‘Like I said, I’ll get you another one.’
‘Aye, and like I said, you can then get tae fuck, ya cunt.’
‘Hm,’ was all Addison said, nodding to the barman who was anxiously hovering nearby that he should get the guy another pint of lager. The drink was poured and sat in front of the still-seething twenty-year-old.
‘I should fucking think so an’ all,’ he snarled. ‘Fucking eejit.’
Addison shook his head, his patience wearing thin and the good mood he was in from the Temple’s phone call gone out the window.
‘I’ve bought you a pint even though you just spilled a mouthful,’ he told the boy. ‘I’ve said sorry. Now behave yourself, drink it and shut your fucking mouth.’
Addison turned away from the drunk and took a mouthful of his own pint. As he raised the glass, the boy pushed out an elbow and deliberately bumped Addison’s drinking arm causing the glass to chink into his teeth.
Enough was enough and Addison put his glass down slowly before stretching out an arm and shoving the drunken kid clean off his feet. He fell stupidly, trying and failing to grab at the bar counter on the way down but only catching thin air on his way to a hard landing on the pub’s tiled floor. All noise in the Griffin stopped like a needle being lifted off an old LP and there were sniggers and shouts from the speakeasy seats. Out the corner of his eye, Winter saw the barman reach under the bar and take hold of something that was undoubtedly as heavy as it was handy. Addison gave him a level stare to say he’d seen the movement as well and that to bring out whatever was under the bar would be as silly as it was unnecessary. The barman knew Addison was a cop and probably took Winter for one as well. He nodded but didn’t look best pleased.
The boy was flat on his back, embarrassment raging in his eyes, so angry he was almost in tears. He lashed out with his feet, succeeding in kicking the foot of Addison’s barstool.
‘Away home,’ sneered Addison. ‘Your mammy will be wondering where you are.’
Somebody else sniggered and there was a fair chance this didn’t do anything for the ginger guy’s mood. He jumped to his feet, furiously wiping beer puddles from his jeans. In a flash he’d reached inside his coat and whipped out a knife, its blade twirling and glinting under the lights of the pub.
Instinctively Winter stepped off his stool but Addison had beaten him to it and had already pushed an arm across in front of him to hold him back.
‘For fucksake,’ he growled at the kid. ‘More paperwork. I don’t need any more fucking paperwork. I hate fucking paperwork. Do you have any idea how much I hate paperwork? Do you?’
The boy roared and lunged at Addison’s face, slashing towards his cheek. Addison was more than ready for him though, stepping quickly to one side and catching the boy’s wrist as it came through and twisting it till the knife tumbled onto the floor, turning the kid’s arm tight behind his back, grabbing his head back by his hair with the other and making him squeal.
‘I’ll tell you how much,’ Addison continued into his ear. ‘I really, really hate paperwork. So much so that I’m prepared to kick your sorry little arse out into the street on the understanding that you get as far away from here as quickly as you can and that you never set foot in this place again. Everyone is entitled to a second chance and you’ve just had yours. There won’t be another. Understand?’
The bampot muttered an ‘Aye’ and tried to pull away from Addison’s grasp. The DI abruptly let him go and the boy staggered forward comically until he ran through the pub doors without a backward glance. Seeing him go, Addison sat himself back down, throwing the Highland Park down his throat and soundlessly signalling to the barman for a replacement in one seamless movement.
Winter had barely begun to complain that he didn’t want one when Addison shrugged, picked up Winter’s glass as it arrived on the counter and sent it chasing down after his own. ‘Please yourself,’ he muttered.
He was staring past the barman into the mirror behind the bar and he didn’t look – how had Rachel put it? – like a happy bunny at all.
‘What is it with these wee dicks?’ Addison asked without looking at him. Maybe it wasn’t even Winter he was asking.
He sat for minutes, breathing hard and staring alternatively from the glass behind the bar to the one in front of him that held his whisky, pensive and angry. He finally gave up his thoughts to his drink, low enough so that only Winter could hear.
‘You ever watch wildlife documentaries?’ he asked.
‘What?’
‘David Attenborough, Life on Earth, National Geographic Channel, that kind of stuff?’
‘Well, sometimes. If there’s nothing else on.’
‘Should watch them. Might learn something. There’s this animal, the honey badger. Just a wee thing, no more than a foot high, but it’s scared of nothing. Get them in Africa and western bits of Asia – Iraq and Pakistan and the like. They take on anything and back down from nothing. Reckoned to be the most fearless animal on the planet. They tackle scorpion, porcupine, meerkat, mongoose, gazelle, python, you name it. They even take on small crocodiles and water buffalo.
‘Hard wee bastards and dirty fighters. They say one of its favourite tactics when it’s up against something much bigger than itself, like a buffalo, is to go right for the balls. Bites them clean off and waits for the fucker to bleed to death before ripping it to bits. But for me, the most amazing thing is that when something does get a hold of it, the honey badger still has a trick up its sleeve. It’s got this ability to twist inside its own skin and bite whatever is holding it. Whatever you do, you don’t fuck with a honey badger. Fucking brilliant, isn’t it?’
‘Aye, wonderful. Addy, what’s your point?’
His face hardened.
‘My point is that if a honey badger could speak then you could bet your last fucking dollar that it would have a Glaswegian accent. Too small to be continually picking battles with the big boys but programmed not to know any better. Just too brave or too stupid to know when to back away from a fight.’
Winter laughed. It was the wrong answer apparently.
‘The thing is it’s not funny, Tony, not funny at all. Every fucking day in Glasgow some stupid wee dick dies because he was born in the wrong place at the wrong time with the wrong attitude. And, just to be clear, every single one of them, every single one of us, is born with the wrong attitude. If you don’t have it then you get the shit kicked out of you. Or get it kicked into you. Chicken or egg. Hit the fucker with the stick and if that doesn’t work then hit him with the carrot. Or stab him with the stick. Either way, you stand on your own two feet or you die on your arse. It’s the Glasgow way. Fuck them or they fuck you. Learn quick or be a victim.
‘That’s why this place is full of wee boys who are dying to be hard men. The cemeteries are full of them. Wee boys with what they think is courage instead of brains, all of them ignorant of the single piece of wisdom that might just keep them alive. The brave thing to do is run, the cowardly thing is to stand and fight just because you are scared of being labelled a coward. The ones that can find the guts to realize that it’s all right to be afraid are the ones that just might live to see their next giro rather than become another statistic. The rest end up the same place that stupid wee fucker out there is going. I give him five years tops till he’s pushing up daisies.’
Addison knocked back the last of his Highland Park, closing his eyes and savouring it as it slipped down. When he opened his eyes again, he turned to Winter with a grin replacing the grimace that had been stuck to his face.
‘Okay, lecture over. I’ve drunk enough for one day. Home time.’
With that he lurched off the bar stool and headed for the door without looking back.
‘Remember to talk to Alex Shirley for me?’ Winter shouted after him. ‘Get me doing photographs on the case?’
‘Och, no chance. You’ve burnt your bridges on that one.’
Winter jumped off his stool and caught the door before it hit the latch.
‘Come on, Addy, you said you’d speak to him. You know how important this is to me.’
The DI still didn’t look back but shouted to him over his shoulder as he headed towards Sauchiehall Street.
‘I’ve told you, wee man, you bite too easily. Takes all the fun out of it. Trust your Uncle Addy. Talk to you tomorrow.’
Winter could still hear him laughing as he disappeared down Elmbank Street in search of a taxi.
