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“Ay, you there, are ye going to buy something?”
The shopkeeper was talking to him. Callum stepped around the stand and looked at the man. He was tiny really, wore a turban and that made him look bigger, but he was less than five foot four and ski
“Are you going to buy something or just stand there?” The man was so small and so angry. He wouldn’t have lasted a minute in prison. Men that slight couldn’t get that angry in prison unless they had a knife or a minder, and then, Callum realized, even if they had a really big argument it wouldn’t come to blows. That was why he was so angry, because it was safe to be angry. He poked his finger at Callum rudely.
“Yeah, son, I can see the top of your head over those shelves there. What you doing standing so long? You’re not stealing from me, eh?”
Callum held his jacket open to show he had nothing, hadn’t hidden a loaf in there. “I was listening to the radio. Forgot what I was doing.”
“Aye, yeah, you like those tunes nowadays, bang bang bang? You like them, you young ones, at your discos. Load of old rubbish, man, garbage.”
The tiny old man and Callum smiled at each other. You young ones. I am young.
“What you come in for anyway, eh?”
“Milk.”
“Over there at the back.” He waved Callum towards a fridge with a glass door. Cartons of green and blue were stacked up on top of each other.
“I don’t know which one to get.”
“Who is it for? For you?”
“No, a baby.”
“Blue.”
Callum put it on the counter and held out the two pound notes. “And a loaf, please.”
“You get that off the shelf. White, brown?”
They gave you a choice of white or brown in prison but they tasted the same. He thought he remembered the cheese sandwich being white.
“White, I think.”
The old man punched the price into the till and charged him one twenty. He gave him his change. “Where you from?”
“Just moved near here.”
“Good,” he said, still sounding angry, but half smiling as well. “You be a good customer to me, yes? Don’t give your money to those bastards in supermarket.”
“OK.” Callum smiled, taking the change from him. “OK.”
Outside he smiled all the way along the road, swinging the loaf by the neck, thinking about the music he had heard and the fu
Smiling, he turned back to the street and saw the leather shoes. They were parked in the close, same as they had been the night before. Brown, sleek, a pattern punched out on the toe. The bloke looked up. A young one, like himself. Long blond hair pulled back from his face, glasses, wearing a red-checked coat, watching down the road the way Callum had just come.
The children who had been playing in the puddle in the back court pushed past the shoes. He let them through, smiling, touching the top of a head, and looked down the street again. He must have watched Callum coming out of the shop. Must have watched him swinging the loaf, off guard, smiling about the fu
Callum leaned his back against the close wall.
They were coming for him.
II
Pete had finally settled in bed after only six trips back into the living room to ask for water, a bit of bread because he was hungry, a cuddle after a particularly badly feigned nightmare, the horror of which dissipated as soon as Dub smiled at him.
Paddy and Dub were alone in the living room, sloped at either end of the settee, and Paddy told him about Kevin and the police. He agreed with her: there was no way Kevin Hatcher had been quietly taking drugs while living a relatively normal life. Could it have been his first time, though? Dub’d heard of people dying the first time they took an E and maybe it could happen with cocaine. They both considered it and decided that Aoife was right: no one swallowed and snorted at the same time.
Paddy was tired, worried about Mary A
Dub knew what would cheer her up: he put on an old tape of Evil Dead II. They already knew it by heart. They’d watched it a hundred times and knew all the jokes already but it was still comforting.
Bruce Campbell had sawn halfway through his own wrist when she suddenly thought about Fitzpatrick and the folder.
“I’ve been left a house,” she said, and told Dub about the folder with her name on it. He laughed at her.
“That’s ridiculous, he can’t make you choose between a folder and a house. It’s a will, not a quiz show. Go back and ask him what the fuck he’s on about. Better yet, get another lawyer to look into it.”
Paddy nodded, watching the tape. A woman in a bad mask was menacing the hero. Dub stretched out on the settee, his foot making contact with her leg. He flinched, withdrew from the electric touch until she smiled at him and wrapped her hand around his toes, pulling his foot onto her lap and holding it.
They watched the TV, both smiling, as the Deadites came to claim the world of men.
TWENTY. RAT SHOES
I
Paddy stood by the doors for a moment, clutching the envelopes from the clippings library. The morning newsroom was empty. Everyone was packed into Bunty’s cubicle for the editorial conference. Admin staff and the dregs and strays were rattling around and, although it was almost two hours after his shift had finished, Merki was still there, strutting, pleased with himself, offering cigarettes and prompting people to acknowledge his article the day before.
Just then Bunty’s door opened and the conference emptied out into the newsroom, eds and subs spilling out to the desks, journalists heading purposefully for the doors or phones to follow up the stories they had been assigned.
Merki trotted over to a desk and claimed his place at the keyboard, notebook propped up against the monitor, fag packet and lighter at his elbow, ready to bang out a story. She made her way over to him, standing shoulder to shoulder with him. She was a full head taller, and she wasn’t tall.
“Merki, where did you get that story, about the gun?”
Without turning to her, he scratched his neck. “That would be telling, wouldn’t it?”
“Yeah, because none of the other papers ran it or picked up on it, which made me think, you know, single source, known only to you. If anyone was confirming it they would have run it too. Did you cross-check it with anyone?”
Merki gri
They stood together and laughed. Merki was pretty fu
Paddy looked over his left shoulder and the Monkey appeared, scowling when he spotted her. She stepped away as he waved her over to Bunty’s door. She held up a finger to the Monkey and picked up a phone, dialed 9 for an outside line, and rang directory inquiries, covering her mouth so Merki wouldn’t hear her asking for the number of Scotia Press. The exchange was deep in the heart of the West End.
The woman answered as if she’d been expecting her call. “Yah?”
“Ah, hello, this is Paddy Meehan from the Scottish Daily News here. I wondered if I might come over later and talk to you about Terry Hewitt?”
Reluctantly, the woman gave her the address, told her not to come in the next three hours and to ring the bell firmly. Paddy thanked her and hung up.
The Monkey wasn’t smiling as she approached. He held the already open door to Bunty’s office and bowed as she passed on the way in.
Bunty was sitting with his elbows on the table, his index fingers steepled against his mouth. He looked up at her. She had never seen him quite as white before.