by Tony Black
I reached the tab’s filter, lit another from the tip.
The sunshine had left the sky, great grey clouds came racing in again. I wondered if Usual would pull through. What was going on inside? There had to be a hope, there was, surely. The vet wouldn’t have taken him through to the surgery if he didn’t think there was a chance. I found myself staring at the sky. I knew God was dead, but it didn’t matter.
‘Please, God, don’t take that dog. Don’t take him…’
I’d got down to the filter again when I heard the hinges screech on the door behind me. It was the vet. My jaw tensed.
He pushed his glasses up on his freckled head. ‘Hello there.’
I nodded. ‘Hello.’
I watched him take a deep breath, put his hands in his pockets. I waited for words but none seemed to come, then he exhaled slowly, spoke: ‘Can you tell me what happened?’
I hadn’t expected this as a gambit; I’d expected to hear how the dog was. I raised my hand; ash fell from my cigarette. I played dumb. ‘I–I returned to my car and… someone had fed the steak through the window and…’
The vet took his hands from his pockets, folded his arms. ‘Had you any trouble with the dog? Had he attacked someone… or, I don’t know, been involved in an altercation?’
‘No. No. Nothing at all like that.’
The vet shook his head. ‘It’s very worrying this type of thing. Seeing it more and more.’
‘He was poisoned, then?’
‘Oh yes, ethylene glycol… That’s antifreeze to you and me.’
I stubbed out my tab. ‘Is he going to be okay?’
The vet played it businesslike. ‘I’ve done all I can, coated the bowel to prevent any further absorption… but he’s not out the woods yet, his kidneys could still fail.’ He turned back to the door. ‘You’ll have to leave him to rest up for a few hours yet. We’ll give you a call if there’s any change.’
He told me to give the receptionist my details. I went back inside. She said, ‘It’s the breed: people think they’re dangerous because the papers go wild when a wee kiddie’s attacked… They just want rid, think they’re all the same.’
I didn’t respond. I was torn between relief that the dog had survived and feeling the need to do some damage.
I jotted down my address and telephone number. ‘You’ll call if there’s any change?’
She smiled. ‘Of course.’
I thanked her and left.
When I got back to the car two young lads were sat in the front seats. One was turning the wheel like it was the Whacky Races. I picked up my pace when I saw them; they clocked me and made a dash for it. I was already in a run as they scampered up a close, got a kick out to one’s arse as I chased them. ‘You little prick!’
He yelped, shot hands on his backside, but kept running.
‘If I see you again, I’ll wipe your face across a wall!’ I shouted.
They had the jump on me and reached the end of the close before I could nab them.
‘You auld cunt!’ the lad yelled from the end of the close. The pair of them stood giving me the fingers.
I lunged again, made to run after them and they pegged it.
‘Little cockheads,’ I muttered as I schlepped back to the motor.
The Punto had lost the wing mirror. I didn’t remember it falling off after the collision. I looked about to see if it was in the street. There it was. The little bastards must have yanked it off. I picked it up and placed it on the front seat. As I sat and stared at the broken and scratched plastic, I thought it was a poor substitute for Usual. I firmed my grip on the wheel, locked down my emotions.
‘Right, McMilne… Let’s see what your boy’s made of.’
I punched the accelerator. The car shot ahead in first. I was in second before the end of the street, taking the corner like a lunatic. If this fucker wanted a piece of me, he could have it.
Chapter 26
The undertaker had a lap-dancing bar in the part of town known as the Pubic Triangle. I parked at the foot of Castle Terrace, walked round to Lothian Road. I felt my adrenaline spike with every step. I was balling fists and had the familiar metallic taste in my mouth. If a warning flag waved, I missed it. I was off the dial, ready to take down all comers.
There’d been some protests to the pubs round this way: sleazy doesn’t work for the Morningside twinsets up the road. I was about to take a protest of my own to the principal purveyor, but I wouldn’t be waving a placard. I had an image of my boot stamping that pug’s face through the back of his head. Way I felt, I mightn’t stop there.
