Falling (4 page)

Well at least it was all done in
the best possible taste.

Can you be done for drunk in
charge of car when you’re not actually in the car? I don’t give a crap at the
moment. All I want to do is curl up and wish the fucking pain away. I think
I’ll flip on my back. Seems like a good idea. Can’t think I’m going to choke on
my own puke. I’m retched out.

I can see the sky framed between
the buildings and smell the exhaust from my car. If I close my eyes the pain
seems to lessen for a second or two. I’ll keep them closed. Anything to numb
the agony.

Karen and me. I am in so much
shit from so many directions. Shall I name them? Let’s start with my fiancée,
Susan. She isn’t going to be enamoured when she finds out. And she WILL find
out. Next on the list of trouble. My sister. If Susan finds out then my sister
will find out and then she will phone my mother. Carolyn’s been crying out for
a chance to get one over on me for years. The successful son. Mum’s favourite.

Then there’s Craig; Karen’s
husband. That will be a tricky one. Ex SAS. Bodyguard. Keep fit freak. Oh and I
think he has a black belt in something. Keep going.

Robin my best friend, our
Financial Director and, unfortunately Karen’s younger brother. Oh this is so
sweet. Of all the things I could have done on this planet to screw my life up I
would be hard pressed to come up with a better course of action than get into
bed with Karen. Hard to think that things can go south from here.

‘Excuse me sir.’

Wrong. I open my eyes and look
up. Policeman.

‘Morning officer.’

What the hell is that up there?
Above the policeman. Hanging out over the edge of the building. Is that a
person?

‘Eh officer…’

Chapter
6

Charlie’s flight is cut short.

For your information I no longer
retain any physical connection between the building and my person. I have a
mental connection but that doesn’t count for much. As it’s been said in so many
ways ‘Elvis has truly left the building’.

Flailing does not look like it
has overcome gravity and, much as I might have hoped that I was to be the
exception, it looks like Newton was right. A short downward trajectory followed
by a somewhat ungainly landing is the sum total of my future.

I’ve never really contemplated
this moment in my life. The end I mean. Sure I’ve talked about it, usually
while drunk or in a state of serious depression, but not really thought about.
You don’t, do you? At least I don’t. I kind of work on the life eternal thing.
I’m now in my mid fifties and everyday I see or hear of plenty of people in
their eighties and nineties. Knock off the first ten years of my life as little
more than a dozen good childhood memories and I could have more good years in
front than behind.

Makes sense to me.

At least it did until ten minutes
ago. Now that my end seems so much closer I should probably be giving some
thought to the hereafter or my loved ones or cherished moments in life or some
such thing. Yet all I can do is dance around the ‘thievin’ prick’ thing. No
flash of my life in front of my eyes. No religious conversion on the brink of
death. No regrets that rush forth to be announced. Nothing but a nagging desire
to know why the hell I am being asked to join the bungee-less jump club.

It could be a case of mistaken
identity. Maybe they have the wrong man. Gorilla number one and two hardly
undertook a formal introduction. For all I know I’m not the man they are
supposed to be teaching to fly. After all I wasn’t sitting at my desk when they
found me. A desk with my name emblazoned on the office door. Well not exactly
emblazoned. Third name down on the brass plaque. Three points smaller than the
top two names and point size means status in Cheedle, Baker and Nudge. So how
did they know I am me? I could have been anyone having a pee.

Does it really matter? Even if I
am the wrong person, is this the time to be thinking about such things? Hell
even if I am the right person and had been caught bang to right with my fingers
in some guy’s till - does it matter? Would it not make a bit more sense for me
to use these last few seconds a bit more constructively?

Pathetic. I mean I am truly
pathetic.

This is the script to my life. I
can write you a rock solid guarantee that, throughout my life and at any given
time on this planet, whatever it is was that I was supposed to be doing was
exactly the opposite of what would have been good for me. Study at school? - no
- bunk off. Kiss Cybil McLean? - no - run away crying. Go to university? - no -
go to a dead end college. Pass my exams? - no - fail my exams. Propose to the
one person I have truly loved? - no - drive her away into the arms of another.
Choose the right job? - no choose a dead end job. Ask for a pay rise? - no -
accept a pay cut. Go to the pub? - no - go home to feed the dog. Go to football?
- no - go to Ikea. You get the drift.

