White Rage (19 page)

‘I thought you hated the stuff.'

‘Fish pie. Humble pie. I'll swallow whatever it takes for a quiet life.'

21

Bobby Descartes' head felt like the inside of a battered galvanized rubbish bin crammed with fishbones, furry pizza chunks, buzzy bluebottles, and an assortment of wee crawling things. His breath was as foul as sulphur. His throat ached and his teeth, his fucking
teeth
, actually
hurt
. How could that be? This was the Big Kangaroo of all hangovers. This was a hangover so huge it spawned screaming baby hangovers of its own. His brain was bleeding and leaking. Physical movement was barely possible, and his thoughts, such as they were, arrived like slabs of black ice on a frozen sluggish river.

He staggered out of the tenement and into the street. Thank fuck Sandrine was still asleep. He wasn't in any mood to face her. Seven hooded dopers smoked crack on the corner. They surveyed him with no interest and then went back to their ritual pipe-passing. He saw seven crows on a telephone line and he wondered about numerical correspondences, and superstitions.

He'd vomited last night on his mother. Why did he remember that particular humiliation?
Your starter for ten, Descartes
.

He saw Annie, the Tezzie addict, on the other side of the street. She crossed towards him. Skin and bone, all she was. Her eyes were half-shut.

‘Hey Bob, Bobbyman,' she said. She wore a short suede skirt and calf-length boots and her greasy fair hair hung down her back. She was barely a teenager and already she was strung out on Temazepam and hoored to score.

‘Annie, hello doll,' he said. A vertebra moved in his spine. Click click click. It wouldn't stop. He straightened his back. The click went on, except the rhythm was changed. Maybe the noise was inside his head. I'll never drink again.

‘You're bruised,' Annie said. ‘There's a big blue mark on the side of your face.'

‘Fell on my arse down a flight of stairs.' He'd been in Maryhill at one point late last night. He had a flash of himself rolling around on a pavement outside a pub, and people shouting at him angrily. What had he done to deserve a kicking? Told a few home truths, that was all. Stated the facts. People didn't want to hear.

Annie rubbed herself against him. Her lips were dry, cracked. ‘I had a rough night.'

‘One day we'll sit down and compare notes,' he said.

‘Could you take me to a posh restaurant sometime? Could you do that? As a favour like.'

‘You like Chinese?'

‘Love Chinese, love it.'

‘Right then. We'll go to the Canton Express, Sauchiehall Street. Great place.'

‘Tonight?'

‘Naw. Some night when I'm free.' Chinese food. Jesus Christ, rice and ribs and sweet-and-sour pork. His stomach rushed to the back of his throat. The afternoon sky was spinning. It hurt to speak. His throat was sandpaper.

‘I got a fortune cookie once,' Annie said.

Bobby Descartes patted her shoulder. ‘See you soon, pet.' He moved away. Fourteen, one of the walking dead. The streets round here were filled with the damned. Me included. He felt the tenements caving in on him. A collapsed universe. He stopped at the corner of the street and threw up some guff at the foot of a lamp-post. Hot belly broth. He walked unsteadily until he came to a stretch of waste ground.

She was already waiting for him. She wore a black leather jacket and blue jeans tucked inside brown boots. She had her hair drawn back and held by an elastic band. No make-up. She's beautiful and she scares me, he thought.
Fuck, I scare myself
. He was dizzy as he approached her. His gut rumbled.

‘You look like shite,' she said.

‘I feel like shite.'

‘Get in the car.' She pointed to an old Mini parked a few yards away.

The upholstery on the passenger side was shot. Springs and tufts of padding, cracked vinyl. The dashboard had been stripped. No radio. Wires hung loose. The floor was rusty and thin.

He drew a hand across his face. He was going to puke again. He fought it. He tipped his head back in the seat. Don't close your eyes whatever you do. If you close 'em you get dizzy and you chuck your guts. He concentrated.

She said, ‘This is simple. You make a delivery.'

‘That's it?'

‘You think you can do it?'

‘I can do anything,' he said. ‘Didn't I show you that last night?'

She drove, looked tense, didn't speak.

‘I'm not sorry about last night,' he said. ‘I was given a job. I did it.'

Still she said nothing.

‘Like at the kindergarten,' he said.

