Murderers Anonymous (10 page)

Galbraith had something to say to Katie Dillinger; uneasy about saying it, because there was not a lot of truth in what he would say. And they all knew that Dillinger could tell a lie from a long way off.

The truth was, he had better things to do with his weekend than spend it with this mob. And Dillinger might just have been expecting him to make a move on her and bring some competitive element to her yearly rendezvous with Arnie Medlock. Delicacy would be required, and he had pressures from Sophie Delaux to consider. And all sorts of other issues.

First of all he had to disengage himself from the dull Bobby Dear.

'People who take one sugar,' Dear was saying, 'are poofs. That's what we used to say in the army. No sugar is fine, that's a definite statement. Five or six sugars, that's a definite statement. But one or two sugars. Absolute shite. Wishy-washy, can't make up their minds. Shite, I say.'

'Sorry, mate,' said The Hammer Galbraith, 'got to have a word with Katie, you know. Be back with you in a second,' he added, a monstrous lie.
I'd die rather than come and talk to you again
, might have been nearer the truth. Bobby Dear nodded, didn't really understand.

Galbraith made his way around the table, clutching his seventh pint of heavy. Thought processes were still working smoothly, but there was always the possibility of a breakdown between brain and mouth. Stopped to listen for a second to Socrates, who had moved back down the wing, and was chatting to Ellie Winters. Giving her the usual line. Same old, same old.

'So what do you do, if you're not a philosopher or a footballer, then?' asked Winters. Hoping that this would induce the reciprocal question, for she loved to tell people how she made her living. Socrates took a swig from his pint, then dug into his inside coat pocket and produced a card. Handed it over with a roguish smile.

Spider-Be-Gone Inc.

Socrates McCartney

for all your spider removal needs

____________________________________

Also: Unwanted pests, bugs, vermin & snakes

24 hr service

Tel.: 0898 985 7898

email: [email protected]

Winters looked quizzically at him. A smile came to her lips, for she was sharp as a button and could already see the potential.

'You remove spiders?'

'Aye.'

'From where?'

Socrates shrugged. He knew he was cool.

'From wherever spiders get to. Which is pretty much everywhere really.'

'So, like if somebody's got a spider in their bath, they call you up, and you go and remove it?' she asked, still a little incredulous that such a service existed.

'Aye. I get five or six calls a day and at least one of them's a bath. I turn up, put the spider into a wee carton, take it outside and release it, and I'm on my way.'

She shook her head. 'And how much do you charge for that?'

'Ten pound call-out. Then a fiver for the first spider, and three quid thereafter. Special discounts for big jobs like garden sheds and attics.'

Ellie Winters was beginning to find Socrates McCartney attractive. Despite his nose. And despite the fact that she wasn't really into men.

'So some woman phones you up if there's a spider in the bath, and you charge her fifteen pounds for the all of two seconds it takes to remove it?'

Socrates finished off his pint with a spider-be-gone flourish.

'Right there,' he said, 'you've hit the nail on the head. Women. It's always women. No bloke's ever going to have the neck to call me out, even if they're scared. No bloke's going to let his bird call me out if they're in the house. So it's aye women on their own who give us a call. Think about it,' he said, tapping the side of his napper, 'it's the biggest phobia in Britain. There are about a gazillion spiders out there, and most of them find their way into someone's house at some stage. It's perfect. And, of course, the best bit is that these birds are usually so grateful that I've rid them of their pest that they give us a shag.'

Socrates smiled. Winters smiled too, shaking her head.

'You're serious?'

'Aye, hen, it's brilliant. The perfect job. I get paid good cash, and I get laid at least twice a day. Brilliant. Mind you ...' he said, rising to head off to the bar.

'What?'

'Spiders give us the willies. The bath ones are all right, 'cause you just stick a glass over the bastard. But see garden sheds, I fucking hate them. Another vodka, hen?'

Winters smiled, a move which enhanced the small, pale hairs along her top lip.

'Aye,' she said. 'Another vodka. No ice.'

'Right, hen,' said Socrates, and off he went. The hunter-gatherer.

The Hammer smiled too. Socrates was all right. In his way. Now it was time to talk his own brand of bullshit.

Dillinger was politely listening to Billy Hamilton's thesis on how Britain and Ireland could have won the Ryder Cup in 1987, and maybe another few times as well, without the addition of the European players. Not even sure what sport the Ryder Cup was, Dillinger, but was nodding in all the right places.

Galbraith leant over her, completely ignored Billy Hamilton. He could have crushed wee Billy like a paper cube. Didn't care if he annoyed him.

'Sandy Lyle, brilliant player, brilliant. Faldo couldn't lick his shoes, even now,' were Hamilton's last few words on the subject.

'Here, Katie, can I have a word?' said The Hammer.

Billy Hamilton attempted to give him a Robert de Niro, but with the foosty moustache and insipid eyes, it was more of a Terry-Thomas.

'Sure,' said Dillinger, delighted to escape. 'Sorry, Billy, I'll be back in a minute.'

'Aye, right,' said Hamilton, and his moustache wilted.

