Digital Circumstances

by BRM Stewart

  There was a laugh. ‘Oh, I see. That was all just business. I didn’t hurt anyone.’

  ‘Did you sleep with Martin to get him to do what you wanted?’

  The laugh came again. ‘I didn’t have to. And I seem to recall you very much enjoyed what we did together. What’s happening with Ken Talbot now?’

  ‘We’re sweeping it all up best we can. But they know exactly who you are now.’ Amanda shook herself and sat upright. ‘Look, I have someone here. I have to go. All I can do is advise you to stay away – it’s too dangerous. For both of us.’ And she killed the call and flicked on the do not disturb setting, and went back to the bedroom.

  Claire flinched as the cool body enveloped itself round her. She murmured something sleepily, and Amanda shushed her and held her tight. It took her an hour to get back to sleep.

  *

  Needless to say, I slept very badly. Steve woke me around two am: ‘No toilet paper.’ I told him where the spare rolls were, and tried to get back to sleep. When I did sleep, I was repeatedly haunted by a very attractive, naked blonde woman who seductively came up to me and then did an alien-style attack on my throat; I woke up sweating every time that happened. Sometimes, for variety, she knelt before me and then tore off my penis with her huge teeth. Sometimes it blended with that night in Romania, and it was Rodica undressing and attacking me.

  I woke at seven, feeling more shattered and hungover than I had the day before. Steve was lying on his bed, still dressed, his laptop beside him, his mouth wide open, snoring, as I passed the spare room on my way to the bathroom.

  The shower and then breakfast revived me. Steve yawned his way past me and opened all the cupboards till he found the cereal and a bowl. He poured himself some, added milk, found the cutlery drawer, and went through to the lounge, shovelling spoonfuls into his mouth.

  I made instant coffee – Steve declined when I showed him the jar – and he went off to shower, though it looked like he put the same shirt back on afterwards.

  We headed out into the cool, dry morning – a classic autumn feel in the air. I took him over to a café to get a couple of proper coffees to take with us, and we caught a passing taxi into town.

  I texted Nicola: ‘You OK to talk?’

  She texted back immediately: ‘Just leaving the hotel for my last appointment. Getting the afternoon flight back to Edinburgh. I’ll call you when I get home. Can we meet at the weekend?’

  ‘Hope so. Speak later.’

  I smiled inside: something positive to look forward, something to counter the mess I was in.

  Claire was at her desk with a cup of coffee, wearing the same clothes as yesterday; she looked happier this morning, almost radiant. Her computer was still off, though she’d started up the switchboard. Grosvenor was in my office, holding a cup of coffee and staring at the scrolling white text in the two windows on the monitor. Steve gently eased him aside and sat down on the chair.

  ‘Any idea how long now?’ Grosvenor asked, his voice sounding deeper and rougher this morning.

  Steve gave a slight shake of his head. He set up his other, thin laptop with a 4G-modem stick, and started typing, still half-watching the Mac and his other laptop as the brackets and the alphanumerics shot up the screen.

  Grosvenor and I went back to Claire’s office. She had plugged a landline into the phone socket now, bypassing the mini exchange, and was answering calls now, fielding enquiries.

  ‘Not much we can do,’ I said. He nodded.

  I helped Claire with the enquiries, and sent an updated list of jobs to do along to Argyle Street. But mainly nothing happened. Nothing at all.

  By eleven o’clock we were seriously bored. I checked the Internet on my phone, and we talked about maybe getting something for lunch later – ‘Yesterday’s sandwiches were good.’

  Amanda Pitt still hadn’t shown, and then we discovered why. The BBC Scotland twitter feed had the breaking story of a man being shot dead in a supermarket car park, and vague references to his being a local businessman but also a ‘prominent figure in the Glasgow underworld’. I phoned Amanda.

  ‘I’m busy, Martin,’ she said, the wind crackling across the microphone of her phone, loud voices all around her.

  ‘I saw the news.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘Who is it?’

  I heard her moving, and then her voice was quieter. ‘Ken Talbot. His driver took him out to Tesco. A car pulled up behind them, a guy got out with a handgun and fired everything into Talbot’s car – killed him and the driver.’

