The First Novels: Pay Off, the Fireman (14 page)

       
‘I need a new supply of coke, Get-Up, and when I discovered you used to work for Laing I figured he might be able to help. But from what you’ve been saying that’s a non-starter.’

       
‘Too true,’ he said. ‘And anyway I’m yesterday’s news as far as that bastard’s concerned. He wouldn’t do me any favours.’ He went quiet and looked at my shoelaces again. ‘I might be able to put you in touch with someone who could help, though.’

       
I knew then how the Klondyke prospectors must have felt when they first found a small nugget of gold glinting in the dross, because at last I was going to get what I wanted from McKinley.

       
‘I thought you’d be out of touch after seven years.’

       
‘Most of the old faces are still in the business, give or take the few who’ve moved on or been sent down. What is it you want, exactly?’

       
‘You sound like a genie from a bottle, Get-Up. OK, I’ll tell you what I want. I’ve got £250,000 in cash that I want to turn into white powder. What I need is someone to arrange the deal for me, to fix up a time and a place where I can hand over the cash in exchange for the drugs. After what happened to me in Glasgow I want to keep as low a profile as possible, so whoever I get will have to have the right contacts and be the sort who’ll keep his mouth shut about my involvement. I need a middle-man, not so close to the streets that he can’t think bigger than a few grams, but not so big that he isn’t hungry. Well genie, can you grant me this boon, or should I uncork another bottle?’

       
‘I think I can help, boss,’ he said. ‘And, yes, I would like another drink.’ I poured him a refill before he continued. ‘One of the guys Laing used to arrange shipments through went down soon after me for a three-year stretch, Davie Read. When he came out he was in the same boat as me, Laing wouldn’t give him the time of day, so he’s been doing some freelance dealing. He’s got the contacts but he doesn’t have the money to set up anything big himself, he’s strictly small time.

       
‘I reckon he’d jump at the chance if you’d cut him in for a percentage. Do you want me to arrange a meet?’

       
‘Sure, he sounds perfect. In fact he sounds too good to be true. Can you trust him?’

       
‘I don’t see why not, boss. I’ll tell him you’re the front man for some very heavy characters and that if he steps out of line you’ll have both of his legs broken.’

       
‘You mean you’ll appeal to the more sensitive side of his nature?’ At that McKinley roared with laughter, he tossed his head back and I could have counted the fillings in the teeth he had left if I’d wanted to get a bit closer to his open mouth, but that had about as much attraction as inspecting a blocked drain.

       
‘I’ve got a better cover story, Get-Up. This is what I want you to tell him,’ and I gave him a story on a par with Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. Hi ho, hi ho, it’s off to work we go.

Kyle’s office was on the first floor of a refurbished building, in a narrow street a grapefruit’s throw from Spitalfields Market. It was early evening and I waited near the carpark where Kyle’s Mercedes was parked, sleek and shiny new and as green as the lettuce leaves blown up against the tyres by a light breeze.

       
The market had been closed for several hours and scavenging down and outs were sifting through the roadside rubbish, picking out bruised and rotting apples and potatoes and carefully placing them in old carrier bags or in the pockets of tired, worn overcoats.

       
Two rooks cawed and coughed and dived on a discarded banana, and pecked it apart until one of the last few delivery trucks roared round the corner and made them hop angrily on to the pavement. They were soon back in the road, pulling and eating, feathers as black and glossy as the leather briefcase I was carrying, which along with the Burberry and dark pinstripe suit branded me as one of the many office workers who’d moved into the area around Liverpool Street station as the overcrowded City pushed relentlessly east, upgrading buildings and filling them full of word processors, designer furniture and anti-static carpet tiles.

       
I was sitting on the low, red railing which surrounded the carpark, briefcase balanced on my knees, and from there I could see the door to Kyle’s office, though I was too far away to see the small brass plate which read ‘Property and Financial Services’.

       
On either side of the black panelled door, fixed to the wall about ten feet above the cobbled pavement, were two wicker cages, each containing a single songbird singing its heart out.

