‘How’s Clarkston RFC doing?’ I said.
‘They aren’t. They vanished years ago. Merged and changed names a few times and are now known as GHA. Still in the same place but a health club bought some land off them and, as part of the deal, they had a new stand and clubhouse built for them. Good deal really.’
‘Do you still go to see them?’
‘Most weekends when they are at home. Occasionally on the road but only if they are close by.’
‘Any of the old school still there.’
‘A couple. Jimmy Naismith still pulls the odd stint on coaching but he has a place in Spain and is more there than here. Donald Grier is club secretary but I am a bit persona non gratis with him. What with me and his daughter.’
I couldn’t help laughing. Mary Grier had been an on/off girlfriend of Martin’s for the last few years before I was sent down. Although she lived in Glasgow, Martin would fly her down for long weekends and then some. This seriously pissed of her dad — a lay preacher of the fire and brimstone variety. Donald was none to happy at his ‘takeaway’ daughter. His phrase not mine — ‘You’re like a bloody Indian takeaway. He calls and you deliver.’
Inevitably it had ended in tears when Martin, tired of the old man’s complaints, found that Donald was badmouthing him to anyone that would listen. Donald had even been known to bring Martin’s name into some of his sermons. Martin reacted by sending four of the lads to have a quiet word. Donald got the message but some people just don’t scare well and he continued to slag off Martin. Only the intervention of his daughter saved him a more serious kicking.
‘Do you still see Mary?’
‘Kind of.’
‘Meaning.’
‘I see her when I pick up Tara.’
‘Who’s Tara?’
‘Mary’s stepdaughter.’
‘Why would you be bothered about Mary’s stepdaughter?’
‘We’re an item.’
‘You and Mary’s stepdaughter. No shit?’
I didn’t ask her age. I could guess. Martin was just too weird for cheese.
The conversation drifted and was taking on a strange glow. Not just as a result of the whisky but, although we’d had our ups and downs, because we had always been able to gab just fine. The years were slipping away and my desire to lay into him was waning with the bottle.
‘Hungry?’
I realised I was ravenous.
‘Kind of.’
Martin reached for a cordless phone that sat next to his sofa and dialled a number from memory.
‘For delivery please. Martin Sketchmore. Hi Ajmal. How’s business? Good — can I have a Lamb Korma, Chicken Tikka Masala and two fried rice? Add in a garlic nan, a regular nan and a bottle of Diet Coke’
He hung up.
‘Not Chinese?’ I said.
‘Had one last night.’
We jawed about next to nothing for half an hour before the doorbell went and we were in Indian food land. We ate in silence and when the dishes were cleared away and my glass refilled we sat down to some serious talk.
‘The courtroom. Why?’ I asked.
Martin rubbed his stomach and belched.
‘Dupree had me by the nuts. I grass on you or my family/friends/acquaintances/colleagues/people I met when I was three and have never seen since — don’t see the next morning. He threatened to kill mum, gran, Joan, Colleen — even little Brian. All of them and then some. What would you have done?’
I had always suspected as much but it didn’t lessen my anger.
‘You could have run.’
‘Where? Dupree is an evil fucker. Far worse than you or me ever were. He was onto me hours after you were lifted and laid it on the line. You or my family.’
‘So who cut the deal with the police?’
‘Dupree. Don’t ask me how, but he did.’
‘And you believed he would keep his word?’
‘It was my biggest fear. I drop you in it and then I’m history. But he’s a weird one. His word is his bond. He said that not me. From what I know he seems to hold to that. If I stay away from him he’ll honour our deal. How else could I have survived? I’m hardly the invisible man. How long did it take you to find me?’
That was true. I had found out his location from behind the bars of a prison. Dupree would have found him in seconds.
‘The letter?’ I said.
‘Do you still have it?’
I pulled it out of my pocket and handed it to him. He rolled it up and threw it in the fire.
‘So what’s in the box?’ I asked.
‘I don’t know. But whatever it is it didn’t come from me ‘
‘Sorry.’
‘It’s from Spencer. Whatever is in the box is from Spencer.’
‘Where’s Spencer?’
‘Dead.’
‘Dupree?’
‘No, a car crash on the road to Oban about two years after you went down. Up until that point Spencer worked for Dupree.’
‘I thought he vanished with you.’
‘That’s what Dupree wanted everyone to think but Dupree needed someone who knew the way the crockery was laid out until he could get his feet under the table. So Spencer was shipped back north and moved in with his mum in Inveraray. Dupree used him as a sounding board and as long as he kept himself to himself Dupree left him alone.’
I had known Spencer’s mum had roots in Scotland but not where she lived. Inveraray was a tourist stop on the way to the Mull of Kintyre. Nice enough for the day but not somewhere I would choose for home and certainly not somewhere for Spencer. He would have gone out of his mind with boredom. I could see him now — blind drunk at the wheel of some hot rod, hammering up the road between Inveraray and Oban. On a good day you need to take care on the road as it either twists and turns through the glens or hugs the shore. Forty feet artics are frequent and, at points, the road hardly accommodates a mini. Car crashes were all too common.
‘So what has Spencer got to do with the box?’
‘I was staying with one of Spencer’s friends. She lived in Fulham. Spencer turns up at the door one day. He looks nervous and knows he is well outside the safe zone that Dupree has given him. He comes in but he doesn’t sit down. He shouldn’t be in London and he knows it. His eyes are all over the place. Like he is expecting someone to jump him any minute. He tells me that Stevie at the Lame Duck has something for me. I look at him as if he just landed from Mars. I ask him what he is on about. He says he knows some things about Dupree and has given Stevie instructions to hand it over to you or me. Then he leaves. Next thing I know he is on the inside page of the Daily Record as one of four that died in a high speed crash on the road to Oban.’
‘So you went to Stevie?’
‘No.’
‘Why?’
‘You don’t know Dupree. You really don’t. He has figured out ways to hurt people that wouldn’t seem credible in a Stephen King novel. I was safe and I wanted to stay that way but I figured you might like a pop at him. So I scribbled up the letter and sent it to you.’
‘And you never once thought to see Stevie in all those years?’
‘Oh it passed my mind now and again and I always reckoned that if I got a sniff Dupree was on the turn I could track down Stevie double quick.’
Sometimes in life you smell things that just makes your nose curl up.
‘Are you telling me that you never went to find out what Stevie had been given?’
‘Never. I wrote you the letter years ago and sent Rachel to deliver it when I thought you were due out. Then I tried to blank it from my mind.’
I rolled back in the chair and sipped at the malt. Martin was looking at me, waiting for a response but I didn’t have one. Not then anyway. I sipped some more and held up the glass for more. Tonight was going no further. I either got very drunk or I went home.
I got very drunk.
Chapter 34
Wednesday January 30 th 2008