2007 - A tale etched in blood and hard black pencel (12 page)

Chara

M
artin can see Noodsy through the wee wire-meshed window into the interview room. Whenever he runs into someone from his childhood days, he’s normally struck by their appearing much smaller than he remembers. Teachers, in particular, seemed to have been put through a harsh shrinking mechanism during his university years. Noodsy, however, was someone in that exclusive schooldays echelon of being shorter than Martin, so his stature seems to be pretty much as Martin remembers it. He looks older, though; and not just twenty years older than back then, but like those twenty years aged him more than they aged his beholder. His eyes are glazed and heavy, missing that guile-free twinkle, that boundless, innocent energy. Poor bastard looks like he hasn’t slept in days, which is probably about right.

Then the polisman unlocks the door, allowing Martin to walk in, and two decades briefly fall from Noodsy’s face. There’s a flash, a glimmer of the wee boy Martin once knew, before age and circumstance all but extinguish it again. All but, because there’s still something burning in there somewhere.

“Marty!” he says, and, to Martin’s shame, tears form in Noodsy’s eyes as he speaks. He wipes them away with an embarrassed sniff and extends a hand to shake.

Martin is a little relieved, as he thought for a moment Noodsy was going to hug him. He’s not shy of the physical contact; it’s the being a two-faced hypocritical cunt part that would have made him uncomfortable. He doesn’t deserve this welcome, and nor is there much he imagines being able to do subsequently to earn it.

“You came, man. I don’t believe it. Thanks, man. Fuckin amazin. Thanks so much. Brilliant tae see ye.”

“You too, Noodsy, though the circumstances aren’t exactly…”

“Naw, I know. Near as bad as bein back in O’Connor’s class, eh?”

Martin smiles, but it feels inappropriate to laugh, even politely. “You’re lookin at a bit more than two of the belt, Noodsy.”

Noodsy nods solemnly. “I know. That’s how I’m so grateful you’ve came, man. I want—”

“Noodsy, before we go any further, I’ve got to put you straight. I’m no a criminal lawyer. I mean, I was for a wee while, but that was ten years ago, so I—”

“Aw, naw, it’s awright, man. I’ve already got a brief. Polis werenae gaunny sit aboot while we waited tae see if you showed up, were they? Didnae even have a number for ye. I got some Legal Aid dude. He’s awright, considerin he’s aboot twelve. Had worse.”

Martin takes a breath, referees a bout between a dozen different reactions to this news, most of them, well, prick-ish. He knew about the other brief, because in order to be allowed to see Noodsy, he had to tell the desk sergeant he had been asked for specifically and was therefore here as a replacement. However, this doesn’t sound like he’s replacing anybody, not even a Legal Aid dude who looks about twelve.

“I’m sorry,” Martin says. “I came up on the first flight soon as I heard…”

“S’awright, man. I didnae ask for ye cause you’re a lawyer, Marty.”

“So, what…?”

“They’ve got me for murder, man.
Two
murders. And I swear on my mother’s grave, I had nothin tae dae wi it. I’ll put my hand up tae the conspirin tae pervert, but that’s aw I did. I just helped get rid ay the bodies. They were baith deid when I got tae the lodge efter Turbo phoned us.”

“Scot said you needed somebody who would believe you.”

“My brief believes me, Marty. Briefs get paid tae believe ye, whether they believe ye or no. But my brief’s no gaunny find oot whit really happened, and neither’s the polis. Polis are just like the teachers used tae be. No interested in whit actually happened, just want the quickest solution to gie themsels a quiet life. But the only way I can get oot ay this is if somebody can work oot whit happened in that lodge afore I arrived.
That
’s how I asked for you: you’re the brainiest guy I know, Marty. Brainiest guy I
ever
knew. Much brainier than that Karen Gillespie wan anyway.”

Martin nods but says nothing, concealing his emotions. This is even more desperate than Noodsy or Scot thinking he could do some Clarence Darrow act. Flattering, in a tragically naive kind of way, but still desperate, and flailingly so. In his efforts to bum Martin up, Noodsy has misremembered: it was always Helen and Michelle who were his competition in those stakes, not Karen, but then from Noodsy’s point of view, half the class must have seemed comparatively brainy.

