He looked down at his left hand. He was still holding the gun. A small patch of blood was seeping through the bandages and he could make out a smear of sticky darkness on the gun handle. He looked up again. Hannah was staring at him and the look on her face made him want to gouge his eyes out. He felt a spasm in his stomach and his legs began to shake, as if the earth was moving underfoot. The tightness moved up to his chest making it difficult to breathe, then into his throat and he vomited. His throat convulsed, spilling out thick, nightmarish bile which dribbled pathetically down his front and on to his bandaged hand and the gun, dripping like dirty engine oil on to the floor. His legs gave way and he sank to his knees. The sickness had released him like the first drops of rain from a storm cloud, and he sat on his knees sobbing like a child too tired to sleep, wishing for all the world that he could curl up and die right there.
He felt himself being slung around as Paul pulled the van recklessly on to the M8 heading east. His head was bursting with pain, and he needed a drink. His body felt like it had spent several tides getting battered against dangerous rocks. The pain in his hand was down to a dull throb, but the bandage was soaked through with blood.
‘Do you see anything?’ Paul asked Danny, who was hanging out the window.
‘Nothing.’
‘Are you sure?’
‘No one’s following us.’
The last thing Connor remembered was being onstage, surrounded by feedback, then he had the gun in his hand… fuck.
‘What happened?’ he said.
‘What, you mean after you went mental and started shooting up the place?’ said Paul, urging the van down the motorway. ‘Or after those guys at the side of the stage started waving badges about and shouting that they were cops and no one was to leave the premises? We fucking bolted, what do you think? Me and Danny grabbed you, then the five of us legged it out the stage door. You think we’d hang about after what you did, with a bunch of police around? Any chance of explaining what the fuck you were up to, you complete fucking psycho?’
‘This should be good.’ Kate sat opposite him with arms folded and lips pressed together. Next to her was Hannah, who’d been crying. When he saw the look in her eyes he knew he had to tell her everything. This whole sorry tour had been full of lies and secrets, and if he was going to have any chance of starting over, of making a go of life, he would have to come clean. Part of him dreaded it, but part of him felt an amazing sense of relief.
‘What do you want to know?’ he said.
‘Good question,’ said Kate. ‘Where do we start? How about where the hell you got a gun from?’
Connor took a couple of deep breaths.
‘Off that Vlad guy in Ullapool.’
‘The submarine kid? Why on earth would he give you a gun?’
‘He didn’t give it to me, he sold it to me.’
‘And why the fuck did you want to buy a gun?’
‘I don’t know. It seemed like a good idea at the time.’
Kate shook her head. ‘Unbelievable.’
‘Who was that guy tonight?’ said Hannah quietly.
‘Which guy?’
‘The guy in Tut’s. You were pointing the gun at him. He was pointing a gun at you.’
The memory came back. Connor could see the hatred in Nick’s face, the two weapons pointing at each other in a pathetic stand-off. But it was all too real. They could’ve died. Someone else could’ve died. Hannah could’ve fucking died. Anything could’ve happened. This had all gone way too far.
‘That was Nick.’
‘Who’s Nick?’
‘He’s a drug dealer I owe money to.’
There was silence for a moment.
‘Did I hear that right?’ said Paul from the front.
‘Depends,’ said Kate. ‘Did you hear that Connor owes a drug dealer money?’
‘Yeah.’
‘Then you heard right.’
‘That probably explains why those plain-clothes police were all over him and his mate like a fucking rash,’ said Paul. ‘Had them pinned to the floor sharpish after the guns came out.’
‘What else?’ asked Hannah, ignoring Paul.
‘How do you mean?’
‘Connor, he wouldn’t point a gun at you just because you owe him some money.’
Connor sighed, but the words came easily now that he’d started.
‘To pay off the money I owed, I did some work for him.’
‘This just gets better,’ said Kate.
‘What sort of work?’ asked Hannah.
‘I was delivering packages for him in exchange for envelopes, round the country, all through the tour.’
Kate put her head in her hands, but Hannah sat motionless looking at Connor.
‘Jesus fucking Christ,’ said Danny. ‘Is that why you kept disappearing all the time?’
‘Yeah.’
‘And all the weird phone calls?’
Connor nodded.
‘That still doesn’t explain why he was pointing a gun at you,’ said Hannah.
‘I lost the packages and envelopes last night, up in the hills.’
‘So, let me get this right,’ said Kate. ‘You were acting as a drug courier for some midget dealer prick you owed money to, you bought a gun, then you wandered into the wilderness and lost all the guy’s drugs and money, then thought you’d come to Glasgow and have a fucking shoot-out with him?’
Connor didn’t know what to say.
‘You’ve been watching too much Scarface or Goodfellas. You’re unbelievable, you know that?’
Connor sat in silence.
‘Is there anything else?’ said Hannah.
‘Like what?’
‘You tell us,’ said Kate. ‘You weren’t pimping that kid Martin as a rent boy, were you?’
‘Don’t be stupid.’
‘I’m being stupid?’
