California (4 page)

7

The first blow caught Golly hard, but the bottle stayed intact. Golly jerked forward, looked like he was struck with a stomach cramp. Both hands went from the settee to the back of his head. His mouth hung open, a scream lodged behind his tonsils.

Shug shattered the bottle the second time, sent cheap whisky across the settee and lino, blood from a burst scalp quick to follow. Golly found his voice, scrambled off the settee. His legs went out from under him and he hit the floor. He grabbed at the telly to try and steady himself. Left a bloody smear on the screen, more blood spilling across his cheeks. Shug chucked the bottle neck at Len’s chair and leant over, pulled the sawn-off from down the back of the settee.

Cracked the spout. Two in there. Paranoid fucking bastards.

Correct
fucking bastards, as it turned out.

Whether it was there in case of chancer stick-up men, or because they were expecting him round, it didn’t matter. Fact was, Golly was supposed to use this on him, at the very least to keep him in place. And for that, Shug flared enough to kick him in the ribs. Then he nipped to the side of the living room as he heard Len approach. He sucked in a deep breath.

 
Len burst into the room. “The fuck? Gol –“

Butt of the sawn-off, short jab to the temple. Another jab knocked Len’s nose out of whack, killed his vision with tears and got the blood flowing. Shug moved forward, put one foot over Len’s, pushed both barrels against the man’s knee and pulled the trigger.

A colossal explosion. Made him flinch away from the light, the heat, and the light warm spray on his face. He stepped back, arm aching with the recoil. He blinked, rubbed the stinging smell of smoke from his nose. He looked across at Len, the man’s leg pulverised into a sodden bloody mess, his face white, eyes as wide as his mouth. And then, over the ringing in his ears, he began to hear the screams.

“Daft lads. Had a chance to be a fuckin’ man about it, you had to act like little boys.”

Len flailed on the floor, trying to reach for something at his back. Shug moved quickly, shoved him onto his stomach, and tugged the drilled air pistol from the back of his jeans.

“Should’ve had it out, you might’ve had a chance to get one off. You’ll remember for next time, eh?”

Len made a noise that sounded like he was drowning. Shug pushed him back upright. Len’s head lolled back. About to pass out, but keeping himself awake through sheer fucking rage. “I’m gonna ... I’m gonna ...”

“What?” said Shug, breathing heavily, flexing his fingers around the trigger guard of the sawn-off. “Come on, Len-son. Say what you need to say.”

“Gonna fuckin’
kill
...”

“Me? No, you’re not, Len. You’re not killing nothing.” Golly moved behind him. Shug backed up a step, glanced over at him. “How’re you, Gol?”

Golly groaned.

“That’s what I thought. See now lads, you both need to have a think about how this evening could have gone. Have a wee mull on the alternatives. Open your minds to the possibility that if you’d treated us with a wee bit more respect, not treated us like a bit player in a fuckin’ gangster film, then you wouldn’t be lying here with your scalp in ribbons, and you’d still have your fuckin’ knee.”

Len sounded as if he was trying to say “fluff” over and over again. He was fading, struggling to stay conscious.

“You keep at it, son. Don’t think I don’t know who grassed us up, eh? Something else to think on: I wasn’t going to come round here tonight. I wasn’t going to do nothing to you. I was going to leave you alone, let bygones be fuckin’ bygones. But you were the one pushed it. You were the one brought us round. So all this? You did it to yourself. You know what kind of man I was, you know you got off fuckin’ lucky here tonight. I could’ve done the pair of youse and been offski before the polis caught wind. Because, let’s face it, that was what you were going to do to me, eh?”

Len grinned at Shug.

“It’s why she texted you. Tell you I was there. So you’d be fuckin’ ready to finish it off.”

Len nodded.

Shug nodded back at him, pulled the mobile from his pocket. He went through the texts sent, found the last one.

Smiled at first, but felt it drop almost immediately.

It read: SHUG HERE DONT HURT HIM PLS

Shug read it a couple of times, dropped pauses in where he thought they should go, then cleared out of it. He turned the phone off, held it tight in one white fist. He stared at Len, who stared right back, even though his eyes were glazed and his anger draining out of him as the blood began to adhere him to the lino. Shug looked over at Golly, alive and awake, but only just. He dropped the mobile onto the settee, nudged Golly with the side of his foot.

