The Dead Beat

by Doug Johnstone

  She clicked Print.

  The sheet that came out was mostly blank.

  She searched ‘Gordon Harris’. A whole raft of obits with his byline on them. She scrolled down and stopped. There was Ian’s obit. Why hadn’t she thought of it before? Wait a minute, why hadn’t she found it just before, when she searched his name? They’d used his full name, Ian Martin Lamb, and the search engine hadn’t picked it up. That is some crap search engine.

  She clicked through and began to read it on screen.

  ‘Working late on your first day? You’re keen.’

  She jumped. Billy was standing across from her. Her eyes darted down to the desk. The reports on Billy’s exploits were hidden underneath the North Bridge story. She scooped up all the papers and threw them into her bag.

  ‘Just reading some obits,’ she said. ‘Getting a feel for it.’

  ‘Fancy going for a drink?’ Billy said. ‘It’s been quite a day. I thought maybe you could use one. I know I could.’

  Martha looked at her screen. Billy couldn’t see it from his side. The obit was accompanied by a picture of her dad she’d never seen before, a fuzzy black-and-white image of him holding a pint glass, surrounded by other drinkers, smiles on their faces. It was at least fifteen years old. He was grinning but there was something sad about his face too, a shadow across his brow that didn’t seem to fit with the occasion.

  There was so much she didn’t know about him, so much she would never know.

  ‘Hello?’ Billy said. ‘That drink?’

  He peered over to look at her screen. She quickly clicked Print then closed the window before he could see. She grabbed her dad’s obit as the printer chugged it out, then flipped it into her bag.

  ‘Why not.’

  15

  They were heading up the Royal Mile, all tartan and kilt shops. It was half eight but still light, spring trying to cast a cheery glow on the evening, but the strong westerly in their faces was putting paid to that idea. Tourists and drinkers tottered along on the cobbles around them.

  ‘Where do you want to go?’ Billy said.

  ‘I said I’d go see my brother after work,’ Martha said. ‘Tell him how my first day went.’

  ‘Think he’s in for a bit of a shock.’

  They were at the junction with the Bridges now. The Basement was down on Broughton Street. She knew what that meant.

  She turned down North Bridge. ‘This way.’

  She didn’t seem able to avoid the place. Or maybe she wasn’t trying to. Maybe she was picking at the scab for all she was worth. Sounded about right.

  They were walking down the east side of the bridge. She’d always preferred this side before Ian had ruined it for her. Everyone new to the city walked on the other side, pointing their cameras and phones at the castle and the Scott Monument, the stretch of Princes Street. But she preferred the view the other way, the beautiful calmness of the sea, the islands out there, the thin spread of Fife and East Lothian you could see on a clear day. Edinburgh was a beautiful bastard at times, whichever way you looked. But she could never look at this view the same way again.

  She stopped at a sign. Bolted onto the stonework, low down:

  Samaritans.

  Who cares?

  We do.

  Some joker had changed ‘do’ to ‘don’t’ with a black marker. The phone number to call at the bottom was obscured by a ripped fly-poster for a Festival comedian from two years ago.

  Billy was next to her, looking at the sign.

  ‘You know they used to have a dedicated phone here,’ he said. ‘A hotline to the Samaritans. But they had to take it down because it kept getting vandalised. They figured it was better to have no phone than a broken phone. Sent out the wrong message.’

  Martha stared at him. ‘I think that’s the saddest thing I’ve ever heard.’

  She crouched down and touched the Samaritans sign. Because of the design of the wall it was about knee height, that was the only place it could fit amongst the crenellations. Which meant it was totally useless. She was surprised she’d noticed it; she hadn’t before. She wondered if her dad had seen it, if the graffitied message had produced a smile on his face, the same sad smile in his obit picture.

  Martha got up again and looked over Waverley Station, followed the lines of the track with her eyes.

  ‘Is this something to do with earlier?’ Billy said. ‘In the ambulance you asked about a jumper.’

  She kept her face turned away from him, towards the horizon, towards infinity.

  ‘It was my dad.’

  ‘Jesus Christ, I’m sorry. I suppose it’s more common than you think. Someone from the office did the same a couple of weeks ago.’

