Gutted, page 10
‘Mac, you’re giving me chatter. This is avoidance.’
He looked at Hod. The pair put eyes on me.
I turned to the wall, checked the calendar – had a Scots piper on it in a field of bluebells. Mac seemed to get the hint. He put his hands on the bar, leaned forward. ‘There’s still a hole in the books. There was another letter from the bank.’
‘Get it over.’
Mac leaned under the bar, took out the petty cash box. He ferreted in his pocket for a bunch of keys, found the one, opened up. I snatched the envelope. It was taped along the seal. Same Manila deal as usual, same threats from the manager. ‘This looks great,’ I said.
‘We need about thirty grand to keep afloat, and that’s before any refit to get new punters in. We can’t remortgage either,’ said Mac.
I put the letter back inside the envelope, tucked it in my pocket, said, ‘Did plod see this?’
Mac nodded.
‘Great.’ If Jonny Johnstone was looking for a motive, he had one in black and white.
In the last twenty-four hours I’d been planted firmly in the shit. The funny thing was, though I was fucked, all I could think about was letting Col down. I’d run his pub into the ground. I could feel his eyes on me where I stood, admonishing me, telling me I was better than I gave myself credit for, that I could pull this back. ‘Quality ye are, boyo,’ he’d said. God, hadn’t I proved him wrong, though. Col was the only man who had ever let me make mistakes without judging. He was the only man I knew who had ever felt genuinely proud of any minor achievement I’d made in my life, had shown faith in me, trusted that I wasn’t washed up, when all evidence pointed the other way. He was nothing like my own father.
Hod smoothed down the hair at the sides of his mouth. ‘Look, I can help out, but what you need is a buyer . . . If I put that to the firm, they’ll think I’m running a charity. If I take over the Wall, you’ll be left with nothing, Gus.’
I didn’t want to contemplate that. It sounded far too much like what I deserved.
I went to the window, stared out. A dog barked on the street and the one at my feet let off with a round of its own.
‘Usual . . . Usual, down, boy!’ roared Mac.
I was taken out of my gloom at the sight of the dog scurrying off to his basket, tail between legs. What that beast had been through put things into perspective. Thank Christ he was still in one piece.
‘What did you call him?’ I said.
Mac grinned. ‘Usual.’
‘What?’
The pair laughed. Hod butted in: ‘He thinks it’s his name . . . Fits, don’t you think?’
I turned to my pint, said, ‘Jesus H. Christ . . . I don’t know what to think any more.’
Chapter 19
‘NOW, YOU KNOW what to do?’ I said.
Hod put up his collar, locked his jaw. ‘Course I do.’
‘No. You don’t, obviously.’ I turned down the collar, playfully slapped his chops, said, ‘Lose the roughhouse demeanour.’
He slouched, nearly dropped the tray of sandwiches, pies and coffee. ‘I just don’t do this nice thing too well, Gus.’
‘Look, you want to help out, right?’
‘I do, yeah.’
‘Well, this is test number one – you get this right, well, we’ll see.’
Mac appeared at my back. His face was set hard as granite. He had a donkey jacket on that wouldn’t have looked out of place on an Irish navvy of the seventies.
‘Dressing down?’
‘We’re going to Sighthill, Gus.’ He spat the words like bullets. As he stood before me he was transformed into the chib-man of old. Mac was ready for a pagger, I could see it in his eyes.
‘Now, you’ll behave yourself, won’t you?’
He didn’t answer; brushed past me and made for the door. He was a fearsome sight with the threat of violence upon him.
I caught Hod checking himself out in the Younger’s Tartan Special mirror that hung in the hallway. He seemed to be psyching himself up, but looked more like a learner driver waiting for the test examiner.
‘You cool with this?’ I asked.
‘Sure, aye . . . Aye.’ He straightened his back, showed teeth.
I nodded approval. ‘That’s the face you show them!’
‘Gotcha.’
‘Then let’s do this.’
First out the door was Mac. He schlepped over to the red Golf. I saw plod following his every move. They never saw Hod approach and put a knock on the driver’s window.
‘Morning, chaps. How goes it today?’ he said.
The window was wound down; a head popped out.