       
Maybe they were singing because they were happy, maybe because they wouldn’t get fed if they didn’t sing, maybe they were calling to each other and professing undying love, but I reckoned they were crying to be let out, to be allowed to fly free above the stonecleaned offices and reslated roofs and join the crows and down and outs foraging for food instead of singing for their bird seed supper.

       
The door opened, and the birds redoubled their efforts as Kyle stepped onto the pavement and started walking towards the car. I was already up and moving quickly, anxiously looking at my watch, a man in a hurry with a train to catch. I crossed the road ahead of him, looked at my watch again, thirty feet, twenty feet, and then I was falling, tripping over my feet and losing the case as I pitched forward, hands outstretched to break my fall.

       
I hit the ground at the same time as the briefcase caught Kyle below the knees, scuffing my gloves on the cobbles and feeling my trousers tear. As I cursed and swore and pulled myself to my feet Kyle picked up my briefcase by the handle, then held it by either end as he handed it back to me.

       
‘Not hurt?’ he asked and I said no, thanks for helping me and whose bloody idea was it to have a cobbled pavement in the first place? And then he was gone, on his way to the shiny green Mercedes leaving me with three perfect sets of fingerprints on the case, which I was careful not to smudge with my gloved hands and which was going straight into a polythene bag when I got back to the flat.

‘I’d like to meet him,’ Sammy had said, and I knew without a shadow of a doubt that David would love to meet her. It was a nuisance to arrange, to explain to McKinley that I’d be out of circulation for a day, to fix up the Shuttle tickets and a hire car, to ring Shankland Hall and tell them I was taking David out.

       
It was a nuisance but it was worth it, worth it to see David hug Sammy and stroke her flowing hair, to see her talk to him and kiss him softly on the forehead. They clicked and I was overjoyed, she wasn’t awkward with him, or pitying, she was just warm and tender, like a big sister. I loved her for it.

       
‘The zoo,’ I told David when he asked where we were going. I drove while he and Sammy sat in the back and we played word games, calling out animals in alphabetical order. Sammy made an appalling attempt to cheat by claiming that asparagus and aubergine were types of mammals and got a gentle cuff from David.

       
The Highland Wildlife Park, near Kincraig in Invernessshire, is about forty miles due north of Pitlochry, and though I’d told David we were going to the zoo, it wasn’t to see elephants, tigers and giraffes. All the animals there are native to Scotland, though many of them are long since extinct in the wild. Driving safari-park style along a wild and rugged road there are deer and cattle in something approaching their natural environment, and you can see brown bears, lynxes and Scottish wild cats close up. David and I were regular visitors, mainly I guess because he loved the Pets Corner where he could touch and hold and feed and play with animals who didn’t care who or what he was, just that he was gentle and had food for them.

       
It was a chilly day despite a watery sun, so I made sure his old sheepskin jacket was buttoned up high over his thick red polo-neck sweater before we tramped around the enclosures. David was inexhaustible, running from cage to cage while Sammy and I walked after him, arms linked.

       
‘What’s your favourite animal?’ I asked her.

       
‘Easy,’ she said. ‘Polar bears.’

       
‘You’ll have to explain that one.’

       
‘Purely visual, I suppose. Big and white and furry, friendly faces. They give the impression you could cuddle up next to them and be safe and warm and protected, but when they move you’re left in no doubt about their immense strength and power, muscles rippling under the fur, paws big enough to rip a man’s head off. Protective of their mates, gentle with their young, afraid of nothing. I love them. I’d take one home with me if I could.’

       
‘They’re killers, you know?’

       
‘I know that, and in a way that’s part of the attraction. To be that close to something that could kill if it wanted to, and yet to be safe and comfortable. Do you think I need a father figure?’

       
‘Sammy, that’s the last thing I think you need,’ I said and she giggled.

       
‘What’s your favourite?’ she asked.

       
‘I knew as soon as the question left my lips that you’d ask it right back,’ I said, and slipped my arm around her waist. ‘I’ll have to think.’

