Donor, The (8 page)

Cynthia had searched her soul many times in the past. Always successfully, she believed. And always, without exception, with the help of class-A drugs.

For over one year she had managed on a diet of
cannabis
and alcohol, bar the occasional hallucinogenic on the beaches of Southern India, but as soon as this young James Dean – who she would one day have, oh yes she would; Heath would like the story – as soon as this young thing told her that her children might die unless she sacrificed a piece of herself, the first thing that sprung to Cynthia’s squidgy mind was heroin.

‘What’s in it for me?’ she asked. Little did Preston know, Cynthia was already planning on returning home. Heath would be eligible for parole again any time and she had no intention of breaking her promise to him. She’d even started busking to save money for the ticket. So far, she had ten pounds.

‘You’ll save the life of one of your daughters.’

‘Of course …’ This guy was an idiot.

‘And … I assume you want to see your boyfriend? I can pay for the ticket home.’ He was becoming less of an idiot.

‘Pay for the ticket and promise me something else,’ she said.

‘I can’t promise till I know what it is.’

‘I want two bags of heroin within an hour of
reaching
Glasgow.’

Preston picked the skin around his thumb. A neat line peeled off, which he placed in his tissue and folded. ‘Make it two hours.’

‘I’ll pack my things,’ Cynthia said, returning to her tent, imagining a syringe in every tall thin thing she spotted en route. Peter was still asleep inside the tent. His feet seemed pinprick pointy. She didn’t wake him.

*

The unlikely pair retraced the last part of Preston’s
inbound
journey, catching a bus to Cairo, where they booked a ticket to Glasgow via London.

Unfortunately, this meant waiting twelve hours in Cairo.

They used the time well.

Preston phoned his client in Glasgow. ‘I have some good news,’ he said into Will Marion’s voicemail. ‘I’ve found your wife.’

Cynthia phoned HMP Manchester. ‘So he
is
still there?’ she asked.

‘Where else would he be?’ came the predictably gruff officer.

She breathed a sigh of relief. He hadn’t tried some dumb-arsed escape. ‘Can I talk to him?’

‘Oh, hang on a moment, I’ll just lock up here and walk all the way over to his hall and up to the second floor and knock on his cell to see if he minds being interrupted.’

‘Thank you so much.’

‘What kind of chocolates do you think he’d like on his pillow?’

‘What?’

‘This
is
the Glasgow Hilton.’

‘Fuck you,’ she said.

‘What did you say?’

‘Thank you,’ she lied, like daughter like mother. ‘Would you mind leaving him a message? Tell him I’m coming home. I’ll visit him next week.’

After that, Cynthia gave Preston his first shot at a bong. He took one puff, sat back and said, ‘I see. It feels like someone has stuffed your head with
cotton
wool then put you in warm water. Yes, I can feel the sensation. Out of control. Other worldly …’ He paused. ‘I can’t really see the attraction.’

Then Cynthia gave Preston his first shot at a woman.

They were in a small hotel room on the outskirts of Cairo. There was only one room – ‘Don’t worry, I won’t eat you!’ Cynthia had said, knowing she wasn’t lying. She wouldn’t eat him. But he would most certainly eat her.

‘Have you seen one before?’ she asked, assuming the answer would be no. Despite his stunning looks, she had never met such a doofus in her life.

‘Online,’ he said. Vaginas were a bit like dope to him. Didn’t really understand the attraction. Indeed, he found some of them downright ugly – outies that you might feed a peanut. However, he felt he should become familiar with them, and with sex, in the same way that he’d felt he should try olives aged nine. He was glad he had tried the olives. The bitter mites had tingled a reminder in his mouth for an hour and a half afterwards.

Cynthia dropped her hippy skirt to the floor and stood before him. She had no pants on. Preston stood and stared at her, not moving.

‘Why do you shave?’ he asked. He was trembling a little. It was more intriguing than olives.

‘It’s nicer,’ she answered. ‘Don’t you think?’

‘Not sure. I’d have to see it hairy to make a concrete decision.’

‘You’d have to wait a week or two.’

‘I don’t have a week or two,’ he said. ‘May I touch?’

‘I insist.’ Cynthia was turned on by his politely freakish behaviour. It made everything Preston was looking at swell.

He moved closer and brushed his index finger against her shaved pubic bone. It felt like a prickly elbow. It didn’t scare him. But he had no compulsion to merge with it in any way.

He stood, walked to the basin, and began washing his hands.

‘You can kiss it if you like,’ Cynthia said, slightly annoyed. What was he doing?

‘Thank you, but no,’ he said, drying his hands. ‘I’m tired. We have a big journey tomorrow.’

