Loss gd-3

by Tony Black

  She looked like I’d slapped her. ‘Is there? I mean, so soon.’ She put down her coffee, stood up. ‘My God, I’ll never be ready in time.’

  I patted the chair. ‘Jayne, sit down.’

  She took the hint. ‘I’m sorry. I get carried away… And there’s so much to do.’

  I tried to relax her. ‘Don’t apologise. You’re doing fine… How’s Alice?’

  Jayne dropped her gaze. She picked up a teaspoon and stirred her coffee. I thought for a moment she wasn’t going to answer me. A silence stretched out between us, then, ‘She’s… coping.’

  ‘You don’t sound convinced.’

  ‘We’ve had to pay a visit to the doctor… get her medicated.’

  I got the hint Jayne was too; like I could comment. ‘So long as it helps.’

  A sigh. Deep breath followed. ‘Yes, long as it helps.’

  I thought to press her further, to ask about the scene I’d just witnessed in the garden with Alice and Vilem, but I pushed it out of my mind. Told myself I was being overly protective of my niece. I still had my suspicions about this character but this wasn’t the time to raise them.

  I sipped my coffee, told her it was great.

  ‘You didn’t come to talk about the coffee, did you, Gus?’

  I felt heat rise on my chest. ‘No, no I didn’t.’

  Jayne squared her shoulders, took another deep breath. ‘What is it you want to ask me?’

  I had a million and one things I needed to know. I saw by the state she was in that I’d have to tread carefully. Much as I wanted to protect both her and Alice, though, I had a duty to Michael to root out the truth. We were all hurting, we were all asking why, why us? I knew if I found some answers, even if it meant more pain in the short term, we would have some peace.

  I spoke softly, kept my voice flat: ‘Did Michael ever mention any trouble he might be in?’

  Jayne tilted her head to one side. ‘Trouble?… No. Never.’

  I tried again. ‘I spoke to Davie and one or two others and I get the impression that things weren’t right with the business.’

  She brought her hands together. ‘Well, you know Davie…’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  She played with her watch strap. ‘Michael used to say that Davie could sell the Pope a double bed.’

  ‘He did?… Did he say anything else?’

  Jayne looked away; an old memory played on her face. ‘I think Michael regretted being tied to the partnership. He spoke about going it alone, but he never would… He’d put his heart and soul into that factory.’

  I could see this was painful for Jayne. Her eyes misted.

  ‘I’m sorry, I hate to put you through this.’

  She shook her head. ‘No, it’s fine. It is, really. Go on.’

  I drew breath, fired on. ‘On the night… on the night Michael didn’t come home, did you notice anything unusual?’

  Jayne rolled her gaze to the ceiling. The tears in her eyes sat poised to fall as I watched her bite at her lip. I thought she might crumble, fold. She found strength, though, said, ‘A man came to the door. I had never seen him before. I didn’t think anything of it at the time, a lot of business associates come… came calling for Michael… but this guy was a bit strange.’

  I pressed her. ‘In what way?’

  ‘When I answered the door he was already on the step, he seemed very anxious… He jumped back right away and apologised.’

  ‘Did he come into the house?’

  ‘Yes, he was here to see Michael. He had very broken English. That’s when I realised he was from the factory and I got Vilem.’

  ‘You got the lodger?’

  ‘Just to talk to him, whilst I got Michael… He’d had a long day and was in the shower. When we came back it looked like the man and Vilem were arguing, but I couldn’t be sure, it might have just been the language I’d picked up wrong.’

  I looked back to the kitchen door. There was no sign of the lodger. ‘And then what?’

  ‘That was it. Michael told me there was some problem at the factory, a conveyor belt or something had broken. He told the man how to fix it and he went away.’

  ‘Did Michael go with him?’

  ‘No. He went out later…’ She paused. A tear fell down her cheek, she wiped it away with the back of her hand. ‘That would have been when he…’

  I wondered if this had been Michael’s visit to the Undertaker that Davie spoke of — or if there had ever been a visit to McMilne. Here was Jayne telling me about a Czech calling the night he died. I found it hard to believe Davie didn’t know about this too, but he’d chosen to leave it out. I saw Jayne’d had enough; I wanted to stop but I knew I might never get this chance again. ‘The man that called, what did he look like?’

