— The other guy would kill to be in my shoes.
The sides of Pye’s face burn. — Righty, I’ll just … ehm … He waddles back to the office, followed by Lennox, and fumbles in the till, nervously counting out five hundred dollars.
— Great car, by the way, Lennox says as he takes the money and pockets it, starting to feel sorry for the fat man, who would head home to his one deadly friend, silent, white and immutable; the refrigerator that was killing him every time it greeted him with a big, brash light-bulb smile. He and Robyn head for the taxi rank. Thinking of Starry and Clemson, he can feel his adrenalin leaking, and the depression setting in, the penny-wise gain followed by the pound-foolish debit: the emotional mathematics of practising violence or abuse. They climb into a taxi. — Fort Lauderdale.
In the back of the cab he explains the situation to Robyn, leaving her in no doubt that he’s calling the shots. — Here’s the deal; you come and see Tianna in Fort Lauderdale with me. Then we go to the police station and tell them everything. Tianna’ll stay with my friends for a week or so, until this shit’s cleared up.
— But I need her with me –
— It’s got fuck all, sweet fuck all, Lennox emphasises, thinking of Tianna and So Fucking Awesome, — to do with what you need right now. That wee lassie isnae gaunny be your sister any more. She’s just a kid and you’re a grown woman. If you don’t start acting like it, I’ll tell the authorities you’re a slut and a cokehead, and believe you me they will listen. You’ll do time for child endangerment if I show them that tape. Believe.
Her face buckles further under his onslaught. — But I thought you were our friend …
— I’m her friend, not yours. You have to start earning friendships and respect. Lennox’s tone softens as self-reproach filters through him. — Get yourself together and you’ll come out of this as a heroine in Tianna’s eyes. Make her believe in you, Robyn.
She nods through her tears. And then he finds himself rambling; telling her that he’s just a Scottish cop who wanted to be with his fiancée in Miami Beach and recover from a bad time. And plan a wedding. Maybe do a bit of sunbathing, with some fishing and sailing thrown in. Then Robyn tells him her tale, and it humanises her, as all stories do, and he sees a person of great misfortune, victimised and pulled apart like carrion by hyenas. And he remembers the trinity of bullies that made him a cop.
You can get better. He’d been as wretched as Robyn when they pulled him off that bar-room floor in Edinburgh, slain by the pub comic’s sick joke. More so, when found lurking in the tunnel after his dad’s funeral, hand pulped, ranting like a madman, protesting he had cocaine under control, as a wrap burned his jeans’pocket and his nose’s cavities. Trudi, though, had taken charge; de facto moving him into Bruntsfield, going to his Leith flat to pick up his mail. She’d been in touch with Toal, agreeing sick leave, and signed him up with her doctor, not the police one, as he’d never bothered to register. He was prescribed the antidepressants. She’d already booked the Florida sun, now the holiday would have the added agenda of executing the matrimonial plans. But first there had been his father’s funeral.
The day before he’d gone round to his sister’s place: a dull, wet and cold afternoon with progress down the leafless, grey avenue a turgid war of attrition against a vicious wind. Jackie had stayed strong during the period leading up to the funeral. She took charge of the arrangements, handled everything in her usual practical manner, displaying scant emotion. That morning when he called round at her home she flabbergasted Lennox by grabbing hold of him in the hallway, the one with the bottle-green Axminster that always smelt slightly of damp, though it had been lifted, aired and cleaned several times. — Ray … my wee brother. You know I’ve always loved you, she’d said.
This came as a shock to him, even more when he smelt the gin on her breath. — I hadnae suspected a thing, he told her, and she thought he was joking.
— You should go and see Mum, Ray. She needs us all.
— Has Jock been round looking after her? he asked quietly.
— Thank goodness for Jock, he’s a star.
So she didn’t know. Lennox fought his rage down. — Aye.
— You should go and see her, she repeated, this time with the assertion of a barrister.
— Aye, ah’ll mibbe go n see her later oan, eh? he said in his cop voice, shot with the harsh vowels and scheme argot he habitually used around Jackie, to counterbalance her posh affectations. It killed the last of the intimacy between them. He then made his excuses and left, back to the order of Trudi’s.
