The Last Darkness (29 page)

Poor old Joe.

And Lou Perlman, crusading for truth and justice out there in the alleys and dull-lit streets of the city, would surely draw the line when it came to his sick brother. You couldn't be certain, of course. There was never certainty. It was another fifty-fifty call. But Shiv Bannerjee had gambled most of his life. The trick was to make sure your arse was covered. He'd been truthful to Perlman, up to a point, that crucial point beyond which you do not go.

All things considered, he felt secure.

‘My man worked out for you, I take it,' Kilroy said.

‘Very well indeed,' Bannerjee said.

‘I always felt that particular arrangement had a gorgeous symmetry,' Kilroy said. ‘You pay him and it comes straight to me. Recycling cash. Keeping the flow rolling. You should see the pure
ambition
in his eyes. He carries around an aura that is eye-popping. I love to have somebody jigging on a wire. And all because he wants a rat-infested room at the top of a building shortly to be condemned. He doesn't know, of course, that the place is scheduled for the wrecking ball. Why spoil his fun? People entertain such sorry dreams. I sometimes think Glasgow is precisely the city for small dreams. I see disappointment all about me, sad faces, tubercular expressions, people hurrying through the rain looking miserable. Spotted dick, Shiv?'

‘I'll pass.'

Bannerjee's stomach made a gurgling sound. He studied Kilroy a moment. He was a man of contradictions, bizarrely attached to this e-coli eatery on the one hand, and fond of a fine meal and a rich Havana at Number One Devonshire on the other. The eccentricities of his clothing suggested a desire for attention, and yet the details of his private life were scarce. Bannerjee could list on the fingers of one hand what he'd learned about Kilroy's world. He was a collector of twentieth-century Glasgow oil-paintings, a devoted fan of Partick Thistle Football Club, the least fashionable team in the city – excluding Queen's Park; he was a slum landlord, a devout Catholic, a pal of bishops and cardinals, and he consorted with some of the most notorious gangsters around. He knew judges and was said to be a friend of the Procurator-Fiscal.

Kilroy examined his hands, breathed on his rings, then buffed them with the sleeve of his coat. ‘Are you finished with him now?' he asked in his honking way.

Bannerjee said, ‘Done.'

‘Then that's that. Is he paid off?'

‘He will be very soon.'

‘And what did he do for his twenty grand?'

‘He delivered two envelopes.'

‘Two envelopes? Very nice work if you can get it … This is one of my talents, Shiv. I bring people together and I make them fit. You want something, I want something, my man wants something. I join the dots. I knew he'd work out. So. End of story. In the immortal words of Zimmerman, the bard of Hibbing, you go your way and I go mine.'

‘Next time we meet, Leo, let me choose the place.'

‘We never meet, Shiv. Oh, we run into one another now and again at this function or that, limos passing in the night, but we rarely have a one-on-one these days.
Mano a mano
. We used to meet more in the old days when you were going like a bat out of hell for public office. I'll never forgive you for blowing it, Shivvie. It would've been very nice to have a sympathetic ear in Westminster. Useful too. My pal the MP.'

‘But I was weak.' Bannerjee started to rise.

Kilroy touched the back of Shiv Bannerjee's arm. ‘You're leaving? No coffee?'

‘I have a date, Leo.'

‘Do tell. Is she gorgeous?'

‘The eye of the beholder,' Bannerjee said. ‘She's too young for me, really. She has enthusiasms I can't even remember having in my youth. I won't go into detail. We meet every Thursday.'

‘A standing engagement, if you'll pardon the expression?'

‘You're forgiven.'

‘My my. You're infuriating. You won't tell me about the girl. So talk to me about these two envelopes. What do they contain? I'm aching to know.'

‘There's nothing I can tell you, Leo.'

Kilroy laughed and prodded Bannerjee with his cane. ‘You sly old Indian, you don't give anything away.'

‘We're an inscrutable race.' Bannerjee moved towards the door.

‘I thought that was the Chinese,' Kilroy said.

