The Amateurs (13 page)

R
ANTA WAS IN THE LOFT, PLAYING SCALEXTRIC WITH
Andy and Tommy, the two youngest of his six children. Andy, seven, had just sent his little silver Lotus Elan flying off the end of the track for the umpteenth time.

‘Naw, son, look, ye need tae slow doon fur the bends,’ Ranta patiently explained again.

‘He’s a mutant, Da!’ Tommy, nine, said.

‘Naw–you’re a mutant!’ Andy shot back.

‘Hey,’ Ranta said, ‘nobody’s a bloody mutant! Here, son,’ Ranta folded his massive fist gently around Andy’s tiny hand and demonstrated how to ease the pressure off on the trigger of the pistol grip, slowing the car down into the bend.

Lately, with Alec increasingly helping run the business–not too much, the boy still had a lot to learn, but you had to let them make some decisions on their own, give them their head–Ranta was getting a wee taste of retirement. Ranta liked the look of retirement very much indeed: sleeping late,
a wee bit of golf here and there, playing with his children and grandchildren every day…Alison often joked that the reason he liked spending so much time with the kids was because he was just a big wean himself. Whatever the reason, Ranta was a good father and a solid provider. Alison had long ago learned not to ask in too much detail about the finer points of the providing.

Wee Andy, his face a perfect study in concentration, slowed the car down now to a ludicrous degree, barely crawling around the bend, but keeping it on the track.

‘Ah did it, Da!’

‘That’s the stuff!’ Ranta furiously ruffled Andy’s hair, the boy squealing with delight.

‘Pile on!’ Tommy shouted as he leapt on his father, the three of them rolling around on the floor in a frenzy of ticklish play-fighting.

‘Hey! Will you three stop that carry-on!’ Alison’s head appeared through the hatch at the far end of the loft. She was far from angry; pleased as always at the delight her husband took in their children. ‘Andy, Tommy, come and get your dinner.’

‘Go on with yer mum, boys,’ Ranta said, sending Tommy on his way with a playful smack on the arse.

‘And that’s number-one son here,’ Alison said.

‘Aye, good, tell him tae come up, hen.’

Father and son sat in the den, the TV on, showing the golf–the Schitzbaul Invitational Trophy, live from Benders Creek Golf Club, North Carolina–with the sound down as they talked business.

‘Do ye want Frank tae dae it?’ Alec was asking.

Ranta thought. A woman. Not a difficult job. ‘Naw. Don’t use one of the boys. Farm it oot tae someone. But make sure
they’re reliable, Alec. Someone wi a track record in doing the business, and who understands whit would fucking happen tae them if something went wrong and they chose tae mention us by name. Five should be plenty, eh?’

‘Fuck, aye, Da. Half the bams in this toon would do themselves fur five grand.’

Ranta opened his desk drawer and took out the Manila envelope Masterson had given him the night before: fifteen thousand pounds in new, waxy fifty-pound notes. Ten grand profit for a couple of phone calls. No bad. Quickly, professionally, with a licked thumb, Ranta counted out a hundred of them and handed them to Alec.

‘Cheers, Da.’ Alec stuffed the notes into his inside pocket. ‘Hey,’ he said, nodding towards the TV, a shot of Drew Keel, biting his lip as he watched a drive sail into the sky, dangerously close to the tree line. ‘Did ye see thon shot yer man there hit at that par five yesterday?

‘Did ah fucken see it? Ah near shat maself watching it. Two-hundred-and-ten-yard carry over water wi a six-iron? No real.’ Ranta slurped his tea and, without taking his eyes off the screen, said, ‘Have ye someone in mind then?’

Alec nodded. He did indeed have someone in mind.

Two birds one stone.

Gary propped himself up in bed, a plateful of toast in front of him, a mug of tea in his hand, the curtains drawn against the sunshine and the golf on TV. Ben lay on the floor, his snout moving carefully from left to right and back again as he monitored the progress of each piece of toast from plate to mouth, strands of saliva hanging from his jaws. He looked like he was watching a very delicious tennis match–two stuffed, basted turkeys playing each other in ultra-slow motion.
Gary tossed the fiend a crust–snuffled up in a nanosecond–and turned up the volume.

Benders Creek was one of the toughest courses on the US circuit, with miles of jungly rough and greens cut tight against deep water. The Schitzbaul Trophy (‘the Shit’ the players called it) had one of the richest purses in golf: over a million dollars for the winner. The guy who came in
last
would get something like fifty grand. Consequently the tournament always attracted a star-studded line-up: Keel, Spafford, Honeydew III, Novotell, Lathe, Von Strapple and, of course, Linklater himself, were all playing, and Gary–golf-starved to the point of insanity–had wanted to catch every second.

