The inset door opened and the impression was that the man coming in had to feed himself through it. He closed the door, straightening up. He was big and fair and his eyes were that light blue colour that can look quietly mad. But the ticker-tape in Lennie’s head was still unravelling its mechanical responses, urgent abstractions, stored up from years of fantasy. Fair enough. A one-to-one situation. Call your play. Come and get it.
‘Hullo, son,’ the man said nicely. ‘Lennie, intit?’
Lennie nodded, one quick jab of the head, just one. So you’ve heard of me.
‘D’ye know who Ah am?’
Lennie shook his head. Should I? He didn’t take his eyes from the big man’s. No surrender.
‘Ah want ye tae tell me a few things, son. All right?’
Lennie smiled, hardly a smile, just a quiver in the corner of his mouth.
‘Uh-huh. An’ whit if Ah don’t choose tae?’
The man looked away from Lennie. That was one-up for Lennie. The man’s eyes moved vaguely round the warehouse as if he was thinking about the problem Lennie was presenting. Lennie was waiting to see how he would handle that.
‘Aye, well,’ the man said and took Lennie by the collar.
It was like being caught in the slipstream of a jet. Lennie was sucked off his feet and the man’s knee had mashed his groin and as he hung there writhing and jerking with the pain, he felt his cheek being blasted by the man’s right hand and simultaneously the man released him and he was pitched onto the concrete floor. He ricocheted off it and the other side of his face came down flat and hard against the stone. It was like being hit on the jaw with the back of a shovel. For Lennie, nurtured on the legends of Glaswegian violence, it was as if his city had fallen on his head.
He seemed drowning in nausea and the nausea was mixed with the fumes of oil and pain was banging in his head. The first thing he knew was that his face was lying in an oil-stain. He tried to raise his head but the warehouse was turning cartwheels.
‘Jist gettin’ acquainted, son,’ the man’s voice said.
The warehouse slowly subsided.
‘Now, son. Whit’s your connection wi’ Minty McGregor?’
Lennie had the feeling that if he didn’t hold onto the floor he would slide off it. He couldn’t get his head up and as he spoke the floor seemed to be grinding against his jawbone.
‘Nae connection wi’ him.’
The floor scraped along his face and it was only when it stopped that he knew his body had jerked and then that it had jerked because the man had kicked him in the ribs.
‘Ah work fur Matt Mason. Minty. A job tae do fur Matt.’
‘Very good, son. Very good.’
Lennie felt himself being lifted off the floor, just a bag of pains, and being dumped on one of the boxes. He was slumping off it when the man’s foot propped him up.
‘Sit on yer wee box, son. That’s yer reward for tellin’ the truth. We give prizes here.’
Fear deputised in Lennie for a backbone, somehow gave him the capacity to stay more or less upright on his box while his body cringed and sagged.
‘Ye went a wee walk the day wi’ Minty. Whit’s special aboot the Bridgegate?’
‘Bridgegate?’
The box was kicked from under him. As he sprawled on the floor, the man had stepped on his throat. Lennie was retching for breath, bucking on the end of his foot like a gaffed fish.
‘End of fuckin’ interview,’ the man said. ‘Ah can see Ah’ll have tae get rough. Ah’m gonny kull you, son. Unless ye tell me everythin.’ Right now. Ma name isny Simon. It’s John Rhodes.’
He said it like a battle-cry and it unravelled what was left of Lennie. He became pure terror, a desperation to talk. But John Rhodes didn’t make it easy. The pressure on Lennie’s throat stayed unrelaxed and he found that everything he wanted to say had to fight its way out.
‘That lassie in the papers. Fella that killed her. In the tenement. Up at the top. Minty gonny get rid o’ ’im the night. Minty’s got cancer.’
John Rhodes pressed on Lennie’s Adam’s apple as if toying with the button of his private hydrogen bomb, then he released him. Air battered Lennie’s lungs. He lay gasping and boking and coming to terms with the fact that he was still here.
‘When?’
Lennie didn’t look up. Even as the lie formed in him, it frightened him. But terrified of John Rhodes, afraid of Matt Mason, he made his own small compromise between them, clung to it like a spar.