‘They don't compare, Leo.' Raising a hand, Bannerjee stepped outside. Kilroy watched him go. The small bell above the door shook and rung. Goodbye Shiv, goodbye.

‘Mrs Bane,' Kilroy shouted. ‘
Mrs Bane
!'

The deaf old dear appeared, her head tilted in Leo Kilroy's direction. ‘Did you call for me?'

‘I certainly did. Bring me a cup of your finest java, wench.'

‘I'll bloody wench you, Leo Kilroy. You're not so big I couldn't smack you a sharp one round the lugs.'

Kilroy laughed. ‘You're a bold old biddy, Mrs Bane. Nobody else would even
dream
of talking to me like that.'

Mrs Bane didn't hear him; she'd already turned and gone into the kitchen. Kilroy looked at the door swinging shut behind her and thought: two envelopes.

Bad arithmetic, my Asian friend. Three.

42

Lou Perlman parked outside the Loch Fynne Mussel Bar in the Gallowgate, a thoroughfare that connected the East End of Glasgow with the boundary of the city centre, where the Saltmarket met High Street. The Gallowgate had always had a wretched reputation, a street of old tenements and mean-faced pubs and violence. Now, most of the tenements had been replaced by staid little houses, but in the slow-falling rain the area still looked drab.

A man in green wellington boots stepped out of the Loch Fynne and sloshed the pavement with a bucket of brackish water. He eyed Perlman and Scullion with open suspicion. A smell of the ocean wafted out of the bar into the rain.

Perlman sidestepped the flood and said, ‘You want to be careful with that slime.'

The man said, ‘It's raining, mister. What difference does it make if I pour water on the pavement?'

‘You're in violation of City Regulation 3978,' Perlman lied.

‘Take your regulation and shove it.'

‘A graduate of the East End School of Charm, eh? I hope you claimed a refund of the tuition fee,' Perlman asked.

Scullion said, ‘Lou, forget it. Come on.'

‘What is it with some people? Is it something they imbibe? Is there poison leaking from a faulty sewage-pipe underground?'

The man with the bucket glared at Perlman and said, ‘Ford Mondeo, eh? Peesa shite car.'

Perlman gave into childish impulse and flashed a V. He wondered at the nature of this short encounter. The flood of water around his feet, the bucket swung with intent to soak, the general nastiness. Blame the way Glasgow, in monochromatic drear December when all things die, creates disaffection. The people succumb to the drab weight of the season. They huddle by fires, and hibernate in their own resentments. They dream of their own perfumed Araby: the lager dens of the Costa Del Sol.

Scullion said, ‘Why let that arsehole rile you?'

Perlman knew the answer, but didn't say so. The man's hostility was irrelevant. Perlman's irritation had its source in Bannerjee's farewell shot:
Keep picking and you may find out more about Colin than you want to know
. How much do I want to know about my brother and his wrongdoings, if that was what they were? And how much was bluff from Bannerjee anyway? The man had been a damn chancer all his career. He was a liar, a villain who'd sucked the milk of the holy cow of high office.

Perlman and Scullion crossed the street through traffic.

Perlman asked, ‘Any luck tracing the taxi?'

‘We found the driver, no bother. He remembered the passenger. He picked him up at the corner of Robertson Street and Argyle, drove him out to Lassiter Place, did a swift turn, then dropped him close to Shawlands Cross. He thinks he saw the passenger go inside a supermarket, he wasn't sure.'

‘Anything else?'

‘Nervous guy, that was all he said. Told the driver he had somebody to visit in the cul-de-sac. Nothing new from the circulated print yet. You haven't told me what you've been up to. Mary Gibson thought you were going to see Shiv Bannerjee.'

‘That's what I did.'

‘Don't rush to tell me, Lou.'

‘Lindsay was Bannerjee's solicitor. There's a whiff of financial knavery.' What to say that wouldn't involve Colin? And if evidence existed that
would
hurt Colin, its emergence would pain Miriam too. She loved her husband, after all. She'd made a point of saying so. Still, you'd protect her, wouldn't you? You'd be gallant, Lou, right? The lover's heart is blindfold.

