I stood in the snow facing Tollcross in the dark of night. The Christmas lights draped over the road glowed down on the traffic, danced on the car roofs. I heard screams and wails carry from the showground in Princes Street Gardens. The sounds sliced me as a double-decker bus passed by, wet spray flying from the gutter. A man with gift-wrapped parcels in his arms tried to squeeze past me, grunted when I didn’t move. He dropped a glove, failed to notice; I didn’t tell him.
I stood staring. Watching the traffic lights change, the taxis turn in the road. I started to get wet. The snow fell heavily. I’d never seen snow like it. It settled where it lay, inches of it already on parked cars. My hair flattened to my head, stuck to my brow. An old woman approached me and held up the fallen glove. She asked if it was mine but I didn’t answer. She waved it at me but I ignored her. The woman’s mouth kept moving and moving and moving but I didn’t hear the words. Eventually she walked away, placed the glove on railings and continued up the street.
I felt cold. My lips grew numb and my hands froze in my pockets. I stood and I stared ahead and I felt the tears forming in my eyes, but they wouldn’t fall. They held there like I held myself to the exact same spot on the pavement and then I felt a dig in my shoulder as a late shopper pushed past me, and the tears were dislodged. I turned to hear the shopper apologise, wiped my face with the back of my hand. I didn’t know what to say. I was beyond words. Words could be formed into thought and I didn’t want to think. I didn’t want to think and I didn’t want to feel. I wanted to trade places with my brother. I didn’t want any part in this misery called life any more. I knew I couldn’t go on if anything happened to Alice.
‘Gus, Gus… fucking hell, Gus.’ Mac called me from the street.
I looked up. He had Hod’s truck stopped in the road; a trail of angry drivers blasted horns behind him. I found myself moving towards the vehicle, automatically opened up the door and got in. Tyres spun on the wet road as he took off.
‘Jesus, you were away with the pixies there, mate,’ he said. ‘What’s up?’
The heater blew in front of me. I started to thaw.
‘I know who killed my brother.’
‘Wha’?’ Mac turned his head. ‘Who?’
I saw my fingernails turning pink. ‘It was the Czechs… They put one of their own in Michael’s house, as a frightener.’
Mac pulled over the truck — we drew in beside the Meadows. ‘How do you know?’
I told him what the Undertaker had said. ‘It all stacks up. On the night he died Michael went to see McMilne; he says he was going to cut out the Czechs.’ I looked out to the Meadows, where they had found my brother’s body. ‘Michael must have went home and had it out with Vilem.’ I saw nothing in the park but blackness. ‘We have to find fat Davie: he’s legged it since Radek got lifted… McMilne has my niece.’
Mac spoke: ‘Your niece?’
‘He’ll put her in a hole if we don’t bring him Davie… We have to get that piece of shit right now.’
Mac started the engine. ‘Let’s go.’
I jerked my head away from the blackness. The Undertaker’s lumps had been searching the city and got not a sniff of him. ‘Where to fucking start?’
Mac pulled right across the road; a blast of car horns went up. He engaged reverse and went for a three-point turn. ‘I’ve got a fair idea where he might be.’
We headed back towards Tollcross. I said, ‘Where are we going?’
‘Remember when I was tailing him, I told you he had a wee scrubber stashed away in a flat in Restalrig?… I bet you a pound to a pail of shite the fat wee gimp’s up there.’
Mac bombed it down Lothian Road, ran lights on Princes Street, but the traffic ground to a standstill on George Street. The middle classes in their uniform Barbour jackets trotted back and forth between the glitter and the tinsel and the bright lights. A crowd of excited schoolgirls giggled and shivered at the crossing; I thought of Alice.
‘Come on, Mac… punch it.’
‘It’s chocka. Christmas Eve, mate.’
I didn’t want to be reminded. Alice should have been like those girls, having fun, laughing and joking. Preparing for a school party, Jesus, getting tipsy. How could I have been angry with her for that? I wanted to say sorry to her and hug her and promise to look after her. She’d lost her father, we’d all lost Michael; we couldn’t lose anyone else. I saw Debs’s face as I thought of Alice tied in that field. Debs would never be able to take any hurt befalling Alice, it would be the end of her too.
Jayne.
My mother.
My sister.
The list grew in my mind.
‘Come on, come on.’ I slapped at the dash. The cars sat still, going nowhere. I opened the door, got out and shouted, ‘Get moving, come on, fucking move it!’ The New Town shoppers stared at me. A woman flicked her scarf over her shoulder and muttered something to the concourse. I pounded the bonnet of the Hilux with my fists.