‘Jist before ten o’clock. He says there’s a quiet time then.’
‘Stand up!’
That was an agonising activity for Lennie. By a series of deliberate acts of will, he put himself together like a Meccano-set. It felt as if some of the parts must be missing and he couldn’t get fully upright, settled for a lopsided sway. Separate pains were beginning to isolate themselves, clamour for his attention. His head felt crushed, one eye was closed, a cheek swollen. At least one rib must have gone. His hip ached and he must have bruises everywhere. His breathing came voiced, a repetitive moan.
With his one good eye, he stayed focussed on the man, a legend who had become real for him. Lennie hadn’t a fantasy to his name. He just knew utter fear and a desire to get away from all of it.
John Rhodes stood containing himself, like somebody reining in a runaway horse. Lennie waited, still dripping blood.
‘You!’ John Rhodes said. ‘Mention this tae anybody, even yer mirror, an’ you’re dead. Understand?’
‘Ah understand,’ Lennie managed to say.
‘All right.’ Then he said, ‘Ah, wid ye look at this! That wis you, boay.’
He extended his right arm and on the cuff of the jacket was a fleck of blood.
‘For that. An’ as a wee last warnin’.’
Lennie saw it as if it was through a telescope. The hand at the end of the outstretched arm clenched and swung. Lennie’s head bounced off the wall and he slumped at the foot of it, like thrown refuse. He was unconscious. John Rhodes wetted his thumb and rubbed it on the cuff of his jacket. Crossing to the car, he leaned in the window and pressed the horn.
The inset door opened and the other two came in. Rhodes pointed to Lennie, then to the car. The wavy-haired man dragged Lennie across and put him in the car. He opened the doors and backed out. The man with the scar closed them.
‘Minty’s been set up tae kill the poof,’ John Rhodes said. ‘Can ye imagine it? Wee Minty. If he wanted tae crack an egg, he’d need tae form a gang.’
‘It saves us the trouble, anyway.’
‘Ah gave ma word.’
‘John. As long as it’s done.’
‘Ah’ll decide the wey it’s done. Ah’ll decide!’
The man with the scar looked at him and then looked away. It was like staring into a furnace.
The wavy-haired man pulled up in a quiet cul-de-sac. Lennie had come to, with his head on a newspaper to protect the seat. He was glad they had stopped because he thought he was going to be sick and was frightened of what would happen if he vomited in the car. The man checked that the street was empty and opened the door.
‘Right, son,’ he said briskly.
Lennie crawled out and teetered on the pavement.
‘Now away an’ play with yer plastic sojers or somethin’, son.’
He took out the paper, smeared with Lennie’s blood, and dropped it in the gutter. He drove off, leaving Lennie like a pre-packaged street accident. Leaning blindly against the railings, he could think of nowhere to go but away.
42
They weren’t nearly there, Harkness discovered. The rest of the day was like cycling on rollers. No matter how much energy they expended, they were still in the same place. They expended plenty.
Harry Rayburn wasn’t at Poppies, wasn’t at home, wasn’t anywhere they could find. The general hunt for a Tommy Bryson was yielding nothing. They knew now where they were going and they knew that they would get there. But what worried Laidlaw was when. During the afternoon something
happened which made Laidlaw say, ‘Maybe we’ve got a grip of a one-way hour glass here.’
It was when he phoned to check with the Burleigh. A small boy had come in off the street with a sealed envelope he handed in at the desk. Laidlaw’s name was on it. He said a man in the street had given him ten pence to bring it in. Laidlaw asked Jan to read it to him. The message, printed in pencil, said, ‘Minty McGregor has cancer. He wants to take somebody you are looking for along with him before he goes.’
But Minty wasn’t home either. Laidlaw and Harkness saw Minty’s house in Yoker, the worn wife, the five children, even the hen-run at the back door. But they didn’t see Minty, and they didn’t see Minty’s fourteen-year-old son leave the house after them and go to another house a few streets away.
