2007 - A tale etched in blood and hard black pencel (31 page)

“He was brought up to believe other people were mugs, there for him to use and chuck away,” Jojo says, quietly but firmly, like she doesn’t want to be overheard dissing the dead but won’t stand for revisionism either. “His mother was nice enough, but his da was a blowhard who thought he was better than everybody else just because he’d made a few bob.”

“I don’t remember that about his dad, but I would have been less than ten the few times I met him.”

“Aye. You only knew Colin when he was a wean, before he got big enough to throw his weight around. I knew him later, when he wouldnae have been seen dead hangin about with you. And I knew him as an adult,” she says pointedly. She drains the last of her coffee and puts down the cup.

Martin looks expectantly at her, inviting her to go on. He suspects he’s giving her precisely the gratification she wants, but doesn’t grudge the price.

“Colin’s what you get when somebody’s confidence tries to break past the buffers of their limitations,” she says. “His dad was a balloon who got lucky with a couple of business deals and thought that made him a genius. Colin inherited the delusions and the ego but not the luck or the graft. He was a big, lazy chancer.”

“Was he bent?” Martin asks bluntly.

Jojo shakes her head. “No. Sleazy, but not bent. I’m not sayin he was particularly honest, either, but if you ask me, he lacked the nous, you know? He would have been bent, but somebody would need to have laid the opportunity on a plate for him.”

“Aye.” Martin nods, thinking of Scot and what he told him of the strip-mall deal pretty much falling into Colin’s lap, something Jojo clearly knows nothing about, given her remarks on his absence of luck. “That sounds like him. The sleazy part, too. I take it he never got married or anything.”

“You must be kiddin. Colin treated women like meat. I don’t think he had a steady relationship his whole life. He thought that hotel of his was like a giant bachelor-pad for a never-ending adolescence. Spent all his time just gettin pished and shaggin daft wee lassies who thought he was the life and soul. That’s why the Bleachfield went downhill so fast. He tried to hire me to manage the place at one point, but I told him to sling his hook.”

“Was it unsalvageable even then?”

“No idea. I just wouldnae work for or with the man. Never knew how Eleanor could do it, but I suppose he was seldom there when she was workin.”

“Eleanor cleaned the hotel?”

“No, he owned some lodges up the Brae.”

“Yeah, I heard they were more of a successful venture than the Bleachfield.”

“Aye, well, small wonder. More picturesque location than the dual carriageway out of Paisley, and they’re meant to be very nice. Wouldnae have been tempted myself, right enough.”

“Not exactly a great escape if it’s five minutes up the road?”

“Naw, it wasnae that. Eleanor put me off.”

“How?”

Jojo pauses and her eyes scan from side to side, almost involuntarily, as though reluctant to break Eleanor’s confidence, concerned that what she is about to impart might fall into the wrong hands. It is the moment when she seems most removed from Fat Joanne, who so relished telling tales; more so than in her slim figure, more so than in her matured features, more so than when they were naked together.

“Just something she once said. I mentioned that I heard Colin would sometimes offer lodges to folk he knew at cut-price rates or even free for a bit of you-scratch-my-back. Eleanor said she wouldnae stay there if she was paid to. I asked her what she meant, but she clammed up. I got the impression she was feart she’d given somethin away that she didnae want gettin back to Colin.”

“What do you think she meant?”

“No idea, but when it’s comin from the person whose business is keepin the place clean, it’s not exactly a ringin endorsement.”

“Cannae see the place gettin a great write-up from VisitScotland either, after what happened.”

“No. Course, I’m forgetting: you’re up here on a mission to crack the case before the polis so you can free Noodsy an be the hero of the hour.” Jojo smiles as she says it, but there’s a mocking sourness to it, much the same as last night but without the sexual sparring. The old Jojo is back in the house, so Professor Brainbox had better watch his step.

“The polis are everybody’s best bet for cracking the case,” Martin says. “I’m just trying to help.”

