Butcher (41 page)

He loved Jackie instantly. Or if not instantly, then the day after.

One night Jackie said, I
need the operation. I need it for myself and for you
.

Dorcus remembered that with joy.

He looked into her eyes and said, ‘I'll sell this house.'

‘Let's not go there.'

‘Somebody will buy it. Even if they only want the land and demolish the p-property—'

‘
No
.' Jackie was touched whenever he suggested this. She saw how eager he was, how love and generosity brightened his face.

‘It makes sense—'

‘No, love, no, this is something I want to do through my own efforts.'

Dorcus opened his mouth to make an objection, but Jackie said, ‘I mean it. My decision … But there's something you
can
do for me, sweetie, drive me to work later.'

‘I always do,' he said.

Jackie slipped into a light-hearted mood, snapped her fingers and gyrated her hips this way, that way, and laughed from the back of her throat. ‘
Arriba, arriba!
'

Dorcus was delighted whenever she danced. The house shed its dull trappings, and for a few lively minutes became a place free of the past, rescued from ruin.

Reuben Chuck didn't know how long he'd been driving. What he did
know
was that he was lost in a part of Glasgow he rarely visited, deepest Cathcart. This isn't east, this is aw wrong. He wished he'd brought Mathieson, oh but he was damned if he'd phone Ronnie and ask for directions – total loss of
face
.

Besides he was fucking
stocious
.

Backing up drunkenly in a quiet side-street, he ran over somebody's lawn, demolishing a wooden fence and squadron of garden gnomes. Tut-tut-Tutenkamen. On the sort of impulse experienced by inebriates and loonies, he got out of the Jag and seized one of the decapitated gnome heads and set it on the passenger seat, buckling the seat belt round it.

He needed a pal. Wee cheeky pink face, whiskers, red lips, pointy ears.

He drove away at speed. The gnome's head, fixed by the belt, stared forward.

‘Been in a Jag before, wee man? Naw? Sit back and enjoy.'

Chuck played ventriloquist, squeaky voice. ‘
Thanks for the lift, I was very fed up in that garden
.'

‘Life canny be interestin just standin there all day.'

‘
Aye, it's a fuckin bore, Mr Chuck
.'

‘Want some gin?'

‘
I swore off the booze, Mr Chuck
.'

‘Aye, me too, me too, wee man. But I was fuckin miserable without it. Zatza fact.'

By the time Chuck reached Daldowie Cemetery he'd finished the last of the gin and was lost again. The city was all unfamiliar intersections. For a minute he thought he'd somehow travelled into another city altogether, one he'd never seen before. He drove into a petrol station, narrowly avoided a pump, then went inside and asked for directions.

A surly young guy with a pearl in his oil-stained right ear lobe was totting up the take, watching a paper-roll spit through an adding-machine.

‘Tryin to find Cobble Street,' Chuck said, stumbling into a Coca-Cola machine. ‘Ooops. Or mibbe Cobble Drive.'

The guy didn't look up. He snarled, ‘Make yer mind up. And stay a few feet away, wid ye? I could smell the booze on you coming in.'

‘Fancy that. I musta been drinking. So what. None o your business.'

‘I've a mind to call the polis and tell them. Drunk driver on the loose.'

Chuck thumped the counter. ‘Cobble
Drive
. Put a lid on the attitude, Jim.'

‘Oh, pardon me.' The guy raised his face and stared at Chuck with intense animosity. ‘What are you gonny day about it? Eh?
Eh?
'

‘This.' Chuck reached across and grabbed the guy by his earring and drew his face down, pressing it into the laminated counter. Dazzlin motion, speed and agility. Wasted he might be, but he could still move fast. He imagined this was Baba he was cramming into the counter. Take yer karma and shove it ya fraudulent fucker.

‘Ah-
wouch
,' the guy moaned.

‘You're what's wrong with this fuckin city, too many rude bastarts, too many toe-rags like you.' He gave the earring a twist and the lobe bled freely. ‘Geeza directions then I let you up.'

The guy, lips kissing laminate, said, ‘Leave here, take a right, you're headed for the M73. Keep going until you reach the M8. Follow the signs for Easterhouse … Once you're there, stop and ask somebody.'

‘M73, M8.' Chuck memorized this much. His brain was an imploded soufflé. ‘So you don't know exactly where Cobble Drive is.'

‘No, but listen, you'll be in the general area. Ask anybody.'

