Butcher (11 page)

Perlman descended to the street. No kids were around now. He walked to his car. His wing mirrors had been thieved.
Fuckety fuck fuck
. Pissed off, he did a little dance of rage and kicked his tyres a couple of times ferociously, then he calmed when he realized he'd been let off lightly. His wheels might have been stolen, his windows smashed. The whole car might have been seized and driven off to some yard and stripped down for parts.

He unlocked the car. When he'd driven as far as Govan Town Hall, he pulled to the side of the road and took his mobile from his pocket. Still irked by the loss of his wing mirrors, and the fact his coat stank of burned timber, he punched in a number he rarely used.

‘Hello.' A frail voice, cracked a little.

‘Aunt Hilda,' he said.

‘Louis? The same Louis who used to be my favourite nephew? The same Louis who goes to live in Egypt, forgets family, and phones once in a blue?'

‘OK, I'm ashamed,' he said. He pictured Hilda's face, florid from high blood pressure, eyes that were magnified behind thick lenses. She was his mother's younger sister. At the age of ten she'd followed in the footsteps of Ettie and Ephraim, escaping Germany a year before Hitler's war, aided by a Jewish action group that smuggled both her and Marlene into Switzerland. How they made the trip from Geneva to Glasgow was a story neither woman ever told.

‘When do we see you?'

‘Soon. I promise.' Perlman felt guilty.

What the hell would it cost him to go eat some homebaked biscuits that had the heft of landmines, and swill Hilda's watery green tea and stay an hour or so? But he hadn't gone in how long? Not even with all the hours that hung so heavily on him during this ‘sick leave'. It was no great trek to the deep south of the city. He'd been devoured by the job too long, compelled by the need to go out day after day and night after night to check the city's crime barometer. He'd turned into a meteorologist of the seamy side, cut off from clan, and lived a life of self-imposed exile.

‘I'm a million miles away, Lou? Aunt Marlene also would enjoy seeing you. Your poor mother, you think she'd be happy she knew you never came to visit her own sisters?'

He pictured the two old women in their somnolent parlour. Clay geese nailed to a wall, a grandfather clock with an inexorable tick that would stop only on doomsday, Marlene's arthritic china-white hands twisted in her lap.

‘Have you heard anything from Miriam?'

‘
Miriam
. So
this
is the real reason you phone me? I may be old, but nobody's fool, Louis.'

He knew he was blushing. ‘I was wondering about her.'

‘She doesn't write you?'

‘One postcard from Florence, then another from Copenhagen.'

‘Me, I was privileged to get one from Amsterdam I don't know when. Weeks.'

‘Did she drop a hint when she might come home?'

‘What home? Miriam, a global lady.'

Perlman didn't want to think Miriam would stay away. ‘I'll visit soon. Promise.'

‘Give me notice, I'll bake. So how is Betty working out for you?'

‘She's a genius.'

‘And not so bad to look at, nu?'

‘No, not bad at all.'

Perlman said goodbye, closed the connection. Hilda was always trying to matchmake. To her it was a travesty that Lou should be a bachelor, and as for that hopeless love he carried around like a precious picture in a wallet, did he really believe it was leading to the altar?

He speeded away.

My peripatetic Miriam, he thought. Amsterdam. Florence. Copenhagen. And men, she'd draw them to her, naturally, a lovely woman drinking coffee alone on some hotel terrace overlooking a lake. With gulls. Men would lust after her. He saw hotel rooms in the afternoon, blinds drawn, Miriam giving herself with spread thighs to a dark-eyed romancer, a man sophisticated in the ways of loving women. They'd speak Italian together, Miriam and this
gigolo
, and drink wine in bed and he'd lick spilled drops from her nipples and later they'd talk about Michelangelo and Leonardo. This sickening intimacy …

Loverboy would be called Mario or something like. He'd be an expert in a kitchen too, knowing a secret ingredient that brought
putanesca
to life, and just how to chop garlic for maximum flavour, and the precise time to pluck fresh oregano.

Lou couldn't bear it, hated this fucker Mario.

14

Samuel Montague gazed up into his wife's eyes. Strands of black hair fell across her forehead and she had a look of euphoric abandon. He was transported by her, by the intensity of lovemaking and the words she spoke:
fuck me, fuck me hard and deeper into my cunt, Sammy, oh
. Sweat created a film between their bodies. It dripped from her face and landed on his lips and he tasted its wonderful saltiness.