  She looked at him.

  He understood. ‘Wait, your dad is Ian Lamb?’

  She pursed her lips together, made a slight movement of her head.

  ‘Was.’

  ‘Holy shit.’

  ‘I didn’t really know him,’ Martha said. ‘My mum and dad split before I was even born.’

  ‘Still.’ Billy rubbed the back of his head. ‘He was a good guy, Ian. I mean, I didn’t know him well, but nobody had a bad word to say about him in the office.’

  ‘They’re hardly going to go around slagging off the dead, are they?’

  Martha rubbed the Samaritans sign, like a superstition, then turned.

  She looped her arm through Billy’s.

  ‘Let’s get drunk.’

  16

  ‘So the guy I was covering for today phoned in his own obituary, then shot himself.’

  ‘Ha, ha.’

  ‘While still on the phone to me.’

  ‘Stop it, please, my sides may split.’

  ‘I’m not joking.’

  Cal stared at her. ‘You’re not joking.’

  Martha raised her hands like it was a stick-up. ‘Honest, guv.’

  ‘Shit the bed. Are you OK?’

  Martha nodded. ‘Two long vodkas, thank you, sibling.’

  The Basement was empty. Monday night, after all, not exactly party central. Only Cal and an older woman working. The woman was mid-thirties, covered in tattoos and wore a bastardised Bratz T-shirt with ‘Slutz’ scrawled across it. Cal wore a tight grandad shirt over rippling muscles, his arse packed tight into red skinny-fit jeans.

  Cal made a face. ‘Fucking angostura bitters.’

  He got on with the rigmarole of making the drinks.

  ‘I know you only order these to annoy me,’ he said. ‘I’m sure you don’t even like them.’

  ‘I was born to annoy you, Cal.’

  Cal emptied out the ice and bitters, filled the glass again. ‘So, tell me about this guy on the phone.’

  ‘This is Billy,’ Martha said, waving a hand. ‘He came to my rescue.’

  ‘Not exactly,’ Billy said, offering up a hand.

  Cal looked at him. ‘My hands are full making my sister’s stupid drinks. But hi.’

  He put the drinks on the bar in front of them and waved away Martha’s attempt to pay. ‘I’ve got free drinks in the till like you wouldn’t believe.’

  ‘We saved the guy’s life,’ Martha said. ‘I think. He’s in a coma anyway.’

  Cal checked the bar – no waiting punters. He leaned forward and placed his chin on his hand.

  ‘So, tell all, chicken.’

  She did. The obit desk, the call, the shooting, the taxi, the hospital. In between she sooked her vodka through a straw and glanced at Billy. Felt like touching his damaged face. She’d read in one of those news reports that he’d had some kind of brain surgery, which explained the scarring at the back of his head. She wanted to feel what the skin was like, see if she could feel the tremor of damage underneath.

  After delivering more long vodkas, Cal gave himself the night off since there were no punters to serve, and joined them at the drinking side of the bar. They moved on to Jägermeisters. Stupid, but Martha told herself she didn’t have to start till noon. How bad could the morning damage be?
And she needed this, needed the release.

  Martha turned to Cal. ‘I told Billy about Ian. We walked from the office down North Bridge.’

  ‘So you’ve seen the scene of the crime,’ Cal said.

  ‘Suicide’s not a crime.’

  ‘Isn’t it?’ Cal tilted his head. ‘I don’t know why you give a shit, sis. The prick left Mum as soon as he found out she was expecting us.’

  ‘She kicked him out,’ Martha said.

  ‘You guys are twins?’ Billy said. ‘I didn’t realise.’

  Cal rolled his eyes and nudged Martha. ‘He’s about to say we don’t look alike.’

  ‘Everyone says that,’ Martha said.

  Billy smiled. ‘Well, you don’t.’

  Martha kept her eyes on Billy’s face as she downed her shot. She could get used to that smile.

  17

  ‘I can’t believe they haven’t fixed the door yet,’ Martha said. ‘Don’t these people want to be secure in their homes?’

