If it hadn’t been for the man sprawled on the couch under the window, the flat would have looked derelict. There was no carpet on the floor and the ratty old armchair in which she sat was ripped and stained with who knew what. She knew she was going to have her trousers cleaned immediately. Or burned, which may be wiser. Big George leaned against a wall smoking a cigarette, refusing to sit on anything in the flat. His camera dangled around his neck, and he’d already snapped off a number of shots of the sallow-faced addict. Every now and then, she heard the click of the shutter as another angle appealed. He’d taken maybe twenty shots but only one would be used, the addict’s face blanked out. Big George could have left any time but he opted to stay, being old school, and there was no way he was leaving a lassie alone with a junkie crook.
Through the grime-encrusted windows overlooking Queen Elizabeth Square she could see the city lying under a sky that looked as if it had been smeared by an oily rag. A gas fire hissed in the wall but the flat still felt cold, thanks to damp walls. There was nothing else in the room apart from the armchair, its neighbour in the corner, and the couch. No coffee table, no telly, no pictures, ornaments or mementos, unless you counted the two or three brown-tinged cigarette filters that lay on the floorboards under the window. She stared at the red-haired man opposite her, unable to shake off the feeling she’d seen him before. He was smoking a thin roll-up, but it was unfiltered. He had other uses for the items on the floor. Even without the usual detritus of habitation, this place had an unlived feel about it. Audrey wondered if it was his home or if it was some kind of Giro drop used by a handful of people.
He told them they should call him ‘Jinky’. Used to be a footballer, he said, a good one. Could jink about with the ball. He’d been jinking about when they first arrived, always in movement and even when he sat, his leg bounced around. If it was nervous leg syndrome, Audrey thought, it was heading for a breakdown. They had talked for a while, but his needs grew too strong and eventually he excused himself and vanished into another room. Big George had raised his eyebrows at her. They both knew what he was doing. Tenner bag into a spoon, heated with a lighter, drawn into the syringe through the filter tip, then into a vein – probably his groin, given the years he’d been mainlining. The residue in the filter tip would be saved for a rainy day. He was more relaxed when he came back, but Audrey knew she was on the clock now. Pretty soon he’d be drifting into a deep sleep, and when he awoke he’d feel the need to jag up once more.
He spoke as if his jaw was stiff, like so many junkies, his voice coming from somewhere at the back of his throat. He spoke about his life, how he’d come from a good family here in the Gorbals but he’d joined a gang, drifted into crime, done time in the Bar-L, then Greenock, for assault with a deadly weapon. When he got out in 1984 he’d started using heroin, got hooked, and now here he was. Still saw his wee maw around the streets, down the shops, but she didn’t want to know him. Ashamed of him, so she was. Couldn’t blame her, he said.
‘Why don’t you kick it?’ Audrey asked, but she knew the answer before he shook his head sadly.
‘Naw, darlin, no easy, that. Tried once, went to one of they addiction service places, Alban House, then did a spell at a rehab unit over in Cardross. It was fuckin hard goin so it was, pardon my language. Almost made it, too, but as soon as I came back here I was right back on the stuff. It’s like bein in love, know what I mean? It’s all you can think of, all you want, and when you’re away from it you can’t wait to get back.’
Audrey scribbled this down. It was a good line and she wondered if he’d read it somewhere. ‘Where do you get your stuff?’
‘Ach, all over, darlin. Here, there. You cannae go nowhere in Glasgow, darlin, without trippin over a dealer. Used to be there was a polis on every corner, or a pub, now it’s a dealer. There’s a couple work the Gorbals here, just down at the shops, fuckin yards away from the polis station, pardon my language. It’s nuts, darlin, pure nuts. They’re there puntin tenner bags and jellies and that and the polis are sittin in their wee office drinkin coffee and eatin doughnuts, you know?’
