Butcher (23 page)

Wee Vic said, ‘Here, that burd was gemme, eh?'

Rooney said, ‘I've had better.'

Wee Vic said, ‘Lying big tosser. You never get crumpet. No like her anyway.'

‘I've had more fucking crumpet than you've had sausage rolls, wee man.'

‘Aye, right, sure ye have.' Wee Vic leaned forward and tapped Mathieson on the shoulder. ‘So how long did the Boss say we'd be outta town?'

Mathieson said, ‘A month, mibbe six weeks. Until things quiet down.'

Wee Vic said, ‘Fuckzake. Six weeks in Newcastle.'

Rooney said, ‘I know burdz in Newcastle.'

Stip rattled his newspaper. ‘Six weeks, long time.'

‘Orders is orders,' Mathieson said.

He drove down a narrow industrial road between warehouses and haulage companies until he saw the wire fence that surrounded HiCon. A galvanized-steel building, surrounded by long brown stalks of weed, sat in the centre of a gravel compound. The building itself hadn't been used for years. The sign HiCon was weather-battered and hung askew above the main door.

Mathieson got out, unlocked the door in the fence, then drove the minibus through the weeds. ‘This is where we get off, boys,' he said. ‘You'll be picked up here and taken down to Newcastle. You'll get expenses, plus a bonus.'

‘Now you're talking,' Wee Vic said, rubbing his hands together.

‘I have the money right here.' Mathieson patted the inside pocket of his jacket and then unlocked the door of the building. The three men followed him inside a large space filled with flattened old cardboard boxes which bore the company name.

‘What's HiCon anyway?' Rooney asked.

‘Used to make computer bits, I think.' Mathieson strolled round the big room.

The three men explored. Wee Vic kicked at some of the cardboard slats and a couple of mice scurried out from under them. ‘How long are we meant to wait here?'

Mathieson said, ‘Five minutes, mibbe ten.'

‘So how come
you're
no taking us to Newcastle?' Rooney asked.

‘I don't have the time, Rooney.'

‘The Boss keeps his boy jumping,' Stip said. ‘So where's this bonus?'

Mathieson took three envelopes from his pocket and handed one to each man. Rooney ripped his open immediately, and counted. ‘Five thou. Nice.'

‘Plus your hotel's paid for,' Mathieson said. He looked at the wire mesh that had been erected inside each window. ‘Stay in the hotel, lie low, don't make a public nuisance.'

‘And what if we do?' Wee Vic asked.

‘I'm passing down orders, boys. That's all.'

Rooney said, ‘Stupid cunt hung herself and we have to take a hike to England.'

Wee Vic was pissing in the corner. With his back to the room he said, ‘This is gash. Newcastle. Fuck that. They talk funny doon there.'

Mathieson said, ‘It's not like you're going to jail.'

‘My girlfriend's pregnant,' Stip said.

‘Away tay fuck,' Wee Vic said. ‘What do you want kids for? Always under yer feet, always greeting and then they need clothes and shoes and you're handing out money all over the place. Nappies. Bibs. Clothes. What the fuck else?'

‘We fancy having a wean,' Stip said quietly.

‘Who's the daddy,' Wee Vic said, zipping up. ‘You better hope it has your eyebrow.'

Stip said, ‘Ha bloody ha.'

A vehicle drew up outside. Mathieson heard the wheels crunch gravel and then the sound of two doors opening and closing. He went outside.

‘Here, where the fuck's he going?' Wee Vic asked.

Rooney looked through a window. ‘He's talking to a couple of guys who just got out a minibus.'

‘Two drivers?' Wee Vic approached the window. ‘Who needs two drivers to take us to Newcastle?'

‘Mibbe only one of them's a driver,' Rooney said.

‘So who's the second punter?' Stip was at another window, peering out. ‘Anybody know them?'

Nobody did.

Stip said, ‘Mibbe one's a minder.'

Mathieson reappeared in the doorway. ‘I'm off, boys. Have a good trip. Stay out of trouble, mind.'

‘Aye, I promise,' Wee Vic said, putting his hands behind his ears and making them stick out like donkey flaps.