  She pushed the door open and headed upstairs to Ian’s flat. Cal and Billy gave each other a look as they followed. The door to the flat was wedged closed, the lock still broken, but a small nudge opened it.

  ‘This feels wrong,’ Billy said. ‘Breaking and entering.’

  ‘We didn’t break in,’ Martha said. ‘Well, we did last time, not this time.’

  She turned to Cal. ‘Billy is just a bit nervous about breaking the law. He’s “known to police”, as we journalists say.’

  Cal put on a mock impressed face. ‘Really?’

  Martha tapped her nose and spoke in a stage whisper. ‘It’s a secret.’

  In the living room, Martha headed for the alcove shelf with the spirits on it. She examined the bottles. ‘He doesn’t like to talk about it. But I heard a rumour down at the office.’

  ‘V,’ Billy said.

  Cal looked puzzled. ‘V?’

  Martha held up a bottle of schnapps and squinted. ‘This crazy American woman, into wrestling. You’d love her, Cal, she’s nuts. It’s V for Virginia.’ She turned to the boys. ‘Yes, V mentioned something, then I did a little research of my own, so you might as well come clean.’

  ‘If you pour us some drinks I will,’ Billy said, slumping into a sofa.

  Martha disappeared to get glasses from the kitchen, then re-emerged clinking three in her hand. Poured out hefty measures and handed them out.

  ‘I was involved in a hit and run,’ Billy said to Cal. ‘It was pretty complicated. I’d been drinking. The guy I hit was a criminal.’

  ‘A crime lord, in journalistic parlance,’ Martha said, waving her drink.

  Cal’s eyes lit up. ‘Oh shit, you’re that guy from the news a couple of years ago.’

  ‘He’s that guy,’ Martha said, examining her dad’s shelves of albums.

  Billy raised his schnapps and sipped.

  ‘Shouldn’t you be in prison?’ Cal said.

  Martha pulled an album from the shelf. ‘That’s exactly what I said.’

  Billy shrugged. ‘I got lucky.’

  Martha looked up from the album she was holding. It had a monkey with a halo on the front cover. ‘I heard it was more than luck.’

  Billy shook his head. ‘You heard wrong, I was just lucky. The prosecution fucked up.’

  Cal turned to Martha. ‘You really pick ’em, don’t you?’

  ‘I haven’t picked anyone,’ Martha said. She held up the record. ‘Either of you heard of The Pixies?’

  She put the album on. Thudding bass, jagged guitars, some guy shouting about a debaser over the top, a girl talking in the background. Martha liked it, it was a bit unhinged. She started to sway to the rhythm, dancing with the album cover in one hand, her schnapps glass in the other.

  ‘Weird to think of our dad being into this,’ she said.

  Cal frowned. ‘He wasn’t really our dad.’

  Martha stopped dancing. ‘Of course he was. If he wasn’t, who the hell was?’

  ‘No one.’

  ‘Do you think Mum was into this music too?’

  ‘Probably.’

  Martha shook her head. ‘I don’t think I’ve ever heard her listen to music, have you?’

  Cal shrugged.

  Martha turned the volume up and went back to examining the shelves. Cal and Billy were talking, but she couldn’t make out what about.

  On one shelf low down she pulled out the box of cassettes she’d pilfered from last time. She flicked through. Bands she’d never heard of – Dinosaur Jr., Hüsker Dü, Mudhoney. A song called ‘Touch Me I’m Sick’ on that last one. She put it in her bag. She tried to imagine her dad when he was her age, listening to this stuff, full of righteous anger or miserably depressed or whatever. Couldn’t get her head round it.

  She kept rummaging through the box. There were tapes in here with just names on them, like people’s names, with dates alongside. She realised they must be interview tapes for work. The dates were all over the place, some over ten years old, some from the last few months. She pulled one out and opened it. The insert card had been turned inside out, and it had track listings for albums by The Descendents and Dead Kennedys inside.

