Butcher (24 page)

‘Sure. Whatever you want.'

They went some yards in silence. She slipped her arm through his without looking at him. He felt comfortable with the connection. She needed support, he'd give it.

Perlman suggested a stroll in Tollcross Park, a fine expanse of greenery at the edge of Egypt, and Betty agreed. The thin sunlight lying across the park glowed pale against the big glass structure of the Winter Gardens. A group of runners in coloured singlets and shorts moved along one of the paths. Athletic crew, vibrant with energy.

They went toward the Winter Gardens. He saw himself and Betty reflected in glass. Anyone looking at them would assume:
long-married couple
. The deceit of appearances. He held the door open for her. Inside, the building was warm. Exotic plants flourished in a rage of rare colours and strange shapes. Perlman led her into the café, where they sat at a table and drank coffee under a window streaming with condensation.

‘I must be keeping you from something, Lou.' She held her cup in both hands.

‘Nothing that can't wait.'

‘Who's working on Kirk's case?'

‘A man called Adamski.'

‘Will he go at it hard? Will he find who did it?'

‘He's dedicated.'

‘That's not answering my question—'

‘He's got safe hands and some good people working alongside him.'

‘How long did you say your sick leave is anyway?'

‘It feels like from here to eternity.' He knew what she was thinking: she wanted somebody familiar in charge of hunting her son's killer. ‘I'll stay in close contact with Adamski.'

‘I'd appreciate that.'

She lit a cigarette despite the No Smoking sign.

What the hell. You could take a day out for your grief, you could say fuck off to the rules.

‘I hate the taste of these things. I don't know why I bother.' She dropped her cigarette into her half-finished coffee. ‘You know what's so bloody
heartbreaking?
The thought you'll never see somebody again as long as you live.'

He was edgy, anxious to move. Coffee, too many smokes, too little food. A transistor radio played somewhere, a penny whistler blowing ‘Tunes of Glory'. Without a word, Betty got up and went outside and stood motionless in the sunlight.

Perlman followed. In a different mood she'd notice life bursting out all around her, she'd see the muscles of the world flexing. She'd see the runners break into a sprint far in the distance, or notice a small hawk rising graceful and free above the tree-line. She'd smile at a gaggle of young mothers going past with their toddlers in a ruction of unfettered laughter and hear a yellow plastic windmill in a kid's fist whir.

Betty, hands deep in pockets, was quiet. Perlman swept aside a strand of her hair where it had fallen upon the frame of her glasses. She took off her glasses and turned to look at him as if she wanted to thank him for his company and support, but she said nothing. She just rubbed her eyelids with her fingertips then stuck the glasses on again, but not before Perlman glimpsed that extraordinary blueness, which made him think of clear arctic skies. She'd been crying. There were veins of red in the whites of her eyes, but the blue was intact. She inclined her face against his shoulder and sighed.

‘Walk me back to my car, Lou.'

‘Of course.'

She slipped her arm through his and they moved across the park. Halfway toward Wellshot Road she said, ‘Miriam's the one who went away.'

Out of nowhere.

‘I noticed the torn postcard,' she said.

‘She's the one, the endless tourist.'

‘Your aunts mention her sometimes. They don't approve. I remember reading something about her court case. You spoke up for her.'

‘I believed she was innocent.'

‘That was the only reason?'

The question was close to the bone. ‘I hate injustices,' he said.
I hated to see Miriam, vulnerable and lovely, harassed and harried by a fuck like Latta
.

‘You must have pished some people off.'

‘I shop there regularly.' He looked at her, but she'd gone into fade mode again, drifting in and out of the immediacy of things, a woman sleepwalking.

She paused, stared the length of the street as if she'd seen something, or somebody she recognized, directly ahead. He noticed nothing out of the ordinary. A man opening a car and tossing a walking-stick into the back seat. A woman entering a tenement with two bulky Tesco bags. A white van approaching, a young man at the wheel. An orange cat ran across the street, streaking close to the wheels of the van. Rubber squealed as the van swerved to avoid it. The cat bolted between the railings that edged the park, and disappeared into shrubbery. The van drove on.