Connor thought about stealing pills from the girl in the Inverness hospital, and from his parents’ bathroom cabinet. Something else came to him.
‘It was me who took that motorbike in Fort William.’
‘Outside the pub?’ said Hannah.
He nodded.
‘At gunpoint?’
He nodded again.
‘Holy fuck,’ said Danny.
Kate counted on her fingers. ‘So, we’ve got possession of an illegal firearm, using that firearm in a public place, drug-dealing and armed robbery. Anything else to add to the list?’
Connor could see Danny looking at him. He was no doubt thinking about the seagull thing. What would be the point in owning up to that? What was that in the overall scheme of things? He looked at Kate and shook his head.
He looked at Hannah, but she’d turned away, unable or unwilling to look at him. He didn’t blame her. Faced with everything he’d done, he felt like the dumbest, most wretched arsehole in the world. Apart from that, he must look like a total mess. He hadn’t shaved or washed since they started this farcical trip, his clothes were a shambles, his eyes bloodshot, teary and exhausted, his hand wrapped in dirty, bloody bandages. But it was nothing to how he felt, as if his body would pack in at any minute. He was on the brink of collapse, and had to rest his head on the cold steel of the van wall and close his eyes to stop everything spinning.
He opened his eyes. Hannah had her head in her hands, and her shoulders moved as she began sobbing.
‘Hannah…’ He got up to head towards her but lost his balance and fell on his arse.
Kate slid along and put her arm around Hannah.
‘Leave her alone,’ she said. ‘I think you’ve done enough, don’t you?’
She gave Connor a look full of venom, which he fully deserved.
They sat quietly for a few minutes amid the rumble and clatter of the van bouncing along the M8, heading home.
Connor looked at Kate comforting Hannah, and wondered if he’d ever be allowed to get that close to her again.
15
Edinburgh
‘We used to think
The mountains would stand tall
The seas would never boil
The land would never flood
We were wrong’
The Ossians, ‘Geometry’
Hannah looked at Connor.
‘How have you been?’
‘Not bad, considering. You?’
‘Same.’
The afternoon twilight had given up and turned to darkness around them. Below their Ferris-wheel carriage, Christmas Eve shoppers hurried around as if buying last-minute presents was the most important thing in the world. The sound of kids shrieking on fairground rides drifted up to them, mingled with the relentless thump of cheesy house from the skating rink. Connor could smell cheap burgers and onions being fried somewhere down below. The Scott monument looked grimy next to them amid the luminous bustle of Princes Street, its dark shape skulking in the gloom. Connor tried to remember being up there a few weeks ago with his sister but the details escaped him. He’d been drunk. He’d been drunk for as long as he could remember. But not for over a week now, and counting. That fact amazed him. He’d not been wasted for the last ten days. Of course, he hadn’t been totally sober either. To begin with, the speed was the worst thing. He missed the amphetamine buzz something fucking terrible, and had smoked a lot of grass to take the edge off the cravings. But he’d gradually eased off on the blow, and now hadn’t even smoked a joint in two days. Two fucking days. It was a similar story with alcohol. He tried cold turkey to begin with, but it was killing him – passing out, the shakes, vomiting, the fucking lot – and after twenty-four hours he’d resorted to a few beers and a whisky in the house each day, just to keep him going. He’d somehow managed to restrict it to that. He’d gradually reduced that amount, and now hadn’t had a single drink in over twenty-four hours. He felt weird. Why the hell was it called being straight? It felt like the most fucking warped thing in the world, walking around with a clear head and a pumping heart and momentum in your legs. He was no idiot, he knew it wasn’t over. It would never be over. The one-day-at-a-fucking-time cliché, and all that.
The first night had been the worst, not helped by the fact he’d spent it in the cells of the local police station. When they got back from Glasgow, Hannah jumped straight into a taxi to her mum’s, saying she needed time away to think. He let her go without a fight. Half an hour later, with Danny walking Kate home and Connor alone in the flat looking at a bottle of whisky, there was a knock at the door. The police had found him easily enough. He was the lead singer in the headline band, for Christ’s sake, even the most moronic copper could’ve tracked him down in five minutes. They took him to the station for questioning. Neither Paul nor the band knew he was there, which was how Connor wanted it. It was nothing to do with any of them, he would have to get out this shit on his own.
They spent a few hours interrogating him, and made him spend the night in the cells, but had to let him go come morning. There was little they could pin on him. His gun had disappeared in the chaos of King Tut’s, some opportunist chancer obviously lifting it in the mayhem. Turns out the cops at the gig were from the Scottish Crime and Drug Enforcement Agency, and had been following Nick for months, waiting for him to fuck up. When they saw him pull a gun in public, that’s all the excuse they needed to go in heavy, get the appropriate warrants, and go to town on him and his drug operation which, judging from the cops’ hints, was far more widespread than Connor had imagined. They clearly hadn’t been doing too good a job of tailing Nick, however, because they didn’t seem to know anything about Connor’s involvement, or his activities on tour. There was no evidence of his connection to Nick. The drugs and money were somewhere in the wilderness near Loch Ossian, and the phone Nick gave him was lost. Connor couldn’t believe his luck. He kept quiet, and denied having seen Nick before. He was physically and mentally wrecked in the interview room, barely able to string a coherent sentence together, drained to absolute empty. The police hadn’t been that interested in him, anyway. They had who they wanted, and believed they had enough to put him away for a long time. Since they didn’t have the evidence of Connor’s gun, they decided to let him off with a caution. He was surprised they hadn’t made a connection between him and the bike theft in Fort William, or the patients’ pills in Inverness, or the thing at Aberdeen pier. But then why should they? They weren’t interested in him, all they wanted was Nick in jail, end of story. That’s the impression he’d been given as he stood blinking in the early-morning light outside St Leonard’s police station, and he wasn’t about to complain.