It was a bloody balancing act, a wonky gyroscope on a taut string.

‘What else would you expect with Bannerjee?' Scullion asked.

‘He's working to repent. He says.'

‘I'm Mother Teresa.'

‘Under a wee bit of pressure, he admitted he knew Wexler. But …'

‘But what?'

‘I don't know how honest he was being with me. You know those characters that are halfway honest and they sound like they're spooning you rich cream, but they're really skimming? That's the feeling I got.'

They entered a building that had been a warehouse of some kind at one time. The air smelled of cats, excrement, cigarettes, dirty bedding: the dregs of a subterranean world. A half-hearted attempt, completely doomed, had been made to convert the building into something else, apartments and lofts, more lofts, Glasgow was threatening to become a city of bloody lofts.

Perlman and Scullion had to push aside some strands of barbed-wire and pieces of plywood to get inside. Scullion said, ‘This should really keep out the riff-raff. By the way, mind telling me what we're doing here, Lou?'

‘Quick and Furfee and the Dogue Affair.'

‘Furfee? I knew he was out of jail, but I didn't know he was back in Glasgow.'

‘He's back all right.'

An orange-tinted sign for Club Memphis –
ROCK ALL THE WAY TO THE TOP ROCK-LOVERS
! – peeled from a wall where a thirty-watt light hung from the ceiling. The two men climbed the stairs slowly, passing unfinished conversions, bare rooms where graffiti artists with demonic graphic styles had been at work, and electric wires dangled from walls covered with menacing multi-coloured runes. Glass crackled underfoot, lightbulbs, bottles, syringes. Vandals and winos dossed here regularly. A pong of used condom, rubbery and seminiferous, was apparent. Abrupt couplings in the dark, the exchange of body fluids between drunk strangers.
Oh, Jessie, I love you, if that's yer name
. There were empty sleeping bags here and there, and a kerosene lamp, guttered-down candles, some kitchen utensils, piles of clothing, little puddles of piss, a few fat jobbies in a corner.

A squat.

On the top floor they paused outside the glossy red door of Club Memphis. Messages and names and assorted arcana had been carved into the door.

Wee Cumby No Deid

WATP

FERGAL WANKA

Perlman tried the handle; locked.

‘So do we kick the door down?' Perlman asked.

‘You up for it?'

Perlman shook his head. ‘Christ no, I'd bounce off it. Jimmy the lock.'

‘With what?'

‘A hairpin.'

‘I left my hairpins at home in my makeup bag, Lou.'

Perlman banged the door with his fist. ‘Hallo. Hallo in there.'

No answer.

‘I'll kick it down,' Scullion said.

‘You fit for that?'

‘We'll see.' Scullion shrugged, took a few steps back, and was about to lunge a foot when a voice emerged from behind the closed door.

‘Aye? Who's there?'

‘Police,' Scullion said.

‘Whatcha want?'

‘A minute of your time,' Scullion said.

Perlman had a slightly uneasy moment: you never knew what lay beyond a closed door. Unarmed, you felt vulnerable. What if the door opened suddenly and a gunman faced you and you were a point-blank target? It had never happened to him, but it was always an edgy consideration as guns filtered into the city in increasing numbers. He loathed firearms. He was pleased he didn't have to carry one – but sometimes you felt the cold hand on the back of your neck and the fearful rush of adrenaline and you wished you had something more comforting than your fists and your luck to fall back on.

A crack appeared, a face in the slit. Scullion shoved the door with his shoulder. The impact forced BJ Quick to stagger a couple of steps back. Perlman followed Sandy inside. A big bare space, fag-ends on the floor, a chair: depressing. Club Memphis, if it had ever flourished, must have had all the ambience of a World War II Anderson air-raid shelter.

Quick asked, ‘What's the fucking game?'

Perlman said, ‘Hello, BJ, you sorry old shitebag.'

‘This is a private club, Perlman, fuck off.'

‘Don't be like that, Bobby J. We're pals. Should Auld Acquaintance Be Forgot and so on.'