“Call for an ambulance before he bleeds out,” said Shug. “I’d take your cuts for grassing us up, but you’ve got nothing worth taking.”

He put the sawn-off on Len’s gaming chair, turned and headed for the hall. He heard the moans, the dizzy scramble as one of them launched themselves at the weapon. Just before he slammed the front door, he heard a cry of triumph, a grunt of exertion. And just as soon as he’d cleared the door, there was an explosion behind him and council blue wood chips sprayed the path.

Shug looked back, saw Golly’s familiar silhouette at the end of the hall.

He gave it a shot, at least. Shug couldn’t fault him for that.

He started walking. Something stung his leg. He looked down, saw the tiny hole in his jeans, felt the trickle of blood at the top of his calf. He carried on.

Heard Cocker’s voice in his head: “Think about it this way, Hugh, someone keeps giving you a hard time, what do you do?”

“I have a word with them.”

“And if that doesn’t take?”

“I have another word.”

Shug heard the harsh sound of prison laughter. It echoed.

“And when
that
doesn’t take,” said Cocker. “What do you do then?”

“I kill them.”

The laughter cut short. The thrum of strip-lighting, but otherwise silent.

Cocker said: “Then that’s what you’ll do to yourself if you keep allowing your temper to get the better of you.”

Shug shook his head.

“You have to let your anger dissipate naturally. Healthily. Think of anger as a mixture of both emotional and physical changes. The emotional is obvious, but the physical is what I imagine pushes you towards violence, Hugh, yes? The physical change is a massive surge of energy, and that energy, well, it has to go somewhere, doesn’t it? And the first instinct isn’t to channel it, is it? It’s to explode.”

Cocker made the childish noise of a bomb blowing up.

“You just need to breathe it out,” he said.

“I just need to breathe it out,” said Shug.

But he couldn’t, could he? Because Shug was Shug, and he’d always be that way. Shug’s Granda was called Shug, too. It was his Granda he’d been named after, his Granda everyone said he resembled. And it was his Granda who originated the family temper. Famous for it. Hard man. Miner. Worked the pits his entire life, or as good as, breathed coal dust like it was oxygen. He lost good mates in blasts, lost a few more to themselves. Like them, Granda drank his blood thin and shed everyone else’s once he’d had a few, and there was nothing better than a square go to put a cap on a night out, preferably with someone who gave as good as they got. By the time little Shug showed up on the scene, Granda’s face looked like a brown paper bag full of walnuts, and moved like it too.

He was a good man, mind. A good man with a terrible affliction, and Shug loved him. Course, he never said it. It wasn’t something you said. Just like he never cried at the man’s funeral.

Granda went the Peckinpah way, swinging his fists from the floor. Beaten into a coma in a Govan boozer when he picked a bone with five rough-hewn cunts who didn’t think twice about kicking shite out of an eighty-year-old man. He slept for four days after that, hooked up to breathing and bleeping machines, before he fought them too and ended up croaking at tea time, just as one of the nurses was sitting down to watch
The Fresh Prince of Bel Air
.

Always the inconsiderate bastard.

Shug slowed as he rounded the corner into the street where Ailsa lived. He checked that nobody was following him, then sat on a low front wall.

Getting tired. He rubbed at the small wound on his leg. It didn’t have the pulsing ache that came with shot, so he guessed he’d been nicked by one of the wood chips. He ran one hand over his face, closed his eyes until he felt his heart slow down.

Like Cocker said to him, a man couldn’t stay belligerent his whole life. Quite apart from the fact it would probably end in him getting kicked into a twitching paste, the rage put a strain on the heart and digestive system. It gave him warnings. It had a word with him. And if that word didn’t take, it would kill him.

Shug felt himself shake. He closed his eyes. Breathed through his nose. Counted to ten, then twenty. When he hit thirty, he opened his eyes again. Black spots jumped in his vision. He looked down the round at Ailsa’s house.

It would be alright. A slight lapse, that’s all it was.

It would be alright once he got his stash. Then he’d be out of here.

8

“Ailsa, open the door. It’s me.”