  ‘Jesus. Obviously couldn’t wait till he died naturally’

  ‘Soft target – someone making a point, starting the takeover. We’re expecting mayhem over the next few days. I’ll be tied up completely with this for a while: we need everyone on this.’

  ‘Right. Did you trace the number of that Golf that was outside my flat?’

  ‘Eh – no. Haven’t had time. Look, I have to go.’

  ‘What about the ownership of B&D, with Talbot dead?’

  ‘I suppose lawyers will make a lot of money deciding that over the next few years. Got to go,’ and she hung up.

  I looked at the mobile, and wondered about the legacy of Talbot’s empire – his legitimate empire. How much did I really own? And if Charlene was his granddaughter, how much could she grab? And I thought about Talbot’s dying…

  *

  The black BMW turned into the parking bay at Tesco’s, and the driver switched off the engine. He half-turned to speak to Ken Talbot – a final check on the shopping list – when they both heard a car braking and stopping at the back of them, its engine still running fast.

  A scrawny man wearing a long-sleeved T-shirt and jeans, his face ravaged and angry, his hair cut back to the scalp, was at the window by Talbot. Talbot pushed the button to lower the window, and he looked up at the man. Heroin, he thought; wired to the moon, after some money. He reached into his jacket.

  The man had one badly withered arm, the result of a severe beating some years before in a computer shop that had caused multiple fractures which had never healed properly. In his good arm, he held a handgun, which he raised. It shook as he pointed it at Talbot.

  ‘Look, son,’ Talbot said, calm, unafraid, resigned. ‘You’re wasting your time. I’ll be dead in a couple of months.’

  ‘Nah,’ came the reply, strangled by adrenalin and a set of rotten teeth. ‘You’re fuckin’ deid now ya cunt.’

  And the gun began to fire till Talbot was slumped and dead, and then turned to fire into the head of the driver as he tried to duck away and cover himself. A minute later and the other car was racing out of the supermarket car park, while people nearby looked up, mystified at the noise, unable to make sense of the sounds. Until someone went over to look at the car, and called the police – and then took some photographs on his phone.

  *

  Grosvenor was helping himself to more coffee – I noticed he’d brought in new stuff, and was keeping it in the small fridge we had. I joined him, got one for Claire, and explained what had happened.

  ‘Did you know him well?’ Claire asked, when I told her about Talbot.

  I shook my head. ‘He got us started in B&D, me and Davey, but he was just interested in using the company for laundering money. I never had dealings with him; just Sandy.’

  ‘Actually,’ Claire said, ‘I don’t know much of the story. It was only ever Colin and Sandy I worked for, and he said nothing about Ken Talbot,’

  So I explained about my gradual awareness of what was really going on with the companies, the leaking of customer details to some ‘people’ out there – I was vague about it all. And I explained about my moral dilemma: I had earned a lot of money, but much of which was not rightly mine. I didn’t mention what I had managed to park in Gibraltar.

  I suddenly noticed Claire wasn’t wearing her engagement ring. I was about to ask, when she realised I’d spotted it. She gave a quick shake of her head, and then the phone rang and she answered it.

>   I looked at my watch. ‘Will Charlene be in Glasgow now?’

  ‘Undoubtedly. We have to wait till she does something,’ Grosvenor said.

  I looked at my phone, scrolling through it, and suddenly realising. ‘I’ve got her mobile number,’ I blurted out.

  ‘How the hell did you get that?’

  ‘In Romania – she gave it to me.’

  Grosvenor thought for a minute. ‘Call her cell now. Speakerphone. Through here.’

  We went into Sandy’s old office – stripped of files, drawers empty, his computer sitting dead on his desk.

  I dialled. It rang out and went to voicemail. Unsure, I said: ‘Call me when you can. We need to talk.’ And hung up.

  Grosvenor frowned at me. ‘You watch a lot of cop movies?’

  My mobile rang a moment later: it was Charlene. ‘Hello, Martin. How are you?’ I recognised that slight Welsh accent. Her voice was confident, calm.

  ‘I’m fine. Can we meet up and chat about how things are going?’

  ‘Good idea, Martin. How long will it take you to get down to Wales?’

  ‘Ages. But it won’t take long to get to your hotel in Glasgow.’

