this Lewington, he was getting nothing from me. It was Rachel or no one. I’d kill who I fucking wanted, post to who I wanted to fucking post to. This was my plan, my rules.
But maybe this was what they wanted. Was that their game? Were they messing with me, trying to throw me off balance? Were the cheeky bastards trying to fuck with my head?
Think, think. I was posting to Narey. They said she had established a dialogue with me. Knew it was me that had started that dialogue. They knew that. They were trying to take that away from me. Break that connection so that I couldn’t get what I wanted. They were cutting me off from her so that I would make a mistake. The bastards.
They thought they were smarter than me. Thought they could control my mind.
I’d seen through them. Saw their little game. They’d need to be a lot cleverer than that. I wasn’t rising to it, not angry any more, I was in control. I picked the paper up and sorted the pages. Placed it back on the table, smoothed it down. In control. Patted the paper so it looked untouched.
But what if they weren’t clever at all? What if they weren’t trying mind games and had simply kicked Narey into touch?
Head bursting with this. Needed to think straight. Concentrate. Sort it.
Bastards. Messing with me. My plan. My rules.
Stick to the plan. Whatever their game was I would stick to the plan. They wanted me to switch course and make a mistake but I’d do what I intended to do. When I wanted. Wouldn’t be rushed. Wouldn’t be panicked.
I knew my next move and I’d make it when I was ready. I’d decide. They’d made me think but they couldn’t make me change course. Too long in the planning, not for changing for anything. I resented them getting rid of Rachel Narey, for whatever reason they’d done it. But I wasn’t getting angry, not for long anyway, I was getting even.
CHAPTER 40
I got on a bus. The number 40 from Maryhill into town.
Three of us at the bus stop. Me, a drunk and a woman doing a fair impression of Maw Broon. They were safe. Whoever it was, it wouldn’t be them.
The drunk was making a fair bid to be elected, right enough. He was doing the lurching tap dance and mumbling to himself. A look in his direction brought a glare, that special Glasgow glare that happens when a guy has drunk enough to think he is six inches taller, two stone heavier and a whole lot harder than he actually is.
I let it go. Other fish to fry.
When I wouldn’t play the game, he tried Maw Broon instead but she had seen plenty of his kind and didn’t bat an eye.
‘Who do you think you are looking at?’ she demanded.
‘Eh?’
‘I said who do you think you are looking at? Don’t fucking look at me like that. Away and fuck off.’
‘Aw, c’mon missus. Nae need for that.’
‘Don’t missus me, ya wee arsehole. Any ay your shite and ah’ll shout ma man doon here to sort you oot.’
It wouldn’t need her man to come down and sort him out. In a square go, my money was on Maw. Straight knockout in the first round, no problem.
The drunk was drunk enough not to have worked that out though.
‘For fuck’s sake. Get him doon here then,’ he came back. ‘Ah’ll tell him how sorry ah ah’m for him, being married tae you and that.’
Mrs Broon breathed in an indignant harrumph and I was sure she was just about to deck him when the number 40 swung round the corner and pulled up in front of us.
The drunk threw her a lopsided smile and stood aside, letting her on first with an exaggerated bow and a low sweep of his arm.
She stormed past without looking at him and took up residence halfway up the bus, her handbag pulled tight to her formidable bosom.
The drunk pulled himself into the first empty seat and let his head smack off the window as it lurched off, feeling no pain.
I sat four rows behind Mrs Broon and had a quiet look around. There were maybe twenty people on board the 40. Glasgow in miniature that bus. All human life was there. White and Asian. Young and old. Shoppers and office workers. Crooks and cops. Prods, Papes, Poles and Pakis. Enough racist opportunity for everyone.
Wee boys in bad suits heading for call centres. Neds in tracksuits heading for street corners. Guys heading for the bookies and the offie.
A couple of kids were pushing and shoving at each other. The first one slapping the second round the head, the second calling him a fud and the pair of them giggling. The wee bastards should have been at school.
A mother with two kids and two big bags of shopping. The five of them squeezed into two seats, her on the outside and them and the messages trapped between her and the window. Weans wriggling like eels, shopping bags bouncing. Trapped but trying to escape.
Another mother. This one no more than mid-twenties and with three kids. Every person on that bus soon knew their names. Chloe. Chantelle. Candice. Chantelle in particular was a real charmer, swinging on the post at the front of the bus, drawing daggers from the driver and shouts from her mother.
Fuck. This was getting harder. So much harder. Had been from the moment that Wallace Ogilvie died.
There was a hard case in a torn leather jacket. His face torn too, an old knife wound scarring him from ear to lip. He was staring at the back page of the Daily Record and shaking his head. The front page had the latest on The Cutter but all he was interested in was who Celtic were supposed to be signing.
Two rows behind him was a junkie, no more than seventeen and off her face. Her scrawny arms tugging at her hair, head twitching. She was bouncing in her seat, bouncing more than the two kids. Energy was bursting out of her. Life leaking out. She must have been good-looking once.
Two guys in white overalls, painters maybe. One of them sleeping on the other’s shoulder. His mate looking out the window at every bit of passing skirt. Knocking on the glass at a couple of them. Winking. Waving with the free arm, the one that wasn’t squashed in by his pal.
Glasgow in miniature. Didn’t look much like a city living in fear, a city living in the shadow of The Cutter. Though it should have done. This bus more than anywhere else. I had already decided it would be the first person who got off at the Viking on Maryhill Road. No particular reason.
The mother had already got off two stops earlier, pulled and pushed down the stairs off the bus by the weans and the shopping. I was glad to see them go. The kids who were plugging the school were still on but I was sure they were headed all the way into the town. Hoped they were. Had to be.
Approaching the Viking. Any time now. I could feel the tension in me. Could feel my heart rate pick up. Any one of them. Anyone.
The hard case in the leather jacket moved in his seat and my eyes turned to him. He’d do. But he was just turning the inside sports pages, settling himself again. Wasn’t him.
One of the two boys stood up and my heart dropped a foot. My breathing stopped. He skelped his pal on the back of the head, got his own back and sat down. Wasn’t him.
My breathing had just started again when a woman brushed past me. She was getting off at the next stop. All I could see was her back. She was as wide as she was tall, just squeezing between the seats. Short and round, thick legs perched on sensible black shoes. A dark raincoat and a scarf. All topped off with a bowl of reddish hair.
She was getting off at the next stop. She was the one.
The woman stood at the front waiting for the bus to come to a halt and copped some chat from the drunk that had already chanced his luck with Maw Broon. I couldn’t hear what he said or what she replied but there was no doubt who had won. The roly-poly snapped something at him and he turned to the window, wrapping his arms round his ears and his head in exaggerated protection. Just wasn’t his day. Slayed by two of Glasgow’s finest within
