Stonemouth (5 page)

‘How is Ellie?’

Donald puts his head back, his expression cold. ‘How is
Ellie
?’ he repeats. I’ve got a quite different feeling running through my guts now. That repeating-what-the-other-person’s-just-said thing is not a good sign with Mr M.
Fuck
, why did I ask that?

‘She’s none of your fucking business, that’s how she is,’ he says. His voice is a grinding monotone, like two heavy plates of glass sliding over each other. He glances at the double doors leading back into the rest of the house. ‘Don’t let me keep you.’

I look down at the floor, nod. Even less point saying any further Sorries, now. ‘Thanks for seeing me, Mr M,’ I mumble, and turn, walk.

As I draw level with the glazed ceramic cheetahs, he says, ‘Just here for the weekend.’ He says it like that; if there’s a question mark in there, I’m not hearing it.

‘Due to leave Tuesday morning,’ I tell him.

His eyes narrow just a fraction more. ‘All right,’ he says. ‘Good.’ He turns and stamps on the corner of the dancing mat like he’s
squashing an insect the size of a locust. The paused dragon on the plasma jerks into life.

I leave to the strains of early Take That. I don’t see Maria. By the side of the front door there’s a big photo of the late Callum, framed in black. I didn’t notice it on the way in. Callum – big-boned, prominent jaw and brow, with a shaved-sides haircut uncomfortably close to a mullet and wearing a padded check shirt that looks like it’s been ironed – stares out at me with a sort of leery scowl.

I let myself out.

Somewhere in the house, a tiny-sounding dog is barking hysterically.

It’s only ten minutes from Hill House to my mum and dad’s. I like driving the wee Ka, even though it does seem a bit small now; I passed my test in one of these all those years ago and it’s sort of nostalgic.

I say all those years; it’s eight going on nine, but while that feels like half my proper conscious life – you’re not fully formed when you’re a kid, are you? – it’s starting to feel like not all that long really. Maybe this is because I spend a lot of time around older people. Secretaries and office juniors aside, the other guys in the firm are all senior to me. Anyway, it’s funny how your perspective changes as you age.

There are some frankly embarrassing tears from my mum when I get to my parents’ place, and a fairly long hug from my dad. I am heartily congratulated on my promotion to partner level, though I make clear it’s just junior partner level, not equity. My folks – Al and Morven – live in Nisk, just outside the old town, in a granite semi somewhere between modest and comfortably off, on a leafy street largely the territory of Mercs and BMWs. Dad always used to drive a Saab – for the engineering, apparently – but these days he’s an Audi man.

‘And
what have you brought, eh? Something flash, eh?’ he asks, going to the lounge windows to see what’s in the driveway, once things have settled down a bit and the tears and hugs are out of the way. Mum’s gone to clatter some tea and cakes out of the kitchen, still sniffing (it’s not as though they haven’t seen me since I left; they’ve been to London loads over the last five years and they stayed in my flat this summer when they were flying out to Orlando). ‘Oh,’ Dad says, when he sees the boring blue Ka. He looks at me. ‘You gone all green or something?’

‘Yeah,’ I tell him. ‘Thought I’d save the planet personally so you guys don’t have to.’

Actually I did think of hiring something bigger at the airport, something people would be impressed with as I swept into town, and I was all pumped to get a Mondeo at least, maybe even a Jag or something, but then I thought that might look a bit too flash in the circumstances. I’m not really rich yet, though I get to live like I’m rich, on expenses and with a mortgage on the flat in Stepney. Plus there’s that thing about flaunting it; people are still a bit old-fashioned that way up here, despite everything. Still a bit old-fashioned about a lot of things, frankly. Plus I had to think about what people like the Murstons might think if I looked like I was rubbing their noses in how I’d landed on my feet after getting run out of town. Mr M especially. Five years ago this would never have occurred to me, but I’m mature now.

Anyway, when I landed at Dyce this afternoon, the Ka is what I went for. Aberdeen looked even bigger from the air than I remembered, and you could see the line of the new bypass. Dyce was the usual cramped chaos, and very helicoptery.

