The Bullet Trick (39 page)

'If I get a ticket it’s your shout.'

'Fair enough.'

I grinned at him, but he was staring straight ahead, manoeuvring the van between the buses that were backed along the street. Eilidh had told me that the venue wasn’t far along on the Trongate, but though I’d tramped the street countless times I couldn’t remember ever noticing the Panopticon. I checked the numbers above the shops while the van eased its way through the traffic.

'Can you slow down a wee bit? We should be able to spit on it from here.'

'If I go any bloody slower we’ll stop.'

I pointed to a space.

'You could pull in there.'

'It’s a bloody bus stop.'

But Archie swung the van in anyway, muttering about blue meanies and bloody stupit cunts that didnae ken where they were going.

I slid back the passenger door and stuck my head out, looking for the hall.

'I’ll just be a second.'

'If the polis come I’ll have to mo–'

I slammed the door and ran along the pavement. The number Eilidh had given me belonged to a blue-fronted arcade that promised Amusements, Amusements, Amusements in pink neon swirls. The windows to the arcade were veiled behind elaborately pleated midnight-blue satin drapes. They made me think of a flashy funeral directors’, the kind of concern that might have got Liberace’s business. The space between the glass and the curtains was decorated with prizes the insurance company probably didn’t require to be locked in the safe at night, oversized ornaments of liquid-eyed dogs, TVs and microwaves that retailed for around fifty quid in Tesco and huge fake-flower arrangements whose bulk was supplemented by multicoloured feathers that had never seen a parrot. The bingo caller’s voice reached out through the empty door into the street, above a clatter of mechanical whoops and bells.

Baby’s done it, number two. One and five, fifteen. Key to the door, two and one, twenty-one, just your age, eh Lorna? Three and five, thirty-five, J Lo’s Bum, seventy-one. Tony’s Den, number ten. Blind eighty.

No one was shouting house. I glanced back to the van. Archie was making hurry-up gestures but there were no wardens in sight. I leaned through the open door to the arcade, into darkness punctuated by the flash of fruit machines, pinball and video games. For all of the noise it generated, the place wasn’t very busy. A bouncer stood sentinel inside the doorway; in the gloom beyond him a few punters tried their luck on the machines or sat solemnly marking their bingo cards.

The bouncer gave me an appraising glance. Maybe he’d studied Zen or maybe he just knew that guys as big as him don’t have to say anything to get guys like me to explain themselves. I said, 'I’m looking for the Panopticon, mate, ever heard of it?'

He nodded his head towards the ceiling.

'Upstairs.'

I stepped backwards into the street and looked towards the top of the building. Three huge storeys of what the early Victorians probably considered a Grecian façade, intersected by arched windows that decreased in size as the storeys rose.

The bouncer directed me to the goods entrance around the side, smiling mildly when I asked him if there was a lift.

I said, 'Never mind, it’s all in a good cause eh?' And went back to the van, wondering if I could use that line on Archie.

But I was beginning to learn that although Archie moaned, he got the job done. He grumbled the full length of the dingy staircase, but it was only when we stepped from the landing into the auditorium that he almost dropped his end of the box.

'Bloody hell!'

If I’d have been first into the room I might have done the same. The mannequin was positioned so you didn’t see it until you turned the corner from the stairs into the auditorium, then he was right in front of you, a whiskered Victorian decked out in frock coat and top hat. Eilidh hurried towards us.

'Are you OK?'

Archie’s end of the box straightened up.

'You’re all right, dear. He just gave me a bit of a start.'

Eilidh scruffed down nicely. Her hair was twisted into a loose half-knot and she wore an old checked work shirt over a pair of jeans that might have seen better days, but hadn’t lost their fit.

'He has that effect on everyone. I’d move him, but we’re being given use of the place as a favour and the management might go off us if we start shifting the furniture around.'

'Aye, you’re right, dear, they management cu– kinds can be an awful trial.'

Eilidh nodded towards the brightly spangled, coffin-sized box that Bruce McFarlane had lent me.

'Is that for the stage?'

'Aye.'

She smiled apologetically.

'Then you’ve another flight to go yet, access is through the back stairs.'

Archie smiled at her.

'Never mind, dear.' He nodded towards me. 'This one could do with the exercise.'

Archie and I manoeuvred the box up the final staircase, and through a door that led straight onto the stage. We lowered it gently to the ground just as Eilidh came in behind us. Archie ran his hand over his head as if he’d forgotten he no longer had any hair and looked around.

'I remember my grandda talking about the music hall, but I’ve never been in it myself.'

Eilidh smiled.

'What do you think?'

'Aye, some place.'

