The Bullet Trick (14 page)

'Wheesht. Just for just now. You can pay me back later.' I leant down and gave her a kiss on the cheek. 'Remember, whatever you do your mammy’ll always love you.'

I said, 'I know that, Mum.'

Knowing I could never grieve her with what I’d done, I waited till the bus moved off, then turned and made my way back to the Gallowgate.

It was late that evening when I returned home from the pub lightened of the twenty my mum had given me. The envelope had been burning against my chest since I’d slipped it into my jacket pocket; now I was anaesthetised enough to face what it might hold. I sat down on the bed, took the envelope in my hands and slit its seal for the first time since Bill had handed it to me over a year ago. Inside was a map. I unfolded it, revealing a small red biro ring around a lakeside portion of a country park. I took off my glasses and rubbed my eyes, then slid my fingers inside and drew out the only other thing in the envelope: a photograph.

Two young men stood grim-faced and weary at the edge of a lake. It was dusk or dawn on what looked like a brilliant summer’s day, but this was no holiday snap. One of the men was Montgomery, younger, with more hair and less gut, but still recognisable. The other man was taller, broader and more powerfully built. I hadn’t seen him before, but I took an educated guess and decided that he was Bill senior, the father of Sam-loving-gay-gangster Bill. Montgomery held an edition of that day’s newspaper in his hand. There was no blood, no violence, no murdered corpse or bruised face, but there was something horrid about the image that forced my eyes to stay on it. This photograph had caused me a lot of grief in Berlin. In a way it was responsible for everything that had happened there, and I had no idea what it meant. I reached into my pocket and felt for my lighter. It would be an easy matter to burn the photo and have done with the whole business.

I turned the lighter over and over in my hand, then discarded it and slid the image and the map back into the envelope. I got a piece of tape from my props box and stuck it to the underside of my bed. I could think of a better hiding place later. Perhaps by then I would know what I was hiding and what to do with it.

Berlin

WHEN I LEFT the theatre that evening Sylvie was standing in the yellow sliver of light cast by the open stage door. She raised her head and smiled, like a diva about to embark on her opening number. Which in a way I suppose she was. I hesitated for a second, then she shaded her eyes against the brightness. I let the door swing to and the beam of light slipped silently away, leaving us alone in the gloom of the car park.

There are some conjurers I know who claim their art helps them when it comes to women, and perhaps it does, but it’s never worked like that for me.

'Hey.'

Her voice was slightly deeper than I remembered, made hoarse by the damp and the cold.

'Hi.' I hesitated, wondering why she was there. 'Thanks for volunteering tonight.'

Sylvie’s expression was hidden by the dark, but her voice sounded like it had a smile in it.

'You’re welcome.'

'Aye, well, you saved my skin.'

'Always a pleasure.'

Men’s-mag wank fantasies fluttered across my mind. I put my suitcase down and asked, 'Are you waiting for someone?'

'Yes.'

Her slim silhouette looked vulnerable against the night shadows. The car park had a bleak abandoned feel, but there were still a half dozen or so cars scattered in the parking bays. Their headlamps were dead, windows dark; anyone could be sitting in them, watching, waiting for me to leave the girl on her own. My mind glimpsed the image of her face, caught in the half turn of a laugh, snapped at some celebration, her smile at odds with the stark appeal for witnesses. I pushed the picture away and bit back the urge to ask if she’d be OK. She was the captain of her ship, I of mine. Besides, I had the feeling she might laugh.

'I’d best get going. Thanks again, enjoy the rest of your evening.'

I unlatched the handle of my case, ready to trundle my burden to the nearest taxi rank and on to my hotel.

'Aren’t you going to ask me who I’m waiting for?'

Then, of course, I knew, but wanted to hear her say it anyway.

'None of my business.'

She took a step forward and the wank mags did another quick flit.

'I was waiting for you.'

I let go of the case, not ready to reach towards her, but wanting my hands free all the same.

'I’m flattered.'

I could see her face now, her bright expression somehow open and unreadable at the same time.

'You don’t know what I want yet.'

The unease was back. I glanced towards the abandoned cars wondering if a movement had drawn my eye there.

'I naturally assumed it was my body.'

Her smile grew wider.

'You Irish guys are all the same.'

'Scottish.' The brow beneath the smooth fringe pinched and I added, 'But my granddad was Irish if that helps.'

'I bet you’d say you were Klingon if it helped.'

'Assuming they don’t have national service.'

She laughed.

'You’re funnier off-stage.'

'So I’ve been told.' Somewhere beyond in the dark a tram hissed across the wires. She shook her head and I saw raindrops jewelling her dark helmet of hair. I waited for her to tell me what she wanted, then, when she didn’t speak, said, 'So what can I do for you?'

'Shall I tell you over a drink?'