Dad just makes that sort of huffing, snorting sound he does, which is his equivalent of ‘Aye, right.’ He’s a ginge, like me, though he’s a good bit shorter, sort of bulkier, and his eyes are brown, not green like mine. His hair’s gone darker and straighter over the years and he keeps it shorter than he used to. Beginning to lose it on top, but then what do you expect in your forties?

‘Ah
well, you’ll save money on petrol, eh?’ he concedes, dropping himself into a chair. He looks me in the eye, glances at the door to the hall and drops his voice slightly. ‘You all right to come back, aye?’

‘Met with Powell Imrie. Already been to see Donald,’ I tell him. ‘Reckon I’ll get out of town alive.’

He still looks serious. ‘They were both okay?’

‘Powell was fine. Donald was a bit, well, like Donald. But okay.’

Dad nods. Another kitchen-ward glance, voice dropping a little again. ‘I told Mike you might be coming back for the funeral,’ he says quietly. ‘He’s been saying for a while it was probably okay. Said if there was any trouble to give him a call, eh? Or one of his boys.’ Mike MacAvett is the other Daddy in town. Though when Al – my dad – says ‘his boys’ he doesn’t mean either of Mike Mac’s sons. On the other hand, he doesn’t mean proper, full-on, tooled-up, Mafia-style gangsters, either. We’re not at that point here, not yet, anyway. All a bit more subtle and low-key than that. The Murstons and Mike Mac run their businesses with the minimum of fuss, and no guns. They have the weaponry, but they’ve broken it out only twice in the last fifteen years, as far as I know, when a couple of gangs from Aberdeen and Glasgow thought they might muscle their way in towards what they mistakenly thought looked like easy pickings amongst us hicks up here.

Didn’t work; faced with two long-entrenched and now armed concerns working in frankly startlingly close cooperation with the local cops, they quickly disappeared. Mostly they quickly disappeared straight back down the A90, the way they’d come, but there were strong, believable rumours that a couple went over the side of deepsea trawlers somewhere between the Hebrides and Iceland, or into a fishmeal plant, or beneath multiple layers of replaced rock in worked-out, open-cast coal mines, at least one of these unfortunates meeting their end after some very painful attention from Fraser Murston, who, allegedly, had turned out to be quite creative in the unpleasantness-inflicting department.

Anyway,
if you’re talking rival families, the MacAvetts are the Vauxhall to the Murstons’ Ford. Or the Celtic to their Rangers or something … Though not in a religious way; I think they’re both Prods, technically. But you know what I mean.

I say, ‘Thanks, Al,’ though it doesn’t mean too much.

Mike MacAvett and his boys wouldn’t be able to save me from Powell Imrie and associates if the word went out. Wouldn’t want to, either: not enough in it. Mike MacAvett would step between Donald and a subject of his righteous ire only for something truly important and worthwhile that promised a serious pay-off at the end, not just to protect a guy who dug his own hole years ago, even if he is the son of his oldest friend. Business, and all that. And keeping the peace, frankly, too; not threatening a whole web of mutually beneficial arrangements by attacking each other and – if things get really out of hand – making it impossible for the cops to keep on turning a blind eye.

Whatever. Dad sits back, relaxes. He looks at me properly. ‘Lookin well. You doin all right? What you driving? You got a car yet?’

And with that we’re safely into small-talk, largely about what I do and don’t possess. I don’t possess a car, for example, which Dad seems to think is almost sacrilegious. I keep telling him I don’t need one in London. Dad thinks it’s political and I’m about to go and start hugging trees and blowing up nuclear power stations or refineries or something. He’s worked all his life in oil – he’s harbourmaster at the new docks these days, where the rig supply and support ships hang out – and so he’s sort of defensive on the subject, but at least not an outright denier.

Mum comes in with a big tray and asks about whether I’m happy, and about girls. I sit holding my favourite old SpongeBob SquarePants mug – I mean, really? – and think about saying something like, They’re all shaved these days, Mum. Pubic hair’s an endangered species amongst girls my age, did you know that? But that would be a bit weird. And probably wouldn’t even shock Mum anyway. Mum’s Dad’s age, looks a bit boho in jeans and a long flowing top (she’s
an art teacher, so, fair enough). Barefoot, as she usually is round the house. She’s dark blonde, still mostly slim, though getting heavier as the years plod on. I always forget she’s got really good tits for a woman her age. I used to waver between being proud she’s still good-looking and not being able to wait for her to stop being a MILF, as my leering pals used to assure me she was. She’s probably just about dropped off that radar screen now.