As I reached McMilne’s club, saw the neon cowgirl twirling her hooters and firing off her six-shooters, I had a pang of regret: I should have got chibbed up for this. Thought, Fuck it, too late now. I felt armed with enough aggression to demolish the joint anyway.
There shouldn’t have been anyone on the door at this time of day. But there was. As I got closer I recognised him — the man they called Dartboard. He had badly acne-scarred skin, accentuated by the greased-back hair that sat in wiry curls over his neck. He had once been known as a useful welterweight, but had piled on the beef a few years back. The next stop was a trip to Matalan for a cheapo black leather, then a brain-dead bouncer’s gig.
I stopped at the door. Dartboard didn’t recognise me at first but when he did his eyebrows made sharp angles above his head. ‘Dury, bugger me.’
We went way back: my old man was connected to all the local sporting worthies. ‘You giving away yer poop-chute now?’
He laughed; didn’t know where I’d found a line in humour with all that was on my mind to do once I got through those doors, but it did the trick. Dartboard put a hand on my shoulder and pulled me in.
A red carpet covered the stairs, some soft-porn photographs on the walls. Dartboard spoke: ‘Was sorry to hear about your brother.’
I didn’t answer; would have been happy for the conversation to end there but he wasn’t.
‘It’s not long since your auld fella went, was it?’
I didn’t like to hear the two incidents being hooked up; my father’s passing was not something I’d lost any sleep over. ‘No. Not long.’
Dartboard was the typical moronic door lump — he didn’t know when to shut his trap. ‘But, you’re still here…’ he laughed, pointed me through the mirror-backed door at the top of the stairs, ‘for now anyway.’
I watched him hold the handle. He had small hands for a boxer. I thought this was something worth noting, until I remembered being told Marvin Hagler had small hands too.
The club was kitted out like every one of these places from here to the black stump. Red walls. PVC seating. Big mirrors. Chrome rails. And a job lot of glitter balls hanging from the ceiling. I’d arrived at the wrong hour for punters. The lights had been turned up, which revealed the true kip of the place: shabby wasn’t in it.
Dartboard tapped me on the arm, pointed to a seating area up the back, just shy of a wooden stage. A girl of twenty had her baps out, straddled a ceiling-to-floor pole. Her silver hot pants got slapped by the pug I’d came to see. He hadn’t noticed me come in. As I checked the room for obstacles I heard a clink of glasses and spotted the Undertaker and two more girls seated to the left of the stage.
My heart rate reached the point just shy of a cardiac arrest as I walked down towards the pug. He was absorbed in the pole dancer’s antics, though, and hadn’t seen me. Dartboard fed a stick of chewing gum into his gob as I broke free of him and bolted for the pug. I had a sledgehammer right in his puss before he knew I was in the room; the second was on the way as he staggered back and fell over the stage. I turned quickly but my Crombie tails got tugged by Dartboard. His mouth sat open, the chewing gum balanced on his tongue as I put my fist in it. His head jerked back, but it did no damage — he’d taken too many knocks in the past to even register it. My break came when he started to choke on the gum, bent over and clutched at his throat.
I turned back to the pug. He reeled fro
m a good crack to the nose and blood ran over his lips. As he tried to get up, he put back his hands to right himself from the stage and I put a boot in his mouth. The pole dancer screamed, covered her tits with her arms. It seemed a bizarre time to develop modesty. The girls beside the Undertaker screamed too, stood up and capsized the table. A shower of glass landed at my feet. A heavy glass ashtray came my way too. I picked it up and set about the pug’s head. I got in two good pelts, opened up his face some more, before the ashtray split in two and he curled up on the floor, kicking out with his feet.
Falling is the strangest thing in the world: one second you’re upright and focused, the next your world view is completely different. He’d caught my feet with a lucky sweep and put me on my back. I stared at a sparkly glitter ball as Dartboard loomed over me, knocked me out with one punch.
I didn’t know how long I’d been out but when the bucket of ice water woke me I was bleeding from the head and my bollocks had been booted. I toppled over onto my hands, collapsed to my elbows as I gasped for breath.
