A Decent Ride (46 page)

— Dunno. Seems a reasonable assumption. But what we haven’t mentioned was that your name cropped up in it.

While this is bullshit, and the only references to him were on the discarded pages, Terry has decided it’s best to look guilty, which isn’t a hard act to pull off. — Aw . . .

— You never said that you and Jeanette Magdalen were lovers.

Though shocked, and wondering who grassed him up about this, Terry is compelled to laugh out loud. — Lovers is overeggin the puddin a wee bit. Cowped her once in the cab: before that Hurricane Bawbag, ay. She wis the second-last passenger ay the night. That’s aw accounted for in the statement ah gied yis. Ah admitted tae droapin her oaf at the boozer, but the shaggin, well, ye huv tae be discreet aboot they things.

Shite Cop shrugs, expressing something that might have even been agreement. He then mentions the names of two girls – one being Saskia – who left Liberty following Jinty’s disappearance. — Do you know anything about them?

— The Saskia lassie went back tae Poland. No that sure if ah mind ay the other yin, Terry says, telling the truth.

The policeman confirms that the Liberty Leisure girls took little persuading to come forward and talk of the intimidation and violence they suffered at the hands of The Poof and Kelvin. Shite Cop then asks Terry if he was aware of anything untoward occurring at Liberty Leisure.

Terry can’t resist. — Well, apart fae it bein a knockin shop?

The detective bristles. The police are collusive in Edinburgh’s bizarre but pragmatic prostitution practices. Provided nobody talks too much about it, most people, conscious of the terrible legacy of the ‘Aids capital of Europe’ days, are pretty much happy to leave things as they are.

— The P— Victor . . . is an old school pal. As ah’ve said, he wanted me to keep an eye on the place. Terry swallows, knowing he could never say this in court, but he has to give Shite Cop something. — He didnae trust Kelvin.

Shite Cop snorts in a derisive manner, which Terry takes to mean the pot was calling the kettle black. — Once again: do you know why Victor Syme is in Spain?

— Business. As in his ain. Terry looks at Shite Cop with an are-you-daft expression. — I ken no tae ask these kind of questions.

— What kind of questions?

— The ones ah dinnae want tae hear the answers tae.

Shite Cop nods thoughtfully. — If you hear anything, let us know, he says, and the chat is over.

Or almost. As Shite Cop goes to rise, Terry asks, in earnest tones, — What do you think happened tae her? Jinty?

Shite Cop smiles, and contemplates the question for a second. Then, almost as if moved by Terry’s sincerity, he muses, — Well, we can only speculate, but she was with a dippit wee felly and being abused by a couple of psychopaths. There were a lot of guys sniffing around her at the sauna. It wasn’t a great life she had, maybe somebody made her the offer of a better one somewhere else.

Terry considers this and nods, as Shite Cop turns and leaves. It was as sound a hypothesis as any. He gets back to the cab, considering the sudden cold winds and the accompanying grim tales of a local virus that was laying Edinburgh’s elderly citizens to waste. Yesterday he’d inadvertently caught an old girl on
Scotland Today
moaning pathetically about her isolation and his heartstrings were tugged. Whatever Alice had done, she is still his mother, and Terry’s avoidance of her has been total. It is time to rectify this. Besides, he has an urgent reason to square things with Alice. Tomorrow morning Terry has a hospital appointment, which the local NHS Health Board had astonishingly brought
forward
, and that certainly wasn’t a good sign.

He heads out to Sighthill, and in the event, Alice is fine when he calls, if obviously a little upset, which he attributes to his non-contact. She beckons him through to the kitchen, where she is robustly making soup, her blade chopping the vegetables with force. Terry had assumed that the visit would be routine. However, Alice quickly reveals the source of her distress, informing him that Henry died last weekend.

This news has not been unanticipated by Terry, who shrugs casually. — And that’s meant tae mean something tae me?

— It means something tae me!

Terry shakes his head. He hasn’t intended for the conversation to take this turn, but realises that it can go no other way. — It obviously never meant that much.

— Eh? Alice’s eyes bulge. Terry is relieved when she lowers the knife to the cutting board.

— Well, ye fuckin well shagged that auld jakey cunt, Post Alec, lit him git ye up the fuckin duff . . .

Alice goes to speak, hesitates, then gets going again. — Eh wisnae an auld jakey then! Eh wis a very presentable and handsome young postman before the drink got tae um! N eh wis your fuckin pal!

