Henderson knew he had him; the beast would be back, had to be back, had to return to his home and face him. Henderson held all the cards, there was no question of that, the only thing he wondered about now was just what the hell Crawley thought he was playing at.
Henderson waited for a gap in the traffic, picked up his pace as he ran between a Lothian Bus and a blue Micra; the small car started to roll forward as he stepped in front of it and he stopped in his tracks.
‘What the fuck you playing at?’ he roared. He raised up his hands then slammed them down on the bonnet of the car; it was an old man behind the wheel, he looked at Henderson over the dash and shook his head. It came as incitement to the younger man. ‘You fucking old prick!’ He kicked at the bumper, sneered again and then walked off, saluting the V-sign as he went. By the other side of the street Henderson was still venting his anger, kicking out at the door to the stairwell and stomping in.
Inside the stair, Henderson slammed the door with the heel of his shoe and then leaned his back flat against it. He let out a long, slow exhalation of breath and then he groaned audibly as he banged the back of his head into the wood panel. He jerked his head forward, then back again. The sound came like a hard slap at first, but as he increased the intensity of the blows, dull thuds like heavy footfalls echoed up the stairwell. He clenched his teeth shut. A rigid sneer set on his face as he pushed himself off the door and took to the first step.
Outside the flat Henderson paused for a moment; his fingers tingled as he drew fists and released them quickly. His thoughts turned over; danced between Crawley and his disappearance and the humiliation he had felt trying to pay off Boaby Stevens in the Wheatsheaf. He felt trapped; nothing was going to plan. It was supposed to be easy: hit the beast for a few quid and move on. Get rid of the deadweight around his neck that Angela had become and make a fresh start. It didn’t matter where, all that mattered was when. Henderson wanted to move on now. He grasped the door handle and walked in. ‘Ange, where the fuck are you?’
There was a groan from the front room. Henderson felt his cheeks flush as he studied the hallway. The place was in darkness, save for the light from the street that fell through the uncovered window. As he trod the bare boards, a grey half moon appeared through the window pane and drew a sickly gleam over the contents of the room. His eyelids twitched as he let his vision adjust to the new setting; on the mattress, curled in a ball, was Angela.
‘Jesus Christ… Look at the fucking state of you,’ said Henderson.
She let out a dull, muddled trail of words. He knew at once she was wasted.
‘Is this what you’ve been at tonight is it?… Fucking wasted again.’ He grabbed her hair in his fist and turned her over; her cheekbones shone in the light of the half moon. ‘You fucking piece of shit…’
‘Hendy… I was…’
She didn’t get the words out before she was thrown heavily towards the mattress. Henderson stood back, cleared all expression from his face as he watched her holding her stomach, writhing in drug-addled confusion. Something snapped in him; his blank features became animated as he pulled back his fist and brought it down on Angela’s face.
She screamed out, at first it seemed in terror, and then, as the blows rained, her cries signalled a deeper agony. ‘Stop. Stop…’
‘I’ll fucking stop all right… stop when you’ve had some fucking sense drummed into you!’
Henderson kept up his attack until he lost his strength; the blows became weaker, not worth his effort. As he raised himself, withdrew, Angela was a curled, sobbing, bleeding tangle of limbs on the floor. He watched her for a moment; she lay trembling and rocking, crying. He felt no sympathy for her, she was trash.
He moved to the side of the window and lit a cigarette. His cheeks creased at the corners of his mouth as he inhaled deeply. The nicotine stilled his surging pulse for a moment. He coughed, ran open fingers through his hair.
‘Hendy…’
‘Shut the fuck up!’
He turned towards the window, looked out at the throngs of people on the pavement, the lines of slow- moving traffic clogging the road. The wind soughed against the pane and shook the frame in a loose rattle above the sill. The chill air in the flat made his moist forehead tingle after his exertions. He took another draw on his cigarette, turned back to Angela. Her drowsy eyes flickered as she took him in.
‘What’s your fucking problem?’ he said.
She scowled, pinching her bleeding nose and lips. ‘I–I tried to tell you… I t-tried…’
‘Tell me fucking what?’ He pointed at her, shook his head and looked away. ‘Ah, what the fuck do you know… fucking junkie.’
Angela pitched her voice higher, rose onto her knees. ‘He came to the Links… I was out there, I saw him.’
Henderson spat, ‘Crawley?’
Angela held out her hands, ‘Yes, he grabbed m-me.’
His breathing had steadied now, but suddenly stared to shorten again. ‘Why… I mean, what did he want?’
Angela swayed; unsteady where she positioned herself beside the mattress, she reached out a hand to the edge of the door frame to hold herself up. ‘He wanted to take me… He wanted to scare you.’
Henderson laughed, he scratched at the edge of his nose then quickly took another draw on the cigarette. ‘He thinks…’ he pointed to Angela with the tip of the cigarette, ‘I give two fucks about you, he thought that?’ He laughed, a spluttering guttural wheeze. The thought stuck in his chest like a winding. ‘He’s mistaken; fucking sorely so…’
Angela slumped to the side, reached out a hand to support herself as the delicate balance of her weight shifted. Her hair flopped in front of her eyes and she lowered her head towards the floor. Henderson watched her with a heavy thought settling on his mind; he stubbed his cigarette and headed towards the door. At the mattress he stood over Angela for a moment, contemplated levelling a boot at her head but the effort seemed unnecessary; she was already out of it. He reached under the mattress and removed the small mauve-coloured diary that she had shown him and tucked it in his jacket pocket. He bent over, grabbed her by the hair, raised her head off the floor a few inches, ‘You better get that hole of yours out on those Links… There’s no free fucking lunches in this world!’ As he released his grip, Angela’s head connected with the bare floorboards making a solid thud.
In Crawley’s car, on the way back to the teacher’s home, Henderson turned over his thoughts. His face sat tense as he held his jaw shut. There was a bitter taste in his mouth and his insides felt raw. What had Crawley been playing at? Showing up on the Links, trying to put a scare on Angela. Was he stupid? It was him Crawley needed to worry about, Henderson told himself. He gripped the wheel harder, felt his fingernails digging into the trim.
‘Fucking daft prick,’ he mouthed to himself.
The traffic had cleared, the roads starting to take on the deserted feel of this time of the night. Edinburgh gave over its centre to taxi cabs and stretch limos ferrying hen nights to and from the pubs and clubs after a certain hour. The city wasn’t a place for people who lived there at this time; it was for the out-of-towners, the party people.
Henderson passed girls, teetering on high heels in short, tight dresses, and rowdy groups of drunken revellers — boys, acting like men and their obverse: men who should know better than acting like boys. The place sickened Henderson at this time of night, it was all kebab shop fights and punters puking and pissing. He’d had enough of mixing it with their sort; where was his share of the good times? Where was his ease and comfort? He didn’t want to hear another word out of Angela; he didn’t want to be out on the Links watching her back or watching to make sure she was on her back. He’d had enough. He wanted something else, something he felt he’d earned, felt he deserved.
As he pulled into Crawley’s driveway, Henderson noticed the bulb burning in the front room: he was home. ‘Cheeky prick,’ he said. ‘Fucking sitting there bold as brass…’
Henderson killed the engine, opened the door and stepped out. He stood on the driveway scree for a moment, turned towards the house and then slammed the car door as loud as possible. He waited to see if there would be any movement in the house: the sound of the back door opening or the light going out. Nothing. Crawley was either unfazed or fronting it out like he was. Henderson felt his throat stiffen and his nostrils widen as he gasped a deep breath.
The front door was unlocked. He moved in, closed it behind him. The lamp with the tassels in the hallway