‘Close call,' Perlman said.

‘Nine lives,' Betty said. ‘Pity people don't get so many chances.'

‘Some people,' Perlman said.

They reached his house. Outside, Betty unlocked her car.

‘Thanks for your company,' she said.

‘Any time.'

‘Call me if there's anything …'

She patted his arm. ‘I will.'

He watched her go, realizing he wanted her to stay.

Indoors he felt solitude. He walked to the coffee-table and looked at the shredded postcard. In the drawer where he'd stuffed his unopened post he found the previous cards he'd received from the Wandering Miriam. He spread all three cards on the coffee-table, piecing together the jigsaw of the one he'd torn apart, and compared the handwriting on each. It was the same flamboyant script, great loops between the letters, a fandango in pale blue ink. He went inside the kitchen and removed the unreconstructed picture he'd pinched from Miriam's bedroom, took it into the living room and contrasted the handwriting on the back of the photo with the postcards. Same handwriting, different sentiments.

What had he expected to find?

More than terse messages at least.

He looked at the postcard pictures. The scene she'd sent from Florence was of tourists wandering in sunlight along a street where every vendor sold leather jackets. It wasn't enthralling. Sunburnt faces and racks of leather. Where was the Duomo? The Ghilberti Doors? Did she think he was a fucking hick?
Oh, he'll accept anything I send
.

The card from Copenhagen showed the railway station covered in snow. Stunning, right. Not even The Little Mermaid, for Christ's sake. Did she just dash inside a tourist shop and pick up the first card she saw and scribble some words and post the damn thing?

To keep me nibbling.

He sighed, then gathered the postcards and the scraps and the anniversary picture and stuck them back in the drawer. He listened to the silence of the house. The place felt empty, detached from the world. He left, locking the door behind him.

He drove away in his funny wee car: voices were calling him.

29

On the steps of the Number One Fitness Centre Reuben Chuck called Ronnie Mathieson on his mobie.

‘How'd it go?'

Mathieson said, ‘Done.'

‘No problems, eh?'

‘Clean as a whistle, Mr Chuck.'

‘See this as a part of a learnin process, Ron. One that never stops. Remember.'

Chuck cut the connection and went inside, climbed the stairs to the upper gym, and walked into Glorianna's room at the back, thinking of the three dead men: it didn't matter if they'd hung the woman or she'd done it herself, the point was simple – he had three less problems. And if Montague could describe any of these thugs, so what? The corpses were locked in a building that had once belonged to Gordy Curdy, and had lain empty for more than two years. No estate agent had the place up for sale or rent.

Glorianna wasn't in her room. She's late, but she's never been late in her life.

Chuck went into the stockroom. He'd find her conducting an inventory of supplies, towels, chemicals, or the vitamin compounds on which the Centre made an indecent profit. She wasn't in the stockroom. He walked back, glanced at her empty lounger and a copy of last week's
Scotland on Sunday
on the floor.

She read this rag avidly: it's important to stay informed, she told him. Chuck hated this particular publication because it had run a series of articles on Glasgow's ‘underbelly':
Dear Green Place In Hands of Mobsters
. Pure shite, Godfather stuff that would have the
S-o-S
readership deluded into thinking there was no form of commerce in the city, from casinos to football teams to day nurseries, that didn't have criminal personalities involved. His own name was mentioned as a former ‘associate' of the late Curdy – notorious insurance scammer, embezzler, loan shark with ‘attachments' to mobsters south of the border and beyond. Chuck had been outraged and wanted to sue the paper, but his lawyers advised against it on the grounds that he really didn't need the public exposure a legal action would generate.

They were right.

As he moved downstairs, he called Glorianna's flat. Her recorded voice said
I'm not here to take your call. Have a great day
. He tried her mobile but she must have switched it off. First time ever, he thought. She was a mobie devotee, called it her life-line. He sat for a while and wondered if she'd spent the night at Dysart's. He was uneasy with this idea.

He overheard Tommy Lombardo in the gym putting a dyed-blond gay guy through his paces with the weights.

‘Oh
you
, Thomaso, you make this so hard for me, you
cruel
boy.'