  ‘He was tall, broad… dark-haired, I think.’

  ‘Did you see his car?’

  ‘I don’t think so. I didn’t look out the window. Oh, I don’t remember.’

  ‘Think. What about when you let him in?’

  She seemed to be rallying. ‘There was, now I think about it, there was one of those jeep things.’

  ‘A four-by-four…’

  ‘Yes. There was one parked in the road.’

  ‘Was it a Pajero?’

  She shook her head. ‘Oh, Gus, I don’t know cars.’

  ‘What colour was it?’

  ‘It was too dark to say. It was very dark, though.’

  ‘Could it have been black?’

  ‘I suppose so, yes, I suppose it could have been black… a black four-by-four.’

  Chapter 20

  Dr. Naughton had been Christmas shopping. A little kid’s tricycle sat in the corner of the room. She’d tied pink ribbons on the handlebars, secured them with a big bow. I couldn’t stop staring. On my last case, a mother had told me of her murdered young child’s love for such a tricycle. I couldn’t believe that the sight of such an innocent object could be a trigger for so much misery. My demons were forever with me.

  ‘It’s safer away from prying eyes,’ said the doctor. ‘I’ll take it home on Christmas Eve.’

  I tore my gaze away, nodded. ‘Of course.’

  ‘Would you like to sit down?’

  I removed my coat, hung it on the stand. I didn’t know what to say; Michael had been the one with all the small chat. I smiled. Prayed we wouldn’t delve into baby talk. I’d been frozen out of that subject a long time ago. I even stopped looking at small children as people — they seemed like accessories that the more successful adorned themselves with. I might have felt differently if I was a father, but the older I got, and the more I found out about the world, the more relieved I was to be childless.

  Dr Naughton put on her professional tone; she had her clipboard back: ‘How do you feel today, Gus?’

  It seemed a totally meaningless question, even as an opener. ‘Fine. I feel fine.’ Was I nothing. I burned inside. In the last few days I’d replayed a million and one scenarios that might have led to Michael’s murder. Every one was possible, and every one twisted in my gut like a bolt.

  She made that face of hers, one that says Trust me, I’m a doctor. I wondered if she practised it in the mirror. ‘Do you think we made any progress in the last sessions?’

  I nodded. She seemed a good person and I didn’t want to upset her, but I thought it would take more than a few hours of chat to see any progress in my life.

  ‘That’s good.’ She sounded pleased, one of her Kicker boots started to tap on her chair leg. ‘Maybe you’d like to tell me some more about your upbringing.’

  Or maybe not. I looked out the window. There were icicles on the railings. They’d thaw before I would, but I played along, said, ‘What would you like to know?’

  ‘Can you tell me something you remember from your adolescence?’

  I had a store of memories from this time. The one I thought of first was when I met Debs. I toyed with telling her about that, about how she thought I looked like I’d been hit with a brick. The mem
ory spiralled on to the time I took her home to meet my family, and it ended with another first: my raising a hand to my father. I decided against telling the doc.

  ‘I, erm, went to university at seventeen,’ I said. ‘I was the first in my family to go. It was quite an achievement. My mother was just rapt…’

  She sensed an opportunity to probe. ‘And your father… How did he react?’

  I huffed, ‘He didn’t.’ My father was hacked-off — anything that took the sheen off his accomplishments was worthy of frowning upon.

  She pressed: ‘He never commented?’

  I remembered his face, wanted to punch it yet. ‘He did, yeah, about six months later… when I bailed.’

  It must have been in her middle-class programming to attack me for that decision, but she held it back. Her face held firm, she let some distance settle between the years then continued, ‘Do you want to tell me what he said?’

  My palms itched. ‘He laughed and said I had shown myself up. Not him, because he had told everyone I’d be back like a whipped dog before the end of the first year. Bastard knew exactly how to get me back as well — it was all his fault. He ruined my chance.’

  Dr Naughton looked impassive. She kept a hold on the level of emotion in the room by remaining so calm herself. She said, ‘What was the subject you studied at university?’