Terry’s eyes dart across the kitchen, looking for something to fixate on. He chooses an old Swiss cuckoo clock on the wall, whose figures stopped making an appearance a good two decades ago. — Yuv ruined ma life, he says in stifled accusation.

— What? Alice screeches in retaliation, stepping towards him. — What are you on about?

— You! Terry turns back to her, the glint in his eye scornful and demonic. — Ah used tae think it wis that Jambo cunt Henry, but it was you aw along! You!

— It’s
you
that ruined
ma
life! Alice barks. — It’s you that cost me Walter n every other chance ay happiness ah bloody well hud . . . Her bony hand reaches out with sudden speed and grapples Terry’s hair, unable to gain traction due to the absence of the corkscrew curls, while the other makes contact with his face. Then Alice steps back, but there’s fire in her eyes.

The punch, though puny, pulled and ineffectual, shocks Terry as it is the first time he can recall Alice laying hands on him since the repeated slaps to the back of his short-trousered legs when he was a wee laddie.

— Yir a waster! Yuv done nuthin wi yir life! Yuv achieved nuthin! Dirty fullums whaire ye make a fool ay yirsel n embarrass everybody!

All Terry can think about are fairways, roughs, bunkers, greens, flags and, most of all, white balls and dark, dark holes. — You ken nowt! Ah’ve won a big fuckin gowf tournament!

— Aye, Alice laughs bitterly, — Yir new sad obsession! Ye think the gowf’ll fuckin save ye? Eh? Dae ye? Answer ays!

— Ah dinnae ken! But it’s something ah’m fuckin good at!

— Good at? Good at? You? Yuv barely held a club in yir hands!

— Ah won an international tournament the other week! Big prize money! Worth a hundred grand!

— Aye, in yir dreams!

— Ah’m tellin ye! And ah goat a 69 oan Silverknowes on Setirday n aw! Awright, jist a glorified council pitch n putt, but when wis the last 69 you hud? Wi that dirty auld cunt, Post Alec, ah bet! And Terry storms out the house, making for the cab, Alice slamming the door shut behind him.

He starts up the motor to head into town, but for some reason stops by the park where he played as a child. The slope of it makes it unsuitable for ball games, or practically anything other than letting dogs roam free to shit to their hearts’ content, and Terry spies a woman with two small children in a buggy, with grocery bags hanging precariously from its handles. She’s still young but careworn, bent out of shape probably by back-to-back pregnancies and poor diet. She’s pushing the buggy across the park, but its wheels have stuck in thick mud, and her pleas for the toddler to get out and walk are met with violent screams. She shouldn’t have taken the short cut. The deep pain Terry experiences on behalf of this woman shocks him. He wants to blare his horn, signal her over and give her a lift home. But he’s a cabbie. She’d think he was a weirdo. So he drives into town.

Disconcerted, depressed and at a loose end, Terry opts to swing by the Taxi Club for a beer. Stumpy Jack is there with Bladesey. — Private hire? Fuckin paedophiles. Recruited direct fae Peterheid they boys, ah telt the cunt, Jack declares, puffing out his chest. — Naw, mate, trust in Capital Cab Service.

— There does seem to be a higher proportion of felons working in the private-hire business, Bladesey ventures, as Terry walks up to the bar and gets a pint in.

Terry is cautious, as he hasn’t spoken to his taxi comrades since last week’s debacle with the drug deal and the botched whisky. He looks sheepishly over at them, just as Doughheid, who is now a Control stalwart, marches in. — Ah, Terry . . . ah see you’ve actually been taking fares instead ay spending aw yir time offline.

— Git oaf ma case, Terry snaps, picking up his pint and necking an inch. — First youse gied ays flak for no pickin up fares, now it’s the reverse.

— Control’s goat nowt against ye, Terry, Doughheid states. — Yir no a marked man by Control. Dinnae think it.

Suddenly, the other cabbies galvanise round Terry in support. — What are you daein here anyway? It’s the Taxi Club, no the fuckin Control Club, shouts Jack.

— We’re aw part ay the same team, Doughheid says defensively.

— Are we fuck! You’ve been tryin tae git me
oaf
the fuckin team, Jack shouts. — Terry, tell um. Whaire’s eh gaun? Terry?