It was late, getting on for later, but they were in. Steve’s Land Rover was parked out front. If the car was home, then so was he. Steve was the kind of bloke who never strayed too far from his beloved Land Rover, and if he was in, then Ailsa was probably somewhere near. She didn’t have the nous to wander off. Too timid. Which was the main reason Steve married her.

He knocked on the door again. Saw a light come on in the hall. He looked over his shoulder at the road. Empty. Shug hoped that Len and Golly would take the hint and stay down. He didn’t hear any sirens, either. Wondered if one or both of them had bled out.

The front door opened. He turned back to see Ailsa stood in the doorway, blinking at him. She was wearing going-out clothes, but looked dishevelled enough to have just come in. The smell that came off her was perfume and gin, reminded him of their mam. So did her voice, which was shaking when she said, “Shuggie?”

“Aye.”

“Oh my God, Shug.” She stepped out, threw loose arms around his neck and squeezed him. “I wasn’t expecting to see you for ... I don’t know. How long’s it been?”

“A while.”

Ailsa pulled back to have a look at him. “So what happened?”

“Nothing.”

“How come’s you’re out early?” She took a sharp breath. “You didnae do anything daft, did you?”

“You know me, I did plenty daft. But no, Ails, I’m out properly.”

“Really?”

“Uh-huh.”

Punched him in the arm. Still had some strength in her. “Away with you.”

“Serious.”

A voice from behind her, braying up the hall. “Letting the bloody cold in, woman, who is it?”

Ailsa smiled. “You want to come in for a bit?”

“Aye.”

She stepped back and let him into the warmth of the hall, closed the front door behind him. She nodded to the open door to the front room. Blue light flickered in there. Shug saw Steve laid out in his recliner, watching the highlights.

Steve said, “Well, who the bloody hell was it? This time of night, I hope you told them where to get off.”

“Aye, she did.”

Steve turned sharply in the recliner, made the springs screech. He was a big man but, as the line goes, out of shape. Money-soft and none the better for it. Kind of bloke whose missus had to stay half-pissed to deal with his moods, with the occasional battering. And judging by the way the light danced across the scabs on his right hand, he’d been at it recently. But Shug didn’t want to dwell on that. Already lost it once tonight, and he could justify it as self-defence. Beating fuck out of Steve would just be indulgent, no matter how much the bastard deserved it.

“Shug,” said Steve. “How you doing? You okay?”

“Not bad.”

Steve kicked the footrest down. “Can I get you a drink or something? Ailsa, get your brother a beer.”

“You want a Stella?” said Ailsa.

“No.” Shug turned to his sister. “Fi said she gave you something to hold onto for us.”

Ailsa looked at Steve.

Shug said, “What you looking at him for?”

“Yeah, what you looking at me for?” Steve laughed. “You know what he’s talking about. Go and get it.”

“Sorry, Shug.”

Ailsa left the room before Shug got a chance to ask her why. He heard her run up the stairs as he turned to Steve, who was busy shifting his weight from one socked foot to the other. He looked at the television.

“That new, is it?” he said.

“That? Nah, had it for ages.”

“Looks pricey.”

“Nah.”

“HD job.”

“It’s all HD now, Shug.”

“Seeing a lot of them about, right enough.” Shug pulled out his pack of cigarettes. Didn’t bother asking if he could smoke. Didn’t need to. He sparked the lighter, puffed smoke and moved his head at the television. “So if I get what I came for and I find that some of it’s gone, you’ll just, what, you’ll shrug at us, will you?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

Course he didn’t. That was why he couldn’t keep still. That was why he looked guilty as fuck. “I’m talking about a brand new telly, Steve. Looks to me like it might’ve cost upwards of a grand. Believe me, I’m getting to be quite the fuckin’ expert on tellies tonight, so I know stuff like this. And unless I’m very much mistaken, that’s upwards of a grand that you don’t have. Or at least you didn’t have until Ailsa brought in my stash to look after.”

Steve was shaking his head, his mouth open. Smiling, like he was trying to come up with a decent excuse but his brain wasn’t working, so he just looked like he was having a mild stroke.

“What’d you think, like, it was a bank up there? Take an interest-free loan, and you’ve got seven years to pay it back?”

