Butcher (27 page)

He laid his hand on a bundle of manila folders. ‘You spawned every one of them. Whenever I think of you and these files I'm reaching for the Zantac.'

The whites of Hack's eyes were a jaundiced colour. He suffered from alopecia, which had destroyed his eyebrows and all the hair on his head.

Chuck always thought he was an odd sight. ‘I pay you enough. You could throw in the desk for what I pay you.'

‘This fucking desk stays where it is. As for your paying me, I cost you an arm and a leg because I'm the best and I keep your arse out of jail. If it wasn't for me, do you think you'd be able to stroll around town like a man with a halo? Buses for the handicapped. Donations to religious charities. Free sessions for senior citizens three nights a week at your health spas. Instead of sitting in a cell, you're at liberty to glow in the darkness of Glasgow, Rube, like one of those electric Christs I nearly bought at Knock.'

Knock, Chuck thought. He knew Knock all right. It was a form of low-grade Catholic Vegas, a place where the depressed and the maimed laid bets on the wheel of fortune they called Faith, cap F. ‘Don't talk to me about Knock, Gerry.'

‘Right. You had a falling out with God.'

Chuck eyed the stack of files. ‘How's your security here?'

‘Your files are safe, Rube.'

‘What if the cops raided this place?'

‘You don't think I
store
the files here, do you?' Hack lit a thin brown-papered cigarette. ‘So Scullion's bothering you.'

‘Gettin on my tits. Has he asked you about that paperwork?'

‘Not yet. When he does, he'll get it.'

‘How?'

‘Don't meddle. I don't reveal trade secrets and I never name connections.'

Chuck imagined he'd figured out Hack's methods: a conspiracy of lawyers and clerks in Government offices was involved, what else could it be? Hack played footsie with Stoker's lawyers, and Curdy's as well. They traded documents and deeds, every doc doctored in the appropriate places, a legal stamp here, a signature there, whatever it took to construct an appearance of legality. When they heard the first whisper of the big changes coming in the map of lawless Glasgow, they smelled huge profit in paper-shuffling. Chuck could see them hold clandestine meetings in quiet country hotel rooms where they hatched treachery. Bram and Curdy were on the skids … who'd want yesterday's men for clients? Who'd want to be associated with losers?

The smart money follows the winner every time.

This was the way Chuck liked to see it, an association of bent lawyers looking out for themselves. And, incidentally, his neck too.

Hack pointed his cigarette at Chuck. ‘Scullion's covered for now.'

‘For now – what does that mean?'

‘I mean he might come up one day with a request I can't fulfil. Highly unlikely, but in the realms.'

‘Wait a minute—'

‘What worries me is your mindset. Think in advance next time you decide on a flamboyant takeover.'

‘It was planned like a military op, Gerry.'

‘More Keystone cop.'

‘The amount of schemin that went into—'

‘I don't want to know,' Hack said, singing the words in a thin funny soprano, and covering his ears and closing his eyes. ‘What I'm telling you is this, consequences are easier to deal with if you root out loose ends before they become loose ends.'

He's Baba in another form, Chuck thought. ‘Somethin might throw you for a loop, is that it?'

‘Who knows? Bottom line, I'm only telling you if you have future plans put them on hold. Let things cool.'

Chuck was quiet. Future plans. All he wanted was peace. He couldn't stop thinking about gypsy cabs. You couldn't trust them. What if some bandit picked up Glori and took a shine to her? Rape was always a possibility. A desirable young woman alone in an unlicensed cab with some horny fuckin Romanian or Greek at the wheel on a stretch of dark isolated road and who knows what.

Hack shook his head. ‘Here's my best advice. Keep your hooter clean. Do some more low-level charity stuff. Be Mister Nice.' Hack pushed his chair back from the desk. ‘Go home. Relax. Count crystals or whatever you do.'

Chuck snorted. ‘
Count
crystals? Shows what you know.' He got up from his chair. He needed to have faith in Gerry Hack. He needed to believe there was no angle Gerry Hack couldn't cover. ‘Scullion's a fuckin pancake. You could snaffle him for breakfast, right?'

‘With my ulcer?' He stood up and walked Chuck to the door.

