Christopher Brookmyre (23 page)

She didn't know who this man was or what he had to do with Ross. What she did know was that he had taken pictures of Ross's ransacked apartment, and had been the one who broke it to her that her son was missing. It hit her with a sudden chill that maybe she was in the process of delivering to this man the very thing that Ross didn't want: a weapon to use against him. What if the guy wanted Ross to do something, give him something, tell him something, but he wouldn't comply?

Believe me, this is
not
about Rachel
. How better to force his cooperation than to get hold of someone close to him? Rachel in the first instance, then, when that didn't work out, get his dear old mother to hand herself over.

But then she remembered: the phone had been secreted by that girl at the supermarket, before the attempt on Rachel. In any case, right then it didn't matter what it might or might not be about, what she could interpret or deduce. All that mattered was the one thing she knew for certain: if he said the only way to help her son was to get to this address, then she was going, as he put it, to accede unquestioningly to his request. She made a couple of stops to fill up the tank and to stretch her legs, but she wasn't feeling the long haul as too much of a strain. Jane had always enjoyed driving, especially long distance on open roads like this, or in the city at night when the streets were quiet, these being the times you could really buy into that romantic notion of the car being an instrument of freedom. It was a good deal harder to believe that the road could take you anywhere when you were stuck on the M8 at Shawhead, the traffic moving slow enough for you to read, 'Wash me, please' and 'No hand signals - driver having a wank' scrawled on the grimy rear of the artic in front. Having provided an on-call, zero-notice free taxi service for Ross and Michelle for the best part of two decades, it was perhaps inevitable that it would occur to her to give it a go for real, especially when the alternative of an evening was sharing the living room with Vegetable Man and Henrik Larsson. That was arguably the greatest factor in her decision to start private-hire driving: avoiding the tandem isolation of two people who lived alongside each other rather than together; driving around in the darkness because it was too late to truly run away.

They weren't meant to be joined at the hip, and they weren't meant to share all of each other's enthusiasms, but at the very least they were meant to be pals, weren't they? She and Tom weren't pals. They were like workmates with nothing else in common but this shared occupation, speaking without saying anything other than the necessary technical discussion that the job in hand entailed. Right now, the job was living together and sometimes being grandparents. In the past, as mum and dad to two kids, there had been more to it, and for that it had been easier to ignore what was missing. Of course, there was a lot more to being a taxi driver than having a set of wheels at her disposal or merely a passable knowledge of Lanarkshire geography. For example, you didn't just need to know how to get somewhere, you had to know how long it would take in the prevailing traffic conditions, so that you and the dispatcher could think two or sometimes three jobs ahead. It required an ability to read customers and situations, to anticipate the obstacles and delays and to understand the crucial differences between what the fare told you and what he or she actually meant. Most of this she learned the hard way, such as how a call-out to a pub at eleven o'clock didn't mean the fare had any firm intention of leaving the establishment at least until he'd finished the round he'd got in at last orders. Some of the drivers seemed to have a sixth sense, always managing to be in the right area as a fare came up, thus avoiding idling or long, passenger-free jaunts between pick-ups, but really this was all down to experience.

Her first fare was the most nerve-racking, even though it was just picking up some old wifey outside Safeway and taking her home with a boot full of messages. All the way there, she'd felt disproportionately apprehensive and could feel her cheeks redden in anticipation of being somehow found out. Tom's encouraging words - 'You're kidding yourself on and you'll be back here in an hour' - rang in her ears, in the end providing ample motivation through spite. It also reminded her that while she might be kidding herself on, the fares wouldn't know that she hadn't been doing this for ten years. In the case of her debut, the old wifey gave no indication of suspecting she was in less than experienced hands, though the fact that she proffered a fiver unprompted once Jane had dumped the last of her bags on her doorstep did save Jane from walking away without remembering to ask for payment. After that, she just relaxed and got on with it.