“I might no be as brainy as you think,” Martin tells him. “This isnae like me helpin you wi your homework or somethin.”

“Naw. It’s mair like me goin up on that roof thon time,” Noodsy says, his face now as stony as it is scared. “I helped you that day because I knew I was the only wan that could.”

Aye. The bugger didnae misremember
that
. Martin nods. He takes out his mobile, sets it down on the table and switches it to voice-memo mode. “You need to tell me everything you’ve told them,” he says.

The Laws of the Game (Part One)

§

“I’ve got to tell you a secret,” says Paul.

It’s lunchtime and they’re playing football on the school pitch, carrying on the same game from morning playtime. Colin’s team are losing 17-15, but they’ve caught up four goals from earlier and don’t even have Stephen Rennie back from lunch yet (though, saying that, the others don’t have Matt Cannon either). The pitch is not as busy as playtime, because a lot of the boys are still in school dinners. Colin takes a packed lunch, which means you get more time to play, because you just sit down and eat it then leave when you’re done. If you go to dinners, you have to line up, and if you’re not quick out of class you can end up in second sitting, after which there’s hardly any time before the bell goes.

Colin loves lunchtime, loves how you can feel like ages have passed since the bell went or before it goes again. If you’re playing sodies or Flash Gordon or something, you can really lose yourself in the adventure. These days it’s football he likes best, though, and lunchtime is when it feels like you’re playing in a proper game, with ebb and flow, not a wee kickabout that’s over before it’s got going. Colin always goes in goals. That was where he was put when he first started joining in games, because he wasn’t very good at kicking the ball. He wasn’t much cop at stopping it or catching it either, but nobody seemed to find this sufficient reason to offer to take his place, and so in goals he stayed. But that was when the games were up in the playground, on the concrete. Once you’re in Primary Five and above, you get to use the pitch at playtimes. No one is sure whether this is a rule created by the teachers or the pupils, but the reason for it is pretty obvious when you see how mobbed the grass can get, with sometimes three separate games taking place at once. When you’re in Primary Four, you don’t much fancy getting caught up in that, so there is never any chance of the smaller ones being motivated to contest the restriction.

Today, though, there are only two balls on the pitch, because recently the Primary Fives’ and Sixes’ games have merged, leaving just the Sevens to a match of their own. Despite there being lots of Primary Sixes in both teams, Colin’s position between the posts is no longer dictated by his stature. The bigger boys still demand that he plays in goals, but these days it’s because they reckon he’s good at it. And that’s fine with Colin, because in goals is where he enjoys playing, as long as it’s on grass. It’s the diving that makes the difference. You can’t dive on concrete, which means most of the saves you make in the playground are just a matter of sticking your leg out and letting it rebound off your shin. So, by the time they start playing on the pitch, it doesn’t occur to most kids to do anything else when a shot comes in; nor, as it’s always the weest and rubbishest ones that get put in goals, is much else expected of them. But one of the first times Colin joined in on the school pitch, Stephen Rennie, the best player in his year, hit this long shot, hard and straight, towards the bottom-right corner, and, having struck it clean, he wheeled away with his arms up to celebrate in front of an imaginary Parkhead Jungle. It was September, the grass was long, the ground was soft, and Colin had been thinking about Gordon Stewart, ‘The Safest Hands in Soccer’, in
Roy of the Rovers
. Colin threw himself full length across the goal and got his right hand to the ball, deflecting it round the post.

It was, according to absolutely everybody, the best save they’d ever seen. (Absolutely everybody, that is, except Stephen Rennie, whose disbelief that Colin could have stopped his shot was only overcome because it was his own team-mates who were telling him.) He then cemented his newly acquired status by diving again, this time outwards, to cut out the resulting corner-kick, catching it in both hands as he landed comfortably on his side.

