Gutted (9 page)

The waitress left. There was a sign up in the shop, balloons either side of it read:
HAPPY 21ST SHONA
. I felt a pang of guilt for loading her with grief on her birthday. She looked a good kid. Cute. Might even have had class underneath the sunbed tan and the home-do streaks. Just knew that ten years from now she’d be living in a scheme, saddled with five kids of her own and a part-time husband
who
once had a Suzuki but now had nothing but convictions to his name.

Morbid? You bet. That’s how it is. I had no other way to see it. What else did these girls have to look forward to? Marrying the next Wayne Rooney? Christ, those ones I felt even more sorry for.

Debs wasn’t for thawing. ‘That’s some whisky breath you have.’

I felt sweat form on my top lip. Touched the bottle of scoosh stashed in my inside pocket. ‘Debs, look, I’m really sorry for keeping you waiting, but I don’t remember telling you I’d jacked the booze.’

‘I just thought you might, well . . . I saw your story and I thought you might be clean again.’

Not exactly the reaction I wanted, but what did I expect? Flags? Bunting? I held schtum.

The waitress brought the coffees, laid them down gently. I tried to smile, paper things over. With Debs too. ‘You look well.’

‘You look like shite.’

‘Thank you.’

‘Does that bother you?’

‘What?’

‘What I think?’

‘Not really. Maybe once it did.’

‘Gus, there are people who do care about you.’

The coffee was too hot; I put it down. ‘I know.’

‘Well, why do you keep throwing their concern back at them?’

‘I didn’t ask for their concern.’

Debs crossed her legs the other way, stared out into the street, said, ‘I’m getting married again.’

I felt my heart stop. My blood surged. ‘
What
?’

‘I wanted you to hear it from me, not from Mac or Hod or whoever.’

My nerves shrieked; I didn’t know what to think. ‘They know already?’

‘No, Gus . . . you’re the first I’ve told.’

I tried my coffee again. It burnt my mouth; I didn’t care. ‘I’m flattered, I think.’

Debs leaned towards the table, picked up a teaspoon and started to swirl it around in the coffee. ‘It’s important to me that you’re cool with this.’

‘Cool with it. How could I be cool with it?’

‘I thought—’

‘Whoa, back up . . . Who is he?’

‘Does that matter?’

‘I think fucking so.’

Cold eyes trained on me: ‘Don’t get any idea about starting, Gus, don’t get any idea about that.’

I sighed. Felt the life drain out of me. ‘What’s his name?’

‘He’s . . . in the force, Gus.’

‘
What
?’ I couldn’t get my head around this at all. My ex-wife marrying filth. Had she lost it? This was call-the-madhouse time. ‘You jest, right? You, Deborah, marrying a cop. You’re off your fucking dial.’

A loud scrape of chair on floor. ‘Right, that’s it. I knew this was a mistake.’

I grabbed her arm. ‘Debs, please, I’m sorry . . . Sit down.’ I wiped my brow, ran my fingers through my hair. I knew I needed to batten down the anger, lock it away. ‘What’s his name, Debs?’

‘I think you might have met recently . . . Johnstone. Jonny Johnstone.’

I couldn’t believe I was hearing this. ‘No fucking way!’

Debs’s eyes widened. ‘Gus, your face – what’s the matter?’

Everything was happening in a haze of shit. ‘Have you set a date?’

‘July fifteenth.’

‘Summer wedding – nice. We were winter, if I remember right.’

‘Well, there was reasons for that.’

Those reasons were forbidden territory. Something we’d agreed not to discuss. Ever.

‘I beg your pardon.’

Debs looked hurt; her lower lip trembled. ‘I’m not getting any younger, Gus, and . . . what we did—’

‘Stop. Stop right there. This I won’t touch.’

‘Gus, we should talk about it . . .’

‘You agreed, we both did, not ever to discuss that again. Never. I won’t.’

‘Gus, it’s not right to let it lie, just sweep it under the carpet . . . I was talking to Mac and—’

‘You spoke to Mac about that?’

