He started to chuckle, frothy spit gathered in the corners of his mouth. His whole frame shook and then he fell into a hacking cough that rattled off his ribs. ‘Come on, Dury . . . deal’s a deal after all. That’s what I told yer brother before he got his.’
I stopped struggling. Played him hard: ‘You’re shitting me . . . You don’t have my niece.’
‘That right, eh . . .’ He called the pug over. ‘Sammy, get that fucking fancy phone ay yours over here.’
The screen of the phone got shoved in my face. A video played. I saw Alice on her knees in a field. She was gagged and tied. Vilem was tied behind her; he had tape over his mouth, a badly bruised face, and blood on his shirt. They’d both been tethered to a rusting tractor axle; Alice struggled to try and free herself, tugging at the rope on her hands. I wanted to reach out to her, and then the scene shifted, a flash of sky as the camera moved on an excavator in motion. The driver leaned out the cab – it was Dartboard – then he lowered the digger into the frost-hardened ground. As the screen’s angle shifted again I saw he had already dug one hole in the ground. Dartboard was working on the second as the screen changed again, homed in on a Transit van. An arm came before the camera and opened the back doors. Inside was stacked with pine-box coffins.
I’d seen enough, looked away.
The Undertaker took the phone up. ‘That niece ay yours has got a tidy wee arse on her . . . No wonder the Czech was poking her.’
I didn’t want to listen. I saw the pug start to laugh.
The Undertaker pointed to the phone. ‘See this Czech boyo here? Your brother told me they put that cunt in his hoose to keep an eye on him, make sure he didn’t do anything stupid like break their wee arrangement.’
I looked up, saw the Undertaker twisting his mouth at Vilem. I said, ‘What are you saying?’
He shrugged. ‘See me, I don’t waste time thinking, Dury . . . I act. When those cunts cut me oot I told Michael, get those wagons running again or there’ll be bother. Your brother was a smart laddie, he knew I didn’t waste time on threats. No like these Czech bastards . . . That’s why he went home to tell that fucker to get out his hoose, and get his nose out our fucking business.’
‘He killed my brother?’
‘Oh, I’d say so . . . Wouldn’t you?’
I strained to free myself again. ‘I’ll kill him.’
The Undertaker stepped back. ‘You might no’ get the fucking chance.’ I looked up at him. He continued, ‘You’ll do something for me if you want your wee niece back . . . And your hands on her boyfriend.’
My head burned up. I couldn’t think fast enough to take it all in. ‘What do you want?’
‘Simple, Dury. That fat cunt’s no’ going anywhere owing me the poppy he does. Bring him back here and I’ll do you a wee favour – since it’s Christmas – I won’t put her in the ground till she’s dead.’ He paused. ‘Way the weather’s going, though, that won’t be long.’
He started to wheeze with the exertion of baiting me, rasped into a cough. He broke away, nodded to Dartboard.
I felt my arms released. I landed on the floor.
‘Get the fuck up, Dury,’ said the Undertaker. ‘Time’s ticking away, laddie.’
Chapter 38
I STOOD IN THE SNOW facing Tollcross in the dark of night. The Christmas lights draped over the road glowed down on the traffic, danced on the car roofs. I heard screams and wails carry from the showground in Princes Street Gardens. The sounds sliced me as a double-decker bus passed by, wet spray flying from the gutter. A man with gift-wrapped parcels in his arms tried to squeeze past me, grunted when I didn’t move. He dropped a glove, failed to notice; I didn’t tell him.
I stood staring. Watching the traffic lights change, the taxis turn in the road. I started to get wet. The snow fell heavily. I’d never seen snow like it. It settled where it lay, inches of it already on parked cars. My hair flattened to my head, stuck to my brow. An old woman approached me and held up the fallen glove. She asked if it was mine but I didn’t answer. She waved it at me but I ignored her. The woman’s mouth kept moving and moving and moving but I didn’t hear the words. Eventually she walked away, placed the glove on railings and continued up the street.
I felt cold. My lips grew numb and my hands froze in my pockets. I stood and I stared ahead and I felt the tears forming in my eyes, but they wouldn’t fall. They held there like I held myself to the exact same spot on the pavement and then I felt a dig in my shoulder as a late shopper pushed past me, and the tears were dislodged. I turned to hear the shopper apologise, wiped my face with the back of my hand. I didn’t know what to say. I was beyond words. Words could be formed into thought and I didn’t want to think. I didn’t want to think and I didn’t want to feel. I wanted to trade places with my brother. I didn’t want any part in this misery called life any more. I knew I couldn’t go on if anything happened to Alice.
