White Rage (48 page)

Scullion dabbed his mouth with a napkin. ‘This isn't doing you any good. It's unhealthy.'

‘So? I've spent my life exploring the unhealthy.'

Scullion's mobile rang. ‘Excuse me.' He took the phone from his pocket. Perlman looked round Princes Square. He fixed his attention on an aged man sitting at a table outside one of the other eateries. Talking to himself. Or an imaginary companion, a dead wife, or just praying somebody would come along and help him out of his solitary conversation.

Scullion tucked his mobile phone away. ‘Shite. I have to go.'

‘I hope it's something tasty.'

Scullion stood up. ‘Routine. You remember routine, Lou? I think you've forgotten the humdrum of every bloody day. It's not all headless clowns and gangland slayings and mystery.'

‘It is for me.'

‘I'll call about dinner.'

‘I'll be by the phone, paralysed.'

Perlman hung around for a couple of minutes after Scullion had gone. When he asked the waitress to get the bill, she told him that lunch had already been paid for.

‘Did he leave you a good tip?'

‘Very generous.'

Perlman got up. He dropped three pound coins on the table.

The waitress said, ‘You don't have to. You didn't even eat your burger.'

‘No appetite, love.'

He walked up Buchanan Street where the afternoon light was already shading toward dark. He raised the collar of his coat and went in the direction of the Galleries: a dead clown, a rainy city.

Instead of driving back to Egypt, he crossed the Clyde and travelled south to Ibrox, passing the monolithic red-brick stadium where Glasgow Rangers played football. About a quarter of a mile from the stadium he parked outside a bar in a street of grey sandstone tenements and sat smoking a moment in his car. Then he flicked his cigarette out the window and punched in a number on his mobile.

He said, ‘Meet me. I'm outside the Jaycee.'

‘Gimme five.'

Perlman closed the connection. He saw two stout girls, faces flushed from a heavy midday session, come out of the Jaycee Bar, arguing. Identical twins, he realized, each wearing the red white and blue scarves of Rangers' fans.

One said, ‘Brian Laudrup's the best we ever had at The Brox.'

‘Away to fuck, it was Davie Cooper, Coop, go wee man.'

‘Za matter of opinion.'

They squared off, fists raised, then apparently thought better of it and went back inside the bar for another drink.

Perlman saw The Pickler approach from the other side of the street. Perlman beeped his horn lightly and The Pickler stepped toward the car and peered in through the window. Perlman reached across, unlocked the door, and The Pickler slid into the passenger seat.

He smelled overpoweringly of mothballs.

‘New car, eh, Mr Perlman? Very nice. What does she get to the gallon?'

‘How should I know?'

The Pickler examined the instrument panel, touched the dashboard, opened the glovebox and took out the Owner's Handbook. ‘What's the cubic capacity of the engine? Is it a 1297 cc?'

‘I never read the book,' Perlman said, bored with car talk already.

‘You should, Mr Perlman. I'd be asking questions. MPG. Horse power. I think she's 68 or 69 bhp. Standard tranny, I see. Four cylinders, right?'

‘Gimme a break,' Perlman said.

‘You want me to look under the bonnet?' The Pickler was already halfway out the car.

Perlman tugged him back. ‘The car runs. I'm satisfied.'

The Pickler settled back in his seat. ‘I'm no delighted with the colour, have to say. Purple's too … soft.'

‘Vermilion,' Perlman said.

‘Vermilion, eh?' The Pickler jiggled the gearstick. ‘So how's life anyway?'

‘You tell me.'

Perlman regarded The Pickler a moment, who was fingering buttons on the dashboard with great interest. A squat man with a collection of sagging chins, he wore an ill-fitting old brown suit and an old-fashioned collarless shirt – clothes that had never been his to begin with, inherited, borrowed, or shoplifted from Goodwill.

‘I hear you're no back on the job yet,' The Pickler said.

A man with sources, Perlman thought. ‘Not yet.'

‘You're outside looking in, eh? Here, that could be my job description as well.' The Pickler chuckled.

Perlman didn't want to dwell on the subject of his exile, nor any similarities between himself and his snitch. ‘This headless clown,' he said.

‘Oh aye, I read about him.'

Perlman took out his wallet and gave The Pickler a twenty. ‘I'm mildly intrigued.'

‘OK-doke. I'll sniff aboot, see whit I can, find.'

Perlman saw the note vanish in the depths of The Pickler's pocket. You're sucking thin air, Lou, dying from lack of a fucking purpose and trying to buy your way into a world where something,
anything
, intrigues you.

‘Upfront with you. It's gonny be tough, Mr Perlman. That place where they found him is way oot my territory.'

Perlman said, ‘It's less than twenty minutes on a bus.'

The Pickler laughed. ‘When were you last on a bus, Mr Perlman?'

Perlman gave The Pickler another ten. ‘I'll phone you in a few days.'

‘Right you are.'

The Pickler started to get out of the car. ‘None o my business, but if you're on leave, how come you're asking about this clown?'

‘Keeping my finger in,' Perlman said. ‘You still going to meetings, I hope?'

‘Oh aye, when I'm sober enough to remember.' The Pickler laughed again, a coarse good-natured chortle. He was a man who knew his weaknesses and tried to accommodate them. He took one last gander at the car and said, ‘Vermilion, did you say?'

‘Right.'

‘Mair like purple.'

Perlman drove off. In his rearview mirror he saw The Pickler waddling down the pavement. Choked by camphorated air, Perlman thought: desperate times. Digging up dead clowns.

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About the Author

Campbell Armstrong (1944–2013) was an international bestselling author best known for his thriller series featuring British counterterrorism agent Frank Pagan, and his quartet of Glasgow Novels, featuring detective Lou Perlman. Two of these,
White Rage
and
Butcher
, were nominated for France's Prix du Polar. Armstrong's novels
Assassins & Victims
and
The Punctual Rape
won Scottish Arts Council Book of the Year Awards.

Born in Glasgow and educated at the University of Sussex, Armstrong worked as a book editor in London and taught creative writing at universities in the United States.

All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this ebook or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Copyright © 2001 by Campbell Armstrong

Cover design by Angela Goddard

ISBN: 978-1-5040-0713-9

This edition published in 2015 by Open Road Integrated Media, Inc.

345 Hudson Street

New York, NY 10014

www.openroadmedia.com

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