Authors: Christopher Brookmyre
‘Did you ever see her at that time?’
‘I made a point of it, yes. We had all heard that she was becoming a wild child but she was adept at giving a different impression when it suited her, so I only saw what she wanted me to see.’
They were approaching the first viewing point from which the falls were visible. Jasmine expected Josie to veer off the main path towards the railings and the little platform, but instead she kept on going towards the stairs.
‘It’s a bit of a climb,’ Jasmine warned.
‘It’s worth it.’
They took it slow, stopping at each switchback. Jasmine was feeling it in her thighs, conscious that she spent way too much of her time sitting in cars and vans. She thought of Laura Geddes and her late-night runs. Air-rifle shooting wasn’t going to keep her fit.
‘Your mum left home when she got into drama school. She was still in Glasgow but she got a flat with some other girls, I think. I heard very little about her at that stage. I think Elizabeth’s funeral was the only time I saw her in about two years, maybe longer. She seemed fine, but, you know, older.’
Josie wore a pained little frown as she said this last word, one from which Jasmine was invited to infer a great deal, but neither of them would ever know the details.
‘Then perhaps a year later, out of the blue, Bruce tells me she’s appearing at the Tron theatre. She had a job with a repertory company, one of those where one month you’re on stage and the next you could be working with nine-year-olds in a community
centre. Bruce was delighted. We all were. And then, just as suddenly, I heard she had quit the theatre company and left Glasgow.
‘Everything was very hush-hush and rather fraught. Bruce wouldn’t say where she had gone, never mind why. Then some months later he asked me to meet him in Edinburgh, and took me to the Simpson Maternity Unit, where I first laid eyes on you. I didn’t even know Yvonne was pregnant.’
Josie’s eyes filled a little now as she spoke, but for the first time since they started walking there was no sadness, no regret, only warmth.
‘It was as I got my first wee hold of you that Yvonne explained the disappearing act. She didn’t want the father to know about the baby. She didn’t tell me who he was and I didn’t ask.’
Corra Linn was in spate. Josie sat on a bench, Jasmine standing at the railing near by. They both stared, entranced, at the falls, arching like vast billowing drapes, an endless crash echoing around the rocks as a plume of vapour rose towards the skies.
Neither spoke for a long time. There was too much churning through Jasmine’s mind, roaring in white noise like the waters. If she moved her eyes and focused a certain way, she could follow a small volume, seeing it hold its form for an instant as it plummeted into the next pool. In the same way, one thought held its shape in her head long enough for her to give it voice.
‘Did you see her? At the Tron, I mean?’
Josie stared for a moment before responding, as though she required time to disentangle her mind from the spell of the falls.
‘Oh, yes. She was Lady Macbeth. She was brilliant. For a while all I saw was my wee niece, but then Yvonne faded away and all I saw was the character. She seemed so young, and yet she played upon that, against an older Macbeth, like a young seductress who didn’t anticipate what her powers would wreak, which only emphasised the tragedy.’
Jasmine’s heart thumped as she ate up every word. Part of her had been waiting her whole life to hear this one account.
‘I only saw her once,’ Josie added with a sigh. ‘At the time, I just assumed it was the beginning of her career, not the end. If I’d
known that I’d have gone along every night, and to the matinees too.’
Josie gave Jasmine a sad smile as she noticed her tears.
‘Och, come here, pet.’
Jasmine sat down beside her on the bench, where Josie ran a hand over her hair, like she had done when she was a girl.
Josie looked to the falls again and they both sat there in a silence for a while.
‘I’ve got something for you,’ Josie said. ‘Remind me when we get back to the house. I meant to give it to you a while ago, but I was waiting for you to visit.’
‘I should have come sooner.’
Josie took her to the room that was never really Fran’s. It was cold, a damp chill in the air indicative of it having been a very long time since the radiator was turned on in here. Josie went to the wardrobe and pulled out some boxes, placing them carefully on the bed. They were all made of cardboard, but wrapped carefully in gift paper like presentation boxes.
Having found the one she was looking for, she popped off the lid and sifted through its contents. She removed an A4 envelope from a stack of binders and folders, then handed it to Jasmine.
Jasmine read Josie’s neat and elegant handwriting in blue pen at the top left corner, and felt something inside her surge. It said simply: ‘Yvonne Macbeth Tron’.
She opened it carefully and slid out the contents. They were black-and-white production stills, ten-by-eight publicity photographs taken during dress rehearsals. There were twelve prints, her mother in seven of them. She looked young, confident, vampish, angry, scared, forthright, vibrant, beautiful. Jasmine had been seeking forever for this treasure, imagining how she would feel if she ever found it. She had always assumed there would be tears, but none came. She just felt excited and proud, thrilled on her mum’s behalf. This was the woman she had always known existed, the one her mum had been hiding from her.
