by Irvine Welsh
I find the books, stacked neatly in a corner, select a couple and head downstairs. Mum has dropped off in the chair, her mouth open like Brian’s. There’s no point in waking her. I head out into the cold and wait for ages on a bus because when I count out the change in my hand there’s only four pound coins and I can’t afford a poxy taxi.
His hand gripped the spanner tightly as he wrenched at the large nut, feeling it give straight away. Then, without loosening it fully, he twisted on the other one. He could feel a twinge on the joist, hear the sound of the piano rocking.
I’m looking back to the grill of the vent, but from this angle I can’t see their reaction, her and that animal that’s on top of her, fucking her.
But do they see it, do they see the piano rocking, hear the bolts slackening?
Resuming his efforts, Skinner couldn’t see them, but he saw himself in the meagre torchlight, reflected in the full-length mirror. His expression was devilish, but composed, like a rock-carved gargoyle from a medieval building that had suddenly come to life and was feasting slowly, with insect coldness, on the flesh of a warm-blooded animal it had just slain.
He watched himself unscrew the bolts and there was only one heart-thudding, sickening moment when he wanted to stop but that was the futile split second before he felt the weight of the piano slip as it sprang from its mountings with two twisting, wrenching snaps.
There seemed a long pause between the release of the instrument from its ceiling berth to the almighty crash and horrible animal groan, which, even through the attic ceiling, was harrowingly audible to Danny Skinner.
Skinner froze, looked at his guilty reflection in the mirror. Then he thought about Kay, and the love they had shared, as the blood ran cold in his veins.
WHAT HAVE I DONE?
Maybe I missed her, or missed them. Surely.
They would have heard it, seen it loosening, got out of the way. She would have seen it. But . . .
But his hand was in her mouth, stifling her cries, her moans, his big, fat sweaty carcass on her . . . my dad’s, no not my dad . . . but aye, it makes as much fucking sense as anything, this is how it has to fucking well be, this is how it has to end . . .
Skinner ran down the stairs, and he didn’t turn back, didn’t look in to see them, or the piano. But then he noted something, a white, ivory key that had shot out from the impact and ricocheted round the corner. There was no noise; no groans were coming from the room. For some reason he picked up the piano key and stuck it in his pocket. He kicked the back door of the restaurant open and moved out into the dark night. Heading down the road in haste, he was almost tempted to break into a run. Avoiding North Bridge, he scurried down New Street, past the abandoned bus depot, on to the deserted Calton Road, running alongside the railway embankment. His spine was almost rigid with fear as he drove forward, waiting for the pursuing police car that never came. Slowing down to a busy stride, he went past the new parliament, open for business at last.
Our toytown parliament: like looking for a father and being presented with a guardian from the social work department.
When he got closer to Leith he avoided the Walk and Easter Road, ghosting and weaving down the backstreets between them. He had taken a circular route across the Links and was down by the Shore when he stopped for a while and looked at the still Water of Leith draining into the Forth. He felt the piano key in his pocket. When he picked it out he was shocked to see that his mind had been playing tricks on him, this key was not ivory white but ebony black. He chucked it into the Water of Leith, went home and sat up psychotic with exhaustion and anxiety, fretfully wondering just what exactly he had done.
Ellie Marlowe was a little late for work, and she hoped that Abercrombie the Zombie, as they referred to one of the line managers who never seemed to sleep, had not risen early in order to check on her. Even worse, the fat boy from the telly, him that owned the place, was sometimes prone to coming in, as it was his new venture.
There was something wrong . . . the door. It wasn’t locked. Somebody was in. Ellie started to formulate excuses about buses. She couldn’t run a car on cleaner’s wages, they surely knew that as they were paying them, after all. She doubted whether Abercrombie or De Fretais had seen a bus timetable in their lives.
Ellie turned the corner with trepidation, walking into the main bar. As a pungent odour of urine filled her nostrils, she couldn’t believe the sight that met her. She then thought that she might scream, or run out into the street, which surely would be coming to morning life by now. Instead she calmly lit a cigarette, then picked up the phone and dialled 999. When the operator asked her what service she required, Ellie took a puff on her Embassy Regal, paused for a second to consider, then said, — I think you’d better get the lot ay them.
