Everything She Forgot (20 page)

He took a deep breath, wondering how to phrase what he wanted to say. She seemed so little suddenly, and her vulner
ability made him feel wretched. He decided it was no time to be serious.

“Are you in the cream puff?” he said, grinning and poking her gently in the side. He had spent his whole life teasing girls, it seemed. It was what he knew best.

She elbowed his hand away from her.

“You are too, admit it. You're in the cream puff.”

“I am
not
in the cream puff,” she said, frowning at him, her mouth pinched and her voice haughty. It reminded him of the night he proposed to Kathleen in Glasgow Green and her mother's coldness toward him. He took heart from the fact that Moll's eyes were no longer threatening tears and that her piqued anger seemed to have stopped her lip quivering.

“Do you know what the cream puff means?”

“Yes,” she said, still frowning.

“What's it mean then?”

“In a huff, but I'm not.”

“Who told you about the cream puff?”

“My mummy,” she said, lips wet, swallowing.

George smiled, remembering Kathleen riled. “Your mum's a good one for the cream puff too, believe me, I remember.”

George poked her again, on her right side, just below her rib cage, leaning down to whisper into her neck, knowing that his words and breath would tickle. “You're in the huff, admit it. You're in the cream puff.”

She twisted away from him, touching her neck and smiling, but quickly correcting herself.

“Am
not
,” she said, facing him, her chin forward and the gap in her teeth showing.

“Are sot!”

“Not!”

“Sot!”

“Not, not, not.”

“Sot, sot, sot.”

He tweaked her side again, and she smiled but then turned around in her seat and knelt, facing him, so that they were eye to eye. He knew that the game was over. She was sitting back on her heels in the front seat, and he noticed that, like him, she not only had long legs but a long back too. He faced her, letting his chin drop a little so that he had to look up at her. In a bar, that worked with girls: they seemed to like his submission.

“I want to go home
now
,” she said.

“I can't take you back just yet.”

Her face darkened again, her good eye considering him and the corners of her mouth turned down. He had broken one of the most basic rules. He had left school at fourteen but he had watched smarter men than him fail with women. Positivity was the first rule of flirtation.
Can't
,
won't
,
never
,
no
were words not to be uttered in the early stages.

He pressed his palms together, as if in prayer.

“Listen to me,” he said, very gently. “I know you want to go home, and I said I'd let you go when it's time, didn't I?”

“
When
will it be time?”

“Soon,” and then, “I
promise
. . .”

“But
when
?”

“Soon.”

George put two hands on the wheel and stared straight ahead at the bare concrete walls of the parking garage, wondering how to negotiate this with her—or how to distract her.

“I'm as good as my word,” he told her.

She folded herself back down into her seat, so that she was
facing straight ahead, her long limbs tucked underneath her. She rubbed her eyes.

“Do you trust me?” he asked, and she turned to him, her eyes quizzical or confused, and he wondered if she had heard or understood him, but he did not have the courage to ask her again.

“Tell you what,” he said. “We've got another drive ahead—couple of hours or so before we stop. Let's play a game. A car game.”

He hadn't expected it to be this easy, but she turned to him, the gap in her teeth showing, and nodded her head eagerly.

“What game?”

George placed two hands on the steering wheel. Suddenly he couldn't remember any games—or none that could help him now. He remembered playing football in the street with his socks at his ankles and his nose running; he remembered conkers and marbles and the games the girls played: elastics and peever and complicated hand-clapping games. His sister had tried to teach him once, asking him to hold up his palms while she sang and slapped the rhythm, but he had forgotten even the song.

“Let's play I spy,” she said, clasping her hands together.

George winced and let his head fall back against the headrest, but before he could say a word in protest, she had begun.

“I spy with my little eye, something beginning with . . .
G
.”

“George,” he said hopefully, grateful that it was a letter he was familiar with.

“No, that's too easy,” she said. “I never say easy ones.”

The Irn-Bru bottle was empty on the floor by her feet and so George pointed at it. “Juice.”

