Flesh Wounds (27 page)

‘Aye. “Just disappearing” was catching back then,’ Sheila said pointedly, though Jasmine couldn’t tell whether the jaggy end was aimed at her or Doke.

There was a light knock at the door, and a waitress appeared carrying coffees for the three of them. Jasmine took a sip in silence, wondering whether her cheeks were as red as they felt, with two pairs of eyes still examining her so intently. She had little doubt that they believed her, but knew that wasn’t the biggest question on their minds.

‘She needed to get away,’ Jasmine said, aware there was no point in sugar-coating this. ‘She didn’t want Jazz knowing she was pregnant. She wanted a clean break from her life in Glasgow.’

‘Where did Yvonne go?’ Sheila asked. She glanced down at her side, where Jasmine guessed her phone sat in her right palm.

‘Edinburgh. Not exactly the ends of the earth, but far enough.’

‘And she raised you herself, or…?’

‘On her own, yeah.’

‘Did she work?’

‘She was a drama teacher.’

‘And what is it you do yourself?’

Sheila’s eyes narrowed just a little more as she spoke, and Jasmine couldn’t help but feel she had just been checkmated.

‘I have my own business. I’m a private investigator.’

Sheila sat back in her chair and sighed with a grim satisfaction. She held up her iPhone, on which a web page was visible.

‘Private investigator, Jasmine Sharp. You’re the one who helped put away those bent polis who were working for Tony McGill.’

‘That’s right.’

Doke’s face darkened.

‘You’re the lassie that was cuttin’ aboot with Glen Fallan when he showed up back from the dead two years ago?’ he demanded, his voice low, like storm clouds rolling in. Jasmine could tell it wouldn’t take long for them to break. ‘The same bastard that just shot oor Stevie? The bastard that…’

‘Doke,’ Sheila cautioned. ‘Keep the heid. The lassie’s no’ done nothin’.’

‘Do you have any idea who Glen Fallan is?’ he asked, incredulous. ‘Did he tell you about the good old days?’

‘He told me enough,’ Jasmine replied. ‘I know he killed people, but—’

Doke leaned over, slapping a hand on the table.

‘He killed your fuckin’ father. He killed Jazz. Did the cunt fuckin’ tell you that?’

Jasmine looked up at the boiling anger in his face, then at her coffee. She picked up the cup and had a long pull at it, swallowing slowly. She wasn’t trying to look nonchalant, she just needed something to physically occupy herself for a few moments while his anger receded, as she feared any kind of immediate verbal response would be incendiary, regardless of the content.

She didn’t answer his question, reckoning her lack of surprise was answer enough.

‘Nothing about this is straightforward,’ she said. ‘Yes, he killed my father. And yet, when my mother was in her last days, she had Fallan tracked down so that she could see him again before the end.
That’s
what brought him “back from the dead”. Was it to forgive him? I don’t know. Was it to ask him why he did it? I don’t know. I want to find out what happened back then. Like it or not, we’re related, all three of us, but unlike you, I’ve never seen my father’s face. I’ve never even laid eyes on a photo.’

Doke let out a very long sigh, the sound of a storm blowing itself out, if perhaps only temporarily. He sounded frustrated, like this would have been a lot easier to deal with if it fitted into the paradigms he understood. Sheila remained harder to read, still shutting herself inside and assuming the weather outdoors was bad.

‘There’s not many pictures of Jazz,’ Doke said, sounding more reflective. ‘At least, not from around the time he was seeing Yvonne.’

He looked at Sheila as he said this. There was clearly something unspoken in his latter remark.

‘Didn’t like getting his photo taken,’ she agreed. ‘He had this scar, right the way down his face, from forehead to jaw.’

She touched her own face as she spoke, looking away as though she could see Jazz in one of the mirrors.

‘How did it…’ Jasmine inquired tentatively, feeling she was on delicate ground.

‘This sneaky wee cunt Stanley Beattie slashed him one night in a club, out of nowhere,’ said Doke. His voice was tinged with an anger that still sounded raw, decades after the fact. It drew a warning look from Sheila: keep a lid on it.

‘Jazz was a looker, and he knew it,’ she said. ‘He had a face that would get a jelly piece at any door, as my mammy used to say. Always had women wrapped around his pinkie, and he took a few liberties.’