The trickle of perspiration snaked down his neck in slow, flesh-crawling violation, setting off a quiver in his body. Brian Kibby slowly rose and saw the cold glint of the bottles by his bed, instantly knowing that they would not have escaped his mother’s notice. Pungent aromas of old alcohol and stale body matter swept into his head, which then fell into his hands in deflated anguish.
Everything’s falling apart. He’s won. He’ll destroy us all.
His heavy body thumped downstairs, as he saw his mother sitting at the kitchen table with a pot of tea and a Maeve Binchy novel. Kibby immediately blurted out an apology: — Mum . . . I’m sorry about the drinking . . . I was depressed . . . I won’t do . . .
Joyce looked up, but without meeting his eyes. Staring off into space she said, — Caroline was here last night. Did you see her?
Why couldn’t they face things? Brian Kibby’s soul screamed. Yet he’d been the same, lying in a stupor, too drunk to even notice that his sister was in the house. — Mum, my drinking, I’m sorry, it won’t . . .
— Would you like a cup of tea? she said, suddenly looking right at him. — I’ve nearly finished the new Maeve Binchy. She displayed the novel’s cover. — I think it’s the best one yet. Pity you missed Caroline.
Kibby nodded slowly in defeated resignation and lumbered wearily to the cupboard where he got a ‘Hyp Hykers Do It Wetter’ mug. It was Ken Radden who had got those mugs made. At the time Kibby had considered them as simply referring to their tendency to get sodden wet in the Highland rains on their hiking trips. Now they seemed to carry a risqué and close-to-the-bone double entendre.
He poured a cup of lukewarm tea and sipped at it, letting it part his lips by dissolving the gluing film on them.
Why was I so stupid? Why couldn’t I see it for what it was? So many of them were just in it for sex. Like Radden and Lucy . . . like . . .
Caroline had probably gone away to be with Skinner. Most likely she was in his bed right now.
Suddenly Kibby felt a terrible resentment towards his sister, so extensive in its nature that previous sibling rivalry had only hinted at it. She was like her friends, all those girls that he had seen glow impossibly, defencelessly, with youth and beauty. With her creamy skin and sharp jawline, her hard breasts swelling and her small waist, she seemed like a walking insult to him, her and her friends. His very presence made them awkward and embarrassed, he just seemed to give off this stink. Yet he could cruelly see how Skinner would be so much at ease with them, how he could easily satisfy this ecstatic, puzzling need to take such beauty to you, to open it, penetrate it, and attempt to elicit its nature.
And Brian Kibby, with a dreadful insight gained through his own terrible decline, saw that there were not the boundless eras he had thought between Caroline’s pellucid, imperturbable beauty and the sagging, haggard appearance of his mother. It was a tunnel made dreadful by its shortness, and you emerged from its other end in a confused dance at a velocity you could barely perceive.
Time is running short, slipping away . . .
He went upstairs and switched on his computer.
The chat room . . . was that horny wee bitch in the fucking chat room . . .?
Yes . . . there she is . . .
how many marks out of ten will I give this dirty wee slut . . .?
07-11-2004, 3.05am
Jenni Ninja
A Divine Goddess
I’ve taken the plunge and got started on the new game. Magnificent! Has changed my life. Decided to marry Ann.
07-11-2004, 3.17am
Smart Boy
The Man in the Know
Ann’s pretty cute in the new edition, but I still prefer Muffy. She’s the hottest!
07-11-2004, 3.18am
Uber-Priest
King of the Cool
I think you’re the hottest, Jenni babe. Where do you hang out?
07-11-2004, 3.26am
Jenni Ninja
A Divine Goddess
Why, Uber-Priest, I didn’t know you cared! I live in Huddersfield and like skating and swimming.
07-11-2004, 3.29am
Uber-Priest
King of the Cool
We should meet up and hang out sometime. I’ll bet you’re really sexy. I don’t mind that you dig other chicks cause I like to watch, before I join in, of course. What do you look like?