‘I saw you sitting out here and I was thinking to myself, Poor buggers – bet they never even get a break for a bit of breckie.’
Hod passed in the tray. Hands went up. Heads went down. They checked out what the go was with all the smiling and the free scran. They never saw Mac creeping behind to pack the exhaust flange with a damp bar towel.
‘So, you’ll be the early shift?’ Hod said, his mock-bonhomie at full blast. ‘Beats the graveyard shift, eh?’
Plod took over the tray, seemed a bit conflicted. He said, ‘I can’t discuss that kind of thing . . . Look, who the hell are you?’
I started to hear whistling: if I wasn’t wrong, The Great Escape. Mac sauntered round to the front of the car. As he passed Hod he gave a little tap on his back. In no time at all, he was behind the wheel of the van, starting up. He had the side door open for me to dive in before plod rumbled.
We pulled out.
The red Golf revved high. Then cut out. Revved again. Cut out.
There was some serious burn from within the engine. Lots of smoke. Suddenly the Golf’s wheels screeched into the street, all of five yards, then the car stalled.
Hod smiled as I checked him in the rear-view. I said to Mac, ‘Nice work, fella.’
His short arms wrestled with the big steering wheel, wide turning circle playing havoc with the needle tickling sixty. ‘Turned out quite well, I thought.’
I grinned. ‘Tell me, the towel . . . where did you get that idea?’
‘Flash of genius, wasn’t it? Truth told, I snaffled it.’
‘From who?’
‘Eddie Murphy.’
I turned in my seat. Mac scrunched the gears, pulled out into traffic, said, ‘Beverly Hills Cop . . . He used bananas, though. We were out of them, but the bar towel did the trick.’
I had to laugh. Put the Eddie Murphy eeh-eeh-eeh in there, said, ‘Get the fuck outta here!’
We snaked through traffic for a few minutes, working the bus lanes to get as far away from the Wall – and plod – as quickly as possible. We did well – Mac might have made a wheelman in another incarnation. I knew the bus route to Sighthill, but Mac was taking me – there’s a phrase – all around the houses.
‘You’re sure about this?’ he said.
‘Am I sure? Of course I’m sure.’ I wondered why Mac the Knife was asking me this. Had he changed his mind about what we were about to do? ‘Are you sure?’
He took his eyes off the road, turned to me. ‘Fucking right.’ He pointed me to a carrier bag at my feet. ‘Check that.’ Inside was a length of rope, tied at one end in a hangman’s noose.
Of all the people I knew, Mac was the last one to go bottling it on me. I said, ‘This wee prick’s got something to hide; I can feel it in my bones.’
He crunched the gears, upped the speed as we took a steep hill with a curve to the left. ‘Well, if the Sid you saw is Sid the Snake, you can bet on that.’
‘I’m sure that Vera Fulton’s got more to give us as well, but this Sid fella was rattled, seriously rattled, when I went round there the last time.’
‘Well, we’ll give him a tug and see what’s what.’
I held on to the handle above the door as Mac tanked it into Sighthill.
‘What’s the Jackanory with him and Rab Hart?’ I said.
‘That’s a tricky one. We definitely don’t want to be pissing Rab off.’
‘Think they’re thick?’
Mac eyed me again. ‘Rab and Sid? . . . I’d fucking doubt it. Sid’s a bottom feeder. He’ll have been running some small-time racket for Rab. My guess, since Sid’s a bookie, it’ll be a book on the dog fighting . . . but hey, you can ask Rab yourself when you get up to the big hoose.’
‘You think that’s likely?’
‘Gus, you better get in and see him. He’ll only send someone for you if you don’t.’
‘No thanks.’
‘Gus, the pug he sent round wasn’t messing about . . . Rab wants to see you like fucking yesterday.’
As we arrived, the jungle bus was pulling in just ahead of us, dislodging a grim cargo of trackie-wearing neds and defeated old folk too afraid to lift their heads from the streets.
‘Look at the state of this,’ said Mac.
‘Tell me. It’s grim as death.’
