Poisoned Cherries (34 page)

“Thanks,” I said, without looking up, or round.

He set down his lager, then settled on the bench, facing me.
 
There were flecks of grey in his hair, which came down almost to his shoulders, and in his heavy beard.
 
The sun was long gone, but he still wore his shades.
 
I couldn’t see his eyes, but I knew that he was staring at me, wondering, maybe, why I hadn’t shit myself.

“Hello,” I said, evenly.
 
Then I reached across the table, almost lazily, and punched him in the mouth.
 
A girl at the next table looked across and gasped, then looked away again, quickly.

His sunglasses went skew-wiff; he put them back in place then wiped blood from his lip with the back of his hand.
 
“What was that for?”
 
he asked.

“You know fucking well what it was for.
 
Glasgow..
 
. not last weekend; a while back.”

“Oh,” he said, “I see.
 
You found out.”
 
He took a drink, swilled it around in his mouth as if he was washing away more blood, and swallowed.
 
“You were expecting me?”
 
he asked.

“Of course I was expecting you; I was meant to.
 
Fucking stupid e-mail address.”

“I thought it was quite clever,” he said, his crest a little fallen.

“It was too clever by half; just typical of you .. . mzrimnmeal92.”
 
I mumbled the jumble, as if the Eighty had got to me already.
 
“An anagram of Zimmerman; give me a bit of credit, I’d have got that eventually.
 
But to add in the numbers as well; I was almost insulted by that.

“Zimmerman is Dylan’s real name; now I might be fucking famous these days, but I can’t imagine Mystic Bob wanting to get in touch with me.
 
Apart from him, and the dead poet, I only know of one Dylan.”

“You’re forgetting Bob Willis.”

“You’re right; I’m forgetting him.
 
Who is he?”

“The cricketer; he took Dylan as his middle name.”

“Big deal.
 
Anyway, even from the anagram I’d have got the link, but you had to put the icing on it by adding the numbers; another anagram, of the day and month Mike Dylan was shot in Amsterdam.”

“How did you know for sure it was me and not someone pretending?”

“Two reasons.
 
The first and most obvious was that you knew my e-mail address.
 
The second was the gifts you left for Janet.
 
An impostor wouldn’t have done that.”

He tilted his head back; I could just see that behind the shades his eyes were closed.
 
“How did I know that’s what the two of you would call her?”
 
he murmured.

“Because,” I hissed, ‘you’re a clever bastard ... too clever by half, remember.
 
So fucking clever it got you killed .. . remember?
 
You’re dead, Mike.
 
I know you’re dead, because I was there.
 
I saw you get shot, I saw you die.”

He shook his head.
 
“You saw me cough up a lot of blood and start to choke, then you saw me pass out.
 
Then they got you the hell out of there.
 
What you didn’t see was when they whipped me out of there to the emergency room.

“If the man they sent had been trying to kill me he’d have blown my brains out.
 
He didn’t; he shot me through the right side of the chest.
 
It got a bit hairy, because he hit my lung, but that served to convince you, didn’t it?
 
They wanted the other guy dead, but not me.”

“Why not?
 
You were a rogue policeman, and Special Branch at that.

Surely they wanted you even deader than him?”

“No.
 
They wanted the names in my head; I’d never been debriefed before

I did my runner.
 
I knew what the guy they killed knew, namely some key

links in the chain of drug imports, not just to Scotland, but to the

whole of Western Europe and beyond.
 
When I began to recover, they gave

me a choice

“Who were “they”?”

“Our security services, the Dutch and the American DEA; heavy hitters all of them.
 
They scared the shite out of me, I can tell you.
 
I gave them the names I had, but they said that wasn’t enough, that the list didn’t go far enough.
 
They gave me a new identity and they told me to contact some of the guys I’d been told about, to infiltrate the network, and to stay in until I had the whole chain and could deliver them.

“I tried to tell them to get fucked.
 
They offered to dump me in the North Sea.”

“So did you do everything they told you?”

He sighed.
 
“Yes.
 
Two months ago there was an international operation starting in Burma and Thailand, and winding up in London, Glasgow, Amsterdam and New York.
 
All sorts of people were taken down; some of them were taken out completely..
 
. like me, for example, I’m dead again.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean they did again what they did in Amsterdam, but in Bangkok this time.”

“What?
 
They shot you?”

He grinned.
 
“Right in the head; but not with a bullet, with a special cartridge filled with blood, like you guys use in the movies.
 
There were witnesses, a couple of the middle-ranking people who were being arrested.
 
The idea was that when they got to jail they would spread the word that I’d been bumped.”

“Did it work?”

“As far as I know; but these dealers have tipsters everywhere on the inside.
 
I should know, I used to be one.”

“So who are you now?”

“I can’t tell you that.
 
But you’re right, I have a third identity now;

I was set up with that, and with a chunk of money.
 
The deal was that I’d go to Portugal and never go near the drugs business again.”

“As easy as that?”

He gave a grim smile; it was less than a couple of years since he’d gone tits up at Schiphol, but his eyes looked twenty years older.
 
I wondered what they’d seen since then.
 
Of course, he’d been dead twice; that must have an effect on a bloke.
 
“Not quite as easy,” he replied.
 
“They told me that they know where I am, and who I am.
 
They may have a use for me in the future.”

“So what the fuck are you doing here?
 
Why haven’t you got yourself yet another false passport and gone somewhere out of their reach?
 
Why have you been following Susie and me?”

“I’m taking a chance, that’s what I’m doing .. . and there is nowhere out of their reach.
 
No, I was ready to split for Portugal, when I picked up a Scottish paper in London and who did I see on an inside page, but you and Susie, and your new baby.