They shook hands and Chuck left, feeling not the reassurance he'd come here for but a little dissatisfied and insecure. How good was Hack really? And if he was capable of entering into a conspiracy of lawyers, how could Chuck know that something similar might not happen in the future – only this time
he'd
be the one conspired against?

A weird thought, I'm replaceable.

He went outside. Ronnie Mathieson was in the passenger seat of the Jag, talking into his mobile phone.

Chuck slid into the back.

Mathieson said, ‘I'm still chasing gypsies. Not a sausage yet.'

Chuck jammed his hands into the pockets of his camel's hair coat. ‘Where is she.'

‘She'll turn up.'

Chuck, fighting anxiety, said nothing.

32

Betty McLatchie's sleep had been shallow. No calming black sea had come to claim her, despite the bottle of Chilean red she'd drunk, and a couple of Dalmane tossed back. She rose unsteadily, glanced at the bedside clock: nine forty-five. Morning, evening. Did it matter?

Her throat was dry and she felt she was listing at a peculiar angle. She pulled on a long unflattering woollen robe and put on her slippers and left her small darkened bedroom. From the living room window she saw streetlights glow. So it was night, not morning. She switched on a table lamp, blinked. Traffic rattled past along London Road. She drew the curtains.

The doorbell rang.

She hoped it wasn't another neighbour with flowers or words of solace or oh my God a homebaked cake. Why did they feel they had to bring food anyway. They knew she wasn't going to sit down and stuff herself with sponge cake or rhubarb pie. Kindness, simple human kindness motivated them, and she was touched, she really was. But even so she was reluctant to open the door and admit another face white with shock and sympathy.

She wouldn't have minded if it was Perlman. He'd been so kind to her earlier, walking with her in the park, taking her arm, saying little – his presence was comforting. He had a quality she liked. More than just sympathy, an unexpected gentleness. He looked as if he was forever on the edge of a gruff mood, but that wasn't the real man.

She knew that much.

She didn't recognize the young woman on her doorstep for a moment. Her mind needed time for memories to slot into place. Slowing down, sluggish, wine, medication, grief. It was a fuck of a concoction.

‘Betty,' the woman said.

‘
Annie
?' Betty was surprised. She lost her bearings, time collapsed around her. How long was it since she'd seen Annie Cormack? Years, how many years, she couldn't calculate.

‘Have I changed
that
much, Betty?'

‘No, no, love, it's me, I was out like a light, and I'm fuzzy-heided. Come on in, come in, oh it's so good to see you—'

‘I can come back another—'

‘I wouldn't dream of it,' and she hugged Annie for a time, then led her inside the sitting room, thinking the light from the lamp was just about right. Stronger illumination she couldn't take. She must look as haggard as she felt.

Annie, slender little thing, kept a tight hold of Betty's hand. ‘I had to come. I saw it on TV. It's so … oh Christ, unbelievable. What can I do? There must be something I can do.'

What can I do
? They all said that. All the sad-faced neighbours. And then they all said,
You think of anything, let us know
.

She wanted to tell them,
Do this for me, resurrect my boy
.

She kept to herself the gruesome details of Kirk's death. Why impose them on others, on well-wishers who were shocked to know he'd been
murdered
, but not by the way he'd been mutilated – which hadn't been broadcast on TV or in the newspapers? Yet.

Annie and Betty sat on a colossal sofa Betty had bought at a going-out-of-business sale. It was unfashionable, beige with a big floral print, and it was a bugger to move, but it was satisfyingly comfortable. You could lose yourself in its depths.

‘I always cared for him, Betty.'

‘I know, I know. Sometimes things just don't work out.'

Annie was so pretty, Betty thought. She always had been. Now she was even more so, but with an authority to her looks. She'd grown up. One time, Betty had hoped that Annie and Kirk would go the distance – but Annie drifted in other directions. It happened.

Annie said, ‘I heard he got married.'

‘He chose the wrong one.'

‘I'm sorry.'

Betty had seen daughter-in-law Debbie somewhere during the blur of the afternoon, when people were coming and going. Debbie was tearful and crumpled. She didn't stay long. Bereavement suited her equine face. She'd want to do the whole widow thing, black clothes and a veil with a tragic inconsolable air.