‘I offered these to your mother once, but she wouldn’t take them.
She wouldn’t even open the envelope. I realised that giving it all up must have been harder for her than she would ever let on, especially to you.’
‘Thanks for keeping them,’ Jasmine said. ‘I’ll treasure these.’
‘You should have this stuff too, if you want it.’
Josie tapped the lid of another box on the bed, which now looked like the scene beneath a Victorian Christmas tree.
Jasmine pulled off the lid with undisguised impatience, like an excited child. She knew she didn’t have to hide this from Josie.
It was full of old jotters, notepads and drawings, a time capsule from her mum’s school years.
‘I rescued this lot from Bruce’s attic after he died. I offered it to your mum but she said to just bin it all. I didn’t. I couldn’t.’
Jasmine homed in on a makeshift scrapbook: an A4-sized unlined jotter with magazine cuttings, ticket stubs, flyers and photographs glued to its coarse paper pages. She was already looking forward to poring over its every detail when she got it home, but more immediately she couldn’t help but scan the decades-old photos of her mum: Polaroids, prints and in some cases photocopies.
She had never thought she looked like her mum, but she could finally see a bit of a resemblance now that she was able to compare herself with the girl her mum had once been. Nonetheless, Jasmine wasn’t exactly a mini-me. Who did Yvonne Sharp see, she wondered, every time looked at her little girl? Her own mother? Granda Bruce? Jasmine’s father?
Then her eye was drawn to another face that she found familiar, and with a jolt she realised why. He appeared in a photo alongside her mum and a girl who featured in several other shots, obviously a close friend. They were in school uniform, on a class trip; from the background Jasmine guessed it was Kelvingrove art gallery, or maybe the People’s Palace. The girls were side by side, posing for the shot, but the boy was engaging in what would now be termed ‘photo-bombing’: leaning over both their shoulders as he insinuated himself into the centre of the frame, laughing at his own buffoonery. The girls were aware of him; tolerant, vaguely amused.
Jasmine had been looking at a more recent photo of him yesterday, on the
Daily Record
website, where it reported that he’d been shot dead in his Bentley on his and her mum’s birthday.
Stagecraft
Glen was sitting at a plastic table in the canteen, perched on a plastic chair, eating from a plastic plate with his plastic cutlery and occasionally sipping tea from a plastic cup. People talked about the indignities and deprivations of prison life, but nobody warned you it would be like living in Legoland. It was little things like this that really brought it home, far more than the locks and bars and uniforms. He missed the feel of metal in his hands, of tools in his hands. He missed the cold air of the outdoors, the wind on his cheeks and earth beneath his feet.
Only now was the true price becoming clear to him: the price of rashness, of letting his emotions cloud his judgment; the price of bad decisions he had made long ago; and the price of one truly good one.
He had his head down, as usual, trying not to engage with anybody. Since arriving in the remand wing Glen had been very careful about who he spoke to and when, paying particular attention to who might be looking on. Despite a few overtures, he wasn’t looking to make any friends. It was nothing personal: he just didn’t want to be responsible for anybody. In here, a friend was just something that could be used against him by his enemies, whoever they might be.
Stevie would have laughed to see him stranded in a sea of people and yet still dedicatedly alone. Big Single, Stevie used to call him. It came from his name sounding ‘like a single malt’ (hence Stevie also calling him Dram), but it was as much a reference to his preference for solitude.
He had found it difficult being surrounded at all times by so many people; so many
men
. It should have been second nature: he was used to being surrounded exclusively by males; aggressive and
tightly wound males at that. He was used to negotiating a landscape of latent threat. He was used to orders, protocols, routines; and used to watching his back. He was not so used to captivity. That was what changed everything. In his military days it was only ever temporary, and then he could fuck off into the badlands, into silence and shadow.
He was missing female company. Not just specific female company, but women in general: female voices, female thoughts, female perspective. The way they spoke, the way they looked at the world. The things they talked about, the things they
didn’t
talk about.
He didn’t speak much to the women at the refuge, but he liked to hear them talking nearby or around him as he worked. It centred him, made the world feel like a nurturing place rather than one to be survived.
This was not a nurturing place.
Somewhere up ahead a fight broke out, a sudden eruption of movement as two prisoners flew at each other. Plastic chairs began skidding on floor tiles as other inmates got clear or took up good positions to watch the bout. The screws moved in with steady purpose but a practised lack of hurry. Glen was reminded of the referee at an ice hockey game.
With all eyes turned to the unfolding action, Glen became aware of something else taking place in his peripheral vision; his eyes were drawn instinctively by another suddenness of movement and an accompanying spray of red. He saw a hand gripping a length of blue plastic plunge into a pocket, a figure turn and merge into the throng, job done.