But, Christ, lying in bed as the camera panned down a fairway–a gorgeous dogleg, velvety green grass, the sand in the bunkers smooth and golden, almost inviting–it was like watching golf pornography. Torture.

He got up and walked over to the window. It was a beautiful early-May morning. Not a cloud in the sky. When had he last gone nearly a month without swinging a golf club? He looked at the clock. Pauline gone all day, hours until his mum would look in…

Complete bed rest for at least a fortnight.

Well, it had
nearly
been a fortnight. He felt fine for fuck’s sake. Just the driving range for an hour or so, hit a few wedges and whatnot–nothing too strenuous. Just get into the groove of swinging the club again.

Who’s to know?

G
ARY HAD THE DRIVING RANGE TO HIMSELF
.

He propped his golf bag up on its metal legs and ran a hand over the clubheads. What to hit? He knew he shouldn’t really be doing this at all, so probably best not to overdo it. No trying to smash the driver, nothing more than, say, an easy nine. Nine-iron–the last club he had swung before the accident.

He pressed the button on the plastic panel set into the wooden wall of his bay and, with a faint hum of machinery, the white ball rose up on its rubber tee peg. After a couple of practice swings, his body feeling stiff and rusty, he sighted down the range and picked out a target: the old rusted-out Land Rover just short of the 150-yard marker.

He settled the clubhead behind the ball. Something felt different as he began his backswing, the club coming back smoothly, his left arm straight, his left shoulder pointing straight down at the ball. There was the slightest lag, a barely perceptible pause at the top of the swing, as his weight began
to transfer from his right side to his left, and then the clubhead was whipping down, faster than he had ever swung it before, faster than he could ever have controlled before.

The clubhead whipped through the ball in a perfect transfer of energy and Gary was turning, his upper body coming round so that he was standing square to the target. He couldn’t see the ball for a second. He had to look up. And then up again. He had never hit a golf ball that high in his life. The ball was pausing now, over a hundred feet in the air, and beginning its descent, falling right for the tractor. Gary watched as it fell to earth–maybe ten yards
beyond
the Land Rover but right on line with its rusted metal roof, whumping into the turf and hopping forward a couple of yards before coming to rest. Gary looked at the number engraved on the sole of the club: ‘9’. He thought for a second he might have pulled out the six, but no. He slipped it back into the bag and pulled out the pitching wedge, a club he should hit ten to fifteen yards shorter than the nine. Another smooth swing and again the ball flying straight and high. He watched, holding his finishing position, posing, as the ball came falling down.

‘P-TANG!’–the hollow sound of the ball clanging off rusted metal reverberated around the empty range as Gary’s wedge found its target: the roof of the Land Rover, a piece of metal not much more than five foot square.

He did it again.

And again. And again.

After he’d hit the thing six times he sat down heavily.

What was going on here? Maybe just the break, the time away from the game. Sometimes you played really well when you hadn’t hit the ball for a while. You swung the club freely and unselfconsciously and you had no expectations and the tensions they created. That was probably it.

Aye, yer maw
, a voice said to him.

Also, he reasoned, he was hitting with the wedge, one of the easier clubs in the bag. How would he get on with a club he was on less than speaking terms with? A club he routinely thinned, skulled and shanked? A club he had pulled from his bag maybe three times in the last year?

A club like the two-iron, say?

He pulled the two out of the bag, took his stance and sighted towards the 200-yard marker: 200 yards, about his best ever distance with the two-iron, and that on only a handful of occasions. He didn’t hold back, really bringing the club down hard.

For a split second he thought he might have completely misswung and missed the ball altogether, for there had been no resistance, barely any sensation of the club hitting anything at all. Then he saw his ball dotted against the horizon and travelling in an absolutely straight line, sailing towards the battered metal sign saying ‘200 yards’.

He kept watching the 200-yard sign.

He was still watching it when he heard a ‘KA-LANG’ and, looking further down the range, saw his ball rattling off another sign.

The 250-yard sign.

These markers are wrong
, was his first thought. Because this was ridiculous. He couldn’t
carry
a bloody two-iron 250 yards. No human being could.

Only a professional golfer could do that.

Hit a few more
, he thought.
You’ll start fucking them up and with that will come the reassurance that everything is still the same.

He creamed a dozen two-irons down the middle, catching one or two a bit thin, one off the toe of the club, but all of
them landing soft and true in the patch of ground between the 200-and the 250-yard markers, four of them clanging right off the 250-yard sign itself, leaving deep dents in the metal.

It was with a dry throat and a slightly trembling hand that Gary pulled the driver from the bag.

The heavy artillery. The lumber. The Big Dog.