She turned to him, frowning and with her lips pressed to
gether. “That begins with a
J
, not a
G
. Don't you know the difference?”

George turned on the engine and rolled out of the parking garage.

He lit a cigarette as he waited for the barrier to rise. They had played at his suggestion and so couldn't complain, but he just wanted the game to end.

“Put your seat belt on,” he said, hearing the sharpness in his voice.

CHAPTER 19

I
T WAS THE KIND OF PLACE THAT
T
AM IMAGINED
WHEN HE
thought of all the atrocities the McLaughlins had committed. He sat alone on a chair in the middle of the empty warehouse by the Clyde. He wasn't tied down, but he had been told to sit and wait, and so he did, a pain in his bladder because he needed to urinate, his mouth dry and his throat tight.

He worked for them because he needed the money, and no matter how hard he tried not to know what they did, he knew all too well.

His father had been a miner, spending his daylight hours underground, fighting against gas and coal dust, cramped in a cage with other men. He had died of black lung before Tam's daughter was born. Tam had never been down the pits, but working for the McLaughlins felt, psychologically, how he imagined his father felt every day at work. He was trapped, filthy dirty by association, and endangering his own life.

It was only a few minutes before Peter and Richard came into the room, Richard walking in front and Peter hanging back, one hand in his pocket and another cupped around a cigarette. Peter's silence made Tam most nervous.

I
T HAD BEEN
nearly three o'clock on Sunday afternoon when Richard had called and asked Tam to come to the garage. With George gone, Tam had felt sick at the thought of being asked to come in when normal business was closed. He wasn't sure what he would be asked to do.

When he arrived at the garage, Richard had indicated a white van and asked Tam to get inside.

Tam had wondered about making a run for it, but knew that was futile. He forced himself to look Richard in the eye and ask, in as deep a voice as he could manage, “Why?”

“There's a car needing to be seen to . . . Peter told me to come and get you.”

“It can't be brought here? We have the ramp and all the tools.”

“No,” said Peter, his face devoid of emotion, “it can't.”

Tam had nodded, fear making his arms so heavy as to feel paralyzed. When he tried to get into the front of the van, Richard had opened the back door and asked him to get in there.

“We don't want anyone to see you, do we?”

Alone in the back of the van, beside tools that Tam imagined were used for other purposes, he wondered if the McLaughlins had a car from a crime scene that needed cleaning. George had done that for them, but now he was gone.

George had always cleaned the cars at the garage. Tam had a deeper worry: that it was not simply a dirty job that awaited him at his destination. He had no idea where they were going, but he sensed from the movement of the van that they were headed southwest of the city. His wife had been concerned when he was called into work on a Sunday, but he had made light of it, for her sake. He had told her that there was a car that urgently needed to be fixed. He didn't want her to worry about him.

They had arrived at a warehouse. The perimeter walls were stacked with oil drums and old machinery, and Tam could not be sure but he thought he could smell the black, oily water of the Clyde. He looked around for a car that might need fixing, but saw only Peter's black Ford Escort by the warehouse doors. Richard had led Tam inside to a cavernous space with a single chair in the middle. It looked like the setting for an urban existentialist play.

“Take a seat,” Richard had said, and left, and so Tam had walked to the center of the warehouse, and sat down on the chair.

O
CTOBER, BUT IT
had been a warm day with sunshine. The metal walls of the building had absorbed the heat so that the room felt muggy and airless. There was no sound apart from the metal sheets of the warehouse walls creaking and shifting in the breeze.

Peter and Richard entered together, but Richard spoke first, while Peter finished his cigarette.

“We heard that you might know something that we want to know,” he began, one hand in his pocket and one foot resting on top of a plastic packing crate.

“What would that be?” said Tam, feeling the hot itch of sweat break at his hairline.

“That's what we hope you'll tell us.”

There was a deep relaxation in the younger McLaughlin's limbs, which seemed so unnatural that Tam was suddenly shot with terror. Richard's eyes were fixed on Tam, his mouth loose so that he seemed half asleep or drugged. Tam decided immediately that if he did know something the brothers wanted
to know, then he would tell them. He nodded, quickly, feeling the tension in his jaw and his neck as he waited for more information.

