A bell chimed and a Super Mario lookalike greeted me with a black robe at the ready. ‘Is it yourself under all that?’
‘The very same.’
Mac flung the robe over his shoulder, a silver comb in one hand and a set of scissors in the other, he stretched out his arms to hug me. I leaned forward, watched my back in the floor to ceiling mirrors.
‘It’s good tae see you, pal,’ he said. ‘Come in, come in. Get yourself oot the cold.’
Mac’s patter hadn’t changed in years. By the look of him neither had his T-shirt — an early eighties job with the words ‘I Came On Eileen’ printed across the front.
I said, ‘Thanks,’ took him up on the offer of a coffee.
Mac looked to be aiming for a more up-market clientele than usual. The way this city was headed, he’d no choice, but it seemed like a struggle against the grain. Especially as the waft of Brut 33 still filled the joint.
The coffee came with a wafer and a little bunch of grapes, three to be precise, on the side.
‘What the hell’s this?’ I said.
‘Call it a wee garnish, eh.’
‘I’ll call it what it is — bloody pretentious!’
‘Pretentious… moi? You say the most hurtful things.’ Mac smiled at me in the mirror. ‘Right, what can I do for you, big man?’
‘Information.’
His comb hovered above my head, he shifted it sideways, said, ‘I meant the haircut, pal.’
‘Short, very. And lose the beard.’
He ruffled my mullet in progress, grabbed up a sizeable ponytail. ‘Do you want your hair cut round the back?’
I joked with him: ‘Why? Have you no room in the shop?’
‘Ha-ha. Funny man.’
He started cutting.
I started probing. ‘Billy Thompson.’
‘Uh-hu.’ Mac looked unfazed. Always his way of doing things. If he knew something, it needed teasing out of him. Though he hadn’t been part of a firm for decades, he still liked to be seen as part of the life, a man in the know.
‘Shame for the boy,’ I said.
‘Och, we’re all headed the same road, Gus.’
‘Some quicker than others.’
‘True. True.’
I upped the ante. ‘Mac, his family’s ruined. Have you a family of your own?’
‘Gus…’ He stopped cutting and looked at me over the comb. ‘You know I’ve a family.’
I snapped, ‘Well, stop buggering about and tell me what you know.’
Mac looked in the mirror. His mouth became a taut wire. ‘Relax, would you?’ he said softly. This Weejie obviously took notes in the anger-management classes. I pulled out my cigarettes and showed Mac the packet.
‘Oh, go on then, haven’t had a red top since Adam was a boy in Dumbarton Rock.’
We sparked up and started to fill the small shop with smoke. It seemed to relax us both.
Mac said, ‘He was an early riser.’
‘What — from his pit in the mornings?’
‘No. No. He was on the up.’ Mac raised his hands, crossed his brows, then continued, ‘The last time I saw Billy Boy he was driving about in a Merc, not any Merc, a fifty-grander. Don’t think it was his, mind.’
‘Benny Zalinskas?’
Mac’s eyes widened. Then they dropped like lead weights. He turned quickly back to the job at hand. ‘I don’t know.’
‘Mac, come on, you can’t kid a kidder.’
‘I really don’t know. Probably was the Bullfrog’s, he didn’t say.’
‘Whoa, whoa, back up there. The Bullfrog?’
‘Aye, that’s his handle. Benny the Bullfrog.’
I laughed. ‘Nice one — so, so scary!’
Mac smirked, then the smirk trailed off and his face changed. Suddenly a grey pallor settled on him. A real shit-stopping seriousness.
‘Gus, that whole firm’s bad news,’ he said. ‘You don’t want to get involved.’
‘Then put me off,’ I said.
‘I don’t know what to say. I’m well out of it… Christ, in my day carving seemed scary enough, these days all the firms have shooters coming out their arses, but nobody messes with Benny’s mob.’
‘Why? You telling me he just got off the plane from Moscow one day, took over a well-established patch and nobody said boo to him?’
‘He has the numbers. He’s well big, Gus — the Edinburgh firm’s a minor spoke in his wheel.’ Mac pointed the scissors at me. ‘This guy’s fucking Blockbusters, do you get me?’
‘Whatever you say.’
‘I mean it, stay away.’
‘And what do I tell Billy’s family? I got scared off so your boy’s murderer is just gonna be left to walk the streets. No can do, Mac. I owe his father answers.’
Mac threw up his hands once again, said, ‘You’re done.’
‘Come again?’
‘That’ll be five fifty.’
‘But what about the beard?’
8
On the way out Mac’s door I bumped into someone I’d been meaning to call.
‘I might have guessed you’d be headed in there. Is this the on trend clientele Mac’s going for?’
‘Bollocks to that, he owes me big time. Who you think splashed for the decor?’
‘Decor — Christ, you’re getting la-de-fucking-da, Hod.’
A smile. Laughs.
‘It’s business speak. You know me.’
‘Aye, into everything bar a shit sandwich.’
‘That’s about right — anyway, what about that room I offered you?’
Hod was an old, old friend. One I’d kind of let slide, since letting things slide became my way of life. To his credit, he’d kept up, even offered to dig me out of a few holes.
‘Yeah, I’m all for it. Just give me a couple of days to get sorted and I’ll bell you.’
‘No worries.’
Hod turned, swaggered through Mac’s door like John Wayne, testing the hinges. Mac waved me off again, I wasn’t done with him, but he was a slow burner. I knew I’d have to let him think I really needed him before he’d come up with the goods. If I was lucky, I’d sown enough seeds. Mac’s type love to be useful, just can’t help themselves.
I took a stroll down Princes Street. One messed-up main drag if ever there was one. They say the tills ring up more moolah here than any other street in Scotland. That’s no mean feat, especially when you consider there’s only shops on one side of the road. On the other, there’s a gigantic medieval castle complete with cannons and crumbling battlements. There’s a stretch of grass at the foot of it that we call the Gardens. Its 24-7 soundtrack is the skirl of bagpipes; strictly for the city-breakers.
I stuck to the right side of the road. The place seemed to be awash with trendy types. Everyone looked the same — I just don’t get fifty-somethings dressing like beat boys. No matter how trendy it becomes, I won’t be carrying a manbag; I won’t be wearing shoes that curl up like Ali Baba’s slippers; and the day you see me in a hoodie and Kappa cap, I’m on my way to put a gun to my head.
Still, my look played on my mind. After a few brews I cared less, but now I had people to impress. I checked myself in Currys shop window. Sorry, Currys. digital. Sure that dot makes all the difference to the paying public. Mac had done a beast of a job with my barnet, cropped to the wood but with a little weight on top. I looked halfway to respectable.
As I stared, something caught my eye inside the shop. A face I recognised appeared on the wall of television screens. I went inside to catch the verbals, it turned out to be a man I knew well. The Right Honourable Alisdair Cardownie MSP.
He banged on about stemming the tide of illegal immigration. I raised a laugh. Couldn’t help but remember the time he was hardly able to stem the tide of his own nosebleed.
A title flashed up below his name, ‘Minister for Immigration’. So he’d moved on then, landed the top job. A shudder jolted through me. Since our last meeting, I’d taken the opposite direction on the career ladder.
A voice from nowhere, a thick Geordie accent, suddenly landed within earshot, ‘Is it a flatscreen you’re after, sir?’
I turned round to see an acne-covered yoof. A mess of angry red plooks shone on his nose, so much gel slapped on his head he looked like the victim of a water-bombing prank.