The Bullet Trick (6 page)

Eventually I said, 'So why don’t you ask him?'

'It’s not as simple as that.'

'Sorry to hear it.' I reached for my jacket. 'I’m in the entertainment game. Complicated isn’t my scene.'

'Hasty.'

Bill raised his index finger and I found myself hesitating.

Sam said, 'At least hear him out. If you don’t like what he says then no hard feelings.'

My half-finished drink sat on the table before me; the cigar Bill had given me still stretching tendrils of smoke into the air. I sighed.

'OK, go ahead.'

Bill’s smile was dry.

'Policemen and businessmen: it’s no secret that sometimes one hand washes the other.'

'Yet somehow no one gets clean.'

He shrugged.

'It’s ancient history now. My dad and Inspector Montgomery had an arrangement, as I said, Monty helped my dad out at a very difficult time; he owed him and old loyalties die hard.'

'So?'

'My dad died three months ago.'

'I’m sorry for your troubles.'

Bill took a sip of his drink.

'He was only sixty-eight. It was unexpected.'

'Natural causes?'

'You’re not in murder central now, Jock, this is civilisation. He had a heart attack. It was instant.'

'So where do I come in?'

Sam’s smile was tense. 'It’s really just a matter of…'

Bill interrupted him.

'You save me the unpleasantness of laying my hands on an elderly policeman.'

Bill ordered more drinks. Out on the dance floor the music had changed to an R’n’B beat. The girls still had their stockings and panties on, but now they’d each equipped themselves with high heels and were stalking around the men waving purses in front of them, getting the audience to pay up if they wanted them to go further.

In the booth Sam said to Bill, 'William’s straight up. Tell him the whole story and he’ll help you out. Won’t you, William?'

I shrugged.

'See?' Sam smiled. 'I told you he was the boy for the job.'

Bill shook his head.

'What does it matter? We’ll be gone soon.' He took another puff of his cigar and resumed his story. 'I said that Monty and my dad went way back?' I nodded. 'Well, they didn’t like each other. In fact, I’d go as far as to say they hated each other’s guts, but they helped each other out. I asked my dad why once and he changed the subject. I assumed it was just business.' Bill gazed out over the dance floor, but I got the feeling he wasn’t seeing the half-naked girls still teasing the drunken policemen. 'Last week Monty shows me an envelope and says my dad paid a lot of money to keep its contents quiet. If I keep up the payments I can keep it quiet too.'

'So what was in it?'

Sam interrupted. 'He didn’t say.'

Bill gave Sam a stern look.

'He was enjoying himself. Said it was something my dad wouldn’t want me to know, but now that he was dead it was up to me to decide whether I wanted to or not.' Bill took a swig of his drink. 'My dad was no angel, but…'

'But you don’t think there would be anything diabolical in his past.'

Bill shrugged.

'We all do bad things. Who knows? But I don’t think so, no. He straightened out a lot after my mum went. He did what he had to do,' Bill glanced over to where Montgomery had Shaz on his knee. 'But my dad always knew where to draw the line.'

I looked for a telltale drunken glaze in Bill’s eye, but his grey gaze looked clear. I wondered why he was telling me all this.

'Maybe you should sleep on it.'

'This is the last night this place is open. I’ve sold it.' He grinned. 'I’m getting out, bought a yacht. Me and Sam are going to have a taste of the easy life before we decide what to do next. Tonight was meant to smooth the way. My dad had to duck and dive to make a living, but he gave me a good education and a good inheritance. I’m cutting old ties and that doesn’t mean sending some copper hush money every month, no matter how far him and my old man went back.'

'So buy it from him and burn it.'

'That’s one option.'

He looked at me.

Bill’s plan started to dawn but I said, 'Where do I come into all this?'

Sam said, 'It’s in the inside left-hand pocket of his suit jacket.'

I remembered Montgomery’s smile, sharp as a broken razor-blade and reached for my coat.

'I’m sorry gents, you picked the wrong conjurer.'

Sam’s voice was injured.

'Come on, William…'

Bill silenced him with a look.

'Leave it out Sam. He does it voluntary or not at all, that’s what we agreed.'

'But…'

Sam shot me a glance like a man betrayed, but Bill put his hand gently on top of his lover’s. His voice was soft.

'Get William a bottle of Moët from behind the bar would you, Sam? Help compensate him for his extra time.'

I said, 'There’s no need.'

Sam gave it one last try.

'Go on, William. I’ve seen you do harder than that. Think of it as a bet.'

Bill’s voice was harsh.

'Just get the champagne will you.' He paused and smoothed a bit of finesse into his tone. 'Please.'

Sam got to his feet and left the table without looking at me.

'Thanks for the drink and the cigar.' I pulled on my jacket. 'I don’t need any extra compensation. Good luck with your new life. I’d like to help, but I’ve got worries of my own.'

