He laughed; didn’t know where I’d found a line in humour with all that was on my mind to do once I got through those doors, but it did the trick. Dartboard put a hand on my shoulder and pulled me in.
A red carpet covered the stairs, some soft-porn photographs on the walls. Dartboard spoke: ‘Was sorry to hear about your brother.’
I didn’t answer; would have been happy for the conversation to end there but he wasn’t.
‘It’s not long since your auld fella went, was it?’
I didn’t like to hear the two incidents being hooked up; my father’s passing was not something I’d lost any sleep over. ‘No. Not long.’
Dartboard was the typical moronic door lump — he didn’t know when to shut his trap. ‘But, you’re still here…’ he laughed, pointed me through the mirror-backed door at the top of the stairs, ‘for now anyway.’
I watched him hold the handle. He had small hands for a boxer. I thought this was something worth noting, until I remembered being told Marvin Hagler had small hands too.
The club was kitted out like every one of these places from here to the black stump. Red walls. PVC seating. Big mirrors. Chrome rails. And a job lot of glitter balls hanging from the ceiling. I’d arrived at the wrong hour for punters. The lights had been turned up, which revealed the true kip of the place: shabby wasn’t in it.
Dartboard tapped me on the arm, pointed to a seating area up the back, just shy of a wooden stage. A girl of twenty had her baps out, straddled a ceiling-to-floor pole. Her silver hot pants got slapped by the pug I’d came to see. He hadn’t noticed me come in. As I checked the room for obstacles I heard a clink of glasses and spotted the Undertaker and two more girls seated to the left of the stage.
My heart rate reached the point just shy of a cardiac arrest as I walked down towards the pug. He was absorbed in the pole dancer’s antics, though, and hadn’t seen me. Dartboard fed a stick of chewing gum into his gob as I broke free of him and bolted for the pug. I had a sledgehammer right in his puss before he knew I was in the room; the second was on the way as he staggered back and fell over the stage. I turned quickly but my Crombie tails got tugged by Dartboard. His mouth sat open, the chewing gum balanced on his tongue as I put my fist in it. His head jerked back, but it did no damage — he’d taken too many knocks in the past to even register it. My break came when he started to choke on the gum, bent over and clutched at his throat.
I turned back to the pug. He reeled from a good crack to the nose and blood ran over his lips. As he tried to get up, he put back his hands to right himself from the stage and I put a boot in his mouth. The pole dancer screamed, covered her tits with her arms. It seemed a bizarre time to develop modesty. The girls beside the Undertaker screamed too, stood up and capsized the table. A shower of glass landed at my feet. A heavy glass ashtray came my way too. I picked it up and set about the pug’s head. I got in two good pelts, opened up his face some more, before the ashtray split in two and he curled up on the floor, kicking out with his feet.
Falling is the strangest thing in the world: one second you’re upright and focused, the next your world view is completely different. He’d caught my feet with a lucky sweep and put me on my back. I stared at a sparkly glitter ball as Dartboard loomed over me, knocked me out with one punch.
I didn’t know how long I’d been out but when the bucket of ice water woke me I was bleeding from the head and my bollocks had been booted. I toppled over onto my hands, collapsed to my elbows as I gasped for breath.
The Undertaker laughed, a rasping sandpaper wheeze that set my spine on edge. ‘Who stole yer toffee, Dury?’ he said.
I couldn’t catch my breath. I was still biting the air, trying to force some of it into my lungs. I cupped my pods in my hand and thanked fuck they were still there.
‘Somebody stole his toffee,’ said the Undertaker. It was the type of thing people said a generation ago; it seemed out of place here. I looked at him: his knees and elbows made sharp angles as he crouched above me. ‘Pick him up,’ he said.
Dartboard dragged me to my feet, walked me over to the seating area at the side of the stage. Nobody bothered to raise the table or the glasses. I noticed the pug looming behind the Undertaker. His face had been wiped on the sleeve of his white Henri-Lloyd sweatshirt. I managed to point at him: ‘I’m gonna fucking have you.’