Sometimes a benign despot is more suitable than self-determination, he considers, particularly if you’re a hopeless fuck-up. He looks at Robyn, sees her staring ahead, focused on something invisible. — It’ll be okay, he says to her, and he hopes that he’s right.
* * *
The reunion in Fort Lauderdale is emotional and tearful, as is the subsequent parting. Lennox informs Tianna that her mother is going to be helping the police put away bad guys like Vince, Clemson, Lance and Johnnie. Which is probably the biggest truth he’s gotten to tell her.
Six Days Later
23
Holocaust
THE FULL-LENGTH BATHROOM mirrors collapse, for his own critical eyes, a thousand naked Ray Lennoxes into infinity; each one carrying the maternal stain of infidelity. Avril Lennox was the surprise package; he’d been watching his father to see how he’d turn out and the old girl had sneaked up on the blind side, the one with the clandestine life and the lusty secrets. From adolescence through your twenties it had been about making your mark as an individual, concealing your hereditary legacy in the process. Then, suddenly, you were on the stage like a stripper under harsh lights; peeling off everything to reveal your DNA.
He clicks off the bathroom spots, watches them bruise to dark, swings the door open with a flourish. The oomph is back; that sexual urge, no, that sexual imperative. Will I be able to do the right thing by Trudi? he wonders, emerging into the pulsing light of the hotel bedroom.
He pulls a cord, twisting the blind closed as she clicks on a bedside light, like a chessmaster expertly countering an opponent’s manoeuvre. She’s as naked as he is, meeting his approach with a defiant thrust at him, her sunbed tan a new outfit. Her body, in his trembling hands, is even tighter than he remembers. In the light from the indented lamps above the headboard he can see a rash of milk-white hairs, finer than silk, across her light brown arms, broken up by the odd little patch of peeling pink that dismays her. She seems so fresh that to squeeze her would leave marks; a gingerbread girl from the oven. A wave of tenderness rushes over him and he has an irresistible urge to stroke her face. Misinterpreting this gesture, Trudi pushes him gently back on to the bed, swivelling round, her sharp, pointed tongue licking down his freshly scrubbed chest, heading south. It lodges for a few tantalising seconds in his navel. A cursory flick or two and it continues as her lips open around his prick.
Lennox gasps, feeling himself stiffen, his cock swelling up in her mouth. He looks at her adjusting to the newer, more formidable status quo, a gratified surprise in her eyes that accompanies the meeting of an old friend. He tucks her hair behind her ears to enjoy the feast of her face.
Both are determined the erection will last, and she’s eagerly complicit when he groans, — I don’t want to get there yet, and he pulls out and mounts her as they make love in a controlled, precarious way, almost delighted that they can, respecting the wondrous building power of each moment with something close to forensic intensity.
They climax together, wildly; Lennox’s pulsing ejaculations so thick and heavy they almost hurt him. Trudi’s eyes roll to the back of her head and a banshee-like howl he feared he’d never hear again fills the room. Spent, they quickly dissolve into a deep post-coital slumber. He feels himself careering across an ocean until he can see Toal behind the lectern at the auction rooms. The still and silent mannequin stands in the coffin. They are bidding, the others; all in shadow, but they see
m weaker. Because Les Brodie is by his side, and they’re not boys any more. The voice of a nonce behind him says, — Two million.
— Three million! Les screams.
— Four million, comes the cry, but there is now uncertainty in the voices of the men in the shadows. They seem to be coming from further away.
Lennox studies Brodie’s face. Gets the signal. — FIVE MILLION! they cry out in unison, in that noise Scots make, through their inventions and their drunken carousings, their gift to Planet Earth of its anthem, ‘Auld Lang Syne’: the sound heard around the world.
— Sssiiixx milliiooonn … the nonce voices fade.
— I didn’t get that bid. Could you repeat it? Toal asks. — No? The last bid was five million. Going … going … sold … to Ray Lennox!
