Flesh Wounds
Authors: Chris Brookmyre
QUITE UGLY ONE MORNING
COUNTRY OF THE BLIND
NOT THE END OF THE WORLD
ONE FINE DAY IN THE MIDDLE OF THE NIGHT
BOILING A FROG
A BIG BOY DID IT AND RAN AWAY
THE SACRED ART OF STEALING
BE MY ENEMY
ALL FUN AND GAMES UNTIL SOMEBODY LOSES AN EYE
A TALE ETCHED IN BLOOD AND HARD BLACK PENCIL
ATTACK OF THE UNSINKABLE RUBBER DUCKS
A SNOWBALL IN HELL
PANDAEMONIUM
WHERE THE BODIES ARE BURIED
WHEN THE DEVIL DRIVES
BEDLAM
COPYRIGHT
Published by Little, Brown
ISBN: 9781405515979
All characters and events in this publication, other than those clearly in the public domain, are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
Copyright © 2013 Christopher Brookmyre
The moral right of the author has been asserted.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of the publisher.
The publisher is not responsible for websites (or their content) that are not owned by the publisher.
Little, Brown
Little, Brown Book Group
100 Victoria Embankment
London, EC4Y 0DY
Table of Contents
Elementary, My Dear (Crick and) Watson
The Vengeance of a Patient Man
For Grace and Jack
‘I’d best be getting a shift on,’ Stevie announced, for perhaps the third time. ‘There’s none of us getting any younger.’
He glanced at the clock behind the gantry. The first time he’d said it had been around half ten. Now it was just after eleven, and he was half an hour older but no nearer the door. He’d have to watch that: he could be sitting here all day if he didn’t get his arse in gear.
Sheila wouldn’t allow that, though. She was opening for business in an hour. It was just that the seat felt that bit more comfy on this particular morning, the craic that bit more engaging. When he got to his feet the spell would be broken and he’d be impatient to get on with his day, but for now it was tempting to stay in the moment just a wee bit longer.
It looked like a lock-in, and it wasn’t even noon. Nobody was drinking anything stronger than espresso, and they did this five or six days a week. It started off all business, Stevie’s way of making sure he was up to speed on everybody’s operations, but once the important stuff was out the way it could degenerate into blethers, everybody too comfy to get up, too full of breakfast to want to leave their seats. Some days the patter was better in the morning over teas and coffees than on late nights when everybody was half pished. At such times he was inclined to tarry, just sit in his favourite seat and take in what was around him rather than holding court; or maybe that truly
was
him holding court: everything playing out for his benefit and no pressing need to remind everybody who was in charge.
He had turned forty-nine that day. He didn’t doubt Sheila had something planned for later, but this morning nobody had brought it up, and that suited him fine. Folk talked about taking stock on birthdays, but Stevie had seldom done so. In his experience, there were other watershed events in life that more naturally precipitated moments of reflection, though truth be told he was usually too busy living it to stop for photos. It was a sign of getting older that he occasionally found himself wishing he had taken a step back here and there in order to appreciate what he had. You always heard the older football players saying that: the young guys in the team don’t appreciate what it is to be playing in a cup final, because they think it’s always going to be cup finals.
He was sitting at his usual seat, his usual booth, up at the back wall of the Old Croft Brasserie, as it was known these days. It wasn’t his name on the licence, and since POCA he had made damn sure there was no documentation identifying it as his property, but it was
his
place, and had been indisputably his place in many other ways long before he’d had the money to own it.
It was all about the food now. Even the cocktail bar where the snug used to be had fallen victim to the last re-fit, as it let them seat up to a dozen more covers. It was simple economics: they did okay with the scran, but the mark-up on the wine list made it look like the cocktail bar had been giving drink away. However, as Stevie surveyed the Old Croft from his favoured perspective, he could picture everything as it was when the place was still the Bleachers Vaults, and the only wines behind the gantry were Buckfast, El-D and Lanliq. In his mind he could still see the yellow walls, stained by decades of nicotine, the faded photos and press clippings in their cheap frames, the narrow range of generic spirits upside down above their optics, the peeling Formica and chipped wood panelling that coated the bar, and the frosted lavvy-window glass that let in the only natural light during the day but principally served to let passers-by know they should keep on passing by, whether they fancied a drink or not.
No matter how many changes it went through, there was nonetheless a permanence about being in this place, a way in which it could put him back in touch with how he’d felt at different stages in his life. He could still see the wee shaver he once was, fronting up at sixteen and hoping to get served; still see the cracked plaster on the ceiling as he lay bleeding on the lino, waiting for an ambulance the first time he got stabbed; still see the faces at the bar of boys long since dead: including some by his own hand or, more latterly, by his word. Times like this, he found himself missing even some of those guys, or at least missing the guys they once were, before they made themselves his enemies.
