Even though four weeks had passed since Beth ended their relationship once and for all, he said, “I’m not sure this is a good idea.”
“No one’s forcing you.”
“I have a spare key for Jack’s flat,” he said. “It’s a bit rough at the edges, but at least it’s got two beds.”
“Good,” she said. “Then that’s settled.”
• • •
JIMMY SQUEEZED WEE Kenny’s shoulder.
Wee Kenny looked at the hard hand only inches from his neck.
“You look worried, wee man.”
Wee Kenny shook his head. “No me, Jimmy.”
“You done a good job there.”
Relief flooded through Wee Kenny in a rush so strong that for one crazy second he thought he was going to piss in his pants. “I done my best, Jimmy.” He tried to force a laugh, conscious of the fingers digging into his collarbone, but it fell flat.
“It’s looking good.”
Wee Kenny eyed the Jaguar’s boot lid. He had never spray-painted a car before, and paint rippled like orange peel in parts where he’d sprayed it too thick. But overall, he thought he done a good job.
“It’ll be dry for the morra,” he said.
Jimmy took a deep draw of his cigarette. Thin cheeks pulled thinner. Eyes as dark as coal closed for a moment’s pleasure. Smoke curled from nostrils thick with hair that leaked into a dank moustache. In the dim light, Wee Kenny thought Jimmy’s mouth looked like one more scar on a face creased with scars.
Jimmy kept a permanent week-old growth to hide his scars. Black stubble, a quarter of an inch long, hid the worst of them, a jagged welt that ran from the corner of his right lip to the lower jaw, the result of a broken bottle to his face. And Wee Kenny remembered what happened to big Archie Chalmers, the punter who done it to him.
It was years ago. Jimmy was fifteen. Not much more. Archie in his early twenties, a small-time thug making a name for himself as a hard-man to be reckoned with. Even though Jimmy still had the stitches in his face, he and his big brother, Bully, goes to see Archie at his home on the fourteenth floor in Red Road. Jimmy stands out of sight while Bully knuckles the door. Archie’s mother opens up. Bully smiles and asks for Archie. But when Archie turns up, Bully steps back, Jimmy steps in, open razors slashing up and down, left and right, like a drummer gone wild. The story goes that the slashing was so bad, even Bully almost threw up.
One slash cut Archie’s left eyeball in half. Another almost had his nose off. Bully had to stick the head on Jimmy to stop him cutting Archie to death, and ended up with sixteen stitches himself from a cut that opened his palm. From that day on, no one messed with the Reid brothers.
But Bully was now in the Bar-L serving fifteen years for manslaughter. The charges should have been murder, but even the Procurator Fiscal seemed too afraid to go for the max. The Bar-L should have been enough to keep Bully out of the picture, but he was keeping busy behind bars, having Jimmy do his legwork.
And rumour had it that something big was about to break, and that Bully was filing an appeal. But Wee Kenny knew better than to ask Jimmy what it was. No way would he ask.
If he did, that would be the end of him.
Chapter 18
GILCHRIST STUMBLED ACROSS Jack’s makeshift cocktail cabinet on the bottom shelf of the food cupboard-a Glenfiddich single malt that looked tempting enough, but contained less than an inch of whisky; or a ten-year-old Longrow, which he remembered gifting to Jack on one of his infrequent visits. He removed it from its burgundy gift box and confirmed it was almost half-full. Perfect.
He picked up a tumbler and walked along the hall to Jack’s bedroom, the bottle of Longrow in hand. As he passed the bathroom he heard the rattle of glass and the sound of running water.
“Goodnight,” he called out.
Nance did not reply.
In Jack’s bedroom, he poured himself a large one and powered up Maureen’s laptop. He double-clicked My Documents, and a screen flashed up with a list of Folder icons entitled Novels, Letters, Research, Databases, and the last one, Spreadsheets. The toilet flushed, and the bathroom door opened and closed with a quiet double click. A shadow drifted by the gap at the bottom of the door like a spectral image, then vanished as the hall light was switched off. He clicked his bedside lamp off and took a sip of whisky, feeling its fiery warmth work through his system. The only light in the room came from the laptop’s screen. He took another sip then clicked on Letters.
The screen flashed up a fresh page that contained a list of files with names such as royalbank-12-01-03, dkerr-29-09-02. He double-clicked one to confirm the simple filing system. jstevens-11-02-03 was a letter to Joyce Stevens dated 11th February 2003. He dug deeper, did an automatic search for files that contained the title rwatt, but found none. He tried rearranging the lists alphabetically, then checked the Rs for Ronnie, the Ws for Watt, but came up empty, which pleased him.
Next, he clicked his way into the Novels folder to reveal more Folder icons entitled by novel. He clicked on Novel 1 to find yet more folders and files that contained research notes, character traits, synopses, and even one that listed titles. He clicked on Correspondence and spent the next twenty minutes discovering that Maureen had written to over thirty literary agents in London and sent another twenty query letters to agents in the States.
He felt as if his daughter was a stranger to him. How long had she wanted to be a novelist? Why had she never mentioned it to him? And what about her photography? Had she given that up? He took another sip of whisky, worked his way out of Correspondence, and jerked his head to the side as the bedroom door clicked open.
Light from the front lounge cast a faint glow along the hallway, exposing Nance in the doorway. A blanket draped around her shoulders hung almost to the floor. Her feet and ankles were bare. “I can’t sleep,” she said.
“That makes two of us.”
She eased into the room. “Do you mind?”
Gilchrist tilted his glass to her. “Like a half?”
“You rat,” she said. “Where did that come from?”
He eyed her over a pair of imaginary spectacles, and said in a ridiculous German accent, “I haf my sourses.”
Nance flitted towards him like a shrouded ghost and sat on the edge of the bed. The laptop lay between them like some tech-age chastity belt. She eased the tumbler from his fingers and took a sip.
From the way her lips puckered, Gilchrist could tell she was not a whisky drinker.
“Like it?” he asked.
“The occasional sip.”
He finished the glass and poured another. Three pints and two large measures was not the recipe for feeling great in the morning, but sometimes stuff happened. Besides, alcohol helped his powers of deductive reasoning. Or so he told himself.
“Any luck?” she asked. In the faint light, her cheeks looked sunken, her chin square. Her eyes lay hidden in pools of shadow, as if shielding her thoughts from him.
“Most of it is innocent enough,” he said. “Daily correspondence. That sort of thing.”
“Know what you’re looking for?”
“Any connection to Ronnie Watt for starters. But I haven’t found it yet.”
“You hate him, don’t you.”
“Oh, much worse than that.”
“Care to tell me why?”
“Not really.”
Nance reached for the glass again. Her fingers wrapped around his as they clutched the tumbler together. She leaned forward, took a sip, and the blanket fell away, just sufficient for the blue-white light of the computer screen to reveal the round swell of her right breast, the nipple hidden in shadow. “That tasted better,” she said, and pulled the blanket back around her as if warding off a light chill.