The stone gallows, p.24
The Stone Gallows, page 24
I drifted into the shadows behind a tree and watched the show. The passenger side window was open just a crack, and from it came a variety of sounds: thumping, creaking, the occasional moan and muttered curse. I wasn’t close enough to see much more than the rocking of the suspension and the occasional outline of a flailing limb, like a drowning octopus, and I honestly can’t say I regretted it.
After about ten minutes, the moans and thuds ceased. The engine started and the car drove away into the night. I wondered who they were. A married couple desperate to spice things up but too cautious to try swinging? A couple cheating on their respective partners, the whole thing giving them an even bigger thrill? I decided that I was happier not knowing.
Now that it was over, I half expected the watchers to linger, perhaps analysing the performance the way people discuss a movie. It didn’t happen. The tail lights had barely disappeared into the night when three of the men started walking – two in the same direction the car had taken, the other simply disappearing, presumably along a path similar to the one on which I had followed Jason. The park was a rabbit warren of tiny little trails and tracks. In less than two minutes, all that was left was Jason and his tubby little friend. They seemed to be talking about something, so I kept my head down and duck-walked a little closer, keeping a tree between us. Unless I did something stupid like stepped on a dry twig or a hedgehog or something, I would remain undetected. I strained my ears to make out what they were saying.
Turned out, I needn’t have bothered.
‘. . . doesn’t light properly. I’ll need to get it replaced, but I’m holding off until after the summer.’
‘I had a combi-boiler installed last year.’
‘Are they any good?’
‘They’re alright. Make a lot of noise. . .’
What a disappointment. It was depressing to learn that sexual deviants are just as boring as the rest of us.
10.11.
Ten minutes of suicidally dull chit-chat later, they said their goodbyes. By then, I had learned that Star Trek fan’s name was Liam and he lived with his mother. I could probably have figured out that particular detail on my own.
Liam started off in the same direction as the car. Jason went back the way he came, passing perilously close to my hiding place. Luckily the tree was one of those oaks that grow to about ten thousand years old and looked big enough to house an entire army of Ewoks. As he passed, I sidled around the trunk. The light drizzle that I had cursed was now my ally; the leaves underneath my feet were damp enough not to rustle as I shuffled through them. In seconds, he was thirty yards away. I fell in behind him, closing the gap quickly. Now was the time to make my move. It was the middle of the night, and given that the park was supposed to be closed to the general public, the only people in the immediate vicinity were unlikely to be fine upstanding citizens. Jason would have to shout very loudly and run very quickly before finding anybody that would help him.
I had no intention of allowing him to do so.
He hummed as he walked, some tune that I remembered Daryl Hannah whistling in a Tarantino movie a few years back. In the movie, she’d been dressed as a nurse, on her way to give a lethal injection to Uma Thurman, who was in a coma in some hospital.
Daryl had looked damn fine, and Uma had made the sexiest coma victim I’d ever seen.
Talk about irony. It should have been me singing the song, because I was the one playing the Daryl Hannah role. Instead of a lethal injection, all I had was my fists, but it didn’t matter. By the time I was done, Jason was going to wish he was in a fucking coma.
Or dead.
Tired, bored, and cold, I decided that it was time to act. There wasn’t a soul around for five hundred yards, and it was unlikely I would get such a clear window of opportunity again. Jason was twenty yards in front of me. I broke into a jog, closing the distance rapidly. At ten yards I accelerated to a run, ignoring the yowl of protest from my hip. He heard me and started to turn. Too slow. He got halfway round before I hit him amidships in a savage tackle, burrowing my shoulder into the soft part between his waist and his ribcage. I ploughed straight through him like a bowling ball picking up a spare, hardly losing momentum, my feet getting ahead of me, running faster to compensate. The run turned into a stumble and then it all became too much; my knee buckled and I was sprawling, throwing my hands out to stop the fall, the tiny jagged stones chewing through the flesh of my outstretched palms like cheese in a grater. I ignored the pain, rolling to my feet and turning. Jason was behind me, head down, on hands and knees, coughing. I ran at him, driving the side of my foot into his stomach like I was punting a rugby ball and going for a world record in distance. His arms and legs collapsed and he went face down in the dirt. I straddled him, grabbing him by that stupid little pony-tail and jerking his head up, bending his spine in a backwards arch. He screamed and coughed, spraying saliva. There was dirt on his cheek. I screamed at him. ‘Jason, you bastard! Why’d you do it?’
