The Glasgow Coma Scale (23 page)

Angus drained half his bottle in a single draught, wiped his hand across his mouth. ‘No exactly the nectar ay the gods.’

‘No, but I know what I can use to top up my car battery if it’s gone flat later.’

The strange woman had moved on to talk to Donna from Maintenance and her seldom-seen boyfriend, described by Donna as working in hospitality but who Lynne had, she was sure, seen stacking broken-up wine crates outside an off-licence on Byres Road some mornings. The stranger was one of these unfortunate women prone to adult acne: her jawline lumpy in the greenish lights. She was rudely made up, mascara clumped in her lashes, and much younger than she had first seemed.

‘You didn’t invite your friend along tonight, did you?’ She had to shout to be heard above the music.

‘China, ye mean?’ Intermittent disco light bloated his face one moment, left it haggard the next. A belch travelled up his throat – she could see it – and he held it in his mouth before letting the breath out slowly. ‘Ah did not, no. Christ no. No exactly the hot ticket, is it? No offence. Anyweiy, like ah said, she wis barely even sumdy ah could call a friend. Ah mean, that stuff she said tae Siri . . .’ He shook his head.

‘I’m sorry,’ Lynne screamed, yet again, ‘for what she said.’ Each time, she meant this to open a conversation in which the apology could be expanded to include herself; but each time, she was too cowardly to manage it, and the same misbegotten blame-shifting crawled out instead, maggot-like, unwanted. But it took two to apologize, and Angus deflected this attempt as he had all her previous efforts:

‘Ach, that’s awright, doll, ye urnae answerable fer her. She prolly thought she wis watchin out for ye – proof yis raised her well, widn’t ye say?’ Lynne grew vexed. Was she implicated, then, in Siri’s bad behaviour too?

‘What about your classes? Will you go back?’

‘What’d be the point? Amateur hour at the Glesga galleries, exactly as ah said it wid be. Christ.’ Angus gulped another burp, made an apologetic face, raised the empty bottle to inspect. ‘It starts gaun down a touch easier after a while, eh? That’s deeply worryin.’ He took a couple of steps towards the bar, and Lynne followed. ‘Get ye anither?’

‘Oh, Angus, I don’t know if that’s—’

‘Wise?’ he mocked. ‘In ma best interest? Och, lighten up.’ He was smiling raffishly. ‘Check the label. Two per cent proof! Yir tapwatter’s mair alcoholic than that.’

‘Fine.’ She followed him, fretting. Their truce was based not just on mutual deception but on mutual contempt. ‘But can we have something different next time? It’s making my teeth feel weird.’

‘Did ye no hear me, darlin? That’s yir lot, red or blue. You urnae gonnae find yir New Zealand chardonnay here, put it that way. Your party organizer must’ve cocked up – or else he actually likes drinkin this weans’ stuff. Me, ah’m startin tae get a taste.’ To the bartender: ‘Eh, two ay each, please, pal? By the way,’ he said to Lynne, wanting, she was sure, to twist the knife, ‘talkin’ ay ma interests, ah’m makin guid progrees investigatin’ where tae go next.’

He handed her a fresh bottle, the remaining three clamped by the necks in a fist held chest-high, inviting comment, she was sure. Surreptitiously, she turned the bottle until she could see the label: four per cent proof. Why would he lie about something so easily verified? She looked at him, his white face, and didn’t say anything, just thought about how soon this, he, would be someone else’s problem, and wondered how that made her feel.

‘Angus, why don’t you stay? I mean it. At least until after Christmas. What will I be doing anyway? Sitting in with Radio 3 on, eating turkey sandwiches from the supermarket.’ Facetious though she made this sound, it was exactly what she feared she’d be doing. She anticipated the obvious rejoinder: should have thought about that before, shouldn’t you?

A slow smile worked into his mouth, and he shook his head. ‘Ah cannae steiy at yours ony mair. It isnae even
you
, Lynne. Sumhin’s . . . ah dunno. It’s haudin me back.’

‘From what?’

At this point, the strange woman blundered into him, causing him to spill one of his bottles, Lynne mildly surprised not to see it rotting an immediate hole in the concrete floor. When Angus rounded on her, she let out a stream of disjointed not-quite-words, ‘Sh . . . ch . . .’, through her teeth. She was drunk, or unwell, and Lynne was about to offer to help when the woman’s sibilants focused into words. ‘A drag,’ she was saying, ‘a pain.’ She pronounced it
pine
, and it dawned on Lynne that this was an attempt at a cockney accent. ‘You guys should overthrow me – take me out into that alleyway behind the office, a shot to the head, gangland-style. Put me out of everyone’s misery.’