She and Doke traded a look, Sheila telling him not to bother denying it.

‘Aye, he flung it aboot,’ Doke admitted. ‘He was different after the slashing, though. Quiet. He’d calmed doon.’

‘He wasn’t calm, he was angry,’ Sheila countered. ‘Suffering in silence.’

‘Either way, he did change,’ Doke said. ‘Yvonne wouldn’t have went near him before that. Not that way, I mean: she’d known him for years, like, but she knew he was too much a Jack the lad to get involved with him. She must have thought he was calmer.’

‘Some women are drawn to a damaged man,’ Sheila said. ‘They think they’ll be able to put him back together in a way they prefer. Doesnae work out like that, though. We all thought Jazz was calmer. Truth is, he was just bottling it all up and eventually it was gaunny explode.’

There were a few seconds of quiet, which in this context Jasmine knew not to mistake for a moment of calm. Something hung in the air between these two that was not precisely blame or accusation, but definitely a cousin of both. Sheila seemed to be leaving it to Doke to continue, but he remained silent, his eyes straying to the photograph and back to Jasmine.

‘Jazz killed Stanley Beattie as soon as he got out the jail,’ Sheila said.

‘He didnae mean to kill him,’ Doke stated adamantly. ‘He went to slash him and the guy put up his arm; Jazz ended up opening his wrist. It was an accident.’

Sheila said nothing, just gave Jasmine an arch look as though to say, ‘How do you respond to that?’

It was a first glimmer of a different alliance that might emerge here, between the two women against a male mentality rather than between Stevie’s two relatives against the interloper.

‘He never moved on from the slashing, that’s the point, Doke. We thought he had changed but the whole time he was just waiting to even up the score. It’s why he’s no’ here any more. It’s why Stevie’s no’ here any more.’

‘Naw, that cunt Fallan’s why they’re both no’ here any more,’ Doke thundered, glaring at Jasmine.

‘Aye, because
none
of you can ever move on,’ Sheila retorted. ‘Look at this photo: what does it tell you? Nico, Stevie, both gone. You should be happy, Doke: under these rules you’re the winner if you’re the last one left standing.’

‘Fallan’s still standing,’ he reminded them darkly.

‘Why did Fallan kill my father?’ Jasmine asked quietly, almost apologetically.

‘What did he tell you?’ Doke replied.

‘Nothing. Only that my father’s death made it easier for my mum to escape. He wouldn’t tell me why he actually did it.’

‘Nobody knows for sure,’ Sheila said, ‘but it happened after Jazz battered her.’

She gave Doke a look, warning him against any denial based on misplaced filial loyalty.

‘He thought she was swithering about being his alibi,’ Doke admitted.

Finally Jasmine was seeing something other than defiance and anger in his expression when talking about his brother.

‘She had been with him when he killed Stanley, but she told the polis he was with her somewhere else at the time. The polis were leaning on her because they knew she was lying and she was the weak link.’

‘So he thought beating her up would engender a deeper loyalty?’ Jasmine asked, barely masking her outrage.

‘He wanted her more afraid of him than she was of the polis,’ Sheila explained. ‘But Fallan found out, and it never went well whenever Fallan found out about a guy beating up a lassie.’

‘Well, you would know,’ Doke muttered. ‘You’ve nae problem with evening the score when it suits you, eh Sheila?’

Sheila stared down at the table for a moment, then continued as though Doke hadn’t spoken.

‘Fallan’s da used to leather his maw,’ she said. ‘Used to leather everybody in the hoose. But because his da died before he could stand up to him, Fallan was always looking for surrogates, you know?’

Jasmine thought of the place she had first found him, at a domestic violence refuge where he was handyman, gardener and courier, among other services. Rita, the woman in charge, had alluded to what happened when abusers turned up at the place. The police would warn the blokes off, escort them from the premises, but once they knew their wives or partners were there, they always came back; except when Fallan was around.

‘When he warns them off,’ Rita told her, ‘they never come back.’

‘Jazz just went out one night and was never seen again,’ Doke said, his lips thin, eyes narrowed too. ‘That bastard killed him, dumped him somewhere and then lied to us about it. We never got to bury him, never had a proper funeral.
That’s
what Fallan did to your father.’

