R.I.P Robbie Silva (8 page)

'Okay, well, if that's you Gail, then I want to know how you got this number.' I put a bit of a scare in my voice, but I didn't think it would do any damage to her. She sounded like she knew she had me in the palm of her hand. Kinda wished she had.

'You called Daddy ... I took your number from his phone.'

I didn't like the sound of that – Silva didn't look like the kind of man who'd let his daughter rifle through his gear. For a second, I felt a seed of doubt grow in my mind. Was she playing me? Was Silva?

Holy fuck.

My mind ran.

Had the whole raid on the fat Jambo been a plant – a fucking ruse to test me out? It was paranoia but something had put the thought there.

'Jed, you there?'

'Yeah ... yeah. I'm here.'

Gail giggled on the other end of the line.

'What's going on there?'

'Not getting all possessive on me, are you?'

'Give me a fucking break.'

She seemed to take a second or two to digest that remark, then, 'I want to see you.'

'Oh, aye.'

'Soon. Like, now ...'

I scratched my chin; there was a three-day growth there. 'Not likely, love.'

She arked up. 'And why not?'

'Because, to be fucking honest with you, I still haven't got over the last time we got together.'

She laughed out loud; I had to hold the mobi away. This girl was some piece of work.

'Not going soft on me, are you?'

'Not a chance.'

'Can't handle a bit of ... action?'

Action I could handle; Gail's idea of action, however, was another question. 'Let me think about it.'

She didn't like my response, but, fair fucks to her, the spoilt brat kept her cool. 'Okay-dokey, I'll give you a buzz later.'

'Yeah, you do that.'

'Oh, I will.'

I let the line die, pocketed my mobi and continued back to Jasper's pad.

* * * *

When I got back to the flat, it was empty.

I was glad to have the joint to myself. My head was numb with thinking things through. I was never very good at using my brain – I was always better at getting the kinds of things done that didn't require thought – physical stuff.

I knew who I was, knew my limitations. I also knew that at some point I was going to have to make a decision about Silva. I was either going to take his offer and go back to work, or I was going to have to look for an alternative.

I shrugged my shoulders. There was an ache setting up shop in my neck. I felt the tension mounting, gripping the tip of my spine and sending tingling pins and needles out to my flanks. Something had to give; another day of this and I'd be a fucking wreck.

I walked through to the kitchen and took out a tin of Stella, sparked up a tab. As the thick white smoke stretched towards the yellowed ceiling I stared out the window towards the city. Edinburgh was my home, always had been. Not always this part of it, but then the places I had been in the past I didn't want to return to.

I looked out at the tumble of tenements, the drying areas and the back greens. This town was the same wherever you went; this is how people lived. My people.

A young lad, no more than five or six, came running through the close bouncing a football. He was laughing and smiling to himself; a young girl about the same age came running behind him. The pair of them made me think of me and my sister at that age. For the first time in a long time I felt myself remembering a time in my childhood when we were happy; when Jody was happy.

And then my heart froze.

I looked away.

I walked through to the living-room and sat down.

In the armchair I shotgunned the can of Stella. The tab in my hand had burnt down to the filter tip before I remembered it was there. A long fossilised head of ash dropped onto the arm of the chair. I didn't even bother to rub at it.

I was miles away.

It was three days after my seventeenth birthday when Jody told me what he had done to her. I didn't believe her at first, thought it was a joke, a sick joke. Then she started to cry, her eyes blinking fast to wash out the tears as she told me he had done it for years. I couldn't take it in. I just couldn't.

'Before Mum ... died?'

She nodded.

'Did she know?'

'No!' said Jody.

'But how, how didn't she know?'

'Because I never told her.' She was trembling. Her eyes growing redder and redder. I wanted to hug her, to tell her it would be all right, but she looked so distant. Not just distant from me, but from everyone. I knew if I held her she would be stiff, cold. I understood then she had cut herself off from the world, from people.

I waited for Jody to leave the room and then I started to punch the sofa. I punched and hit out until I was sweating and my knuckles red, the skin cracked and near to bleeding. And then I slumped against the wall and slid to the ground.

I remember the crying; I remember hating myself for crying but the hatred was nothing compared to what I felt for him.

It had been light outside when I fell against the wall and wept, but it was dark when my father came home. I watched him staggering up the close. He flicked a cigarette into the gutter and I watched the amber sparks fly. It was as if they ignited something inside me; my heart pounded loudly in my chest.

When his key turned in the lock I felt my whole body tense. There was a sharp spike prodding at my stomach. I thought I would be sick, but I held it in and walked to the fireplace.

The door to the living-room was mottled glass and as he turned the light on I saw him framed in the hallway. He was mumbling, drunk. I couldn't hear what he said, but it didn't matter. I was already way beyond words with him; nothing he could say would change what he had done.

When my father walked into the room I stepped towards him, the poker from the fireside was raised above my head. I let him get inside the door, turn on the light, and face me. For a moment or two he didn't seem to register anything unusual, it was just me, Jed, his son. But then his features changed and he looked up at the poker. I waited for him to say something, to explain, but he said nothing; he merely lowered his head and I brought the poker down.

I brought the poker down again and again. On his body and legs. I moved up and down his full length as he crawled before me, slithered away like a snake. I lost count of the number of times I struck him. He was already bloody and broken when Jody came rushing in.

'Jed!' she yelled. 'Oh, Jed. Jed ...'

She knelt down beside my father and touched his brow, and then she ran to the phone to call an ambulance.

I sat and watched the ambulance men work around my father but I didn't move from the chair. At some stage one of them must have called the police because in little or no time there were two uniformed officers standing over me.