In my world if I was really
destined to be jumping off a building then I would actually be standing on the
pavement below wondering why I wasn’t jumping off the building. It’s the
Charlie Wiggs way of life.

So for once in your life Charlie
do the right thing!

So what is the right thing? Pray?
Cry? Plead? Scream? Prepare? Pass out? Whistle the national anthem? I have no
idea.

I see Gorilla number one has
taken a step towards me. To get a better view no doubt. It’s not often you see
someone head-butt concrete from forty stories up. Can’t think what the mess is
going to be like. Not good I suppose. Not the sort of job the council cleaners
will be fighting over. But someone will have to do it. Either that or they will
have to cone me off and let the local wildlife do a number on me. Probably the
ecological way but not very PC.

Then again cleaning up dead
people from the pavement, especially ones mashed and trashed by a big fall,
must use some fairly serious chemicals if you want to get all the stains out.
Serious chemicals that lack an environmentally friendly bent and if there is
one thing you can say about the local council it is their impeccable drive
towards an environmentally friendly future. 

So my guess is a bin bag -
biodegradable or recyclable of course, a scrubbing brush and some warm water
and I’ll be history. Such will be the sad ending that bears the title Charlie
Wiggs.

Interesting how gorilla number
one seems to want such a close view of events and gorilla number two seems
content to film things from a distance. There will be a good deep seated
psychological reason for this but the psyche of killers was never a strong
interest of mine so I’ll let it go at that.

Gorilla number one is ever so
close. With a little effort I could almost touch him. Almost being the
operative word in this case.

I look at him and then up into
the sky as I twist in the air. High above me a contrail from a US bound
jetliner scores a crystal clear sky. The view from the plane’s windows must be
stunning. I cock my head slightly and trace the dissipating trail as the jet
stream grabs it and begins to whip it into nothing. I cock my head a little
further and the trail peters out as if it was never there. Soon there will be
no evidence of the passing of the plane. Three hundred people will have slipped
by at a fraction below the speed of sound, wrapped in a metal tube flying
higher than Mt Everest. It’s so every day we don’t even notice any more.

I feel myself gently turn and the
sky vanishes as I begin to tumble towards earth. I see the lane below and I
close my eyes.

The sharp change in direction
doesn’t register for the briefest of moments and then my arc changes and I am
accelerating back towards the building. I feel someone grabbing at my leg and
then I slam, upside down and head first, into the building and a dark world
opens up.

Silence.

Chapter 7

The thoughts of a second gorilla.

‘What the fuck are you doing?’ I
shout.

Bally has just grabbed the vic
out of mid air. As cool as you like he has just leapt forward and snatched his
left leg. What for? Good riddance to bad rubbish is my motto. Hello to a grand.
I need the money. I don’t need the grief. Doesn’t Bally realise that we will
get a right kicking if Mr Accountant doesn’t end up with a short service in the
local crematorium sometime soon. I don’t want no kicking. I don’t need no
kicking. It’s sore. Bloody sore. Like when I screwed up and duffed up the wrong
jockey on the day of the big race last year. I got a real kicking for that one.

Shit but they all looked the
same. Four feet nothing. Shiny clothes and the smell of horses. Not my fault. I
asked the vic if he was the jockey for the favourite in the two thirty and he
said yes. So I hit him. Four thirty not two thirty. I should have said four
thirty. Turns out I beat the crap out of the country’s leading steeplechaser. I
don’t even know what a steeplechaser is. I mean what the fuck have church
steeples to do with horse racing.

Cost my employer fifty grand so I
was told. Cost me three weeks in the ICU unit. They didn’t even send flowers. I
ain’t going back to ICU. So what the hell is Bally up to?

