them up, one by one he flung them at me. ‘Feast yer eyes on that little lot… Jaysus, if it doesn’t make ye throw I don’t know what will.’
Fitz stamped away again, walked over to the wall. I watched him running his hands through his hair, then he hoisted up his trousers by the belt loops. He sighed and rubbed the back of his neck as he turned to watch me pick up the photographs.
‘Oh, fuck no…’
The images were horrific. They’d been taken at a crime scene; nothing had been missed out. I saw a face robbed of its features, black bruises and deep-drawn wounds where you would expect a nose or an eye. The pictures were in colour, but seemed to lack the full spectrum: everything appeared black or white, the death-mask skin so pasty, the blood so dark. The only hint of colour I found was on the collar of the old Lord Anthony ski jacket.
Fitz stood over me, ‘You recognise him?’
I nodded. ‘It’s Andy… from the factory.’ I kept turning the pictures. There were wider shots, had taken in the length of his body. A particularly gruesome image showed Andy lying spreadeagled, on wasteland. There was a dark pool of blood behind his head, down his front it looked like another bucket of the stuff had been tipped over him. Something was pinned to his chest — I saw the hilt of a blade.
I pointed. ‘What’s that?’
Fitz leaned in, drew on his tab. ‘That there… that would be the poor bastard’s tongue.’
I felt a heave in the pit of my gut. ‘They cut his tongue out?’
‘I don’t think the fecker did it himself.’ Fitz stubbed his cigarette, moved round the other side of the desk, sat. ‘I know ye spoke with Andy Gregory earlier in the week.’
I looked up from the photos, pushed them towards him. This was quite a turn of events. ‘Have you been trailing me?’ I knew he hadn’t; I’d never met the plod who managed that trick without making it as obvious as a donkey’s cock.
Fitz pointed a finger at me. ‘Dury, don’t feckin’ quiz me on this investigation. Ye have already gone and bollixed it up.’ He moved his finger to the photographs.
‘You blame me for that?’ The accusation jabbed me. Andy was a good man. He had helped me out, because he knew there were wrongs being done and because he respected the memory of my brother. I felt enormous guilt to have endangered him. All I could think about was what I had said to fat Davie on the Craigs, about having a snitch. Mac had held me back — I knew I’d fucked up. Had I caused Andy’s death?
Fitz kept still, then spoke slowly: ‘I don’t know the exact circumstances… Andy Gregory was obviously in over his head.’
It was time to tell Fitz what I knew.
I revealed everything I’d learned from Andy about the Undertaker’s involvement. He seemed to know all about it, sounded like the factory had been under surveillance for some time, which told me how they knew I’d met with Andy. I told Fitz that I knew Davie Prentice was up to his nuts in it and that got nods. He didn’t know what fat Davie had told me about Michael meeting with the Undertaker the night he died, and he knew nothing about the Czechs — or pretended not to.
‘What else did you question Andy Gregory about, Dury?’
‘The factory, y’know… what was going on in there.’
‘And what did he tell you?’
‘The Czechs had pushed out McMilne and he wasn’t happy.’
Fitz reached for another smoke. I took one too this time.
‘This is getting feckin’ tribal,’ he said.
I lit my cigarette. It tasted too mild after the Marlboros. ‘It’s only going to get worse. The Czechs are…’ I was going to tell him about the visit to Michael’s home the night he died, about the bloke with the black Pajero, but Fitz shot me down.
‘Don’t tell me how to do my feckin’ job, Dury.’
I saw he had a boner for the Undertaker. Fitz was glory-hunting, he was imagining the headlines, knew he had a press favourite on his hands. It made me mad as hell. Another man had died — how many more would there be? ‘If you did your fucking job I wouldn’t need to tell you. And I wouldn’t have a dead brother.’
That wounded him. Fitz rose from his chair, swept up the pictures and closed the folder. He walked to the door. Before he went through it, he turned. ‘Leave this to the professionals, Dury, or sure as there’s a hole in your arse you’ll be joining your brother soon.’
Chapter 23
I walked home, struggling to keep a straight line. Nothing new for me there, however this time I was sober. My legs felt so limp, my knees weak. Every few steps a shiver came up from the street and rampaged through my gut en route to my heart. Another man had lost his life. A good man. Andy had a family, he’d worked hard all his days to keep them; now they’d be spending Christmas without him.
I couldn’t keep Andy’s face from my mind: not his troubled, forlorn, world-weary face, but the bloodied, brutalised mash I’d seen in the photographs. My life had taken another turn; the slow, ponderous descent into ruin had been hastened. I had another soul on my conscience.
The cold north winds scattered litter and leaves before me. Bodies bent into the onslaught and fought to stay upright. The entire city seemed to have been drained of blood, everywhere looked greyer, darker than usual. I couldn’t focus on what had changed. Perhaps it was everything; perhaps it was me. My existence seemed futile. I held tight to the quarter-bottle of Grouse in my coat pocket. It felt cold; my fingers clasped tight but there was no warmth to be had. I knew that bottle held fire, I knew it also contained answers, of sorts. Those who say, ‘You won’t find any answers at the bottom of a bottle’ are dead wrong. The one and only answer was in there: oblivion.
I craved an escape from my life. I wanted to unscrew the cap on the bottle of Grouse and swill deep. I wanted to taste the heat of it, the burn of memory being obliterated, thoughts turning to smoke and ashes. I was lost. I knew I had no clue as to who had killed Andy, or Ian Kerr, or Michael. I had my gut telling me it was the Czechs one minute, then the Undertaker the next. I had Davie Prentice calling for a bullet out of sheer frustration, but I knew that was just my anger, my stupid lust for revenge.
The truth was, I had failed Michael; and now Andy had paid the price with his life.
Snow fell again. It came down quickly, deep and thick. It settled on the street and the walls and the railings. The rooftops turned white and the cars slowed as the roads filled with slush. No one seemed to be bothered by the downpour: they dashed in and out of shops with carriers and Christmas trees and rolls of wrapping paper as if nothing mattered save the coming celebrations. What happened to the crisis in capitalism? I thought. What happened to economic misery? To the great woes we had all embraced, the new-found common enemy? I wanted no part in readying myself for the festivities. I knew that in the next few days, three families would be gathering with empty chairs round the table. It didn’t seem right. Nothing was right any more.
I schlepped through the town, along the main drag and onto Waterloo Place. On Regent Road I looked up at St Andrew’s House, had a thought of praying to our nation’s patron saint but let it pass. A weather-beaten saltire flew above the building. It was so faded I could hardly make out the cross on it. I tried to look at it, tried to raise my head from the gutter, but the snow kept filling my eyes.
I was wet and cold and tired. As I made my way back to the flat I stopped to watch a window cleaner, working a cake shop’s front pane. Chocolate tarts, topped with strawberries and cream, sat on the shelf inside. I wanted to ask him: ‘How can you do that without your mouth watering?’ But I didn’t have it in me. Michael was the man to stop and share a craic with anyone — I didn’t feel capable of bringing a nice moment to another’s life.
When I got to the flat and looked at the keys I realised I’d walked home in a daze: I’d left the car parked on the south side. I thought to call Debs and ask her to retrieve it on her way home from work, but I’d have to give her an explanation and that would cause more grief.
Usual went wild. He’d been cooped up all day — a walk would do him good. I shook the snow off my coat, said, ‘Okay, boy, soon, just let me get warmed up a bit.’ My solution was to take some speed from the cistern, got
