Alison looked back at Candy II and frowned. "She hasn't got kids."
They walked on.
"Alison," said Maureen carefully, "I know ye probably get asked this all the time, but how old are you?"
"Is that what you're paying to ask me?" said Alison curtly, turning the corner into the alley.
"No."
"Well, fuck off, then."
They settled on the wall. Alison took a cigarette from Leslie and a tenner from Kilty.
"We want to know if you've ever heard of a guy called Si McGee," said Maureen.
Alison thought about it, repeating the name under her breath. "Naw. Don't think so."
"What about the Park Circus Health Club?"
"Oh, aye, I know that, yeah. Up by the park?"
Maureen nodded.
"I knew a lassie worked up there," said Alison, "but she's chucked it now. Don't know where she is."
"Why did she leave?"
"She got Jesus," said Alison, waving her hand dismissively, as if she herself had something altogether better. "Heard she was doing voluntary work up at the Wayfarers' Club."
"Is that the soup kitchen by the river?"
"Aye," she said, making fists and grimacing. 'Breed and jam, breed and jam.' ' She saw that they didn't understand and added quietly, "That's what they say in the queue."
"Your pal who worked there," said Maureen. "What's her name?"
Alison took a draw on her fag. "Candy."
Chapter 30
The man pressed the buzzer and waited on the dark stairs. He saw a glint of light from the spy hole and smiled at it automatically, as if for a photograph. The door opened and Kevin welcomed him in. The man had been here many times, so often that now he almost got hard at the sight of green wallpaper or a blue carpet. He smiled to Cindy behind the desk but she looked away, knowing what he was here for. Kevin was standing at the top of the stairs to the basement, wearing the same cheap evening suit he always wore.
"All right, Kev?" said the man, handing over his three hundred quid in fresh twenties.
"No bad," said Kevin, holding the banister, bulky and ungainly on the shallow steps. "How are ye yoursef?"
"No bad, no bad."
The decor stopped at the bottom of the steps. The basement walls were a glossy gray, the floor bare concrete, adding a frisson of solemnity. Kevin led the man along the long corridor to a room at the end. "Oh," said the man nervously, "I've not been in this room before."
Kevin smiled as he took out his keys and looked through them. A lot of the punters liked to make small talk before they went in, to chat and make it all seem normal.
"Aye," he said. "It's a nice room. Soundproof."
The man was tense but attempted a tight smile. "Good," he said, and wiped his damp lips. "Good."
Kevin swung open the door. She was skinny as fuck, dressed in cheap knickers and a bra with a see-through dress pulled over it, sitting on a double bed with a nylon flowery cover. She looked surly. The man looked in at her. "Hello. Speak English?"
She didn't answer. The man walked into the center of the room, nodding and pulling off his belt. He called out as Kevin shut the door, "It's okay, isn't it?"
Kevin glanced back at the sulking Polish bitch on the bed. "Anything," he said, knowing she couldn't understand. "Anything at all."
In the six months since they had started the business, Si McGee had never seen his sister so worried. She was flicking the ash from a pink cocktail fag with a gold tip over and over into the bin, kept going over the same details and wouldn't go home even though she had nothing to do here. For Margaret emotional behavior of any kind constituted a full-blown panic attack.
"I'm telling ye," she said. "I'm telling ye, she was there and she was noising up the sheriff. We don't need this. We don't need this now. Charlie'll go fucking spastic. He'll make his move if there's a squeak of trouble."
"There won't be trouble," said Si. "Calm down. There won't be trouble."
Margaret squashed out the cigarette against the side of the metal waste bin and took out her handbag, clipping it open and lifting out the black and gold fag packet.
"Why did you put it out if you're going to light another one?" he said, trying to get her off the subject.
Margaret flicked back the gold paper and selected a green cigarette this time. "The bit near the filters gives ye cancer." She lit up and began flicking it into the bin interminably. "You don't know the Adams family like I do. You've never met them. Nothing stops business. A bit of trouble and they'll wipe us."
"They'll move on us soon anyway," Si pointed out. "You said so yourself. As soon as we're up and running, they'll wait for us to move on them, and if we don't they'll move on us."
"It's the worst time for this shit to fucking happen, I'm telling ye." She was frightened, and Si knew from his management course at university that now was the time to take charge, show leadership. "Look." He lifted her bag off his desk and handed it to her. "Put that on the floor." On the desk between them was a copy of a newspaper, open at a picture of Maureen. "We've got her picture," he said. "We both know what she looks like. We took care of Ella and we can sort her out too. It's a problem, I grant you, but it's a fixable problem. Tell me it's a fixable problem."
Margaret glared at him resentfully.
"Tell me it's a fixable problem," he repeated slowly, trying not to smile.
She didn't smile at him, but that didn't mean she didn't get it. Margaret rarely smiled. She swallowed and puffed her cigarette.
"It's a fixable problem," she said obediently. "But I cannae fix it. And you cannae. The court case'll finger us both."
"We'll just have to delegate, then," he said patiently. "What about Kevin?"
Margaret tutted under her breath. "Fuck off. He's fucking useless. Charlie Adams'll go fucking mad if anything happens here. He'll say he was coming in tae get his dough back and wipe us out, take the whole fucking thing over."
"You think I don't want rid of her too? She shouted at me in front of my school friends" He blushed at the memory. The kind regard of the St. Al's old boys was all he had left now the estate agent's business was closing up, and Maureen O'Donnell had tried to humiliate him, to take even that away from him. He took a deep breath. "We'll take care of it. Stop worrying."
Margaret stubbed her cigarette, sending a cloud of orange flecks into the bin. "Will we ever be big enough to fuck Charlie Adams over?"
"Maybe," Si said, lifting the edges of a file and slapping it shut. "Soon. And the minute we're big enough to pay him off and clean our own money, he'll try and fuck us."
"Just keep him sweet," she said, nodding to the fire exit.
"I will."
"Charlie sets a lot of store by him."
"I will," Si repeated. "I will."
He had to stop and catch his breath. He wasn't young anymore. The combination of everything – the woman, the warm room and the flecks of blood – it was too much. He swung his legs over the side of the bed, put his feet flat on the floor, and hung over his knees, breathing in deeply. Behind him he heard her panting and moaning. "D'ye like that, do ye?" he said, wiping the sweat from his face with an open hand. "Yeah? You fucking like it, don't ye?"
"I'm love you," she said.
He thought he had misheard her, thought the heat and the exertion were making him imagine words, but she said it again. "I'm love you."
He laughed, disbelievingly, and looked up at her. She was tied to the wall, her hands together above her head, her feet chained to the bedposts. Her naked back and buttocks were swollen with red welts from his belt and bloody scratches where the buckle had cut her. "You love me, do ye?"
She twisted on her shackles, bending her head over her shoulder so she could see him out of the corner of her eye. Her eyes were dark and open wide, looking around at such a sharp angle that she resembled a frightened cow. "I live your home?" she said.