But Terry is heading out the door, and back into the cab. There is no respite at the Taxi Club; even the robust camaraderie now seems empty and only the harbinger of more hassle. Jonty is in London – he saw the wee man off the other week. Ronnie is back in the USA. He is utterly useless to his own family. So Terry finds himself driving aimlessly, exiting at Newbridge and heading out towards Fife. The Road Bridge spans ahead, about to be replaced by another construction further up the estuary. Redundant, like me, Terry thinks caustically. Realises that now is the time to end it all, in that most fitting of places.

He parks the cab and walks down the pedestrian gangway, battered by surging gusts. Yes, it is time. Terry climbs over the balustrade and looks down at the water, like a sheet of beaten black metal, punctuated by the odd foamy white slash which makes him think of Alec’s larvae. Would the fish do to his body what the land creatures had done to his father’s, to his great friend’s?

As he contemplates letting his cold hands go, the phone rings. He sees Donna on the caller ID. He answers it, pressing the earpiece to his head, to counter the noise from the swirling wind. He can still barely hear her. — Ma nana’s in the hoaspital. She’s hud a faw doon the stairs.

— Right, Terry says. He visualises Alice, rendered careless and clumsy by the rage their row induced, tumbling to the floor, her bones cracking.

— You’ll huv tae pick her up, ay. Ah cannae cause ah’ve goat the wee yin n she’s been up aw night wi the runs.

— Right . . . is she okay?

— Aye, but it’s totally mingin n it nivir stoaps. Ah’ve went n changed her three times this affie awready, ay.

— Ah mean my ma, Terry says.

— Thuv no said aye, but thuv no said naw. You’ll need tae go n see cause ah cannae leave Kasey Linn but, ay.

— Right . . . Terry clicks off the phone. He looks down again, and for the first time is petrified. His grip – he can’t feel his hand on the barrier. He stares at it; it looks bluish-pink, and as cold as Alec’s face in that block of ice. Fatigue spreads through his body like a virulent poison and he knows he’s too weak to climb back over. The other hand slips the phone into his North Face jacket. The cold numbs him and he has a sense that he is falling . . .

He
is
falling . . .

But it’s only a few feet. Somehow, he has slipped back over the balustrade on to the pathway. He cries out, feels the wind sting the salty tears that run down his face. Death has scared him. But cheating it has frustrated and tormented him. As if on cue, he feels a twinge in his underpants. — How is this happenin tae me? Aw ah want is . . . aw ah fuckin well want is . . . he screams into the unforgiving wind, down the black river’s estuary, — AW AH WANT IS A FUCKIN DECENT RIDE!

Then, without any sense of himself walking back down the bridge, his numbed hand is unlocking the door of the taxi. Similarly, he drives on automatic pilot towards the Royal. His only awareness of being there is when the electronic doors swing open and the heat blasts him.

Alice had fallen over and had been X-rayed but has suffered only bruising and inflammation. He drops her off in silence. His mother, lost in her own world of pain and misery, seems to register at the end of the ride that something is seriously amiss with her son. — Are
you
awright?

— Aye, ah’m fine, he says in a defeated tone, which chills Alice. She tries to get him to come inside, but Terry refuses and goes home, sitting up most of the night, scrolling through his phone numbers, wondering whom to call. Then someone rings him. He laughs at the ID: SUICIDE SAL. They could do a double dive together. True romance! He presses the red button to silence it. He goes to bed and falls into a jagged, uneven sleep.

He awakens more fatigued than ever in the anaemic light, the alarm on his mobile calling in a truculent tone he can’t recall setting it to. He isn’t looking forward to his hospital appointment. It is a wet, miserable morning, the sort where, even though it’s only May, Scotland has already practically given up hope of having any sort of a summer.

The first thing that puts Terry on edge is the presence of another man in the consulting room, who is sitting alongside Dr Moir. In contrast to the cardiovascular consultant’s tense bearing, he’s a louche-looking character in a brown suit, with a blond floppy fringe and a long, pockmarked face. Terry thinks he might be some sort of a specialist. There is an ominous charge in the room. It moves Terry to wonder: how much worse can this fuckin get?

Dr Moir clears his throat. — I’ve some terrible news, Mr Lawson.

Terry feels what is probably the last of his life being crushed out of him. He curses Donna’s intervention on the bridge. It surely was time to get several grams of coke, book into a nice hotel room, call somebody up and snort and pump his way into the next world. — Aye? What’s that then? he wearily asks, now completely beaten.

— This has genuinely never happened before . . . at this health board, at any rate, Moir ventures cagily, looking like he’s bracing himself for an explosion.