Steve stopped moving his head now, his gaze stuck to the carpet. He breathed out through his mouth. Ailsa came down the stairs, slower than she’d gone up them. Shug heard her come into the room.

“Shug –“

“Do us a favour and turn on the big light, will you?”

“It’s all there.”

“Come on, love, you know better than that.”

Shug held out his hand. Ailsa gave it to him, then turned on the main light. She gasped at the sight of him, blood splattered all up his T-shirt.

“Shuggie –“

“It’s alright,” he said. Didn’t know whether that was Len or Golly. Didn’t really matter either way. Might be adding to it soon. There was supposed to be eight grand and change in the box, but there didn’t look to be more than five. He removed the money, saw his passport and his Granda’s watch, the gold one they gave him the day he left the mine. Shug tucked the cash into the back pocket of his jeans, the passport into his jacket, and slipped the watch over the knuckles and onto his right wrist. He looked back at Ailsa. “I’ll need a new shirt.”

“I’ll get you one.” Ailsa left the room.

Steve frowned. “Wait a second –“

“Steve,” said Shug. “I’m going to need the keys to the Land Rover an’ all.”

Looking him in the eyes now. “I already told you I never took your money.”

“I know what you told us.”

“Your girlfriend had it before –“

“I know. Could’ve been you. Could’ve been her. Could’ve been both, but it doesn’t really matter. Not like it changes the situation. You’re still going to give me the keys to your car.”

“No, I’m not.” He backed away a step, second-guessing himself. “Why?”

“Because if you don’t, I’ll shoot you in the face.” Shug pulled the pistol, held it loose against one leg.

“I swear, we never took any money from you.”

“I’m past caring. Thing is, I’m robbing you, Steve, because if I don’t, I’m going to have to hurt you. Badly. Because you’re a fat cunt who’s belted my wee sister for far too many years without someone showing you your fuckin’ guts. And the only reason I don’t do both is because I don’t want to see the look on her face when she finds you in a bloody heap, and because I made myself a promise that I wouldn’t seriously maim anyone else tonight. But here’s the thing, Steve, I will do both if you continue to fuck me about.”

Steve trembled, but his face was stone. “How dare you.”

Shug blinked. “Eh?”

“How dare you come into my house and threaten me.”

“Dinnae get blustery, Steve. Start crying or something, whatever you need, but dinnae come the fuckin’ bolsh. It doesn’t suit you and it’ll get you nowhere.” Shug readjusted his grip on the pistol. “I’m taking the car. The only choice you have is whether you get to keep your kneecaps, or whether I add one more to the tally.”

Ailsa returned to the front room. Shug heard her stop dead in the corner of the room.

“What’s going on?” she said.

“Your husband’s about to make a very important decision. Way it’s going, you might not want to be in the room when he makes it.”

“Jesus, what’s that? Is that gun? Did you bring a gun into my house?”

“Yes.”

“Shuggie –“

“Won’t take a second. Steve?”

Steve looked at his wife, then dug around in his pocket. He pulled out his keys and gave them to Shug.

“Thank you.” Shug replaced the pistol, pocketed the keys and held out one hand for the shirt Ailsa had brought. “Ta.”

She slapped him hard on the chest. “Fuck d’you think you’re doing?”

“Don’t.”

“Bringing a
gun
into the house.”

“I’m going.”

She was made up, but the light in here made Shug see through it, made him see the swelling on one side of her face. He put one hand on her cheek. His throat was dry. Needed saving, but never wanted it, and he was past asking.

“Is that it?” she said. “Flying visit?”

“Let him go,” said Steve.

“Take care of yourself,” Shug told Ailsa. “I’ll be in touch once I’m settled, alright?”

He kissed her on the cheek and then moved past her into the hall and out of the house. Left Steve to reach for the phone, get on with calling the police. It was the logical next step for a man stripped of his motor and his dignity.

Shug approached the car, bleeped off the alarm.

He saw a figure approach out the corner of his eye, heard footsteps rattling up the pavement. He turned, reached back for the pistol at the same time.

Fiona.

He let go of the gun.

“Wait,” she said.

He didn’t want to. He couldn’t. He had places to get to.

But he waited all the same.