The Quiet Death of Thomas Quaid: Lennox 5 (40 page)

‘You sure were,’ I said, dully. ‘You had me hook, line and sinker.’ The truth was I’d suspected something from the way he had overplayed the military thing. But I said nothing: I didn’t think now, when I was soon to hold his unconscious head under water until he drowned, was a good time to give him critical notes. I pushed the second bottle across the floor to him. ‘Cheers . . .’

‘Cheers . . .’ He snatched up the bottle, sneering defiantly at me with the half of his face that was capable of sneering defiantly, and took two long pulls. He wiped his mouth, his lips now slack with booze.

‘Wanna know ’bout my face? What happn’d it?’

‘Sure,’ I said. There was an etiquette to killing a man in cold blood. An executioner’s code. Anyway, it wouldn’t be long now. He’d get so drunk that he’d start talking nonsense, then he’d fall asleep, then I’d force more booze down him, then he’d pass out; and then I’d kill him, making it look like a drowning accident in the bath.

‘Everybody thinks I was wounded. But I wasn’t. I never saw action. Fucking entertainment corps. Along with Frankie fucking Findlay – by the way, you kill him?’

‘I didn’t play lead, but was in the supporting cast,’ I said.

‘Good. Surprise t’hear me say ’at? Good fuckin’ riddance. No loss either. What he did to those kids. Fucking creep.’ He shook his head woozily as if annoyed at losing his thread. ‘Anyway, Findlay was in Singapore with me, but fucked off before the Japs came. By the way, he started all this shite as far back as then, out there in Singapore. He used to arrange little parties for officers, local whores an’ that. Rumour was he also catered for “special tastes”. He made a fuckin’ fortune out of it and gained powerful friends. Got himself transferred home. Me?’ He stabbed his chest with his thumb. ‘Muggins here gets captured in forty-two when Singapore fell. Along with eighty-five thousand other poor bastards.’ He shook his head and it nearly cost him his balance, even sitting down. ‘All because they put that useless, buck-toothed, lanky streak of piss Percival in charge. Anyway, I was in with the real fighting men – Aussies and Indians who’d been captured after Sarimbun Beach – an’ others who’d had to give up without a fight.’

‘Keep drinking . . .’ I said. He actually made an apologetic gesture and took a couple of hefty swigs.

‘
Anyway
. . . I ended up with the others in a prisoner of war camp. A labour camp run by the Kempeitai. Men starved, beaten and worked to death. But I got what everyone else thought was a cushy number. The Nips put me to work as a steward in the Kempeitai barracks. In the non-comms’ mess, serving drinks and polishing boots for fuckin’ Jap’nese NCOs. For a while it
was
a cushy number. Not as hard work as the others an’ I was able to steal scraps of food, sleep separately from the others. Less chance of catching typhus or dysentery, y’see.’ He frowned, trying to focus on his story through his growing stupor; or maybe it was the memory that was making him frown. ‘But then things started to change: there was this particular sergeant – Sergeant Tsukuda. I can still see the little bastard. A short-arsed, squat, dark-skinned wee sadist. I’d taken the odd beating for being too slow or not serving the
sake
right, but this little shite decided to start a new game. This night they were all pretty pissed and I brought in another tray of
tokkuri
and
ochoko
– you know, the pottery jug and cups the Nips use for
sake
. Anyway, instead of being dismissed, Tsukuda makes me stand to attention and wait. Wee bastard starts waving yen about like he was starting a bet on something. Know what they were bettin’on? Me. Tsukuda walks straight up to me and hits me in the face, hard. That side.’ McNaught pointed to the right side of his face.

‘I go down, everybody starts fucking laughing. I’m hauled to m’feet and the next Nip has a swing, then the next, then the next. I can hear the sound still – the bones cracking in my face. Eventually I pass out. The bet, I worked out, had been to see how many punches it would take to put me out. I woke up in the dirt outside the mess hut. Next day, they treated me as usual and no one laid a finger on me. They didn’t for two weeks. Then they obviously reckoned that I’d healed enough for it to be sport again. So they did the same thing. Did it the following week, and the week after, and the week after. Breaking and rebreaking the bones in my face, always just on that side. It went on for months. That’s why I look the way I do.’

I nodded. There wasn’t much to say. There were a thousand – tens of thousands – of stories like that, brought back from the war in broken containers.

‘But I swore I’d get the wee cunt.’ More waving of the bottle. ‘After they dropped the bomb and Japan surrendered, the Nips handed over the camp to us. Tsukuda knew what was good for him and fucked off sharpish. I searched for him for days. All I thought about was killing the little bastard, cutting chunks out of him. Payin’ him back. Thousand per cent interest. Never did find him though. Never did get justice. Never did.’

He shook his head sadly and looked across the table, his eyes struggling to focus on me. He was now too drunk to be any danger, if he ever really had been any danger, so I tucked the gun back in my waistband, came around to his side of the table. Holding his head back, I poured the rest of the bottle into him. A lot of the whisky was spilled as he coughed, spluttered and gargled on it, but enough went in to finish the job.

I let him go and he slumped onto the settee. I slapped his face a couple of times and called his name, but got no response.

Taking out my cufflinks and putting them in my pocket, I slipped off my jacket and rolled up my shirtsleeves. I went through to the bathroom and ran the bath taps. Gresty didn’t regain consciousness while I undressed him, leaving his clothes scattered on the floor. When he was naked, I dragged him across the living room and into the bathroom. It took a lot of effort to get him into the bath, which was filling up. Eventually I got him in and waited until the water level was up to his chest.

I looked at him. A fucked-up man with a fucked-up face and a fucked-up life.

I grabbed his ankles and pulled his legs upwards. Gresty’s head went under the water. There was a stream of bubbles from his nose and mouth, then a sudden explosion of them burst the surface as, without regaining consciousness, he bucked and wriggled under the water. He started to drown.

A fucked-up man with a fucked-up face and a fucked-up life, which I was now ending for him. Maybe he had been right: maybe he had played the part well, after all. I was killing McNaught, the character he had played, not Gresty, the actor. For some reason I couldn’t get the image of that photograph on the mantelpiece out of my head. A pathetic attempt to brighten up a bleak and empty life with memories of a past life. A life that had been shaped by the cruelty of a little Japanese who’d never been held to account. I was doing Gresty a favour.

‘Fuck it!’

I reached into the bath and placing my hands under his armpits hauled his head out of the water. He coughed and spluttered, eventually pulling a long, rasping breath. His eyes opened for a moment and held mine, confused, before he lost consciousness again.

I pulled the plug and let the water drain away.

Before I left the flat, I hauled Gresty out of the bath, through to the bedroom and laid him on his side in the bed, his face turned down and out, pillows behind him to stop him rolling onto his back. After my sudden and inexplicable beneficence, I didn’t want him to choke on his own vomit.

*

I drove back to Glasgow to pick up Jennifer and take her out on the town. Maybe we would just have a laugh, or maybe we could have a serious talk. A talk about how maybe the time was right for a new start for me, for us both, back home in Canada.

As I drove, I tried to work out why I hadn’t gone through with killing Gresty, but I felt good I hadn’t. Maybe I was developing a conscience.

Or maybe I was being haunted by the ghost of a good, quiet man I had once known.