       
Together we followed David towards the otter pool. It was just after three pm and it was feeding time. There are some questions that reveal a lot about a person. Sammy’s answer had told me something about her, it had shown me a side of her I wouldn’t otherwise have seen, and my answer would do the same, unless I lied. But I wouldn’t lie, I decided.

       
‘My favourite isn’t here either,’ I said. ‘And I’m glad, I feel uneasy seeing any animal in captivity, but I feel most for the dolphins.’

       
She was listening closely, head tilted, brushing the hair away from her eyes, watching my face. She didn’t have to ask why because she knew I’d explain.

       
‘They’re so bright, so intelligent, so perfectly adapted to their environment. Have you ever seen them close up?’

       
‘I went to a dolphinarium once, but it made me feel sad.’

       
‘I know. They do tricks, but at least they’re not like sealions. Sealions are clowns, clapping, balancing balls and walking on their flippers, doing tricks for food. Nature’s buskers. I hate to see that.’

       
A keeper was throwing small dead silvery fish to the otters with a minimum of fuss, and once the glossy animals had tired of chasing their food he tipped the contents of his red plastic bucket into the greenish water and walked away, leaving them to eat in peace, nervously eyeing each other as they chewed noisily like dossers in a soup kitchen.

       
‘Dolphins are different,’ I continued. ‘They are much more intelligent. In the wild they’re something else. Friendly, sociable, playful, gentle. They don’t interfere with anyone else and they’re completely non-aggressive, no claws, no sharp teeth, no spikes. But they’ll kill to protect themselves, and they’ll band together to fight off an enemy. God help the shark that tries to attack a dolphin.’

       
We stood together, watching David watching the otters feed until they’d finished. Then he romped over and forced his way between us, holding our hands and bouncing up and down as we walked back to the car. He asked if we could come back and I said yes, of course and he said what about Sammy and I said yes, she’d come too and he said what about Shona and I had to think about that one.

       
She was waiting for us when we arrived back at Shankland Hall, leaning against her Rover, smiling the smile of the wounded.

       
‘You might have said you’d be taking David out today,’ she said, looking Sammy up and down as we got out of the car. She stepped forward and kissed me on the cheek, and then hugged David before wiping saliva off his chin with a handkerchief. ‘Hiya, kid,’ she said to him and he laughed uncontrollably. The sister came out and David went inside with her, still laughing as he waved goodbye. This time there were no ‘don’t go’s’, the parting was easier, and I think that was because Sammy had been there and he knew he had another friend.

       
The three of us drove to a small country pub three miles from the nursing home, taking the two cars which was a problem because I had to choose but it was no choice really, I had to go with Sammy. Strike that, I wanted to go with Sammy.

       
The pub was a weathered stone building amid a clump of grey houses, probably the only source of live entertainment for miles around, but it was virtually empty, just a few red-veined locals standing by the bar and downing whisky as if the licensing laws had never been relaxed north of the border.

       
An untidy tower of roughly-hewn logs burned in a large brick fireplace, filling the room with warmth and smoke. To the left was a small bench seat, in front of it a round knee-high table made from the same dark wood, with two comfortable old chairs on either side. Shona and Sammy each flopped down into one. That left the bench seat for me, and when I’d put the drinks on the table and sat down they were facing me like a pair of temple dogs.

       
‘Well, this is nice,’ said Shona. ‘Cheers.’ It wasn’t like her to be so bitchy but she was right, I should have let her know I was going to see David and I shouldn’t have sprung Sammy on her like an unfavourable diagnosis.

       
‘Did you enjoy yourselves?’ she asked me, and I nodded and told her where we’d been.

       
‘He’s a lovely boy,’ said Sammy, and Shona smiled at her, the smile of a predator ready to pounce. I’d never have to ask Shona what her favourite animal was, it would have to be the tiger, sleek and beautiful, quick to purr and quick to kill. I’d seen her in action many times, and admired her for it, but this was different. This was Sammy, and Sammy was a friend on unfamiliar territory.