Crime

breakdown, career frustration, mental breakdown, life.

It was too much. He’s tired of surviving. It’s time to live. Lennox sees that Robyn is standing waiting in open anticipation.

— Would either of you ladies care for a drink?

They nod in the affirmative and state their choice. As the barman pours, Lennox feels he’s been hustled but his only mild resentment comes from the girls’ apparent belief that he doesn’t realise this. — This here’s Ray- with-a-y from Skatlin, Robyn grins.

— What kind of work you in, Ray? Starry asks.

— Sales, Lennox lies. He never says he’s a cop when he’s in company. Not unless he wants rid of it.

Starry flashes a shit-eating grin as she accepts his drink. She steers Robyn, almost pushing her forward into Lennox. The women smile at each other. There is no doubt as to who’s in charge here, he thinks. The petty victories. He’s seen it so many times before, in so many of the women he’s encountered through his work.

Angela Hamil asked for so little. She was destroyed that her daughter had been abducted, raped, murdered. But there seemed no real anger. Life had long since defeated her; she acted like she expected and even deserved this horror that had been visited upon her, that it was her due. It was just another misery piled on top of the ones she’d already had to endure.

Serious Crimes.

Lennox thinks about the name of the department and the actual activities that gave it its title. Murder. Rape. Serious assault. Kidnapping. Armed robbery. Obviously, most people who committed serious crimes were in a bad way. But so many of the victims shared that characteristic. Too often it was the same set of circumstances that threw the victim and perpetrator together.

— Scotland must be a damn fine country, Starry is saying to him in her more generic American voice.

Lennox pulls a taut smile. — It’s okay.

— Cause it looks like your head’s still over there. Tell ya what I think, there’s usually only one thing makes a strange man come into a strange bar alone and throw back those drinks like you been doin. And that’s a strange woman.

Angela Hamil. Trudi Lowe.

— Strange women. Aye, there’s a few of them around, Lennox retorts.

— So, how are sales these days? Starry asks, imbuing the innocuous statement with cryptic sleaze.

— Oh, not so bad. You know how it is, Lennox enigmatically rejoins, getting into her game.

She looks at him as if prompting him to say more. Then she asks, — So what do you sell?

— I never talk about work when I’m socialising, he says. All I will say is that it’s not the commodity that’s important, it’s the customer.

Starry seems to glow at his bland response. She pulls her friend forward again, and Lennox tries to figure out what the game is as the girls shuffle around him with the nervous energy of punch-drunk, traumatised old contenders in a seedy gym, evidently ready to sing for their supper. — You’re cute, Robyn giggles. Lennox knows that she’s drunk, they probably both are, but Starry is holding it better.

As they chat, his ears quickly become desensitised to the superficial glamour of the American accent, and he can now see these women in any scuzzy backstreet Edinburgh pub. A lifetime of cigarette consumption seems to induce all the bar’s smoke to congregate around Robyn’s grey skin and cheap, flashy clothing like iron filings to a magnet.

— So you know a few strange women, Starry says, her eyes going to his bandaged hand. — Does that make you a strange man? Who am I kidding, is there any other kind?

Lennox has sparred in too many Edinburgh meat markets to be wrong-footed by some apolitical feminist jibes. — We do stupid very well, he says, then adds, — but you girls beat us hands down when it comes to crazy. That’s just the way we are.

Starry laughs, opening her jaws so wide it seems she could swallow up the bar and everybody in it. Lennox stares into the ribbed, pink cavern of that mouth, the protruding red tongue a welcome mat, quickly coiling into a threatening snake. — And don’t you forget it!

— Excuse me a second, ladies, while I answer the call of nature. Lennox slides from his stool and makes for the restrooms in the corner of the bar.

Why did they call it a restroom?

Lennox feels like he really wants to rest. To lie down on the tiled floor covered in men’s pish, shoe leather, dirt, cigarette ash, and sleep like a baby. Instead, he stretches out his bad hand and starts to unwrap the elasticised bandage with his good one. The dressing is discoloured and a stink rises from it. A spasm of fear seizes him, and he almost expects to be confronted by a withered, black and green gangrenous object. In the event his hand is stiff, red and a little swollen and angry-looking around the knuckles, and his eyes water when he tries to make a fist of it. But it’s still visibly his hand, and is probably on the mend. He entrusts it with the holding and pointing of his penis and can’t bear to watch his dark and stagnant urine splash against the metal of the latrine.

Lennox washes his hands with care, welcoming the other back into the family.

It took him thirty-five seconds to grab her, bundle her into the van, gag and secure her with electrical tape and drive off.

Puts his hands under a dryer. Enjoys the heat sensation against the numbed, sore paw.

The two women face Lennox as he emerges back into the pub. Starry has picked up the copy of Perfect Bride and is leafing through it. But now there is someone else on the scene, another man who has emerged from the shadows at the back of the bar and who approaches the women at the same time as the returning Lennox. He looks at Starry in confusion.

Lennox realises that the guy is about the same height as him, around six two, and also in his mid- thirties. — I’m in sales, he beams at Starry and Robyn, ignoring Lennox, who gently seethes. This cunt has been listening in to me talking, and now he’s taking the piss.

Pulling on his shoulder, Lennox pivots him round. — I’ll tell what you’re in if you don’t fuck off right now. Trouble. Big fucking trouble. Is that clear?

The guy blinks, taken aback.

— Hey… Starry begins, laying down the magazine on the bar, — no need for that!

— Listen, buddy… the guy starts, but Lennox can see that any certainties he has are evaporating.

He feels himself smouldering with violence. This guy has rubbed him up the wrong way. — I’m no your buddy. Got that?

— Have it your way—

— I intend tae. Now fuck off.

The man shrugs, raises his palms in appeal and skulks back into the corner of the bar.

— What was that about? Starry says, evidently upset.

— I didn’t like him, Lennox tells her, as he keeps his eyes on the man, who promptly finishes his drink and leaves.

— He seemed a nice guy, she says, looking to Robyn.

— I dunno, I thought he was kinda creepy.

— I guess you would know all about that, honey.

Robyn screws up her face a little and shrugs, turning to Lennox with a tight smile.

Starry seems to relinquish her anger. — Look, let’s move on somewhere else.

They discuss where to go. Lennox thinks that he should head back to the hotel. Make his peace with Trudi. Tiredness is kicking in. But he can’t face her. Better to wait till she’s asleep.

— What’s this? Starry asks Lennox. She holds up the copy of Perfect Bride. — You planning a wedding?

— Aye. Not my own though, he says, surprised how effortlessly falsehoods pirouette from his mouth. The difference between a cop and a villain is that we get paid a salary and make better liars, his mentor Robbo once told him. — That’s what I sell, he qualifies. — Weddings; the whole package.

— You’re a wedding planner? Like the Adam Sandler movie? Robyn squeals in delight.

— Well, yeah. He looks at Starry who is forcing a grim smile, before her cellphone ringtone starts to play ‘Won’t Get Fooled Again’. She apologises, moving to the door of the bar to answer it.