“Aye,” she says, nodding sincerely. “Because that’s what you’re really doin here tonight, isn’t it? Fishin for information. Shouldnae blame you, really. I did say I was the one to ask. I’d just have preferred if you were more up-front about it, instead of kiddin on it was somethin else. I’d have preferred it also if you’d actually asked me what
I
thought, but you’re not interested in that. Fat Joanne might accidentally shed some light but she’s not got the brains to put two and two together herself.”

“That’s bollocks,” he says, keeping his voice low. He considered a more ameliorative reply, but that tone only seems to irritate her. “I came here because I didn’t like the way I’d left things.”

“You came here because you like the idea of yourself as a nice guy and you wanted some kinda absolution for what happened. You never quite got that, so you’re makin it worth your while by tappin me for background knowledge.”

Fuck this, he thinks.

“Well, you’ve never exactly been reluctant to show off what you know, Jojo, have you?”

“Look who’s talking.”

“Great comeback. Why don’t you call me Professor Brainbox and have done with it.”

“Why don’t you call me Fat Joanne and have done with it? You’re no more interested in what I’ve got to say now than—”

“Wait a minute,” he interrupts. “First I’m tapping you for information and then I’m not listening? Which is it, make up your mind.”

“It’s both. You want to know what I can tell you, but you’re not interested in hearing what I might have to say.”

“No, this is binary, Jojo, do you understand? One or other, off or on. Can’t be both.”

She sneered as he said the word ‘binary’, and he felt like an utter prick for doing so, but he’s struggling to fight his corner here. Now they really are Professor Brainbox and Fat Joanne. He recalls one of the more nauseatingly precocious acts of his schooldays, and it’s safe to assume she does, too. It was in Primary Seven, when O’Connor was introducing this particular subject. He told the teacher he’d once read a sentence that would illustrate it, and was invited to write it on the blackboard. “There are 10 types of people in this world,” he’d written. “Those who understand binary and those who don’t.” He’d been so proud of himself. If somebody had kicked his balls for it, it would have been both just and a mercy.

“It isn’t both,” Jojo states precisely. “There’s a difference. Why haven’t you asked me what I think?” she demands.

“We’d barely strayed on to the subject when you started getting all—”

“Two days you’ve been here, Martin. Why haven’t you asked me what I think about the very subject that brought you back to Braeside?”

He says nothing. He could deflect, deny, come up with something, but what’s the point? They both know she’s right.

“Must be murder for you, just now,” she says, breaking a grim silence.

“What must?”

“Nobody’s allowed to be as clever as you. You resent the success of these numpties you talked aboot because you think they’re not as clever as you; and you resented playing second fiddle to folk like me and Colin at school for the exact same reason. So it must be murder bein back in this town and knowin
less
than everybody else, that big brain of yours unable tae come up with all the right answers.”

There is another silence, even bleaker than the last. He decides he’ll be the one to fill it. She’s just taken him apart so she shouldn’t complain if he responds in kind.

“You ought to be careful, there, Jojo,” he says coldly. “I think your insecurities might be showing. Same as they were the time you ritually slaughtered me in front of everyone way back when.”

This, he knows, will bring the old Jojo fully to the fore. If it’s going to end as bitterly as it began, then so be it. At least she won’t be able to tell herself all that shite about folk not being who they once were.

Jojo bows her head so he can’t see her face. When she raises it again, he’ll take both barrels, and then he’ll be out of here. She runs a hand through her hair. Here it comes.

But when Jojo sits up straight again, there are tears forming in her eyes, as well as anger that he’s seeing this.

“And what if my insecurities
are
showing, Martin?” she asks, just about managing to steady her voice. “Am I not allowed to feel undervalued as well? Am I not allowed to be pissed off because you’re not remotely interested in
me
for who
I
am?”

“I’m about as interested as you’ve ever been in me.”

She wipes at her eyes and smears her make-up a little. “Aye, well,” she says. “I guess you’re no as smart as I thought. Nobody at our school was immune to feeling overlooked, Martin. Nobody gets spared the feeling that they’re worthless in somebody else’s eyes.” She stands up. “The last train to Glasgow leaves in aboot five minutes,” she informs him, then walks away.

Martin stands up too, in that moment remembering something not quite too late. “I did ask you what you thought,” he says.

For a moment, he is sure she’s going to ignore it and keep walking, but she turns.