‘No. No. Of course not . . . I spoke to Mac about you. He thinks you’re in a bad way, getting worse, and could do with help.’

‘Och, for fucksake.’

Debs started to cry. ‘Gus, I am too . . . It’s on my mind, all the time.’

I felt wounded, sore. I stood up, walked over to Debs and put an arm around her shoulders. She grabbed me tight. I felt my whole self healed in her arms; I wanted to cry as well. To let it all out. To stop raging at everyone and everything and admit, yes, I was wrong, we were wrong to do what we did. But that was back then, in the past. We could make it right. We had each other. Hadn’t we?

I heard the cafe’s doorbell sound. Footsteps. Then I felt a hand on my shoulder.

‘Dury?’

I turned. The cafe was bathed in blue lights, flooding in from the street. Car tyres screeched to a halt. More lights. More police.

‘Are you Angus Dury?’

I nodded, felt Debs loosen her grip on my hand. ‘Yeah, that’s me.’

My arms were taken, turned up my back, cuffed. ‘You’re coming with us.’

‘
What
?’ I tried to rein in my fear. Mainly for Debs. She was too shocked. I saw her hide her head behind her hand as she ran out of the place and up the road without so much as a backwards glance.

I was spun towards the meat wagon’s blacked-out windows.
A
twenty-something in a Hugo Boss suit got out the back door and smarmed before me, viper eyes shining as he said, ‘Hello again, Dury . . . Thanks for making yourself available for further questioning!’

THREE HOURS SITTING
in a cell, without so much as a knock, will get you thinking. I’ve tried not to think about this stuff but it has a way of coming back, time and again. You get Debs forcing it into the frame, you can’t avoid it . . .

It’s the words that do it for me: ‘Raise yourself, Dury, and depart from the Lord’s house . . . The pair of you offend the congregation with your very presence.’

I’m gobsmacked. ‘You what? And how would we manage that?’

Father Eugene stoops. He seems nervous before us, his top lip twitching and sparkling with sweat. ‘Now, Dury, we need have no trouble from the likes of ye in front of these good people,’ he says.

The Irishman has nothing on me. I’m only here for Debs – she’s the Catholic. Sure, it means a lot to her that I go through the whole church thing, but I’m not having this from anyone.

‘“Good people”. “Good people”, is it? There’s not one I would call “good” among that lot . . . Look at them. Every one of them’s had the knives out for us.’

Debs touches my arm but says nothing. She’s usually as fiery as me, the first to wag the finger and start shouting, but she’s done with the lot of them too. She’s more done than she deserves to be. I glance at her. She still looks beautiful, a knockout as they all say,
but
her face is hardened, no longer the image of a carefree young girl of seventeen. She’s a woman, searching for courage. ‘Come on, Gus,’ she says, ‘let’s just go.’

‘I will not. We have every right to be here,’ I blast out.

Father Eugene straightens his back and raises his voice. ‘Ye cannot seek forgiveness here, not now, not ever. Go, the pair of ye!’

Debs rises to leave and there’s a flutter of tongues about the place. I glance back and see her mother and father sat at the front of the church. Her mother flinches uncomfortably where she’s sat and turns towards Debs, but her ruddy-faced father lays a hand on her shoulder, jerks her round, eyes front, away from the daughter who isn’t fit to be looked at.

I run to Debs. She’s trembling as I place my arm around her.

‘And ye can stay away,’ shouts the priest at our backs, his voice emboldened. ‘The Holy Mother weeps at the sight of the likes of ye in the Lord’s house.’

I want to turn round, lamp him one in front of the entire church, but Debs grabs my arm. I want to shout, to show the blackness of their hearts, the falseness of their piety, but Debs leads me outside.

‘What did they want, us ruined?’ she says, her courage vanished now, the tears starting up. ‘Me barefoot and you begging to feed us? . . . I can’t take it any more, Gus, I cannot.’

My heart sears in two. I know I’ve done this to her. I keep waiting, hoping her family will come out of the church, pick her up, take her home and tell her that’s an end to it, no more Gus Dury.