“You might have been surprised when I turned up ... think how I felt when I saw that.
 
What the hell happened, Oz?
 
What happened to Prim?”

I looked at him, hard; for all his adventures he didn’t scare me, not a bit.
 
It was the other way round and he knew it.
 
By coming back, he’d put his life in my hands.
 
“You know what the punch in the mouth was for.
 
Didn’t it even occur to you that Susie might have spilled the beans about you and her?”

He winced.
 
“I left a letter behind, didn’t I?”

I nodded.
 
“Some secret operative; you couldn’t even cover your tracks with your best pal’s fiancee.”

“I’m sorry, Oz, it was just...”

‘..
 
. one of those things?
 
Spare me, please.
 
So was Susie and I at first.
 
The fact is I didn’t know about you and Prim till a couple of days ago.
 
Susie only told me when she showed up at her place.”

“Her place?
 
I thought...”

“She bought it from me.
 
Before we ... Anyway, back to your story; you saw us and you were gob-smacked.”

“Yes.
 
I bailed out.
 
I told my minder I was going and I split.
 
He took me to the airport, but I lost him, went back into London and caught a train to Glasgow.
 
It took me a while to pin you down, but when I did, I started to follow you.

“I wanted to see you, man, to see the two of you, to see how you had turned out.
 
That’s all.
 
I’m sorry if I spooked you ...”

“Lying bastard!
 
You’re not sorry at all.”

“I am if Susie got worried; honest.”

“I’ll take your word for it.
 
So, now that you’ve seen us, what do you think?”

He drained his glass and gave me a long look.
 
“I think you’re all right.
 
You look like a family, you know.
 
I really hope you stick it.” He gave a big sigh.
 
“You know, I always thought that we had the wrong women, you and I; I always thought that Susie was more your type and Prim was more mine.”

“What do you mean by that?”

“I mean that you two are basically straight, while she and I are basically bent.”

I laughed.
 
“That has to be a compliment, coming from you.”

He grunted.
 
“Here,” he said, suddenly, ‘what are you doing hanging out with my old boss, Ricky Ross?
 
He was your mortal enemy for a while.”

“Aye, and you were my best friend.”

“Touche.”

“Ricky’s head of security on the movie,” I told him.
 
“That’s all.”

“Mmm.
 
You going to get more beer in?”

I raised an eyebrow.
 
“Like hell!
 
You are.
 
You owe me, pal.”

He gave me a grin and disappeared to the bar, returning after a couple of minutes with two more.

“So what’s next?”
 
I asked him.

“I’m going to turn up in Portugal, as planned.
 
I’ve seen what I came to see, and I’m content.”

I leaned across the table.
 
“That’s good,” I murmured, ‘for you have to know one thing.
 
Susie is never to learn about this, or about you.
 
If you ever show up near us again, if you ever try to contact her...”
 
I paused.
 
“You’ve changed, I’ve changed.
 
If you ever do that then I promise you .. . you will be dead again, and it will be for real this time.”

I looked him in the face and gave him time to think about it.
 
“Do you believe me?”

“I reckon I do.
 
There was always a hard bastard under your surface, wasn’t there.
 
But don’t worry; I’m too fond of Susie .. . and of you .. . ever to threaten either of you.
 
The only thing is .. .”
 
He hesitated, then took off the shades and stared at me.

“I’ve got no one, Oz.
 
I’m cut off from everyone I’ve ever known in the life I had before all this; they’ve fucking buried me.
 
You’ve no idea how lonely it is, being dead.”

I heard what he was saying, loud and clear.
 
“You’ve got my e-mail address,” I told him.
 
“If the need really arises .. . and it had better be more than going for a pint, mind .. . that’s how you can reach me.
 
Use the same stupid name and I’ll know.”

“Thanks.”
 
He drained his lager in a one-er, and stood up.
 
“So long.”

The guy who had once been Mike Dylan turned on his heel, and walked out of the Pear Tree, into whatever kind of a future might await him.

O1Q

Fifty.

It had been a while since I had drunk Eighty at all, let alone shifting three pints of the stuff in under an hour, so my brain was even fuzzier than it had been after the Oxford when I got back to the apartment and pushed the entry button.

“Whozzat?”
 
Liam asked, through the speaker.

“Santa Fucking Claus.”

“You can come in down the chimney, then.”
 
But he pushed the button, anyway; just as well, by that time my bladder was feeling the pressure.

He gave me an appraising look when I re-emerged from the bathroom.
 
“Where the hell have you been then?”
 
he enquired.
 
It’s a funny thing about mates, is it not; when you share a flat with them, they can be worse than wives in some ways.

“Thinking,” I told him.

“Thinking about how fast you can get to the bottom of the glass?”

“That, among other things.
 
Come on, superstar of wrestling, let’s go get that Chinese.”

We grabbed a cab on the hill outside; by chance, it was the legendary white taxi, the one with the tartan-lined interior, and Jock and Roll music playing from the moment you step in until the moment you close the door behind you.
 
It is to Edinburghers what the great white buffalo is to Native Americans.
 
There is a theory that the driver is long dead, and that it is but his shade that cruises the city streets bringing eternal delight to tourists.
 
Whatever the truth of it, he took us straight to the Kwei Linn.

The crispy duck was as I remembered it from a few years back, and so was the chicken in black bean sauce.
 
We walloped them down, with a beef dish and a mild prawn curry.
 
I stuck to fizzy water..
 
. Okay, I admit it.
 
We shared a bottle of Lambrusco, but it’s much the same ...
 
and by the time we got to the coffee stage, I could see clearly again.