“Exactly. They’re all doing shitty jobs during the day and then they’re too tired in the evenings to write anything decent. Ryan, on the other hand, will have a guaranteed income and all the time in the world to produce a masterpiece, if he wishes.” McLeod had grown quite passionate during this exposition. “Three hundred quid a week’s about a hundred pound more than this kid can ever hope to earn.” He turned to Ryan. “I’ll bet my balls you’ve got a criminal record, eh son?”
“Aye, for assault when I was sixteen and two raps for shoplifting.”
“Then you’re minimum wage, warehouse fodder till the day you die I’m afraid…just like I was at your age. No different to a black man in Apartheid South-Africa or an untouchable in India. I was forced to carve my own path, outside of the system.” He looked at Judith as if expecting admiration or sympathy, before returning his attention to Ryan, now nodding in accord with what was being said. “And remember, there’s nothing to stop you getting a day job if you wanted. You’d be on five hundred quid a week then, twenty-two, maybe twenty-three grand a year! When you walked in here you were underclass. I’m giving you the opportunity to leave middle class.”
At this point Danny finally intervened. “Ryan, we have to have a word in private.”
“Oh no,” McLeod interjected smugly, “there’ll be no whispering round corners. I like complete transparency when I do business, so if you’ve something to say, say it here.”
“Complete transparency eh? In that case, he’s going to use you Ryan, as a vehicle to launder money…money from heroin dealing!”
McLeod turned to Bob and glared, yellow teeth snarling like a rabid dog, eyes as dead as great white shark’s, before facing Ryan again and raising his voice impatiently.
“Right son, it’s make your mind up time. If you’re interested Fergus will take you into town to sign the necessary documents. If not, get the hell out of here.”
Ryan turned to Danny as if imploring his advice.
“I’ve told you what I know,” Danny said, dejectedly. “Armed with such information, I personally wouldn’t get involved. But I can’t impose my principles on you…and I’m certainly in no position to judge.”
Next, Ryan looked at Judith. She didn’t want to hurt Danny, but her maternal feelings towards the youngster won the day. Making sure he got credit and at least some reward for his work was her main concern, so she strained a smile of encouragement.
“Don’t worry about what anyone else thinks sweetheart, just get on and do what’s right for you.”
When Ryan agreed to accompany Baxter, Danny marched out, looking ashen. During the distraction, no one had noticed Bob slip away, escaping Rex McLeod’s wrath at his indiscretion over the money laundering scam. It transpired he’d received nothing for procuring Ryan’s book. His only reward had been the knowledge that he’d hurt Danny some more.
After being escorted off McLeod’s property, Judith found the minibus gone, leaving her all alone in Glasgow. She booked into a hotel for the night then returned to Gairloch by public transport the following day. When she finally arrived, after an eight hour bus journey, the kids told her there’d been no sign of Danny and that Hamish had packed his bags and left with Angie, citing Ryan’s assault as the final straw.
All week, Judith agonised over whether to stay, but, in the end, decided it was futile. She knew Danny would never return, and Ryan worked for Rex McLeod now anyway. So, realizing that Gairloch College was over, she left Fin with the students and drove back to England, where she’d soon be working as an assistant curator again, only this time at Birmingham’s City Art Gallery.
PART FOUR
CHAPTER: 16
The following summer, Judith took a well-deserved walking holiday in Iceland. To get there though, she had to catch a plane from Glasgow, where she arrived by train the day before her flight. While queuing for a taxi outside Central Station with her luggage, she spotted a familiar face approaching, smoking a roll up, accompanied by a shell-suited, teenage brunette, pushing a baby in a pram. It was Dickens. He stopped to talk, telling her that he was living back at the Great Eastern Hotel, but would soon be moving, with his girlfriend and nine-month-old child, to a brand new housing association pad in Possil.
“That’s were Danny used to live,” Judith exclaimed, smiling genially towards the skinny young mother, who was either nodding at everything Dickens said or laughing nervously.
“I know, he’s told me all about the place,” Dickens declared proudly.
Judith was taken aback by this statement. “When did you see Danny then?”
“Didn’t you know? We’re next door neighbours over at the Great Eastern. I apologised to him for my behaviour that Christmas night up in the Highlands…he was really good about it.”
“Yes, he’s like that. He’s a good man,” Judith said, trying to maintain a veneer of normality, but her veins were pulsating with shock at the news about Danny’s lowly accommodation. That aside, she was delighted to see Dickens so happy, but, knowing how sensitive and prone to violence he could be, worried about what might happen if his young girlfriend ever decided to leave him.
After dropping her luggage at a bed and breakfast, Judith took a cab to the Great Eastern Hotel. Here, Danny lived in one of twenty-four white, wooden cubicles which faced one another along a narrow, chlorine smelling corridor. He was sitting on a bed wearing his blue overalls when she arrived, after being shown up to the fourth floor by a masculine looking female warden with tattooed forearms.
“I’m surprised you want to see me,” he said, forlornly.
Embarrassed by Danny’s self-deprecation, Judith’s eyes wandered from the single bed at the centre of the cubicle to his mother’s portrait painting, now nailed to the wooden wall behind. Looking down again, her attention was grabbed by a hardback book on the pillow behind him. Staring up from its glossy flysheet, against a backdrop of iron shuttered, concrete tenements was Ryan, head turned just enough to flaunt his battle scar.
“Why are you here Danny?” She regained eye contact. “Is it because you feel guilty about being happy that year up at Gairloch? Are you ashamed that your contentment was funded by McLeod’s drug money?”
“How do you know about that?” Danny exclaimed, his eyes following Judith as she approached the bed and picked Ryan’s book up.
“I overheard your conversation with Bob.”
Danny looked relieved not to have to explain everything. In the meantime Judith perused the item in her hands. Published by another Rex McLeod front called Highly Educated Delinquent, it went under the title ‘Toi’s Are Us’ — Toi being the name of the ‘team’ which Ryan had led around his housing scheme.
“I stole it from Waterstone’s,” Danny confessed. “Somehow, shoplifting seemed more moral than subsidising a heroin dealer.” This elicited an exasperated sigh from Judith.
“Ryan really disappointed me when he accepted McLeod’s proposition. My own corruption was bad enough, but his fall was like the end of all hope. It was as if everything me and him had discussed over that past twelve months meant nothing. After he let me down like that, I didn’t want to be near human beings ever again.”
“But you let him down first Danny…can’t you even see that! By being all nice things to all men, you allowed the bad to prosper at the expense of the good. You should have been protecting Ryan and all those other kids from spiteful weirdos such as Bob Fitzgerald, but instead you allowed him to sleep under the same roof…you even invited him to stay permanently! You were too blinded by those damned egalitarian beliefs to notice the danger you were putting everyone in. The fact is Danny, there are people who are always going to be bad, no matter what, and they don’t deserve our compassion. Those types have to be expelled from society otherwise it just isn’t worth living in.”