He came for me again, but the Undertaker raised a bony hand and he halted mid-stride. ‘You’ll no’ have anybody, laddie. You give me any more bother and I’ll fucking open you up like a sponge cake.’
His words carried a kind of practised menace I’d heard a few times before, but never delivered so convincingly. I felt suddenly out of my depth, like I’d fallen asleep on a lilo and woken up a mile out to sea. A queasy sensation rose in my gut.
The Undertaker shuffled over to sit beside me. He patted me on the thigh and said, ‘Sit up.’
Like I was going to argue.
As I looked at him I saw he was worse at close range. On the shoulders of his polo neck sat some heavy-duty dandruff, and you could have used the bags under his eyes for a fortnight in Benidorm. The single landing-strip of grey hair that ran down the middle of his head made his gaunt features seem even more severe. I’d like to think a doctor would prescribe feeding up, maybe a course on the sunbeds.
‘I’m going tae forget about this wee… incident,’ he said.
I felt there was a but coming.
‘But’ — there it was — ‘only if you do right by me, Dury… Is that no’ fair enough?’
He spoke like a remnant of another time, the seventies maybe. He turned my mind to rubbish on the streets, white dog turds and Kojak on the telly. Maybe it was the polo neck.
I found my breath. ‘What you after?’
He didn’t like that. I was too lippy; and he wanted respect.
‘You’re no’ in any position tae haggle, laddie. Cunt me around and I’ll put you in a hole.’
The pug rolled on the balls of his feet. Laughed.
‘Look, I don’t know what the fuck you think I can do for you.’
Dartboard brought the Undertaker a glass. It was whisky, Johnnie Walker if I wasn’t mistaken, and I never was. He took a sip, winced. His skull looked shrink-wrapped in his skin. ‘It’s a very simple wee matter… I want you to have a word with your late brother’s business associate.’
I knew Davie Prentice was at the heart of this; I’d rip his out.
‘Go on.’
‘See, that fat wee cunt owes me some poppy. I make it about a hunner grand.’
‘A hundred Gs… How the fuck did he rack that up?’
He took another sip, less of a show this time. ‘We had an arrangement and fat Davie pulled the plug on it. I’ve got a trailerload ay Polish vodka sitting in dock waiting on him getting those fucking trucks of his rolling again. Every week my shelves are doon, it’s another fifty bastarding grand he owes me.’
This was a message he could have delivered himself, much more forcefully. The reason he hadn’t was obvious: Davie was held up by the Czechs. McMilne owned half the pubs in Tollcross, nice visible targets for a bit of firebombing. He didn’t want a war he couldn’t win. I pushed him: ‘Why don’t you tell him yourself?’
The Undertaker emptied his glass; he held it up for Dartboard to take away. He sighed as he spoke to me. ‘I’m being, what d’ye call it?… diplomatic. Look, laddie, that fat wee prick’s had us all over. You should be doing this for yer brother.’
I didn’t want to hear him talk of Michael — it sent blades into me thinking of my brother dealing with this lowlife, said, ‘That’s not the way Davie tells it. He says you were the last one to see him alive.’
McMilne jutted his jaw, little stray cactus spikes came for me. ‘If that was true, he’d still be here. I had nae bother with Michael, sound as a pound, he was… And let me tell you this: he was pissy bloody sick ay Davie’s antics as well.’
‘What antics?… What was he sick of?’
He spoke fast, frothy spit coming at me: ‘Broon-nosing they fucking foreigners and cunting me around. Michael knew where his bread was buttered. Nice wee drink he got for himself out ay me… Now, you tell Davie this is his last fucking chance tae get those trucks back on the road or there’ll be bother.’
I saw I wouldn’t get away with much more cheek before the Undertaker lost it, decided to put me in the ground, but I was cocky. ‘What if I don’t want to be your messenger?’
He laughed — a hacking, throaty birr rose in his windpipe. ‘Dury, I’m no’ giving you a fucking choice… See yon rolly bastard, you better get him told to see sense. And when you come back to me, laddie, you better say what I