Holding his stiffening cock, he eagerly waited for a response. None was forthcoming. Then, as he received a message from the board monitor saying that he was banned from the chat room, his erection crumbled in his sweaty hand.
Ellie Marlowe’s contention had proved not to be so fanciful: they had indeed required the services of the fire brigade as well as the ambulance and police at the Muso Bar and Restaurant. The piano had fallen almost square on top of the Master Chef and the waitress, pinning them to the bar during their act of copulation.
Alan De Fretais had died instantly under its impact. At first it was thought that Kay Ballantyne had suffered the same fate, but they felt a faint pulse in her. Kay was weak but still very much alive, the considerable bulk of the chef absorbing most of the shock impact of the falling piano.
The fire brigade used power tools to cut the legs off the instrument, and then it took several strong, fit firefighters to lift it from De Fretais. It took almost as many to prise the chef’s corpse from the comatose body of Kay Ballantyne. Blood ran from his mouth into her face; he’d bitten off his own tongue and it hung almost completely severed across her cheek. As they attempted to pull the corpse with its obscenely bulging eyes from her, they noted that Kay seemed to be coming to, murmuring deliriously. It was one of the attending doctors who saw that the motion of De Fretais’s corpse was arousing her, given that his member was still inside her and had probably stiffened due to rigor mortis.
As Kay Ballantyne gasped into consciousness, one irreverent firefighter turned to a colleague and remarked, — You’ve got tae hand it to that fat cunt De Fretais. A top shag, even in death.
40
Persevere
HE SAT, STARING out of his bedroom window, across the backcourt, to the bare, spindly trees, their sooty-grey barks greening with moss and lit up by a semi-opaque shaft of morning daylight. Behind them were the five-storey tenements, the emerging sunlight bouncing off them, shining up their brown stone to a rustic Mediterranean terracotta.
The clock on the church steeple told him the time, his one piece of reality orientation. Otherwise Danny Skinner felt as rootless as the dead autumn leaves that blew aimlessly around his backcourt. He had sat up most of the night, snorting cocaine from an old wrap he’d found in his bedside cabinet, listening to Radio Forth, particularly anxious every time a local news bulletin came on.
Then, at around 9 a. m., Skinner heard about the two persons believed to be badly injured in a freak accident at a restaurant. He had no intention of going in to the job he’d just restarted and sat consumed by misery and regret until he went down to the Bengali grocer’s on the corner, for a late-morning edition of the Evening News. The paper headlines were full of the grisly death that television celebrity and Master Chef Alan De Fretais had suffered. Skinner was jolted, but not surprised, to hear that the chef’s real name was Alan Frazer and that he came from Gilmerton.
I’ve killed him. Killed my own father. He was a chef, a shagger; we even had the bond of hating Kibby. My ma didn’t like him, but then he wasn’t a likeable guy. I can see it now, she didn’t detest him because he hated her; she loathed him because he was so indifferent to her, indifferent to me. She was just another silly wee tart who didn’t take precautions that he’d got up the duff, so it was her problem. He probably got into her the same way he did tae poor Kay . . .
He didnae react tae me like I was his long-lost son. There was no vibe, outside a bit of morbid fascination on his part, which he satisfied after he’d met me a couple of times. He knew who I was from the start, but there was no vibe because he was just a selfish cunt . . .
. . . but . . .
. . . but when I got the promotion and went to his restaurant, and he brought over the champagne, maybe he did that because he was proud of me . . .
He got an old notepad and pen and practised writing the name:
Danny Frazer
The paper reported that Kay, whose identity was not disclosed until later issues, was in a stable condition. As soon as she was named on Radio Forth, Skinner made telephone enquiries to the hospital, stating he was her fiancé. A sympathetic nurse told him she was okay.
