Another thud sounded behind him, Milo turned back towards the source of it. ‘Walloping’s not going to mend the thing! Would ye ever fecking listen?’ He shook his head, turned back to me, raised eyes aloft, said, ‘Eejit.’
‘Trouble?’
‘Telly’s on the blink. Yon Russki thinks kicking the shite out of it’s the answer — I tell you, it’s Stalingrad all over!’
I laughed and gave Milo an understanding nod, then turned back to my room. As I closed the door I heard him cheer. I’m sure Anne Robinson blasted a contestant on The Weakest Link for all of a millisecond, before banging on the TV resumed.
I mouthed, ‘Nut house,’ and looked to the heavens.
Got booted and suited. Grabbed my jacket. Checked the pocket — I still had some holding-folding. Col had seen me right so far but I would need to tap some more expenses soon.
On the way out Milo roared like Doran’s ass. I heard him as I hit the street and pulled up my collar. It felt cold enough to grate cheese on my pods. Shit, it was Edinburgh, but nice to be out as Kelly Jones says.
Cars clogged up the crossroads at the top of Easter Road. I choked on the fumes from the school-run mums in their Stockbridge tractors. It was too early a start for me. I usually miss all this mayhem. The days when I needed to be at a desk by nine sharp were long gone.
I watched the pinstriped yuppies power walking towards fifty-grand-a-year, superannuation and medical benefits — would need to come with a crate load of Prozac to get me interested. The big thing with the suits this season appeared to be massive collars and cuffs. Real Harry Hill jobs. They made me laugh, the bloody comedians.
Beyond the grass embankment on London Road, a drinking school knocked the froth off a few cans of Special Brew. The Flower of Scotland got its first airing of the day. Never ceases to amaze me, it’s always time for a celebration with this crew. The desk jockeys shirked past them, eyes down, upping their pace till a few steps clear, then they dropped down a gear.
I let out a wide smile on my way past. I ventured brief applause when the performance finished. They loved it. Thing is, I know my own coat’s hung on a slack hook as well.
I headed on past the cottagers’ cludgie. Too early to see any Careless Fisters, as they’d been renamed following the George Michael contretemps.
Every manor has its Huggy Bear. Just like the character from Starsky and Hutch, they know the lot. I figured if any theories on Billy’s demise had been put about the East End then Mac the Knife would know.
Mac’s a character. What his native Glaswegians call a chib man. Very handy with a knife, until he landed a score at Her Majesty’s extreme displeasure. After the best part of eight years in the Riddrie Hilton, Mac fled to Edinburgh and never looked back. Now he’d turned his attention to the more mundane task of hairdressing. He’d seen to my short back and sides for more than a year before I got the story behind his half Chelsea smile. I’ve never watched a barber more closely since.
A bell chimed and a Super Mario lookalike greeted me with a black robe at the ready. ‘Is it yourself under all that?’
‘The very same.’
Mac flung the robe over his shoulder, a silver comb in one hand and a set of scissors in the other, he stretched out his arms to hug me. I leaned forward, watched my back in the floor to ceiling mirrors.
‘It’s good tae see you, pal,’ he said. ‘Come in, come in. Get yourself oot the cold.’
Mac’s patter hadn’t changed in years. By the look of him neither had his T-shirt — an early eighties job with the words ‘I Came On Eileen’ printed across the front.
I said, ‘Thanks,’ took him up on the offer of a coffee.
Mac looked to be aiming for a more up-market clientele than usual. The way this city was headed, he’d no choice, but it seemed like a struggle against the grain. Especially as the waft of Brut 33 still filled the joint.
The coffee came with a wafer and a little bunch of grapes, three to be precise, on the side.
‘What the hell’s this?’ I said.
‘Call it a wee garnish, eh.’
‘I’ll call it what it is — bloody pretentious!’
‘Pretentious… moi? You say the most hurtful things.’ Mac smiled at me in the mirror. ‘Right, what can I do for you, big man?’
‘Information.’
His comb hovered above my head, he shifted it sideways, said, ‘I meant the haircut, pal.’
‘Short, very. And lose the beard.’
He ruffled my mullet in progress, grabbed up a sizeable ponytail. ‘Do you want your hair cut round the back?’
I joked with him: ‘Why? Have you no room in the shop?’
‘Ha-ha. Funny man.’
He started cutting.
I started probing. ‘Billy Thompson.’
‘Uh-hu.’ Mac looked unfazed. Always his way of doing things. If he knew something, it needed teasing out of him. Though he hadn’t been part of a firm for decades, he still liked to be seen as part of the life, a man in the know.
‘Shame for the boy,’ I said.
‘Och, we’re all headed the same road, Gus.’
‘Some quicker than others.’
‘True. True.’
I upped the ante. ‘Mac, his family’s ruined. Have you a family of your own?’
‘Gus…’ He stopped cutting and looked at me over the comb. ‘You know I’ve a family.’
I snapped, ‘Well, stop buggering about and tell me what you know.’
Mac looked in the mirror. His mouth became a taut wire. ‘Relax, would you?’ he said softly. This Weejie obviously took notes in the anger-management classes. I pulled out my cigarettes and showed Mac the packet.
‘Oh, go on then, haven’t had a red top since Adam was a boy in Dumbarton Rock.’
We sparked up and started to fill the small shop with smoke. It seemed to relax us both.
Mac said, ‘He was an early riser.’
‘What — from his pit in the mornings?’
‘No. No. He was on the up.’ Mac raised his hands, crossed his brows, then continued, ‘The last time I saw Billy Boy he was driving about in a Merc, not any Merc, a fifty-grander. Don’t think it was his, mind.’
‘Benny Zalinskas?’
Mac’s eyes widened. Then they dropped like lead weights. He turned quickly back to the job at hand. ‘I don’t know.’
‘Mac, come on, you can’t kid a kidder.’
‘I really don’t know. Probably was the Bullfrog’s, he didn’t say.’
‘Whoa, whoa, back up there. The Bullfrog?’
‘Aye, that’s his handle. Benny the Bullfrog.’
I laughed. ‘Nice one — so, so scary!’
Mac smirked, then the smirk trailed off and his face changed. Suddenly a grey pallor settled on him. A real shit-stopping seriousness.
‘Gus, that whole firm’s bad news,’ he said. ‘You don’t want to get involved.’
‘Then put me off,’ I said.
‘I don’t know what to say. I’m well out of it… Christ, in my day carving seemed scary enough, these days all the firms have shooters coming out their arses, but nobody messes with Benny’s mob.’
‘Why? You telling me he just got off the plane from Moscow one day, took over a well-established patch and nobody said boo to him?’
‘He has the numbers. He’s well big, Gus — the Edinburgh firm’s a minor spoke in his wheel.’ Mac pointed the scissors at me. ‘This guy’s fucking Blockbusters, do you get me?’
‘Whatever you say.’