She looked directly ahead. Fuck this silent act, he thought. Women did the silence thing when it suited them. What was her problem anyway? He'd done the work last night. He'd done it the way she wanted. He had a memory of the black bitch screaming. He saw the hard metal head of the hammer and heard her jaw crack under the force of the blow. He couldn't stop himself. Couldn't stop. Actually got used to it. Liked it. After the first few blows it was just a piece of fucking meat you were pounding to tenderize. That was it. A slab of cow, a black carcass. Blood everywhere. Blood on walls. Floor. Blood and more blood, rivers flowing out of the black cunt's veins.

‘This is just a delivery,' she said. ‘Nothing more.'

‘Right, right, I got it.' He gazed out of the window. Garscube Cross, St George's Road. A couple of turbaned guys walked along like they owned the place.

Then he saw the spires of the university. Wind blew through a screen of trees and created an impression that the towers were swaying side to side. I don't like this feeling, he thought.

He hung his head from the window.

Fresh air, gimme buckets of it.

She said, ‘Not much longer. Five minutes.'

He glanced at her. Fine straight nose except at the end, where it developed a tiny little bulb he longed to kiss. No way. She was untouchable. Even if he risked a kiss, his breath was stupendously
scunnering
, like he had a long-dead weasel in his mouth.

The roaring engine echoed inside his head. A Mini, what year, 1962, ‘63? He found himself staring at shopfronts. Dead animals hanging in a butcher's window, an inverted rabbit not yet skinned, fish on slabs of slushy ice, so much to eat, so much to choke down.

She parked the car, pulled on the handbrake. ‘Here we are.'

‘What now?'

She reached under the seat, produced a small padded white envelope. ‘You go to that shop,' and she pointed. ‘You ask for the owner. You give him the packet. He's expecting it. You come back to the car, I drive you home.'

‘Easy as that, eh?'

‘Easy as that, Beezer.'

She handed him the envelope. It weighed a few ounces at the most.

‘You're up for this?' she asked.

‘This is a stroll on the beach.'

He got out of the car and walked to the shop. She watched him. He seemed to drag himself through the dull light of the afternoon. Last night he'd beaten a woman to death: look at him now, hungover, a shambles.

He stopped outside the shop, knocked twice. He entered, and the glass door slapped shut behind him. She drove away instantly.

She thought: Thanks for the memories.

22

Perlman was glad to escape Force HQ. He regretted, if only in a half-hearted fashion, how he'd opened fire in front of Deacon and the others; presumably his behaviour would provide more howitzers for the stone-hearted Tay to hoist.
Perlman lost it at a meeting today. Out of control, Super. Do something about him
…

Too much, Perlman thought. Too much weight in the baggage I carry. Heart beginning to soften with time, you can't hide from your own humanity. Once upon a time you exorcized the dead with ease. Now they stalk you like demons. They congregate in the corners of your brain, shrouded and horned.

At 3.10 he entered Bewley's Hotel in Bath Street, where Dennis Murdoch was waiting in the bar. The young constable was dressed in a beige raincoat and dark brown suit and black shoes. Perlman thought: He looks like a policeman. No matter what he wears, he gives out the same aura. It was like a sonic warning: I am a copper emitting noise. It was his height, Perlman thought, and the size of his shoes, and the evangelical look in his eye. Either a big-footed Bible salesman or a policeman – and who was selling Bibles door-to-door in these heathen times?

Perlman ordered coffee, dropped a lump of sugar in, stirred it. ‘Tell me about scenic Bargeddie, Dennis.'

‘It doesn't have a lot to offer, Sergeant.'

‘You josh. No tourist attractions? No beauty spots?'

‘It's the back of beyond. There are places out there I've never even
heard
of – Birkenshaw. Langmuir. Crosshill. You wouldn't go to Bargeddie unless you had a specific destination in mind.'

‘People tell me Drumpellier Country Park is pleasant.'

‘I didn't see any park,' Murdoch said.

‘But you saw Bargeddie Haulage.'

‘I did. The depot is situated just off Gartcosh Road. One huge metal building and a wire perimeter fence. The site is probably about a couple of acres big. Trucks coming, trucks going. I counted about twenty. What you'd expect to see at any haulage operation, Sergeant.'

‘How close did you get?'