‘Gus, Gus . . . fucking hell, Gus.’ Mac called me from the street.
I looked up. He had Hod’s truck stopped in the road; a trail of angry drivers blasted horns behind him. I found myself moving towards the vehicle, automatically opened up the door and got in. Tyres spun on the wet road as he took off.
‘Jesus, you were away with the pixies there, mate,’ he said. ‘What’s up?’
The heater blew in front of me. I started to thaw.
‘I know who killed my brother.’
‘Wha’?’ Mac turned his head. ‘Who?’
I saw my fingernails turning pink. ‘It was the Czechs . . . They put one of their own in Michael’s house, as a frightener.’
Mac pulled over the truck – we drew in beside the Meadows. ‘How do you know?’
I told him what the Undertaker had said. ‘It all stacks up. On the night he died Michael went to see McMilne; he says he was going to cut out the Czechs.’ I looked out to the Meadows, where they had found my brother’s body. ‘Michael must have went home and had it out with Vilem.’ I saw nothing in the park but blackness. ‘We have to find fat Davie: he’s legged it since Radek got lifted . . . McMilne has my niece.’
Mac spoke: ‘Your niece?’
‘He’ll put her in a hole if we don’t bring him Davie . . . We have to get that piece of shit right now.’
Mac started the engine. ‘Let’s go.’
I jerked my head away from the blackness. The Undertaker’s lumps had been searching the city and got not a sniff of him. ‘Where to fucking start?’
Mac pulled right across the road; a blast of car horns went up. He engaged reverse and went for a three-point turn. ‘I’ve got a fair idea where he might be.’
We headed back towards Tollcross. I said, ‘Where are we going?’
‘Remember when I was tailing him, I told you he had a wee scrubber stashed away in a flat in Restalrig? . . . I bet you a pound to a pail of shite the fat wee gimp’s up there.’
Mac bombed it down Lothian Road, ran lights on Princes Street, but the traffic ground to a standstill on George Street. The middle classes in their uniform Barbour jackets trotted back and forth between the glitter and the tinsel and the bright lights. A crowd of excited schoolgirls giggled and shivered at the crossing; I thought of Alice.
‘Come on, Mac . . . punch it.’
‘It’s chocka. Christmas Eve, mate.’
I didn’t want to be reminded. Alice should have been like those girls, having fun, laughing and joking. Preparing for a school party, Jesus, getting tipsy. How could I have been angry with her for that? I wanted to say sorry to her and hug her and promise to look after her. She’d lost her father, we’d all lost Michael; we couldn’t lose anyone else. I saw Debs’s face as I thought of Alice tied in that field. Debs would never be able to take any hurt befalling Alice, it would be the end of her too.
Jayne.
My mother.
My sister.
The list grew in my mind.
‘Come on, come on.’ I slapped at the dash. The cars sat still, going nowhere. I opened the door, got
out and shouted, ‘Get moving, come on, fucking move it!’ The New Town shoppers stared at me. A woman flicked her scarf over her shoulder and muttered something to the concourse. I pounded the bonnet of the Hilux with my fists.
Mac called me, ‘Get in, Gus, you’re not fucking helping.’
That was my problem; I wasn’t helping anyone. I hadn’t been there for Michael, and now I’d let down his daughter, my niece. Knew I was transferring my own self-loathing to the surrounds. Anger and hurt burned in me.
I got back in the truck and Mac eased it through a gap in the bottleneck. He tore through York Place until we hit the roundabout. We rolled into a quiet stretch, and topped sixty most of the way to Jock’s Lodge. At Restalrig we roared through the streets, flashing anyone who got in our way with the headlights on full beam.
Mac dropped gears, threw two wheels on the pavement and hit the anchors. ‘Right, follow me.’ He opened the door and eased out of the truck. He hopped on his sore ankle but there was a steel in his gut that told me he’d tear down walls to get to fat Davie. The flat was in a street of ex-council maisonettes. There’d been no maintenance done here since before the Thatcher years, save the odd lick of paint by late-boom developers looking to turn a quick profit.