Mac called me, ‘Get in, Gus, you’re not fucking helping.’
That was my problem; I wasn’t helping anyone. I hadn’t been there for Michael, and now I’d let down his daughter, my niece. Knew I was transferring my own self-loathing to the surrounds. Anger and hurt burned in me.
I got back in the truck and Mac eased it through a gap in the bottleneck. He tore through York Place until we hit the roundabout. We rolled into a quiet stretch, and topped sixty most of the way to Jock’s Lodge. At Restalrig we roared through the streets, flashing anyone who got in our way with the headlights on full beam.
Mac dropped gears, threw two wheels on the pavement and hit the anchors. ‘Right, follow me.’ He opened the door and eased out of the truck. He hopped on his sore ankle but there was a steel in his gut that told me he’d tear down walls to get to fat Davie. The flat was in a street of ex-council maisonettes. There’d been no maintenance done here since before the Thatcher years, save the odd lick of paint by late-boom developers looking to turn a quick profit.
‘It’s up there,’ said Mac. He pointed to a skanky door, banging on its hinges. I went in behind him. The stair was in almost complete darkness — one dim light flickered beside the front door. A pram with a bent wheel sat in the hallway alongside a giant yellow Tonka truck that had been trashed and spray-painted. The young crew’s graffiti artists had also tagged the stairs and there was the familiar stench of Special Brew and pish everywhere.
At the top of the steps Mac pointed to another door. I didn’t need any more information, put my boot to the lock and it shed a few strips of peeling emulsion. The second kick put the whole frame in; the top hinge collapsed, spat out some screws.
As I walked in I heard the theme tune from Only Fools and Horses starting, another Christmas special rerun with Del and Rodney. I stormed through to the living room and a bleach-blonde stick insect with a nose piercing and an Embassy in her grid screamed at me. I put my hand over her mouth and pushed her back into the chair she’d leaped from. She screamed again, ‘Fucking cunts come into my fucking house!’ Her face lit up like a lantern as she spat.
Mac stepped from behind me and cracked a knuckle on her brow. She flopped like a deflating sex doll.
Fat Davie sat in his chewing-gum-coloured Y-fronts and a stringy semmit, toasting his stockinged toes in front of a three-bar electric heater. One of his brown socks had a hole in it; his big toe had worked its way out. He had a tinfoil Chinese carry-out box balanced on his belly and a forkful of egg noodles poised before his open mouth.
‘Hello, Davie,’ I said. The noodles dropped into the box. Some chow mein sauce splashed on his chest and he jumped with a start. Mac leaned over and smacked the carry-out from his hands. It splashed on the wall and the electric fire sizzled as the beanshoots and chicken strips bounced off its red-hot bars.
‘Gus, ehm, I was thinking about what you told me…’ said Davie.
I leaned forward and grabbed a bunch of his semmit, yanked him up. ‘No, you fucking fat waste of space, you weren’t thinking.’ I threw him to the door. ‘Folk like you never fucking think, Davie.’
He stumbled and put his hands out to break his fall. Mac pulled a pair of beige Farah slacks from the back of a chair, threw them at fat Davie. ‘Get dressed, y’cunt.’
As Mac kicked shoes towards Davie, I looked about the room. There was a travel bag and a leather briefcase sitting by the fireplace. I opened up the bag first: it was full of clothes. ‘Going somewhere, Davie?’
He jerked his head towards me, nearly lost balance as he tried to put a foot in his trousers.
‘I was just…’ he said.
‘Shut the fuck up,’ said Mac. He slapped him across the face. A trickle of blood fell from Davie’s nose and caught in his pale moustache.
I opened up the briefcase: stacks of paperwork, bankbooks, chequebooks, and a few hefty rolls tucked away underneath. I held up some twenties. Mac gave Davie another belt. The sack of shit whimpered.
‘Don’t see your tickets, Davie,’ I said, ‘for Disneyland.’
He wiped the blood from his nose. ‘What? What?… Disneyland?’
‘Maybe not…’ I shook my head. ‘I think your Donald Duck just ran out.’
Mac picked up a blazer and shoved it at Davie. ‘Come on, get your arse out that door.’
The fat fuck turned back to me, whimpered again. ‘Gus, Gus…’
‘Get through the door, Davie… If you speak nicely to him, the Undertaker might let you say a prayer before he puts you in the ground.’ I walked over and pushed him in the back. ‘But if he’s hurt my Alice, I’ll fucking dig you up and finish the job with my bare hands.’