She went out four or five evenings a week, sometimes more. At first she'd start after dinner, just as Tom was reattaching the armchair's umbilicus, but in time she progressed to eating earlier on her own and leaving a portion for him to microwave. She enjoyed it, on the whole. There were times when it was boring, but never as boring as being stuck in that living room, and even on the quietest nights, she still got more conversation than she would had she stayed home.

Some talked from the minute they climbed into the car, others said no more than their destination. She could usually tell what she was in for from the off. If they sat up front, they wanted company, and you were in with a better shout of a tip too, as they weren't going to treat you like you worked below stairs. There was no code of client confidentiality as guarded the consulting room, the couch or the confessional, but there still seemed an assumption that what was said in the car was sacrosanct, as she'd been party to the most unguarded and indiscreet personal revelations from people who'd only met her less than ten minutes back.

The fares didn't actually need to speak to grant her glimpses into their lives, and often they were lives you wouldn't want any more than a glimpse into. Poverty, squalor, desperation and so much loneliness. Destination Hairmyres or Wishaw General, ferrying worried and sometimes bereaved relatives to and from their last hours with loved ones. Angry wee men, seething all the way home from the pub, no amount of drink enough to anaesthetise their grudge against the world at large, turning Jane's thoughts to the poor dear who would be opening the door to that in a few minutes. Young women, out of their faces despite the bumps swelling their waistbands. A moonlight flit while an abusive partner is out of the house, Jane being treated with a reverent gratitude like she was one of the emergency services, and pleaded with not to disclose her destination to anyone.

It certainly afforded her a sharp perspective upon where her own complaints ranked in the grand scheme, though humility and consolation were not the same thing. In her grandmother's words, 'There's always somebody worse aff than yoursel", and there was a difference between being grateful for what you had (or hadn't) and settling for it. Jane had a comfortable home and an honest, dutiful husband, even if she didn't want to be there spending time with him. She wasn't abused, she wasn't bereaved and she wasn't dying a slow, painful death.

Just a slow, numb one.

She got glimpses into better lives, too.

Having brought up Ross and

Michelle, she'd long ago made her peace with the younger generation being the ones who had all the fun, but it wasn't them she was jealous of. She drove people who were her age or older to restaurants, bars, hotels, theatres, the airport, and it wasn't the good times they were in for that made her envious; at least, not entirely. It was the good times they were having before they stepped into her car, before they dialled the cab firm's number, before they booked the table or the tickets.

And then there had been that one, most haunting night that had stayed with her such a long time after, like a secret stolen treasure, and yet one that ached to recall. The fare was a guy in his mid-forties, going to King Tut's Wah Wah Hut in town. She didn't get much of a look at him in the few seconds the inside light came on before he closed the door and extinguished it. He had a full head of flecked salt-and-pepper hair, she saw that much, and was wearing jeans and a leather overcoat.

As predicated by his choice of seat, they talked, or rather, mostly he talked. He was off out to see some band Jane had never heard of, though it was twenty years since that distinction would have put the said performers into any exclusive percentile of obscurity.

'Me and the missus don't go oot much any mair, just the odd restaurant a couple of times a month,' he said. 'But I'll be staunin' in these places wi' a Zimmer, because it makes me feel the same as it did when I was my weans'

age, you know? The atmosphere, the smell of drink and smoke, the posters on the walls, folk gettin' aff wi' each other in the corners. That rush when the lights go doon. Pure magic. It never changes.'

Clearly, he didn't ken the score.

He was still blethering away enthusiastically as they reached his destination. When Jane put the overhead light on to take the fare, she finally got a good look at his face and confirmed her growing suspicion that she knew him. Ferguson, had been the job name. Iain Ferguson. Ferret. That's how he'd been known, though only as a convenient corruption of his surname and no reflection upon his physical appearance or libidinous conduct. This was worth stressing given that Jane remembered having sex with him, in a drunken and barely competent, but nonetheless enjoyable, one-night stand. He paid the fare, giving her a twenty-pound note to cover a seventeenpound ride. She thanked him and told him she hoped he enjoyed the show. He hadn't recognised her and she chose not to jog his memory. She was idling in town when the call came for the return trip. It was often worth hanging around in the city centre at that time of a Saturday night if a fare had taken you in there already, but she knew not to be kidding herself. She had waited because she wanted the job.

