The Bullet Trick (18 page)

A voice said, 'Hello?'

And I hung up. Almost immediately the mobile resumed its buzzing. I turned it off, went through to the en suite, filled the sink and dropped the phone into the water. Tiny bubbles rose from it, almost like the phone was breathing its last. I’d heard the police could trace locations through sim cards, but I had no idea if it worked overseas. Maybe I was overreacting. Maybe Sam had done for Bill then killed himself. Maybe I was safe as houses in Berlin, and maybe it hadn’t been Inspector James Montgomery’s voice I’d just heard at the end of the line.

Glasgow

FOR ALL OF the warnings drink seemed a pretty slow killer. Not like a knife in the guts or a bullet through the head. Looking at the men that lived in the pubs around the Gallowgate it appeared you could reach sixty or seventy on a diet of whisky, beer and bile. But perhaps the drinkers I took for pensionable were raddled thirty-somethings and it wouldn’t be long before I looked the same. I stared in the mirror and whispered, 'Bring it on.'

Already my waist had thickened; there was a scaliness between my fingers that itched more at night. My skin had the porridge pallor of a prisoner after a six-month stretch. I’d abandoned vanities like deodorant, cologne and contact lenses. My specs added three years, though they were a mite flash for my current circumstances. I wondered if I should get a new pair, ones that didn’t mark me out as a man who had known better days. My hair was longer too. I could go a full fortnight without showing it the shampoo. And there was no need for mousse or gel or any other crap. I just swept it back with my fingertips and left it as nature intended — which seemed to be a dirty brown flecked through with dandruff. Add to that the new old clothes I’d bought at Paddy’s Market and, all in all, I was managing my decline pretty well.

When I was a boy my heroes were two great escape artists, Harry Houdini and Jesse James. I borrowed library books about them, read up on their exploits and stared deep into black and white photographs of two men so skilled they could only be killed by cowards. In my fantasies I was the cowboy magician, no bonds could hold me and I was swift enough to sidestep a punch in the guts or any bullet in the back.

I jammed so many yales and mortises my father decided we were under siege and called the police. But in time my picking grew smooth. I freed tethered dogs, opened padlocks to sheds, gates and lockups. I released jangles of bicycle chains and liberated telephone dials from locks designed to frustrate teenage sisters. I bought a pair of trick handcuffs and taught myself to unfasten them with a dismantled hair clasp stolen from my mother. I hung about the locksmith’s shop, begged adults for old keys. My fingers were twitching to try their skill on a safe, but round our way there was nothing that worth securing, so I kept on the alert for a gang of thieves on the lookout for a nimble-fingered boy. They wouldn’t need to promise me lemonade streams or big rock-candy mountains; all I wanted was a chance to click that dial to the right combination. I’d be their creature and if we got caught, no great matter, I’d unlock the prison and set us free. But no wily crew ever spotted my talents and once mastered there was no drama in solitary achievements. Jesse had his pursuers, Houdini his audience. So of course I decided to organise my own great escape.

Ten-year-old boys have more access to padlocks and chains than adults might think. I invited the kids in my street to collect all they could find, and leave the keys behind. We met down by the railway line in an abandoned signal box that had once been boarded shut. They came with dog leashes, belts and skipping ropes. They came with rusty iron links that had hung round gates for years. One boy brought a pair of handcuffs he said he’d found at the bottom of his parents’ wardrobe. I gave a short speech, and then chose the prettiest girl in the group to come and tie me up. She was too shy, but the boys obliged, setting on me with cowboy whoops and primitive yells. I flexed my non-existent muscles, like I’d read Houdini had done, and kept my face straight, though the bellows and rough jabs from the boys all eager to bind me as secure as possible made me want to struggle. Eventually I was trussed. Some of the strapping was slack but at its core was a tight tangle of metal, a firm pressure through my clothes and onto my flesh. My hands were cuffed behind my back. I felt a strange excitement in my stomach. The boys stepped away, I put on a deep voice that demanded they leave me for fifteen minutes precisely; the audience hesitated and my vulnerability entered the room. I gave them a strong hard stare. Then Ewan McIvor, the tallest of the group, said, 'He’s a fucking weirdo.' Neil Blane picked up the refrain, 'Weirdy Wilson.' And it became hard to make out individual insults beneath the mêlée of abuse. Stupid fucking poof… silly cunt… weirdy bastard… Jessie… fucking spazmo… Joey Deakon …

