Bad Samaritan

by Michael J Malone

  I’ll give you “nicer tie”, you prick.

  My phone pings. It’s Maggie. If I’m coming over, she’s asking me to bring some bread, cold ham and salad stuff. Tomatoes and the like. If not, she’ll make do.

  I drive to hers. Realise when I’m sitting outside her building that not only do I have no recollection of the twenty-minute journey, I haven’t stopped at the shop for the food.

  Should I go upstairs?

  I don’t articulate an answer. Instead I reignite the engine. Driving off, I throw a glance over my shoulder. See a pale face at her third floor window and feel a stab of guilt.

  * * *

  As I reverse park into a space just feet from my front door, I see a man standing there. He’s holding a small, white plastic bag.

  He holds it up and waves it in my face when I draw near. I smell spices.

  ‘You’ll have had your tea?’ he grins.

  ‘Kenny.’ I give him a look, which judging by his answer, he correctly translates as, what the fuck are you doing here.

  ‘Maggie called. Said you’d be needing some food. Said you were fading away to a mountain.’ He looks at my gut.

  ‘Fine,’ I reply. Don’t have the energy to tell him to piss off.

  I unlock the door. We walk inside. Kenny makes for the kitchen and starts to plate up. I go to the toilet. Aim a weak string of piss at the bowl. Didn’t really need to go. This is more of a delay tactic.

  ‘Hope you washed your hands,’ Kenny says as I accept a heaped plate of food from him when I walk back into the kitchen.

  ‘Nah,’ I say. ‘Didn’t even get my fingers wet.’

  ‘Clatty bastard,’ says Kenny. He’s the kind of guy who washes his hands before and after he goes for a pee.

  ‘Couldn’t help but notice, Ray…’ Kenny speaks with a mouthful of half-chewed chicken, ‘…there’s barely any food in your cupboards.’

  ‘Yeah, cos if I buy it, I eat it.’

  ‘Is that not the idea?’

  ‘Yeah, but I buy the bad stuff. The “go straight to my artery and clog it” variety.’

  ‘So you starve?’

  ‘Does it look like I’m starving?’ I pat my gut.

  ‘Instead of bad choices at the supermarket, you’re then making bad choices at the carry-out place?’

  ‘There’s a kind of logic in there somewhere,’ I grin.

  He gives me a look, shakes his head and shovels in another mouthful. ‘Fucking eejit.’

  We eat in silence. I eat much more than he does, his body being a temple and all that. I use the last piece of naan bread to wipe up the last streak of sauce. Chew until it’s gone. Lean back in my seat and belch. One thing about me, doesn’t matter what kind of mental state I’m in, hand me a plate of food and I’ll hoover up the lot.

  Leaning back, I think about Maggie. Her strained face at the window. She knows me better than I know myself. Knows exactly what is going on in my head, but I wonder if knowing makes it easier to accept without being wounded by my actions. It takes a special kind of person to set aside their own needs in that situation.

  Maggie is that kind of special. My chest tightens with equal parts love and guilt. I should be better, I know it, but there are times I only have room in my head for the snarl of my own thoughts

  ‘Maggie sent you?’

  ‘Not “sent” so much as suggested I pop over.’

  ‘Right.’

  ‘You’re not going to self-harm are you, Ray?’

  ‘Fuck off.’

  ‘Want me to go?’ he asks. There’s no side to the question, just a request for honesty. If I want him gone, he’ll leave. But the evening stretches ahead of me, and it’s too quiet, too long, and my heart beats a leaden pulse at the thought.

  ‘You’re here now,’ I concede less than graciously.

  ‘You’re welcome for dinner by the way.’

  ‘And I was all set for a baguette, cheese and ham. With salad.’

  ‘Ooo, salad. Get you.’ His expression shifts. Softens. ‘Maggie phoned an hour ago. Only takes twenty minutes from hers to yours.’

  ‘She saw me then?’

  ‘Aye.’

  I sighed. ‘I’m not fit company.’ And the words I don’t deserve her sit heavy on my heart.

  ‘Don’t worry about it. Sometimes I think Maggie knows you better than you know yourself.’

