Stonemouth (40 page)

I swing round the obstructing wing of metalwork and jump neatly onto the little landing beyond. I shake my head at the lock securing the door. Is it even legal to lock a fire escape, no matter that the floor it serves is never occupied? What if people need to get to the roof ? Anyway.

Still
no entry to be gained from the exterior fire-escape doors at the end of the fifth-floor corridor. Well, pooh-ee to that.

I give in and do what I should have done at the start. I make my way back down to the ground floor and Reception, sweet-talk one of the receptionists and then the junior manager – possibly leaving the latter with the impression that I just want to revisit the site of an old conquest, mw-ah-ha-ha – then take the middle service stair to the fifth floor and let myself in.

The lights don’t work. They might have mentioned this.

I use the torch function on the rubbish phone: not as good as the iPhone’s. The wan, ghostly, white-screen light guides me along through the darkness of the deserted fifth-floor corridor to the offending toilet.

The place feels cold and gloomy, lit only by the phone and the watery light filtering through the etched glass of the single window. The green floral curtains that preserved the modesty of the undersink plumbing have gone, as have any towels and toilet rolls. The cubicles stand empty, doors open. I gently close the door of the middle one as far as it’ll go, which is about seven-eighths to fully.

I wait patiently while the rubbish phone sorts itself out to upload email, then I negotiate the clunky interface to find the attachment I sent myself from Al’s computer. I open up the photo of the red gloves. I take out the copy I printed earlier this morning too, comparing images. I reluctantly concede the phone’s image is the more useful even though it’s smaller, and put the print away.

So I stand there, looking up at the top of the middle cubicle’s door and holding the phone up and out and then closer to and further in, trying to get everything aligned.

There’s no problem with the photos taken from under the sinks, from beneath the curtain. Any kid could have taken them; so could any adult, prepared to stoop so low.

It’s this one, the one featuring the pair of red satin gloves hoisted
ecstatically (if I may make so immodest) above the cubicle door, that poses credibility problems.

I squat on my heels, shoulders resting against the surface supporting the three sinks, but that doesn’t work. Nothing fits until I’m standing upright, the image – and, by implication, the camera that took it – at about adult head height. I turn and look down at the formica surface I’m resting against. I suppose a kid could have jumped up onto this and got the angle that way. Though in that case…they’d be even higher than I can plausibly hold the camera here. They might even have stayed standing on the floor but held the camera as high as they could, and trusted to luck…Maybe even that, plus jump and snap at the same time.

Except you wouldn’t expect a kid to do that. And Jel’s arms/hands were raised like they are in the photo only for a few seconds, max. (I remember; they came down to grasp me, hard, at the nape of my neck, immediately afterwards.) So not much time for a wee person to spot the gesture and scramble up here to take the relevant shot. Though of course some of the kids with cameras weren’t so small; a few were maybe ten or eleven: straw-thin beanpoles who looked like they’d fall over if you sneezed too close to them, but already maybe eighty per cent as tall as they’d be as adults. Maybe one of them could have stretched to the required height…

Oh well. I take a few photos with the rubbish phone; it insists on using flash. In my head these count as evidence somehow, though probably only in my head.

Altogether, nothing that would stand up in court, Your Honour, but pretty flipping suspicious if you ask me, and it’s me that’s doing the asking, so I ask myself and sure enough my self says, Yeah, pretty fucking suspicious, right enough, matey boy.

I pocket the phone, take a last, sad, nostalgic, slightly despairing look at the relevant toilet-bowl seat, then exit, pad along the gloomy corridor and walk slowly, thoughtfully back down to Reception, returning the keys with a smiling, borderline-unctuous Thank you.

‘Where the fuck have you been?’ Ferg asks.

‘I
could tell you,’ I tell him, ‘but then I’d have to cut you dead.’

‘Hnn. Needs work.’

I go to walk past a table where Phelpie is sitting playing on a Gameboy while a couple of intense-looking boys spectate. The boys are maybe just pre-teenage and look uncomfortable in their slightly too-big suits. Phelpie finishes whatever level he’s playing on – it’s some dark, monstery, shooty game I don’t recognise – with a series of deft twists and a flurry of control taps, then hands the device back to one of the kids, who is obviously, if reluctantly, impressed. Phelpie stands up, saying, ‘There you go. Easy, really.’