In something like a trance now–pumped up and confident and swinging free and hard–he pulled the club so far back on his backswing that its fat head actually touched his left buttock. He unloaded and the sound as metal ate ball was deafening. It seemed to take three minutes for the shot to begin falling to earth, to come whistling down and embed itself in one of the holes in the wire mesh at the very end of the range–about 270 yards away.

The second drive didn’t touch the fence–it sailed straight
over
it, coming to rest among the blooming rows of potatoes in the farmer’s field behind the range, a good 310 yards away from where Gary stood.

He sat down again. His hands were shaking. This was crazy. He’d never hit the ball this well in his life. Maybe a few dozen times in over twenty years. Not a few dozen in twenty minutes. Just a fluke, he told himself. Probably never hit it like this on the actual golf course.

No, something has happened to you,
the other voice said.

Well, only one way to find out.

The Monthly Medal this Saturday…

L
EE
I
RVINE WALKED INTO THE TINY KITCHEN
. A
MAZON
was sat on the floor–patiently pulling arms and heads off of a pile of dolls and throwing the severed limbs all over the place. Styx hurtled screaming through the room en route to the ‘garden’ (twelve square feet of concrete, Lee had paved it over as soon as they moved in. Grass was just too much bother) closely followed by Delta, the latter screaming,
‘Ah’m gauny kill ye, ya wee prick!’
Lisa, smouldering Club in one hand and tea mug in the other, was watching something slowly revolving in the microwave that didn’t quite work properly–you had to give it a bang every now and then to keep the turntable rotating–while listlessly repeating her tired, halfhearted mantra:
‘Stop that, you two, don’t dae that, Amazon, gie’s peace…’
Biscuit wrappers, crisp packets and empty three-litre plastic bottles of supermarket own-brand super-strength cola were strewn all over the floor, their sugary contents now barrelling through the veins of the children.

Normally Lee might have gone mental. But tonight he was
in a fine mood. Expansive even, with three double vodkas in his veins, cocaine still humming in his nose and close to one and a half thousand pounds in his jacket pocket.

‘A’right?’ Lisa said to him.

‘Fine, hen.’

The microwave pinged cheerfully. Lisa popped the door open and the kitchen was flooded with the smell of melting plastic. ‘Ah was just getting oor tea ready,’ Lisa said, shoving a pile of dirty washing along the counter to make room for the bubbling platter of nuked chicken-and-pineapple frozen pizza. ‘And, Styx, you need tae eat yer pizza, ye hear me?’ Turning from son to husband she added, ‘Ah don’t know whit’s wrong wi’ that boy. He willnae eat a thing. He’s even aff his crisps and ginger–’

‘Fuck that. Ye can gie that shite tae the dug,’ Lee said, nodding at the pizza. ‘We’re all going oot fur dinner. Tae the China Garden.’

‘Really, Da?’ Delta said.

‘Aye.’

‘Whit…sit in?’ Lisa said uncertainly. The China Garden was the good Chinky, the dear one up the top of the high street.

‘Aye. Only the best fur the best.’

‘Magic!’ the children chorused.

‘Here…’ Lee said, handing his wife the carrier bag he was holding. She looked inside: a bottle of Smirnoff–a whole bottle–and a bottle of Coke. ‘You make us a couple of wee voddy and Cokes. Ah’m away fur a shower.’ He kissed her on the cheek, Lisa looking at him in awe and wonder.

‘Da,’ little Amazon was saying, ‘can we get starters? Can we get spring rolls?’

‘You can get anything ye want, doll,’ Lee said, ruffling his
daughter’s hair. He headed upstairs, the sound of familial celebration–excited children’s chatter, glasses clattering from the cupboard–sounding good in his ears.

Lee could still not quite believe the change in his fortunes the day had wrought. When Alec Campbell’s car had pulled up beside him this afternoon he’d thought he might be limping in the door tonight in a very different state.

He turned the shower on–it took ages to get warm. Maybe he’d buy a new one–and then crossed the landing to the bedroom, pulling his T-shirt over his head.

It’s a woman
, Alec had said.
Is that a problem?

‘No if the price is right, Alec,’ Lee had said suavely, sipping his second double (Alec was buying) in the shadows of the Boot. And, by Christ, was the price right. Five grand? Obviously Alec was taking the two and a bit Lee owed him for the speed plus interest out of this. It still left nearly three thousand quid. ‘Half now,’ Alec said, slipping an envelope under the table, ‘and half when we’re done.’