  ‘Wouldn’t be difficult. Self-knowledge isn’t exactly my strong point.’

  He says nothing in response. Sits back in his chair, waiting for me to speak.

  ‘I went to church last night.’

  ‘Did you say a prayer for me?’

  ‘You’re beyond redemption, mate. And not everything is about you, by the way.’

  ‘It’s not?’ He grins. ‘I’m the centre of my universe. Thought it was the same for everyone else.’ He pauses. Adopts his serious face. ‘So, what’s eating your gusset?’ Typically Kenny. No hanging about.

  ‘You should go into counselling. Make a fortune.’

  ‘Nah,’ he replies. ‘I find shouting “pull yourself together” at people isn’t really that effective.’ He leans forward, elbows resting on his thighs. ‘So. The church?’

  I look out of the window behind him, at an unfathomable sky clothed in a palette of dark grey. Fatigue pulls at my eyelids. Not sure if it’s the feeling of satiety from the food or a feeling of safety from Kenny’s reassuring, non-judgemental presence.

  ‘Not in the mood for talking, Kenny. D’you mind?’ I allow my head to fall back onto the cushion and stare at the stipple on the ceiling.

  ‘Fine by me,’ says Kenny. ‘There’s only so much of your shite I can stomach anyway.’ I hear the smile in his voice and feel myself respond. Want to offer a fuck you in response, but I don’t have the energy.

  * * *

  It’s dark when I’m woken by a pressing need to go to the toilet. I’m in there for a good five minutes, and when I come out I hear Kenny ask, ‘I take it the loo’s a no-go zone for the next hour?’

  ‘Still here?’ I go back to my seat and see from the weak light coming in from the street that he’s stretched out on the other sofa. Judging by the touch of light in the sky, it’s early morning. About five-ish.

  ‘It’s a mirage,’ he says, his voice thick with sleep. ‘The real Kenny is actually spooning into the back of his favourite working girl, hoping she’s ready for another session.’

  I smile into the gloom of the room. And realise that this has been the longest unbroken sleep I’ve had for a long time. I want to thank him, but he’d only tell me to piss off.

  Instead. ‘Coffee?’ I ask.

  ‘Have you got any in those barren cupboards?’

  ‘There’s no calories in coffee, so I trust myself with that.’

  ‘Milk?’

  I snort in reply. ‘If there is any it’s bound to be halfway to cheese by now.’

  ‘Black coffee it is then,’ he says.

  I go to my bedroom, take off my shirt and suit-trousers and put on a t-shirt and a pair of joggers that are lying at the side of the bed. Then I walk to the kitchen and set us both up with a coffee.

  The light has grown by the time I get back into the living room, and there’s enough to see that Kenny doesn’t even have the decency to look like he’s slept on a couch. Looks like he’s just come out of make-up at the film studio.

  ‘Prick,’ I say as I offer him the coffee.

  ‘Wanker,’ is his reply.

  I sit. We sip.

  First light is my favourite time of the day. Dreams fostered by the dark no longer have the power to wound, and the damaged and the deranged are still asleep. The day stretches ahead with a hint of possibility unthreatened by reality.

  I put my empty cup on the low glass table in front of me and lean forward, my elbows on my knees. The
thumb of my left hand finds the inside of my right wrist and caresses the embossed edge of my scar. My permanent reminder of Leonard’s hate for me. I survived while his twin brother didn’t, and for that sin he wants to rub me out.

  After the attack, I used to wipe at it for hours, as if to erase it, but instead it bled. Now I’ve learned to control that urge.

  I can feel Kenny’s eyes on me. My scars.

  ‘I could’ve died.’

  ‘I know,’ he replies. ‘I love this time of day,’ he says, changing the direction of the conversation. We both know I’m grateful, and Kenny has no need to hear it expressed again. ‘If I had my gear with me I’d be off for a run.’

  ‘If I could be arsed, I’d join you.’

  ‘I’m curious,’ Kenny says, his head cocked to the side. ‘You mentioned the church last night. What’s that all about?’