  She gave a short laugh. ‘Who have you got there with you, Martin?’

  ‘Just a couple of guys. You heard about your grandfather? He was shot dead today, in a supermarket car park.’

  There was silence for a time, and her voice was less cocky this time round. ‘I think you’re right, Martin. We need to talk. Why don’t we have dinner this evening, at my hotel?’

  ‘What time?’ I was conscious Grosvenor was frowning hard.

  ‘Six this evening? Meet in the bar.’

  ‘Where are you staying?’

  ‘I’m in the Crowne Plaza. See you at six.’

  ‘Looking forward to it.’

  I hung up and turned to Grosvenor. ‘Right – what do I say to her?’ But he was already on his mobile.

  ‘Hi, it’s me. I need to check the guest list at the Crowne Plaza hotel, Glasgow, Scotland. I’m looking for a Charlene Anderson aka Charlene Talbot aka Charlie Talbot. Asap.’

  He hung up and turned to me. ‘You just talk to her, find out what you can about what she’s up to. Try to see if you can persuade her that the situation she’s in is hopeless, but we’re willing to talk to her if she’ll cooperate.’

  Just like they did with me, I thought. ‘Can’t we get her arrested?’

  ‘We have no evidence that she’s done anything wrong, and I don’t think that’s necessarily the best approach. But it’s a possible threat. Just meet her.’

  ‘Will I tell her the FBI is involved? That might impress her.’

  ‘I don’t think she’ll either believe you or act on that: she’s not yet feeling as cornered as you were; she probably still thinks she can have a slice of Talbot’s empire – she is his natural heir, after all. Save the FBI bit till later. How tough do you think she is?’

  I thought back to that first sighting on the beach at Alvor: the pretty blonde with the pert breasts, who didn’t speak at all, and so we assumed she was stupid, someone’s trophy wife. Given her background, did she feel the world had cheated of her rightful inheritance – had she felt abandoned by her family, making her angry, deeply resentful – ‘tough’? ‘I don’t know,’ I said.

  I was pacing the room, checking my watch. ‘I need to do something,’ I said. ‘I’m going along to Argyle Street, see how the Franks are getting on. Do you want to come?’

  He looked between me and my office, where Steve was still staring at his laptop and flicking back to my Mac and his other machine. He shook his head. ‘I better stay here with Steve. You go – but get back here in good time to get over to Charlene. I’ll try to find out what I can.’ His mobile rang. ‘Yeah? … OK … Can you check the rest of the hotels in and around Glasgow? … Yeah, I appreciate that, but I need to find her. It is important. … Good, thanks.’ He put it away. ‘She isn’t registered at that hotel.’

  ‘Fake ID?’

  He shook his head. ‘Don’t know. We’ll go ahead with the meeting. You head off, but get back here good and early.’

  *

  It was strange being back in the shop up at Finnieston, where it had all started – that promise of a hard-working but rewarding life, the lucky start that had turned out to be fatally flawed. All the disasters that had befallen us since.

  As I walked in the door, I remembered seeing Charlie with his cock out in the drunken hope that it would prove irresistible to our secretary; the neds who’d tried to run a protection racket on a company owned by one of the biggest gangsters in the city, and who’d ended up in A&E as a result; the fun we’d had, working till all hours, Davey at his desk, totally focused; Sam with her black hair and clothes – which led me to remembering having sex with her. Where was she now? And poor Fiona – seeing her at the museum. Helen – who looked so like her. ‘Never lie to me, Martin…’ The doomed marriage to Elizabeth that Helen had rescued me from – then losing Helen. The night with Nicola in Kirkwall: the promise of a relationship. Charlie’s death, Davey’s horrific injuries.

  All of it washed back and forth through my mind as I closed the door behind me and sensed the history of the place, everything me and Davey had done and achieved, all of it made frictionless by a gangster’s money and intervention. Had I achieved anything in my life that was truly down to me? Could I ever right the wrongs? Were the disasters that had befallen me down to some balancing of the universe?

  I looked around and felt myself go weak with the weight of all the memories and the baggage, tears welling in my eyes.

  There was a cough. Ben was standing near me, looking at the floor. ‘Hi, Martin,’ he mumbled. He looked less thin these days, though his skin was still pale even by Glasgow standards.

