2007 - A tale etched in blood and hard black pencel (34 page)

He’s about to ask, “What?” when he sees the scrunched-up bog roll lying on the carpet next to the settee. He swoops to grab it and instantly shoves it up to his face, where it has the opposite effect of normal, in that it applies something warm and gloopy to his nose rather than removing it.

“Oh, yuck, you
have
got the sniffles,” his mum says. “For goodness’ sake, cover your mouth and nose when you sneeze. I wouldn’t want a load of
that
stuff all over my face.”

“Yes, Mum,”
he
says, and stuffs the bog roll into his pocket as Uncle Jim walks in, clutching his spectacle case.

“That’s me got them,” he says. “You mind and make sure you never dae anythin tae damage your eyesight, Colin, mark my words. What are you daein sitting here with the blinds drawn?”

He looks at the window, beyond which it’s broad daylight. “Eh, there was a glare on the telly. Just for a wee while. Sun’s gone now.”

“A glare? Rain hasnae been aff the whole day.”

“It was just for a minute.”

Mum has a look at the telly. “What are you watching?” she asks, which is when he notices that
Jackanory
’s on. “You not a bit old for this?”

Her hand is inches from the screen, in touching distance of the control panel. If she’s suspicious, one brush of her finger could turn it to channel eight, where the porno is still playing.

“I was watching a tape of the Celtic game from Wednesday night,” he says, thinking quickly of something both plausible and of zero interest to his mum. “Just finished. I was about to rewind it,” he adds, and quickly squats down to hit the ‘Stop’ button.

“Aye, some game,” says Jim. “Here, I wouldnae mind watchin it again, and oor Jock might have missed it. Can we bring the tape up tae Perth?”

Oh, Jesus
.

“Eh, I’m pretty sure Papa’ll have already seen it.”

“Aye, but I know oor Jock, he’d never get tired of watchin a humpin like that. That first yin, what was it like? The look on the boy’s face as he stuck it in, absolutely rammed it in, so he did. And what aboot the tackle? Have you ever seen anything like it?”

“Come on, Colin,” says Mum. “Give us out the tape, then. Dad’s got the engine running.”

Oh, Mother of Christ
. He looks for the other tape, the tape that was in the machine. Fuck knows what’s on it, as he just made it up about the football, but he can’t give them this one. He needs to pull off a fly switch, but how’s he going to manage that with the other tape somewhere down behind the telly? Jim’s standing over him, as well, waiting as the machine makes its interminable noises, slowly preparing itself to deliver Colin into family damnation.

And then, like a shining light as Mum opens the blinds, there comes salvation when he remembers: “This’ll not play on Papa’s machine,” he says.

“Aw, will it no?”

“Naw. This is VHS. Papa’s is Betamax.”

“Betamax?”

“Aye, Betamax.”

Thank fuck for Betamax.

§

“So who told you about this?” Karen asks as they pass the last of the streetlights on the outskirts of town and into the darkness of the country road leading up the far side of the Carnock Braes.

Martin thinks about pleading confidentiality, but reckons more damage could be sustained if Karen finds out later and starts wondering why he would be so coy. “Jojo told me. I ended up in the Railway Inn tonight, got talking to her.”

“The Railway? But I stood you up in Glasgow. What the hell made you go there?”

“A question I was asking myself very shortly upon my arrival,” he deflects.

“Big Jojo’s the landlady there now, isn’t she?”

“Yeah. She’s not so big these days, though.”

“No, I know. She never really was, especially in secondary. I ran into her a couple of years back, coming out of the pictures in Linwood with her kids. We didn’t get to talk long, but she was really pleasant. Genuine, too.”

Martin feels the knot tighten. Pile it on, why don’t you. “Was it not a bit tense? I mean, she was a pure cow to you at St Grace’s, was she no?”

“Aye, she’s still never forgiven me for stealing her best pal in Primary Five. Come on, Martin, it’s so long ago, we’re lucky if we can remember what we ever held grudges about. I mean, you and she were hardly each other’s favourite either, but presumably you got on fine tonight or we wouldnae be here.”

“Aye,” he says, wincing. “We got on okay.”

He is surprised to see a second car waiting as they pull into the horseshoe clearing where the four lodges sit along the shore of the fishing loch. Karen clocks his reaction.

“What, you didnae think I was gaunny let a civilian come poking around a crime scene with just me to supervise, did you? Besides, Tom lives near the station and I needed someone to pick up the keys.”

