Laidlaw

41

Run run as fast as you can

you cant run away from the cancer man

It might have been Michelangelo at the Sistine Chapel. Working, Lennie was total concentration. The wall of the lavatory was rough white plaster and it was hard getting it to take the biro. If you leaned too heavily, the point of the pen went and the flow of the ink was stopped. You had to use a lot of light strokes, one on top of the other, to lay the ink on the surface of the plaster. He would have to get a felt pen.

While he was working, he was contrasting what he was doing contemptuously with his well-stocked memory of other things he’d seen, the shaky drawings, the invitations, the same old jokes (‘It’s no use standing on the seat, the crabs in here can jump 10 ft.’). They were all daft, the sort of thing he used to write himself, but not now.

He remembered the feeling of walking in the street with Minty McGregor. The coldness of the thought was exciting — the idea of a man who could kill for no more reason than wages, who walked about the streets like a disease that would settle where it chose, who had nothing to lose and therefore wasn’t afraid. It was a dream of himself so overpowering that he would have to be careful. He had gone too far already.

Last night in the pub it had been. He had been drinking with a couple of the boys he used to knock about with and he couldn’t resist making unexplained references to ‘the cancer man’. The three of them had finished up saying in chorus, ‘Oh, the cancer man’ll get you if you don’t watch out.’ Lennie remembered a man with a scar looking bitterly along the bar at them. He hoped Matt Mason didn’t get to hear about it.

But at the moment nothing could interfere with his pleasure. It was a feeling of two things simultaneously, wildness and safety. His imagination ran amok and yet faced him with nothing more difficult to deal with than some words on a wall.

Morgan the Mighty and Desperate Dan

take off their hats to the cancer man

He was satisfied. He flushed the lavatory and opened the door. He didn’t know for a second whether he was seeing or still imagining. Looking at him was the man with the scar. While Lennie’s stomach came up and went back down, he could hear the noise of music in the bar. It sounded very far away. The man nodded as if confirming Lennie’s fear.

Lennie’s first instinct was to shut the door again. He was starting to do that when the man’s foot hit the door, slamming it against the wall with Lennie’s arm between them. Lennie screamed.

‘Whit hiv you been doin’ in here?’ the man asked.

He was leaning with his back against the door-jamb so that he could exert the maximum amount of pressure with his foot. What was he, a lavatory inspector?

‘Whit’s the gemme?’ Lennie managed.

‘Ah think you’ve been wankin’,’ the man said. ‘That’s no’ nice in public places.’

‘Who are you?’ Lennie asked.

‘Ah’m the man that’s got your arm jammed in the door. There’s a fella wants tae see you. When Ah take ma foot aff this door, you’re gonny come wi’ me. If ye cause the least wee bit bother, it’s your heid Ah’ll use as a door stopper. Fair enough?’

Lennie’s head nodded for him. As they came out into the small area where the washhand-basin was, another man was waiting.

‘Take it easy!’ he said to the man with the scar. ‘Ye’d think the boy had done somethin’ wrang. Ye’re all right, son. It’s just that a friend of ours wants a word wi’ ye. An’ that’s all. It’s as simple as that. But he’s got to have that word. That’s the kinna fella he is. Now if ye’ll just come to the car quietly with us, we’ll take ye there. If ye cause us any bother. Like goin’ through the pub here. We’ll leave ye for dead. No question. It’s your choice son. D’ye understand? Okay?’

From his tone, he might have been explaining to a child why he had to wash behind his ears. He had a nice suit on and careful, wavy hair. Both approaches, the instant, vicious malice and the fatherly promise of massacre, were for Lennie just different notches on the same thumbscrew. He was stiff with fear of the next turning, a dread so acute that they got him through the Howff and into the car without a murmur.

The man with the scar drove. The other man was in the back with Lennie. He got Lennie to crouch down on the floor.

‘No keekin’ now, son. It’s for yer own good. What ye don’t know, ye can’t tell. An’ what ye can’t tell, nobody’s gonny kick yer head in for. All right?’

