Kill Me Twice: Rosie Gilmour 7 (6 page)

‘Mitch?’

‘Aye. Rosie?’ He glanced over his shoulder.

She motioned him to sit down.

‘Awright, man? Sorry I’m late.’ He sniffed. ‘I was rattlin’ when I woke up, had to get a wee toot. Sorry.’

‘No problem, Mitch. I was just enjoying my tea.’

Rosie smiled, studying his face to get a handle on his age. It was always hard to tell with junkies, ravaged from
years of living the way they did. He looked about thirty-five, but he was probably ten years younger. His eyelids were heavy and his pupils like two pinheads. He’d had a recent hit. Christ, Rosie thought. He looks like he could fall asleep on me.

‘So,’ she began. ‘You want something to eat? How about a bacon roll.’

‘Nah!’ He puffed. ‘No lumpy stuff. Can I get a Coca-Cola iced drink? They do good ones in here. Big dollop of ice cream, man. Just what I need.’

She knew all about a junkie’s craving for sweet things. She beckoned the waitress and ordered.

‘Oh, and a chocolate biscuit too. One of them Orange Clubs,’ Mitch ventured. ‘Is that all right?’

‘Sure, Mitch. Let’s push the boat right out.’

Rosie hoped he had something interesting to say – and soon, because he smelt like he hadn’t had a bath in a month. He wiped his nose with the back of his shiny jacket cuff. ‘You staying in the hostel, then?’ she asked, thinking she might as well start somewhere.

‘Aye. So far anyway, till they kick me out.’ He sniffed. ‘That’s where I saw Dan.’ He looked into Rosie’s eyes. ‘That’s his name. The boy I told you about. He’s Bella Mason’s brother.’ He shrugged. ‘Or so he says. Could be fuckin’ lying, but I don’t think so.’

Rosie’s stomach tightened.

‘Did you get a second name?’

‘Eh?’
He seemed surprised. ‘Mason. Same as hers.’ His drink arrived and he took a long suck from a straw, then started spooning the ice cream into his mouth. ‘Fuckin’ magic this!’

‘Have you met him a few times or just once? What I mean, Mitch, is that I want you to tell me when you met. Everything you know.’

‘Am I getting paid, by the way?’ He wiped his mouth.

Rosie locked eyes with him and said nothing for a long moment. ‘You’ll get paid. Sure. But only if you can take me to him. I want to meet him.’ She hated telling a junkie they’d get weighed in with cash, because it could mean there was no end to how they’d embellish a story to up the ante.

He looked a little crestfallen. ‘But I’m here now. I mean, I’ve got work to do, man. I could be out earning instead of sitting here.’

Rosie leaned forward and stretched her hand over the table, so that she touched his wrist. He looked down as she held it. ‘Listen, Mitch. I want you to know something so we’re absolutely clear. I didn’t come up the Clyde on a banana skin. I’m no soft touch. I know plenty of junkies who would tell me the sky was falling in, like Chicken Licken, just to get a few quid for a fix. Now, so you know, I’m not that kind of reporter. So if you’re making any of this up in the hope of upfront cash, then forget it. But if you’re telling me the truth, I’ll look after you. Don’t worry about
that.’ She paused for effect. ‘And the deal is, you don’t talk to a single soul about this or you get nothing.’ She’d find a way to tell McGuire about the cash.

‘Aye, right. I get your drift, man.’ He scooped out more ice cream. ‘But I had a wee toot about an hour ago, so it’s beginning to wear off. I need something to sort me out in the next wee while or I’ll be fucking useless. Can you not give me something now?’

Rosie ignored the request, sipping her tea. ‘Tell me the last time you saw this guy Dan. Tell me everything you know.’

He stared at the table for a few beats, as though he were trying to piece it together in his head. ‘Right. Okay, then. Here’s the sketch.’ He took a long breath and let it out slowly. ‘It was about two months ago, maybe three. I don’t know, really, because I lose track of time. The weeks and months all roll into one. Sometimes you only know what season it is if you’re sleeping outside and freezing your balls off.’

Rosie waited patiently. She didn’t need to hear tales of a junkie’s lifestyle. She’d seen and heard it all before.