‘I drove right up to the front gate,' Murdoch said. ‘A guy came out, asked me what I wanted. Said I was looking for directions to Edinburgh. He told me I was trespassing on private property and piss off. Helpful bugger.'

‘Maybe he was just trying to spare you the genteel horrors of Edinburgh.'

Murdoch sipped his tea. He held the cup clamped in his big hand. ‘I didn't hang around. The place has a sort of tense feel to it. And when they say no trespassing you get the sense that there might be a shotgun concealed nearby.'

‘Anything else?'

Murdoch produced a little green notebook. ‘Only what's in the computer. Public knowledge. Bargeddie Haulage is owned by Zahar Industries, a subsidiary of Ramesh Holdings. The directors of Ramesh are Bharat, Madhur, Indra, Dev and Tilak Gupta. A family firm, clearly. Registered offices Crown Street, Glasgow.'

‘Who's Madhur?'

‘Bharat's wife,' Murdoch said, consulting his notes.

It occurred to Perlman he'd never seen Mrs Gupta. ‘So Bharat stuck family members on the board of his holding company. Nice way of keeping total control. Wife, daughter, son … and nephew. I wonder why he went outside the immediate so-called nuclear family to bring the nephew in.'

‘Tilak Gupta's official position was Company Secretary.'

Perlman considered another coffee, decided against it. The caffeine jag made him cranky. And he'd been cranky enough today without the help of stimulants. ‘Any irregularities?'

‘It's a clean company. They own thirty vehicles. They had one offence two years ago, when one of their vehicles had invalid insurance. An oversight in their accounts department, seemingly. That's it.'

‘Any idea what they carry?'

‘They have a couple of refrigerated vehicles, so foodstuffs would be one.'

Perlman imagined truckloads of frozen peas roaring down motorways. ‘What else?'

‘I saw some small cardboard packing crates inside the compound stencilled with Indian lettering,' Murdoch said. ‘I
assume
it was Indian. Maybe they import spices. Or tea.'

Perlman heard a pert little waitress sing ‘
the tide is high, I'm moving on
' as she sashayed past the table, balancing a tray. He watched her go. He thought about Miriam. Why hadn't he accepted the offer of the sofa last night? The Puritan Jew.

‘It would be useful to get something more specific on the cargo.'

‘I'll dig around,' Murdoch said.

‘With the utmost care, son.' Perlman looked out at Bath Street. A very light rain fell. Black taxis, buses, a city on the move. Faces in bus windows watching the street, or reading newspapers, or just dreaming whatever kind of dreams the city provoked. They hadn't heard of White Rage yet. It was an oil well waiting to be drilled by the media – and then,
gush
, Glasgow would be awash in geysers of newsprint and fear. He heard headlines roar like runaway trains in his brain. He saw the computer impression of the young woman's face splattered across the tabloids and broadsheets alike.
Do You Know This Girl? Is She A Cold-Blooded Race Hatred Killer?
And all the tumult he'd lived through in the aftermath of Colin's death would come back again as the fife and drum bands of the press assembled and played their bloodcurdling tunes.

Terry Bogan appeared in the doorway. He wore a tweed overcoat and a deerstalker bent slightly out of shape. He looked like a penniless squire reduced to living in a ruined tower, which he shared with some stray cattle. He spotted Perlman, raised a hand, then marched across the floor. There were tiny drops of rain in his whiskers.

‘Thought I'd find you here. They tell me this is one of your regular haunts.'

‘It's convenient and the coffee's passable,' Perlman said. He introduced Murdoch. ‘Dennis here has been on the Force for – what? Three years?'

‘Two,' Murdoch said.

Bogan took off his hat and shook rain from it. ‘Two years? Enjoying it so far?'

‘Absolutely,' Murdoch said.

‘Ah, youth, youth,' Bogan said. He stuck his hat back on his head. ‘Remember those carefree days, Lou? Remember when it was a joy just to come into work, and you jumped out of bed a little bit quicker?'

‘Dennis is enthusiastic, Terry. Don't discourage him.'

Bogan said, ‘Far be it from me. Can we talk about Tilak Gupta? A barman at the Corinthian remembers seeing him the night he died.'

‘Ah. Alone?'

‘He was draped all over some pretty young thing. Glued to her, the barman said. They might have been epoxied together. They danced most of the night. He was practically slipping her a length on the dance floor. The barman's not sure the exact time they left.'