'I thought you’d never ask.' I glanced at my suitcase. 'Do you mind if we swing by my hotel so I can check in and dump this bag?'

She smiled showing perfect American pearly whites.

'Maybe we could have a drink there?'

'Why not?'

I returned her smile, but kept my teeth hidden, thinking Casanova himself couldn’t have managed things better, forgetting that she hadn’t told me what she wanted.

In the hours since I’d arrived the district had changed. It was still busy, but the pace had slowed. We were at a crossroads of the night. The traffic of homeward-bound theatregoers and late-night diners was cut through with the young club crowd for whom the evening, like everything else, was still young. Sylvie led me along a street lined with bars and restaurants and I caught glimpses of couples and clusters of friends caught in the bright lights, smiling. I could almost have imagined myself in London and yet I was most definitely abroad. Maybe it was just post-show tiredness made worse by a slight sense of dislocation, but everything looked too good, too clean, too nice for me to relax. It felt like the scene in the movie just before the bad guys come blazing in.

We waited for a tram to clang its way around a corner then I stepped from the pavement and into the road.

'Hey, hasty.' Sylvie put her hand on my arm and nodded at the red pedestrian light.

'Sorry.' I grinned and stepped back onto the kerb. 'Where I come from traffic lights are for the aged, the infirm and homosexuals.'

The light switched to green, we crossed together and Sylvie asked where I was staying. I told her and she said, 'It’s pretty close, we can walk from here.'

'Any good?'

Sylvie shrugged her shoulders.

'I’ve never put in any time there.' She flashed me a smile, her heels brisk against the concrete. 'I love new hotel rooms, don’t you?'

'I’ve spent too much time in them.'

'I haven’t.'

We’d turned away from the bars and cafés into a side street dominated by the skeleton of a half-constructed building. Blue plastic flapped in the structure’s frame and I thought of a giant ghost ship travelling through the night, sails slapping against the squall. Sylvie stepped onto the kerb of the unfinished pavement, and our pace slowed as she teetered along its edge, pausing occasionally to steady her balance like a tightrope-walker on the highest of high wires. I walked beside her, my suitcase’s wheels grumbling against the roadway’s newly surfaced tarmac. Sylvie stretched out her arms, seesawing with exaggerated concentration, then placed the tips of her right fingers against my shoulder to steady herself.

'If I ever make it big I’ll live in a hotel. Clean sheets every day, a minibar full of cool drinks, room service, cable TV, a shower with fuck-off water pressure…'

We reached the end of the pavement. She wavered, swaying slightly like it was a long way down; I took her hand and she jumped lightly from the verge, landing in a small curtsey. I said, 'And a cooked breakfast every morning.'

'A cooked breakfast whenever you wanted. Midnight, if you felt like it, and…’ She hesitated making sure she’d got my full attention before adding her pièce de résistance ‘… free toiletries.'

We were back on a main street now. A young couple crossed our path and went into a bar, his arm around her shoulder, hers around his waist.

'See if you were in Glasgow at this time of night the streets would be full of drunks.'

'Yeah? Why?'

'I don’t know. That’s just the way it is.'

'Where I come from only big-time losers are drunks.'

I felt myself bridle.

'Is that right?'

'Yep, just the guys that are too fucked-up to score crystal meth. Getting drunk’s for pussies.'

'Lucky pussies. Where is it you come from?'

'Let’s just say I come from here, now.'

'The here and now?'

'You better believe it.' The heels of her boots gave a final clack then she stopped before a doorway. 'Here we are, Hotel Bates. It doesn’t look very lively.'

I glanced at the shuttered windows, the fastened storm doors and sleeping neon sign. 'The guidebook said this was a twenty-four-hour city.'

'It is, but only where it pays to stay open late.'

I rang the bell and watched, straining my ears for the sound of a porter’s footfall, then pressed the bell again, unsure whether it was ringing somewhere deep within the house or if it had been disconnected sometime around the porter’s bedtime. I stopped and listened.

'Did you hear something?'

Sylvie shook her head. I started to bang my fist hard against the door. But my blows seemed to be absorbed by the thick wood; all I was going to end up with was a sore hand. Behind me, three notes chimed like an incomplete scale on a cracked xylophone. I turned towards the sound and saw Sylvie switching on her mobile, her face illuminated by the phone’s green glow.

'Perhaps we should call them.'

I glanced at the address Ray had given me.

'I don’t have their number.'

But Sylvie was already keying the buttons on her mobile. She nodded towards a hand-painted sign above the porch. Somewhere beyond the bolted door a phone started to ring. We waited twenty peals then Sylvie broke the connection, retapped the number and we waited twenty more. I swore under my breath. Then Sylvie said the words that every single man and many a married man who’s just met an attractive young woman longs to hear.

'I guess you’d better come back to my place.' Then she added the caveat we all hope is just for form’s sake. 'There’s a spare bed.'