“So I take it you’re still living there?”
“I was, up until a fortnight ago, when the prick stopped taking his medication and got detained again. Some do-gooders came round wanting to know my connection to him. Unsatisfied with my answers they returned next day with the police and had me evicted. For the past fortnight I’ve been sleeping on the back seat of my car, in a lay-by off the A82, between Glasgow and Dumbarton. It was while I was making the return journey to town — to wash at the swimming baths — that I spotted Ingrid and Francesca heading out here.” Bob stopped talking for a moment, as if suddenly stunned by a vision of some sort, before announcing: “It’s all over Dan. I’m gonna have to go back to my parents.”
“Stay here with us.”
“No, I’ll stay the night then it’s time to confront reality. It’s going to be hard, explaining that their precious only child never really made it big after all… that he’s a failure… a vulgar gangster’s ping pong ball…When I went to prison my mother attempted suicide you know. Fortunately, I’ve managed to convince her I was the innocent victim of a madman’s spite and she’s made an almost full recovery now. God knows what this is going do to her.” He made another big sigh. “But for that mouthy whore everything would be ticking along fine! The moment they arrested me I became a liability in Rex’s eyes. You see, his boys used the Govan stair my apartment was on for storing and chopping heroin. He’d put the whole place under my name and turned it into apartments with non-existent tenants. That way, if the police raided, they couldn’t pin anything on an individual. Luckily, the latest cargo had been shipped out by the time they arrived to try and gather evidence against me…not that they were gonna find much after I’d repainted the place twice and repeatedly jet sprayed the stairs with bleach and water.”
“Hold on…heroin? Rex Macleod doesn’t go near drugs, he bloody hates them!”
With what sounded to Judith like exasperation at Danny’s simplicity, Bob affected a sneering laugh. “What was it Shakespeare wrote? ‘Methinks the lad doth protest too much.’ Macleod hates drug dealers like Roy Cohn hated homosexuals. The anti-heroin persona? That was just a smokescreen for one of Europe’s biggest drugs barons. The street corner dealers he used to shop? They were actually banging out his gear, but didn’t even know it — stupid wee bastards! Just like I never knew he was buying all my records.”
“So where did my money come from?” There was a panic in Danny’s voice now.
“Definitely not from song royalties, put it that way. When you blackmailed me I begged Baxter to help find a solution, but he deserted me as a Rex McLeod reject. Until, that was, I explained the painting scam. He put it to the Big Man, who then lent me seven hundred and sixty grand on the express understanding that he recouped a million within twelve months, or else. Mercifully, my brainwave was a success, otherwise I’d be couriering packages every other month and ending up in the same prison cell the whole scheme was designed to keep me out of in the first place.”
“What do you mean, painting scam?”
“The kebab house man who bought all your work at the exhibition I set up in London was in the loop. He bought the paintings from me with money which Rex was already laundering through his takeaway shop tills. Then, having established a phoney market for your work, he sold them for real and got over a million quid, all of which went straight back to the Big Man, netting him a handsome two-hundred and forty grand profit on the original seven hundred and sixty he’d lent me in order to pay you off. The rich get richer my friend, but then you already know that better than anyone, after all, it’s pretty much all you’ve ever droned on about these past twenty-five years”
“You mean this college is courtesy of the plague that’s ravaged our city? Oh please God…no! Kids have died in their hundreds, been made homeless or lost limbs so that I can play with paints and drink fine wine? You bastard! You knew what you were doing all along didn’t you? You’ve deliberately made me complicit in that which I despise…compromised my soul and will no doubt destroy my mind in the process. All that crap about me having ‘won’, it’s just your bitter sarcasm. You’re the winner. Now, till the day I die, I’ll be more miserable than you ever could be.”
“You’ve only yourself to blame Danny. You relinquished the right to moralise once you entered the world of blackmail. Besides, it’s your own vanity that’s making you miserable…your romantic need to be perceived as ‘the good guy’. No one leaves this world with a clean sheet Danny boy, so why the hell did you think you were going to be any different?”
“You should have told me! You should have let me know you were broke! I’d never have shopped you anyway!”
“I couldn’t take that chance…not with your friggin’ morals! I may have made the most of my time-out in Barlinnie Prison to think, but I certainly had no intention of going back there.”
Danny, who was muttering insanely now, sounded like he was crying. “Oh-please-God-no! Please, please, please God - no!”
“Oh grow up man! Surely you of all people must be aware that all money’s filth. Our city, the one you’re so passionate about, was built on tobacco and slavery. And now, your college is built on heroin. Just like the National Health Service is built through taxes imposed on smokers with lung cancer and drinkers with liver disease, not to mention the oil guzzling, kid killing car drivers for whom, as you never ceased banging on about, half of Glasgow was demolished to provide a motorway. It’s the great paradox of life Danny — happy birthday son!”
Danny made no response.
“Anyway, I have to be up early so I’ll bid you adieu.”
The sound of Bob making his way upstairs to spend the night in Danny’s room, just across the landing, made Judith feel physically ill.
CHAPTER: 15
The morning after Bob’s revelation, Judith woke to loud arguing. Running down to the kitchen in her nightshirt, she found the whole college standing over Hamish, who was lying unconscious on the flagstone floor, after trying to prevent Ryan from assaulting other students. Overnight, while they’d all been sleeping outside the byre, someone had taken the young author’s computer and the back-up discs containing his book, leaving him to suspect, accuse and then physically attack those closest.
Remembering that Danny had told a certain somebody about Ryan’s work, Judith rushed back upstairs and burst into the room where Bob was supposed to be staying, only to find an empty, undisturbed bed. Heart sunken, she put on a grey hooded sweat top and jeans, then jogged back downstairs, herding Danny and Ryan to the minibus, which she drove at high speed towards Glasgow. Virtually catatonic with depression from the previous night’s bombshell, Danny sat on the farthest back seat, saying not a word until they arrived five hours later and then only to mutter something about Bob’s parents living in Bearsden.
Bearsden is an affluent, residential suburb on the northwest outskirts of the city, containing a significant number of million pound mansions along its leafy avenues. The Fitzgerald’s home, however, was a more modest affair — a whitewashed bungalow, beyond a low, granite stoned boundary wall and a small rectangle of lawn. The family had escaped here from the council tenements of Maryhill back in the nineteen-seventies, thanks to Mr. Fitzgerald’s earnings as a welder on the North Sea oil rigs. In accordance with her new middle class status — achieved by working class means — Mrs. Fitzgerald had sent her only child to Glasgow Academy, the city’s oldest public school, in the West End. Mixing among the real middle classes hadn’t come naturally to Bob though, and, despite achieving decent exam results, he’d grown into a self-absorbed teenager. But for meeting Danny, he’d probably still be hiding in his bedroom to this day, writing stories only for himself.