Stevie was one of Scotland’s top gangsters. Had to be true: he’d read it in the
Daily Record
. Like there was a league table or something, or a chart. Up two places this week, it’s Steeeeevie Fullerton! As for ‘gangster’, what kind of patter was that? The only folk who still used the term in this country were the sweetie wives in the press and wee daft boys kidding on they were darkies. Nobody who could reasonably be considered fitting of the term would dream of applying it to themselves.
Stevie knew a lot of criminals but precisely no gangsters. There were boys you worked with, boys you did business with and, very rarely, boys you trusted, but none of them had been in a gang since they were about fifteen: daft wee shavers out looking for mayhem, easy scores and, if they were really ambitious, their hole. Maybe the papers should name ‘Scotland’s top daft wee shaver’, perhaps as part of a ‘ones to watch’ list of future gangster contenders.
He looked at the raggle-taggle assembly before him in the Old Croft Brasserie: Doke, Gerry, Haffa and himself. Stevie thought of the strange loyalties and improbable allegiances that had brought them all under one roof. To call this a gang would be to ignore greater levels of complexity than they had to cope with on an average shift at the UN.
Sheila gave his cheek a rub as she walked past, picking up his empty cup and saucer. It was part gesture of affection and part reminder that he hadn’t shaved yet. He was planning to wait until he came back from the gym so he’d be smooth this afternoon and into the evening. It was growing back so fast lately that his five o’clock shadow tended to turn up at lunchtime. Used to be he liked having the old designer stubble; used to suit him, make him look just the distinguished side of rugged. These days, although he could dye the grey out of his hair he couldn’t hide the salt-and-pepper when it came through on his jaw, which meant that if he missed a couple of shaves he just looked like a jakey. So did wearing the sports gear he used to favour. He kept himself in good shape, was never out the gym and arguably as fit now as when he’d been in his twenties, but the gear didn’t work on him any more. Past forty, the only folk you saw wearing tracky bottoms outside the gym were bin-rakers and big fat heifers. As a result, it was suits all the way for him now. Bespoke ones, naturally, always the best, but though they made him look smart they couldn’t make him look younger.
Why did it bother him so much, he wondered? It didn’t seem to trouble Sheila that he was looking older, although maybe she just loved him too much to say. He knew for sure it didn’t bother him that Sheila was getting older. Though he could see the changes in her from when they first got together, it always felt like the latest version was an improvement. He’d always liked the fact that she looked older than him: it was one of the things that attracted him in the first place. She had seemed like a woman who had seen plenty of the world and knew what she wanted as a result. That was why he must have been one of the few men of his means ever to leave a wife near-on a decade his junior for one three years older than him.
He gazed at her, heading for the kitchen to discuss tonight’s menu with Angus, the chef. The place belonged to Stevie, and it was Angus’s talents that had all the trendy types venturing out to the wilds of Croftbank, but Sheila ran the show, like she always had.
She was working behind the bar here when they first met, another reason this old place felt like a portal to the many ages of his life. His eye drifted to the store room next to the toilets, just past where the swing doors now granted access to the kitchen. That was where they used to sneak off to on her breaks, sometimes with her first husband Donny working through in the snug. He could picture it, feel it, smell the mixture of perfume, cigarettes and drink. Her on her knees, giving him a gobble like nobody ever had before. Christ, he was getting hard thinking about it. He could fair go shagging her right now, in the store, up against the shelves like old times. Better than old times. He fancied her more now than he ever had. The years were not diminishing Sheila, they were improving her; improving him too in so many ways, in the life he led, the things that were within his grasp, the freedoms that were now open to him. And yet, and yet…
Look at this place. Haffa was in raconteur mode, recalling the time a team of Gallowhaugh boys had organised an ambush inside Stevie’s first nightclub, Nokturn, and they turned the place into something out of a John Wayne movie, utterly wrecking the joint. ‘Wild West George Street,’ Haffa described it, eliciting a laugh all round as it did every time he used the phrase, which he did every bloody time he told the story.
The downside of that anecdote, always unspoken, was that it was also the night Jazz got slashed, which set in motion the chain of events leading to his death.
Before that, they’d been sharing bittersweet reminiscences about Glen Fallan, the old stories given a sharper edge these past couple of years since it emerged that big Single wasn’t quite as unthreateningly dead as everybody had previously believed.