Mathieson walked back to his minibus. He climbed in behind the wheel. He watched the two newcomers go inside the building. They were a hard pair with Fife accents. The taller of the two wore a flat bunnet, the other was bald and one side of his face swollen the size of a golf ball from a gumboil.

Imported talent.

Mathieson heard one of them shout, ‘Right, boys. Ready for the big journey, are we?'

Followed by three gunshots in rapid succession.

Mathieson closed his eyes until there was silence again. Then he got out of the bus and went back inside the building. The two Fifers were checking the bodies for movement. There wasn't any. Mathieson went around gathering the envelopes. The one he took out of Rooney's limp hand was streaked with blood. Wee Vic lay alongside Rooney, face turned away. The side of his head had caved. Stip had a look of displeasure.

‘Swift,' Mathieson said. He stuffed the envelopes back in his inside pocket.

One of the gunmen said, ‘We come, we go.'

The one with the swollen face said, ‘We aim to please.'

Mathieson said, ‘If I ever need you again, I'll know where to find you.'

The bald gunman said, ‘Any time you're in the East Neuk, pop in and say hello.'

The other one added, ‘But don't sneak up behind us if you know what's good for you, eh?'

The two killers laughed, and high-fived each other.

‘I'll make a point of knocking first,' Mathieson said.

28

Perlman went back to Egypt. He didn't expect Betty to be there, but he called her name anyway when he entered his house. No answer. She was probably with close friends and family, seeking solace. The drab silence disappointed him just the same. He picked up his post from the floor and sifted through it; a bank statement, a
Concern
appeal, an invitation to an opening of something called The Furniture Depot:
BUY THAT BEDROOM SUITE YOU ALWAYS WANTED. PRICES SLASHED DRASTICALLY!!!!

I need a futon, he thought.

The last item of mail was a postcard from Miriam.

He tossed the other crap back on the floor and went inside the living room to read the card.

He had a pain behind his eyes. Maybe the effect of the contacts, maybe tension. He found his painkillers in a drawer of the sideboard. He took one, throwing it back without water. He noticed his supply was dwindling – out of thirty prescribed, he'd devoured twenty-seven. He ought to be cutting them out instead of gobbling them.

He sat in the armchair and lit a cigarette, and fingered the smooth surface of the card a moment before reading it. Why postpone it? What are you afraid of? Bad news, distressing revelations.
Lou, I met somebody … he's changed my life utterly
.

Or,
I'm marrying Mario
.

Or,
I was in a car wreck and I'm in hospital
.

He had the selfish thought that her hospitalization was preferable to the idea of her finding love. Shit, what was he doing – wishing pain on her, for God's sake?

He read the card, which had been posted five days ago from Barcelona, and the message was short:
Nice town. Who needs Glasgow? Fondly, M
.

Still the fondly.

So Barcelona now. Maybe Mario had been replaced by Juan or Pedro. What a mover she was. The world, oy, was her oyster.

Who needs Glasgow? He translated this as Who needs Perlman?

Definitely a brush-off.

It hurt, he'd be a liar to deny it, but a little less than it might have pained him once. It was more a pen nib to his heart than a dagger. Just the same. Absence blunted hopes and dreams, always the way. I should have dreams, at my age.

He got up and walked back down the hall to pick up the items of mail he'd dropped. Clean as you go. Don't leave a mess. He put the post in a drawer, then paced the room, smoking and still holding Miriam's postcard.

Which he read again.

She writes this five days ago. Or at least she posts it five days ago. Maybe she's long gone from Barcelona by now. He set the postcard down on the shelves where his CDs were stacked. His mind drifted to the photograph in the loft, the one parked beside the bed, Colin and Miriam, happy partners. Latta, it had to have been Latta who put it there, because if Perlman believed one thing Miriam had told him before she'd flown out of his world it was the fact she despised her late husband, there was no love left between them—

He remembered Tartakower's latest little story: he'd do something about that, he'd get on to it now – but he couldn't drive the shimmering mirage that was Miriam from his mind. He called the telephone company and asked when her connection had been cut off. A woman told him the line had been severed seven weeks ago, non-payment. He rang the electricity company and was informed by a man with a high-pitched voice that the electricity was paid quarterly and the next payment was due in a week.