  She never asked the questions I expected, the logical ones. ‘Don’t you want to know why I left?’

  ‘Only if you want to tell me, Gus.’

  I leaned forward in my chair, planted my elbows on my knees. ‘He beat my brother so badly that he ended up in hospital. He’d duffed us all up for years but this was something else, this was savage. He’d kicked him about like a football.’ The memory set off a tick in my brow; I smoothed it away with my fingertips. But the image still burned. ‘He was so black and blue, his face such a horrific sight, that my mother woke up screaming in the night for months.’ It wasn’t the physical beating she’d upset herself over — it was the damage it had done him inside his mind. ‘Michael was so ashamed, knew he couldn’t hide his bruises like we were supposed to, that…’ I wondered if I should tell her this. I had never spoken of it before, it was Michael’s business and no one else’s, but now he was gone. ‘He put a clothesline around his neck and jumped from the back dyke. If the line hadn’t been rotten through he’d have made a job of it.’

  The doctor lost her composure — her hand jerked on her clipboard. ‘My God.’

  I had gotten to her, broken that steely reserve. ‘I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to shock you.’

  My words helped her gather herself. ‘You came home to protect your brother?’

  I had been used to protecting Michael — this one incident aside, he had fared better than all of my father’s children. ‘I wouldn’t want you to feel I resented him for that…’

  She spoke softly, ‘It’s what you feel that matters here, Gus.’

  I didn’t know what to feel any more.

  Chapter 21

  Hod was due for release from hospital. I waited for the call. Mac had told me that Hod had some information to give me; apparently he’d come good. I’d already decided what my next move was going to be: if Hod had come up with the goods then it was time to do some serious head-stomping.

  I sat in front of the tube, flicking, when I caught Gordon Ramsay calling a chef an arrogant twat, thought: Has the man no sense of irony? It was some ‘reality’ shite, couldn’t watch more than a second. Had the notion to suggest Tyson as one of Gordon’s next star turns — like to see him try the rough stuff on Iron Mike. Might even tune in for that.

  Flicked some more, found an infomercial for a lateral thigh trainer. Kept going through the channels, hit the twenty-four-hour news. Some academic banged on about the end of capitalism, said we’d be binning globalisation and going back to small-scale economies. A bloke in the street had said something similar to me the other day: ‘We’ll see the horse making a comeback yet!’

  I knew who I believed.

  News said the oil price had slumped and Scotland was facing a whack to its offshore development. We’d lost our banks — some that were older than our dodgy Treaty of Union — our businesses were going to the wall by the hour, but I found something to smile about: the man who had been the country’s one and only billionaire had lost his title as Scotland’s richest man. His fortune had been slashed, he was even forced to sell his?50 million Cap Ferrat mansion. If I had any tears left I spent them laughing that he had to sell his?2 million yacht as well.

  ‘Welcome to reality,’ I said. Could see the day when some of the plutocrats that had been pushing the trickle-down economic model would be trickling down to the job centre. And it wouldn’t be long.

  My mobi started to ring.

  ‘All right, my son,’ said Hod.

  ‘It’s John Wayne!’

  ‘I’ll be fucking John Wayne Bobbitt if I have to spend another night in here surrounded by nurses.’

  I laughed that up, said, ‘Thought there was only two sure things in life — death and a nurse.’

  Hod guffawed, ‘Aye well, no’ in uniform, that’s for sure. The food’s fucking awful as well; my belly thinks my throat’s been cut.’

  I saw where this was going. ‘You checked out?’

  ‘Aye, oh aye… Want to come and collect me?’

  ‘I can hardly say no. When?’

  ‘Now, mate… sooner if you can make it.’

  I flicked off the TV, said, ‘I’ll get in the car.’

  I left the dog behind, chucked him some Bonios.

  The roads were still iced up. No sign of a gritter the entire route. I drove in the teeth of a fierce wind all the way to the hospital. When I arrived Hod was out front in a short-sleeved shirt, three buttons open. The dash said it was about two degrees above freezing, but he looked unfazed. His second skin poking out his collar did the job. He smoothed down the corners of his tache as I pulled in — still couldn’t get used to the sight of it. ‘You want to drop round Wyatt Earp’s gaff to give him his mozzer back?’