Annie, dressed in baggy black pants, black sneakers and a rainproof black jacket with big pockets and a hood that hung at her back, played nervously with a tiny lace-edged hankie she took from her black leather purse. All this blackness – Annie had always preferred bright colours in the old days. She was uneasy, but Betty didn't ask why. Probably the situation made her tense. The death of Kirk, flashes of the past, and coming back to this flat when she probably thought she never would.

Betty felt herself space out, seeing the room and not seeing it. She was lost in a ball of lamplight reflected in the panel of the glass display case where she kept her good china and some other possessions dear to her, including a framed photo of her and Kirk taken on the beach at Saltcoats when he was about two, a tousled plump-faced boy in baggy swimming-trunks saddled on a stubborn donkey.

Annie went to the cabinet. She paused once, as if she felt pain in her leg.

‘You OK?' Betty asked.

‘I pulled a stupid muscle at my exercise class. Sometimes it twinges. It's getting better.' She looked at the picture of Kirk. ‘He was a wee charmer, wasn't he?'

‘Aye, he was. I remember he couldn't get that bloody animal to move. Kicked it, shouted, even whispered in its pointy ears, but the donkey was going nowhere. He couldn't say donkey. The word came out as denka.
Denka, giddy-up, giddy-up, denka
.'

Annie came back to join her on the couch. Betty patted her hand. She felt the need to keep a conversation going in banal everyday words, safe words that didn't have depth-charges buried in them. ‘How long has it really been?'

‘Four years and a bit.'

‘That long? Where does time go? How are you doing? Bring me up to date.'

‘Oh, getting along.'

‘Working?'

‘I do a bit of this, a bit of that.'

Betty wondered what this meant. She didn't pry. ‘So are you still living in The Drum?'

‘No. Kelvinbridge. Up near the top of Belmont Street. Dead posh, so it is.' Annie delivered this, not in a boastful way, but as if she were ridiculing the neighbourhood for its airs and graces, and herself along with it.

Betty said, ‘It's very nice there.'

‘Aye if you like cheese shops and fancy French pastries.'

Betty still couldn't get over how strange it was to see Annie again. She hadn't even known Annie still lived in Glasgow. Twice she imagined she'd seen her on the street, but it was somebody else both times.

‘Your parents, how are they doing?'

‘Dad retired. Mum's busy as ever.'

‘I can't remember what your mother does.'

‘She delivers flowers. And Dad mopes, feeling old and useless.'

Betty waited a second before she asked, ‘So is there somebody special in your life?'

‘There was somebody.' A strange look crossed Annie's face. Betty thought it was indescribable, in part resentment, in part trepidation. ‘Men can be so bloody disappointing. They're like weans. They want you to do things you don't want to do.'

‘Aye and throw a fit when you don't.'

Annie said, ‘Can I get you something to drink?'

‘You remember where it's kept?'

‘Unless you've moved it.'

‘I'll have a wee glass of the vino if there's any. Wait, I should go if your leg hurts—'

‘It's nothing.' Annie disappeared into the kitchen. Betty heard the rattle of glasses, a cupboard door opening on a squeaky hinge.

‘I found some red and some white.' Annie carried two glasses. ‘What's your preference?'

‘You choose.'

Annie gave her the red and said, ‘I was just thinking Kirk always liked movies.'

‘His great passion.'

‘We'd see a film and we'd come back here and sit in your kitchen and drink your wine.'

‘So that's where it all went,' Betty said.

Annie smiled. ‘It didn't matter if I fancied doing something else, he dragged me off to the cinema every chance he got. Always those action things, aeroplane hijack flicks, every one the same as the last. He thought they were the berrs. We used to come out trying to imitate Yanks. He'd say, “Let's kick ass”. And I'd come back, “Hey whaddya say we go chill out wid a coupla brewskies”.' Annie's impersonation was good. She laughed very quietly at the memory, but a sombre note lay submerged beneath the laugh.

Reconstructing Kirk. Fleshing out the dead. Betty put her glass down. She started to cry.

Annie hugged her. ‘There, there.'

Betty said, ‘I'll be OK.'