‘It’s up there,’ said Mac. He pointed to a skanky door, banging on its hinges. I went in behind him. The stair was in almost complete darkness – one dim light flickered beside the front door. A pram with a bent wheel sat in the hallway alongside a giant yellow Tonka truck that had been trashed and spray-painted. The young crew’s graffiti artists had also tagged the stairs and there was the familiar stench of Special Brew and pish everywhere.
At the top of the steps Mac pointed to another door. I didn’t need any more information, put my boot to the lock and it shed a few strips of peeling emulsion. The second kick put the whole frame in; the top hinge collapsed, spat out some screws.
As I walked in I heard the theme tune from Only Fools and Horses starting, another Christmas special rerun with Del and Rodney. I stormed through to the living room and a bleach-blonde stick insect with a nose piercing and an Embassy in her grid screamed at me. I put my hand over her mouth and pushed her back into the chair she’d leaped from. She screamed again, ‘Fucking cunts come into my fucking house!’ Her face lit up like a lantern as she spat.
Mac stepped from behind me and cracked a knuckle on her brow. She flopped like a deflating sex doll.
Fat Davie sat in his chewing-gum-coloured Y-fronts and a stringy semmit, toasting his stockinged toes in front of a three-bar electric heater. One of his brown socks had a hole in it; his big toe had worked its way out. He had a tinfoil Chinese carry-out box balanced on his belly and a forkful of egg noodles poised before his open mouth.
‘Hello, Davie,’ I said. The noodles dropped into the box. Some chow mein sauce splashed on his chest and he jumped with a start. Mac leaned over and smacked the carry-out from his hands. It splashed on the wall and the electric fire sizzled as the beanshoots and chicken strips bounced off its red-hot bars.
‘Gus, ehm, I was thinking about what you told me . . .’ said Davie.
I leaned forward and grabbed a bunch of his semmit, yanked him up. ‘No, you fucking fat waste of space, you weren’t thinking.’ I threw him to the door. ‘Folk like you never fucking think, Davie.’
He stumbled and put his hands out to break his fall. Mac pulled a pair of beige Farah slacks from the back of a chair, threw them at fat Davie. ‘Get dressed, y’cunt.’
As Mac kicked shoes towards Davie, I looked about the room. There was a travel bag and a leather briefcase sitting by the fireplace. I opened up the bag first: it was full of clothes. ‘Going somewhere, Davie?’
He jerked his head towards me, nearly lost balance as he tried to put a foot in his trousers.
‘I was just . . .’ he said.
‘Shut the fuck up,’ said Mac. He slapped him across the face. A trickle of blood fell from Davie’s nose and caught in his pale moustache.
I opened up the briefcase: stacks of paperwork, bankbooks, chequebooks, and a few hefty rolls tucked away underneath. I held up some twenties. Mac gave Davie another belt. The sack of shit whimpered.
‘Don’t see your tickets, Davie,’ I said, ‘for Disneyland.’
He wiped the blood from his nose. ‘What? What? . . . Disneyland?’
‘Maybe not . . .’ I shook my head. ‘I think your Donald Duck just ran out.’
Mac picked up a blazer and shoved it at Davie. ‘Come on, get your arse out that door.’
The fat fuck turned back to me, whimpered again. ‘Gus, Gus . . .’
‘Get through the door, Davie . . . If you speak nicely to him, the Undertaker might let you say a prayer before he puts you in the ground.’ I walked over and pushed him in the back. ‘But if he’s hurt my Alice, I’ll fucking dig you up and finish the job with my bare hands.’
Chapter 39
MAC PUT THE HILUX INTO gear and released the clutch. We shot out of Restalrig like the four-minute warning had just sounded. Fat Davie pleaded at my side like a spoilt child: ‘Gus, I only did what was best for Michael, I promise.’
‘Don’t use his name again.’
He whined, ‘I wouldn’t do anything to harm Michael . . . or his family.’
I lost it, put a fist in him. It was like punching a mattress; I felt my knuckles sink as I pummelled Davie’s gut. ‘I told you, don’t use his fucking name. Didn’t I tell you?’
I’d disturbed the balance of the truck – it started to slide on the road.
‘Whoa, whoa . . . Cool the beans there,’ said Mac.
