I didn’t expect this.
A photograph of the Czech lodger that my brother had installed in his home had been put up. Vilem was standing in the garden, seemingly unaware his image had been captured. In the comment box beside the photo Alice had keyed: ‘Welcome to my Boy Zone!!.. More to follow!!’
I didn’t know how to interpret this — was it just a teenage girl being a silly wee lassie? She’d posted the picture a week before my brother’s death. A few of Alice’s friends had posted comments in their hybrid language of text-speak and slang, but Alice hadn’t updated the site again. It seemed pointless to leave a message for her there if she wasn’t using it right now.
I logged off the web.
Shut down.
I felt guilty for not giving Alice more attention. I knew she was taking the loss of her father hard. I should have intervened earlier, maybe come down on her harder about the drinking. Decided I would try her mobi again. I had the contacts book open, finger hovering on the call button when I heard a knock at the door.
I jumped up to the spyhole. The back of a head covered it. I opened up, immediately regretted the move.
A shoulder forced the door into my face. I went back, tumbled downwards and felt my palms get scorched on the carpet. Next thing I felt was a backhander knocking me into the wall.
‘All right, Gus boy.’ It was Dartboard; the pug with the parka stood behind him. ‘… You and me are going on a wee visit to a friend of ours.’
He grabbed my hair and hauled me up.
‘Get his coat, Sammy.’
Chapter 37
The undertaker was dressed in a double-breasted grey suit. The last time I saw lapels that wide it was in an Edward G. Robinson movie. He had on a black shirt and it was open at the collar, an eyeful of bling played for attention beneath a heavy white chest rug. His eyes followed me as Dartboard prodded my back all the way across the bar floor. My head throbbed from the spank he’d given me in the flat, and I was sorely tempted to land a fly jab in his puss. Only thing that held me back was I knew this boy had some moves; maybe I was learning.
The Undertaker nodded to Dartboard and he pointed me to a velour-backed seat. ‘I’ll stand, thanks.’
I didn’t see the fist coming for my gut, but I felt it, compressed me like an accordion; I made as much noise too. Fell onto my knees, panting and wheezing. I looked up at Dartboard, tried to figure how he’d packed so much power into a blow that had come straight from his pocket.
‘You’re gonna…’ I coughed my guts onto the floor, tried again, ‘you’re gonna have to show me how to do that.’
He smiled, impressed with himself.
The Undertaker stood up. ‘Get the cunt in the chair.’ He looked even closer to death than the last time. Under the full glare of the lights his skin was almost transparent. He was like a waxwork of himself, before they’d applied the paint.
Dartboard dragged me into the chair, sat me down. I watched as he retreated to the other end of the room with the parka prick they called Sammy. Neither spoke, just stood with their hands at their sides, clenched fists.
The Undertaker walked the floor. His legs were so thin beneath his baggy trousers that his kneecaps poked out like shards with his every step. He was like a cadaverous Peter Crouch. There’s a phrase, all arms and legs.
‘What did I fucking ask you, laddie?’ he said. His tone had changed too: the sandpaper rasp was still there but now a belt-grinder was working it. He was keenly pissed at me, proper furious. ‘Eh, y’cunt… What did I ask ye?’
I held in my entrails. I felt that if I took my hand from my stomach it’d spill on the floor. ‘Do you mind standing still?’ I said. ‘It might come back to me then.’
He stopped dead. I saw the false teeth in his head as his mouth widened. The Undertaker looked as if he’d been poked in the arsehole with a sharp pencil.
Sammy seized the initiative and dived forward, clapped a mitt on my jaw. I fell off the chair. He had a way to go before he was in Dartboard’s league. I shook it out and clambered back onto the seat. ‘You’ve stopped pacing, good. The answer you’re after is… Davie Prentice. You gave me a message, and I passed it on. So why the fuck am I here?’
The pug with the skinhead got nodded away, the Undertaker approached me. As he leaned in I saw the grease on the back of his collar. His breath smelled as though a rat had been living in his mouth for a year and there was dandruff falling on me from his shoulders as he spoke. ‘Aye, that’s right, laddie, I gave you a wee fucking simple message to pass on to that fat cunt…’ He turned to Dartboard and Sammy. ‘Should’ve been simple, eh no?’
The shit-lickers nodded. Dartboard tucked his hands behind his back. He looked as if he was trying out for a job at Slater Menswear.
The Undertaker started on again: ‘Well… you fucked it right up!’ He grabbed me by the ear and hollered, ‘Davie’s fucking scarpered… He’s had it away on his toes, and I’m oot my poppy!’ He let go of my ear, stepped back. It was like watching a stork wading into a river for fish.
I said, ‘He’s what?’
‘Fucked off…’
It was news to me. ‘When was this?’
‘The factory’s been closed doon. His fucking Czech fancy man’s been hauled doon the polis station and I’m no’ best pleased, Dury.’
It made sense to me: the Czechs were Davie’s shield; without their protection, what choice did he have but to go rabbit? The prospect of getting any cash out of him seemed distant now. I wondered where all of this left me, and Michael’s killer.
I said, ‘I’m sorry to hear that.’
‘Don’t play wide with me, Dury,’ he said. ‘Remember what I told you last time I had you in here?’
I replayed the speech: ‘You didn’t like bad news.’
‘And remember what I said I’d do to you if you fucked up, Dury?’
I nodded.
‘Aye, well, I had a wee think aboot that and came round to the conclusion that since you clearly don’t give two fucks for yerself, I’d have to take it out on someone else.’
I sat up in the seat. I thought of Debs leaving the flat shortly before me: fucking hell, had they grabbed her? I rose to my feet. Dartboard came behind me and grabbed my arms.
‘If you’ve…’
The Undertaker leaned over me. He looked like a suited-up Albert Steptoe as he spat at me, ‘If I’ve what?… Hauled in yer wee niece and her Czech boyfriend, tied them up ready for going the same road as your brother?’
I struggled to get to him. Dartboard twisted my arms up my back. The pain sent nails into my joints. ‘You fucking dirty bastard…’
He started to chuckle, frothy spit gathered in the corners of his mouth. His whole frame shook and then he fell into a hacking cough that rattled off his ribs. ‘Come on, Dury… deal’s a deal after all. That’s what I told yer brother before he got his.’
I stopped struggling. Played him hard: ‘You’re shitting me… You don’t have my niece.’
‘That right, eh…’ He called the pug over. ‘Sammy, get that fucking fancy phone ay yours over here.’
The screen of the phone got shoved in my face. A video played. I saw Alice on her knees in a field. She was gagged and tied. Vilem was tied behind her; he had tape over his mouth, a badly bruised face, and blood on his shirt. They’d both been tethered to a rusting tractor axle; Alice struggled to try and free herself, tugging at the rope on her hands. I wanted to reach out to her, and then the scene shifted, a flash of sky as the camera moved on an