  So he’d been taping over his musical past with boring work interviews. Erasing the songs that he’d once loved with chatter that paid the bills. She looked at the names of the interviewees, none of them meant anything. No famous politicians or whatever. He’d been a news reporter, then news editor, after all. You hardly interviewed anyone once you became an editor. That was one of the strange things about journalism she’d discovered on her Napier course – as soon as you got promoted to editor you were chasing other people’s copy, telling them what to write, tracking down pictures, making sure it all went together properly. And you rarely got to write any more, presumably the thing you loved doing in the first place. Stupid.

  She realised these interview tapes would have Ian’s voice on them. She grabbed a handful and shoved them into her bag. She wanted to hear his voice.

  She pulled the box out further and spotted something behind. A loose wooden panel at the back of the alcove had come away. She could see something behind it. She nudged it out the way and reached in. She pulled out a black A5 notebook. Opened it. Her dad’s scrawl across the pages. It was dense, sloping, filled every page to the edges. There was a date on the first page, 22.7.91, two years before she was born. She narrowed her eyes, tried to focus on reading some of the words, but they swam in front of her. Stupid alcohol. She widened her eyes and tried again. Nope, she couldn’t focus.

  She put the notebook in her bag, got up and turned. The movement made her feel light-headed and she belched schnapps and Jägermeister.

  Billy and Cal were laughing on the sofa about something. She wondered if Cal was telling Billy all about her and if that was putting him off. So what. There was damage everywhere. Who in this world wasn’t damaged?

  On the turntable, the guy was shouting about the devil and God and a monkey going to heaven.

  She downed the last of her schnapps.

  ‘I need to go home,’ she said.

  18

  Martha stood over her mum asleep on the sofa. Light from the television flickered over Elaine’s face. She looked drugged.

  Cal came in the living room. ‘Zonked?’

  Martha nodded. ‘As always.’

  Elaine took a couple of sleeping pills every night. Cal and Martha could’ve been having an orgy with a herd of elephants and she wouldn’t have woken up.

  Martha tried to imagine Elaine at a Pixies gig with Ian. Couldn’t. Elaine now was frumpy and dull. Maybe that was Martha’s future, watching late-night television alone and drugging herself to sleep.

  She got a blanket and put it over Elaine. There was always a blanket handy, Elaine more often than not slept down here. She said she liked the noise of the television to go to sleep to. Martha thought it was maybe the double bed was the problem. Too big and too lonely. She felt a shiver as she imagined that in her future as well. Then she thought of B
illy.

  They’d left him outside Ian’s flat, heading in the other direction. She didn’t know what he was expecting, or what she wanted either, but whatever it was, it wasn’t happening tonight.

  She and Cal jumped on the night bus, then got off a stop early so Martha could drunkenly commune with her heron. That’s how Cal put it. The boy had no sense of nature. They walked the extra distance through Figgate Park. It was unlit, and they stumbled round the pond to the boardwalk. From there you could see right over to Arthur’s Seat. The heron was usually somewhere on the island. Of course, it would be sleeping now. The best time to catch it was at sunrise when it would sit on a small outcrop of rock at the edge of the island and soak up the new light with its wings hanging out, as if solar-powered. Martha imagined the bird now. It was an elegant thing, but Cal just laughed at her obsession with it, like he did most things.

  Cal had a bottle of red wine in his hand. ‘Nightcap?’

  Martha looked at the clock. Ten past three. Shook her head.

  ‘I’m off to bed,’ she said.

  Cal gave her a hug and they both headed upstairs.

  She went to her room and threw herself on her bed. Exhausted. She rummaged through her bag and pulled out the notebook. Put the bedside light on and tried to focus, but still couldn’t concentrate on the words spilling all over the page. She pulled out the printouts from the office, the stuff about Billy, Ian’s obit, but she couldn’t focus on that either. She stared at the picture of her dad for a while.

  She got an interview cassette out her bag and slid it into the Walkman, plugged the headphones in. There was crackle and hiss, then her dad’s voice in her head. It was an interview about a proposal to build a new school somewhere. Boring. The woman Ian was talking to was posh, complaining that the new school would ruin the area where she lived, that’s why she’d organised an appeal against the decision. Local politics.

  She found herself yearning for the small snippets of Ian’s voice in between the woman’s blether. Methodical, workmanlike questions, attentive and functional.