I locked it down, sat back in my seat. Davie toppled over. His knees hit the ground, his legs buckled under his weight. I grabbed him by the collar, hauled him up. He winced in pain, shrieked, ‘I haven’t done anything wrong . . .’
‘Shut it.’ He sounded pathetic. I couldn’t believe the way he was still yabbering, after all he’d done. After all the grief that Davie’s antics had brought to me and Debs, to Jayne . . . the death of Michael, and Andy, and Ian Kerr. And now there was Alice. Oh Christ, Alice. The snow was falling heavily now: she couldn’t survive much longer.
‘Davie, let me say this only once.’ I tried to keep my voice steady, but it quivered, betraying my emotion. ‘The Undertaker has my niece bound and gagged in a field, there is a hole in the ground dug for her. The only hope for that girl is you. Do you understand?’
Davie’s face froze, turned white. His lips tightened into a knot and refused to let out any words. He nodded.
‘When I hand you over, Davie, I don’t care what he does to you. I don’t care whether he demands money or puts you in the ground . . . All I care about now is Alice.’
The words seemed to register with him; he turned away. Davie stared out of the window like a man who was watching his final moments in slow-mo. I hoped he was thinking about what he had done. About how his actions, his greed, had hurt so many others, and was hurting them yet. I wanted Davie to feel the pain I felt. I knew he hadn’t murdered my brother but he had played his part, and I wanted revenge.
The roads grew busy but Mac pushed on and flashed the oncoming traffic as we powered through the town. The snow pelted down, and the sky darkened with cloud covering; if there were night stars out, they weren’t shining over us.
Christmas Eve revellers started to appear, groups of lads tanked up on designer lager and barely dressed young girls staggering from bar to bar. In an hour the blokes would be singing ‘Danny Boy’ and the girls walking barefoot, their heels in their hands. There would be barf swimming in the gutters and aggro in the kebab shops. Just another Christmas Eve in Edinburgh, but it stung me to think of anyone enjoying themselves while Alice faced a grim death.
I looked at the thermometer in the dash: it was eight-below.
‘Can’t you go any fucking faster?’ I yelled.
‘Trying . . . trying.’ Mac rounded the bend onto the Grassmarket. A tart in reindeer antlers was touching up a guy in a Sa
nta hat; they stood bang middle of the road, going for it. Mac slammed on the anchors, yelled out, ‘Get up a close!’
The wee hingoot twisted her face and Santa hat pulled in his belt, headed for the car. Mac yanked on the handbrake, opened the door. The guy strutted as he walked towards the truck. He put back his shoulders, gave Mac a come-ahead flick of the fingers. Mac managed three or four paces on his sore ankle, let the guy get closer on his own. When he drew up to the bumper Mac put him down with one sledgehammer right. It was clinical. He dragged him to the side of the road and got back in the cab, gunned the engine. The tart took off her antlers as we passed.
The end of the road looked like a Hieronymus Bosch painting, bodies seething everywhere. Queues from the pubs spilled onto the road. Mac blasted the horn and swerved. The Hilux mounted the kerb as we drove onto West Port; we hit fifty before Tollcross. The truck skidded to a halt outside a busy pub, folk queuing to get in already.
I leaned over and opened Davie’s door, said, ‘Out!’
He was silent now, accepting.
Mac hobbled behind me on his one good ankle, jangling the car keys. ‘Right, let’s fucking nash.’
The snowfall was heavier than I’d seen it all year, and it was the harshest winter I could remember. I thought again of Alice, out in that field, tied to a rusting tractor axle. She was so thin, so frail. I couldn’t believe she wouldn’t perish. I tried to focus, to get moving. I knew I was her only hope – but I just couldn’t shake the sight of her, the image that the Undertaker had shown me on that phone haunted me.
I pushed Davie in the back. ‘I’m telling you now, Davie, anything’s happened to my niece . . . you’re fucking well done for.’
He slipped in the street, fell. The knees of his beige Farah trousers turned black. I put a grip on his belt and hauled him to his feet. His soft shoes slid about all over the pavement as he walked, glancing back at us.
‘Just fucking get going,’ said Mac.
At the Undertaker’s lap-dancing bar in the Pubic Triangle a flannel-shirted Scouser was arguing the toss after being refused entry. I didn’t recognise the doorman, but I recognised the type. I fronted up, said, ‘We’re expected.’
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