‘I haven’t got any money! Don’t hurt me!’
‘You prick! That was my flat! My stuff! My girlfriend!’
‘What! What flat? What stuff?’
I turned his head halfway round, jamming his cheek into the soil, leaning forward so that he could see me. His eyes were crazy and wide.
But then, so were mine, probably. ‘You burned down my flat. You fucking burned up all my stuff.’
He started to shake his head from side to side. ‘I swear, I didn’t. I didn’t touch your fucking flat.’
‘You were there, you piece of shit. I fucking saw you!’
‘I was never anywhere near your flat! I don’t know where you live,’
he blubbered. ‘I don’t even know your fucking name!’
I pressed down on his shoulders, driving him further into the ground. He screamed. My mind was an abyss, filled only with the gladiatorial roar of conquest, the barbarian in me proud of my revenge. As it had been on the night of the accident, all my common sense was gone and only the adrenaline was left. I wanted to hurt him.
I wanted kill him. I wanted to make the cunt cry like a baby. I seized his arm and forced it up his back. He screamed again, but this time it wasn’t fear but pain.
‘Please! PLEASE!’
Something click/crunched in his shoulder and he howled. I eased off, just a fraction, leaning close into his ear. ‘I saw you, you turd.’
‘Saw me do what, ya fuckin’ psycho? I don’t know what you’re talking about. I swear. Don’t hurt me anymore.’
I was about a heartbeat away from an aneurysm. ‘DON’T
FUCKING LIE TO ME!’
‘I’m not lying. Whatever you think I did, I didn’t.’
‘Liar.’ I reapplied pressure on the arm, jamming it further and further toward his shoulders until I felt the bone itself bend, just the tiniest fraction, seeking a compromise I had no intention of giving. By now, Jason had quit screaming. Instead he was making a high pitched mewing sound, like a nest of starving chicks. He sucked air desperately, his eyes bulging with terror.
And then it broke.
And so did he. His eyes rolled like the tumblers on a fruit machine before coming up empty, his body going limp beneath me as he passed out from the pain.
10.12.
I waited and listened, planning to fade into the background if there was any indication that our scuffle had attracted anybody’s attention.
It hadn’t. The moon slid out from behind the clouds, and the silence, broken by the sound of anger and pain, healed itself. I made a slow count to a hundred, the only noise the patter of falling water.
It was just me, Jason and the rain.
He lay at my feet. I pressed my finger to his neck, feeling a faint but steady pulse. Still alive. How wonderful for society.
On the edge of the path was a brightly coloured yellow bin.
Grimacing with distaste, I rummaged for a few seconds, finding what I was looking for wrapped in a brown paper bag underneath an empty pizza box. I removed it from the bin and examined it. Mississippi Steamer. Pineapple flavour. High in alcohol content and low in price, the beverage of choice for the city’s homeless alcoholics and dis-enfranchised teens. Also known as Jakey Juice. There was still at least half a litre of fluid swishing around in the bottle. Wishing I had some gloves, I unscrewed the cap and sniffed. The stench of spoiled fruit juice caused my eyes to water and my stomach to grumble.
Jason was still unconscious at my feet. I rolled him onto his back and upended the bottle, pouring the contents over him, starting at the top and working my way down, making sure that not a drop was wasted. Then I reversed my grip on the bottle, holding it by the neck as I smashed it on the edge of the trash bin, leaving me with the world’s most popular makeshift weapon. Moonlight glittered as it bounced off the jagged edges.
Behind me, Jason moaned.