Bill glanced towards the bar, making sure Sam was out of earshot, then he reached into his pocket and pulled out the bundle of IOUs it had taken me months of hard losing to accumulate with my bookie. His voice was low and sympathetic, like a nurse about to stick a needle into a particularly tender portion of flesh. He said, 'Are any of them financial?'

Pick-pocketing is not as easy as some people would have you believe. The greatest defence is a crowd, where a little bit of physical contact won’t be unduly noticed, a packed subway or a busy lift. The second-best defence is distraction. Luckily for me the biggest distraction in the world was right in front of the inspector’s eyes, sex. Jacque made her way up to our booth, there was a slight stagger to her walk and I could see a glaze in her eyes that might have been drink, drugs, an attempt at detachment, or maybe all three. She shook the full-looking bag in front of us. It was all notes.

Bill said, 'Leave it out, Jacque.'

But I took out my wallet and dropped in a fifty.

'I’d like to buy Mr Montgomery a retirement present.'

Jacque tucked my fifty in tight with the rest.

'You could have saved your money, that lot out there have already paid for him.' She looked back over her shoulder. 'Ta all the same.'

Back on the dance floor there was a cheer as the girls peeled off the remnants of their costumes. They were shaved and vulnerable in amongst the suits and studied casualness of the men. Bill said, 'I guess this is where I leave you to get on with it. Sam and me’ll be upstairs in my office when you’re ready to deliver.'

Jacque and Shaz were on the floor, the men crowding round them now, shielding them from my view.

I asked, 'Will they be OK?'

Bill said, 'They’re whores. OK doesn’t come into it.' A second cheer went up. Jacque was standing in front of Montgomery, loosening his tie. The men beside him had pulled back. I watched the men’s eyes as Jacque worked her way down the Inspector’s body, sliding his tie between her legs. I finished my drink and made my way towards the bar as if in search of another. When I passed the knot of men I reached over and grabbed Jacque by the waist, pulling her towards me.

'Any chance of a private dance, doll?' Montgomery got to his feet as I’d hoped he would, pushing me to one side. I lurched to the right, still holding the sweat-slicked girl in my grip, and dipped his pocket, feeling the envelope, sliding it out quick and sure, tucked between my thumb and index finger, then crabbed it in my hand and conveyed it to my own pocket, pushing the naked girl towards him as I did so. 'Hey, no harm meant pal.' Making my accent thick and drink-addled.

One of the men gave me a shove, 'Stupid bloody Jock.' But the scene was quick to resume itself, Jacque flashing me a sharp confused look that might have spoken of suspicion or regret or perhaps just of disgust. I gave her the briefest of smiles, and then went to deliver my prize.

Glasgow

MY FIRST MONTHS back in Glasgow I never once let daylight touch my face. I slept more than seemed possible and woke groggy-eyed from half-remembered dreams. It wasn’t hard for me to hide during the day. Apart from those mornings when train timetables heaved me from my pit, unshaven and blinking, to stagger with my suitcase into the predawn, I’ve rarely ever left my bed before noon.

I perfected my practice method early in my career, around the age of nine, when I stumbled on The Boy’s Own Guide to Conjuring in the local library. I can still see the front cover of the book. A boy with dark hair cut in a side parting, dressed in a red school blazer and grey shorts, pulls a rabbit from a hat. On a table suspiciously swathed by a green cloth, reclines a copy of The Boy’s Own Guide to Conjuring. The boy on its cover is pulling the same rabbit from the same hat and the same book rests face up showing the same image, though it is more of a smudge now.

If I positioned the mirrors on my mother’s dressing-table at a particular angle I could achieve the same effect, myself repeated over and over into infinity. It gave me a strange feeling to see all of these other Williams shadowing my actions. I felt that when I stepped from the glass these other boys did the same and moved on in their own worlds where everything was an inverted image of mine and these Williams were the braves or bullies of their school.

It was a solitary pleasure. Every day when I got home I’d set the panes of the mirror at exactly the right angle, like a precocious teenage masturbator, then set to work. Under my command the army of other Williams stumbled through the same tricks until we had mastered one to perfection. I was the prince of illusion. And even though these doppelgängers might have been tougher or more popular in their worlds than I was in mine, in the world of mirrors it was my decrees that held sway.

In time, the reflection aged into a thirty-three-year-old trickster, standing before dead-eyed hotel mirrors murmuring the patter beneath his breath. Sometimes I’d forget to whisper and my voice would boom across the empty room and into the lifeless hotel corridor.

It was these practice sessions rather than companionship or money that I missed most in Glasgow, because, although I was used to making my fee stretch and sleeping alone in anonymous rooms, I never adjusted to abandoning the ritual of rehearsal.

The bedsit the taxi-driver had taken me to faced south; it would have got the afternoon light if it weren’t for the shadows cast by the building opposite. When I got there I resolved to stay put and think things out. But that very first night the walls started to close in on me like a torture chamber in a bad Hammer Horror movie and I found myself putting on my shoes and coat and setting out into the darkness.