The girl on the stage is now wearing a white bridal gown. She reaches up and removes her mask as Lennox flies to the surface from that mine of sleep, sweat and duvet. Opens his eyes. Trudi’s face next to his on the pillow. Eyes shut, crooked smile. He takes a grateful, exhilarating gulp of air. After savouring a few moments of intense pathos and adoration, he wakes her with a kiss.
She’s both delighted and irritated to be roused in this way. — Oh Ray … what’s up, baby? You’ve not been having those horrible dreams again?
— No, beautiful dreams of white brides, he says, reaching out for her.
Trudi snuggles into him, then after a pause, where she’s so still and silent he thinks she’s fallen back asleep, says, — At least give Stuart a bell, Ray.
— Later, he forces a smile, pulling one arm behind his head on the pillow, feeling the wastage and shrinkage of his biceps muscle and thinking gym, gym, gym, — we’re on holiday.
— Okay, she says, and gets out of the bed and heads to the bathroom. He watches her move with lithe, coltish grace, admiring the slender tautness of her buttocks, the blades of her shoulders and the smooth indentation her spine leaves in her back. Then she’s gone and he hears the water jets hiss.
Stuart.
What had happened to the elfin-eyed kid with the clear skin and golden-brown curling hair?
Their father’s funeral. Stuart’s face reddening after every whisky; that vile, sickening concoction. The pastry from the sausage roll he was eating flaking off into his glass without him noticing. Pulling Lennox into the corner at the funeral reception and whispering in a nervy excitement. Beetroot countenance and flaring nostrils in such proximity. How Stuart had no notion of personal space at the best of times and just how smotheringly close he got when he was drunk. — It was embarrassing having to go and tidy out his office. I found a porn stash in the desk.
Lennox had raised a tired eyebrow, wanting him to stop, but too weary to insist. His skin crawling from being up all night free-basing coke in his Leith flat, where he’d gone after he’d walked out on Melissa Collingwood and the counselling.
Stuart misread this sign as intrigue. — Everything in it, Raymie, I shiteth thee not. Couldnae believe it. Dad! I took Jasmine for a drink. She admitted she felt terrible because when she’d looked through his office window and saw him all tensed up, she thought he was having a wank. He must have been known for it! So she turns away sharpish, then she hears stuff crashing around. She opens the door and sees Dad lying on the deck. He hadnae been jerking off. He was huvin a fucking heart attack.
The poor old bastard. Trying so hard to find his sexuality, that cardinal component of the self, but buried by the pills that were keeping him alive.
Lennox looking at his young brother, seeing blemishes on the skin he’d never noticed before. They might have been new. Beholding a slack-jawed muppet; an actor, a performer, always onstage. The more fucking drama, the more spoiled wee Stu would absorb it, would thrive.
— Are you going to talk to Mum?
— Just keep her the fuck away fae me, he’d said, watching his teary mother. Trudi standing beside her, consoling her. Trying to explain the inexplicable. Why isn’t Ray talking to me, Trudi? He’d told Trudi, of course, but he wasn’t sure if she’d believed him or had put it down to a deranged fantasy to be placed in the ‘stress’ dustbin.
Then Jock Allardyce had moved across to him, and he was followed by Avril Lennox, her trembling hand unwittingly teasing a glass of red wine. Big Jock’s shock of white hair, lustrously gelled back, his sad, blue eyes. — Look, Raymond, I just want to say –
— You get the fuck out ay my face, Mr Confectioner, and take her wi ye. He turned to his mother. — Ma faither’s still fucking warm, ya sick bastards!
He recalls Jock’s horror and bemusement, and his tearful, oval-eyed mother trying to cough out some words, but breaking down instead, to be comforted by Trudi and Jackie. Even at the time he knew it was petty and inappropriate to call Jock by the nickname they’d given to the murdering paedophile Horsburgh. ‘Uncle Jocky’ had never been employed in this way, nor did he have a sweet tooth. Even Horsburgh hadn’t used candy to lure his prey, just fire and Sprite.
Then Stuart was over, chameleon face and gait trying to assume the shape of nightclub bouncer. — What’s the story?
