“They’re just wee girls, though,” said Meehan, watching Isobel move in a way that made her big, fluid breasts tremble beneath her jersey.
Griffiths flashed him a cheeky smile. “Isobel’s game, though, eh?”
Meehan’s face broke into a wonky smile. He cleared his throat and smeared his hair down. Exaggerating his hard-man swagger, he walked over and put his hand in his jacket pocket as if he had a blade.
“These girls are too young to be out at this time. I’m taking them home.”
The men in the car glanced at each other, dropping their shoulders.
Meehan leaned down, filling the open window. “Want to make something of it?”
The boys shook their heads.
Meehan gestured to the girls to get in the back of the Triumph. Isobel burped and pulled down her jersey as Irene, too drunk to realize that the danger was by, sobbed and dragged her towards the Triumph.
“Right, boys,” said Meehan, enjoying himself, playing it like an off-duty policeman. “Back up and pull out.” He slapped the roof of the car. “On your way.”
Far from fulfilling her promise as a jailbait temptress, Isobel fell asleep as soon as she got into the car. She sat with her fat legs sprawled across the backseat, snoring vehemently. Irene sobbed with fright and drink all the way to Isobel’s and then on to her own house. Whenever she managed to stop crying, she told Meehan and Griffiths that they were awful good, dead kind, and the thought would start her crying again. She was irritating the life out of them.
The sun was halfway up in the sky and the milkmen were finishing their rounds by the time they arrived at a row of brown-and-white prefabs on the outskirts of Kilmarnock. The curtains were open in Irene’s living room, the lights on inside.
“My ma’ll be frantic,” she said, rubbing her swollen, itchy eyes. “She’ll be phoning the polis and everything.”
They made her get out quickly at that. Griffiths sped all the way back to Glasgow. They’d missed the meat market and skipped breakfast, parting slightly sick of each other, knowing they’d be pals again after a sleep and a feed.
IV
Mr. and Mrs. Ross lay on the floor for two more nights and two more days. They heard children playing in the street outside and cars rolling past their house. The telephone rang in the hall. A couple of dog walkers met on the pavement outside their bedroom window and chatted for a while. They lay on the floor until Monday morning at ten o’clock, when their cleaner turned up for work as usual and used her own key to get in.
Rachel Ross sighed her last breath as the ambulance drew to a soft stop outside the hospital.
NINETEEN . HEATHER’S LUCKY BREAK
I
Heather gathered the keys for her mother’s car from the hall table and tiptoed out of the house. Heavy rain masked the noise of the closing door and Heather’s feet crunching over the moat of gravel around the house. She swung her bag into the passenger seat, shut the door carefully, and started the red Golf GTI, leaving the lights off until she had cleared the drive.
The country roads were quiet all the way into town and stayed quiet as she approached the city center. It was just past midnight on a Friday night, but the rain had chased everyone off the streets. Every third car was a cab. Even the buses had stopped. Going at full speed, the windscreen wipers only managed to pull back the curtain of rain periodically, and sheets of water rippled down hills.
Waiting at a traffic light, Heather rummaged in her handbag on the seat next to her, feeling for her cigarettes. The lights changed before she could take one out of the packet, and she found herself on the green side of every light into town. It wasn’t until she reached Cowcaddens that she managed to put one in her mouth and press the lighter on the dashboard. She inhaled, and the smoke made her lungs feel dirty and clogged. On the way out it did the same to her teeth. It felt good.
The Pancake Place was straight across the road from a shuttered and padlocked side entrance to Central station. A big van was parked right in front of the doors, so she parked a few spaces back and checked her makeup in the rearview mirror. Her lipstick was coming off in the middle where she had sucked her cigarette. She took the No. 17 Frosty Pink from her handbag and one last puff before touching up her lips. She opened the door, stepped out into the wet street, dropping the half-smoked cigarette to hiss to death into the wet, and ran into the café.
The Pancake Place menu was a testament to the versatility of the humble pancake: it was offered with everything, from a dollop of cheap jam to a pair of eggs and black pudding. Open until four a.m., the café had become a haven for late-night shift workers, students on their way home from the dancing, and tired street prostitutes giving their feet a rest. The overwhelming impression of the decor was dark brown. Plastic timbers had been grafted into a suspended ceiling and fake oak partitions built between the tables. To add a touch of olde worlde authenticity, laminated menus were propped up in darkwood stands.
It was quiet, and Heather immediately spotted the man sitting at the back table reading a copy of yesterday’s Scottish Daily News, just as he had promised. He was younger than she had expected from his voice and looked too rough for the paper he was reading. He was dressed like a construction worker, in a heavy jacket and a black woollen hat pulled down over his ears.
“Hello,” she said, trying to look unexcited and professional.
He seemed puzzled. He looked her up and down, taking in her expensive red overcoat and thick lipstick, and went back to reading his paper.
“You called me?” she said.
He looked up at her again, annoyed this time. “Do I know you?”
It was a different voice from the one on the phone, and Heather looked behind her to see if there was another man in a donkey jacket reading the Daily News. There wasn’t. She checked her watch. It was one in the morning. She was right on time.
“I think…” She looked at the empty seat across from him. “May I?”
“May you what?”
“May I sit down?”
He folded his paper shut and cleared his throat. “Gonnae leave me alone?”
“Didn’t you phone me and ask me to come here?”
“I never phoned ye.”
“But someone phoned me.”
“Well,” he said, opening his paper again, “it wasn’t me that phoned ye.” He glanced at her and saw how disappointed she was. “I’m very sorry.”
“I was to look for a man in a donkey jacket reading the Daily News.”
“I think someone’s playing a joke on ye. Sorry.”
Heather suddenly understood. It was one of those bastards at the Daily News, one of the morning-shift boys having a laugh at her expense. They’d be watching her. They’d be in here or across the road, laughing at her.
“Okay,” she said, her voice cracking on the second syllable as the disappointment choked her. “Thank you.”
She backed off, glancing around the café, making sure there wasn’t someone else in the room who met the description. Two tarty women in high heels and evening wear were huddled together near the back; a stoned mod girl was sitting with two boys in leather jackets, each red-eyed and slow moving; an old, old man hunched in an overcoat with tobacco-stained arthritic fingers. No one looked back at her.
She stood inside the door looking out at the shitting rain, blinking hard and trying not to cry. She lifted a paper napkin from under the cutlery on the nearest table and wiped the itchy lipstick off. There would be no London. She would never get a job up here either, because the union had taken against her and those bastards never forgot a grudge.