The Hammer and Dillinger wandered over to the bar, away from the crowd. To their right Arnie Medlock and Sammy Gilchrist exploded in near-violent argument over the nature of Wordman's Theorem, but they ignored it and leant against the sodden bar. Brushed away the beer and the peanuts, and the detritus of urine from unwashed fingers.

'What's up?' she said.

The Hammer nodded, lips clenched. Looked her in the eye.

'Got a few things to do this weekend,' he said.

Dillinger's eyebrows plunged together.

'What are you saying?'

He shrugged, lifted his pint and waved it around a little.

'This and that. Stuff, you know. And the bastard is us going on Saturday and coming back on Monday. Just can't get the day off work.'

'It's Christmas Eve!'

'You know what it's like at that place.'

'So you're not coming?'

He stared at her. Expressionless.

'Pretty much,' he said.

'Paul?' she said, a little pained. She could be cool, she could achieve her air of aloofness, she could be judgemental, but she still had feelings same as every other human, and a lot of those feelings were for The Hammer. A good man; brutal, perhaps, but always a good bet on the weekend away in case tempers frayed and the true nature of some of their crowd emerged. 'I thought, well you know ...' she said, and let the sentence drift off.

The Hammer shrugged again. Stay firm, he thought.

'Just got things to do, you know. Sorry, love, but that's the way it goes.'

'What are you doing, then?' asked Dillinger. Could tell there was something else going on in there. None of this lot ever told the truth.

The Hammer could no longer look her in the eye. Quickly downed the rest of his pint. He didn't owe her anything. He had vague feelings for her, but he could afford to lose them. And, of course, if the worst came to the worst, he could always just kill her. It wasn't like he hadn't done it before.

Drained the glass, rested it in a pool of sludge. Arnie Medlock drunkenly yelled something about Wagner's antagonistic interdependence with Nietzsche; someone obscurely put George Harrison's
Behind That Locked Door
on the juke-box; across the bar punches were thrown in a discussion on Paul McStay's overall contribution, or lack of it, to Scottish football; outside a car smashed into a lamppost; overhead, a plane, destined to crash into the side of a Spanish mountain after a near-miss with an Air Afrique 737 flown by the pilot's brother-in-law, roared quietly through the night sky.

'Got to go, babe,' he said. Put a small piece of paper in her hand. 'Here's my name for the Christmas draw. You'd better give it to someone else.' Cheekily leant forward and kissed her on the lips, didn't look her in the eye, and was gone. The Incredible Captain Bullshit, that was how he'd been known at university. Until the incident with his ex-girlfriend, after which he'd became the Incredible Captain Bloodbath.

Katie Dillinger watched him go. Curious and moderately hurt. Looks like me and Arnie Medlock this weekend, she thought.

She turned and surveyed her merry men and women. Arguing, chatting, flirting, pointing, shouting, talking, posing. A flawed bunch who she would lead away for a weekend in an isolated house in the Borders; and as she surveyed them, a shiver ran up her back and suddenly she felt a cold draught of dread and a vision of blood and of a slashed throat came to her, and was gone in the time it took to lift her glass and nervously swallow the remnants of her fifth vodka tonic of the night.

***

Number three. Or number two, as the police would think, for it would be some time before they realised that Wee Corky Nae Nuts had been murdered by the same man.

The killer was keeping better count, however. For the moment. Seven was his intended number. A good number, seven. Seven seals.

The same thing for supper every night now for two months. Home from the pub, then Spam fritters, chips and mushy peas. The pleasure of it was beginning to wear off. He had only been able to finish them these past couple of nights owing to the wine with which he'd been washing it down. A New Zealand chardonnay. Strangely it didn't recommend on the label that you should drink it with Spam fritters, so he was thinking of writing to the vineyard and getting them to change the wording.
A light, fruity wine with excellent length, firm thighs and a hairy arse, with overtones of strawberries, lime and mince. Delicious as an aperitif, or as an accompaniment to fish, chicken, salad, Spam fritters, chips and mushy peas. Buy it or we'll break your legs.

He swallowed the remainder of the bottle and headed on out into the night. It had turned a little colder, and there was light December rain in the air. A jacket, certainly, but he still didn't need a jumper. Might not even have needed the jacket in fact, if he hadn't required somewhere to conceal the knife.

Not sure yet of his intended victim. Might be male, might be female. You just never knew until it happened.

He was moderately disturbed by himself, since this psychotic urge had been reawakened. Sometimes, however, you just had to follow through on your urges. And so he caught a lonely bus to a different part of the city, and on this dank night he would see another lonely figure plying a desolate trade and, with a smile upon his face, he would move in for the kill.

***

And in the small hours of the morning, as the killer made his way home on an even lonelier bus, and as the body of Jason Ballater lay slumped in a bloody mess against the wall of a public WC; and as the rain fell softly against the bedroom windows of the city; and as the night wept for the departed and all the souls who would lose the fight for life, Barney Thomson awoke from a nightmare, the prayers for his own soul still ringing in his head, the spectre of death still standing at his shoulder, his heart thumping, pains across his chest, drenched in sweat.