Straddling him, she rose and fell, her hands splayed on his shoulders, her nails digging his flesh as if she was determined to contain as much of him as she could at this crucial moment. He thought the same thought every time: this is the most exciting thing ever. His coming was a pure fire. He shouted her name and felt her shudder and she threw her head back in blissed release, and screamed even as he pushed himself up from the floor to penetrate her as deeply as he might. They were bonded, locked, devouring.

She laid her face against his and for a while they both breathed very hard. Their hearts roared. Neither of them was ever able to speak coherently for a time afterwards, but they made sounds, sighing, purring, intimate little half-words that would mean nothing to anyone else.

‘Hey, take a gander at this, boys,' a man said.

‘A porn film, intit,' somebody else said.

Shocked, Samuel Montague turned his face to the bedroom door.

Three men, masked in scarves, looked down at him. He saw only their eyes. He instinctively reached for something to pull over the naked bodies of his wife and himself, and found the edge of the sheet on the bed above them, which he dragged downward, but one of the men stamped on his hand and said, ‘Naw, don't deprive us of the view.'

The pain caused Montague to groan.

‘Jesus Christ,' Meg said. She scrambled for the sheet but one of the men kicked her in the shoulder and she slid away from Sammy, who tried to rise, defend himself, his wife, his home.

Montague said, ‘Please, Christ, don't hurt her.'

‘That's up to you, Sammy.'

‘If you want money just help yourself, there's a couple of hundred pounds in my desk and my wife's jewellery is in a room at the end of the hall and take the car if you want it, leave us alone.'

‘We want none o that crap,' one of the men said. He wore white latex gloves. Montague noticed that they all wore them.

A shotgun was pressed into his forehead. He'd never felt such deadening fear in his life. This was the stuff of newspaper headlines, the kind you read and never imagined would happen to you.
Suburban couple's home invaded by gunmen
.

‘That's the gemme, be very still,' the man with the shotgun said.

Another of the trio, this one small and cocky, said, ‘Lookit they pictures on the walls. It's a brothel in here, widye believe what respectable people get up to in Bearsden, eh?' He examined the Kama Sutra prints and the explicit lithographs Samuel and Meg had purchased during a trip to India.

The man bent down and picked up Meg's discarded panties, brief and red silk, and he sniffed them. ‘Oh oh, I'm feeling something here, boys.' And he grabbed his crotch.

Sam Montague said, ‘Just tell us what the fuck you want.'

The man still holding Meg's panties pulled open a wardrobe door. ‘Widye look at this, boys? Here's a wee kilt and a schoolgirl's blazer and a nice short black leather skirt and – what's this? – leather straps? Red silky rope? And look at this—'

‘Please stop,' Meg said.

The wee man ignored her. ‘Here, sweetie, put this on.' He tossed a transparent negligee to Meg, who turned away, pulling the garment over her shoulders quickly.

The big man with the shotgun jabbed Montague's neck. Montague felt the blunt pain but this time made no sound. His left hand was a knot of agony. He reached with his right for Meg, who had her arms folded over her breasts.

‘Just tell me what you want,' Montague said.

The third man, who'd been wandering the room, saw fit to kick in the glass cabinet that contained the Montague's collection of wedding photographs. Glass flew all around, photographs slipped from shattered frames. ‘I hate fucking wedding photies,' the man said.

Montague said, ‘If it's not money and it's not stuff—'

The wee man who'd rifled the closet said, ‘Talking of stuff, your wife's a tasty-looking bird.'

The lascivious way the wee man said this set off a loud clock ticking in Montague's head. It was wired to an explosive. If this little bastard touched Meg … He edged closer to his wife, who was staring at the intruders with a noticeable defiance. She was no weakling: she had a core of fortitude. ‘Big shots,' she said. ‘Guns and destroying things and scaring people, oh, such big shots—'

‘Shut yer fuckin gob.' The man who'd smashed the cabinet reached down and grabbed Meg's long hair and twisted it back, so that her small pretty face was forcibly angled upward. ‘I canny stand a whining cunt.'

The wee man suddenly crossed the room, unzipped himself, flashing his stubby purple-headed cock and spraying urine at Meg, who averted her face but not before she'd been doused with piss. She made a gagging sound. Her negligee was soaked.