She walked down the basement steps and into the bar, which was deserted but for a couple of staff and a girl in goth garb placing club flyers on to the empty tables. She could hear the thrum of the music from the venue proper upstairs, could feel the bass vibrate around the building.

'Taxi,' she explained as a barman approached, ready to take an order. 'It's for--'

'On you go up,' he said, nodding to the door that led to the stairs. 'Band's no' finished. Or you can stay here if you prefer. You want a drink?'

'I'll go up,' she decided, enticed by curiosity and a desire to revisit the scene of a cherished moment.

It had been less than half full on that occasion, the audience less than half enthusiastic, which was to be expected given that the headliners weren't due on-stage for another ninety minutes at the time. None of that had diluted Jane's sense of electrification, because the rest of the crowd didn't see what she was seeing. They were watching the first of two unknown support acts; she was watching her baby girl on bass guitar.

Tonight, however, it was packed to the rafters and late in the proceedings. She shuffled further inside to get a view of the stage, her vantage point also affording a clear perspective on the exit, in case her fare should walk out past her. It only took a few moments watching the band to know that wasn't going to happen until they had finished. The singer clutched a mike stand, guitar slung around his neck, an imposing bear of a man, grinning wickedly as he spoke. Jane was confessedly out of touch with this kind of thing, but she could still tell that he had the whole place eating from the palm of his hand. They'd listen to him if he sang until dawn, and a glint in his eye said he might just stay and do that. He even sang as much: 'I've fifteen hours to burn and I'm gonna stay up all night.'

When he sang, his voice
was
a nightclub: smoky, sultry, seductive, intoxicating, sleazy, euphoric, threatening, dark, dark, dark and an irresistible temptation. Jane thought of the old legend about the blues guitarist waiting at the crossroads to do a deal with the devil. This guy would have dragged the devil to the nearest bar, drunk him under the table, fleeced him and then laughed him out of town.

Jane was soon under the spell too. She knew that what she'd brought with her was a factor. Memories and forgotten dreams, echoes of a girl she'd once been and perhaps the other women she might have turned into. 'It's Saturday night, baby,' the singer kept calling out. Sometimes it seemed incorporated into his lyrics, and at other times it was simply a spontaneous, ecstatic exclamation. 'Hey Glasgow, it's Saturday night!' He did it with such rapture, such a sense of celebration that Jane realised she had long ago forgotten why. Saturday night was meaningless when every day was the same, when you were never going to do anything special with it anyway. But this was a stirring reminder of what it used to mean. Saturday night, Saturn's night. The night of misrule. The time when you threw off cares and conventions and thought, the devil take tomorrow - right now I'm going to live for me. When had she last looked forward to Saturday night? When had she last thought: I'm gonna stay up all night, fifteen hours to burn or not?

She dropped Ferguson off, finished her shift and went home to bed, where she utterly failed to get to sleep. At first this was because her ears were still ringing from the music and she was still a little too exhilarated to switch off and let her fatigue pull her under. But as she lay awake, she found herself thinking about Ferguson: daft, desperate projections. The two of them going out to a bar where music was playing, maybe before a band took the stage, talking about the old days, talking about where life had taken them since, talking about what they still wanted, talking, talking, talking. That could happen, couldn't it? That was plausible: each of them finding a companion to go to places neither his wife nor her husband could be dragged along to. That was how it could begin, maybe, and then perhaps they might find themselves doing other things their spouses weren't interested in any more. No, that was silly, wasn't it? It was just a fantasy, but the pleasure of it told her something about herself that she couldn't unlearn. She hadn't simply been fantasising about sex, nor even simply fantasising about having an affair. She was fantasising about being in a different marriage.