‘Aye, ta,’ the first boy says, sitting down, while the other kid draws up another seat and they both hunch over.

‘Aw, hi, Stu,’ Phelpie says with a grin when he sees me.

‘That was quite neat,’ I tell him.

‘Aye, well,’ Phelpie says, grinning. He looks a little drunk for once, which makes such reaction-time-critical gameplay even more impressive.

‘How come you don’t play cards that fast?’ Phelpie shrugs. ‘No money involved. Just a game.’

‘Phelpie, come on; it’s just a few quid. You never bet big, and you’re not short of a bob or two.’

Phelpie stretches, interlaces his splayed fingers, then cracks his knuckles. He has an even bigger grin on his face. ‘Truth is, Stu,’ he says, ‘I just like listening to the guys talk.’

‘What?’ My first thought is that Phelpie means he wants to get people talking off-guard so they’ll spill some beans that might be useful for Mike Mac’s business dealings.

‘Aye,’ he says, slowly, as though this is only just occurring to him as he speaks. ‘We play too fast sometimes, d’you no think? I mean, we’re there to play the game, right enough, but…it’s no why we’re really there, is it? I mean, you could just play on-line sitting in yer underpants, know what I mean? We’re there to have a chat, have a laugh, just be with our pals an that, eh? But I just think the
guys can get a bit too intense with the betting and the money and that, sometimes, so I just sort of like to slow things up a wee bit. The craic improves. I’m no razor wit maself, like, but I love listening to the likes of Ferg an that, know what I mean?’

‘Kinda,’ I say, looking on Phelpie with a degree of respect – albeit slightly grudging and even still a little suspicious – I wouldn’t have expected to be exhibiting five minutes ago.

‘Ye’ve no tae tell the rest, though, eh?’ he says, winking at me.

‘Dinnae want them gettin self-conscious or that, eh no?’

‘Aye, cannae be having that,’ I agree. I make a mental note to be very careful indeed if I ever end up in a head-to-head with Phelpie over serious money.

‘See you later, Stu,’ Phelpie says, and wanders off.

I try to get a word with Grier a couple of times, but at the same time I don’t want to just rock up to the Murston table, not with the Surly Brothers using it as their base for expeditions to the bar and with the disapproving relations in attendance.

The third time, in the corridor just outside the function room, Grier looks like she’s going to walk right past me again, ignoring me, even after a perfectly audible, ‘Grier?’

I wonder if she saw me talking to Katy Linton?

I step in front of her; she almost collides with me. She frowns, makes to go past. ‘Stu, do you mind?’

I block her again. ‘Grier—’

She tries to get past me again. ‘Get out the—’

‘Grier, can we—’

‘No, we can’t. Will you stop—’ She stands still, hands on hips for a moment, glaring at me, then tries to slip past to my right. I grab her wrist, already knowing this is a mistake.

‘Fuck off !’ she hisses, shaking my grip off.

‘What do you think you’re doing, Gilmour?’

Shit; it’s Fraser, right behind me, hand on my shoulder, turning me around. I’m half expecting his other hand to ball into a fist and
come round-housing up into my face, or sweep in towards my belly. My head cranes back on my neck and my stomach muscles tense without me even consciously willing such desperate preparations.

However, Fraser isn’t quite at that stage yet. He looks close to it, though; his face is redder than his beard, he’s a bit sweaty and he has a slightly crouched, boxerish stance, like he’s just ready for a fight. Grier gets past me, looks like she’s about to continue on her way down the corridor, then stops, stands, arms folded, glaring at both of us.

‘Eh?’ Fraser asks, when I don’t reply immediately. ‘What the fuck’s goin on, eh?’

‘Nothing, Frase,’ I tell him.

‘You okay, Gree?’ he asks her.

‘Fine,’ she says.

‘This arsehole givin you grief ?’

‘I wasn’t—’ I start.