One of them thought he saw a Rangers player on the street and they started talking about football. On the floor, Lennie realised he had left most of himself behind, like luggage. He had nothing that fitted this. But eventually there caught up with him a response he should have had a while ago. He tried it.

‘Whit man is this?’ he asked.

The wavy-haired man looked down at him, his face showing pleasant surprise, as if he hadn’t realised Lennie could talk.

‘No’ Santa Claus, son.’

But Lennie had at least found a reaction. Listening to their ordinary chat with each other, he tried to rehabilitate himself on it. Maybe it wasn’t so bad. They didn’t seem to be taking it all that seriously. Perhaps he could brass it out.

By the time the car stopped, he was wearing an attitude he hoped would get him through. He unwound himself and stepped steadily out of the car, even flexing his right leg, which had gone stiff. They were in what looked like a warehouse with an arched, corrugated roof. It was a long place, so that the car didn’t take up much room in it. It reminded Lennie of the kind of place he’d seen in Molendinar Street.

‘Talk nice an’ ye’ll be all right, son,’ the wavy-haired man said.

The big double doors had been closed before they got out of the car and the two men went out of the inset door. Lennie was alone. The place was empty except for a couple of boxes. There were oil-stains on the stone floor. He could hear traffic.

Given some time to himself, he began to use it. The very drama of his position raised him to meet it. He was in a tight spot. This was the time for turning up. They would know they were dealing with somebody. No surrender.

The inset door opened and the impression was that the man coming in had to feed himself through it. He closed the door, straightening up. He was big and fair and his eyes were that light blue colour that can look quietly mad. But the ticker-tape in Lennie’s head was still unravelling its mechanical responses, urgent abstractions, stored up from years of fantasy. Fair enough. A one-to-one situation. Call your play. Come and get it.

‘Hullo, son,’ the man said nicely. ‘Lennie, intit?’

Lennie nodded, one quick jab of the head, just one. So you’ve heard of me.

‘D’ye know who Ah am?’

Lennie shook his head. Should I? He didn’t take his eyes from the big man’s. No surrender.

‘Ah want ye tae tell me a few things, son. All right?’

Lennie smiled, hardly a smile, just a quiver in the corner of his mouth.

‘Uh-huh. An’ whit if Ah don’t choose tae?’

The man looked away from Lennie. That was one-up for Lennie. The man’s eyes moved vaguely round the warehouse as if he was thinking about the problem Lennie was presenting. Lennie was waiting to see how he would handle that.

‘Aye, well,’ the man said and took Lennie by the collar.

It was like being caught in the slipstream of a jet. Lennie was sucked off his feet and the man’s knee had mashed his groin and as he hung there writhing and jerking with the pain, he felt his cheek being blasted by the man’s right hand and simultaneously the man released him and he was pitched onto the concrete floor. He ricocheted off it and the other side of his face came down flat and hard against the stone. It was like being hit on the jaw with the back of a shovel. For Lennie, nurtured on the legends of Glaswegian violence, it was as if his city had fallen on his head.

He seemed drowning in nausea and the nausea was mixed with the fumes of oil and pain was banging in his head. The first thing he knew was that his face was lying in an oil-stain. He tried to raise his head but the warehouse was turning cartwheels.

‘Jist gettin’ acquainted, son,’ the man’s voice said.

The warehouse slowly subsided.

‘Now, son. Whit’s your connection wi’ Minty McGregor?’

Lennie had the feeling that if he didn’t hold onto the floor he would slide off it. He couldn’t get his head up and as he spoke the floor seemed to be grinding against his jawbone.

‘Nae connection wi’ him.’

The floor scraped along his face and it was only when it stopped that he knew his body had jerked and then that it had jerked because the man had kicked him in the ribs.

‘Ah work fur Matt Mason. Minty. A job tae do fur Matt.’

‘Very good, son. Very good.’

Lennie felt himself being lifted off the floor, just a bag of pains, and being dumped on one of the boxes. He was slumping off it when the man’s foot propped him up.

‘Sit on yer wee box, son. That’s yer reward for tellin’ the truth. We give prizes here.’

Fear deputised in Lennie for a backbone, somehow gave him the capacity to stay more or less upright on his box while his body cringed and sagged.

