he gripped his limp hair in his hands.
‘Thinking about bolting are you?’ said Henderson; he edged forward again, closed down the space between them. ‘Not much fucking chance of that, I’d have the throat out you before you got a yard.’ He started to laugh, watched as Crawley closed his eyes tightly; he looked like a child pretending that nothing would happen if he couldn’t see it.
‘What do you want from me?’ he wailed.
Henderson locked down his prisoner; he could almost smell the fear in the room. He sensed Crawley’s energy attenuating, seeping out of him, as he reached forward and placed the haft of the blade on the sleeve of his jacket. The movement made him tense, his shoulders squared. ‘Is that what they said to you… Those girls?’
Crawley raised a hand, wiped at his eyebrows with the tips of his long fingers; some drops of sweat glistened there. ‘What girls?… I’ve no idea what you’re talking about.’
Henderson sparked, ‘Don’t fuck me about, you know what I mean.’ He reached out, grabbed Crawley by the collar. His hot neck brushed against Henderson’s knuckles as he pulled him towards the blade, forced it to the edge of his jaw. ‘The girls you took out to the field, the ones like… Angela.’ He said the name slowly, savoured each syllable, made sure Crawley would have no doubt about the word he uttered.
‘Who?’ said Crawley.
Henderson raised the butt of the blade again, pressed it into the fleshy part of his jaw line; a thin trickle of blood smeared the tip of the blade and then ran down Crawley’s neckline. ‘Don’t fucking mess me about, you know fine well who she is… You took her out to the field and tied her up but she got away.’
‘No. No. No.’
‘Yes! Fucking yes. And she’s been walking the Links since she got away, from you, Crawley… She got away when she hit you with a fucking rock.’ Henderson brought the haft down on Crawley’s head; there was a dull thud and then the teacher called out in pain. His knees seemed to fold, one at a time and then he slumped to the floor in a slow, swooning fall. He writhed like a maggot in a bait-bucket, his arms flailing before him as he tried to renegotiate his place in this strange new world. His balance had deserted him, he patted at the carpet with his large ungainly hands and groaned audibly.
Henderson leaned over, grabbed Crawley’s hair, dragged him towards the middle of the room. He was still dazed, still fumbling, as Henderson produced the nylon rope from the inside of his jacket and started to tie him, first round the ankles and then, after pushing the arms behind his back, the wrists. Blood smeared on the carpet from the nick on Crawley’s jaw which had opened wider, and from the fresh wound on his head. His eyes rolled about and his limbs fell limp. He mumbled, tried to speak, but words wouldn’t come. When he opened his mouth to grab mouthfuls of air, Henderson noticed the blood on his teeth.
‘You know all about getting folk tied up, don’t you…’ said Henderson. He yanked on the rope, saw it burning into Crawley’s skin; he tightened it even more, said, ‘I say you know all about tying up folk, eh.’
Crawley groaned, a broad rivulet of blood traced the shape of his forehead from hairline to brow. His head lolled on his shoulders and his facial muscles sagged and drooped. He looked dazed, his eyes glassy and moist.
Henderson prodded him, ‘Wee lassies, you know about tying them up, don’t you.’
Crawley started to mumble again, his words came coated with spittle. Some blood escaped the corner of his mouth as he spoke, ‘I don’t know anything. I–I don’t…’
‘Just keep that up,’ Henderson yelled. ‘See where it fucking gets you, pal.’ He stepped back, dropped the trailing rope at his feet and raised his hands. ‘Are you fucking daft or what?… Can you not tell when you’re digging a hole for yourself?’ Henderson steadied himself before the teacher; he shook his head as he took in his gaze. He settled before him, let the mash of his thoughts subside and then he lowered his hand to the floor and pulled the rope tight. He tested the tension, looked at his work; he seemed content that the knots would hold and so he cut the excess rope at the teacher’s wrists. As he rose, Henderson dug inside Crawley’s jacket pocket and removed his wallet. There was a thin bundle of notes there; he seized the cash, then looked towards the bank cards.
Henderson held up the cards, waved them in Crawley’s face. ‘Right, what’s the fucking numbers for these?’
Crawley folded over, moaned. He had started to hyperventilate, gasping for breath as he lolled to and fro on the carpet. ‘I don’t know anything.’