‘So,’ he continued, ‘I was in the hostel the first time I saw him. He’s just a wee guy, a bit younger than me. Twenty-one, I think. Blond hair. Nice-looking wee guy. He got a bit of a doing from some cunt that was just out of jail, and his face was all bruised. I jumped in to help him and broke a chair over the cunt’s head. We all got thrown out, so me
and Dan slept under the bridge that night. Fucking freezing. Then in the middle of the night I heard him greetin’. Sobbing, so he was. After that we used to cut about together. He used to sleep next to me in the hostel and that’s how I got to know him. He woke up one night sobbing again, and I had to try and calm him down. He’s a bit fucked-up. He does a bit of rent-boy stuff, he told me, and he gets picked up a lot because he looks young.’

Rosie nodded, afraid to say anything now that Mitch was in full recollection mode. She stuck the tape on, and Mitch looked at it and shrugged as he continued.

‘So I got up and we went into the wee corridor for a fag. Because if you make a lot of noise they just turf you out. I mean you do hear the odd guy greetin’ or something at night, but mostly it’s just farting.’

He sniggered and Rosie saw a dimple in one cheek. His face might have been beautiful once, a grin in a school photograph, sweet and innocent. She felt a wave of sympathy for the boy he had been. ‘Go on.’

‘We were talking outside and he said he was greetin’ because he had all these nightmares about when he was a wee kid. Said he got abused by loads of people. He was in a children’s home in Glasgow. Said he was with his sister for a while in the same home, but they got split up. They took her away . . . Then he started sobbing again. I mean, he’s well fucked-up this boy. Been smoking heroin for a few years now.’

‘Jesus,’
Rosie said. ‘Did he say which home?’

‘Eastwood Park Children’s Home. It’s down in the East End. Or it was. It’s not there any more. I know a few boys who were there. I see them in here or in the houses where I get my kit.’

‘You mean a few of them are heroin addicts?’

‘Well, put it this way, Rosie. Everybody I know is a heroin addict. I don’t know normal people any more. I haven’t seen my family in eight years. My da’s dead and my maw’s not well. My sister died from heroin two years ago and my maw’s never been the same since.’

Christ! Rosie thought. The city’s schemes were littered with stories like this, so many victims, no matter what hard line the government peddled to deal with the aftermath of the nineties heroin explosion that had swept the country.

‘I’m sorry to hear that, Mitch. Must be tough for you. But you need to start looking at a programme to get off this shit.’

He nodded wanly. ‘Aye. I’m going to get on methadone. At least it makes it easier – you’ve always got something to get you started in the morning if you’ve got a meth script.’

Rosie knew that was part of the problem. Half the junkies were hooked on heroin, stealing to get it, and the other half were hooked even deeper on methadone, using it as a crutch till they got their next fix. It was costing millions, and nobody was getting any better. It was just a more
organized way to get spaced out, and it made social services feel they were tackling the problem, which they weren’t.

‘So where is he now? When did you last see him?’ Rosie was as convinced as she could be that Mitch was genuine, however desperate he was for money. She’d been here before and she could usually detect a bullshitter, even a good one.

‘A couple of nights ago. We ended up in a house down the Barrowfield. He was smoking heroin and was in a bit of a mess. Place is stinking, but at least it was a roof over our heads. We slept on the floor.’

‘Did you see him in the morning?’

‘Aye. About eleven or twelve or something we woke up and had another wee toot. Then we went out to go up the shops and see what we could blag. That was when he saw the paper.’

‘The newspaper?’

‘Aye. All the papers had the front page about this Bella Mason killing herself. Wee Dan just fucking went to bits. He collapsed and everything. I had to pick him up and drag him to a side street. That’s when he started going on about stuff happening to the two of them. He said he should tell the cops again. Apparently he did when he was younger, but nothing happened. And now . . . I mean, who’s going to believe a fucking wee junkie claiming he’s the brother of a famous model? It’s just not going to happen, is it?’

‘It’s
difficult, I’ll say that.’

‘Aye. More like impossible.’

‘Did he say when he’d last seen her?’

‘Aye. He said they’d lost touch years ago. They took her away when she was thirteen, but she came back to Glasgow one time and found him. She was trying to help him with the drugs and stuff, but he was a junkie big-time by then. I don’t know what happened after that. But he’d seen her a few weeks ago, he said, and they’d been talking about the stuff that happened years ago. The abuse.’

Rosie had to find Dan. Of course he might be a fantasist, making up stories about a sister, but her instincts told her different. ‘So, Mitch, how are we going to find Dan now? I really want to talk to him.’

