It all fitted, as far as he was concerned. There were rumours around the court that Sophie Marshall had been seeing a married man. It figured that this man most probably knew her from her professional life. (She didn’t have much of a social one.) When Jack found that my car had been ticketed on a road near the Horseshoe Estate, a long way off my usual patch, he knew he was on to something.
So he’d had Gayle Afflick tailed, and had her wired up too, taking the whole thing carefully, nice and slow, because he knew how easy it would be to lose me. But he hadn’t lost me. He had it all now, the whole story. And he had me. He asked if I wanted a solicitor.
‘Of course I want a solicitor.’
‘I hear Tony Barraclough’s good,’ Jack said.
That smell was in my nostrils, that police station smell. There were, I decided suddenly, worse smells, far worse smells, in the wider scheme of things.
Unknown Pleasures
Nelly sat with his head in his hands. He could feel the sweat, except it was more viscous than sweat, more like a sheen of cooking oil. The tenement stairwell smelt of deep-fried tomcat, and the cold step beneath him was stained and scuffed. Over the years, thousands of pairs of feet must have pulled themselves up here, tired or drunk or ailing. But no one in the whole history of the tenement had ever come near to feeling as bad as he did right now. Eleven o’clock, an hour shy of the millennium, and the only way he was going to make it was if he got some stuff. Hunter was mean at the best of times, doubly mean at this festive period. ‘Reverse goodwill’ he called it. Chimes outside. Nelly counted eleven. The crowds would be gathering in Princes Street, laser shows and live bands promised, then the fireworks. He could have some fireworks of his own, here on the stairwell, but only if he got some stuff. Which was why he’d climbed the three flights to Mrs McIver’s flat. He knew she was out: Cormack’s Bar every night, eight till eleven. She was in her seventies, wouldn’t swap her eyrie for a retirement home with a lift and ramp. In her seventies and well pickled. Rum and black. When she laughed, her tongue was an inky tentacle. He’d nothing against her, only he’d figured her door would be easiest, so he’d shouldered it and kicked it and shouldered it again. Nothing. She’d morticed it, even though she was only round the corner.
So now he sat with his head in his hands. Soon as the pain got to him, he’d top himself, couldn’t see any other way. He’d leave a note grassing up Hunter: revenge from the grave and all that. There was nothing in his flat worth hawking, and nobody to hawk it to at this time of night, this night of all nights. Everyone was on the outside. Hunter and Sheila and Dickie and his mum and gran, part of the party that was Edinburgh, kissing strangers and wishing Happy New Years less than an hour from now. Should auld acquaintance be forgot.
His acquaintance was the big H, and no way was it letting him forget it.
Methadone was a joke. He sold his. Some chemists had started taking the junkies in ten at a time, shutting up shop while each dose was dispensed. Standing in a line like cub scouts or something. One wee plastic cup… With jellies hard to come by, what was the alternative?
There is no alternative, that’s what heroin would have said. It wasn’t true it would kill you. It was the crap they cut it with did that. Anybody who could afford a good, big habit of the nice stuff, they could go on for ever. Look at Keef. Learned to ski, used to whip Jagger at tennis, made Exile on Main Street – skagged out the whole time. Skagged out and playing tennis. Nelly started to laugh. He was still laughing when the sound of the tenement door closing came crashing up the stairwell. Slow, steady steps. He rubbed tears from his eyes. His shoulder hurt where it had connected with Mrs McIver’s door. And here she was now, climbing towards him.
‘What’s the joke, Nelly?’
He stood up to let her past. She was getting her keys out of her bag. Big canvas bag with Las Vegas painted on the side in loopy red writing. Looked like big red veins to Nelly. He could see a newspaper and a library book and a purse.
‘Nothing really, Mrs McIver.’ A purse.
‘What’re you doing up here anyway?’
‘Thought I heard something. Wanted to check you were all right.’
‘You must be hearing things. I thought you’d be out on the town, night like this.’
‘I was just heading out.’ He stepped on to her landing. She had her key in the door. ‘Eh, Mrs McIver…?’
As she turned her head, his fist caught her on the cheek.
Johnny Hunter was holding court in his local. He was in his favourite corner seat, both arms draped round the necks of the blondes he’d chatted up at Chapters on Boxing Day evening. He’d given them champagne, driven them around in his Saab convertible, keeping the top down even though it was cold. He’d told them they needed fur coats, said he’d measure them up. They’d laughed. The littler one, Margo, he’d told her that was the name of an expensive wine. The other one, Juliet, was quieter. A bit stuck-up maybe, but not about to duck out, not with The Hunter throwing his money and his weight around. He’d done a few deals tonight, nothing cataclysmic. The punters wanted speed to keep them going, coke to lend an air of celebration to the new beginning. He’d steered a couple of them towards smack instead. Fashion was cyclical, whether it was hemlines or recreational drugs. Heroin was back in style. That was his pitch.
‘And it’s safe,’ he’d tell them. ‘Just follow the instructions on the box.’ And with a wink he’d be off, rearranging the lines of his Armani jacket, eyes open to the possibilities around him. Margo seemed to be cosying into him, maybe to get away from Panda, who was seated next to her. Panda was the scariest thing in the pub, which was the whole point of him. He was paid to be a deterrent, and also did the deals outside. The Hunter didn’t touch the goods if he could help it. The cops had come after him three times already this year, never enough for a prosecution. And now he had a pair of ears in the Drugs Squad: a hundred a week just for the odd phone call. Cheap insurance, Caldwell had agreed when Hunter had told him about it. Cheap for Caldwell, at any rate.
Hunter didn’t know how much Caldwell was making. Ten, fifteen grand a week, had to be. House down in the Borders apparently, more a castle than a house. Six cars, each one better than the Saab. Hunter wanted to be Caldwell. He knew he could be Caldwell. He was good enough. But Caldwell had the contacts… and the money… and the muscle. Caldwell had made people disappear. And if Hunter didn’t keep business moving, he might find himself on the wrong end of his boss. There were other dealers out there: younger, just as hungry, and edging on the desperate, which meant reckless. All of them would like Hunter’s power, and his clothes and car, his women and money. They all wanted his money. And now Nelly of all runts was giving him grief – just by his very existence. Caldwell’s goons making sure Hunter knew what had to be done, making him acknowledge just how low he was on the ladder.
‘It’ll be you takes the fall,’ one of them had said. ‘You or him, so make it clean.’
Oh, he’d make it clean, if that was what it took. He knew he’d no choice, much as he liked Nelly.
‘Are we clubbing or what?’
Billy Bones talking: skinny as a wisp of smoke, seated the other side of Juliet, whose legs he’d been staring at for the past half-hour.
‘One more,’ Hunter said. The pub was heaving, table service impossible. There were a dozen empty glasses on the table. Hunter reached out an arm and swept them to the floor.
Patrick Caldwell examined himself in his bathroom’s full-length mirror. He was casually dressed: brogues, chinos, yellow shirt, and a Ralph Lauren red V-necked sweater. Nearing fifty, he was pleased that he still possessed a good head of hair, and that the only grey was provided by touches at either temple. His face was tanned, and his eyes sparkled with self-satisfaction. It had, in the words of the song, been a very good year: less merchandise apprehended by the authorities; demand steady in some areas, increasing in others. A very satisfactory year. But still something niggled him. The more money he made, the more contented he should be: wasn’t that the dream? But the things he really wanted seemed still intangible. Seemed further away than ever, yet so close he could almost taste them…