the sticky fingers?’
He sniffed. ‘I told you before. You really don’t want to know.’
‘I’m aware of that,’ I said. ‘Painfully. But I’ve already given you that stash on McFadgen and his latest findings. You’re owing me. It’s up to me if I’m willing to take the risk of knowing who it was, surely? Who was the fall guy? Who slipped into Pollok House and did the deed?’
It was clear he was itching to finish his story, to get the full satisfaction of showing he’d really uncovered this whole thing. But he was still swithering. It was almost touching in a way, realising he wanted to protect me to the extent that he was willing to forgo a public display of his powers.
Then it got too much for him. ‘Fuck it,’ he said, and he told me.
He told me, and I realised immediately that he’d been right – absolutely right. I really didn’t want to know.
I staggered back a bit, losing my balance a smidgeon. I found my way to the couch behind me and dropped myself down onto it, leaning forward and trying to focus on the manky brown carpet. I wondered if there’d been an earthquake, or something else that had tilted the room on its axis. Nothing seemed steady. Everything appeared to be squint.
I couldn’t quite believe what he’d told me. I couldn’t quite believe the name that he’d given me.
Are you ready for this?
Here we go: the chump who’d stolen the painting for Chaz Anderson, and who’d therefore whacked Dougie Dowds to stop him delivering the news to Duncan McFadgen, was none other than Vince Fucking Cowie – Wilma Caldwell’s fiancé. The man my whole future fortune depended upon.
The shitting groom.
7
No doubt you’re thinking to yourself at this juncture, ‘What’s this bampot’s problem? How come he’s getting himself tied up in knots about some random wedding? What’s the story?’
And well you might – well you might.
I daresay I should probably have outlined the set-up a bit earlier on in the narrative, but I don’t think you’ll disagree that I’ve had my hands more or less full from the get-go with this, that and the other.
Still, there’s no time like the pr
esent to make amends for past transgressions, so here we go. Here’s the deal . . .
One night, maybe a couple of months ago, I’m sitting in the living room watching a documentary about an American conceptual artist. Strange choice, you might think, but I’ve got something of a soft spot for these conceptualists. For one thing, a fair few of them are from Scotland – and more often than not from Glasgow, if we’re being specific. So there’s a wee bit of hometown pride there. But that’s only the half of it. Like I’ve probably mentioned once or twice already, I’m an ideas man myself, a boy for the brain flashes, and that’s the same deal with these conceptualists. Idea merchants you might well call them. So I always get a buzz hearing about their work. Hearing the mad nutcase stuff they come up with.
Take that boy who turned the plinth upside down so that he could claim the planet itself was sitting on his plinth, and the whole world was his work of art – that kind of thing fair tickles me. Then you’ve got the other one turning up at the gallery to assemble his exhibition and he’s brought nothing with him. So he has a look at the place, has a wee think, and then asks them to drill a few holes in the white walls. He sticks a fag through each hole, lights it up, and smokes it through the hole – leaving big burn marks on the white paint.
And that’s his exhibition.
Totally magic.
And they pay these bods a fortune into the bargain. I tell you, that’s the kind of ideas I wish I could have. Nine times out of ten the ideas that hit me are simply ideas for some crime or another, but if I could choose what type of ideas would come into my head, I’d much rather it was some of these art ideas.
Anyway, that’s a pretty long road for a shortcut when all I’m really trying to say here is that I often watch these documentaries, trying to train myself to maybe have an idea like that sometime. And a couple of months ago I’m sitting watching this one about an American guy who makes these things using wood, just the same shapes over and over again, and at one point he’s describing his process and he says something like, ‘I use a very delicate sander, it’s very slow and very subtle. It’s the same machine criminals use for removing their fingerprints.’
And all of a sudden I’m like ‘Woah. Hang on there just a minute’. And I rewind the box and listen again, and sure enough I’d heard him right the first time. And I’m thinking, ‘Maybe in America, pal. I’ll give you that. But as far as I’m aware I’ve never heard of anything like that over here. No way.’
And I ask a bunch of folk, and nobody I know’s ever heard about it either. But I look into it properly, and sure enough – in certain places – it’s a thing. And I realise that I’ve stumbled onto a goldmine.
It turns out it’s a long slow procedure. You need to sit with your fingers being finely sanded by this thing for hours at a time, over multiple sessions. But to me that only makes it more perfect. You’re going to be able to charge an hourly rate, which’ll fair mount up over time. So I work out what I could charge per paw, multiply it by the endless supply of members from the ‘community’ that would do whatever it took to be free of their fingertips, and I realise that I’m home and dry. Minted.
The only drawback is the prohibitively expensive price tag on one of these machines, to which you’d need to add the price of safe premises to house the business, and no doubt a good whack of electricity to keep it up and running. So as you already know, I took the idea to John Jack. And as you also already know, he told me to stick the proposition up my proverbial.
Just bad timing, I suppose. His man was losing in the snooker at the time, and I was already quite deep in the hole with him, owing to a few recent projects that hadn’t recouped their initial financial investment. Or that had gone tits up, to express it in the vernacular. But I suppose I have to thank his keenness to get rid of me for what happened next.
‘Take it to Brian Caldwell,’ he said. ‘I hear he’s about to come into some money.’
‘How come?’ I asked him.