An old man, so bloated he could hardly walk, was struggling with two Lidl carrier bags at the side of the road. As he waited for a gap in the traffic, two young yobs sneaked up behind him and pulled down his joggers. The bloke was exposed to the world, but too scared to put down his bags for fear they’d be stolen. He struggled to get both bags in one hand before struggling again to hitch up his joggers.
‘The wee bastards,’ said Mac.
The yobs stood at the side of the street laughing it up. Between them they were an advertisement for fluoridation of the water supply – hardly a good tooth in either head.
‘This place is a fucking nightmare.’
‘Think yourself lucky you’re not living here.’
It was on my mind to say ‘Maybe soon’, or perhaps ‘I could be facing worse’, but I let the thought pass without giving voice to it.
We pitched up outside Moosey’s home. The street was deserted, save a few half-starved mongrels that trotted about in packs, sniffing at bin bags and the litter and scraps that blew everywhere.
‘You think those dogs belong to anyone?’ I asked.
‘Aye,’ said Mac, ‘fucking everyone.’
‘What – they’re a feral pack?’
‘What else would you call them? They’re not looked after, that’s for sure . . .’ He sat upright behind the wheel. ‘Oh, hang on: show time.’
Voices came from Moosey’s house. A couple of young yobs emerged, spraffin’ away together and passing a bottle of Woodpecker between them.
‘Thought they’d be on the White Lightning,’ I said.
‘Did you check the clobber?’
‘Can hardly miss Tommy Hilfiger lettering a mile high.’
‘They’re wedged up, those wee bastards.’
‘No question.’
As the young crew schlepped down the street, Mac said, ‘Recognise any?’
‘Nah, not them. They’re about fifteen, sixteen . . . The pricks on the hill were older, eighteen at least. I’d clock them straight off too.’
In a minute, another figure appeared. Shuffling and hunched, leaning over a tab as if it was a life-support machine.
I clocked him straight away. It was Sid, though looking a little less sure of himself than on our last meeting.
‘That the Sid you know?’
Mac squinted over the steering wheel, peered down to the gate where Sid emerged onto the street. ‘That’s the Snake all right. No missing the slimy wee bastard.’
‘Let’s give him a tug.’
Mac took the keys out the ignition. ‘C’mon and boost.’
I climbed out the door, caught sight of Mac putting on a pair of black leather gloves. ‘What’s this? Anticipating bruised knuckles?’
A grunt: ‘Worse than that . . . much fucking worse.’
Chapter 20
SID LOOKED SHIFTY. As he walked down the street he kept turning left to right as if he expected someone to emerge from one of the half-derelict hovels and lay about him. Mac and I watched the Snake with suspicion.
‘What the fuck’s he up to?’
‘Dunno. All very sus,’ I said.
At the end of Moosey’s row, Sid turned left and continued down past the high-rises to another street of mainly boarded-up and deteriorating homes. The pack of dogs had migrated to this end of the scheme and were running about, barking and savaging each other and anything else they could get their jaws around. Sid shuffled through them, let out a few shouts to disperse the pack as he reached the gate at the bourne of his own run-down heap.
Mac prodded me. ‘Round the back.’
I nodded.
In the alley skirting the street, two teenage girls were buzzing lighter fluid. They didn’t look up as we passed, even as I kicked at the canisters around their heels. They were too far gone to register it. I tapped Mac on the arm, shook my head, but he didn’t so much as blink.
The back gardens lined up against the street consisted mainly of grass that had grown out of control, a couple of feet high, and the usual schemie detritus – burst couches, wrecked children’s toys, rusting engine parts and the occasional burnt-out car. Sid’s garden was more orderly. For a kick-off it was secured like Fort Knox – a six-foot fence and razor wire over the top of it.
‘What the fuck’s with the wire?’ I said. As we got closer a volley of deep, vicious barking started to rumble from the garden.
Mac didn’t answer. He had a hand-jemmy at the padlock and was already through the gate before I needed to know any more.
The yard was fitted out with some of the same gear as there had been in Moosey’s – treadmills, weights and car tyres with teeth-marks in them. There was a kid of about thirteen standing with a six-foot-long flirt-pole, what looked like a dog’s tail on the end of it, taunting an angry bull terrier that had been tied to a stake.
Mac grabbed the pole, smacked the kid on the side of the head. ‘Beat it, fannybaws.’
