For Zoë Strachan
Ah, sweet whisperer, my dear wanton, I
Have followed you, shawled in your warmth, since I left the breast,
Been toady for you and pet bully,
And a woeful heartscald to the parish priest;
And look! If I took the mint by storm and spent it,
Heaping on you in one wild night the dazzle of a king’s whore,
And returned next morning with no money for a curer,
Your publican would throw me out the door.
‘Raftery’s Dialogue With The Whiskey’, Padraic Fallon
Contents
Title Page Dedication Epigraph Glasgow London Glasgow London Berlin Glasgow Berlin Glasgow Berlin Glasgow Berlin Glasgow Berlin Glasgow Berlin Glasgow Berlin Glasgow Berlin Glasgow London Berlin Glasgow Berlin Glasgow Berlin Glasgow Berlin London Acknowledgements About the Author By the Same Author Copyright
THE AEROPLANE WHEELS touched the runway, jerking me awake.
‘I envy you, that’s a gift.’
The blonde woman in the next seat smiled. I wiped a hand over my face.
‘Sorry?’
‘You slept like the dead all the way from Tegel. You’re lucky, I don’t sleep like that in my own bed.’
Some other time I might have asked how she slept in strangers’ beds, but I kept my smart mouth shut and waited while the pilot bumped us into a smooth landing, just another flight. The seatbelt lights turned off and the business types got to their feet and started pulling their bags from the overhead lockers. A mobile phone chimed awake and a man said, I’ll call you back in ten minutes. I’m on a plane. He laughed. No it’s OK, we’ve landed. My insomniac neighbour stood up and I slipped my equipment case from under the seat in front. It felt heavy, but I’d added nothing to it in Berlin, except for the envelope packed tight with bank notes that I hadn’t bothered to count.
The queue of passengers edged along the aisle then down the metal staircase and onto the tarmac. No one kissed the runway. I pulled my coat close and kept my eyes on the ground.
A long line of luggage lurched along the carousel but I’d left my broken suitcase along with its contents in a hotel room in Berlin.
The taxi-rank controller was bundled against the weather in a fluorescent jacket that looked regulation issue and an old checked bunnet that didn’t. He slammed the cab door on the safely settled traveller in front then turned to me.
‘Where to?’
‘Glasgow.’
He smiled patiently, a man used to jet-lag and bad English, and asked, ‘Where in Glasgow son?’
‘City centre.’
He wrote something on his clipboard saying, ‘That’ll do.’ And waved one of the white cabs forward.
The driver asked the same question that his supervisor had. This time I said, ‘Do you know anywhere I could rent a bedsit in the city centre?’
He looked at me in the rear-view mirror, seeing the same face I’d splashed cold water on only minutes before in the gents. A nondescript face with a hard cleft in the centre of its brow that might suggest ruthlessness or worry, but nothing that would make me stand out in a crowd.
I said, ‘There’ll be a bung in it for you.’
And he swung the taxi out of the airport, down into Glasgow and towards the Gallowgate.
I sat in the back and closed my eyes, wondering how I’d got myself into this mess and what lay in store for me in the city I used to call home.
THE FIRST NIGHT I met Sylvie she saved me from dying. The clock has ticked round and the pages have been flipped on the calendar, its numbers switching from red to black and back, shades the same as playing-card suits, and I realise that over a year has passed since Sylvie and I first met.
In