Henderson looked away, balanced his thoughts, then placed the cards in his pocket. He took a step back from the centre of the room then made a lunging kick into Crawley’s lumber region — the teacher called out in agony, rolled to his side as Henderson stepped back. ‘I’ll ask once more, but only once more, and only because you seem to be a wee bit slow on the uptake, Mr Crawley. Now, if you tell me what I want to know… I’ll fuck off and leave you in peace — so, the numbers on these cards…’
Crawley started a coughing fit, his face darkened as he tried to raise his head off the carpet, his thin hair fell over his watery eyes. He seemed to have registered the request, said, ‘There’s only one number… The cards all have the same number… It’s two-two-four-three.’
Henderson had been tightening his fists, waiting to lunge forward and connect them with the teacher’s head. He nodded instead, smiled to himself. He said the numbers over, ‘That’s it?… No others?’
Crawley gasped, ‘N-no. That’s the number I always have.’
‘OK. OK.’ Henderson leaned over him, grabbed his mop of a fringe and twisted it. ‘Now, I am going down the road there to clean out these accounts…’
Crawley’s eyes lit. His head tilted, still drooping on his thin neck.
‘Don’t worry, don’t worry… I won’t get it all today; see they have limits on these bank machines. But…’ he raised a finger in the air, his voice lilted, became a song, ‘so as you won’t be alone tonight, I’ll come back here and I can get some more out tomorrow, how does that sound?’
Crawley rasped, ‘You said you were leaving… If I told you the numbers, you said…’
Henderson placed the sole of his shoe on Crawley’s shoulder, pushed him onto his back again and started to laugh. ‘And you fucking believed me… You’ve still got a lot to learn, teacher, sure you have.’
Henderson straightened himself, stepped over the bound Crawley and headed for the hallway. He closed the living room door behind him, released the handle and pressed the flat of his back to the panels. He allowed a moment to compose himself, still his breathing. When he lifted his head he saw the car keys on the floor by the window; they sat beside a fallen lamp with a tassel shade. He walked over and picked up the keys, dropped them in his jacket pocket and headed through the front door, closing it behind him, checking the lock held.
Henderson’s feet scrunched on the driveway scree as he walked towards the car. A low hedge partly screened the house from the street and the road but the neighbouring properties were in full view. His heart still pounded beneath his jacket, but the cool breeze that touched his brow seemed to calm him. He opened the car door and found the engine started on the first turn of the ignition; he reversed out. On the main road Henderson wound down the window, let the air lick the edge of his face as he pushed the needle towards thirty miles-per-hour. In a few moments he felt his pulse subside; he had calmed completely. He slapped the dashboard, congratulated himself. ‘Nice one, Hendy… Fucking nice one indeed.’
Henderson followed the roads into the centre of Edinburgh, heading for Newington on the south side. The traffic was heavy, commuters clogging up the city arteries, but once he passed the main shopping precinct the congestion eased. On North Bridge he stopped the car just shy of the High Street, beside a Bank of Scotland branch with a cash machine; a homeless man sat outside, wrapped in a blue blanket, begging for money; on his way out the car Henderson sneered at him. He knew he was on the verge of clearing a substantial chunk of his debt to Boaby Stevens and he already felt the surge in his confidence. He saw the faces on Shaky’s lot when he handed it over; they’d know he was someone who settled his debts, not just another loser that they were going to pick away at for the rest of his days.
Henderson slotted in the first of the three cards he had taken from Crawley and withdrew the maximum limit, then repeated the action twice more. He felt a compulsion to kiss the cash as he slotted it into his inside pocket, but he resisted; he didn’t want to draw attention to himself. As he headed back to the car he looked up to the darkening sky and shook his head. He’d had a result, all he had to do now was hold his nerve and make the payment on his debt.
Henderson knew Boaby Stevens holed up in a pub in Newington called the Wheatsheaf; he turned the engine over, released the clutch and started out along Nicolson Street. As he drove, he went over the words he would use as he strolled into the pub: ‘Hello, Mr Stevens, I believe you sent a messenger out my way.’ He smiled to himself, imagined the look on Shaky’s face as he counted out the money. ‘Well, I couldn’t have you thinking Neil Henderson