Angus’s face was stuck in the same curious rictus as Lynne’s own. Taking their silence for encouragement, the bewigged woman – you could see now that the hair wasn’t real – continued, in her mangled Estuarine: ‘No more of my bullying. No more catty comments. You don’t need to force me, I’ll go willingly. I don’t want to be your boss any more. I hate you all, and you all hate me.’ Lynne only got it when the woman put a finger round the crucifix chain on her neck and tugged it upwards like a hangman’s noose. They were parodying
her
, the boss from hell: a reflection conjured up by pooled bad will, the grotesque her juniors saw in her brought to shambling, vulgar, self-pitying life.

‘I
want
,’ her impersonator insisted, looking from Lynne to Angus, ‘to die.’

Seeing Lynne incapable of mustering a response, Angus emerged from his trance. He bent at the waist, brought his face close to the impersonator’s and said, in a low and dangerous tone: ‘Go –
away
.’ And the woman, taking no offence, simply pulled a face, shrugged, and limped off, muttering to herself once more, towards the next guests.

Silent for a moment, then both started babbling at once.

‘That was—’

‘Ah know. But who—’

‘Why did she say I
want
to die?’

‘A joke, darlin, a nasty, nasty . . . Jist try and forget it.’

They drew breath.

‘Ye ken who’s responsible, don’t ye, Lynne? That wee runt—’

‘Struan. With the blond hair, and the—’

‘The attitude, aye.’

‘We can’t be sure,’ she said, agreeing. ‘How can we prove it?’

‘By, ah dunno, lookin at him? Wi oor eyes? Lynne, did ah no tell ye ah’ve incredible powers ay observation?’ He swigged from his drink, coughed, wiped his mouth. ‘Ye no see them conniving thegither when we came in?’

‘It’s not enough,’ she said miserably. ‘I can’t haul him up in front of everyone. He’d just deny it. Or say I’d misunderstood, that I was being paranoid – or humourless. People will forgive almost anything except a lack of humour. Somebody who lacks
fun
.’ She shook her head. ‘What authority would I have left come Monday morning?’

‘What authority huv ye now, if this is the kind ay thing folk think’s appropriate? You,’ he said, ‘need a new bluddy job.’

‘A new job.’ She thought again of those evolving animals hauling themselves in fits and starts through the fossil record. ‘A new life.’

‘These fuckers dinnae respect ye, Lynne. Ah’m sorry, but they don’t. That . . . wummin, whatever she is, got that right, surely. It’s not like you actually enjoy workin there, is it? Sorry tae break it to ye, but there isnae a reward for puttin yirsel through things ye hate. Life’s too short. Ah mean, ah’ve hud mortgages and that in ma time, and ah know ye’ve got tae dae what ye must for money.’ Was this – was he giving her a row? ‘But huv ye considered findin a joab that isnae sae . . .’

‘Evil?’

Angus, thoughtfully, embarking on his last drink: ‘Stressful, ah wis gonnae say, but evil’ll cover it right enough.’

‘Of course I have. It’s not as easy as just deciding to leave and going.’

‘How no?’

One song failed to merge into the next, indistinguishable one, and in the brief silence, over derisory hoots, Lynne heard bellowed laughter. She turned to see Faraz, hands on his knees, bent double in hysterics while Lynne’s impersonator wobbled and curtseyed, grinning cockeyed at him, face halfway between lascivious and demented. ‘You know, actually, you’re right. Okay, first thing Monday morning I’ll start uploading my CV. I can’t carry on at Arundel. I should go round them all now, tell them they’ve won.’

Angus’s face had grown oddly rigid. He looked round at the dance floor, where dry ice was skooshing from jets at ground level, dancers moving ghostlike in the haar as the music, the sonic torture, resumed – then thumped the empty bottle down on a desk and yanked his tie knot away from his neck. ‘Get in the next roond for us, Lynne, eh? Something ah’ve got tae go and dae.’

As he lumbered off, Lynne took the smallest sip possible from the saccharine stuff in the bottle – it felt like it was corroding her throat on the way down – and tried to think calmly and realistically about the consequences of handing in her notice. Already it was mid November, and she knew nothing important got done at this time of year. Come January, head office would be busy with all the admin from the previous year-end; it would likely be February before anybody in HR looked with any seriousness at her resignation letter. Even then there’d be the three months’ notice still to serve. The resolve that had been swelling up in her reached its apogee and began to subside. The mortgage on Glendower Street was nearly paid off. She had been so careful – so sensible. Why give it all up now?