The other cop emerges from a fifth building, a small timber shed built in the same style as the lodges. Karen gives him a wave and kills the engine.

As they walk towards it, Martin can see that the shed serves as a maintenance⁄storage hut and miniature site office. Linen, towels and domestic supplies are piled on clear-varnished pine shelves against one wall, another wall accommodating outdoor hardware. Across the centre there is also a short counter bearing a telephone, a monitor and a keyboard.

“Bugger of a job being the janny for a whole forest,” Martin says, eyeing up the thick-bristled brush that is standing nearest the door.

“You should leave the gags to your wee pal Scot,” Karen says witheringly. Martin feels his metropolitan confidence ebbing. He remembers Jojo’s remark about it being murder everyone else knowing more than him. She was right. Every minute back here is causing his stature to recede towards the starting point of overlooked, schooldays, short-arsed nobody.

Karen does the introductions, her brevity suggesting she has already thoroughly filled in Tom on more than Martin finds comfortable.

“I’ve been here ten minutes,” Tom says. “Had a wee look around again. First thing to note is that the buildings are all detached and even this wee doocot doesn’t back on to anything, so I don’t know where any prospective voyeur might position himself. Ceilings are vaulted, right enough, so we might need to get out the ladders.” He nods towards a pair of extendable aluminium steps hanging lengthways along one wall. “Needless to say, we’ll stay out of Lodge Two,” he adds, eyeing the next building but one.

Martin can’t help but turn and look at the scene of the crime. There is, as the polis always say, nothing to see here, but the thought of what went on within its walls gives the lodge an inexplicable aura. He feels sad, and guilty, too. A friend died there. He hadn’t been a friend since a very long time ago, but he was once, when they were very young and very innocent, and that’s the person he thinks of when he looks at the closed door. The Colin he knew disappeared way back in the early eighties, but this is when it hits home that he’ll never be coming back.

Tom lifts the ladders from their hooks and Martin steps behind the counter to get out of the way.

“Okay, we’ll start with Lodge One,” Karen says to Tom. “You see if you can get into the loft space and I’ll have a swatch around below.”

Martin has a look at the PC sitting on the floor. He’s pretending to examine it but really it’s just somewhere else—other than at Karen—to be looking so that he doesn’t appear improperly eager. He’s not sure how serious she was about me extent of his permitted involvement here. He’ll follow if he’s told to, but doesn’t want the further slapping down of being ordered to stay put. However, now that he’s looking at the computer, he starts to notice something.

“Are you coming, then, or what?” she asks him. “I brought you along as an extra pair of eyes.”

“Sure,” he says. “It’s just…something struck me about this PC. What’s it doing in a daft wee shed like this?”

“I think it doubles as the lodges’ management office.”

“Aye, but I cannae imagine the places needing this much management. Plus, it’s a decent bit of kit.”

“You kidding? The monitor’s ancient.”

“All the more reason why the box itself is incongruous. This thing’s even got a dock for a removable hard drive. I take it you lot have got the drive itself?”

“No,” says Tom. “We don’t know where it is. The PC itself is password protected. We’ve got guys who can crack it if need be, but it’s not been a priority.”

“Noodsy’s pleading ignorance about the removable drive,” Karen says. “Playing to his strengths, you might argue. But to be fair, it could be anywhere: in Temple’s house, in Turner’s house, at the bottom of the fishing loch, or in the Clyde under the Erskine Bridge, where Noodsy says they dropped the gun.”

Martin squats down and has a closer look at the rear of the machine, specifically the cables protruding from it.

“ADSL broadband modem
-for a hut
. And look at this cable here, coming up from under the floorboards. It’s coaxial, going to the graphics card. AV input.”

“Oh boy,” says Tom.

“AV input?” Karen asks. “What’s that?”

“Audio-visual.”

§

Scot comes back into the bedroom carrying a tray with three mugs of tea he nipped downstairs to make while they were waiting for
Manic Miner
to load on the Spectrum. Scot’s house is on the way to St Grace’s, which is why Martin has arranged to come round here before they go on to the disco, though these days it’s a regular Friday night fixture for one of them to be at the other’s place. Cass, Scan Cassidy, is here tonight, too. He sometimes comes round to Martin’s or Scot’s on a Friday as well, but he doesn’t have a computer, so they never go round to his. This is fine by Martin, as Cass lives down the Bottom scheme and Martin has heard a few too many stories of people getting jumped down there to fancy walking back home after dark. Cass loves the games, but his real passion is movies. He is a generous source of Betamax pirates, horror Eighteens a particular speciality, though the copies are often so many generations from the original that it can be hard to know whether you’re watching
Friday the 13
th
or
Fast Times at Ridgemont High
.