The Panopticon was small by modern theatrical standards, a long room overhung on its left and right by high wooden balconies that I guessed used to house the cheap seats. Some old fruit machines, casualties from the amusement arcade below, stood sadly along the far wall looking like the Daleks’ more frivolous cousins, their single arms raised in a greeting no one wanted to return. The building’s eaves showed through its fractured ceiling, slanting into a peak that reminded me of an upturned boat. They gave the place a vaguely jaunty feel at odds with the otherwise Victorian atmosphere. The walls were the sallow brown that you find on the naked walls of old flats when you manage to peel back years of wallpaper. The floor was scuffed and unvarnished. There were no seats in place, but some metal chairs that looked like they would begin to pinch after a while were stacked along the back wall next to the fruit machines, waiting to be set in line.

It was clear that the Panopticon had been neglected for some time now, but there were signs that it was coming back to life. A pianola sat below the stage and a couple of glass-topped display tables containing artefacts from the music hall’s heyday were pressed along the entrance wall. Above them hung old posters, playbills and programmes advertising forthcoming attractions that had taken their last bow a hundred years ago. It was far away from the sequinned edginess of Schall und Rauch, but I liked it that way. Something up on the balcony caught my eye; I started, then pointed towards it, saying to Archie, 'Someone you know?'

He followed my gaze.

'Jesus Christ.' Archie turned to me. 'You bugger.' Two more Victorian mannequins, a man and a woman, stood silhouetted in the gloom of the balcony. 'Give me the bloody heebie-jeebies they things.' He looked at Eilidh. 'I bet there’s a few ghost stories about this place.'

'One or two.' She nodded down to the old pianola. 'Apparently George down there has been known to start playing all by himself, and a young soldier in a uniform from the Boer War has been spotted up on that balcony.'

Archie nodded his head sagely.

'Oh, come on,' I said. 'It’s no wonder folk think they’ve seen a ghost with those waxworks up there. They’re like something out of a Hammer Horror. The eye plays tricks on you, especially in an old place like this.'

'When you get to my age you begin to realise there’s more in this world than can be explained.' Archie looked at Eilidh and me as if imparting some ancient wisdom. 'People don’t just vanish when they die, they’re all around us and sometimes we catch sight of them.'

A cold finger pressed into my neck bone then ran the length of my spine.

Eilidh said, 'Do you really believe that?'

'Aye, I do dear. You should go to the spiritualist church up on Berkeley Street sometime. It’s amazing the messages that come through.'

'It’s a pile of mince.'

I was surprised at my own vehemence. Archie bridled.

'We’re all entitled to an opinion. I go there every Tuesday to see if the wife’s got anything to tell me. It’s a comfort.' He gave me a defiant stare, then turned to Eilidh. 'Do you mind if I go and have a look at your display, dear?'

'You’re welcome.'

'Thanks.' He stropped off the stage muttering something that sounded suspiciously like superior wee cunt as he passed me.

When Archie was out of earshot Eilidh said, 'Poor old soul, he’s lonely.' She gave me a compassionate look. 'How are you, William?'

I felt like saying lonely but settled for, 'Fine.'

Eilidh hesitated as if there was something else she’d like to add, then thought the better of it and said, 'I’ll leave you to get on with things, while I make a start on setting up the chairs.'

I followed Archie’s gaze as he watched Eilidh make her way to the back of the hall, then I went down to make amends.

'I shouldn’t have said that just now. You’re right, what do I know?'

'What does anyone know, son?' He gave me a sharp, shrewd look. 'Have you lost someone recently?'

My heart executed the familiar dip between fear, pain and shame, but my voice remained neutral.

'What makes you ask that?'

'Just a feeling.'

I kept my own counsel and handed Archie what I owed him, plus the promised extra. He counted it and smiled, tucking the notes safe in his jeans.

'Look at all this stuff.' He pointed to a tray in the cabinet filled with small objects, cigarette packets, buttons, ladies’ brooches, a couple of rings, a silk commemorative poppy, old newspapers and programmes. 'See they old Woodbines?' He smiled nostalgically. 'That’s what I used to smoke when I was a boy.'

'It’s true they stunt your growth then?'

'Cheeky bugger. They found all of this under the floorboards in the gallery up there. Can you imagine it? Some poor woman loses an engagement ring or a fella drops a full pack of five, got to last him the whole night most likely, and that’s that until a hundred years later.'

'I never realised you were interested in history, Archie.'

'Get to my age and you’ve got to be, son. What you call history’s sometimes just yesterday to me.'

'Oh get off it, you’re not that old.'

'Aye well, what I’m saying is, nothing vanishes for good. There’s still traces of it somewhere, so don’t close your mind. The dear departed often come back.'

'Like a packet of Woodbines?'

'Just don’t close your mind, that’s all I’m saying.' He grinned, showing me his missing teeth. 'She’s a bit of all right that one; you could’ve been in there.'

'You’re a dirty old man for a mystic.'

'That’s the only reason I’m no trying to get in there myself, son.'

'Anyway you’re wrong, she’s married.'