Butcher (19 page)

She put on her panties, then a black skirt and a pale blue blouse. She slipped her feet into low-heeled black shoes, applied a little make-up, brushed her hair. She reached for her black cashmere overcoat, tied the belt loosely. She checked her bag to make sure she had massage oils and scented candles.

She could hear Chuck continue to read the riot act to Mathieson.
Somebody lets me down they hardly ever get a second chance, Ronnie. I wipe my arse with them
. She hadn't heard him so angry in a long time. Losing the plot, she thought. Remember the Baba's teachings, Chuck.

Poor Ronnie, he always did his best. He deserved better treatment. He'd resent being made to feel like an eejit in her presence.

Sure, he'd survive because Chuck needed him, passably competent people were rare. But she wouldn't bet money on the life spans of the three goons who'd done the banker's wife.

25

She took the lift to the lobby. The uniformed doorman smiled at her as he held the front glass door. She blew him a kiss as she passed through and headed for the curb where a taxi was waiting. The cabbie, a man with a face like a red cabbage, smiled at her too. All men did. She could bring cheer to pallbearers shouldering a corpse.

She gave the driver the address and settled back to watch Glasgow flick past in a gallery of café lights, bars, small corner shops, the sullen bastions of the tenements. Out of the city, the taxi travelled close to the eastern housing schemes. Here was Cranhill, and beyond the yellow chemical lump of the Sugarolly Mountain lay the streets of Ruchazie. She'd been brought up in Drumchapel, and what she remembered most about The Drum was boredom, the endless grind of life, the drudgery of unemployment, the alkies who hung out on street corners and fell down drunk wherever they fancied.

It wasn't life as she wanted it to be.

She was nineteen when she met Reuben Chuck in a city bar called Arta. She had a boyfriend at the time, naïve and sweet, a long way behind her in ambition. Chuck came on like a blast of gelignite, and tilted the axis of her world. He was the first man she'd ever met with the power to click his fingers and bring waiters scurrying. He got the best tables in restaurants, even when he hadn't booked. He wore designer suits and shoes as soft as gloves and he moved through Glasgow as if it was a property he was thinking of buying. She learned to ignore the entourage of minders that always discreetly accompanied him: they became background, wallpaper. She hadn't been entirely sure what Chuck did for a living, but she was sharp enough to realize quickly that his activities were on the opposite side of the street from legal.

He escorted her to parties in flash houses belonging to loud self-satisfied men like Stoker and Curdy, whose wives and mistresses wore tons of tacky jewels and tight sequined dresses. Splashy Botox-browed burdz with big mombassas and bagza glossy lipstick and shiny helmet-like hairdos and gutter Glesca accents. Chuck never gave Glorianna anything ostentatious. All his gifts were thoughtful, stylish. He took her to the opera, presented her with a cashmere stole and a small Celtic cross, and piloted her for romantic trips in his four-seater Cessna – Skye, the Highlands, London, Paris.

And the sex – oh, it was all thunder and lightning. He made her weak-kneed. They couldn't get enough of each other. He made her feel she was important in his life, not just some young crumpet he was doing.

And now he was Captain Celibacy, keeping his pecker in his pants, and eating muesli and organic figs. Now she was told to grab a cab instead of his cock. She felt neglected. OK, she owed her rise in the world to Chuck, and he'd always treated her with respect and tenderness in the five years of their relationship, and he'd listened carefully to her dreams –
Go for them
, he'd say.
Reach out and you'll grasp them
.

But she was still pissed off with him.

At times she wished he hadn't been so encouraging, that he'd asked her to stay in Glasgow with him and forget this LA stuff … but he hadn't.

Maybe he would. And then what?

She'd want her own Jag and chauffeur before she'd even think of staying. She was worth at least that.

‘Here we are,' the driver said. ‘Spooky intit. Rather you than me.'

She peered through the window at a high grey brick wall surrounding an old house that looked like a manse. It was incongruous against a background of the four- and five-storey towers of a housing scheme. She gave the driver the Fitness Centre's account number, signed a receipt to which she added a generous tip, then stepped out.