There were tears in his eyes as he read the glowing testimonies to the achievements and character of his victim. Shaking free of his maudlin inertia, Skinner took a taxi to the Infirmary, convinced that enough time had passed to put him out of the frame of suspicion. There had been no reference to potential foul play in the paper but the police would know that bolts didn’t unscrew themselves. Or maybe they did, he didn’t know.
When he got on to the ward he almost walked past Kay’s bed. She was so battered-looking, like she’d been in a bad car accident. Her face and eyes were swollen and there was a bandage across the bridge of her nose.
De Fretais must have nutted her when the piano hit them.
Yet she seemed so pleased to see him, and he was just massively relieved to discover that she would be okay. He realised with an almost sickening force that he still loved her, and possibly always would. It was a doomed love of course, but one that would never be the less for that. He wanted to tell her everything, but fortune had it that she spoke first.
— Danny . . . I’m so glad you’re here . . .
— I heard about it on Radio Forth. When they mentioned your name, I was so shocked, I had to come and make sure you were okay, Skinner gasped, now relieved that the moment for total candour had passed. — What happened?
— A piano fell on us . . . myself and Alan. He’s . . . I was so lucky . . . Tears welled up in her eyes. — I was so stupid, Danny . . . we were . . . we were having sex . . . She spluttered it out. — What was I thinking about?
— It’s okay, it’s okay . . . Skinner cooed breathlessly, almost rendered speechless with guilt. Her nose was broken and so were two of her ribs and he had done this. Done this to someone he loved.
It was the hate.
It was the alcohol . . . the chefs.
It’s not Kibby’s curse, it’s a curse to everybody, and it’s consuming me and every single person I come into contact with. I’ve got to sack it all, got to get back to Dorothy in San Francisco . . .
Skinner sat for a bit until Kay’s mother came in. She was an elegant woman, well groomed, who had obviously looked after herself. The type that aged well, he’d always thought. She seemed surprised to see him. It’s probably because I’m relatively sober, he considered with a poignant ache.
He excused himself but was in no shape to return to work. He found an Internet café and emailed Dorothy, and then checked online for cheap flight tickets to San Francisco.
Ah’m fucking oot ay here. The Kibbys, Brian Kibby and Caroline Kibby, it isnae right, it’s well fucked. Ah’m gaunnae kill them all if ah dinnae get the fuck away. It’s being here; it seems to lend itself to having strange, destructive obsessions with your neighbours, and you forget to get a life of you
r own.
Naw, I’m hurting nae cunt else.
He contemplated the curse, how it was infecting everything. He thought of the old cliché, ‘Be careful what you wish for’, and considered whether he could, compos voti, achieve satisfaction.
While looking through the Evening News earlier, Skinner had noticed a feature on a white witch, Mary McClintock. Although now retired, it was claimed that she was an authority on spells. It took him a long time to track her down to her Tranent home in the sheltered housing complex. He called her and, after finding out his age, she agreed to see him.
It was uncomfortably hot in Mary’s flat, but Skinner took a seat opposite the fat old woman. — Can you help me? he said earnestly.
— What’s your problem?
He told her that he believed that he had put a spell on somebody. He wanted to know if this was possible, how he could have done this, and how it could be reversed.
— Oh aye, it’s possible. Mary regarded him cannily. — I can help you, but I need payin first, son. Money’s nae use tae me at ma age. Her eyes wrinkled. — You’re a fine-lookin laddie, she said harshly. — A good cock, son, that’s the payment I need!
Skinner looked at her, and shook his head. Then he broke into a broad grin. — This is a joke, right?
— There’s the door. Mary raised her hand slowly and pointed behind him.
Skinner kept his gaze on her, his expression pained. He blew out some air through tight lips. Then he thought about Caroline, his terrible impotence around her. — Awright, he said.
Mary seemed slightly taken aback, then rose eagerly, letting her weight slump heavily on to her walking frame. Hobbling slowly through to the bedroom, she beckoned Skinner to follow. He hesitated for a second, and smiled crushingly to himself, before pursuing her.
The sparsely furnished bedroom, with an old brass bed prominent, was dank and musty. — Take oaf yir clathes then, let me see the goods, Mary rasped in lecherous cheer.