Ewan pushed me to the ground and the others joined in with quick kicks and jabs, then almost as suddenly as it had started the assault was over. They turned and ran whooping out into the sunshine, slamming the door behind them.

It wasn’t completely black in the hut. Light filtered in through cracks in the untrue slats, but it was dark enough to give the old signalling equipment a sinister aspect. I bumped up onto my bottom, brought my hands round in front of me and grasped the small metal pick I’d hidden beneath my tongue. Then I got my second shock of the adventure. Police handcuffs are not as easy to unfasten as the trick set I’d been practising on.

It was dinner-time before my mother noticed I was missing. Neighbours’ children were interrogated and my fate soon discovered. My father shook his head, borrowed a pair of bolt cutters and set off to release me. The summer nights are long in Scotland, and it was not quite yet gloaming when he found me. But the shadows inside the signal box had spread their fingers until the little space was black. The darkness had crept inside my clothes, filtered into my nose and mouth, and slunk into my ears until I was unsure whether the rustling noises and groans came from the trees and grasses outside or from some creature inside the box with me.

My father ruffled my hair, and slowly cut my bonds, scolding and comforting in turn, finally releasing me, piss stained, snot crusted and tearful, into my mother’s custody. That was the first time I learned a fact that has haunted me throughout my return to Glasgow. I can’t stand to be locked up and I was never destined to be an escape artist.

After a few of my usual consolations I decided I was finished with pubs for that morning, so I bought myself a picnic and went down to the Clyde to drink it. In Berlin the rivers and canals were part of the centre of the city, there was bathing and boating, tourist barges and river taxis. People sunned themselves and played tennis and frisbee by the banks of the Spree, and though there were rainy days I only ever went there when it was sunny, so my impression is of brightness and good times.

It was damp down by the Clyde. The concrete walkway was deserted but there were signs others had been there before me, rusting beer cans, dead bottles of Buckfast, old porno magazines splaying already splayed women in the breeze. There were a few boats moored by the riverside, but the water was lead-grey dead, if I’d had any thoughts of drowning myself I would have ditched them for the day. The water was too cold to consider it. It would swallow you with a slurp and no word of pardon afterwards.

I walked along by the edge for a while trying to keep my mind empty. I didn’t bother trying to conceal my carry-out from the early afternoon. It swung from my hand in the kind of thin plastic bag licensed grocers seem to think sufficient for transporting lager, though every drinker knows they’ll bend and snap before you’ve walked a mile.

An old man with Struwwelpeter hair lay skippered in the shadows beneath Jamaica Bridge. He’d made a nest from an army-issue sleeping bag supplemented by a bundle of rough-looking blankets and some dismantled cardboard boxes. A tattered tartan trolley stuffed with newspapers lay toppled on the ground beside him. The old man mumbled something and I leant beneath the bridge’s supports and passed him a can of lager. It was more a plea for karma than any kind of sympathy, but the old tramp tipped his hand to his forehead and whispered ‘God go with you son’ in a voice raw with phlegm and cold. I nodded and said, 'And with you.' Though I thought any god had probably given up on both of us a long while back.

I found a bench, tucked my supplies neatly beneath its seat and settled myself down with my first tin, pulling the collar of my jacket up. It was pretty bitter down there by the river, but there was a distant gleam somewhere across the sky and it was no longer impossible to believe that spring was somewhere in the beyond. I took a sip of the beer. The liquid was warmer than the air outside, but it was better quality than the stuff I’d been supping in the bar. These old tramps were obviously men of discernment. Who knows what I might learn if I joined their ranks?