She heard ear-cracking music from the towers, boomboxes reverberating. A shotgun was fired, a single burst that echoed between the buildings. And something was on fire back there. Flames rose, and sparks scattered. She caught an oily stench in the air. A car aflame, maybe. Kids at their regular play. Let's torch this jalopy. Let's shoot a gun.

I should just have said no. Find yourself another girl for this
fucking
job, Mister Chuck.

She walked to a set of tall spiked metal gates cemented into the stone wall. A bell-button was buried in brickwork. She pressed it, waited. Nobody came. Dogs barked with savage intent. She hoped they were securely locked up.

She looked the length of the street. Dusk, a few lamps were lit, others broken. There was always a latent tension in this kind of neighbourhood, that persistent thud of music, the fire illuminating the cheerless facades of the towers, the proximity of guns, but no sign of anyone – although she suspected that dangerous figures, muggers, louts and the genetically violent, could materialize menacingly out of the shrubbery.

She pressed the bell again, holding her finger on it for about a minute. Hurry, hurry up. She stared up the long driveway at the house. Time passed, nothing happened. She rang the bell again in short bursts –
I'm leaving if he doesn't come
.

A porch light went on to reveal a man coming out of the house. He wore his long hair tied back in a ponytail.

‘Forget I was coming?' she called as he approached. She used her good voice, like an actress enunciating her lines clearly in an accent that belonged to no particular geographical location. In the role, she thought.
Masseuse
extraordinaire.

The man looked at his watch and shook his head as he reached the gates. He took a big key from his pocket, unlocked one gate.

‘Dorcus, right?' she asked.

‘Y-yes,' he said. ‘But you're early. You s-said seven-thirty. It's only about six-thirty.' He locked the gates behind her, slipped the key in his right pocket.

‘No, I believe I said six-thirty.'

‘W-well that's not how I r-remember it.'

She heard the dogs again. ‘I can go away, come back again.'

‘No, you don't have to do that.'

The client is always right. She said, ‘Dorcus is an unusual name.'

‘Some people s-say so.'

She assessed him fast as they walked up the drive. Weedy, bookish, coy. Easily flustered – as he was now. The glasses made him look glaikit. He wore silly brown corduroy trousers and a long-sleeved navy blue shirt, the kind you buy in Army & Navy stores. He was angular, and had a tentative quality in his movements. He couldn't bring himself to maintain eye contact for more than a few seconds. He gave off a potent chemical smell, as if he'd just come straight from swimming in a pool of industrial-strength disinfectant and tried to disguise this stench with a spray of cheap deodorant. She thought that if he put a lot of work into himself – did something cool with his hair, got himself some modern specs, wore decent clothes, and didn't smell like he'd fallen in a vat of undiluted Dettol – he'd be OK, and passably pleasing to look at. But he had a long way to go.

‘Come in, f-follow me.'

He led her into a hallway. The air smelled like wet laundry drying slowly. An antique crystal chandelier with two functioning bulbs was the only light source. It illuminated a huge green patch of damp on the wall and a series of intricate cracks that rose to the decaying cornice-work. She looked up, saw dragonflies and flakes of fallen plaster trapped in intricate strands of a great webdrift. Whole place was falling down. One mighty storm would flatten it. Who'd want an old mansion next to Boombox Bay?

She noticed a couple of oil-paintings on the wall, one of a sombre man in judicial robes, the other a pale woman with a fragile consumptive look. Neither face smiled.

‘Who are they, Dorcus?' she asked.

‘Parents.'

‘They live here?'

‘Oh no, they're … they're dead. I'm on m-my own.'

He led her to the foot of a staircase, then stopped. He didn't move for a while. What's he listening for? His smell was stronger when he stood still. She took a step away.

‘What time's the bus, Dorcus?'

‘The bus?'

‘I assume we're standing here waiting for
something
.'

No wee smile, no nod of recognition at her little joke. Humour just wasn't his thing, she could see that. He stared over her shoulder and she turned to see what had absorbed his attention. She followed the line of his eye into a room where dust-sheets covered furniture. She made out the shape of a piano in the gloom, and a wingback chair that, with a sheet covering it, suggested the figure of somebody sitting there in a shroud.