I turned to face him. His eyelids were fluttering. Both hands moved to wipe the stuff off his cheeks, but only one of them made it. The other flapped uselessly at his side, like a bird with a broken wing. He whinnied in pain. I got down so that his head was almost between my knees, the damp seeping through the material of my budget denims.
With my left hand, I pinched his earlobe as hard as I could, causing his eyes to spring open. They were muddy and confused. That would never do.
I wanted – needed – Jason’s complete and undivided attention.
By leaning over him, I could encircle his throat with my left hand, driving my thumb and forefinger deep into the flesh. His good hand grasped weakly at my wrist. I ignored it. With my right hand I skimmed the remains of the bottle in front of his face and explained how I planned to use it to remove his eyeballs if he didn’t stop fucking around.
He got the point, going limp immediately. His eyes tracked the jagged glass. I waved the bottle at him, using it as a visual aid to underline my words. ‘I don’t particularly want to kill you, but I should warn you that doing so would not be the tragedy that you no doubt think it to be. I suspect that very few people would miss you.’ A thought struck me. ‘Although I’m quite sure that Betty the Cleaner would miss the regular bonuses. What is it you do that makes her discretion so appreciated?’
He didn’t answer quickly enough, so I sliced a tiny line into the skin of his forehead, quickly subduing his lamentable attempt to struggle. The shallower the wound, the more it bleeds, and this one was no exception. Within seconds, his forehead was smeared red. I used the sleeve of my jacket to wipe it away, wishing that I had thought to wear gloves. ‘Seriously, what’s the deal between you and Betty?’
When he spoke, his voice was low and choked. ‘She’s got a part-time job in the local secondary school.’
‘And?’
He looked past me, into the sky. I pressed the jagged sliver of glass into his forehead, the skin dimpling and then puncturing, a tiny bead of blood swelling from the perforation. ‘And?’
‘And she knows lots of girls.’ He saw the look in my eye. ‘Not kids.
The ones that are over sixteen. Sometimes I go and pick her up and she. . . introduces me.’
‘You’re kidding me.’ I found myself seriously considering cutting his face off. It was only the fear of finding something even less pleasant underneath that stopped me.
He shrugged. ‘You wouldn’t believe what these kids are like. Since the Internet was invented, all people want to do is have sex. I’m not committing any crime.
‘You are if they’re under eighteen.’
His eyes flickered left, and then right. ‘They’re not. All sixth formers.’
‘I guess that makes you a stand-up guy. I wish I had a sister so that I could give you her phone number,’ I said. ‘Besides, I know that you’re fucking lying to me. You said sixteen first of all. I bet you think that if the shit goes down and you end up in court you can argue that they looked eighteen. You can turn those big puppy dog eyes in the direction of the jury and explain how you’re actually the victim? How some nasty, morally bankrupt girl lied to a man no doubt grieving the death of his dear sainted mother, who made the mistake of turning to a comely young lady for comfort and emotional support. Is that about right?’
He said nothing. He didn’t need to.
‘Jason, you’re a scumbag. I hate to be so plain, but there you go.
When I spoke to you yesterday afternoon, I was just passing on what everybody thinks of you. There was no need for you to do what you did.’
‘What I did. . . I didn’t do anything.’
‘Yes, you did,’ I said patiently. ‘You followed me home and burned down my flat. Last night.’ I patted him affectionately on the cheek. ‘I don’t mind – it was a shithole, really – but I was in it at the time. As was a close friend of mine. Now I can understand why you might hold a grudge, but seriously, all you did was demonstrate the sort of stupidity and ineptitude that got you locked up in the first place, and by putting my friend’s life in danger you made yourself much more important to me than you originally were.’
‘I swear, I don’t know what you’re talking about.’
‘Jason, I saw you.’
‘You didn’t. I was at home last night. I had no where else to be.’
‘Bullshit. I suppose it was just a co-incidence that your car was parked down the street when my flat went up in flames.’
He tried to shake his head, but I held him down. ‘I don’t know. I didn’t burn your flat down. I swear it. I can’t be the only person in Glasgow who drives a Mercedes.’