Chuck stepped back, releasing the earring. ‘That's all you had to do in the first place, sonny. Instead o this surly act. A wee bit o cooperation goes a long way in this life. Know what I'm sayin?'

The guy said, ‘You hurt my ear.'

‘I coulda yanked it right off yer
fuckin face
, ya wanker. Think about that.' He kicked the Coke machine and left the building, crossing the concourse and passing under tall blindingly bright lamps.

He reached the Jag. Inside, he fumbled with his belt-buckle and looked at the gnome. ‘Some people,' he said.

‘
There are bad-mannered gnomes as well, Mr Chuck
.'

‘In all walks of life bad is what you find more than anythin else,' and Chuck gave the big car some instant pedal and zoomed out of the station and zipped quickly through oncoming traffic, screeching past flashing lights and angry horns – so much fuckin
rage
, just because he nipped in front of a few cars. Rudeness everywhere. He cruised the M8, dipping in and out of lanes as he fancied. He burst into loud song,
This Jaguar's so fast and sleek, it could run for a fuckin week …

When he reached the housing scheme he drove between tower blocks, passing people on unlit corners doing sneaky wee deals in the dark, and boys and girls smoking hash. He braked, tyres squealing, and rolled his window down and asked some kids the way to Cobble Drive. They gave him directions that sounded simple enough.

‘Izzat a gnome's heid in there?'

Chuck looked at the young girl who'd asked. She was pretty, but blurred in his gin-whacked vision, as if she was underwater. A nimbus hung around the crown of her head. He was reminded of Catholic icons. He remembered tossing cash at the RC Church, and that pederast Father Skelton.
You'll get your reward when you're in heaven, Reuben
.

‘Lassie, come here, closer. You tell me. What the fuck is it about holy men, eh?' he asked.

‘Uh?' The girl poked her face inside the open window. She popped a bubble out of her chewing-gum. Chuck imagined it was a small balloon-like extension of her tongue.

He said, ‘Priests and gurus, total shite. Total shite! The lotta them.'

‘So they are.' The girl giggled. Her friends were gathering around, a bunch of teenage girls with bloodshot eyes.

‘Priests and popes and fuckin bishops,' Chuck said. He understood he meant to warn these girls of some impending evil in the world, but the intention fell apart like faulty scaffolding. ‘You lassies keep an eye open. Know what I mean?'

‘Whiddye doin wi a gnome's heid anyway?'

Chuck moved his lips, did the squeaky voice. ‘
Hello girls, I'm Gregory and I'm gnomeward bound
.'

High on dope, the girls found everything hysterical, doubling over and throwing their heads back and hooting at the sky.

‘
Night girls
,' the gnome said.

Chuck drove off and found his way to Cobble Drive, where he saw the house set back from the road.
Sticks out like a plook on a fashion model's nose, Mr Chuck
. A couple of windows were lit. He braked, gazed at the high walls, the big iron gates. He stepped from the car, walked to the gates. Lockedy-locked. Two big dogs rushed through shrubbery, frantic canine energy, slavering. Fuck the fuckin dogs, Chuck thought. He rattled the gates.

Dr Dysart, I am here to see you
.

The gates shook but wouldn't yield. He kicked them.
Come on
.

Easy solution. He got behind the wheel of the Jag and reversed. He told the gnome to hang on, changed gear to drive, and flattened his foot on the pedal and smacked the big car straight into the gates, which swayed, then buckled and finally snapped under the force of so much horsepower. He broke a headlamp and ruined his grille, but kept going, clattering through a clump of shrubbery and over a series of grassy bumps and then a stretch of gravel that crackled under the wheels and then there he was – right up at the front door, Jag scratched and dented, fender bent, two dogs howling at him, and the gnome's head, which had fallen from the passenger seat, broken in many pieces on the floor.

I lose friends, Chuck thought. I lose my girl.

He rolled down his window and looked at the big dogs. ‘Fuck off ya beasts.'

Staggering, Chuck took a gun from the glove compartment and got out of the Jag and fired the weapon in the air and the dogs scampered off terrified. He walked up the steps to the front door and kicked it open, roaring,
Dorco, hey Dorco, where are you
?

Jackie saw him from the window of the sickroom and said, ‘Company, Dorcus. In a Jaguar. With a gun.'

Dorcus peered out. ‘Oh G-god, it's Chuck. What'll we do?'