She nodded. It was a tale told and retold across the city. Gorbals, Saracen, Possil, Blackhill. The police couldn’t stem the flow of drugs on the streets, so it often seemed they tried to ignore it. She had even heard that senior officers had long ago decided they couldn’t stop the trade, so they decided to control it by ‘licensing’ dealers to operate in return for information when it was needed. It was almost an urban legend, but Audrey had never found anyone to corroborate it. She wished she could – what a story that would make. Her husband wouldn’t be happy, though. He was seldom happy with what she wrote. But then, he wouldn’t, being a plainclothes cop.
‘Anyway, darlin,’ Jinky said, his voice sad, ‘I suppose it’s what I deserve. I’ve no been a good person, you know what I’m sayin? My maw would die if she knew all the things I’d done.’
‘Like what?’
His face crinkled. ‘Ach, robbin folk, hurtin folk. See my prison stretch? Was for usin a knife on a fella. Carved him up bad, so I did.’
‘Why’d you do it?’
He stopped and considered her question, his eyes dull and lifeless. ‘Fucked if I know, pardon my language, darlin. I think I was paid to do it. I did that back then, got paid to hurt folk. There was a Tally man around here who used to get me to scare folk who didn’t pay their debts on time. Known for it, so I was. Even in the jail.’
‘In Barlinnie?’
‘Aye, used to do people in there for fags and chocolate and stuff, you know? See if it was now, I’d be doin it for a hit.’
Audrey doubted that. He didn’t look capable of hurting anyone now. He must’ve been a powerful enough bloke in his day, but the drugs had eaten him away. The tenner bag he’d jagged up in the other room was taking effect now. His head was beginning to droop, his speech slowing.
‘There was this one bloke, though. I was told to give him a right going over, do him in if I could. It was nothing to me…’
Audrey suddenly became interested. Now here was a story. ‘You were to kill him?’
‘Aye. I’d be protected, they said. I’d get away with it, they said.’
‘Who’s they?’
He didn’t answer, his chin sliding towards his chest, the forgotten cigarette still burning between his fingers.
‘Jinky!’ Audrey said, her voice sharp. His head snapped up and he focussed on her once more. ‘Who’s they?’
‘The guy that wanted me to do it, right bastard he was. We all hated him. But he came to me one day and he gave me this Bar-L Special…’
‘What’s a Bar-L Special?’
‘Plastic toothbrush with two razor blades melted into it. Carves a right deep double wound, so it does. And he gave me a fork, sharpened to a point. I was to stripe this guy and plunge him. If I couldn’t kill him I was to put him out of action.’
‘Out of action?’
‘Cripple him…’
‘What happened?’
He was drifting again so Audrey clapped her hands and yelled his name. His head raised but his eyes were glazing. She knew she didn’t have long. ‘What happened?’ She asked again.
He thought about the question. ‘The boy gave me a right doin, so he did. Never even got as much as a punch in. Like a fuckin machine he was, pardon my language. Pounded me like a piece of mince.’
Audrey felt her blood freeze. ‘Who was this boy?’
Jinky paused, dredging up the name. ‘I should remember it, so I should. Bastard put me out cold. I got transferred after that, away from Bar-L.’
‘Try to remember…’ Audrey was leaning forward now. At first she had simply sensed a great story, but this was all sounding very familiar. She felt her nerves tingling and she was no longer taking notes. She studied Jinky’s face, trying hard to see the features of the burly, hard-faced convict she’d seen years ago across a courtroom in the sallow cadaver before her. The addict’s eyelids began to flutter again, the hit really takin
g hold. ‘Jinky,’ she said, ‘this is important – what was the name of the person who beat you up?’
‘A legend, so he was, but I didn’t know that at the time…’ His words were really slurred now, his voice barely a whisper. Audrey leaned forward to hear them.
‘Jinky,’ she pressed, ‘was it Davie McCall? Was the boy you were sent to hurt called Davie McCall?’
He nodded, his head drooping. ‘Fuckin legend he was, pardon my language…’
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