There was something else. She liked to believe she was someone who didn’t quit, quitting being to admit weakness: but she had given up at art school, hadn’t she? If only Angus had said at the time that she had talent. The sad thing, though, was that when she imagined what the Lynne who’d persevered with that course might be like by now, years on, all she could bring to mind was an identical copy of herself. What it comes down to, she told herself, is that you don’t have the guts to walk out of this job.

It was oddly warming, this self-torture, such a reliable way to make herself miserable – so much so that Lynne only became aware of the altercation unfolding nearby when people started to scream.

This dayglo gloop in the bottles, give it credit: piss-weak, yet Angus, having ingested it in sufficient quantities, could feel it working on him – seething in his blood, blue-glowing. Urgent need to piss. But when he saw Struan jiving away beside the photocopier, next to Lynne’s impersonator, he altered course and made straight for the runt. ‘Hie, you. Baw-jaws.’

The wide wee bastard pretended not to recognize him. ‘What you want?’

‘How’s about an apology tae Lynne fer starters, fat boy? Aboot tonight, and that stuff ye pinned up on the lavvy door aboot her.’ To the impersonator woman: ‘Take a hike, sweet cheeks.’

‘You.’ Struan looked him up and down. ‘You were at the office.’

‘Ah wis, aye. Ah
saw
.’

‘Whit are ye then, Lynne’s boyfriend? Her bodyguard? She’s got anyhing tae say tae me, she kin say it hersel.’

Angus prodded him hard in the shoulder with a finger. ‘Ye go through me, fat boy.’ He wasn’t even particularly fat, a little plump was all, but Angus didn’t feel he could back down on the nickname now. ‘Jist go on over there and apologize nicely, and mibbe then ah’ll let ye walk away.’ Struan didn’t move, and Angus, swaying, uncertain how to escalate, could only repeat, ‘Ah mean now, pally. You know ye’ve been makin her life miserable, and that stops right here.’

‘Aw, come aff it. Her life’s already a misery. Mardy fuckin mare. Thinks jist cos she goat promoted she’s better’n the rest ay us. Thinks—’

Struan didn’t have a chance to say what else Lynne thought, because Angus barrelled into him then, dropping to come in low, as in a rugby tackle, his wrecked leg protesting. His shoulder struck and sank into Struan’s pulpy body, and the impact, the surprise at least, threw the short-arse off his feet, Angus grabbing his arm to spin him about and stop him falling. Lynne whirled across his vision: she wasn’t even looking. What was the point in defending someone’s honour when they didn’t pay attention? Then Struan’s fist got him beneath the ribs, provoking a childhood blurt of pain, ‘Ah-yah!’ and a retaliatory jab to the blond’s chin, shocking back up to Angus’s elbow. A shriek nearby – Lynne now? Angus lucid enough to feel this a bit of an overreaction – and as he and Struan tussled, slapping and grabbing, weirdly silent themselves, a stray elbow or hand struck the copier, which began to document the fight, its light beam rolling over them.

Struan’s clenched fist clouted him once, twice on the right ear. He tried to lift the guy off his feet, felt his back spasm, dropped the effort. Pages wheezed into the photocopier’s out-tray: a forearm, a murky profile, a hand flattened on the glass like a mollusc. Struan’s podgy hand came up, tried to yank at his beard, but Angus lurched away, managing at the same time to crook his arm round Struan’s neck. As he was trying to wrest his opponent’s face round into the photocopier’s scrolling glare to blind him he felt his arms seized, and he was swung by his own momentum around and away from the fight. A voice came in close by his lughole, through the bloodrush: ‘Angus. Gonnae cool it, chief?’ He was almost delighted to recognize Cairry-Oot Aidan’s still-courteous baritone. Who else should intervene but the guy who spent every other night neutralizing rowdy drunks?

Short-breathed, drookit with sweat, Angus let himself be held, exaggerated his grunting and struggling somewhat to disguise the fact that his attempt to batter Struan had been a disaster. Over Aidan’s shoulder he again saw Lynne, aghast now. He wanted to set her right: don’t go acting so appalled by what ye think ah’m capable of; be appalled by the fact that it seems ah amnae capable ay anyhin.

Into Struan’s flushed face wriggled the beginnings of a sneer, a rodenty triumph. Angus relaxed, and when he felt Aidan’s grip slacken, he sprang forward and drove his forehead hard into the middle of Struan’s face – seeming to hear Lynne’s yelp even before the blow connected. A monumental crack and Angus reeled back, dazzled, hands flying to his own face. Conventional wisdom stated that, done right, a headbutt shouldn’t hurt the instigator at all, which suggested he hadn’t done it entirely correctly. Blood flew like sparks. He was aware of turmoil around him, but it was inaudible through the blazing brass roar in his ears.