Enraged, Montague tried to rise but he was slammed in the gut with the shotgun and the blow blasted all air out of his lungs. Dizzy, he doubled over, face pressed into the carpet.

The big man said, ‘My wee friend has no fucking control over his bodily urges. If he fancied it, he'd shite on your nice rug. In fact, he'd shite in your wife's mouth if the mood came over him.'

Meg said, ‘Disgusting bastard.'

The wee man zipped himself up and snorted and hee-hawed. ‘Speak dirty to me, gonny?'

‘Say what it is you want,' Montague pleaded.

The big man bent down beside Montague and shoved the barrel of his gun into Montague's cheek. ‘Love your wife, do you?'

‘Yes, yes, I love her.'

‘Awfy pretty girl, Mr Montague. Awfy pretty.'

The wee man said, ‘Turns me on something terrible, so she does. Oooh. Where did I put those knickers? I want another sniff.'

‘Getting the snapshot, Monty?'

Montague raised his head, glanced at Meg. Her nipples were visible under the fouled garment. Dearest Meg. He'd do anything to keep her from harm. These pigs had no scruples. They were slime.

‘I'm getting it,' he said.

‘Fine,' the big man said. ‘Then here's the deal.' He helped Montague to his feet and led him to the bedroom door, and Meg tried to follow, but the other two grabbed her, holding her back.

‘My wife,' Montague said, and turned from the doorway with a look of fear.

‘She'll be fine,' the big man said. ‘You and me need privacy.'

Meg said, ‘No.'

The wee man said, ‘Shut your cakehole, hen. And fucking behave.'

15

Perlman drove through the southern part of the city centre. Layers of grey clouds hung low: seasonal cruelties would soon rage. The heater of his small car churned and the radio was tuned to one of the Beeb's stations, where a man was interviewing an author of ghost stories.
I suppose everybody asks you this, how do you get your ideas
? The writer answered with a heavy Glasgow accent.
I have a verrrry close relationship with the Devil
.

A relationship with the Devil. That's what I need, Lou thought: me and Lucifer attuned, clues from occult sources, signs inscribed in flame or the fire of dragons. Who held the blade? Who cut the hand and left it? A storm rumbled through his brain. He drove along Argyle Street, passing under the glass-walled railway bridge known as The Hielanman's Umbrella.

He wasn't far from Virginia Street, where Miriam's loft was situated in a building that had once been a tobacco warehouse in the days of Glasgow's flourishing. He'd thought of going there a couple of times before, but never had … Look, see. Who knows what?

He turned the Ka into Virginia Street and parked as close to Miriam's building as he could. He got out, blowing into his hands for warmth as he paused to look at the buzzers at the side of the door. He rang Miriam's, even though he knew nobody would answer.

He waited, then rang the caretaker's bell.

A woman with her head in a scarf appeared behind the glass door of the entranceway. She had a flustered look and a paintbrush in her hand.

Her face and scarf were spotted with white drips.

Perlman showed his ID, pressing it to the glass.

She undid the lock. ‘What can I do for you?'

‘Sorry, I'm interrupting you,' Perlman said.

‘I hate painting walls anyway. Louis Perlman? … are you a relative of Miriam's?'

Perlman entered. ‘She's my sister-in-law.'

‘Oh. OK. Nice lady, Miriam. I haven't seen her around for a while.'

‘I'd like to take a look inside her loft,' Perlman said. He had explanations ready if she asked – he'd left something behind, or she'd asked him to change the heat-settings, but no question came.

The woman simply said, ‘No problem.' She had a clutch of keys attached to her belt and she slipped one off, and gave it to him. ‘Drop the key in my letter box before you leave.'

He thanked her and moved toward the stairs. The lift was out of order. In the few times he'd come here, it had never worked. The same Do Not Use sign was still taped to the lift door. The loft was way at the top, the fourth floor.

He tightened his fist around the key as he went up. Strange to be here again: how many months had passed since the night he'd lain with Miriam and a seagull had flown blindly into the skylight? At the time he'd wondered if it was some kind of omen. Bad or good, he hadn't been able to decide. Now he knew, given Miriam's unannounced odyssey, that gulls crashing into skylights were not harbingers of love requited.