The Elephant Tree (16 page)

Twinkle’s message arrived the next day just after 2 pm. Scott had woken early but lay in bed ‘til noon. He’d wandered the house unable to settle into anything. Starting one task and then leaving it unfinished and beginning something else. The message had provided a welcome focus. It simply read ‘Tonite John Henrys at 8’. Now there was something for his mind to fix upon, he wouldn’t need to look for distractions from the questions about Angela that relentlessly surfaced like bubbles in water.

He ate, walked the dog, came home and showered. Scott felt he was on the verge of something, it wasn’t excitement he felt but nor was it fear. When the time was right he called a cab and left. Only then did it occur to him that it was Christmas Eve.

There was no surprise that Twinkle was in the bar as Scott arrived. The speed he was drinking from his glass suggested he was in a desperate race against sobriety, and one that he appeared to be winning.

‘Slow down, the night is still young,’ Scott said, putting a hand on Twinkle’s shoulder.

Twinkle turned to him and grinned, there were dark wet spots on the front of his t-shirt from beer that had dripped from the glass in his haste.

‘Another one of these for me and one for my young friend as well,’ Twinkle said, leaning unsteadily across the bar attempting to catch Joanne’s arm as she walked past. She evaded his grip and cast a concerned glance back towards Scott.

‘Let’s go sit at a table, man. That’s Sharon’s friend remember, you don’t want to blow things before they get back off the ground again.’

‘I know, I know,’ he said, shaking his head drunkenly. The tips of some strands of his hair glistened as if they’d fallen into his glass. ‘It’s my last night Scott. We do that thing and then I’m off the drink and everything else for good.’

Scott took a firm grip on Twinkle’s elbow and half ushered, half dragged him away from the bar.

‘That’s enough. We’ll have a couple of drinks together if you want, but no more talk of later on, OK?’

‘OK my friend, whatever you say.’

Scott went back to the bar and picked up their drinks. Twinkle had flopped down onto a bench between two tables and the current occupiers of one had taken the hint and moved. Scott pushed in beside him, putting their glasses on the table.

‘You been in for long?’ Scott asked.

Twinkle made an elaborate shrugging gesture, which pretty much told Scott that he’d been drinking long enough for time to no longer be a factor.

A while later they both left John Henry’s. Scott had asked only the time they needed to leave, planning on getting all further information Twinkle had been given when they were alone outside. He’d kept the conversation away from anything criminal and let Twinkle go on at length about the plans he had for himself, Sharon and the kids. By encouraging Twinkle to do most of the talking, this at least had slowed down his drinking, and when suggestions to top up with spirits arose, Scott had declined them as well.

The meeting, Twinkle now told him, was to take place in a large tower block in Orchard Rise, just outside of the main city zone. Orchard, Scott thought, that was a joke. The only thing that ever grew around there was the crime rate and the amount of dog shit on the paths.

No more snow had fallen since last night but the temperature had dropped below freezing again, and what snow remained had now frozen into solid patches that crunched as they walked on them. Twinkle was a little unsteady as he walked, but Scott kept an eye on him and stayed close enough to prevent a fall should he stumble or slip on the ice. There would have been no point waiting for a cab to take them at this time on Christmas Eve. Besides, Scott didn’t want anyone knowing where they were going, and was taking an indirect route to the tower block just in case. His paranoia levels were elevated but Scott was glad of the heightened awareness.

Twinkle trudged on in silence, his breath as visible as it was pungent in the cold night air. Scott reached for his cigarettes but then put them away again, he didn’t want anything to slow them down now they were so close. Just get this over with and find out what to expect next.

The block they wanted was called Raven’s Nook, and was one of three ugly grey concrete columns that loomed like giant tombstones over Garden Heights. They had first been built to house the homeless after the war, but these days it seemed only the lowest rung on society’s ladder were housed there.

As soon as they came into view, Scott instinctively pulled up his hood. There’d undoubtedly be high resolution surveillance cameras on top monitoring the streets all around, and Scott wanted no connection between himself and this meeting. If he’d asked, Scott would have told Twinkle it was for the cold, but either he hadn’t noticed anyway or simply didn’t care.