I was remanded. A primitive fucking boot camp for bad boys. On my second month inside they told me my father had taken the easy road out, killed himself. My sister had been taken into care. On the third month they told me Jody had been moved to stay with a foster family in another town.

Jody never called or visited me. At first this made me angry; I wanted her to be glad that I had finished off her abuser. But I know now she never saw it that way.

* * * *

I wasn't sure about this. You get a feeling for a job, call it what you like, superstition or whatever. I'd been in firms with blokes who had walked out because a black cat had crossed in front of the car on the way to a jump. There was one blagger, another fucking Londoner called Mad Mikey, who'd parked his motor down at Leith Docks and came back to see it covered in seagull shit, looked like a plasterer's radio, and that was it for him. Bird shit, at some stage, he'd decided was bad luck and he was Harry the Toff back to the King's Road calling the job ''a write-off'' and claiming we were in for ''a fucking mugging''.

I stood on the edge of the kerb; it was getting dark now. The street light fizzed, painting an orange glow on the road and the shop fronts. People were whizzing about, heading home after a few quick scoops in the howff. I wondered what it must be like to be a square-peg; to do an honest day's work for an honest day's pay. Nah, wasn't in me. Knew I wasn't wired-up right for that kind of patter.

The 26 bus showed, fucking old Jambo-coloured one, Jesus, what was that all about? I waited for it to hoy up close to the stop and then I got on and paid the Ted driver whose greasy-old quiff looked like it was about to drip on the wheel. The road out to Porty was chokka with cars and Joe Baxis, horns blowing all over the place. The days of going on the rob in this type of traffic were long gone. Not even with a fucking Suzuki.

At Abbeyhill the roads eased a bit and I watched the punters legging it down Easter Road, duckwalking to beat the rain that was starting up. Felt my stomach churning; had a lot on my mind of late but there was a chance that could all change.

You get a group of cons together and they like a good yak. They'll drive you round the fucking bend with tales of the one that got away. The Big Payer. I'd heard several versions of this story, the job that lets you retire on the proceeds and get the fuck right away from this rain ... Mexico, Costa. Doesn't matter. That kind of moolah and you're laughing.

I'd never had a story to rival the cons' tales of woe. Never been part of a big enough firm. When you do a post office or a building society, you're only clearing the take from the cashiers. If you're lucky, you'll net five grand. Splitting that more than two ways and you're going to need to pull a job a week. But I'm no different to anyone else at this racket – I fancy a slice of the big take. I wasn't scared of doing another stretch, and the thought of earning a nice Big Payer had me tempted.

The bus pulled round the roundabout in Porty, hit the main drag. I never much liked this end of the city – always reminded me of some skanky little Scottish town, one of those shit-holes in the west coast where all those fucking bluenosed soap-dodgers come from. Ones that looked like cast members from Zombieland, but with more scars.

Silva had picked out a drinker, The Arms. I spotted it through the bus window and got off at the next stop. When I got out it had started to spit down; there was a waft of effluent blowing in from the sewage outflows in the sea and I felt my stomach tighten again.

All I could think of as I walked down to The Arms was this better be fucking worth my time and effort – I'd vowed to hear Silva out – but sure as shooting the signs weren't looking good.

I rumbled through the door, had my who-the-fuck-you-looking-at-cuntybaws face on. An old soak at the bar turned round and eyed me, thought again, turned away. The barmaid was in her bad fifties, bat-wings and a corned-beef complexion. Her over-dyed black hair was scraped back in a tight scrunchie and showed at least an inch of grey roots; when she smiled at me I wanted to heave.

'What can I get you, love?' she said.

I was about to say something about looking for Silva when I felt my arse grabbed, both cheeks in cusped hands.

'I'll get his!' It was Gail.

'What you doing here?' I couldn't believe what I was seeing.

'Come on, you know ...'

'No, I fucking don't.' I didn't even want to contemplate the fact that she might be on this job; after our last outing the possibility seemed insane. Beyond insane.

Gail stretched round my waist, made an order at the bar. She had the hot-pants on again and was pointing her arse at me. She turned quickly, caught me checking her out and giggled. 'Get him a pint and I'll have a Bacardi Breezer.'

As the order went in, the door to the snug behind me screeched open. Inside sat Silva and the gimp with the mullet. I was ushered in with a tipping of Silva's head. As I stared at the pair of them, still conscious of Gail's hyperactive antics behind me, I felt like walking straight out the door. Figured I had about three seconds of standing there like a spare prick before I had to make a move, one way or the other.

* * * *

You must've heard that phrase, hear it all the time,
my heart was in my mouth
... That's where I was with these muppets. I knew the right thing to do was turn tail. Walk. I'd had first-hand experience of working with Gail and I sure as fuck wasn't for repeating it. The girl was so off-the-dial scripto I'd have to seriously consider giving her another balling. I mean, that type are as likely to have the billiards off you and hoiked in a handbag before you can say ''thanks for the memory''.

I started to feel myself sway a bit, don't know why ... was I gonna keel? Maybe it was the bad guts again, but before I could move a muscle, Gail – drinks tray in her hands – was shouldering me towards the snug. I looked down at her and got those big eyes flashed at me; they seemed to stare through me for a moment and then the hooks were in and I was being dragged to the snug.

The pub seemed cold, but in the snug it was warm. I remembered these sorts of places before the smoking ban; they were like fucking saunas – could hardly see two feet in front of you – you'd be padding about with your hands trying to find your pint on the table. As I sat down, Gail lifted my pint towards me.