Berlin

THE SOUND OF Montgomery’s voice had sent me out into the street cursing Bill with his public-school vowels and his gangster pretensions that got people killed. This whole escapade was nothing to do with me.

There was money in my pocket; I could catch a flight that afternoon if I wanted. I fished out the scrap of paper Sylvie had written her number on. It took me a while to find a phone box, and then it took me a while to follow the instructions in German, but eventually the phone at the other end started to ring. Sylvie picked up and I asked her, 'Still looking for a job?'

'You found something already?'

'How do you fancy working with me for a while as my assistant?'

I left the phone booth with her shriek of excitement still ringing in my ears and started to walk towards the theatre, wondering what was inside the envelope I had sent home.

Glasgow

SEAGULLS WERE CACKLING above the Clyde. They made low, swift, argumentative swoops towards the water, maybe remembering times when they fished for their supper, instead of splitting restaurant rubbish bags and vying with urban vermin for abandoned takeaways. I wondered why they chose to live in this city when there were swathes of white sandy beaches and clear seawaters up north on the coast, but then who was I to judge? I raised my can to the sky and said, 'Go on yoursels. Away and shite on as many heads as you can.'

A posse of neds sloped down the walkway towards me. I lowered my eyes and tilted my head so they wouldn’t catch me following their progress. The last thing I wanted to hear was the immortal line, 'What the fuck’re you looking at?' A prelude to a Glasgow kiss or worse. There were five of them, dressed in trainers and shell suits, each with their hood up, hands in pockets. They had an excited bouncing walk, their heads bowed towards the ground, torsos nodding in rhythm with their feet. I could hear their keyed-up voices growing louder as they got closer and cursed myself for choosing this deserted spot. If they wanted to they could hold me down, fillet me and leave me for the seagulls. I slid my can into my pocket and kept my eyes fixed on the further shore, watching them with my peripheral vision. Their voices were high and nasal, tossing some recent adventure between them.

'You pure gave him a doin’.'

'Split his head like a coconut.'

'A jammy coconut.'

'Jammy donut.'

'Fuckin’ jammy fanny.'

'Fucking mental, man.'

One of the boys glanced at me. I saw a fine spray of rust-red droplets across his nose, like a delicate dusting of freckles. His face was as pale as mine, but instead of the graveyard grey of my complexion, his was the milk white of youth before the acne sets in. In another life he might have been a model or a movie actor. Our eyes locked and the boy peeled his top lip into a sneer. I thought fuck, here we go and got ready to spring into the kick-off. Then one of his companions gave a shout of sheer joy, and I saw a Miami-blue launch cutting through the water churning two great wings of white spume in its wake. The boys’ heads turned, following its progress, then they began to run, keeping it in their sight. I saw one of them lift a stick and throw it towards the water, knowing he had no chance of hitting it, but wanting somehow to be part of the boat.

I took my can out of my pocket, noting that my hands were trembling. All the same I wondered at the quick stab of fear I’d felt. They were only boys and I had done worse than any of them would ever accomplish.

Berlin

THE THEATRE DOORMAN was slumped behind a newspaper in his booth at the stage door. I rapped gently against the glass and he snorted awake, harrumphing like an old dog who’s lain by the fire too long.

Early in my career I learnt the importance of cultivating that all-powerful alliance of janitors, cleaners, ushers and doormen, the people who can lose your fliers and cut your rehearsal time to the minimum or allow you free access to the building and gift you gossip that might solve all your disputes with the management. I gave the doorman one of my best smiles and he gave me a hard stare that suggested he’d seen my type before and hadn’t been impressed. The newspaper started to go up again. Still smiling, I rapped on the window.