Cynthia put her skirt on. She had never been
humiliated
like this before, the little shit. She’d tell Heath. He’d be very angry.

*

The following day they boarded the flight to London. Preston flipped the pages of a book on the journey.

‘Why don’t you actually read it?’ Cynthia asked, trying hard not to notice that the towns below were shaped exactly like syringes.

‘I am,’ he said.

‘Crap.’

‘Test me,’ he said, handing her the book. It was called
Understanding Power: The Indispensable Noam Chomsky.

Cynthia read the first page of the first chapter. It took her several minutes. She couldn’t understand any of it, wouldn’t manage to frame a question if he paid her.

‘What’s the first line?’ she asked.

‘Noam Chomsky is Institute Professor in the Department of Linguistics and Philosophy at MIT, Boston,’ he said.

Smart arse, Cynthia thought, reading the
very
first words. She handed him the book and looked at the syringe-shaped clouds. Uncanny.

Linda and Will hadn’t spoken for a fortnight. He said he’d call her when he got back from visiting Heath in Manchester, but he hadn’t. He hadn’t even been tempted, to be honest. After years of friendship,
coupled
with the occasional masturbatory fantasy, he was disappointed to find the actuality second rate and
extremely
painful. Instead of ringing her, he’d hidden himself inside the house – bar trips to the dialysis unit – and prayed that the following miracles would
happen
:

That the private detective would find Cynthia.

That Cynthia would agree to donate her
perfect-in-every-way
kidney.

That he would do the same.

And both girls would stop fading away as they were, the spirit and the life draining from their faces and bodies, and be all right.

None of these things had happened and now, two weeks after the wooden spoon to balls incident, Will was unexpectedly excited by her phone message. Georgie had fled the house after hearing it on
loudspeaker
, taking his mobile with her. He didn’t have Linda’s cell number written down, so he dialled her home number immediately, planning to hang up if her husband answered. Luckily, he didn’t. She came over straight away.

‘About the other night.’ Will finished pouring Linda a large glass of red wine and handed it to her. He was about to ask her if being hit was a deal breaker. She misunderstood.

‘Oh no, you’re not getting away that easily,’ she said. ‘“
About the other night!
” i.e., “Thanks for the shag, Linda, now fuck off to your wanker husband.” You left two weeks ago saying you’d call me and you never did. I’ve been at home trying to get rid of the arsehole,
waiting
for you to call. So let me tell you about “the other night”. I needed it. I wanted it. And I’m going to have it again. I’m not going away. I’m not going anywhere. And you’re going to hold me. I said fucking hold me, Will.’

*

After three more glasses of wine, Linda explained the farcical situation at home. Her husband, an arrogant pain in the arse prior to being caught red-handed, had taken to his knees. ‘Literally,’ Linda said. ‘He does everything on his knees. You should see him mowing the lawn. At dinner I can only see his hair. I had to tell the kids he’d injured his feet in a team-building canoeing accident.’

‘Does he know about …’ Will stopped short of the
us
word.

‘Fuck, no. This is too good. I’m enjoying it.’

Will didn’t need to ask for an explanation – he’d been around housewives long enough to understand Linda’s way of thinking. She liked her life. She liked the house and the holidays and the fact that her
husband
was away most of the time and that she could slag him off non-stop to her friends. It suited her. A lover was icing on the cake. Will didn’t have the energy to work out his own thinking on the matter. He just wanted physical contact with someone.

It wasn’t as bad as last time. No wooden spoons. But Linda was very demanding (On the chair, Still … Still … Edge of the bed … Still. Now you can move. Faster,
faster
. Out. Hand. Not there. No. Oh, you numbskull, there! I said
there
!) and Will really didn’t feel like being bossed around. During the sixty
minutes
of precisely choreographed acrobatics all Will could think about was how long it might take before she’d finish.

Finally, Linda gave an ugly groan and slid off him.

The clock was ticking, Will thought, wiping sweat and other fluids from his chest with a tissue. He’d give the private detective one more week, then move on.

He was tired. He wanted to go to the toilet. If he asked her to leave, would she hurt him again?

When Cynthia and Preston arrived at Glasgow Airport, the rain moaned at them, as Cynthia recalled it had
always
done in this city –
See you
, the rain seemed to say,
I wet you weakly with my constant dribble.

‘You have one hour and fifty minutes,’ she said to Preston. ‘You’re going to give me money for a room at the Marriott – I’ll check in as Cynthia Jones. Get a move on! You now have one hour and forty-nine
minutes
.’

Preston had always managed the goals he set
himself
. He had never bought heroin, but it couldn’t be hard in Glasgow, could it? He asked the taxi driver to drop him off on the edge of the Gorbals, donned a baseball cap and left Cynthia to continue on to her city-centre hotel.