‘Easy job big man,’ said Bally.
‘Pick up a vic in the city. Do a Mikey and away before the police appear. A
thousand quid for a thirty minute job.’

It was supposed to be that easy.
And now he’s rescuing him.

ICU. ICU. Hang on. ICU. That’s
not what Bally said would happen to us if we screwed up. He told me ‘the Voice’
promised something else.

Hang on I’ll remember. I find it
hard to remember things at times. If you just give me a second it will come
back. It always does. I’m good at remembering things - given time.

Look I can prove it I’ll name
every player in the nineteen sixty seven European Cup winning Celtic side.

There was Simpson, Craig,
Gemmell, Murdoch, McNeil, Clark, Johnstone, Wallace, Chalmers, Auld and… and…
and shit. And. I know. I do. And I know I know. I’m good at remembering I am.

Estádio NacionalPortugalMay
25th
Lisbon
,
1967.
First northern
European team to win the European Cup. Come on I know this I do. Simpson,
Craig, Gemmell, Murdoch, McNeil, Clark, Johnstone, Wallace, Chalmers, Auld and,
and…

‘Bally who played outside left
for Celtic in the 1967 European Cup Final?’

No answer. I think Bally might be
concentrating on keeping the vic from falling. Bally is good at concentrating.
He says I’m not. He says I can’t keep my mind on one thing long enough for
toffee. Attention span of a goldfish. Bally tells me that.

I don’t like to tell him that I
don’t know what an attention span is. I don’t understand a lot of what Bally
tells me but I like him. He looks after me. He’s a friend.

We went to the same school. At
least we did until I got kicked out for setting fire to the headmaster’s car.
What a fuss over a battered old Morris Minor and how was I to know his stupid
dog was sleeping in the back seat. It’s cruel to keep a dog in the car when
it’s that hot. Anyone knows that and I was only getting my own back on the
headmaster after he grassed me up to my mum about my drinking at the school
dance.

There wasn’t no need to tell mum.
She got proper mad. Not about the drink. She didn’t give a crap about the
drink. What narked her was where I had got the money for the drink and why it
was ok to spend it on me and not give it to her. Mum wasn’t big on money
sitting with anyone but her. My dad was scared of her.
‘A busted pay packet
will kill you son,’
he used to say. As far as I know he never brought home
a busted pay packet.

I can see that holding the vic
from falling is hurting Bally. He’s as a strong as an ox but it ain’t easy
holding on to a man by the leg like that. He won’t last long.

‘Jim give me a hand,’ he shouts
at me.

Coffin. That was it. Coffin. Not
ICU. ‘the Voice’ said if we screwed up we would end up in a coffin. See, told
you I was good at remembering things. If I just put my mind to it I’m good at
remembering things.

‘Coffin,’ I shout.

Bally is really struggling. I
tried to hold a man like that once. Well not quite the same. I once had a man
by the collar and dangled him out of the third floor of my gran’s tenement.
He’d been noising up my wee sister and nobody does that. So I dragged him up to
my gran’s house and hung him out the window. It really hurt. I couldn’t do shit
with my left arm for weeks. It didn’t help that my gran was beating seven bells
out of me with her walking stick at the time. Hard to hold a man and take a
beating at the same time. No I don’t envy Bally one bit.

Hard to hold a man like that.

Now if I could only remember the
name from the Celtic European Cup winning team of 1967. Simpson, Craig,
Gemmell, Murdoch, McNeil, Clark, Johnstone, Wallace, Chalmers, Auld and who?

Chapter 8

George gets involved.

Thoughts of Innellan are blown
away. What are you supposed to do when you see someone being thrown off a high
rise building? Phone the police? Nice idea but it kind of lacks the sort of
direct intervention that is required.

I could rush over and try and
grab the poor soul but there is forty yards of rooftop between me and the
incident. There’s no way I can make it before Charlie is long gone.

I could shout and that might
distract the two guys in suits but Charlie will still head for the pavement.

I don’t recognise the two men.
One of them seems to be filming the whole thing with a mobile phone.
Frightening. Well we all need to get our kicks somehow.