The kid shot a hand up to his head, took a look at Mac’s face and ran for the gate. I took the flirt-pole from him, looked at the end of it. The dog snarled and strained as I took the tail into my hands. ‘That’s off a fucking Labrador or something . . . Check it.’
Mac looked uninterested. He’d already located Sid – who was walking towards us. The dog pulled on his rope when he saw his master, his own tail going into motion. Sid carried a racing pigeon in his hands. He saw us in his yard but played it cool: ‘Wee bastard, ain’t he?’
‘The dog?’ said Mac. ‘He’s that.’
‘No’ a patch on the pit bull, though. Yon forty-two-teeth American’s a bastard and a half.’ Sid held up the pigeon. ‘I do the burds as well . . . but they piss me off. This cunt should have been back two days ago. Fucking no good to me!’ He snapped the pigeon’s wing in his hand, dropped the bird to the ground and laughed as it flailed about helplessly. ‘Fucking no good to me!’ He watched the bird complete a few desperate circles, creasing up his hollow cheeks – it was a deep pleasure to him – then he kicked the creature towards the snarling bull terrier.
The dog lunged on the pigeon and caught it in his jaws. He threw it in the air and then pounced on it again before shaking it violently. The dog was still shaking the bird as I looked back at Sid to see him laughing so much he had to take off his big glasses and wipe his eyes.
‘You are one sick fuck,’ said Mac.
‘It’s just some fucking fun; a wee bit of sport.’
‘You what?’
‘Come here.’ Sid motioned us over to the wire mesh cages he kept his dogs in. ‘Look at that.’ He became excited, animated, as he pointed to a fox that was pacing one of the far enclosures. ‘Caught that wee bastard under the pigeon hoose the other night . . . Going to make some pagger, that, eh!’ He was smiling and laughing, rubbing his hands at the thought.
Mac lost it, ‘This guy’s a fucking roach . . . You want me to do him?’
I saw Sid reach for the handle of the enclosure that held the dogs. He was too slow. Mac was close enough to throw a windmill right, decked Sid. As he lay pegged out on the ground I told Mac to pick him up.
‘You better watch yourself, Sid . . . Mac the Knife’s got form for this lark.’
I saw the name registered with him. He spluttered, gripped at his collar with his fingernails and yelled, ‘What the fucking hell do you want with me?’
‘Oh, I think you know . . . You were very reluctant to let me speak to Vera Fulton.’
Mac pressed his forearm hard against Sid’s neck. ‘You poking her? That what the game is here? You were poking Moosey’s wife and decided to do away with him, that it?’
I wanted to congratulate Mac. He was doing a great job of putting the shits up Sid, said, ‘All the more attractive a proposition, given Moosey was holding fifty grand of Rab’s, eh, Sid?’
‘I don’t know what you’re fucking talking about . . . I don’t.’
I glanced at Mac. It was enough. He put a wrecking-ball right into Sid’s gut. The gimp bent in two and fell to the ground, clutching at his stomach as though his insides were about to become outsides. Over the chaos the caged dogs went mad, barking and clawing at the wire. I could see a dash of red as the fox tried to leap out. It had no chance.
I bent down, leaned over Sid. His glasses had come off. I picked them up, snapped them in two between the lenses. ‘Shame – they’re broken . . . Might need a wee bit of Elastoplast for them now.’
Sid wheezed, tried for words. Found none.
‘Where did Moosey get the fifty grand?’
Sid struggled to speak, ‘It was the takings . . . Rab’s takings from the pagger.’
‘Dog fights?’
‘Aye, aye . . . the whole fifty fucking grand.’
‘What was he doing with it?’
‘Holding it for Rab. We do the books – we did together – but when Rab went inside, the money was just sitting about.’
‘So you and Moosey thought you’d have it?’
‘Naw, it wasn’t like that . . . We wanted to get it to Rab.’
Mac sighed, said, ‘Aye, right . . . and I button up the back.’
He leaned over and grabbed Sid by the collar. Sid kicked out, tried to push him away. ‘Call him off. Call him fucking off!’
I nodded to Mac. He dropped him on the flags. Sid collapsed again, panting.