Hmm, he thought, wandering past the new-build shops and eyeing each person he saw: single mother, car thief maybe, prostitute, social worker, social worker, social worker, kids dodging school … where were all the drug dealers? Perhaps this was the
rejuvenated
part – indeed, a high-rise apartment block had recently been blown to smithereens across the way, and privately owned flats lined several streets in the vicinity of the shopping area. He continued on. Drugs, surely, must still be readily available in the Gorbals, the famous, dangerous, dirty, poverty-stricken Gorbals.

He made his way past the health centre, the
housing
office, the social-work office, and then into a
two-block
by two-block wasteland where most of the
buildings
had been demolished. Ha, he thought, spotting a group of young neds hovering in front of one of the remaining buildings. He smiled and made his way over to do some shopping.

All five boys were around eighteen years old. The pack uniform was hooded cagoules and jeans. They spoke loudly to each other in rough accents Preston found difficult to understand. As he got nearer, he managed to recognise two words – gay and fucker.

‘Hello,’ Preston said, ‘and how are you all?’

Another word this time: cunt.

‘I’m just wondering if you have any gear.’ Preston felt proud of himself. He was proving himself to be exceedingly street.

‘Who’s asking?’

‘Preston MacMillan,’ he answered, without
thinking
twice about the fact that he’d given his real name. These boys would never talk to the police. They were on the same side.

‘Whatchawanin?’ The tallest of the five asked.

‘Two bags of heroin, please,’ he answered.

The boy gestured for Preston to follow him. As he did so, he realised they had all been standing at the front of the police station. Maybe they figured it was safer there. Or maybe they preferred not to have to walk too far once arrested.

Preston and the tall boy walked past a beautiful old chapel, over more wasteland and into the foyer of a high-rise building. There were CCTV cameras in the foyer. He kept his head down, cap obscuring his face, but wasn’t too worried, really. Even if his face was
visible
, how would he ever be traced? The police had never photographed him or taken his fingerprints.

The boy pressed a button, waited for the lift and they got inside.

‘So, have you lived here long?’ Preston asked as the elevator elevated at snail’s pace.

‘Aye,’ said the boy.

‘It’s nice to see they’re doing the place up,’ Preston said, now all out of chit-chat. He stared at the elevator buttons for several minutes before it finally crunched to a halt at the sixteenth floor. Maybe, Preston thought to himself, they made the lifts especially slow to help the unemployed fill their time. Or maybe it kept them off the streets longer.

The boy had a flat to the left. It had amazing views and was surprisingly well furnished. He’s poor, Preston thought to himself, but his television is enormous. Maybe he stole it. Or maybe he’s rich from selling gear.

‘Here,’ the boy said, returning from the bedroom with two bags of heroin. ‘It’s pure uncut shit, best there is, so be careful. A hunnert an’ fifty quid.’

‘Excellent,’ Preston said, not realising that the street value of these bags was actually twenty pounds. Preston’s ignorance made the boy’s eyes twinkle. They twinkled tenfold as Preston took out his wallet, counted out £150 and handed it to him, another £500 and several credit cards visible inside the wallet.

It was pretty quick, what happened next. When Preston deconstructed it later, it reminded him of a scene from
Reservoir Dogs
:

Boy asks Preston to hand him the fuckin’ wallet.

Preston enquires as to why.

Boy says Just fuckin’ gees it.

Preston says No.

Boy takes knife from back pocket and points it at Preston’s neck.

Preston tries to run away.

Boy grabs Preston’s arm before he gets to the door and twists it behind his back.

Preston says Ow!

Boy presses knife against Preston’s neck.

Preston, feeling the point of the knife pierce his skin, uses all his strength to turn around, kick boy in the nuts and grab the knife.

Boy lunges towards Preston’s neck with strangler’s hands and vicious snarl.

Preston realises the knife he is holding is now halfway inside boy’s chest.

Preston says Sorry, oh God, sorry, it was an accident.

Boy falls to the ground.

Preston no longer holds knife. Knife is now poking out of chest of boy who is lying on floor making choking sounds.

Then no sounds.

Preston checks if boy is breathing, says Shit, turns and runs down sixteen flights of stairs.

With two bags of heroin in his freshly murderous little hand.

Maybe he’s not dead, Preston thought, head down.

Or maybe he is.

If he is, he thought, they would never suspect a seventeen-year-old boy genius from the trendy West End. And they had nothing on him, anyway. Some CCTV of his baseball cap perhaps, face obscured. Plus, he told himself, this was a disorganised crime, a
gangland
crime. He simply did not fit the profile. Walking determinedly towards the main road, Preston threw his cap in a bin and hailed a taxi.