The Undertaker laughed, a rasping sandpaper wheeze that set my spine on edge. ‘Who stole yer toffee, Dury?’ he said.
I couldn’t catch my breath. I was still biting the air, trying to force some of it into my lungs. I cupped my pods in my hand and thanked fuck they were still there.
‘Somebody stole his toffee,’ said the Undertaker. It was the type of thing people said a generation ago; it seemed out of place here. I looked at him: his knees and elbows made sharp angles as he crouched above me. ‘Pick him up,’ he said.
Dartboard dragged me to my feet, walked me over to the seating area at the side of the stage. Nobody bothered to raise the table or the glasses. I noticed the pug looming behind the Undertaker. His face had been wiped on the sleeve of his white Henri-Lloyd sweatshirt. I managed to point at him: ‘I’m gonna fucking have you.’
He came for me again, but the Undertaker raised a bony hand and he halted mid-stride. ‘You’ll no’ have anybody, laddie. You give me any more bother and I’ll fucking open you up like a sponge cake.’
His words carried a kind of practised menace I’d heard a few times before, but never delivered so convincingly. I felt suddenly out of my depth, like I’d fallen asleep on a lilo and woken up a mile out to sea. A queasy sensation rose in my gut.
The Undertaker shuffled over to sit beside me. He patted me on the thigh and said, ‘Sit up.’
Like I was going to argue.
As I looked at him I saw he was worse at close range. On the shoulders of his polo neck sat some heavy-duty dandruff, and you could have used the bags under his eyes for a fortnight in Benidorm. The single landing-strip of grey hair that ran down the middle of his head made his gaunt features seem even more severe. I’d like to think a doctor would prescribe feeding up, maybe a course on the sunbeds.
‘I’m going tae forget about this wee… incident,’ he said.
I felt there was a but coming.
‘But’ — there it was — ‘only if you do right by me, Dury… Is that no’ fair enough?’
He spoke like a remnant of another time, the seventies maybe. He turned my mind to rubbish on the streets, white dog turds and Kojak on the telly. Maybe it was the polo neck.
I found my breath. ‘What you after?’
He didn’t like that. I was too lippy; and he wanted respect.
‘You’re no’ in any position tae haggle, laddie. Cunt me around and I’ll put you in a hole.’
The pug rolled on the balls of his feet. Laughed.
‘Look, I don’t know what the fuck you think I can do for you.’
Dartboard brought the Undertaker a glass. It was whisky, Johnnie Walker if I wasn’t mistaken, and I never was. He took a sip, winced. His skull looked shrink-wrapped in his skin. ‘It’s a very simple wee matter… I want you to have a word with your late brother’s business associate.’
I knew Davie Prentice was at the heart of this; I’d rip his out.
‘Go on.’
‘See, that fat wee cunt owes me some poppy. I make it about a hunner grand.’
‘A hundred Gs… How the fuck did he rack that up?’
He took another sip, less of a show this time. ‘We had an arrangement and fat Davie pulled the plug on it. I’ve got a trailerload ay Polish vodka sitting in dock waiting on him getting those fucking trucks of his rolling again. Every week my shelves are doon, it’s another fifty bastarding grand he owes me.’
This was a message he could have delivered himself, much more forcefully. The reason he hadn’t was obvious: Davie was held up by the Czechs. McMilne owned half the pubs in Tollcross, nice visible targets for a bit of firebombing. He didn’t want a war he couldn’t win. I pushed him: ‘Why don’t you tell him yourself?’
The Undertaker emptied his glass; he held it up for Dartboard to take away. He sighed as he spoke to me. ‘I’m being, what d’ye call it?… diplomatic. Look, laddie, that fat wee prick’s had us all over. You should be doing this for yer brother.’
I didn’t want to hear him talk of Michael — it sent blades into me thinking of my brother dealing with this lowlife, said, ‘That’s not the way Davie tells it. He says you were the last one to see him alive.’
McMilne jutted his jaw, little stray cactus spikes came for me. ‘If that was true, he’d still be here. I had nae bother with Michael, sound as a pound, he was… And let me tell you this: he was pissy bloody sick ay Davie’s antics as well.’
