The Good Son (14 page)

Back inside, I saw Andy, Bill's boyfriend, in the A&E waiting room. He was a tall, gaunt architect with Jarvis Cocker glasses that magnified his serious eyes. He was pacing back and forth across the room. Restless. Pent up energy waiting to find release.

I saw myself, one year earlier.

The memory made me want to turn round and get the hell out. But I forced myself to stay.

When he saw me, Andy quit stalking and his lips pressed tight together. He turned his head to the side.

“Andy,” I said. But didn't know how to continue.

“I don't want to talk to you.”

“I understand,” I said. “But…”

“Listen,” he said. “Billy's in fucking surgery and I don't know if he'll walk again. The one thing I'm sure of is that all of this is your fault. Playing at being a fucking private eye.”

“I'm not playing.”

“Like that makes it better?”

There was nothing I could say to him. All I could do was hope that when this was over he would understand that all of this was outside of my control.

When this was over. When Bill was walking. When everything was normal again.

Except normal seemed a long way away.

I clammed up on Andy, backed out of saying everything I wanted to say.

And walked out.

I found an empty stairwell, sat down at the top of a flight and placed my head in my hands. My body shuddered uncontrollably. The anger and frustration tried to shake itself out of me. But it wasn't enough. I wanted to scream. Break some bastard's neck. Anything. Just find a release.

All I could do was feel my insides boil and my brain smash against the inside of my skull in frustration.

Andy was right. Elaine's father was right. Fucking Lindsay was right.

All of them, on the nose.

I was responsible.

Me.

Alone.

“Fuckers!” I screamed it out in the stairwell.

Was I looking for someone to blame? Someone to take it all out on? Aye, well who better than those two pricks. The ones who had violated my fucking life. Near killed my friend.

Murdered a woman in cold blood.

Maybe they thought they were hard men. But their actions reminded me of the cowardice of the schoolyard bully.

I could find them. They had unfinished business, these fucking cowards. They wouldn't leave until they had completed their master's bidding.

Daniel Robertson was dead, beyond their reach. Katrina Egg's betrayal had been dealt with. But the money, as far as they were concerned, was still out there. They wouldn't leave without that. Gordon Egg, the greedy prick, wouldn't allow it.

I stood up. Fire in the back of my legs. My muscles protesting, threatening to knock me back down on my arse. I ignored them, walked down the stairs to the ground level of the hospital. Each step deliberate, measured, as I kept that anger inside me, bubbling gently. I would need it, I knew.

A small voice in my head whispered,
this isn't about justice or friendship or compassion: this is about making you feel better.

But I didn't listen.

Or care.

I didn't sleep well that night. I sat in the front room of my flat, listening to the sounds of the city; the rush of cars down the street outside, the shouts of drunken pub crawlers a few streets away and the occasional squeal of fire engines and police cars.

It had been around half ten when I got home. I was trying to work out what my next move should be.

That morning, I'd told Robertson:
go to the police
. Advice given half-heartedly, as though I had already known the path that was before me.

Shortly after I got through the door my mobile rang. I checked the number: withheld.

“You back home, then?”

Ayer.

I stood up. Involuntary. “What the fuck is it to you?”

He laughed. “How's the poof?”

“Alive.”

“I'm glad.” He paused, then: “No, really. Fucking glad. Because that was a warning, yeah?”

“A warning?”

“That's right. In our line of business people don't listen if you just use fuckin' harsh words. They got to know you mean business.”

“I would have listened.”

“Didn't want to take the chance.” I could picture him smirking on the other end of the line.

But I was only half listening. Straining to hear background noises: anything that might give me a clue where he was calling from.

“You talked to the farmer?” he asked.

“It slipped my mind.”

That gave him another laugh. I imagined his body before me, battered and broken.

Kept myself focused on that image.

“Good one, mate. Fuckin' good one. Awright, guess you got a point. Gotta make sure the little poof's doing fine, yeah? Well, you know the cunt's going to live so now you can find that fat fuck and tell him we want our fuckin' money.”

“Find him yourself.”

“He isn't answering his phone no more. Doesn't want to talk to us. Shame, really. He gives us what we want and we just go away. Nothing fuckin' magic about it, yeah? I've had enough of this fuckin' place to last me a lifetime.” I thought he was going to hang up, but he wasn't finished. “You tell the fat fuck that he'd better talk to us the next time we call. Tell him he'd better give us what we want. You think what happened to that poof in your office was bad, it ain't nothing. We was gentle with him, mate. Like fuckin' pussy cats. I hope you got the message this time. Because next time isn't no fuckin' warning.”