“Correct me if I'm wrong, but you and my baby brother were pretty pally, were you not?”

“We went for the odd pint, that was all.”

“Nah, I could tell George liked you, and when Georgie likes someone, he talks. He's always been the same.”

“What do you mean? What is it you need to know? If I know anything, I'm happy to help.” Tam was taciturn at best, and he knew that his sudden willingness to talk only communicated his fear.

“Good,” said Peter, his voice so quiet that Tam could barely hear him. “Good, good. You see . . .” Peter undid the button of his jacket and put one hand in his pocket. “We think that George has something that doesn't belong to him—something
precious—
which doesn't belong to us either, but it does belong to somebody we know, and that somebody wants it back very, very much.”

When Tam opened his mouth to speak, it was so dry that it made a sound like a boot leaving mud. His eyes felt hot, and his T-shirt was damp underneath his boiler suit. He wiped a hand across his mouth, remembering George unbuttoning his shirt in the Portland Arms to show him his tattoo.

“Now, you understand, this person thought that the precious item was gone forever, but has now realized that it's only missing, and can therefore . . . be returned. It's this matter we want help with. Richard tells me even the press know you know something. Journalist turns up at the garage to talk to you yesterday. To
you
. . . asking
you
where George is.”

Tam managed a smile, licked his lips, and began to speak.
All his breath was in his throat and he knew he sounded terrified, but he continued as best he could.

“You understand George and I are not friends, but you're right he can talk, and the last time we were out for a pint he told me he was leaving.”

“Where did he say he was going?”

“Up north to Thurso, and then south, he said he didn't know where, but he didn't sound as if he was in any hurry to come back.”

“Thurso?” spat Peter and Richard, almost in unison.

“Where the hell is that, anyway?” said Richard.

“What's in Thurso?” said Peter, frowning, looking at Tam. “Why would he go there?”

“Well . . . the precious thing you were talking about . . . His daughter.”

“What?”

Richard took one step back, but Peter continued to frown at Tam.

“His daughter?”
said Richard.

“Aye,” said Tam, looking from one brother to the other.

“Which daughter is this?” said Peter. “I didn't hear about him knocking up someone else, although I wouldn't put it past him.”

“Em . . . I remember, her name was Moll,” said Tam, recalling the bright red tattoo above George's heart. “Moll, yes, that was it.”

“And how did he knock up someone in Thurso?” said Richard.

“It was a while ago, a girl from Glasgow. I can't remember her name, but she moved north and—”

“Kathleen Jamieson,” Peter spat. “You're joking. I heard talk that there was a wean, but . . . there's no way.”

“He was fond of Kathleen,” said Richard, turning to Peter.

“Ach, Georgie's fond of anything in a skirt.”

“That's where he told me he was going. He was going to ask Kathleen to marry him again and then the three of them would be together,” said Tam, hope buoying under his ribs that this was the information needed and now that it was given, he would be free. “That was what the journalist was asking me about the other day. He was from up north. Sure enough, that little girl's gone missing and somehow he'd clocked on George.”

Peter nodded, both hands in his pockets. “Are we talking about that kid that's on the news? Is she not called Molly?”

Tam shrugged.

“I'll be damned,” said Peter, and shook his head at Richard, whereupon both of the brothers burst out laughing. They laughed for well over a minute, Peter reaching out to lean on Richard's shoulder when the mirth began to hurt his stomach muscles.

Tam watched, confused, and then deeply relieved, and he began to laugh too: not a hearty genuine laugh, but a laugh of empathy, as when a joke is cracked that one doesn't understand, but wants to, for the sake of being accepted.

Both brothers stopped laughing at the same time, and suddenly the warehouse was silent and creaking as it had been when Tam was alone. The smile slipped from his lips.

“Nice story. I wouldn't put it past my crazy wee brother, but now cut the crap and tell us . . .
where's the fucking money
?”