There the boy found his father and the man he called Uncle James sitting alone in the house. They put a grownup silence between him and them as soon as he came in. His news that the police had been to the house didn’t seem to bother his father at all. He nodded and smiled at Uncle James. All he said was, ‘Tell yer mither Ah’ll no’ be hame till late on the night.’
It was fairly late on and beginning to get dark before two policemen at Poppies reported that Harry Rayburn was there. The news was especially heartening for Harkness because it inspired Laidlaw to use a car.
43
Having done what was necessary, Minty was slow climbing the steps of the Underground and as he came out into St Enoch’s Square, he rested a minute before tackling the curving hill that led to the pedestrians’ entrance to the car park.
The morality of what he had done wasn’t his concern. All it meant to him was something troublesome and tiring, but worth it.
St Enoch’s Station had been a part of the Glasgow he knew. Now the high, arched, glass roof that had fascinated him as a boy was patched with sky. What had seemed before unimaginably far away now only served to give perspective to the vastness of the distance beyond it. Those squares of starlit sky were a bottomlessness he was falling into. There were acres of macadam where the rails had been — nowhere for him to go from here.
Walking among the pillars, he could see no light or movement among the cars. Then far out beyond the roof, he saw the lights of a car flash on and off. As he walked towards it, the front passenger door swung open.
It was Matt Mason in the driver’s seat. Behind Minty was somebody else but he didn’t bother turning round to find out who it was. He stared at the windscreen in front of him. The car was fogged with breathing. There was a smell of drink that made Minty feel like retching.
‘Well?’
‘The job’s done,’ Minty said.
Minty heard a soft sound which he knew was a smile taking place behind him.
‘How did it go?’
‘Nae problem. Like droonin’ cats. He wis a pathetic boay, that yin.’
‘How did you get to him without him getting the wind up?’
‘Ah knocked at the door.’
There was quiet laughter from the back seat. Mason wasn’t amused.
‘Come on,’ he said.
‘Ah’m tellin’ ye. Ah knocked at the door.’
‘Who did he think it was? Avon calling?’
‘Lennie telt me aboot Harry Rayburn. Ah said Ah wis fae him. Wi’ a message. He couldny get away an’ it was urgent, Ah said. Ah took him up a fish-supper as well. Dae Ah get that aff expenses?’
Mason was staring at him.
‘How did you do it?’
‘Wi’ a bit o’ rope. That way ye don’t need too much pressure. Ah let him eat maist o’ his supper. There wis only a few chips left when Ah gave him it. Ah hope he wisny the kind that keeps the best chips tae the last.’
The other two were impressed in spite of themselves. Their breathing seemed self-consciously loud, as if they were deliberately indulging it.
‘He wis an awfu’ quick eater that boay. Ah saved him fae a terrible case o’ indigestion.’
Mason was the first to recover.
‘How do I know you’ve done it?’
‘Ye want a receipt?’ Minty asked.
He put his hand in the pocket of his coat and dropped something on Mason’s lap. Mason switched on the interior light. He was holding up a pair of yellow lace panties, only slightly torn and hard with dried blood in places. He switched off the light and made to hand them back.
‘They’re yours,’ Minty said. ‘Ah don’t want them. Ah want paid for them. That’s a five-hundred-quid paira knickers ye’ve got there. The dearest drawers on the market.’
Mason thought for a moment and said, ‘If they’re not genuine, they’ll be helluva dear to you.’
He gave Minty the money.
‘Thanks, Mr Mason,’ Minty said. ‘Ah’ll pit in a word for ye wi’ the heid man when Ah get there.’
He got out of the car and walked slowly out of St Enoch’s. Watching him go, Lennie stayed in the shadow of the pillar he was hiding behind. He waited till he saw Matt Mason’s car ease itself out of its berth and check out of the car park. Then he headed for the left-luggage office in Central Station, where his travelling-bag was.
In Argyle Street Minty asked a man at a bus-stop for a light and gave him five hundred pounds for it. Then he made his way towards the nearest police station, which was in St Andrew’s Street.
44
Harry Rayburn was angry. In early afternoon he had managed to get Tommy to stop saying no to being taken from the tenement. He hadn’t agreed to go but his passivity was all Harry felt he needed. Tommy had stilled to the point of being just another part of that ugly room. Furniture you could move — it didn’t struggle.