Jackie Ace was already planning a course of action. She squeezed Dorcus's hand. ‘Can you go down and keep him occupied?'

‘Occupied? You
kidding?
'

‘A minute's all I need, Dorcus.'

Dorcus trembled. A gun. He'd never even
seen
a gun. ‘I don't think I c-can d-do it, Jackie.'

‘Stop stuttering. You can do it. I won't let you come to any harm. I promise you. Go, before he comes upstairs.'

Dorcus felt cold fear. He trusted Jackie with his life, but even so … What if Chuck shot him right away, no questions asked?

From below Chuck yelled,
Where's my girl, Dorco
? His big blustery voice rattled through the hallway.

‘Stall him. Tell him you don't know where she is,' Jackie said. ‘Look at him with confidence, right in the fucking eye.'

‘C-confidence?'

Jackie Ace said, ‘The way you were with Perlman.'

‘Perlman didn't have a gun.'

‘Do it for me, Dorcus. Show me.'

Dorcus stepped out into the hallway and moved as if through marmalade to the top of the stairs. Brave and bold, right, he wanted to show Jackie he was worthy, he wanted to be manly.
Nobody comes into this house and threatens me with a gun
. He descended. He sweated. His eyeballs felt numb. He had the feeling he'd piss his trousers any moment. He'd done that years and years ago, hiding behind the curtain and spying on the séance, the creepiness of it all.

He reached the landing and looked down and shook and tried to conceal his fear.
Jackie promised
.

Red-faced, swaying, Chuck was looking up at him.

‘Where's my girrel, Dorco? What have you done to my lovely Glor-ian-na-na?'

‘She's n-not here, Mr Chuck.' His bladder swelled. His throat was so dry his words felt like wads of cotton.
I'm coming apart, Jackie
.

Chuck blasted the gun at the ceiling, hitting the chandelier, which burst in a fine shower of glass rain and Dorcus flinched, covering his ears with his hands. C-c-confidence.

‘Where the fuck you keepin her?'

‘D-don't shoot me, Mr Chuck. I'm coming d-down.'

‘Tell me about my girl, ya bastart!'

‘I t-told you—' Dorcus was halfway. Going all the way, can't stop now. He reached the bottom step. He slipped into a kind of trance. He heard his mother ask for a kiss, he smelled roses, he imagined the assembly of ghosts might rise to support him.

‘Tell me again!'

Chuck advanced in a staggering mode along the hallway and fired at two oil-paintings that pissed him off. A pair of ugly fuckin faces starin at him. They slid from the wall, and their wood frames cracked as they tumbled over and down slowly, step by step. Then he turned and followed Dorcus, who'd hurriedly retreated inside a room where a lamp lit a piano and a wingback chair, both covered in white dust sheets.

‘
Where's my fuckin girl
?' He fired twice into the piano, shooting through the dust sheet and the keys, and the soundboard vibrated like a choir of crones tuning up their dehydrated pipes. He booted the wingback chair, and it fell over, and a mouse streaked out from a hole in the upholstery.

‘Rodent problem,' Chuck said, and fired at the moving mouse and missed.

Briskly, Jackie Ace tossed a few things in a big blue canvas bag. Timing was important. Had to act quick. She heard the sound of gunfire and Chuck's upraised voice. She walked to the top of the stairs, descended softly to the first landing, looked over the handrail.

Chuck grabbed Dorcus and forced him to the floor, pressing him down, knee crushed into his chest.

He shoved the gun at Dorcus's throat. ‘Did you do a nummer on her, Dorco? Did you gie her the scalpel treatment?'

‘N-no way, Mr Chuck.'

‘Cut out her heart and sliced that lovely young body, didya? Stuck her innards into an ice-box and delivered her, did you, did you, did you? Tell me where she is, you fuckin faggot. I'll rip this fuckin dump apart if I have to.'

Dorcus felt the barrel against his throat. He saw in Chuck's eyes a world gone berserk. Why hadn't the spirits of the house come to help him? ‘I n-never t-t-t-touched her, M-m-mr, I s-swear … n-never a ha-hand on her.'

‘Lyin faggot peeza shite. Tell me the fuckin truth Dorco or my next bullet goes – guess where, fudgepacker? Right between your fuckin eyes.' Chuck stared at him, but his line of vision was skewed so that he seemed to be looking directly at Dorcus's left ear.