The large entranceway door shrieked as Scott pushed it open. Twinkle had told him the meeting was at a flat on the fourteenth floor; as much as he didn’t want to chance getting stuck in one of the elevators here for the Christmas break, Scott also didn’t feel like climbing all of those stairs. He pushed the button to summon the lift. A grinding sound followed by two metallic clangs announced it was on its way.

The stench of urine wafted over them as the metal doors shuddered open. Scott covered his face with his sleeve and stepped inside; the smell even appeared to have slightly sobered Twinkle, whose face was now drawn tight in a look of disgust like he’d just taken a bite from a raw onion.

Twinkle pressed the button, the doors closed and another slow grinding noise before it suddenly lurched upwards. Either no-one else was waiting to use the lift, or no-one else trusted them and it carried them straight to their floor.

The doors opened out onto a narrow hallway of blistered linoleum which barely covered the concrete underneath. It was dimly lit from single bulbs housed intermittently along the ceiling within opaque plastic shields in an effort to prevent breakage and possibly theft. Twinkle stumbled on ahead searching for the door number he had scribbled on the crumpled piece of paper he’d taken out of his jacket pocket. Scott followed a few steps behind.

Twinkle stopped outside a door and again squinted at the paper he held and compared it with the number in front of him. He cleared his throat and knocked three times. The door swung inwards and Twinkle walked inside.

‘You coming in or not?’ a gruff voice asked, as Scott had hesitated before following.

‘Yeah,’ he said, went inside and closed the door after him.

Beyond the doorway was an unkempt open plan living area with yellowed newspapers strewn over the bare floor, and a smell of mould hung in the air. The room was small with a kitchen cubicle on one wall, a bathroom which looked little bigger than a phone box and one other door which Scott presumed led to the only bedroom. A sofa upholstered in a dark green fabric with a paisley design was occupied by Dominic Parish and his accomplice with the earring from the initial drop off. On a matching armchair, with patches of stuffing escaping from it like rising dough, sat a man Scott hadn’t seen before, smoking a thin cigar. He was sharply dressed without straying into vanity or flamboyance. A designer suit and expensive looking shoes, not that Scott was an expert but he’d learned to recognise quality from Jack’s attire over the years.

‘Take a seat,’ the man said, waving his hand towards two wooden stools, his tone indicating it was more of a command than a suggestion.

Scott and Twinkle sat where they’d been instructed.

‘I’m Paul McBlane,’ he said in answer to the question that hovered on Scott’s lips. ‘You now work for me.’ There was a pause, presumably to allow time for the sentence to sink in.

‘You boys did well on the last job, so tonight you’ll get paid what was agreed, but for now we’ll just relax and have a chat,’ the man said, and steepled his fingers, but there was nothing relaxed about the atmosphere in the room. ‘Firstly, there was no cocaine in the shipment.’

‘We never touched it,’ Twinkle stammered, ‘delivered just like we picked it up.’ Scott felt his heart lurch but he said nothing.

McBlane’s hand holding the cigar casually waved away Twinkle’s anxiety. ‘No, like I say you boys did great but let’s be fair, I’d be pretty stupid to risk such a big investment on two new lads who hadn’t worked for me before,’ he said, and laughed. A short hollow sound that ended as abruptly as it had begun.

‘There never was any coke in there, it was just a box of crap, wires and fucking screwdrivers or whatever. But you’ll get paid just the same. It’s not like I’d just say fuck the agreement now, eh?’

He tapped the ash from the end of his cigar and a coil of blue smoke drifted casually from the corner of his mouth as he watched them. Twinkle fidgeted on the stool beside Scott.

‘Can I offer you boys a drink or perhaps something else, while we get comfortable?’ he asked, in a lighter tone.

Dominic stood and brought some Glenmorangie in an unfamiliar teardrop shaped bottle, and a small case from out of the bedroom. He then went back and returned with only two glasses which he placed beside the bottle within reach of McBlane. The case he took back to the couch, flipped the catch and opened it.

‘I hear you don’t partake in those activities,’ He said to Scott, and nodded over to the case Dominic had unzipped and now had his hands inside of. ‘Very wise. That’s why I brought this.’

He lined up the glasses on a vacant TV stand between himself and Scott and poured the Scotch.

‘The vale of big meadows, eh Scott?’