Taking his jeans off Lee remembered the wrap in his back pocket.
You finish it. Call it a wee signing-on bonus.
Nearly a gram in there. Good gear too. With an ear cocked to the kitchen, Lee quickly racked out another wee line on the dressing table. Put one out for Lisa? Naw, put her aff her dinner. He’d surprise her later, after the kids were in bed. It’d been a while. He honked the line up and licked the bitter residue off the edge of his Silver Screen Video card. The coke and the booze were proving excellent help in preventing him thinking too far ahead, which was good news because when he did think ahead he kept coming up against a pretty big problem: contrary to what Alec Campbell believed, Lee had never killed anyone in his life.

Tits McGee? It happened like this…

Lee had met Tits to buy an ounce of speed which Lee was going to cut with some novocaine he’d got from Archie Boyd, who had got it from some boys that broke into the chemist’s on Calder Road. Lee was then going to sell the speed/ novocaine mixture as cocaine down at the Southport Weekender, offloading it at about three in the morning when every cunt was too cunted to tell the cunting difference. Deal done, Tits had been driving Lee to the bus stop when he got a call on his mobile and said he had to make a quick diversion, some boys from Glasgow he had a bit of business with. They pulled into a lay-by up near the Annick woods and Tits walked off to a car parked nearby. Lee had watched Tits stick his head in the window and start talking to someone. Then a white flash in the night, a bang, and Tits falling backwards with half his face missing. Lee had felt the quick hot spurt in the trough of his pants and then, before he knew what he was doing, he was out the car, jumping the fence behind the lay-by and running headlong through the pitch-black woods, the dreadful sensation of cooling, viscous diarrhoea spilling down the back of his legs.

Lee had lain low for a few weeks, terrified that whoever had killed Tits would realise they had left a witness to the crime. In the meantime, the point-blank ‘gangland’-style execution became a big story: a brief report on the evening news, the
Daily Standard
running a faintly celebratory piece along the lines of ‘one less drug dealer in Scotland’. Wee Audrey Harrison had seen Lee and Tits driving through Kilwinning a few hours before the shooting and gradually the Chinese whispers escalated–Lee and Tits had gone off to do a deal, they’d got into an argument and Lee had shot Tits in the head at close range. Lee was pulled in for questioning but they had nothing really.

Suddenly he found he was afforded respectable elbow room at the bar in the Bam. Sly nods and hushed whispers in his direction. As the police seemed to have little interest in bringing the killer of Tits McGee (drug dealer and rumoured beaster of girls a little under the legal age of consent) to justice, Lee decided it would do his rep no harm at all to let the story grow. The truth–that he had soiled his pants and ran off through the woods–would have been far less flattering.

Are ye carrying anything these days?
Alec had asked him.

Naw, Alec. Ah’m no daft
, Lee said, shaking his head.

OK
, Alec said.
We’ll get ye a piece.

Lee Irvine had done some bad things. He’d sold drugs to teenagers–bad drugs, drugs cut with laxative and baby powder and brick dust and grit. He’d broken into homes and taken people’s property, creeping through dark gardens with video recorders and jewellery boxes under his arms. He’d stolen cars and been involved in low-level fraud, money laundering and passport theft. Yes, some bad things. But, kill a woman? Some poor woman he didn’t even know?

When Lee pictured his father in heaven he thought of him as reclining on a big, fluffy king-size cloud watching television and reading the paper. He thought of him now, watching his eldest son taking an envelope stuffed with fifty-pound notes out of his jacket, peeling off four of them and hiding the envelope deep in his sock drawer. Then he thought of his father–someone who had worked hard all his life in return for very little–realising where the money had come from. What it was for. Lee had never seen his father cry and was unable to picture it now. Instead, he saw his father glowering and angry, the way he had seen him many times in the last years, after Lee’s life had begun to go off-track: the wrong friends, the first arrests. The image helped: it was easier to
defy the angry than it was to defy the sad, the heartbroken. Something else was helping too–Lee snorted, pulling a thick string of numbing cocaine down his throat, and the vision of his father popped and evaporated, like bursting a plump, soapy bubble when you were a kid, that faint sting on your face as it sparkled away into nothingness.

In his boxers now, tingling from the cocaine, he roamed the upstairs of his house. Well, it was the council’s house. And it wasn’t much of a roam: bathroom and three tiny bedrooms. Delta’s school trousers were hanging over the back of a chair–the knees long worn through and stitched up. One of Styx’s trainers, the sole flapping away from the bottom, gaping at him like a fish’s mouth. Amazon’s broken pink bicycle in the hall downstairs. The DVD player that no longer worked. The last two loan payments they’d missed. The holidays they never took. Aye, things were fraying at the edges of his little kingdom and no mistaking. Still borrowing money off his mum and his wee brother all the time? At his age? Jesus fuck, it was bad news.

So, kill a woman? Some poor woman he didn’t even know?

Absolutely.