The Blade Artist (23 page)

— This isnae thanks, Anton chokes. — But how? What fir? he pleads, trying to bolt down the panic in his voice.

— Well, ye mentioned the death ay the missus n the bairns, Franco takes a step back from the door, — tae whom I’ve become a wee bitty attached. That was an awfay daft thing tae say. Ah wis disappointed; thought ye would have picked up by now that ye dinnae threaten some people, it’s just counterproductive. That wis the first reason –

Anton’s face crushes forward into the space at the slightly ajar door. — AH DIDNAE MEAN IT!!!

— C’mon, mate. Franco sounds mildly dismayed. — Keep the dignity.

— Listen, Anton Miller’s features contort in a sneer, — ma boys’ll hunt ye doon, you and your family! They ken ah wis meetin you!

— No massively impressed by these fellies, mate; a cut above Power’s mugs, but ah dinnae think they could cross the road withoot you. Ah’ll take ma chances there. He waves Anton’s mobile phone in his face.

— Look –

— The second reason, Franco looks at the calls list on Anton’s mobile, — is they aw think that you did Sean. Ye kin see how bad that looks for me. He shrugs at the soaked, miserable face in the gap. — So littin you live jist isnae a fuckin option, ay-no. Worked hard for this rep, mate. It’s a poisoned chalice, but it’s cost ays a lot, Franco explains in almost gloomy resignation, hearing Larry’s high groans whistling from the howf.

— AH NIVIR . . . AH NIVIR . . . FRANCO . . . Anton looks like a young boy now, his hair plastered to his scalp by the petrol. Fear has stripped the knowingness from his face.

— N thaire’s another reason, which, fair enough, is a pretty pathetic yin, but here goes: it’s barry fuckin sport, he grins, feeling Anton’s phone purring inside his pocket. The henchmen might be here soon. — Never burned nae cunt tae death before. You pit ays in mind ay it yirsel when ye said that thing aboot settin the world on fire, Franco explains, getting back to work, splashing more petrol in.

Anton steps away, then springs forward into the aperture again, pressing his face out. His breathing ragged. — AH’VE
GOAT MONEY!! AH’LL SEE YE AWRIGHT!! AH SWEAR TAE GOD!!

Frank Begbie cocks his fist and pivots a straight right cross into the framed, squealing, petrol-soaked face.

Anton’s head snaps back into the howf. It briefly reappears, nose bloodied, as he screams again: — ANYTHING! WHAT DAE YE WANT?!

— I’ve goat what ah want right here, mate. For you tae burn, Franco reveals, deadpan, lighting a book of matches and tossing it inside. Almost instantly, he can hear a
whoosh
, the spreading fire sucking out the air in the cramped howf, and then there’s a big flash and a sheet of flame blazes out the gap of the door, forcing him to hastily jump back. Franco imagines he can still hear Larry’s soft whimpers, but if that’s so, they are soon drowned out by Anton’s urgent shrieks. With a heavy heart, he pushes the young gangster’s green leather bomber jacket in through the gap. It was a nice garment and might have fitted him.

Franco looks at Anton’s mobile. A couple of missed calls and texts, the most prominent being RYAN. He assesses this to be the stockier, more assertive associate. He examines the texts, at which Anton is quite prolific, trying to decipher the minimal, coded instructions they are full of. He struggles with the keys and fonts, the fading screams of the young man in his head, but manages to type to Ryan:
All good. See you back at mine in 30 mins
.

Then he drives the van forward and gets out, opening the door of the howf. To his astonishment, the flaming figure of Anton comes charging out, a burning ball, running straight
at him. Franco wagers that, by this time, the young man can sense nothing, and this suspicion is confirmed as he simply steps aside to let the blazing figure stagger towards the edge of the dry dock and fall in.

Realising that dusk is coming, Franco looks down, and watches the black, twisted shape of Anton. It is not moving but still burning. Suddenly thinking of the Warner Brothers’ Road Runner–Coyote cartoons, he feels a shivering mirth snake through him. Then he heads back to the howf, opening the wooden door which is charred on the inside. The smell is almost unbearable; thick, congealed grease hangs in the air, a porcine odour, with a whiff of sulphur. The brick outbuilding’s internal walls are sooted, its contents reduced to ruins and ash. The fire has sucked all the oxygen through the air bricks, facilitating an explosion. Then he sees the remains of Larry, his face lacerated and bloody, though otherwise strangely intact, resting on what seems to be a pile of blackened clothing. He looks at his old friend’s vacant eyes, staring out at nothing, though those redone teeth still gleam white, and he mouths,
fuckin wanker
, heading outside, grateful for the air.