“Has it worked?” Scot asks, placing the tray down carefully on the floor. He’s talking about the poke for infinite lives that Martin got from a magazine.

“Soon find oot,” Martin says. “Just let Cass have a go and he’ll get killed in nae time.”

“Cheeky bastart,” Cass says, but he’s happy enough to take this as a cue to get first shot on the computer. They’ve got it hooked up to Heather’s colour portable. She’s away out to the pictures in Paisley with her boyfriend, otherwise they’d be making do with the old black-and-white. Martin passed her at the bus stop on his way here, all made up so she looked much older than any time he’s seen her in the corridor at school. Heather’s pretty, but Martin can’t really think of her that way, as he’s known her so long it would be like fancying his big cousin or a youngest auntie; not forgetting the fact that he wouldn’t have a chance in a million years. He’d love to be going to the pictures, though, with any girl. Well, not
any
girl, obviously, but, you know, a girlfriend.

Cass bursts out laughing as he reliably guides Miner Willy to an early death in the Central Cavern. They all look to the bottom of the screen as the level restarts, and share in a cheer as it shows three lives intact.

“This game’s brilliant,” Cass says. “Even better than that wan we played at Marty’s,
Jetpac
.”

“You were better at
Jetpac
.” Martin laughs, watching Cass snuff it again.

“Wish I hadnae got the cheat code the night of the disco,” Scot says. “I’ll be up tae aboot three in the mornin tryin tae finish this efter I get hame.”

“Me too,” Martin agrees, though in truth he’ll be in bed by ten as usual, parents’ rules. There are no rules about how early he can get up, right enough, and it’s Saturday tomorrow.

“Have you got this game as well, Marty?” Cass asks.

“Aye,” Scot answers. “It was Marty taped it for me aff his.”

“See, that’s what’s amazin aboot computer games,” says Cass, shaking his head in apparent wonder. “The picture’s always brilliant: crystal clear, gallus quality even if it’s a pirate.”

Scot bursts out laughing. “Cass, ya tube. It’s software, it’s machine-code.”

“Aye, but it’s still a tape of a tape.”

Scot ejects the tape from the cassette-recorder and holds it in front of Cass, who looks alarmed for a moment until he sees that the game is still playing on the screen.

“It’s digital, just a string ay numbers that’s on the tape. The numbers don’t change no matter how many times you copy them. Videos deteriorate because they’re analog recordings.”

“Analog recordings?” Cass retorts. “Fuck’s sake, who’s been teachin you the big words?”

Scotty gives him the finger. It’s done in fun, but Scotty can be a bit nippy if you allude to him being clever. It’s the only thing Martin has ever seen get him riled, as normally Scot just laughs off all the mud-slinging and posturing that goes on at school. You could almost say he’s the one guy who really doesn’t care what anyone thinks of him…as long as they don’t think
that
.

“Anna Logue recordings,” says Cass. “I wouldnae mind wan ay them. She’s that wee honey in First Year. Noodsy’s wee cousin.”

“Cradle-snatcher,” says Scot.

“Geezabrek. It’s only two years’ difference. Anyway, lassies ayeways go oot wi guys aulder than them. We’d be in wi a better chance if it was a Second and Third Year disco, no Third and Fourth.”

“Cass,” says Scotty, “if we were the only guys there, the lassies would dance by themselves.” Martin laughs, wishing it was a joke.

“The wans that think they’re dead grown-up wouldnae look at ye, and the rest wouldnae gie ye a dance because they’re too feart ay the slaggin.”

This is all true, but Martin doesn’t want to agree out loud, as though doing so would break some spell that might yet prove it wrong. It would be great to dance with one of the girls, and surely it isn’t totally out of the question. Not a pure ride like Samantha Gerrity or one of Jojo’s trendy in-crowd, obviously, but there had to be somebody, surely? It didn’t have to mean anything, didn’t have to say they were ‘going with each other’ or imply that he was asking to get off with her. Just a few dances, maybe a decent conversation, a shared smile, some kind of validation that the opposite sex didn’t see him as a complete nonentity.