Peter was leaning forward, hissing in Tam's face, so that he could smell the elder McLaughlin's quintessence of cigarettes, aftershave, and malice.

“What money?” said Tam, swallowing. “I don't know anything about money.”

“Do you expect me to believe that?” said Peter, still close to Tam's face so that Tam could barely breathe. “He told you his life story and forgot the bit about nicking the Watt brothers' hundred grand?”

Tam closed his eyes. He struggled to recollect the night at the bar. He had been drinking, and he hadn't wanted to hear what George was saying anyway, but he did remember George saying he had
“enough to disappear”
and that he had
“found a bit of money”
but that it would be harmful to Tam if he knew where.

Tam's heart was beating so hard that he thought he might have a heart attack—and he began to wish for it. The stress of being taken, and then the relief that had flooded his veins, and now the deep, thickening dread were all hitting him in waves from inside. He felt sick and his vision was blurring and sweat from his forehead had begun to sting his eyes.

Richard reached out and grabbed Tam by the scruff of the neck. Tam shouted out, and recoiled, as if he had been struck.

“What did he do with the money? Did he take it with him?”

“I think he might've,” Tam whispered.

“So you
do
know,” said Peter, so quietly that he was almost inaudible. “‘
I know nothing about money,'
you said a moment ago, but in fact . . . you do.” He spoke very slowly, so that each word seemed separated by seconds.

“All right, all right,” said Tam, out of breath, his chest heaving. “He told me he had found some money, enough to run away with, but that it was best I didn't know about it, and so he told me no more. That's the truth, I swear to God.”

“And did he find it somewhere in that car you both worked on in the garage? The Watt brothers are now convinced it was there, instead of at the bottom of the Clyde. They switched cars. Was it in the tires? Where was it?”

“He told me no more. He said it was best I didn't know. That's the truth, I swear to God.”

“You keep saying it's the truth, Tam, but you have already lied to us, and so that makes me suspicious.” Peter was smiling, teeth bared, his eyes fixed on Tam.

“I swear. I promise that's all I know. That's everything I know.”

“I don't think you realize how serious this is. If our baby brother has taken the Watts' money, then they'll be coming to get it back . . . from us, if they can't get their hands on him.”

“I understand, but, please . . . I've told you all I know.”

Peter nodded at Richard, and again Tam thought that they had believed him and it was all over. Peter folded his arms and turned his back on Tam while Richard walked to the side of the room and returned with a plastic container, which as he drew nearer Tam realized was full of gasoline.

“Dear God, no,” Tam whispered. He felt his bladder contract and then the warmth of his own urine down his left leg.

“Please . . . please, I told you all I know.”

“I'm not sure that I do believe you, Tam,” said Peter, as Richard took the cap from the container.

The familiar, heady, heavy scent of gas wafted over to Tam. He had worked with engines since he was a boy, and had always loved the smell of gas. Now the scent choked him. He tried to get up, but Peter put a hand on his shoulder and pressed him back into the chair.

“I wonder if you need your memory jogged?” said Peter. “I mean, you were drinking and all. I wonder if you can remem
ber something else? Should we have a go? Maybe I should light a cigarette and consider it.”

“No, please,” Tam whispered, his voice raw and hoarse—no moisture left in his mouth at all. He remembered again the Portland Arms with George singing on the tabletop, and the sight of Giovanni DeLuca's wasted hand.

Richard stood with the cap in one hand and the canister of gasoline in the other. He looked to Peter for instruction. Peter shrugged at his brother and held out his hand for the canister.

As Peter took the plastic container and stepped toward him, Tam began to cry. He thought about his wife and his daughter, and if he would see them again.

Peter put a hand on Tam's shoulder. “There now. Pull yourself together, man. I'm not going to hurt you. We just want to make you understand the seriousness of this. You should have come to us about it from the start. You need to remember who you work for . . . and you certainly shouldn't have
lied
to us just then. We need to know the truth. This is a
very serious
matter.”

Tam nodded, hands over his face, taking a long slow breath in. He looked up at Peter. “I'm sorry.”