— You love this, he’d sniped at his young brother. — Well, you can bond with stepdaddy here, I’m offski.
Stuart had rounded on him. He recalls his brother balling his fists up, standing on his toes, his whisky breath an inch from him. — You think that because ye work with shite in yir fascist job that ye ken everything about human nature? You’re a fuckin novice, Raymie. You dinnae have a clue what Mum needs or wants oot ay life!
And Avril Lennox repeating a closed-eyed prayer, — It’s ma fault, it’s ma fault, it’s ma fault …
Lennox had calmly planted his hand on Stuart’s chest, pushed him back a couple of feet. — I’m sure you do. Go and swap fucking make-up tips. He’d turned away and headed outside into the car park, his mood blackening like the dark clouds that swirled above. Walking for a bit, without knowing where he was going, he ended up back at the graveyard, sitting on a bench. Thinking how he couldn’t ever tell his dad, or any of them, what happened to him in the tunnel. Wondering what it must have taken John Lennox to let go of his own big secret.
After a while there was the sound of gravel crunching underfoot, and a thin shadow passed over Lennox, making him aware that somebody had joined him on the bench, parked a respectable distance away. Les Brodie, cigarette in hand, was staring ahead, squinting in the weak sun that was trying to reassert itself. Lennox was going to ask to be left alone, but Les was saying nothing, just looking up into the murky sky.
Lennox could feel the cold air on his neck now, which throbbed with his pulse.
Les eventually spoke. — Cauld yin, El Mondo.
His childhood nickname. Used only by the immediate family and Les. That’s how close we were, he’d thought. — Things are as fucked up as they can be, Lennox moaned, looking round.
— They can always be fucked up mair. Les Brodie shook his head. Then a smile played across his lips and he turned to Lennox, meeting his gaze. — But they can be made better as well.
— That cunt, and my old lady, shagging him, bringing him there while my old man’s still warm in his grave.
— Jock was his mate, Raymie.
— Aye, some fucking mate, eh, shagging his wife. And that wee cunt Stuart –
— Aye, folk can be a bit strange. Les Brodie nodded in the way people do on such occasions; banal and vacuous in the face of the insolvable riddle of mortality.
— Tell me about it.
— But you’ve got to let go, Raymie.
— How? How the fuck, Lennox began, and his mind shot back to the tunnel and a broken Les emerging into the light with his bike, — how can you let go?
Les cleared his throat. — You know what those cunts did to me, Raymie? They raped me. Two of them, one after the other. Never told you that, did I? Never came right out and said it. Two of them, he said again, his eyes creasing around the laughter lines. — Just when I thought it was over, the other started. I was waiting o
n the third, the young guy, but he bottled out.
— Fuck sake, Les, I – He couldn’t say any more. He’d gotten away. Should he have stayed, fought, screamed and taken his punishment – as they might say, like a man – by Les’s side? That question had tormented him all his adult life.
— I could go into more detail, but I won’t. Les fished out some smokes and offered one to Lennox, who declined. — I’ll tell ye about how angry I was though, how I was looking for people tae hurt for what happened to me, and lookin tae hurt myself. I went way, way off the rails, he smiled in bitter reminiscence. — All that hate, naewhere to go. I even hated you, for getting the fuck out ay there.
— I hated myself for that, Les. I tried tae get help, tae raise the alarm. I got those people tae come, but it was too late.
Les took a deep drag on his fag. — Have to pack these in, he said. — Naw, mate, you did right. If you hadnae got away they’d have taken their time, and the other boy might have, he raised his brows, — you know.
Lennox dipped his head a few degrees. He realised that his closeness with Les had never been compromised, that the years apart had only incubated it. Les hadn’t rejected him, they were just at different ends of that long, black tunnel that stretched between them. — Did ye ken that was the reason I became a cop? I wanted those bastards, Les. I still fuckin well do. If you knew how many mugshots I’ve looked at in my spare time since I joined the force. Every sex offender on our files, UK-wide. Nothing. That was why I got into Serious Crimes, to get that kind of access to those cunts. Tae hunt the bastards doon. But zilch. He shook his head. — Maybe they just vanished into thin air.