“She’s a head turner alright.”
“After a glass of champagne and a couple of lines of coke, she started whining that she needed a break from you…that she was cracking up being cooped up in that apartment all the time. She said she needed a couple of weeks in the sun and began crying. I remember thinking that I should wrap my arms around her, but I just couldn’t pluck up the courage. In the end she slept in one of the spare rooms and, when she woke, there were two air tickets to Italy on the pillow by her head. She flew into a virtual panic and couldn’t get out of the apartment fast enough, thanking me for the offer, but saying she had to get back to you. That evening, I was lying in bed thinking what a fool I’d been, when someone started banging at the front door. Convinced you’d come to beat my brains out I asked who was there before opening it. I couldn’t believe it when I heard Ingrid’s voice. When I opened the door, she was on the landing with two suitcases, one at either side of her on the floor. Apparently, you’d had another one of your teatime rants during the news, which had inevitably degenerated into a vicious, personal attack on her.”
“Oh, it wasn’t that bad! In fact, she started it. She said that unemployed people shouldn’t get dole money and that soup kitchens should provide their food. I remember her shrieking: ‘They’d soon get up off their lazy butts then!’ As if she didn’t know that would get me going.”
“Whatever the case, she used it to legitimise leaving you and, the following day we flew off to Italy. I remember looking at Glasgow from the plane. Knowing that you were down there, falling apart, while I was up in the sky with the love of your life…it felt great.”
“You’re a sad man Bob.”
“Keeping Ingrid entertained in Italy required just two things: designer clothes shops and a credit card. I myself was beginning to tire of her company. It was really hard work, pretending to be interested in all her self-obsessed babble. But the reflected glory of her beauty — even in Milan — was addictive. Passing catwalk models would flash glances at me. They’d stare right into my eyes, searching for whatever it was that made me so valuable to such a good-looking woman. After a fortnight of this my self-esteem was soaring, so much that I felt attractive to women for the first time. But Ingrid and the catwalk models of Milan didn’t do it for me. It was the hookers of Naples that got my blood boiling…preferably the bigger ones. They went out of their way to make me feel good. With them, I got to do the talking, instead of having to listen to all that hard done to, feminine bullshit. We stayed in Italy for another fortnight and were both sublimely happy. During the day Ingrid got to wander round clothes shops with me feigning interest at her every word, then, in the early hours, when she was fast asleep, I stalked the red-light areas, indulging myself stupid. By the time we got back to Glasgow I’d been transformed. On leaving, I’d been a lonely virgin. Now, I had a paragon of beauty on my arm and a catalogue of up to twenty sexual liaisons under my belt. I was oozing confidence and growing stronger every day, while you faded into oblivion. That said, the Italian trip had left me up to my eyes in debt, having spent nearly ten grand on my credit cards.”
“What are you on about, debt? Ten grand to you is like a hundred quid to most people!”
“Oh Danny Boy, you’re so naïve…that’s why everyone likes you I suppose. Still, they had me fooled as well. I was the last to know what was going on.”
“You’ve lost me Bob.”
“It’s all a sham Danny. The Squeaky Kirk — it’s a fraud. Back when we started out, Billy’s old man ran up a big gambling debt. Rex McLeod’s boys were sent to retrieve or bereave, but when the Big Man found out that his son had a band he offered him an escape route. He was willing to wave the full ten grand, pay for Squeaky Kirk recording sessions and even create a record label for us. The only condition, that he could launder his ill-gotten gains through spurious sales of records and merchandise. After our first album I was wandering around Glasgow like I owned the place, oblivious that we’d only shifted two hundred units of the sixty thousand sales going through the books. We were playing in front of twenty people some nights on the continent, yet still managing to shift two thousand CDs, T-shirts and programmes. The irony is that after my arrest we actually started selling albums for real, though only about five thousand nationwide.”
“What about the six hundred odd thousand sales reported in the press?”
“Oh come on Danny! Do you really think McLeod hasn’t got people working in the media, weaving illusions for him and lending his scams credibility?”
There was a pause, during which Danny no doubt tried to digest the extent of the deception, before interrogating Bob further.
“So I take it he was paying you a wage?”
“Two hundred and fifty quid a week plus touring expenses. The cars and suits were on credit and Ingrid was able to fund most of our nights out, after she landed a well-paid TV commercial when we returned from Italy. Stupid cow believed I was paying thousands out a week on mortgages, and so thought she was getting the best end of the deal. Not only did she think I was paying for the apartment and our retreat up on the coast, but a couple of places I’d invented in St Tropez and Mauritius too…what a friggin’ joke eh?”
“How the hell did you afford those houses then? And what about the little knocking shop over in Govan?”
“They all belong to Rex. Of course, as soon as I attracted the attention of the police he kicked me out. Do you know where I’ve been living this past year?”
“Where?”
“Herman’s.”
“Friggin’ hell, after all that’s gone on?”
“One frosty night, I was driving round Calton when I saw him with some church group, handing out cups of hot soup to the hookers. I felt obliged to take him home…though I don’t know why, not after all the harm he’s done me. When we got there, his house was lit up like a bloody Christmas tree…there was a friggin’ party going on! There must have been fifteen of the dirty rotten scumbags in the place — old winos with beards and smack head louts, supping out of cans from cardboard crates, neatly stacked up along the living room wall, all the way up to the ceiling.”
“Jesus.”
“He’d only been down to the Great Eastern and invited everyone back to live with him. Said it was an act of contrition, for what happened to that mouthy little bitch Curran. Also, he was trying to emulate you.”
“Me?”
“Yes. I’m afraid you’re his new hero. You’re all he ever talks about, ‘Danny this’ and ‘Danny that’. He’s been trying to do with the down and outs what you’ve done with the kids…it’s pathetic. At one stage he locked all the booze away until they sat through his music appreciation classes in the kitchen.”
Danny blew his cheeks out, a little spooked at being Herman’s new obsession. “And you moved in there, with all that lot?”
“Well, I’d been living in a bed and breakfast, so I thought, if I can just get rid of the freeloaders, Herman’s pad could make a good springboard for the future. So I did, while he was attending an appointment up at the loony bin. I got Rex’s lad, Jimmy, to come round with a team and scare them off. In return they helped themselves to some of Herman’s more valuable furniture. When he got back I just told him the down and outs had robbed him and fled…stupid bastard was devastated.”