Scott didn’t understand what that meant and was now growing more distracted as syringes and rubber tubing were withdrawn from the case.

‘Shugg,’ Dominic said as he handed a syringe to Earring. At least Scott could now put a name to the face. He held out another to Twinkle.

‘Fuck it, alright it’s my last one though,’ Twinkle said, reaching over to take the syringe, smiling despite himself.

‘Don’t worry,’ Dominic said as he rolled up his sleeve. ‘I knocked these up just before you got here.’

Twinkle nodded and did likewise. He glanced up at Scott and then quickly looked away.

‘I find if you give them what they want, and you give them what they need, then they tend to stay a lot more loyal than if you deny them,’ McBlane said softly, leaning in closer towards Scott. ‘Course sometimes like now the two are one and the same, which makes my job a whole lot easier.’

When McBlane finished speaking he turned to Scott and winked, then took a sip of his Scotch.

‘So what is it that I want and need then?’ Scott asked, trying to focus on what was being said rather than the rubber tubing Dominic was tying around the man he’d called Shugg’s arm.

‘Maybe that’s what we’re here to find out, Scott. Why don’t you tell me, I know you do some work for your brother and that you peddle drugs around the streets, so why did you come and do the job for me then?’

‘Money, what else?’

‘Fair enough, that’s what most people look for to begin with, but money can be a sliding scale, the more you have, the more you want, the more you need,’ McBlane said as he sharpened the ash on the tip of his cigar into a point against the rim of the ashtray. It gave him the appearance of wielding a dagger as he gestured with his cigar holding hand.

‘Not for me, I just want enough to make a fresh start and then I’m gone.’

‘That’s a shame. So our working relationship will only be short term. Fair enough though, I respect a man who knows what he wants. So is it something you’re getting away to or from then, may I ask?’

Scott shrugged. ‘Maybe a bit of both.’ He didn’t want McBlane knowing anything more about him than he’d obviously already found out, but the man had an easy-going almost coaxing tone to his voice which made it hard to evade his subtle questioning.

‘Sometimes truths are what we run from, and sometimes they are what we seek. Sometimes maybe we don’t know which the fuck it is,’ McBlane said and laughed again. ‘For me, I like to know the truth. To be in possession of all the facts.’

Shugg and Dominic both shot up and Dominic passed the tubing to Twinkle. Scott looked at the eager expression on his friend’s face. His eyes keen and alert, his tongue flicked over his lips, a few seconds would pass and he’d do it again, looking almost reptilian. Holding one end of the tube between his teeth, Twinkle tied it tight around his arm, then bent and straightened the arm repeatedly, working a vein closer to the surface. Satisfied he’d found an injection site Twinkle squirted just a little out of the syringe pointing upwards to clear any air bubbles, he placed the tip of the needle against his old blue vein that had risen to the surface like an inquisitive dolphin, but then paused. Scott wondered if thoughts of Sharon and the kids were going to make him decide against taking it. He’d said one last time, but would it be?

‘What’s wrong Twinkle, getting cold feet?’ McBlane said.

Twinkle’s hand wobbled slightly but then he slid the needle in and pushed the plunger home. Dominic and Shugg were now slouched back onto the couch, their eyes almost closed. Conscious but in a semi-dreamlike state. Air seemed to escape from Twinkle as he leaned back against the wall like someone sitting down on an inflatable chair that has been punctured.

McBlane picked up the whiskey bottle and refilled their glasses. ‘ To future endeavours,’ he said, and clinked his glass against Scott’s.

Twinkle’s breathing was coming in short rasps, like an old wooden door being opened and closed that didn’t sit flush in its frame. His eyes were closed. Scott turned his attention back to McBlane.

‘Is there any point in me asking when the next job will be?’ he asked.

‘Someone will be in touch,’ McBlane answered, and grinned over the rim of his glass.

‘But it’ll be more of the same, like the job at the docks?’

‘It may be, yes, but the operation may vary as well as your level of involvement.’

Twinkle murmured something and tried to stand up. McBlane’s eyes slid coolly from Scott over in his direction.

‘What’s that Twinkle? You ready for another one already?’

Twinkle attempted to stand, bracing a thin arm against the wall behind him, but tipped forward and fell flat. Scott jumped off his seat and rolled Twinkle onto his back.