  ‘I know. Not sure I understand it myself. It’s like that poem about parents fucking you up. ‘Cept with me, they were aided and abetted by organised religion.’ It wouldn’t need an expert to draw causal link from my childhood, the Catholic Church and my present issues. And yet, the draw of the familiar, the cool echo of the building and the young priest’s eagerness to help overcame all of that.

  ‘What do you think sparked this latest episode off?’ Kenny asks.

  ‘McCall dying.’

  ‘Yeah?’

  ‘It was too easy to go with the official verdict, let him take the blame and allow Leonard to escape.’ As I mention his name, that final tableau rears up in my mind. Mother Superior lying at the foot of the altar with her throat cut. I’m fighting to move a muscle, any muscle, not knowing that Leonard has injected me with something. His face entering my vision, all leer and hunger as he draws a knife across my wrists. His plan was to kill the nun, avenge his brother and lay the blame on me. In his narrative, I then cut my own wrists.

  All of this was ruined by the timely arrival of Kenny O’Neill. He completely missed Leonard and huckled Joseph McCall to the floor while he waited for the police.

  ‘Would you recognise Leonard if you saw him?’ I ask.

  He shakes his head. ‘I saw you in a daze, lying in a pool of your own blood. McCall was the only living, breathing person in that wee chapel. Leonard was long gone.’

  I shiver.

  ‘What are you going to do?’ Kenny asks.

  ‘He’s the bogeyman. Can’t have that. I’ve dealt with enough disturbed people to know that they’re only scary if you invest them with that quality.’

  ‘Any ideas where he might have gone?’

  ‘We find a Catholic organisation that has recently taken on a handyman.’

  ‘Easy as that?’ Kenny gives me his sceptical look.

  I think of how at my recent moment of crisis, my automatic movement has been back to the familiar and nod.

  ‘It’s what he knows.’

  ‘I’ve got a guy,’ Kenny says. ‘Does “research” for me. I’ll get him on the case.’ Pause. ‘How can I narrow it down for him, Mr Detective?’

  ‘He vanished that night. The only sight of him has been via a couple of postcards. Nice Scottish scenes. All that was missing was a tin of shortbread.’

  ‘So, he’s stayed in the country.’

  ‘Aye, and he thinks I’m public enemy number one, so he won’t have gone that far. Not Glasgow, but only an hour or two away.’ I think of the postcard. ‘Somewhere to the north.’

  He was on a handyman’s wage. Can’t have much cash, surely. He’d need a job quickly, and a job like that at a local church could well come with a bedsit type of arrangement. Leonard would know exactly how to worm himself into that kind of situation.

  ‘Tell your man to check job adverts in local newspapers being published north of Glasgow. Might as well go as far as Inverness. Jack of all trades kind of thing.’

  ‘What will you do when we find him?’

  Not if. When. Kenny is confident in his guy, and this confidence causes a vibration deep in my mind. I think of the blade, cold on my skin. The desire in Leonard’s face. And despite myself I shiver. This man will not control me any longer. I cross my arms, as if trying to preserve heat, to steel myself against a small boy’s fear.

  ‘Have you ever killed anyone, Kenny?’

  35

  They arranged to meet in a public place. Leonard suggested a bookstore with a cafe. Waterstones – Argyle Street branch. He arrived a good thirty minutes early. Slowly walked through each of the three floors. Pretended to look at the stacks of brightly coloured books.

  He’d only ever bought one book: the Bible. White leather cover with gold embossed lettering.

  He heard a member of staff in conversation with a punter.

  ‘It has a red cover,’ the would-be customer began. ‘It’s called The Girl with something or other. My book club were reading it. They all said it was great. Sorry, I can’t remember the full title.’

  The bookseller went through a list of titles all beginning with The Girl. The customer shook her head at each of them. Shaking his head, Leonard walked away. He thought people using these kind of places would be smarter.

  On the first floor, he turned left at the top of the stairs and walked through the coffee shop. Took in the glass-fronted cooler and the selection of cakes.

  ‘Help you?’ asked the barista, as if he did actually want to help.