‘No. Let’s just—’

‘Cos I’m just the boy to give him some back.’ Fraser rubs a meaty hand through his thin auburn beard like he’s trying to work out how best to start dismantling me.

‘Don’t,’ Grier says. ‘I can look after myself.’

‘Look—’ I begin.

‘Naw, it’d be a pleasure,’ Fraser says, smiling thinly at me. ‘This shite’s tried to coorie in with Callum, then Joe, then Ellie; bout time he was taught a lesson.’

Grier takes his arm, starts to pull him away. ‘Let’s go back to the table.’

‘What if I don’t want to—’

‘Come on, Fraser, see me back,’ she says, pulling harder on his arm.

‘Aye, well,’ Fraser says, and really does do that shrugging inside the suit thing, like he’s making sure his shoulders fit inside there. He takes one step away, then he’s back in my face while Grier’s still tugging at him.

‘One
fucking day, Gilmour,’ he says quietly, close enough for me to smell beer and smoke and whisky off him. ‘One fucking day.’ He wags a finger in my face as Grier pulls him away.

Slightly shaken, I return to the room. I sit down and say hi to a whole table of people I vaguely recall from school. They seem to remember me better than I remember them, which ought to feel flattering but instead feels embarrassing. One of the girls, the cute one with short black hair, looks at me like we might have once shared a moment but for the life of me I can’t recall either her name or the incident. Besides, she looks far too young. Hopefully just a false alarm, then; there are enough ghosts of misdemeanours past haunting this pile.

I head for the bar. My hands were shaking for a bit there but I think I can trust myself to hold a drink again without spilling it.

The bar staff must all be on a fag break or something. I turn my back on the bar for a moment, draw in a deep, clearing breath and take a good look round the place as the numbers start to thin out a little.

There must be some critical density of crowd that lets you see the most; too many people and all you can see is whoever’s right next to you; too few and you’ll see mostly walls, tables: just stuff. The population of people remaining in the room has probably approached whatever that ideal concentration is, and I take the opportunity to look about them.

All the local worthies, all the important people in town, are either still here or on their way out or not long departed. No schemies, no junkies, no crack whores, probably nobody unemployed or who genuinely has to worry about being out on the streets in any sense over the coming winter. Just the nice folk, those of the comfy persuasion. High proportion of sole owners, partners – junior or otherwise – shareholders, execs and professionals. People who don’t have to worry too much even in these financially straitened times. Well, how nice for us all.

Doesn’t
make us bad people, Stewart…

Well, no, and we will continue to look after ourselves and to some extent those around us, in concentrically less caring levels and circles as our attention and urge to care is attenuated. The inverse square law of compassion.

But still not good enough. Not ambitious enough, not generous and optimistic enough. Too prepared to settle, overly inclined to do as we’re told, pathetically happy to accept the current dogma, that’s us. My parents wouldn’t lie to me; the holy man told me; my teacher said; look, according to this here
Bumper Book of Middle Eastern Fairy Stories
…

Ah, I think. I’ve got to
this
stage of drunkenness. Usually requires a lot of drink and just the right mix of other drugs, though I’m sure when I was younger it could be brought on with alcohol alone. It’s a feeling of encompassing, godlike scrutiny, of mountaintop scope and reach, of eagle-like inspection, though without quite the same eye to subsequent predation. And I don’t want to be noticed; it’s not,
Behold me, wretches!
It’s more,
Fuck, behold
you;
what are you like?

Comes with a high degree of preparedness to use mightily broad-sweep judgements, applied with eye-watering rapidity, to condemn or dismiss entire swathes of humanity and its collected wisdom, up to and including all of it. So, not for those deficient in sanctimony or lacking in self-righteousness; definitely not for the faint or smug.

I have stood in gatherings far more opulent and distinguished, more monied and glamorous, in London and elsewhere – though mostly in London – and felt something of the same corrupted disdain for those around me. It’s a fine, refreshingly cynical feeling in a way, and one that I know separates me from so many of my peers – in all this clasping, cloying pressure to accept and agree, a few of us will always pop out like pips, ejected by just those forces that seek to clamp us in – but much as I distrust it in principle and hate it for its unearned, faux-patrician snobbery, I relish it, almost worship it.