“Excuse me?” she asks, folded arms accentuating a defensive hostility.

“I did ask what you thought and you dodged it. I asked what you thought Eleanor meant and you said you didn’t know.”

“I didn’t know. I
don’t
know.”

“You deduced that she was scared she’d given something away, and yet you’re claiming you never speculated what that was?”

“Oh, Christ, of course I speculated, but what’s that worth to anybody?”

“It’s worth something to me. That’s why I asked. That’s why I’m asking now.”

They stare at each other from a few feet away, a real gun-slinger duel of a stare. She’s weighing up many things: face, spite, anger, and the best way to serve all three.

She licks her lips, her tongue just the slightest protrusion between them. “I think the sleazy bastard had a peep-hole,” she says, then glances at the clock. “You’re gaunny miss your train.”

XI Bootis 2

T
hank fuck it’s Friday afternoon. Just one double period to go and then home for tea, before the school disco tonight. Should be a laugh. Plus he’ll get to see all the lassies dressed up, though seeing is about as much as Robbie will have a chance of. Doesn’t matter. The lassies in his year are all fucking cows and snobs anyway. Not like the ones he’s heard Boma and Joe talking about. Sounds like the lassies in their years were less tight. Course, Boma and Joe could be talking shite. It wouldn’t be the first time.

It’s been a long week: the first week back since, you know. First week back after holidays is always slow. This week was like that but worse. After holidays,
everybody
’s trying to get their act together again, not just you. And making it more awkward is the awareness that every cunt must know. A long week, sure, but the two before it were a sight longer, were they not? Aye, and they could have been longer still, could have been shorter, in extreme ways he doesn’t like to think about.

The doctors said he was lucky. Didn’t feel very fucking lucky. Thousands of cunts sniffing glue every day and this never fucking happens to them, does it? So what’s fucking lucky about it? But he knows fine what’s fucking lucky about it. He could have ended up like one of those poor bastards on the news. One of the real stories, he means, on the telly news. Not the papers, the
Daily Record
and all that shite, whose take on glue is to keep coming out with pish about some daft cunt attacking somebody because they’re on a trip and think he’s a fucking werewolf or something. He means the nae-kidding glue stories: pan breid, or a fucking vegetable or something. And all for what? Sniffing solvent out a fucking crisp poke to get a buzz. Fucking pathetic, now he’s looking back at it. Probably wouldn’t have got into it if he’d been able to get hold of some Woodpecker or Merrydown that first time, but who the fuck’s going to serve him? Even the bigger guys, like Tempo and Panda, get big brothers or pay somebody older to buy them their carry-outs.

He remembers the day he first did the glue. He was fed up hearing all the stories from other cunts about getting a carry-out and getting steamboats. He had gone round collecting ginger bottles for the deposits; did it every night of the week until he had enough for a bottle of cider. He gave the money to Boma to buy it for him, but the bastard fucked off with the bottle himself and scudded Robbie in the dish when he complained about it. Not as if he could tell his maw, was it? “Mammy, your sixteen-year-old has just knocked your fourteen-year-old’s kerry-out.” So that was him fucked. No drink and no money. And it’s not as if you can knock booze, either, because it’s all kept behind the counter at the Paki’s, with fucking bars and wire, like a cage. You can knock glue, but. No danger. They’re talking about making the shopkeepers demand proof of age before they can buy it, sixteen minimum, same as fags. You don’t need proof of age to fucking thieve it, but, do you?

So that was him sorted out for a Friday night: tube of Bostik and a packet of fucking Space Raiders. He remembers the room birling, remembers liking it. Remembers the fucking headache he had the next day as well, but it’s amazing how quick you can forget something like that when you’re bored out your tits the next night and there’s still glue left. He must have done it four or five times before he got ‘lucky’ and ended up in the Alexandra Infirmary with a fucking tube down his throat. In and out of consciousness for three days. He remembers opening his eyes and it being night-time, blinking and it was day. Remembers folk round the bed before he was sharp enough to make them out properly. Maw and Da arguing, though he couldn’t always hear what they were saying. Maw was upset, Da just angry. That was usually the script at home, right enough.