‘Ye went a wee walk the day wi’ Minty. Whit’s special aboot the Bridgegate?’

‘Bridgegate?’

The box was kicked from under him. As he sprawled on the floor, the man had stepped on his throat. Lennie was retching for breath, bucking on the end of his foot like a gaffed fish.

‘End of fuckin’ interview,’ the man said. ‘Ah can see Ah’ll have tae get rough. Ah’m gonny kull you, son. Unless ye tell me everythin.’ Right now. Ma name isny Simon. It’s John Rhodes.’

He said it like a battle-cry and it unravelled what was left of Lennie. He became pure terror, a desperation to talk. But John Rhodes didn’t make it easy. The pressure on Lennie’s throat stayed unrelaxed and he found that everything he wanted to say had to fight its way out.

‘That lassie in the papers. Fella that killed her. In the tenement. Up at the top. Minty gonny get rid o’ ’im the night. Minty’s got cancer.’

John Rhodes pressed on Lennie’s Adam’s apple as if toying with the button of his private hydrogen bomb, then he released him. Air battered Lennie’s lungs. He lay gasping and boking and coming to terms with the fact that he was still here.

‘When?’

Lennie didn’t look up. Even as the lie formed in him, it frightened him. But terrified of John Rhodes, afraid of Matt Mason, he made his own small compromise between them, clung to it like a spar.

‘Jist before ten o’clock. He says there’s a quiet time then.’

‘Stand up!’

That was an agonising activity for Lennie. By a series of deliberate acts of will, he put himself together like a Meccano-set. It felt as if some of the parts must be missing and he couldn’t get fully upright, settled for a lopsided sway. Separate pains were beginning to isolate themselves, clamour for his attention. His head felt crushed, one eye was closed, a cheek swollen. At least one rib must have gone. His hip ached and he must have bruises everywhere. His breathing came voiced, a repetitive moan.

With his one good eye, he stayed focussed on the man, a legend who had become real for him. Lennie hadn’t a fantasy to his name. He just knew utter fear and a desire to get away from all of it.

John Rhodes stood containing himself, like somebody reining in a runaway horse. Lennie waited, still dripping blood.

‘You!’ John Rhodes said. ‘Mention this tae anybody, even yer mirror, an’ you’re dead. Understand?’

‘Ah understand,’ Lennie managed to say.

‘All right.’ Then he said, ‘Ah, wid ye look at this! That wis you, boay.’

He extended his right arm and on the cuff of the jacket was a fleck of blood.

‘For that. An’ as a wee last warnin’.’

Lennie saw it as if it was through a telescope. The hand at the end of the outstretched arm clenched and swung. Lennie’s head bounced off the wall and he slumped at the foot of it, like thrown refuse. He was unconscious. John Rhodes wetted his thumb and rubbed it on the cuff of his jacket. Crossing to the car, he leaned in the window and pressed the horn.

The inset door opened and the other two came in. Rhodes pointed to Lennie, then to the car. The wavy-haired man dragged Lennie across and put him in the car. He opened the doors and backed out. The man with the scar closed them.

‘Minty’s been set up tae kill the poof,’ John Rhodes said. ‘Can ye imagine it? Wee Minty. If he wanted tae crack an egg, he’d need tae form a gang.’

‘It saves us the trouble, anyway.’

‘Ah gave ma word.’

‘John. As long as it’s done.’

‘Ah’ll decide the wey it’s done. Ah’ll decide!’

The man with the scar looked at him and then looked away. It was like staring into a furnace.

The wavy-haired man pulled up in a quiet cul-de-sac. Lennie had come to, with his head on a newspaper to protect the seat. He was glad they had stopped because he thought he was going to be sick and was frightened of what would happen if he vomited in the car. The man checked that the street was empty and opened the door.

‘Right, son,’ he said briskly.

Lennie crawled out and teetered on the pavement.

‘Now away an’ play with yer plastic sojers or somethin’, son.’

He took out the paper, smeared with Lennie’s blood, and dropped it in the gutter. He drove off, leaving Lennie like a pre-packaged street accident. Leaning blindly against the railings, he could think of nowhere to go but away.