‘You’re the only one who’s threatened to kill me in the past forty-eight hours. And that’s quite a coinkydink, isn’t it?’
We carried on like this for another five minutes or so. He kept denying it, and I kept pressing him. Eventually I dropped the matter, deciding that I had made my point. I found his mobile phone in his inside pocket and checked the display. Three bars; good reception. He wouldn’t have any difficulty phoning for an ambulance.
I told him that I was going to let him go – on two conditions. He nodded. Anything.
‘One. Move the fuck out of Glasgow. You’ve got money, so it won’t be a problem. If I don’t see your house in the property pages by this time next week I’m going to find you and break your other arm.
Alright?’
Alright.
‘Two. You might be entertaining some silly ideas about revenge. It’s alright to think these things, but to act on them would be very, very silly. There are so many things I could do to you. I have so many friends that can act on my behalf. I have friends in the police department, I have friends on the street. You got off easy tonight. Your arm will heal. I could have happily taken a hammer to your joints, but I like to think of myself as a kind person. Fuck with me again, I’ll do something you won’t walk away from. Understand?’
He understood. I tossed his mobile phone onto the ground next to him. ‘Phone an ambulance. Tell them that you tripped and fell. They won’t believe you, but that’s their problem and not yours. You mention my name, I’ll kill you. Do you think I’m kidding?’
He didn’t.
Chapter 11
Friday 21st November
11.1
I woke up the next morning a changed man. My lungs, which had spent the last twenty-four hours feeling like a deployed airbag, felt clean and refreshed. The air seemed to shimmer with the promise the new day had to offer. It was time to move on from all the shit that had been holding me back. Instead of thinking of the loss of my flat as a tragedy, I would see it as an excuse to move on. I would find somewhere better. Nicer. Christ knew, it wouldn’t be hard. I was a lucky man. I had a great job with a good boss. A nice girlfriend. A beautiful son. It was time to stop wallowing in self-pity and start getting on with my life.
I hummed as I shaved
After the excitement of the past couple of days, it was good to get back to what passed for normal in my life. Joe and I spent the morning in the office, going through the nuts-and-bolts work that comprised maybe seventy percent of his business. Sophie Sloan wasn’t the only active case we were investigating. We had several other clients, all of whom believed they were more important than anybody else. I spent most of my time on the telephone, chasing down avenues as they wound their way into various blind alleys and dead ends.
I wanted to show Joe how much I appreciated the bed and the loan, so I took him out to lunch. We ended up spending the afternoon in the pub, playing pool and talking bullshit, the line between employer and employee becoming ever more blurred as the drinks flowed. After his third drink, Joe mentioned something that caught my attention.
‘You ever think about the future, Cameron?’
I lined up a stripe, aiming for the corner pocket. ‘Not really. I find that it happens soon enough.’
‘I think about it a lot. I’m going to be a granddad soon. You find yourself wanting to leave something behind. Not just money, but more. A. . . a legacy, if you will. An empire.’
‘An empire?’ I straightened, clapping my hand to my cheek and pretending to be concerned. ‘Joe. . . are you dying?’
‘Fuck off.’
‘It’s just that you sounded very serious for a second. I thought you were going to tell me that you had a terminal disease.’ I eyed the glass in his hand. ‘Like liver failure.’
‘I am serious. I’ve been thinking about expanding the business to include a diligence department.’
Even though I wasn’t really concentrating on the game, I bent to the shot again. ‘What, like Sheriff Officers?’
‘And Messengers at Arms. I’ve got the contacts; I think it would be a good little moneyspinner.’
Sheriff Officers and Messengers were the Scottish version of Baillifs, only with significantly more legal power. It wasn’t a popular job, but neither was it a bad one. I shot. Missed. The cue-ball bounced awkwardly and hid against the top cushion.
Joe sighed and shook his head. ‘You’re shite at this.’
‘Yeah, well, I never claimed to be Steve bloody Davies, did I?’
Joe leaned down and cued up, aiming for an almost-impossible yellow at the opposite end of the table. ‘I’d need to have somebody to run the department.’