‘I was looking for him the past couple of days, but to be honest, I got caught up in a few things. I was arrested for shoplifting and spent a night in the cells, so I haven’t had a real chance.’

‘Have you any way of getting in touch or digging him up through friends?’

‘Nobody knows who he is or what his story is. We don’t really have a lot of friends in this fucking set-up. We only have people who’ll give you the time of day if you share your stash with them, then rob you once you fall asleep.’

‘Can you start looking for him now? Take me to some places? Or at least have a serious look for him, and as soon as you see him, call me?’

‘Aye. I
can do that. But I don’t think you should be walking into some of the shitholes we hang around in.’

‘I’ve been in them before, Mitch. As I said, I’ve been doing this a long time.’

‘You don’t look it. You look quite young.’

‘I’m flattered.’ Rosie smiled. Even a down-on-his-luck junkie had the guile to try a bit of charm. Top marks for effort.

She noticed that he had started to look even more pasty-faced, and sweat was appearing on his top lip and hairline. He needed more heroin.

‘Listen, Rosie. I have to go. I’ve got to get myself sorted, know what I mean?’

Rosie knew exactly what he meant. She went into her bag and took out twenty quid. It was more than enough to see him through the day. Half of her believed she might as well set fire to it for all the good it would do her. But something inside told her that she could put a glimmer of trust into the pathetic shambles in front of her. Right now, she didn’t have a lot of options.

‘Here’s the deal, Mitch, and listen good. I’m going to be looking for you later this afternoon and tonight. I want to talk to you and you’ll need to tell me where you’ve been and what you’ve seen. I need you to do that. Just text me on your mobile.’ She asked him to let her see it, then keyed in her number and stored it. ‘Are you understanding me?’

‘Aye. Of course I am. I’m going to find wee Dan for you
and I’m going to bring him and get him to talk. I want paid, mind you, but I don’t want him fucked about because he’ll need paid too.’

‘Don’t worry about that. Just find him for me, and we’ll take it from there.’

They stood up and Rosie paid at the counter. Then they left, and Rosie found herself giving his bony shoulder a friendly squeeze as he half smiled.

‘Thanks for the iced drink. I’ll text you.’

Rosie watched him bounce down the road towards the Barrowfield, hoping her twenty quid wouldn’t be smoking out of his brains in the next two hours.

Chapter Six

Millie
opened her eyes but could see nothing. It was pitch black. Her eyelids felt like they were weighed down. Fear lashed through her. Where the hell was she? She shifted in the bed and a searing pain shot through her hip and back. Then she remembered. Eastbourne. The car had hit her and flipped her into the air. The squeal of seagulls before she hit the ground, before everything turned black. She brought a hand up to touch her face. Nothing hurt there, and she traced her fingers across her lips and cheekbones, then her eyebrows. There was a bandage on her forehead. She followed the path of it, wrapped around her head, and pressed lightly, wincing at the sharp pain. She began to move her feet and arms slowly, to make sure she could, then turned her head a little to the side.

Her body was clammy, trembling every time she moved. But that was normal for Millie: every morning she woke up with the tremors. But now she could barely lift her head
off the pillow. She must be in a hospital. But how long had she been out? And why was it so dark? She could hear movement in the corridor and turned her head carefully towards the chink of light under the door. Her eyes were beginning to focus and she could see that the blinds on the window were pulled down tight. She wanted to get up, but pain burned through her when she moved. She thought she wasn’t badly injured, perhaps just stiff from the accident.

All of a sudden, the room lit up, the ceiling lights dazzling her. Slowly the window blind rose and stopped halfway, sending in streams of daylight. The handle of the door turned and was pushed open. She closed her eyes, barely breathing. She could hear someone approaching her bed. She half opened her eyes.

‘Good morning, Millie.’

A broad Irish accent. Millie opened her eyes to see the bright smile of a nurse, middle-aged with a round, friendly face.

Millie didn’t return her smile. ‘Where am I?’

The nurse was adjusting a drip at the side of her bed, and looked down at her, again with the smile. ‘You’re going to be fine, Millie. How are you feeling?’

‘Where am I?’

‘You’re in hospital, pet. I’m Staff Nurse Bridget Casey. You’re being looked after well here, so don’t you worry about a thing. The doctor will be in to see you shortly.’

Millie
swallowed and licked her dry lips. Her tongue felt like paper. ‘I got hit by a car.’