  ‘Hi, Frank,’ I said. ‘How are things?’

  ‘Frank’s out on a job. I’m working remotely on a system we repaired in June for a small independent record shop on Otago street; the owner is fifty six and has …’

  I managed to stop him with several waves of my hand. ‘But no one on the front desk, no one handling invoices. What happened to June?’

  ‘She left nine days ago.’

  ‘Yes, but did she say why?’

  ‘Said this place was too weird.’ He flapped his arms.

  ‘OK. You go back to work.’

  He went through to the back of the open-plan workshop, where I could remember Davey clearly, hunched over open computers, wrestling with their innards, plugging tiny connectors into circuit boards.

  I spent an hour there. The till was stuffed with cash and mysterious IOU notes; I counted and took the bank notes but left enough money for a float and also the IOUs, not feeling up to asking Ben for an explanation of their existence: he’d explain each and every one at length, and I’d be none the wiser.

  I looked around the stock – graphics cards, processors, motherboards, cases, a few printers and monitors, hard drives, a small stock of ink cartridges, a few USB sticks and SD cards, assorted leads, keyboards and mice. We couldn’t compete with the nearby PC World or Amazon for the mainstream stuff, though a few people would just do an impulse purchase when passing the door, so we carried specialised equipment that the enthusiasts would be interested it, because we could talk to them about it, genuinely help them decide what they really needed, and help them sort out their inevitable disasters. Ben said we didn’t need anything right now.

  ‘OK. Give me a call if anything happens.’

  Outside, with the breeze picking up and chilling the air, I walked the short distance to Kraweski’s pub, our old haunt. It was quiet – just a few students and some locals – so I bought a pint of IPA and a packet of crisps. I sat in one of the booths near the back of the pub and looked around, letting all the ghosts come back. All those nights sitting here with Davey, starting with the day we’d first seen the shop; here with Sam that night when she’d ended up in my bed; working all those hours, coming in knackered and getting quickly dru
nk on two pints because we were so tired; moving into our flat just up the road; living with Fiona in the flat, that all-too brief time, maybe the happiest of my life. More thoughts of Sam… and Elizabeth. Then Helen.

  I finished my beer and wandered out into the street. I walked all the way along Argyle Street to where it crossed the M8 and morphed into St Vincent Street, my thoughts tumbling and surfacing in my head.

  By the time I climbed the steps to the office, I felt something like resolve forming inside me. I’d get out of this, doing whatever it took, and I’d make a go of things with Nicola – no way back to Helen now. I’d keep in touch with Davey and Jane, and I’d keep in touch with mum and my step-dad. I’d get it all sorted, get some kind of life together.

  *

  ‘Keep your phone on, son – just in case,’ had been Grosvenor’s last words to me. ‘Scottish police are tied up with the Talbot case; there’s no backup for you.’

  I walked down to the river, and then all the way along the path to the hotel, joggers and cyclists streaming past me, the cool evening breeze tugging at me, light rain falling now. I passed the angled road bridge known to Glaswegians as the ‘squinty bridge’, the huge Finnieston Crane which was a memorial to the vanished shipbuilding industry, the Hydro Arena overshadowing the Clyde Auditorium, BBC Scotland headquarters and the science centre across the river, a car – bizarrely – in the middle of the Bell Bridge, which I had thought was for pedestrians only. All of it completing the transformation that had its beginnings with our own, back in the day.

  I pushed through the main door into the warmth of the hotel, and turned right, walking round the island bar. Just a few people there, reading Kindles or iPads, or talking on phones – sometimes all three. The barman looked at me expectantly, and I looked at my watch; I was five minutes early.

  I ordered a pint of very expensive Czech lager and sat at a table near the window, where I could look out but also see anyone coming in from the front door or from reception. I drank my lager and waited, all the memories that the day had stirred up still washing back in forth in my mind.

  I had spoken to Nicola earlier, just when I had begun to wonder whether she would call. She talked of her visit to Orkney, some creep trying to chat her up at dinner in the hotel – I winced at that – and the poor weather. I told here I was really tied up with business, but should manage through at the weekend. ‘I hope so, Martin. I really want to see you again, for all sorts of reasons.’ ‘Me too.’