  ‘Shut it, man. You’re just jealous of my manliness.’

  ‘Ah-ha, of course, your manliness… that’s what it’ll be. And I thought I was just embarrassed to be seen with someone who looks like he’s one of the Village People.’

  He gave me the finger, said, ‘Fuck off, I can take it.’ We pulled out laughing. I was glad to have my mate back in one piece; didn’t think I’d ever been happier to see him. We headed for the Wall but got stuck in a static lane of traffic.

  ‘These roads are murder,’ said Hod. He winced, went on, ‘Sorry, didn’t mean… you know.’

  I put him straight: ‘Don’t be daft, I’m not that far gone.’

  ‘Look, why don’t you pull off the road, we’ll grab a coffee and a roll in there.’ He pointed to a caff with a big open window. In front of it a bloke in a Honda indicated he was leaving his parking space.

  I nodded, stuck the car into first.

  The caff was a bit of a dive, peeling linoleum on the floor, peeling Formica on the tables. But it was a good solid Edinburgh scran house, and it suited us down to the ground.

  Hod ordered up some rolls on sliced sausage. ‘You put onions on them?’

  The waitress was tipping sixty, a frame so delicate a sneeze might knock her to the ground. Her face looked broken by the years, her eyes watery. She was no heartbreaker, but one of a thousand like her in the city. She was what the Scots call soulish. ‘You want sauce with yer onions?’

  ‘Oh aye, brown sauce.’ Hod rubbed his hands together, a bit too energetically: his ribs twinged and the pain played on his face.

  The waitress left us, but her forlorn presence lingered.

  I spoke: ‘Mac said you’d made a few calls in the hospital.’

  He nodded. ‘Got on to some of the builders still in the game. Had big Brian Ingram pay me a visit as well — had lots to say.’

  I was glad to hear of some progress. ‘Well, spill it.’
r />   ‘Your Pajero geezer… name’s Radek.’ He put his hand in his pocket, pulled out a note. It was an address overlooking Leith Links, written in carpenter’s pencil on the back of a torn-up pack of Regal King Size. ‘That’s his kip.’

  I smiled, waved the address about. ‘This is good work, Hod.’

  He shrugged. ‘I’ve got my uses.’

  ‘So, what’s this cunt’s story?’

  Hod leaned in. ‘Well, he’s no fucking saint.’

  Surprise, surprise, said, ‘We knew that.’

  ‘In fact, he’s a bit of a nut-job by all accounts. Big Bri said he started out on the sites about a year and a half ago, was labouring, doing it hard as well. Double shifts on more than one site about the town. Was pulling a fair whack in poppy, but never happy, y’know the type?’

  I nodded. ‘Eye to the main chance, enough never enough.’ No wonder he got on so well with fat Davie.

  ‘He’s got a bit of a rep as a boxer as well, going bare-knuckles and that. Got into a few scrapes on Bri’s crew and he punted him. Mad bastard only went and pulled a blade.’

  This all sounded very interesting. ‘Mad indeed.’

  There was some kind of commotion up the street, horns blowing. I looked out but couldn’t see anything. The waitress reappeared. She crept towards the window and stationed herself there like a wobbly sentry. I watched her shake her head, bony fingers worrying at the front pocket of her nylon tabard.

  Hod reeled me back in. ‘Anyway, so Radek set himself up, got a few homeboys around him, was pulling in some gigs here and there and the rest is, well, you know the rest.’

  The horns got drowned out by a belt on a police siren. A blue light flashed into the caff. ‘Aye, aye, it’s the woodentops. What’s going on here?’ I said.

  Hod looked like he was about to speak, his mouth began to form the words then closed like a trap as the door to the caff swung open.

  In walked a couple of uniformed plod. ‘On your feet, Dury.’

  I turned. ‘Wha’?’

  I felt a hand on my shoulder. ‘Now come on, don’t have us haul you along the street… On your feet. We’re going down the station.’