‘What antics?… What was he sick of?’
He spoke fast, frothy spit coming at me: ‘Broon-nosing they fucking foreigners and cunting me around. Michael knew where his bread was buttered. Nice wee drink he got for himself out ay me… Now, you tell Davie this is his last fucking chance tae get those trucks back on the road or there’ll be bother.’
I saw I wouldn’t get away with much more cheek before the Undertaker lost it, decided to put me in the ground, but I was cocky. ‘What if I don’t want to be your messenger?’
He laughed — a hacking, throaty birr rose in his windpipe. ‘Dury, I’m no’ giving you a fucking choice… See yon rolly bastard, you better get him told to see sense. And when you come back to me, laddie, you better say what I want to hear. Or you’ll find out what I do tae messengers that bring me bad news.’
It felt as if a firework was burning in my head, heat flashing behind my eyes. I knew I was screwed; out of options, said, ‘I’ll see what I can do.’
Chapter 27
Usual pulled through. When I drove him home from the vet’s he curled in my lap, seemed too timid to ride in the passenger seat alone. Debs made a fuss over him; I didn’t want to tell her about the poison, but felt I had to.
‘Poisoned?’
‘He was lying on the floor of the car when I came back.’
Debs riled, ‘Gus, what the hell’s going on?’
I tried to make an excuse. ‘The vet said, y’know, it’s the breed, makes some people go a bit mental and try to off them.’ A white lie was one thing but I was making it worse, compounding the sin. I hated bullshitting Debs but what else could I do? I was trying desperately to keep the relationship from falling apart, again.
She didn’t buy it, sparked up: ‘Just poisoned because someone didn’t like the look of him?… Och, come off it, Gus.’
I dropped into the couch, sighed. ‘Look, Debs, lay off me… I’m sorry, I feel dreadful.’
Something made her reach out to me; she knew I wouldn’t cause the animal any pain. She knew I was in pain myself. She let it go, but she knew I was keeping something from her. I’d definitely got away with less than I was due — if she knew what had really happened, what I’d gotten myself into with the Undertaker, I’d be carrying her bags down the stairs; or maybe sleeping on them myself.
I left Debs to get ready for work. She had the ironing board up and it left no space in our tiny living room for both of us. The smoked-glass table was covered in hair-styling products and the kitchenette was a no-go when she propped up the mirror on
the window ledge to do her make-up. I slunk off to the bathroom and ran the taps, then slid the cistern to get to my speed. I’d had some serious insomnia — not a wink of sleep, hours spent staring into the darkness. I knew what I was doing, and I knew how dangerous it was in my fragile state of mind. If you gaze for long into an abyss, the abyss gazes also into you was a line of Nietzsche’s I understood entirely.
I took a wrap of speed and chased it with another two. My tolerance had increased dramatically and tackling three wraps at a go was nothing for me. I’d been getting headaches and stomach cramps but I put that down to my general deterioration. I’d lost all appetite and had more or less stopped eating; the thing that had shocked me most, though, was the bleeding from my gums. I felt like my body was shutting down. Knew my soul wasn’t far behind it.
I slid the cistern back into place, was about to go and grab a smoke when my mobi rang.
‘Yeah.’
It was Mac. ‘What’s happening? We’ve been waiting for the nod on this Radek cunt.’
My plans had changed, for now. ‘Well, I ran into some difficulties.’
‘Such as?’
Did he want to know? I had to keep Mac and Hod informed if they were going to risk their necks for me. ‘I went to see Ronnie McMilne.’
‘You off yer fucking scone?’
‘I’d say so, yeah.’
‘I’d fucking say so too. What prompted that?’
I lowered my voice, checked Debs wasn’t on the other side the door, and told him about the poisoning. ‘I had no choice, it was one of those things.’
‘The red mist.’
He wasn’t wrong. ‘Aye, that’s it.’
He asked what I’d got out of McMilne and I gave him a brief rundown. He made the same assessment as I had — we could see all the pieces at the end of the kaleidoscope, but none of them were moving into shape.