The walk home across the Meadows in the sharp morning air, through the stretch of barren trees, was an odd mix of elation and misery. He was free and clear of trouble with the police, and Nick and Shug were in jail for the foreseeable future. But what about Hannah and the rest of them? That was all fucked. Hannah was gone, and he didn’t know if she was ever coming back.
But here she was sitting next to him.
Hannah examined Connor while he gazed down at the melee below them. She was partly relieved and partly annoyed to find he was looking pretty good. He was clean-shaven and clean-clothed, and his eyes were clear, although tired-looking, with lines around them she’d never noticed before. He was painfully thin. She’d heard through Kate that he’d gone to the doctor, who prescribed antacids for what turned out to be stomach ulcers, presumably because of all the speed. More extensive test results for liver damage and the like were still pending. The powder burns on his hand had healed enough for the bandage to come off. Hannah could see an angry red blotch of a scar in the crescent between his forefinger and thumb which looked like it was going to be permanent. A nice wee reminder of everything.
She didn’t know what she was doing here. She’d holed up at her mum’s as soon as they got home. She didn’t tell her mum anything about the tour, Connor, or her condition. Connor left messages with her mum every day, but she didn’t reply or speak to him until now. It was only now, after ten days, she’d decided to face him, arranging to meet here on neutral ground.
She’d got in touch with the school as soon as possible. It’d been decided she should go on paid leave for a while. She couldn’t blame them. Thankfully, Martin turned up safe at home in the middle of that week, singing Hannah’s praises, and blaming no one but himself. His parents were so relieved, they forgot all about being angry at anyone, and Martin received a hero’s welcome from his classmates for his, by then, notorious adventures. The Fort William police backed up his and Hannah’s version of events, and she was free to return to work in the New Year. Whether she would or not, she didn’t know yet. Everything was up in the air. Her, Connor, the baby. The baby. Thinking that to herself freaked her out. She’d gone to the doctor, who confirmed the pregnancy. She was now waiting on results from a CT scan, to hopefully determine the cause of her fit. In the meantime, she’d been advised to relax, enjoy the pregnancy. Easier said than done. Maybe that’s why she was here now, after ten days away from Connor, because there was something altogether bigger linking the two of them, something he still didn’t know about, something she had to get off her chest. She had to tell him, but she didn’t know where to begin.
Connor watched as Hannah gazed out at nothing. She looked great. Clearly the time away from him had done her the world of good. She was wrapped up in her big suede coat with the furry trim. Connor could see her knee-length leather boots, and wondered what she was wearing under the coat. A brief flash of the two of them having sex, her still in those boots, flitted across his mind. God, he loved her. Why had he treated her so badly? In the last ten days he’d thought about her constantly. Throughout the police interviews and detox sweats and sickness and stomach cramps, all he thought about, the focus of everything, was Hannah. Looking at her now, her face seemed somehow more luminous. Maybe it was just the cold wind biting down Princes Street into their faces. She was wearing a woolly hat with side flaps, and without her hair to frame it, her face was exposed. He realised how beautiful and kind that face was, full of compassion, hope
fully even for the likes of him.
‘Did you go to the doctor?’ he asked.
‘What?’ she said, flustered. Shit, maybe Kate had said something about the pregnancy.
‘The fit in Inverness,’ said Connor. ‘Did you get it checked out?’
‘Oh, yeah. They did a CT scan to see if it was epilepsy. Still waiting on the results. I reckon it might just’ve been stress.’
‘Right.’ Connor looked miserable. ‘I guess I caused that.’
‘Me having a fit wasn’t your fault.’
They were silent for a moment.
‘Hannah, I know this sounds completely pathetic and insubstantial, and it’s only words, but I really am so sorry. For everything.’
Hannah looked at him, and could see tears welling up in his eyes. She didn’t know if he was crying or if it was this bloody freezing wind.
‘I know you’re sorry.’
‘But?’
Hannah sighed. ‘It’s difficult. Sorry is just a word. I know you mean it, that’s fine. But you have to prove you mean it every day from now on. There’s no deadline on this, it goes on and on and on, as long as we do.’
As long as we do. There was promise in that phrase.
‘I know. I know it does.’
The wind blustered around them in a huff. Connor noticed that the sky was clear of clouds, but starless. The sound of festivity below them felt like it was being beamed in from a far-off planet.
The Ossians Page 31