  Leonard shook his head and walked past the counter. He scanned the other customers. Not one of them was reading a book. Why come into a bookstore coffee shop and not cop a free read of some of their books?

  He walked in a large circle, past cookery, poetry, kids and fantasy, before arriving back at the top of the stairs. There was a chair by the window. From there he could see everyone coming and going. He could study the boy as he arrived.

  Seated, he plucked his phone from his pocket and checked the internet connection. It was strong. He connected and opened his emails. Nothing. They’d agreed the boy would email if he was held up.

  He looked at the time. Five minutes to go.

  He picked a book from the table to his right. Opened it to the first page and pretended to read. Someone walked past. A girl. Then an old couple. Then a couple of booksellers.

  Then, right on time, Simon arrived.

  He could tell it was him from the way he scanned the people around him. Searching for a look of connection, possible recognition. Leonard kept his expression neutral and allowed the boy’s eyes to skim past.

  Simon was taller than he expected. Broad across the shoulders with long lean legs. There was a softness in his gut and in the line of his chin, suggesting little exercise and long hours at the keyboard. An untucked red and blue check shirt, jeans and a three-day growth completed the look.

  The boy approached the counter, which took him out of Leonard’s line of sight, so he moved, took a few steps forward and pretended to study the books piled high by the side of the chiller cabinet.

  Simon ordered a can of Irn Bru. Collected his drink and took a seat.

  Leonard approached the counter. Ordered a black coffee and sat one over and watched as the boy studied every person that entered the space.

  His own drink arrived, and he gave a nod of thanks to the server. He hated coffee, but it was part of his disguise. He lifted the cup and pressed the lid to his lower lip and pretended to sip.

  After ten minutes of watching the boy eagerly looking at everyone who comes in, he pulled out his phone and thumbed out an email.

  Can’t make it. Can’t do this. Sorry. And he pressed send.

  He heard the boy’s phone sound a warning. Watched as he pulled the phone out of his pocket and read. Saw the look of disappointment on his face and allowed a smile to tug at the corners of his mouth.

  The boy stood. Pocketed his phone. Took a last, long pull at his can and walked away.

  Leonar
d followed close behind, thinking, at last, the hunt is on.

  36

  Kenny’s certainty in his guy is justified, and a couple of hours later we’re headed up to Perth in Kenny’s Range Rover.

  ‘What happened to the BMW?’ I ask.

  ‘All the best crims are in four-wheel drives these days.’

  ‘Crims and yummy mummies. How can we tell you all apart?’

  ‘The tattoos and the cauliflower ears,’ Kenny says with a grin.

  ‘I’m guessing a few not-so-yummy mummies could challenge that assertion.’

  My phone pings. It’s a text from Alessandra.

  ‘Hey bossman. You up for kickin some arse today?’ She’s checking up on me. Doesn’t normally text at this time in the morning. I must have looked particularly shitty yesterday.

  ‘Sorry Ale. Got a lead on Leonard’

  ‘Where you going? Want me to tag along?’

  ‘Best you don’t know.’ The boss wants me to forget all about Leonard and McCall, and he’ll be furious when he finds out I’ve got my own investigation going on. I need to protect Alessandra from that.

  ‘Just so our stories are straight. What will I say to Peters?’

  ‘Tell him no amount of playing the big man will make up for having a micro penis’

  ‘Ray!!!’

  ‘I’m owed some time off. Tell him I’m using it to get some root canal treatment. The prick will enjoy the thought of me in pain so much he won’t ask any more questions’

  ‘True dat’ A pause. Then, ‘Don’t do anything completely stupid’

  ‘Not sure I can promise anything’

  I pocket my phone and look out of the window. We’re now well out of the city and almost at Stirling. The castle comes into view on my right. And beyond it, the gothic tower in commemoration of William Wallace stands out in bas relief against the Ochil Hills. I have a vague memory of an outing here organised by the nuns. I must have been about nine or ten. After a severe march up the hill, all the boys were gap-mouthed at the size of Wallace’s sword housed inside. But now I can’t see it without thinking of the shit movie Mel Gibson made about the man himself.

  ‘FreeDOM!’ I shout.