Williamson looks around the premises again. A DJ whom he recalls playing lots of cool shit back in the day now sits slaughtered at the bar, a semi-jakey, slavering about the pomp of Pure, Sativa, the Citrus Club and the Calton Studios to a bored, younger barman. — Do what we Catholics do.
— What’s that?
— Lie. Be a fucking hypocrite, Williamson shrugs. — I never rattled as many women in my life as I did when I was married to Ben’s mother. Rode the mother-in-law, the wee sister, banjoed the fucking maid of honour on the night before the wedding; the whole shebang, for fuck sakes! I’d have rammed the old boy if he’d had a fanny. If I had my way I would have drugged that cunt, given him a gender reassignment operation, had him ganting on it, then made him my bitch and treated him atrociously, he declares, visibly warming to the thought.
Euan finds himself sharing guilty laughter, surely a measure of how far he’s fallen, before he reflects in sad resignation, — My life is a mess…
— Listen, mate, you have to go back and try to make amends.
— It’s not possible. You saw the video. You witnessed her reaction. Her fury was beyond incandescent. She was totally broken and completely disillusioned, Euan whines, refusing to drop his voice, even though two couples have sat down at the table next to them. Foam spills from the ripped leather seats between them.
— She was in shock, ya radge, Simon declares. — People are adaptable. I’m not saying you’re her pin-up boy and she’s coming round a hundred per cent, but she needs to see you. It’s been months. She’s had time to process it all.
This observation provides Euan with a smidgen of comfort. — Yes, he concedes, — I can see that.
— Well?
— Well, what?
— Do you want to return to normal family life?
— Well, yes.
— But still shag around on the side?
Euan reaches into his heart. Trembling, he looks at Simon. Nods grimly. — But thanks to your friend Syme, the first is no longer an option.
— We certainly can’t let Carlotta see that video, Simon says. — Or it’s over, and he passes his phone to Euan, who is stunned to see an image of himself, having sex with Jasmine in the sauna, only thirty minutes ago.
— How did you –
— Technology will kill us all. Williamson screws his face up, as if in edgy recall. — I can get Syme to erase those videos. But you need to work with me. That means doing him a wee favour. If not, he puts this shit online and not just Carlotta and Ross, and her friends and his classmates, but all your colleagues and patients will see this. They will form an opinion as to the type of man you are. A one-off mistake is one thing; a serial philanderer and pervert, exhibitionist hoor-monger is something else.
Euan wallows in his despair. The images with Marianne were devastating for the family. But this stuff the world would see. The credibility he’s built up over the years would be trashed and he would be humiliated in his profession, a laughing stock and a pariah… He struggles to make sense of the nightmare. — How? Why? Why me? What does Syme want with me?
His brother-in-law swivels his eyes around the bar, and sighs. — It was my fault. I was looking for you, at Carlotta’s request, and I took that Christmas picture around the saunas. Syme heard about this, came after me, and was curious about what I wanted with you. He obviously thought I was the polis at first, then perhaps some kind of grass. I told him the situation and let slip that you had medical skills, at which point he suddenly took an interest. Then you vanish off the map for months, and I have to deal with the hassle from this murderous buffoon, who fucking well thinks we’re both at it. Then you come back and he rumbles you rifling one of his Roger Moores in the sauna. Bang to rights.
— He… this Syme character, he wants me to look at his feet?
— He has a job for you. Simon Williamson notes a swaggering posse of lads enter the bar. He puts on a Wild West frontier accent. — Some kinda doctorin work, I’m supposin. With Euan evidently unmoved, he adds abruptly, — That is as much as I know.
— But I fail to see how – how can you do this to me?! This is blackmail! We’re family!
Simon Williamson’s features seem to turn to cold stone. He speaks in a clipped, staccato rhythm. — Let me make one thing clear: you are not being blackmailed by me. For both our sakes, I wish that were the case. We are both being fucked over by a very dangerous cunt indeed. You should not have gone to the saunas, Euan. I would have set you up with a tasty wee bit of –
— It’s your set-ups that have ruined my fucking life already!
— Look, we both fucked up. Simon suddenly slaps his own forehead. — We can point fingers at each other till the cows come home, or we can try and sort it. I’m suggesting the latter course of action. If you disagree, feel the fuck free to have this argument with yourself. I’m off.
Euan is silent in the face of Simon Williamson’s cold logic.
— It’s broken, but it can be fixed.
— What do you want me to do?
— I don’t want you to do anything. But this cunt, and I use the term advisedly, he apparently needs your medical skills. What for, I can’t even imagine.
Euan contemplates his brother-in-law. — What sort of world are you mixed up in? What kind of a person are you?
Simon Williamson looks at him in injured disdain. — I’m as desperate as you, and I’ve been pulled into this world by you shagging about!
— You gave me that fucking drink spiked with MDMA! Your drugs started –
— Fuck you and your First World problems! If every cunt that had taken their first ecky committed adultery by jacksie-rifling the first psycho fucker who smiled at them, not one worthwhile relationship in Britain would still exist! Either you man the fuck up and we sort this shite out, or everything, your family, your job, your reputation, are all down the fucking swanny!
Euan sits trembling in the seat. His hand fastens around the glass of vodka and tonic. He downs it in a oner. Asks Williamson, — What do I have to do?
16
OUT OF THE SHADOWS
For some time anonymous shapes and shadows, their identities almost but not quite discernable, have haunted Danny Murphy. They swagger out of Leith Walk’s pubs for cigarettes, sprawl in duos or groups to the next howf, or stare out as menacing smudges from behind dirty bus windows. His heart jumps beats in anticipation as echoing footsteps in the stair outside intensify, only to die out on the floor below, or slap past his door bound for the top-floor flats. But as the days roll by, he finds himself reacting less. The unlikely scenarios of comfort he’s formulated and magnified start to achieve dominion in his mind. Perhaps the biker crashed and the box somehow opened, and it was presumed that had ruined the kidney. Maybe he was in the clear.
One evening, all this changes. Indoors with the dog, watching TV, he hears the familiar steps on the stair. This time there is something about them, perhaps their weight or rhythm, that indicates a dread purpose. This sense is shared by Toto, who looks poignantly up at his master and lets out a sad, barely audible whine. Danny Murphy sheds a skin, and he almost breathes a sigh of relief at the bang on the door, which he opens up to the inevitability of Mikey Forrester. — Mikey, he says.
Forrester’s face has been pulled an inch south. His hands are clasped together in front of him. — You fucked this one up big time. You’ve cost my partner, Victor Syme, a great deal of money and –
As if on cue, a man pushes past Mikey, who, in timid deference, gives way for him. Whereas Mikey is all performance, Victor Syme carries an overwhelming air of reptilian menace, speaking with the certainty of a man already privy to the conversation he is about to have. — You, he points at Spud, — you tried tae take the fuckin pish!