An inmate held his face, blood welling over his fingers like he was trying to stem a burst pipe.
From the glimpse he had caught, the weapon had looked like a toothbrush, the head melted to mount a razor blade: a classic improvised prison chib. He didn’t know whether the fight had been staged as a diversion or whether it had been an act of opportunism, but either way, the victim hadn’t seen it coming, and neither had Glen, which was what really bothered him.
He felt vulnerable in a way he had never been in the field. The dangers were different here, and the normal rules of engagement didn’t apply. He could scope out his environment, read the signs, listen to his fear, but he couldn’t use his surroundings like he’d been trained. They would be coming for him, but he couldn’t intercept them or out-manoeuvre them because he’d never know who they were until they were upon him.
He had a big target on his back and he could remember feeling this exposed only once before, back in Gallowhaugh. It was after he had taken down two local hard-cases who made the mistake of picking on Glen shortly after his sister died, when he was at his nadir of nihilistic teenage desperation. He was a soul in pain, he genuinely didn’t care what happened to himself, and he had reached the stage where he achingly needed to damage someone else when the Egan brothers volunteered.
Unlike Glen, the Egan brothers had a lot of friends.
He was walking down Kerr Street when they appeared, scrambling from the waste ground like warlocks over graves. There were six of them, with axes, hammers, machetes, a bike chain. They had been lying in wait.
Throughout his youth, Glen had adapted to find a kind of security in his isolation. Being alone had become a refuge, a state that cultivated a stronger sense of self. But after his sister died, he understood what it was to be lonely. The absence of Fiona was like a void in the world, one he could never fill, but of late it had felt like it was himself who was disappearing.
He had no money. No job. No prospects. No ambitions. He lived in a shambolic and increasingly unkempt tenement flat with a broken husk of a mother. The one person he had truly loved was dead, and he was coming to understand that deliverance from their father had come too late for both of them. Glen was no longer subject to his father’s violence, but his father’s violence was in him now, a demon that had passed from one host to the next. He had taken a knife to the Egans, cut them up in broad daylight. What kind of future could possibly lie ahead after that? Not a long one.
He knew there would be reprisals, but it was not the prospect
of brutality that disturbed him. He had known too much of that already for it to hold new fears. No, what disturbed him was the anticipation that when the attack inevitably came, he might accept his fate; that part of him was already inviting death. He would join Fiona in oblivion. Living always in violence, it seemed inescapable that he would meet his end in violence, but finally, at least, he would meet an end
to
violence.
That was why he’d been drifting, oblivious, off-guard. Part of him wanted this. Part of him wanted death. Another part just wanted mayhem, and didn’t care if death was the price.
They were masked: nylon stockings pulled over faces, ski-masks improvised from reversed balaclavas with eye-holes torn out.
Instinct told him to run. Experience told him it would be pointless: if he got away today, they’d catch him tomorrow.
The demon told him he could strike before he fell.
Six guys don’t attack at once, it whispered. One of them would be first. One of them would be that bit more resolute, that bit less apprehensive. Among the others, one, maybe more, would be hanging back, doubting himself, hiding his cowardice in the facelessness of a crowd, waiting for someone else to make the decisive move. His gait or his posture would betray him. If Glen could get his weapon in the early moments of the mêlée, then he’d soon see who really wanted this.
Glen scanned the six figures coming towards him. The demon lied. There was no gradual approach, no cautious steps to analyse. They were gathering speed, spreading out, breaking into a run, a charge. None of them was holding back, none of them showing any tell-tale lack of aggression.
This was a violence he had never faced before. Something, finally, worse than his father. He knew then that he wanted a future, any future he might carve; that even his faded sense of self was better than oblivion.
He wanted to live.
He heard a screech of tyres to his left and saw a white Ford Cortina shoot out of Milton Crescent. It slewed across Kerr Street
and swung around until its tail was overhanging the pavement, the driver’s-side rear door hanging open.
A figure was leaning across the back seat.
‘Get in. Now,’ he shouted.
He looked early twenties, shaven head, yellow tracksuit top. Glen didn’t recognise him, but this wasn’t the time to worry about climbing into cars with strangers.
Glen dived through the gap and the Cortina sped away with his legs still sticking out, the door flapping against his knees. He felt a weight on his back like a blow, then realised that the guy in the tracksuit was leaning on him in order to pull him all the way inside and get the door closed. Glen’s head ended up in the footwell and, given his size, it took an awkward few seconds of manoeuvring to get himself sitting upright, not assisted by the speed at which the car was travelling and the way the driver was throwing it around corners.
‘Thanks,’ he managed cautiously.
The guy in the tracksuit glanced at him but said nothing in response.
‘There’s a man wants a word with you,’ said the driver.