“I’m not saying you’re wrong, but, because of my upbringing, it isn’t easy for me to think like that.”
“What’s that toe-rag up to these days anyway?”
“Bob? He’s avoiding Rex McLeod full-time, odd jobbing his way round the world and restricting himself to remote places. The last I heard, he was supposed to be working at a fish canning factory, somewhere north of the Arctic Circle in Norway. I just hope to God he manages to evade that filth peddling bastard for ever more.”
“Why?”
“Why? Well, mainly, because if anything terrible happens to Bob then it’ll be all my fault, for making McLeod aware that he’d been sharing trade secrets with me.”
“But if McLeod does catch up with Bob, then you’ll at least have achieved some justice for that poor girl Carina…what’s her name?”
“Curran.”
“Yes.”
“Well, first of all, I’ve learnt that there isn’t any justice and, secondly, if it was wrong of Bob to have inflicted violence upon Carina, then it would be no less wrong for Rex McLeod or anybody else to inflict violence upon Bob. An act of barbarism shouldn’t suddenly become palatable simply because it’s supported by a moral argument. I’m not having a pop at you Judith, but frankly, there’s nothing more sinister than a sadist in search of legitimisation. As far as I’m concerned, you either enjoy violence or you don’t.”
Judith stood in silence, wracking her brains for a counter argument. But at heart she felt Danny was right.
“So, apart from festering in this hole, what else have you been up to these past ten months? What’s happened to the college for God’s sake?”
As Danny’s explanation gained steam, Judith sat down on the bed, listening intently.
It transpired that he’d never returned north, being unable to set foot in a house financed by heroin. However, he had spent his final fifty grand employing qualified teachers to get the kids through their diplomas. But, according to Katy — who visited him regularly at the hostel — it had been a miserable place thereon. The new employees did only as much as they were paid for and eschewed the students when outside the classroom. The big communal dinners became a thing of the past, and the kids were discouraged from the house altogether. Instead, they were expected to prepare their own individual meals back at the byre, in a tiny kitchen which occupied the room vacated by Ryan.
With all the joy removed, only six of the original twelve Glaswegians had completed their second year. Thanks to the foundations laid by Danny, Hamish, Judith and Angie, though, they all achieved high grades that summer — most notably Belinda, who passed English with distinction, despite being heartbroken over Ryan’s departure.
Once the place had been deserted — around mid-May — Danny had put the house and byre on the market for less than he’d paid for them derelict, so desperate was he to be cleansed of any association with Rex McLeod’s money. It sold within days. The only problem was, his charity owned Gairloch College and so he had to conduct the absurd charade of selling a painting to it for one hundred and fifty thousand pounds, in order to get his hands on the cash. At first he’d been more than happy paying the Capital Gains Tax to the government, until he learnt that Rex McLeod’s security firm had just won a large government contract. There seemed to be no escape — he was either being paid by or paying for the drug dealer.
Carrying the remaining money in a holdall, Danny had walked through some of the city’s most deprived areas, during the early hours, redistributing it as he went. First off, he’d revisited North Glasgow, where Katy and her parent’s now lived in an even worse and older building than their original tenement, which had been demolished for private houses. Not only was it a far cry from the home with front and back doors that the housing association had promised, but it too would soon be torn down. Here, he’d posted ten thousand pounds through the letter box, as thanks for the girl’s unstinting dedication to his ill mother, and to help finance the creative writing degree she was embarking on that autumn, down in East Anglia. Then he’d hit the daunting, thirty floor, Springburn high rises. Despite the elevators not working, he dropped twenty grand at a fourteenth floor apartment, home to a guy called Brucie Cruickshanks, who was dying from Mesothelioma after years working with asbestos in the Govan shipyards. The poor bastard had been denied compensation and Danny hoped his donation might lessen the stress, if not for Brucie then maybe for Mrs. Cruickshanks. After this, he’d returned to the East End, pushing a similar amount through the door of a football club for recovering drug addicts, before crossing the M8 footbridge and walking several miles to a new, semi-detached house in the redeveloped Blackhill area, where he posted a manila envelope containing fifty thousand pounds. He hadn’t quite made it back down the path though, when a squat, moustachioed fellow aged about fifty came out, wanting to know what was going on. Danny could not have imagined a worse situation. He’d been left with two choices: run or finally confess his sins to the person he’d exploited most. In the name of decency, he’d felt compelled to introduce himself.
The man had invited Danny inside, where a thin, dark haired woman lay on the couch watching TV — it was Carina Curran. Having spent months semi-comatose, followed by years in a deep, appetite suppressing depression, she’d shed much of her former weight. She’d made a steady recovery in the three years since the attack, and even regained her ability to walk, but only over short distances and then very slowly.
Having taken the armchair opposite Mr. Curran, Danny had wasted no time with his revelation, maniacally spewing it up without commas or full stops. He’d been prepared for hysterics from Carina and even physical violence from her dad, but instead they’d just sat in silence, depriving him of any distraction from his shame. Confession over, the eight foot walk to the front door had seemed like a mile.
Three days later, the Currans had turned up at the Great Eastern Hotel, returning Danny’s money. He’d tried to convince Carina that, as a victim of both Bob Fitzgerald’s violence and Rex McLeod’s drug dealing, she was entitled to some compensation. But she’d said she abhorred the compensation culture and believed all money should be in the hands of communities, not individuals.
“Individuals waste money on phone ringtones, cocaine and furry dice to hang from their rear view mirrors,” she’d said. “Whereas communities, at their best, spend it on brain surgeons and special needs education. As a beneficiary of both, how can I legitimise taking any more money out of the pot? Without a Health Service, fifty thousand pounds wouldn’t even have paid for my bed and breakfast in a private hospital.”
When Carina spoke, her brain damage had made itself apparent. She’d had to pause every so often to remember a simple word or regain a train of thought and occasionally she’d slurred her words. Apart from this handicap she’d been remarkably eloquent — especially for someone having to relearn how to read and write.
Carina said that closing a college for twenty kids in order to make one individual wealthy was absurd. If he really wanted to make amends for what he’d done, she’d told Danny, he could teach her how to paint.
After the first drawing lesson round at the house, Carina had taken a nap, leaving Danny and Mr. Curran alone together. Mr. Curran had explained how the be all and end all of his daughter’s life had been playing the cello, until Mrs. Curran died, following a protracted illness. It was at this time that she’d become close friends with a wealthy violin player from her orchestra, called Cordellia Henderson. This elegant lady — the wife of a merchant banker — had been smoking heroin in Carina’s company after shows for years without any apparent adverse effects. As a consequence, the young girl had seen no harm accepting an invitation to a toot one evening, as a distraction from her grief. The banker’s wife had enjoyed having a partner in crime and Carina smoked heroin gratis on fourteen consecutive nights before that particular run of shows ended. The following week, she’d been ringing on the Henderson’s doorbell at their West End townhouse, lusting after another toot. But the visit had been ill received, with Carina being scolded for her indiscretion and warned never to visit the house again, under any circumstances. If she hadn’t just inherited three thousand pounds the teenager would have been blissfully broke, as always, and gone straight home, perhaps never touching heroin again. Instead, she’d hit the East End, enquiring for dealers among the street corner gangs, until someone directed her to a Gallowgate apartment. Within a month all her money had been smoked away and her life was spiralling out of control. Having been sacked from the orchestra for falling asleep during a performance, she’d sold the cello her father had worked double shifts for at the Tennents Brewery, before taking up prostitution and the hypodermic needle. The rest, as they say, is history. Fortunately, Carina’s injuries had erased all memory of heroin. Unfortunately, though, they’d also stolen her musical talent.