As the sun slides behind the warehouse buildings to the far side of the wharf, heralding a chill in the air, Franco takes the keys from the van. He gingerly begins to climb down the embedded rungs into the dock. Each step of the slow descent delivers a jabbing pain to his bad leg. On feeling the foot on his good one hit the bottom, he walks across the rubble-strewn deck to what had been Anton, and places the keys in the still-intact jeans pocket of the sooted and tarnished body. He takes the phone and slowly and laboriously texts:

You are going to die for fucking with me, you fat arse bandit.

And he sends it to a number he remembers by heart, before placing it in the pocket with the keys.

Then Frank Begbie turns away and looks up in the fading light at those intimidating bars of iron cut into the stone walls of the dry dock, some of them filigreed by corrosive rust, illuminated by the dull lamp shining from above. His leg aches badly, and the climb looms; this isn’t going to be easy.

Placing his good leg on the first rung, he sets off. His hands feel slimy and slidy with sweat, and his leg shot with pain, ascending as darkness insinuates its regime, making for the sickly light of the reflected street lamp, not daring to look down, only glancing at the top, which never seems to get closer. Mostly, he concentrates on the bars. At one stage he imagines that his shoe sole will slip. Or perhaps he will snap a worn, corroded bar, his weight wrenching his weak grip from them, sending him crashing to the floor of the dry dock, broken and trapped. Down there, he’d just wait for death or prison, with a burnt body for company, and another one up in the howf.

Then, at last, he finally grasps the top rung. As he draws breath, he suddenly feels a crushing pain in his outstretched hand. Looking up, he sees a boot, grinding on it. Then a pressured jet of liquid blasts steadily in his face. Its pungent aroma fills his nostrils. Frank Begbie looks up at the figure pishing down on him, and knows that his time is up.

It was a clammy summer’s night. The wind had changed direction, the welcoming Pacific breeze replaced by the hot desert air tumbling over the Sierra Nevada. The yard was uplit by floodlights and Melanie docked her iPhone into the system they’d had installed when they’d gotten the place wired for sound. A salsa beat swept out from the exterior speaker, above where Jim reclined on the comfortable all-weather furniture at the large wooden decking to the rear of their house, overlooking the back garden. Melanie was urging him to get up and dance with her, as Juan and Ralph were moving smoothly to the rhythm.

Jim was reluctant at first, protesting that he hadn’t had a drink, looking to the empty bottles of wine on the table. Alcohol had been easier to give up than he’d thought. A couple of drinks were useless to him; he got a mild buzz, then just felt a bit shabby and tired. He always said that you needed loads of drinks, and when you had loads, you lost control, and his loss of control was negatively consequential to him and others, so why bother? But looking at the three of them, cheerfully lit up, playful, he got a little melancholy, lamenting how some people had mastered the art of knowing when to stop. Melanie sensed his envy of them; both recognising a skill he would never acquire.

Finally succumbing to his wife’s insistent tugging on his arm, Jim rose just as Ralph was starting to fall, his eyes popping, as he clutched at his arm, unable to break his tumble to the decking. It was like some pantomime, and Melanie couldn’t work it out, but Juan’s expression of horror was clear enough to dispel any notions of the extreme pranking Ralph was occasionally prone to. As Ralph lay on the deck twitching, his husband was screaming, neither he nor Melanie knowing what to do. Then Jim pulled out his cellphone and thrust it at his wife. — Call 911, request an ambulance straight away, tell them it’s a heart attack, give them the address, he said, crouching down by Ralph’s side.

Ralph had now sunk into unconsciousness and didn’t appear to be breathing. As she spoke to the operator Melanie could hear Juan’s anguished cries: a mixture of English and a Spanish she’d rarely heard coming from his mouth. She was astonished that her husband seemed to know exactly what he was doing.

Jim had decided that Ralph was likely to be in cardiac arrest so there was no sense in wasting valuable time looking for a pulse. Instead he immediately started cardiopulmonary resuscitation, placing the palm of his hand flat on Ralph’s chest just over the lower part of the breastbone and starting to pump by applying pressure using his other hand.