Since then Harry had been trying to make contact with Matt Mason. He had phoned all the places he could think of, he had gone to his bookie shops, he had even in desperation gone to Bearsden, to be turned away by an elderly caricature of gentility calling herself the ‘housekaypah’ and playing at the Lady of the Manor. Working-class parvenus were the worst. Her voice was East End garrotted by Kelvinside. ‘Eh’m afrayd they’re both aht. Perheps yew could call again. No, Eh’ve no ideah when Mr Mason wull be beck. Perhaps yew’d care to leave a massage?’ ‘Yes,’ Harry said. ‘Fuck ’im!’
Perspiring and panicky, he came back to Poppies to begin phoning again and found it had closed on him like a trap. The policemen were very polite but he would have to wait in his office until he could be seen. He was raging but he soon gave up trying to vent it on them. You might as well try to get a reaction out of garden gnomes. ‘We’ve got our instructions, sir.’
He walked up and down the office, burning Mason in effigy and suing the police into abject apology. The threat to himself represented by their presence was made trivial by the danger to Tommy the delay was causing. It was hours now since he had seen Tommy, a lot of hours. Anything could be happening. Tommy would have expected some fulfilment of Harry’s promises by this time. He might panic. He might get out of the tenement himself, and that would be it. The state he was in, he wouldn’t last an hour in the street without doing something crazy. He might come walking in here.
The frustration of it was fierce, and the sense of persecution he felt reactivated all his past frustrations. There were plenty of those. They made up most of his life. The injustice of this moment connected up with all the other injustices, the sneers, the dismissive looks, the time three men had followed him into the toilet of a pub and left him unconscious there, for doing nothing more than being himself.
The effect of this latest insult was out of all proportion to its cause. It was like one glass of whisky to an alcoholic. It found its way so far into him that by the time they knocked at the door he was almost hysterical with rage. The two who had been here yesterday morning came in.
‘Not you again! What the hell is going on here? If you’ve got a lawyer, get him! I’m going to mince you for this.’
‘Oh daddy-mammy,’ Laidlaw said.
‘I’m telling you. You’ve got no official sanction for being here. You’ve encroached o
n my rights already. Now get out. You’re trespassing. Get out! Before I throw you out.’
‘If you don’t stop frightening me, Mr Rayburn,’ Laidlaw said very quietly, ‘I won’t hit you — I’ll make love to you.’
It was like stopping a runaway horse with your pinkie. Harkness could see Rayburn’s presence go soft, filleted with one remark. The anger that had etched his face lost definition, and his features became blurred. The whole bias of the place had shifted. It was Laidlaw’s room. As Laidlaw walked into it, Rayburn moved backwards clumsily. Laidlaw gestured backwards at Harkness, who came in and closed the door.
‘Take off your hairy chest, Mr Rayburn, and sit down.’
Rayburn disintegrated into the chair that Laidlaw offered him. Laidlaw leaned into him, almost whispering.
‘I’ve watched your act long enough, Mr Rayburn. It’s a bad act. And now I want my money back. I could knock you out with my eyelashes. But that’s not what we’re here to talk about. We’re here to talk about Tommy, Mr Rayburn.’
Rayburn looked up, looked away.
‘I don’t know any Tommy.’
‘Mr Rayburn. I don’t think you understand. If you don’t answer the questions I’m going to ask, I’m going to jail you. Right now. Because if you don’t answer them, I’m going to assume you’re implicated in a murder.’
Rayburn’s face attempted incredulity but Laidlaw’s face gave him nothing back.
‘You’re a homosexual, Mr Rayburn. For some time you’ve had a homosexual relationship with a boy called Tommy Bryson. Is that correct?’
The silence was the time it took for Harry Rayburn to realise that the last thing he had left to hope for was never going to happen.
‘Yes.’
It was the smallest word Harkness had ever heard.
‘His name doesn’t appear on the list of staff you gave us. But he works for you. Is that correct?’
‘No. No, it’s not.’
‘Mr Rayburn-’
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