Thereafter, there was no question of him playing outfield, and it was a source of private pride during team-picking disputes to hear the likes of Stephen Rennie argue his opponents couldn’t have Matt Cannon on their side if they also had Colin in goals. The greatest compliment, however, is that he usually gets to stay in when it’s a penalty. Normally the best players tell the wee guy they’ve forcibly installed between the sticks to get out and let them take over at such crucial moments, because saving a penalty is even more impressive than scoring one, and they’re not passing up the opportunity for such glory. This still occasionally happens, but not when the scoreline is tight, as Colin’s ability—or maybe just his preparedness—to dive makes him much harder to beat. Being honest with himself, he knows it’s more the latter. Diving saves are the easiest thing about being the goalie. Nobody can hit the ball that hard from much of a distance, not even Stephen or Matt, which makes landing on the grass a less painful prospect than getting in the way of someone leathering it straight at you from two yards in the midst of a goalmouth stramash.

It’s quite cold today, early December, and the ground is hard but dry. They tend not to play on the grass if it’s wet, because you end up with soaking trousers if you fall down, and that’s no joke if it happens at morning playtime and you won’t be going home to change until four o’clock. Colin’s got his anorak on, with insulated padding, which means he can still dive, though there haven’t been many opportunities since the lunchtime break got under way. The balance of play, or, rather, the imbalance of players, has seen most of the action confined to the other end, where the majority of the boys on the park are swarming around the ball. You sometimes see Jamesy or Francis standing on their own, away from the morass, screaming for someone to pass because they’re in space. This is usually followed, once possession has been lost with no pass attempted, by equally loud accusations that their team-mate is ‘a ball-greedy bastard’.

The only others isolated from this roaming frenzy are Martin, Paul, Robbie and Colin. Martin is not much of a player and has therefore spent his own share of games between the posts (or jackets), but when playing outfield he is one of the very few to assign himself the role of defender. This, as he has confided to Colin, is because he has learnt that with both teams made up almost entirely of strikers, you get more chance of a kick at the ball by hanging back in defence. Another reason for his chosen position is that he and Colin are pals and can have a chat and a laugh during the long periods when play never leaves the opposing penalty box.

Robbie, who is playing for the other side, is here because he is a mooching wee bastard. Mooching is hanging around the other team’s goals in the hope that the ball breaks forward away from the pack at the other end, offering the chance of a sneaky shot without first having to negotiate your way through two dozen opponents and as many team-mates trying just as hard to get the ball off you. Robbie is a persistent practitioner of this, despite it earning him almost as much resentment from the guys on his own side as his opponents. It also frequently prompts Matt Cannon to shout ‘offside’, but as nobody other than Matt knows what this term means, it has no effect on Play.

Paul is on Robbie’s side, and though he is also, technically, mooching, this is neither a common tactic for him nor the real reason he’s in Colin’s goalmouth. He’s there to chat, having just returned from school dinners, and will most likely rejoin the action proper later. The three of them have been talking about
Lagan’s Run
on the telly, though Martin has seen the film at the pictures and says it was much better and you even got to see a woman’s bare bum. Colin loves telly and films about space. He doesn’t want to be a spaceman any more, though, because he’s seen the real space rockets in books and they look pure rubbish compared to the ones in stories. Plus they can only go as far as the moon, which is nothing. He’s got books about stars and the universe, and he knows the names of all the planets; some of the constellations as well. It’s called astronomy. That’s what he’s going to be when he grows up: an astronomer. He’s asked for a space telescope for Christmas, so he can look at the stars every night.

Robbie is a few yards away, nearer the edge of the box, hoping for a punt up the field. Paul has had a wee look to estimate Robbie’s distance and earshot before venturing that he has this secret to tell them.

“What is it?” Martin asks.

“You’ve got tae promise no tae tell emdy, right? Cause it’s dead secret and I’m only tellin yous because you’re good mates.”

“I promise,” says Martin.

“Aye, me too,” agrees Colin, eager to know what it is, and hoping it’s in the same league as Kevin’s revelation last week that he’d seen Zoe Lawson’s fanny when she stayed the night in his room because their parents were all having a party.

Paul has another wee look towards Robbie, which prompts Colin to check further upfield to confirm the ball is still pinging around the other penalty box. Then he tells them: “I’m really fae another planet.”

Colin’s first instinct is to look to Martin for a reaction, but Martin doesn’t look back; in fact, his eyes are fixed on Paul.

“My whole family. We had tae come here tae hide oot because there’s folk after us.”