plod — as quickly as possible. We did well — Mac might have made a wheelman in another incarnation. I knew the bus route to Sighthill, but Mac was taking me — there’s a phrase — all around the houses.
‘You’re sure about this?’ he said.
‘Am I sure? Of course I’m sure.’ I wondered why Mac the Knife was asking me this. Had he changed his mind about what we were about to do? ‘Are you sure?’
He took his eyes off the road, turned to me. ‘Fucking right.’ He pointed me to a carrier bag at my feet. ‘Check that.’ Inside was a length of rope, tied at one end in a hangman’s noose.
Of all the people I knew, Mac was the last one to go bottling it on me. I said, ‘This wee prick’s got something to hide; I can feel it in my bones.’
He crunched the gears, upped the speed as we took a steep hill with a curve to the left. ‘Well, if the Sid you saw is Sid the Snake, you can bet on that.’
‘I’m sure that Vera Fulton’s got more to give us as well, but this Sid fella was rattled, seriously rattled, when I went round there the last time.’
‘Well, we’ll give him a tug and see what’s what.’
I held on to the handle above the door as Mac tanked it into Sighthill.
‘What’s the Jackanory with him and Rab Hart?’ I said.
‘That’s a tricky one. We definitely don’t want to be pissing Rab off.’
‘Think they’re thick?’
Mac eyed me again. ‘Rab and Sid?… I’d fucking doubt it. Sid’s a bottom feeder. He’ll have been running some small-time racket for Rab. My guess, since Sid’s a bookie, it’ll be a book on the dog fighting… but hey, you can ask Rab yourself when you get up to the big hoose.’
‘You think that’s likely?’
‘Gus, you better get in and see him. He’ll only send someone for you if you don’t.’
‘No thanks.’
‘Gus, the pug he sent round wasn’t messing about… Rab wants to see you like fucking yesterday.’
As we arrived, the jungle bus was pulling in just ahead of us, dislodging a grim cargo of trackie-wearing neds and defeated old folk too afraid to lift their heads from the streets.
‘Look at the state of this,’ said Mac.
‘Tell me. It’s grim as death.’
An old man, so bloated he could hardly walk, was struggling with two Lidl carrier bags at the side of the road. As he waited for a gap in the traffic, two young yobs sneaked up behind him and pulled down his joggers. The bloke was exposed to the world, but too scared to put down his bags for fear they’d be stolen. He struggled to get both bags in one hand before struggling again to hitch up his joggers.
‘The wee bastards,’ said Mac.
The yobs stood at the side of the street laughing it up. Between them they were an advertisement for fluoridation of the water supply — hardly a good tooth in either head.
‘This place is a fucking nightmare.’
‘Think yourself lucky you’re not living here.’
It was on my mind to say ‘Maybe soon’, or perhaps ‘I could be facing worse’, but I let the thought pass without giving voice to it.
We pitched up outside Moosey’s home. The street was deserted, save a few half-starved mongrels that trotted about in packs, sniffing at bin bags and the litter and scraps that blew everywhere.
‘You think those dogs belong to anyone?’ I asked.
‘Aye,’ said Mac, ‘fucking everyone.’
‘What — they’re a feral pack?’
‘What else would you call them? They’re not looked after, that’s for sure…’ He sat upright behind the wheel. ‘Oh, hang on: show time.’
Voices came from Moosey’s house. A couple of young yobs emerged, spraffin’ away together and passing a bottle of Woodpecker between them.
‘Thought they’d be on the White Lightning,’ I said.
‘Did you check the clobber?’
‘Can hardly miss Tommy Hilfiger lettering a mile high.’
‘They’re wedged up, those wee bastards.’
‘No question.’
As the young crew schlepped down the street, Mac said, ‘Recognise any?’
‘Nah, not them. They’re about fifteen, sixteen… The pricks on the hill were older, eighteen at least. I’d clock them straight off too.’
In a minute, another figure appeared. Shuffling and hunched, leaning over a tab as if it was a life-support machine.
I clocked him straight away. It was Sid, though looking a little less sure of himself than on our last meeting.
‘That the Sid you know?’
Mac squinted over the steering wheel, peered down to the gate where Sid emerged onto the street. ‘That’s the Snake all right. No missing the slimy wee bastard.’
‘Let’s give him a tug.’
Mac took the keys out the ignition. ‘C’mon and boost.’
I climbed out the door, caught sight of Mac putting on a pair of black leather gloves. ‘What’s this? Anticipating bruised knuckles?’
A grunt: ‘Worse than that… much fucking worse.’
Chapter 20
Sid looked shifty. As he walked down the street he kept turning left to right as if he expected someone to emerge from one of the half-derelict hovels and lay about him. Mac and I watched the Snake with suspicion.
‘What the fuck’s he up to?’
‘Dunno. All very sus,’ I said.
At the end of Moosey’s row, Sid turned left and continued down past the high-rises to another street of mainly boarded-up and deteriorating homes. The pack of dogs had migrated to this end of the scheme and were running about, barking and savaging each other and anything else they could get their jaws around. Sid shuffled through them, let out a few shouts to disperse the pack as he reached the gate at the bourne of his own run-down heap.
Mac prodded me. ‘Round the back.’
I nodded.
In the alley skirting the street, two teenage girls were buzzing lighter fluid. They didn’t look up as we passed, even as I kicked at the canisters around their heels. They were too far gone to register it. I tapped Mac on the arm, shook my head, but he didn’t so much as blink.
The back gardens lined up against the street consisted mainly of grass that had grown out of control, a couple of feet high, and the usual schemie detritus — burst couches, wrecked children’s toys, rusting engine parts and the occasional burnt-out car. Sid’s garden was more orderly. For a kick-off it was secured like Fort Knox — a six-foot fence and razor wire over the top of it.
‘What the fuck’s with the wire?’ I said. As we got closer a volley of deep, vicious barking started to rumble from the garden.
Mac didn’t answer. He had a hand-jemmy at the padlock and was already through the gate before I needed to know any more.
The yard was fitted out with some of the same gear as there had been in Moosey’s — treadmills, weights and car tyres with teeth-marks in them. There was a kid of about thirteen standing with a six-foot-long flirt-pole, what looked like a dog’s tail on the end of it, taunting an angry bull terrier that had been tied to a stake.