— He’s dying, Juan screamed.

— No fuckin way: cunt dies when ah fuckin well say eh dies, Jim snapped, so violently that Melanie and Juan looked at each other, briefly astonished. He now had his elbows locked into his side and was slamming his bodyweight down on Ralph’s chest. — One, two, three . . .

After thirty thumps, he opened Ralph’s mouth, tilting his head back, lifting his chin and shouting to Melanie, — Pinch his nostrils shut!

Melanie fell down by his side and complied. Jim took a deep breath and sealed his own mouth over Ralph’s.

As he breathed into Ralph, his stricken friend’s chest rose. He started another round of thumps on his sternum, — One, two, three . . . c’mon, Ralphie son, moan tae fuck!

— Oh my God, Juan shrieked, — where are they! Melanie squeezed his hand with her free one.

Then Jim was back on Ralph, back on the mouth of a man who had, in his own words, ‘blown a thousand cocks’, and Melanie recalled this drunken, scandalous statement, as she looked into the eyes of, not Jim, but Frank Begbie, the thug, who seemed to be asking himself: What am I doing, why am I here . . .?

Then there was a convulsion, almost like a mini-internal explosion, as Ralph started breathing again, hollow at first, then more regular. Melanie could feel the pulse in his neck. — He’s back! He’s back!

Juan crossed himself, and kept muttering, — Thank you, thank you . . . oh, thank you . . .

Ralph was still unconscious, so Jim rolled him gently onto his side into the recovery position. Mucus and vomit trickled out of his mouth onto the deck. Jim asked Melanie to get a blanket, and she returned with one and draped it over their afflicted guest. Grace had woken up with the shouting and, alarmed by all the commotion, had come through, and Jim calmly
explained to his daughter that Uncle Ralph had been taken ill, but was going to be fine, leading her back to bed.

When Jim returned, Ralph had regained consciousness but was bewildered. Melanie was telling him that he’d had a turn, but Juan was here and an ambulance was on its way. When it arrived, Jim said he’d stay with the kids, if Melanie wanted to go in the ambulance and look after Juan, who was also obviously in shock.

Ralph was taken immediately to the Heart and Vascular Center at the nearby Cottage Hospital. He was breathing comfortably when Melanie and Juan went up to see him, some forty minutes later.

The next day, she and Jim went to the hospital to visit him. Ralph smiled at her husband. — Hey, Jim, Juan and Mel both tell me that you’re one hell of a kisser. I’m sorry I missed it.

— You’re lucky the kissing worked, Jim said, deadpan. — You don’t know what I was going to do next.

Then he and Melanie drove down to Goleta Point, looking out to the sea, where he explained about the Telford College first-aid course they’d sent him on years ago. It was related to a job that his probation officer had set up, working in a box-manufacturing factory. It was a shit gig and he’d only taken the course as it meant eight Mondays at college instead of the monotony of the assembly line. — Thank fuck for the Scottish penal system, he laughed.

Ralph had suffered a serious heart attack, due to an undetected congenital defect, but this could be corrected by a procedure. Jim had certainly saved his life, and his long-term
prognosis following the surgery was good. — He’ll soon be able to salsa again, Melanie smiled.

— Good on him, Jim said, picking up a large rock crab that was stranded in a pool. He placed it on the sand, watching it scuttle sideways towards the sea.

— What were you thinking when you were doing that first aid on Ralph, saving his life? Melanie asked.

— I was thinking, Jim went, — with a Leith voice in my head: so this is what the fuckin salsa leads tae!

Their laughter echoed out down the beach and up to the clifftops.

The music being pumped into the limo isn’t salsa, but bland, easy-listening rock. It’s a cheesy ballad called ‘I’d Love You to Want Me’ and Melanie can’t recall who the artist is. The large man sitting next to her, driving the car, seems to know the words, mouthing them softly under his breath. David ‘Tyrone’ Power had introduced himself as a friend of her husband. He’d told Melanie that he’d been concerned about Frank, and had a mutual acquaintance call by at Elspeth’s. They had just missed Melanie, but heard that she was planning to head down to Leith and look for him, just as he himself had decided to do. — I’ve been working my way up the Walk and Junction Street.