“Why should I care?”
“Bella fancies you,” leered Flynn. “She’s always asking after you. Maybe it’s mutual? A romance in our midst.”
“Jesus,” muttered McKirrop. “I’d have to be desperate.”
“Well you know what they say,” whispered Flynn conspiratorially. “Any port in a storm!”
“Christ! It would have to be a hurricane for Bella,” exclaimed McKirrop, making Flynn burst into laughter again.
“So what do you say? Are you gonna come down or not?”
“Maybe,” replied McKirrop.
Flynn shrugged. “Please yourself. I don’t suppose you’ve got a swallow on you?”
McKirrop paused for a moment before bringing a half bottle of Bell’s whisky out of his coat pocket. It was two thirds full.
“Jesus! Good stuff!” exclaimed Flynn, grabbing at the bottle and removing the top with his palm wrapped round it rather than his fingers. He took a long gulp before McKirrop grabbed it back from him. “That’s enough,” he growled.
“Drinking Scotch is it?” muttered Flynn suspiciously. “No wonder you’re not bothering with the likes of us any more. Not good enough for you I’m thinking.”
“It’s nothing like that,” said McKirrop. “I did a bit of work for a woman up the Braids way; that’s all.”
“I don’t believe it,” leered Flynn. “You’re up to something.”
“I don’t give a fuck what you believe,” retorted McKirrop with an abrupt change of mood, “So piss off before I brain you!”
Flynn held up his hands in front of him in mock submission. “I’m going, I’m going,” he said. “Just don’t come crawling back when whatever it is falls through.”
“Piss off!” repeated McKirrop with a swipe of his hand.
Flynn dodged the blow and moved away, looking back over his shoulder as he shuffled off. “Tight bastard,” he mumbled before turning back and concentrating on where he was going.
It started to rain again as McKirrop made his way through the dark streets with his hands sunk deep in his coat pockets. It was a double-breasted military great coat, a gift from some charity although he couldn’t remember which. Not that it mattered. God how he hated their smiles, not that that mattered either. What mattered was finding shelter for the night and getting a few drinks inside him. If his fall from grace had taught him anything it was that ‘now’ mattered, not the past, not the future but ‘now’. Every animal in nature seemed to know that except man. Human beings spent their lives wallowing in the past or planning for the future.
McKirrop glanced furtively behind him and saw that he was still alone. Flynn hadn’t followed him. With another glance in both directions he turned in through the iron gates of the cemetery and felt safe. He paused for a moment, feeling comfortably isolated before starting to make his way up to the far end. The cemetery was a large rambling place which had been allowed to become overgrown because of private ownership who saw it as a real estate investment for the future. Many of the paths had succumbed to the ambitions of creeping shrubs and moss and were almost impassable but McKirrop knew his way around well enough. Using outstretched arms he parted the undergrowth where necessary and ducked under low branches until he had arrived at his new ‘home’ as it had been for the past two weeks, a gravedigger’s hut that was no longer in use.
Although parts of the cemetery itself were still used, contract workmen from outside were now brought in to dig and fill graves when required. Rationalisation of labour, if he remembered the term correctly. There was no longer a need to store tools and equipment on the premises. An ill wind for the Council Works Department had brought McKirrop a home.
It was quiet here and the hut was reasonably wind and watertight. His new-found ‘touch’ up in the Braids district had given him the opportunity to provide a few creature comforts. Cleaning out her garage, unused since her husband’s death, had enabled him to acquire during the process a torch, some candles and a butane stove which came as a kit in a tin box complete with spares. She had paid him handsomely into the bargain and there was a promise of regular odd jobs to come. There were also some nice tools in that garage that might need ‘re-locating’ at some time but, for the moment, he would continue to play his role as the honest artisan who had fallen on hard times and allow her to play Mother Theresa or the Good Samaritan or whoever else she saw herself as being. Symbiosis! That was the word he had been trying to remember. He and the woman would continue in symbiosis. That was as far into the future as McKirrop cared to look.
McKirrop twisted the rusty padlock on the door and pulled it off. The tongue was broken but it looked as if it was functional so it had deterrent value and he was careful to replace it when he went out in the morning. He went inside and pulled the door behind him, anxious to be in out of the wind. The inside was cold and damp and smelt of earth and rough sacking but the air was still and that was a blessing in itself. He rummaged under the sacking in the corner and brought out the torch which he switched on while he erected the stove in the middle of the floor and brought it into life. The blue flame and the comforting hiss from the burner made him release a sigh of satisfaction. He glanced up at the single window to check that the sacking screen he had tacked over it was still in place. It was highly unlikely that anyone would come anywhere near here at night, or even in the day time for that matter, but there was no point in taking any chances he didn’t have to.
The hut, small and square, heated up quite quickly. There was no ventilation but that didn’t matter. He liked the smell of the gas. It was suggestive of warmth and, if it helped him sleep, so much the better. The Gas Board were hardly likely to come round and condemn it. McKirrop smiled at the thought and brought out his bottle to take a long drink from it. A drink by the fire in his own home, another thought to make him smile. Home used to be a four bedroom villa not more than ten miles from this place with a Saab at the door and malt whisky in the drinks cabinet but that was a hundred years ago and didn’t bear dwelling on. That was ‘then’ and this was ‘now’ and that’s what mattered. He had warmth, a roof over his head and a bottle in his hand. Everything was just fine. These bastards down by the canal could get maudlin if they liked with their bullshit about past glories but he was doing just fine.
McKirrop was stirred into a groggy state of consciousness about three in the morning, not that he knew the time, just that he had been sound asleep. His arm caught the empty bottle as he struggled to prop himself up and he knocked it across the floor. There were noises coming from outside in the cemetery. The thought that it might be the police cut through the haze inside his head and forced him into alertness. They might be having one of their bloody round-ups. De-lousing, a shower using carbolic soap and back out on the street again. ‘Returned to the community’. He sat still and listened like an animal in the night. He could hear clumsy movement in the nearby bushes and loud whispering. Periodically the noise level would rise and someone would urge silence.
McKirrop got to his knees and pulled back a corner of the sacking on the window a little. He couldn’t see anything in the blackness but heard a voice somewhere say, “Get on with it then.” A few seconds later he caught a glimpse of a torch beam through the trees. It was about twenty-five metres away in the part of the cemetery that was still in use.
Thankful that the intruders were apparently not the police and that they appeared to have no interest in him or his ‘property’, McKirrop relaxed and began to grow curious. He edged open the door a little in an attempt to hear more of what was going on.
He could hear the sound of a shovel being used and it excited him. He had long held the view that the best place for a murderer to dispose of a body would be a cemetery, particularly one like this which nobody cared about. If they — whoever they were — were burying someone it would be as well for him to know about it. There might be something in it for him; a possibility of blackmail perhaps? A reward for information? But maybe it wasn’t a body they were burying; maybe it was the proceeds from a robbery which he would dig up later and make off with. He could almost feel the sun on his back, hear the ice cubes clink in the glass. At the Copa, Copa Cabana... But first he had to find out.