OK, OK. The phone was disconnected because she hadn't paid. Forgetfulness? Or because she knew she wasn't coming back? But if she'd decided she was staying away, why hadn't she said so in one of the cards, and why had she left so many possessions behind – including her paintings? Had she just abandoned them? Unlikely. Maybe she was undecided. Maybe she hadn't made up her mind if she was staying away forever—

Do I care? Do I fucking care?

Drawn back to the postcard, he picked it up. He studied it. A boring picture of crowds on a beach, sun umbrellas stuck in sand, palm trees. She hadn't even troubled her arse to choose an interesting postcard, something artsy, say, a picture of something built by that guy – Perlman fished for the name.

Gaudi
.

Because she didn't care, or because she thought Perlman was blind to art and architecture. I wasn't her equal.

Suddenly he was angry, angry that he'd nurtured such a fragile hope for such a long time, angry that she'd gone without a fucking word of goodbye, and infuriated by allowing himself to be
seduced
by the postcards, which were like a form of slow faux striptease where she never took off a single garment, even if he was daft enough to believe that one day she might.

He ripped the postcard down the middle, slicing the sun lovers and the sands and the sea, then he tore these pieces a second time, and a third, and the scraps fell from his shaking fingers to the coffee-table.

He didn't hear Betty McLatchie come into the room. He raised his face, looked at her, and stepped around the coffee-table as if to conceal from her the sight of the dismembered postcard.

She wore a black overcoat, a black headscarf, black glasses, black Levis. Only her grey shirt and maroon Docs alleviated the severity of her appearance. ‘I should've phoned,' she said.

‘No, no matter, it's OK.'

She sat in one of the armchairs and stared at the floor a while, then raised her face to look at him, and her sadness, so evident in her posture, crushed him.

‘It wasn't Kirk,' she said.

For an uneasy moment he thought she was speaking factually, a terrible mistake had been made, the dead boy wasn't her son. But no, she was talking in metaphor, the way you always did when you spoke about the dead. Passed on, passed away, popped your clogs.

‘Kirk would have sat up and said, “April Fool, Ma.” He liked practical jokes. But it's the wrong month, the wrong bloody month.' She opened her small black leather purse and tugged out a cigarette. Perlman lit it for her. She inhaled deeply.

He sat on the arm of her chair and laid a palm on the back of her hand. ‘I'm sorry,' and wondered what else he could say when it came down to the extremities of feeling. Grief needed a new lexicon.

She shook her head, blew a stream of smoke angled upward. ‘There's this wee corner of me that's always been optimistic. It's like a candle burning away at the back of my head. I try to keep it going because I want to think the best of people and enjoy life. How the fuck do I keep that candle going now?'

Perlman wanted to say it would take time, but the sentence was a candygram. He got up and fetched an ashtray from the dresser and took her dying cigarette from her hand and stubbed it. She appeared not to notice.

‘Do you believe in a God, Lou?'

God made Perlman uneasy. As a kid he'd thought Rabbi Friedlander, with monumental beard and authoritarian voice, had been God. ‘I have good days when I imagine there might be some benign power out there. Most days, no. Like today.'

She got out of the chair and wandered the room, ran a hand across the CDs as if checking for fresh dust. She paused at the coffee-table and looked down at the destroyed card. He wasn't sure if she was reading fragments of it, or if the card was just an indefinable object in her field of vision.

Betty said, ‘I was brought up to believe. But I got tired of the blether of ministers, Lou. All they can do for me now is bury my kid.' She raised her face to him. ‘Why are some people …'

‘Just downright evil?'

‘Yeh. Why are some people
like
that? For God's sake, Kirk was … harmless. Just a harmless boy. He had his faults. But he had no malice in him, Lou. None.'

Harmless boys get murdered, the innocent die. Perlman sensed a slight reaction from the painkiller, not the normal mild detachment he experienced, but a contraindication, a sharpened awareness. Maybe the need to concentrate on Betty's situation nullified the power of the anodyne.

‘Let's get out of here,' he said. ‘Get some air, go somewhere for a coffee.'

‘Why not.'

He walked with her down the hallway. Outside, she moved along the driveway in slow contemplative steps, pausing now and again to adjust her glasses or her headscarf. He was about to open the passenger door of his Ka, but she said, ‘I feel like walking, Lou.'