Chuck gazed at the front desk where Zondra was signing some first-time customers in. He watched money change hands, then when he was satisfied she was running it through the cash register – and not into the pockets of her tight white shorts – he entered Lombardo's little office and closed the door. I should be beyond this, watchin pennies. I own an empire. Old habits, picked up in poorer times when he was an ambitious kid low on the totem and countin change, died slow.

Chuck used his mobile to call Rick Tosh's number.

Rick Tosh answered, ‘Howdy.'

Chuck said, ‘Here's the stuff you need, Rick. The Azteca Bank of Aruba. Account: 957 8671-045. Password: countdracula. You got that?'

‘Countdracula one word?'

‘One. You have the code I gave you for the transfer?'

‘Sure do. I'll arrange the wire now. The money will be in your Luxembourg account tomorrow, less my commission. You're cleaning house, man. Bigtime.'

‘Cleanin and accumulatin.'

‘Things move forward, Rube. No life in stagnant water, right? How's the weather over there?'

‘What do you expect? I suppose you're baskin in ninety degrees.'

‘It's a sweet eighty in the shade. You gotta come over some time, Rube. I'll lay on a barbecue to end all goddam barbecues.'

‘One day. Call me when you've made the deposit.'

Chuck said goodbye. A barbecue, burning dead animals and brushing them with brown sauce. He sat with his elbows propped on Lombardo's desk, which was strewn with glossy body-building magazines. The models on the covers were all steroid cowboys. Restless, he tried Glorianna's two numbers again with the same results. Was this the morning she took off for her voice lessons? He checked the date on Lombardo's desk calendar.

No. She went Mondays. This isn't the day.

He felt a touch of depression. All this death was disturbing. He wondered how much of it he could absorb and what he'd have to do to offset it in karmic terms. He needed to see Baba and get himself centred. He needed a quiet presence, a reassuring spiritual encounter.

He made another phone call, this time to Dysart's number.

‘Hallo.'

‘Dorco, how did you and Glorianna get on?'

Dysart said, ‘G-get on?'

‘Did she
relax
you, Dorco?'

‘Oh, ah, y-yes.'

‘What time did she leave?'

‘I d-don't remember. I fell asleep.'

‘I presume she got a taxi.'

‘I woo-would think so, Mr Chuck.'

‘Hard to find taxis out there, is it?'

‘I n-never use them.'

Reuben Chuck was silent, trying to imagine Glorianna looking for a cab in the wilderness. Maybe she phoned for one. She'd have more sense than to walk the streets in that part of the world.

Chuck changed the subject. ‘Incidentally, Dorco, my man was delighted with the last shipment you delivered.'

‘Oh, that's g-great.' Dysart giggled.

‘Just keep the stuff comin.'

‘Definitely I w-will, I will.'

Chuck hung up. Dysart's giggle pestered him. The giggle, the stutter, the chopped sentences: Dysart was definitely odd. He needed to be odd in his line of work.

Chuck got up. He had a memory of himself and Glorianna making love in the toilet of a plane on the way to Corfu. She'd been pressed up against the wash-basin, her dress hoisted up and her panties down to her ankles and he saw his face in the mirror behind her. He could recall the jet roaring in his head and how the image in the mirror was no longer himself but that of a man experiencing ecstasy … Wonderful, out of this world – but brief, too brief. That was the problem with sexual rapture. It died about as quickly as it flowered.

Never mind, he missed the intimacy and the thrill of mutually explosive release, and the clinging together after and the pleasure he felt in satisfying her and seeing that dizzy outerspace look on her face. He pictured her massaging Dorco.

He couldn't see it somehow.

Ron Mathieson drove him through the red sandstone tenements of Hyndland. Outside the Temple of Personal Enlightenment, Chuck told Mathieson to wait, then he went inside.

The place was empty. He noticed Baba's big pillows on the floor and saw that Christ's broken eye had been repaired and that the leak-catching bucket was no longer around. What did he do now, just wait for Baba to materialize? He walked to the pile of cushions and stared at the curtains drawn across the wall a few feet further back.