The waitress who had brought the coffees returned looking for the empty cups and perhaps to see if anyone wanted anything else. She got as far as popping her head into the doorway and very swiftly read the atmosphere, hurriedly turning on her heel.

‘He told me he owed me,’ Jasmine said, feeling like it was incumbent upon her to respond, though she didn’t know who appointed her Fallan’s spokesperson or apologist. ‘He said he owed me a debt.’

‘You’re not the only one he felt he owed something,’ said Doke. ‘It just wasnae so much settling a debt as payback.’

‘For what?’

He and Sheila shared a look, like he knew she wasn’t going to be happy but he couldn’t be bothered with her disapproval any more.

‘Fallan tripped himself up, for once. He told us he helped Jazz pack and fly away to Spain to lie low. Problem was, Stevie had contacts in the polis, and he found oot that Immigration had no record of Jazz leaving the country. That’s how we knew he’d killed him.’

‘What did you do to him?’ Jasmine asked, steeling herself.

Doke rolled his shoulders, his posture straightening. All of a sudden he looked like he was answering in court.

‘What happened after that, I cannae say for sure, because Stevie was fly, a born schemer. Unlike Jazz, he didnae just blaze in and worry aboot the consequences later.’

Doke’s face shone as he warmed to the tale.

‘There was a few of us he knew he could rely on. He gave each of us an envelope, which we werenae to open until we were alone. In it was a message telling us a time and a place. Some folk turned up to wherever it said and found one other member of the crew. Their instructions were just to stay there until they got the shout that it was done. Other boys had instructions for getting Fallan.’

‘What did they do to him?’

‘I was one of the folk that ended up just sitting around, so this is second hand. They ambushed him. They put a sack over his head and arms, and pinned him like that with a rope, then they got into him with hatchets and hammers and all sorts. I heard even a sword. They assumed he was deid when they left him, and for two decades that’s what everybody assumed.’

‘Why the business with the envelopes?’ Jasmine asked.

Sheila looked down at the table, evidently not sharing Doke’s pride in her late husband’s resourcefulness.

‘It was in case the polis ever tried to get somebody to turn. Only the folk who were there knew who else was involved, and the rest all had cast-iron alibis. I never even knew for sure whether Stevie was one of the ones that went – until Fallan turned up again and shot him.’

He gave her a look of contempt as he said this, like she had cheapened him by forcing him to explain all this to her. He also seemed to think it was the last word, the irrefutable clincher. If so, Jasmine was still missing something.

‘I spent a lot of time with Fallan,’ she said, ‘and he never talked about grudges or settling scores. He had left that all behind for twenty-odd years. Why would he suddenly decide to kill Stevie now?’

‘Beware the vengeance of a patient man,’ Doke replied. ‘That’s what Stevie always said. Didn’t he, Sheila? Well, now we know whose vengeance he was afraid of.’

There were four of them. Two had stepped in from behind, cutting off his escape route to the recycling workshop. Two more had emerged from between the big skips, standing in front of what was anyway a dead end.

He didn’t recognise them. As anticipated, they had not previously made themselves known, and the bloke who had threatened him directly was not among them.

They all had improvised weapons. They had blades. They had clubs.

They had no chance.

He had chosen his first target and struck before any of them were even sure he’d noticed them. He collapsed the guy’s windpipe with a fingertip blow to the throat, disarmed him and used his falling body to block off the man next to him as he stepped sideways through the narrow channel.

In less than two seconds, Glen was standing with his back to the doors and nobody behind him. He was still facing three of them, but he had a length of pipe in his hand and it wasn’t plastic.

He was the one cutting off
their
exit.

Christ, he thought, was this all they could muster? Or had his reputation so diminished through his prolonged absence that they thought this shower, plus the element of surprise, would be enough to take him down? It wouldn’t have been enough twenty years ago, and that was before he had been taught to fight by military professionals.

It certainly hadn’t helped them that there
was
no element of surprise.

Glen had long ago learned how to truly listen to his instincts. He understood how fear, the insistent sense that something was wrong, emanated from parts of the brain that predated language or even cognitive thought, and thus operated a million times faster. He had needed no such primal instincts today, though: the awareness that he was about to be attacked didn’t precipitate in the fraction of a second before the first blow was attempted. It came when the screw came over and told him to get a fresh bin for the offcuts.