I tell her I’m not involved with anybody long-term at present; too busy.

‘What about that Zoraiya lass? She seemed nice.’

Zoraiya was the Iranian girl I was seeing on and off during the summer: trainee lawyer. ‘She was nice. Still is.’ I shrug. ‘We’ve just gone in different directions.’ I smile big. ‘As you do.’

She smiles too. ‘Good to have you back, son.’

‘Good to be back, Mum.’

‘Aye,’ Dad says.

‘No; classical music.’

‘Like the Beatles?’

‘Not exactly. Beethoven, that sort of thing.’

‘That no a dug? Ah saw that fillum.’

‘Never mind.’

‘Evening.’

‘Stewart! Thank fuck. Great to see you. Mine’s whatever overpriced Continental lager this is. Ask BB for details.’

Ferg holds up a nearly drained pint glass. We’re in The Head in Hand. Ferg – lanky, darkly foppish-haired, eyes glinting – is the same Bodie Ferguson of the golf course story. The Head in Hand is the latest name for a pub on Union Street in the town centre where we’ve all been hanging out since before we were legally allowed to. When we first started sidling in for a bottle of alcopop and two straws it was called Sneaky Pete’s, then it became Murphy’s during Stonemouth’s belated and short-lived Irish-bar phase, then The Mason’s Arms, and for the last couple of years it’s been The H in H, apparently. Overdue for a name change.

The decor changes more slowly; still much like it always was, which is nondescript. On the outside, on Union Street itself, there’s a big awning all the smokers congregate under; inside it’s the usual
Friday night crush, with most people standing. Our lot form a knot of bodies corralled into a little raised area with wooden railings near the food service end of the bar, handy for the gents. I get a lot of hugs and claps on the back from the guys, who are mostly actual guys, though with some lady drinking buddies too. BB is Big Bairn: Nichol Dunn. I find him, find out who’s drinking what and head for the bar.

While I’m waiting, trying to catch an eye, Ferg puts his glass down, sliding it between me and the big rustic-looking guy next to me, then follows his arm in, wriggling until he’s squeezed himself between us, his body pressed against mine. The big farmer chappie scowls at him and rumbles in the near subsonic but Ferg ignores him.

‘I’ll give you a hand,’ he tells me. ‘You well?’ He frowns, picks at my jacket with two fingers, rubbing. ‘What’s this? You haven’t developed
taste
while you’ve been away, have you? Who put you up to it? Is it a girl?’

‘No,’ I tell him, ‘it’s money.’

‘Not a girl?’

‘Girldom in general. No one specific. Girls like the—’

‘So, where’ve you been? Why have you been out of touch?’

‘All over. And I’ve not been out of touch; you have.’

‘I most certainly have not. Few people I know have a higher level of in-touchability than I do. Possibly none.’

‘You keep changing phone numbers.’

‘I keep changing phones. Accidents happen to the little fuckers.’

‘You can take your number with you.’

‘So people keep telling me. I can never be bothered with the paperwork.’

‘Well—’

‘And “All over”? Excuse me? Could you be a little more vague?’

Ferg was my great rival at school for prizes, especially the English prize. He was pretty good at Art but I was better, and he was a lot more adept at Maths and Physics than me. I usually prevailed in
French and Chemistry. The rest of the subjects were sort of shared between us, with the occasional other kid allowed to best us on an ad hoc basis (I did a year of Latin by mistake). Quite an intense rivalry. I think the only subject we weren’t that bothered about was PE, and even there we were far from being the class weeds; middle rankers in the team-choosing ritual. Anyway, my best friend, for want of a better term, until I left in such a hurry and we lost touch.

‘I’m based in London,’ I tell him. ‘Not that I’m there often. I spend a lot of time at thirty-five thousand—’