‘His ex-wife’s about to get remarried. Brian’s been making hefty alimony payments ever since the divorce. As soon as Wilma ties the knot, the agreement’ll be null and void. He’ll be rolling in it.’
Now, no doubt the Jackster thought Brian would be as keen to give me the bum’s rush as he himself had been. Maybe he thought I wouldn’t even bother going to see Brian, after the rubbishing he had just given the idea. But he was wrong. Seriously wrong. On both accounts. I went straight to see the Caldwell fellow, to congratulate him on his good fortune, and he in turn congratulated me on the spectacular potential of my idea, when I’d laid it out for him.
‘How did John Jack find out about my situation, though?’ he said. ‘How did he find out I’m about to have some cash to spare?’
‘You never told him yourself?’
‘I hardly know John Jack,’ he said. ‘Our uncles are cousins – something like that. I rarely see the guy.’
I shook my head. Classic J.J.
Brian Caldwell himself isn’t what the Jackster would call a member of the community. He’s an architect by trade, strictly law-abiding. I know him from the days when he was married to Wilma, what with Bev being Wilma’s best pal and what not. But the somewhat dodgy nature of the proposition I’d put to him didn’t seem to be a problem. All that mattered to him was that it looked guaranteed to turn a healthy profit.
‘Who knows if this wedding’ll ever actually happen,’ he said. ‘It’s a real on-again-off-again affair. As far as I hear, Wilma’s constantly getting cold feet. But if it actually takes place, you can count me in, Peacock. The money’ll just be burning a hole in my pocket otherwise.’
So over the next few weeks we firmed up the arrangement. Come the wedding, Brian would take out a loan to cover the capital investment in the sanding machine, and his recouped alimony would take care of the monthly payments on the loan, as well as the rent and rates for appropriate premises. He’d originally wanted a fifty per cent share of the profits in exchange for his investment, but I’d slowly ground him down – pointing out that I was bringing the customer base as well as the conceptual framework for the business, not to mention the fact that I’d have to perform whatever hard labour was involved in the day-to-day running of the operation.
After that, I’d just been counting the days, up until this very morning in John Jack’s office when I’d sat with my head between my legs gasping for breath, sick to my stomach at the thought that I’d sent the whole thing up the spout. What a fucking situation. I’d told McFadgen I’d bring him a name to get him off my back, and now the name I was going to have to give him was the very name that would bring the whole enterprise crashing to the ground. Vince Cowie would be locked up for the murder of Dougie Dowds, the wedding would be cancelled, and the funds that were meant to catapult me into the world of the independently wealthy would continue, instead, to keep Wilma Caldwell in the style she’d grown accustomed to, out there in Bearsden.
‘I told you you’d have been better not knowing,’ John said as I lifted myself wearily off his couch and made my way towards the door.
‘You certainly did,’ I said. ‘I can’t argue with that, John. You were right on the money there.’
‘If it’s any consolation,’ he said, ‘your business idea was doomed to failure anyway. DNA – that’s what it’s all about nowadays. Fingerprints are a thing of the past.’
‘Cheers, pal,’ I said. ‘You’re all heart.’
And I made my way down the stairs and out onto the street, slightly less affected by the brilliance of the sunshine than I’d been on my way in.
8
McFadgen was a good fifteen minutes late for our tête-à-tête. I’d found myself a seat up against the back wall of the café, ordered myself a roll and sausage and a pot of tea, and demolished the greater part of them both before he had the good grace to show himself.
By rights, I should have been using the extra time to work out what the fuck I was going to say to him, but before the waiter even dumped my order down on the tabl
e in front of me, I’d noticed that a few of McFadgen’s pals were dotted about the place at tables on their own. Different numpties from the ones who’d helped him demolish my flat, granted, and dressed up to look like the average tool that would be sitting about on their tod in a café like this, at this time of day. But they were familiar faces to me. I’d seen them here and there over the years, in uniforms and in squad cars, throwing their weight about in a typical manner, and I couldn’t for the life of me figure out what they were doing here.
They were all avoiding looking at each other, and they were all avoiding looking at me, but that only served to make their presence more obvious. And I suppose all my speculating about what the fuck they were up to kept the back bit of my brain fully occupied – cause absolutely nothing was delivered regarding what I was going to do about Vince Cowie when the detective inspector arrived.
Wandering about the town, after I’d left John Jack’s office, I’d had the vague notion that as long as I could keep McFadgen in the dark about Vince till the wedding took place, I’d be home and dry. As long as Wilma and Vince tied the knot, Brian Caldwell’s alimony obligation would be null and void, and I’d be up and running with my business. True, I’d probably have played a part in hooking my wife’s best pal up with a murderer, but I suppose there are winners and losers in any business venture. And I could always give McFadgen a tip-off about Vince before the honeymoon took place, if my guilty conscience got the better of me.
If you looked at things optimistically, it was entirely possible that all Vince had done wrong was whip a painting to cover the expenses he was bound to accrue in starting up a new life. There was every possibility it was the Chaz Anderson guy he’d sold it to that had done for Dougie Dowds, or even one of the painting’s later patrons, desperate to cover up whatever it was they’d used the painting to fund. When you really thought about it, all those guys had a lot more to lose than Vince if the painting got traced back to them. There was no point in me prematurely hanging Vince for the theft of a cart. Live and let live, that’s always been my overriding philosophy.