He cleared the line. I listened to the silence for a moment before hanging up. In the living room, I sat
in the dark and waited.

It got light around four o'clock. I was still in the chair. Finally, I began to move. I showered, shaved, got dressed.

Replayed the conversation from the night before in my head.

These Cockney bastards were professionals. If Egg had sent them up here, then he trusted them. And if Egg trusted them, they meant business.

Next time isn't no fuckin' warning.

When Robertson had told me about the first phone call, I'd dismissed his fear out of hand. An over-reaction. Natural enough, given everything he'd gone through.

But now I was beginning to understand what these arseholes were capable of.

They weren't just going to give up and go home if we gave them the run around. And they wouldn't give a shite if they knew the coppers were after them. They'd killed Katrina Egg. Shot Bill. Enjoyed it, too. And now they were coming after me and James Robertson.

For these psycho-fucks, reclaiming the big man's missing cash was little more than an afterthought.

I always thought a city was a place you could lose yourself.

Dundee calls itself a city, but it's hard to become lost here. Elaine, whose family came from Glasgow, called it a small town with pretensions. I guess she was right. Once you've lived here long enough, some days it seems you can't walk ten steps without seeing someone you know.

Which made my staying in the city a perversity of sorts.

Every street dredged up memories of Elaine. The sight of the Law Hill rising above the buildings made me think of when we used to take walks together up the gentle slope towards the observatory.

Was I simply reluctant to let go?

Or was it something more troubling?

The morning after the two Cockney pricks had broken into my office, I found myself walking past Elaine's old flat. It was to the east of the city, situated above a bookies. The gamblers had used her
close as an unofficial urinal. The first time she invited me back, she warned me about the smell.

I stood on the street outside, looked up at the window of the third floor flat and imagined I could see her there, looking out the window, waiting for me, translucent, a ghost waiting for a day that would never arrive.

The day she moved out, I remember she took one last look at the hallway before closing the door and following me down the steps and onto the street. I asked her why she looked so sad. She smiled at me and said, “If you live somewhere long enough, you leave a part of yourself there. I was saying goodbye.”

I saw movement up there at the window where I imagined her to be standing. And I thought that it was a beautiful idea, leaving part of yourself behind.

But I knew it was bullshit.

When Lindsay answered the phone, he sounded irritated. I said, “You wanted to talk. So let's talk.”

I told him I'd be there in twenty minutes.

He told me he'd chuck me in the cells for wasting police time.

Lindsay stood on the steps out the front of HQ at the West Marketgait entrance. He was smoking a cigarette. His gaze was fixed on the Marketgait, watching the twin lanes of traffic as they swept past. Across the way, empty jute mills had been rejuvenated; student accommodation. The town was
transforming; from industry to education and innovation.

“So what do you want to talk about?”

“You were right,” I said.

He raised his eyebrows. Forced the grin back off his face. “Really?”

“I'm a stubborn prick. I'm holding shit back because I don't like you. And because of that, people have ended up dead and a man who doesn't deserve it could be a cripple for life.”

“Have you called the hospital?”

“No.”

“Some friend you are.”

“Can we leave this alone?”

“You haven't been looking well lately. When you saw that body, I thought you were about to fall over.”

I put weight on my left leg as though to make the point. “I'm doing fine.”

He looked like he didn't believe me. But instead of passing comment, he took another puff on his cigarette. He couldn't have looked like he wanted to be here any less.

“These men think I have something that belongs to them,” I said. “I don't. Neither does my client.”

“Aye? You sure about that?” He took a deep drag on the cigarette. “Your client, the man, Robertson, that's his name? Maybe you can tell me where he is?”

“I don't know,” I said, thinking that everyone seemed desperate to find him. “You might want to try him at his home.”

He nodded. “Trouble with that is he's no got a home any more. Last night, there was a fire. A monster from what I hear. Black smoke choking up the skies, flames that could singe the back of your eyeballs if you just looked at them. The whole place
burnt to ashes. Nothing left.” I knew he could see my reaction out of the corner of his eye. “I don't know if there was anyone in there. They're still going through the wreckage. I'm waiting to hear for sure whether it was an accident. I mean, that kind of fire, it's got to be an accident. Unless someone wanted to prove a serious point.” He didn't believe that it was an accident. You could hear it in his voice. See it in his face.

I hadn't come here to play games with him. “I have a few ideas.”

“No doubt.”

“The two men are associates of Gordon Egg.”