She asked, ‘Do you play?'

‘Play … what?'

‘The johanna.'

‘Me? N-no never. It was, uh, my mother's and she played a long time ago … y-years.' He sprayed saliva with some words, and choked back others.

He led her from the bottom of the staircase and down a corridor, away from the room with the piano. Corridors went this way, that way: the house had an abundance of passages, a maze.

‘Rube says you work with him.' She couldn't imagine what this hesitant stooky of a man had in common with Reuben Chuck.

‘Mr Chuck, I don't c-call him …'

He was never going to finish the sentence. ‘What is it you do exactly?'

Dorcus opened a door and showed her inside a room with a long black leather couch and a shelf of leatherbound books. An old black Bakelite phone sat on a table. The curtains at the window were covered with cartoon characters from old DC Thomson comics. Desperate Dan. Lord Snooty. Christ, she hadn't seen these in years.

‘I provide him w-with office supplies,' he said. He shut the door.

‘Really?'

‘Paper and printer c-cartridges and that sort of …'

Glorianna took off her coat, slung it across a chair. She sat on the couch. It squeaked under her. The only office supplier she knew in connection with Chuck's businesses was Grimmond & Company of Finnieston, who provided invoice books, business cards, and stationery to the Fitness Centre. But then she didn't know everything about Chuck's affairs, and didn't want to.

Too much knowledge – you know what they say.

Now she heard what seemed like the sound of footsteps very far away, muffled, the slop-flop an old man might make as he shuffled along a track of threadbare carpet in brokenbacked slippers. Dorcus, who'd drawn the curtains and turned on a lamp, began flexing and unflexing his hands nervously. Outside, the dogs roared as if they'd found a couple of newborn babies, perfect aperitifs.

She was cold. A draught blew at her. She couldn't locate its source, it was erratic and swirled around her, carrying a hint of perfume reminiscent of – what? She wasn't sure. Flowers, but what kind? OK, maybe one of those little scented Airwick things in a bottle tucked in a corner. But where was the draught coming from? The door was closed, the curtains drawn.

Dorcus appeared to be listening for something, head tipped to one side.

‘Are you sure you don't have a lodger, a roommate?'

‘Yes, nobody, n-none.'

Fine. I'm the one hearing stuff
. Maybe it wasn't anyone walking, just the rising and settling of ancient floorboards. Old houses had arthritic tics of their own. And that odd draught was just … air rushing through the gaps in warped window frames, blowing down old chimneys, and joining in a shimmy of wind.

She heard the erratic clink of piano keys.

‘Mice,' Dorcus said. ‘It's an old …'

An old house, yes sweetie, I clocked that instantly, it's rotting away, honeycombed with rodent runs.
Gross:
she wasn't enthralled with the rodents running up and down the keys of the piano. She didn't like mice. They creeped her. Their whiskers, their cunning eyes and furtive movements. She was about to suggest traps or an exterminator, but what business was it of hers? And she wasn't warming to the prospect of laying hands on Dorcus. But she'd do what Chuck asked, she'd do it as quickly as she could, and then get the hell out.

The piano keys rattled again. ‘That good old rodent rock,' she said. ‘You think it's a special night for them? Somebody's twenty-first?'

No response, no wee smile.

‘Come here,' and she reached out for his sweating hand. She felt resistance. His body was unyielding, his expression stricken. ‘Sit beside me, Dorcus. Come on.'

She tugged his hand, but still he didn't move. Reuben, you have some serious fuds for associates. This guy's been double-dipped in a cryonic substance. ‘Let me massage your shoulders. You'll feel better.'

Dorcus lowered himself tentatively to the edge of the couch, keeping a safe distance from her. She opened her bag, took out a vanilla-scented candle, lit it: it helped defuse offensive odours. She uncorked a bottle, and tipped massage oil into her hands. She rubbed the backs of his hands, stroking them, noticing the ragged fingernails.

‘What's that smell?'

‘Lavender and almond-honey. Feeling better, Dorcus?'

‘Uh …'

‘Tell the truth. You're unwinding. I know you are.'

‘A wee … little, yes.'

He was lying. ‘You got anything to drink? Scotch? Vodka?'