Crime

Tianna that her mother is going to be helping the police put away bad guys like Vince, Clemson, Lance and Johnnie. Which is probably the biggest truth he’s gotten to tell her.

SIX DAYS LATER

23 Holocaust

THE FULL-LENGTH BATHROOM mirrors collapse, for his own critical eyes, a thousand naked Ray Lennoxes into infinity; each one carrying the maternal stain of infidelity. Avril Lennox was the surprise package; he’d been watching his father to see how he’d turn out and the old girl had sneaked up on the blind side, the one with the clandestine life and the lusty secrets. From adolescence through your twenties it had been about making your mark as an individual, concealing your hereditary legacy in the process. Then, suddenly, you were on the stage like a stripper under harsh lights; peeling off everything to reveal your DNA.

He clicks off the bathroom spots, watches them bruise to dark, swings the door open with a flourish. The oomph is back; that sexual urge, no, that sexual imperative. Will I be able to do the right thing by Trudi? he wonders, emerging into the pulsing light of the hotel bedroom.

He pulls a cord, twisting the blind closed as she clicks on a bedside light, like a chessmaster expertly countering an opponent’s manoeuvre. She’s as naked as he is, meeting his approach with a defiant thrust at him, her sunbed tan a new outfit. Her body, in his trembling hands, is even tighter than he remembers. In the light from the indented lamps above the headboard he can see a rash of milk-white hairs, finer than silk, across her light brown arms, broken up by the odd little patch of peeling pink that dismays her. She seems so fresh that to squeeze her would leave marks; a gingerbread girl from the oven. A wave of tenderness rushes over him and he has an irresistible urge to stroke her face. Misinterpreting this gesture, Trudi pushes him gently back on to the bed, swivelling round, her sharp, pointed tongue licking down his freshly scrubbed chest, heading south. It lodges for a few tantalising seconds in his navel. A cursory flick or two and it continues as her lips open around his prick.

Lennox gasps, feeling himself stiffen, his cock swelling up in her mouth. He looks at her adjusting to the newer, more formidable status quo, a gratified surprise in her eyes that accompanies the meeting of an old friend. He tucks her hair behind her ears to enjoy the feast of her face.

Both are determined the erection will last, and she’s eagerly complicit when he groans, — I don’t want to get there yet, and he pulls out and mounts her as they make love in a controlled, precarious way, almost delighted that they can, respecting the wondrous building power of each moment with something close to forensic intensity.

They climax together, wildly; Lennox’s pulsing ejaculations so thick and heavy they almost hurt him. Trudi’s eyes roll to the back of her head and a banshee-like howl he feared he’d never hear again fills the room. Spent, they quickly dissolve into a deep post-coital slumber. He feels himself careering across an ocean until he can see Toal behind the lectern at the auction rooms. The still and silent mannequin stands in the coffin. They are bidding, the others; all in shadow, but they seem weaker. Because Les Brodie is by his side, and they’re not boys any more. The voice of a nonce behind him says, — Two million.

— Three million! Les screams.

— Four million, comes the cry, but there is now uncertainty in the voices of the men in the shadows. They seem to be coming from further away.

Lennox studies Brodie’s face. Gets the signal. — FIVE MILLION! they cry out in unison, in that noise Scots make, through their inventions and their drunken carousings, their gift to Planet Earth of its anthem, ‘Auld Lang Syne’: the sound heard around the world.

— Sssiiixx milliiooonn… the nonce voices fade.

— I didn’t get that bid. Could you repeat it? Toal asks. — No? The last bid was five million. Going… going… sold… to Ray Lennox!

The girl on the stage is now wearing a white bridal gown. She reaches up and removes her mask as Lennox flies to the surface from that mine of sleep, sweat and duvet. Opens his eyes. Trudi’s face next to his on the pillow. Eyes shut, crooked smile. He takes a grateful, exhilarating gulp of air. After savouring a few moments of intense pathos and adoration, he wakes her with a kiss.

She’s both delighted and irritated to be roused in this way. — Oh Ray… what’s up, baby? You’ve not been having those horrible dreams again?

— No, beautiful dreams of white brides, he says, reaching out for her.

Trudi snuggles into him, then after a pause, where she’s so still and silent he thinks she’s fallen back asleep, says, — At least give Stuart a bell, Ray.

— Later, he forces a smile, pulling one arm behind his head on the pillow, feeling the wastage and shrinkage of his biceps muscle and thinking gym, gym, gym, — we’re on holiday.

— Okay, she says, and gets out of the bed and heads to the bathroom. He watches her move with lithe, coltish grace, admiring the slender tautness of her buttocks, the blades of her shoulders and the smooth indentation her spine leaves in her back. Then she’s gone and he hears the water jets hiss.

Stuart.

What had happened to the elfin-eyed kid with the clear skin and golden-brown curling hair?

Their father’s funeral. Stuart’s face reddening after every whisky; that vile, sickening concoction. The pastry from the sausage roll he was eating flaking off into his glass without him noticing. Pulling Lennox into the corner at the funeral reception and whispering in a nervy excitement. Beetroot countenance and flaring nostrils in such proximity. How Stuart had no notion of personal space at the best of times and just how smotheringly close he got when he was drunk. — It was embarrassing having to go and tidy out his office. I found a porn stash in the desk.

Lennox had raised a tired eyebrow, wanting him to stop, but too weary to insist. His skin crawling from being up all night free-basing coke in his Leith flat, where he’d gone after he’d walked out on Melissa Collingwood and the counselling.

Stuart misread this sign as intrigue. — Everything in it, Raymie, I shiteth thee not. Couldnae believe it. Dad! I took Jasmine for a drink. She admitted she felt terrible because when she’d looked through his office window and saw him all tensed up, she thought he was having a wank. He must have been known for it! So she turns away sharpish, then she hears stuff crashing around. She opens the door and sees Dad lying on the deck. He hadnae been jerking off. He was huvin a fucking heart attack.

The poor old bastard. Trying so hard to find his sexuality, that cardinal component of the self, but buried by the pills that were keeping him alive.

Lennox looking at his young brother, seeing blemishes on the skin he’d never noticed before. They might have been new. Beholding a slack-jawed muppet; an actor, a performer, always onstage. The more fucking drama, the more spoiled wee Stu would absorb it, would thrive.

— Are you going to talk to Mum?

— Just keep her the fuck away fae me, he’d said, watching his teary mother. Trudi standing beside her, consoling her. Trying to explain the inexplicable. Why isn’t Ray talking to me, Trudi? He’d told Trudi, of course, but he wasn’t sure if she’d believed him or had put it down to a deranged fantasy to be placed in the ‘stress’ dustbin.

Then Jock Allardyce had moved across to him, and he was followed by Avril Lennox, her trembling hand unwittingly teasing a glass of red wine. Big Jock’s shock of white hair, lustrously gelled back, his sad, blue eyes. — Look, Raymond, I just want to say—

— You get the fuck out ay my face, Mr Confectioner, and take her wi ye. He turned to his mother. — Ma faither’s still fucking warm, ya sick bastards!