But it doesn’t happen. They leave Debs to me, abandon her to her fate. All I can do is hold her and hope the tears stop soon.

IT STARTED WITH
a show. Cell doors flung open in dramatic style. Boss Suit strutted in, touch of Pacino about him as he slapped down a folder with a flourish.

I said nowt. In the nick it’s policy: keep it zipped.

There was a minute of dead air between us and then, ‘You’re fucked, Dury.’

I didn’t know where this had come from, where he got the balls to harass me like this, but I wasn’t in the mood for any of his shite after what Debs had told me.

‘I’ve
been
fucked,’ I said. ‘Right now, at this moment, don’t believe I
am
. . . You have a problem with your tenses, sonny.’ I let the nip in the last word take hold, get a good sting in there, then . . . a smile.

He slapped palms on the table, leaned in to my face. ‘I wouldn’t mess with me, fuckhead.’

‘Fuckhead! I like your style. You have what my mother would call “a way with words”.’

He stared at me, bit thrown, a look you might expect him to use after finding he’d bought another losing Lotto ticket.

I prompted: ‘Now, you see, you’ve missed your cue . . . You’re supposed to jump in with some hilarious and witty piece of repartee about what you and my mother were up to last night . . . It’s in the script. Come on now, keep up, lad.’

He laughed, full-on belly laughs, then sat down. As he dried his eyes he let out a slow trail of words: ‘Dury, Dury, Dury . . . why, oh why would I waste my time joking with you about fucking your mother when in actual point of fact I am fucking your ex-wife?’

That got my attention. I took my hands out of my pockets, met his eyes across the table. I mustered all my reserves of cool to stop me lunging out of my seat.

He spoke again: ‘And may I say . . . what a mighty fine fuck Debs is.’

That was it – I reached for his throat. Instantly I was grabbed from behind, dumped back in my seat. I was winded, breath taken out of me.

Boss Suit paced, sniggered.

I went with, ‘She always had some bad taste: she chose me . . . Shit, there goes your advantage. Gonna have to look for some other leverage.’

‘Enough badinage, Dury,’ said Johnstone. He leaned over the desk, flipped open the file. ‘Take a look at those.’

Inside the folder were photographs of the corpse I’d stumbled over on Corstorphine Hill. The corpse I knew to be Tam Fulton; it looked worse than I recalled. In the full flash-glare, worse even than my nightmares. Two eight-ball eyes where the blood vessels had ruptured. Lots of sliced-up flesh. The pictures showed him at the crime scene and then some had been taken at the morgue, which had yet more detail. Camera close-ups on the actual knife wounds, pink flesh spilling over bright orange fat deposits. Made me want to hurl my guts up.

I pushed the folder aside, said, ‘Are you trying to gross me out?’

‘Don’t jerk me off, Dury.’

I pointed a finger, said, ‘Jerk you off . . .? Don’t you think I’ve had enough sick images for one day?’

He slapped his palms on the table again – it was becoming a habit – then scooped up the pictures and started to flick through
them
one at a time. ‘Murder, Dury, is not something we like to joke about in the police force.’

He was too close to me, so close I could smell the expensive aftershave, the breath fresheners. I leaned back.

‘Oh, it’s unpleasant, isn’t it?’ said Johnstone.

‘What I find unpleasant is being in the same room as some jumped-up little prick in a shiny suit, and being presented with puzzles. If you have something to say, say it . . . otherwise, let me the fuck out.’

He cooled, closed the folder, fastened the clip. ‘What were you doing on Corstorphine Hill on the night of May fifteenth, Mr Dury?’

‘I’ve already told you.’

A long slow trail around the room, hands in pockets, then, ‘You’d be better to come clean with me now, Dury . . . It could all get terribly messy if you leave it too late. All those deals you see on the telly are bullshit. Real police work is a lot more . . . intense.’ He illustrated the last word, raised his hands and splayed fingers out either side of his head. If this was the international symbol for ‘intense’ I’d missed the memo.