were practically nose to nose. I could smell the sweetness of the marijuana on his breath, see the specks of gold in his hazel eyes. Good technique for dealing with anger, focusing on small details of your environment.
I pushed him in the chest. Not hard, just enough to make him back off. ‘I’ll explain inside,’ I said, lips tight against my teeth.
‘Well, big fat hairy deal,’ Richard muttered, turning on his heel and pushing past the two neopunks who were leaning against the wall behind him, desperately trying to pretend they were far too cool to be interested in the war raging around them.
I followed him back into the living room and returned to my seat. Richard sat opposite me, the coffee table between us. He started emptying the contents of the three carrier bags on to the table. ‘You’ll find bowls and chopsticks in the kitchen,’ he said to his giant Gaelic gargoyles. ‘First on the right down the hall. That’s if she hasn’t emptied it as well.’ The redhead left in search of eating implements. ‘This had better be good, Brannigan,’ Richard added threateningly.
‘It smells good,’ I said brightly. ‘Yang Sing, is it?’
‘Never mind the bloody Chinese!’ I waited for the jolt while the world stopped turning. Never mind the bloody Chinese? From the man who thinks it’s not food if it doesn’t have soy sauce in it? ‘What was that creep doing here?’ Richard persisted.
‘Pitching me into a gravestone,’ I said as the redhead returned and dumped bowls, chopsticks and serving spoons in front of us. I grabbed a carton of hot and sour soup and a spoon.
‘I realized that. But why here? And why my gravestone?’ Richard almost howled.
The punk with the Mohican exchanged apprehensive looks with his mate. The redhead nodded. ‘Look,’ the Mohican said. ‘This mebbe isnae a good time for this, Richard, know what ah mean, but?’ The Glasgow accent was so strong you could have built a bridge with it and known it would outlast the civilization that spawned it. Once I’d deciphered his sentiment, I couldn’t help agreeing with him.
‘We could come back another time, by the way,’ the redhead chipped in, accent matching. Like aural bookends.
‘Never mind coming back, you’re here now,’ Richard said. ‘Get stuck in. She loves an audience, don’t you, Brannigan?’ He piled his bowl with fried noodles and beansprouts, added some chunks of aromatic stuffed duck and balanced a couple of prawn wontons on top, then leaned back in his seat to munch. ‘So why am I dead?’
He always does it to me. As soon as there’s the remotest chance of me getting my fair share of a Chinese takeaway, Richard asks the kind of questions that require long and complicated answers. He knows perfectly well that my mother has rendered me incapable of speaking with my mouth full. Some injunctions you can rebel against; others are in the grain. Between mouthfuls of hot and sour soup so powerful it steam-cleaned my sinuses, I filled him in on the scam.
Then, Richard being too busy with his chopsticks to comment, I went on the offensive. ‘And it would all have gone off perfectly if you hadn’t come blundering through the door and blowing my cover sky-high. Two days early, I might point out. You’re supposed to be in Milton Keynes with some band that sounds like it was chosen at random from the Neanderthal’s dictionary of grunts. What was it? Blurt? Grope? Fart?’
‘Prole,’ Richard mumbled through the Singapore vermicelli. He swallowed. ‘But we’re not talking about me coming back early to my own house. We’re talking about this mess,’ he said, waving his chopsticks in the air.
‘It’s cleaner and tidier than it’s ever been,’ I said firmly.
‘Bad news, but,’ the Mohican muttered. ‘Hey, missus, have you thought about getting your chakras balanced? Your energy flow’s well blocked in your third.’
‘Shut up, Lice. Not everybody’s into being enlightened and that,’ the redhead said, giving him a dig in the side that would have left most people with three cracked ribs. Lice only grunted.
‘You still haven’t said why you came home early,’ I pointed out.
‘It was two things really. Though looking at what I’ve come home to, I don’t know why I bothered about one of them,’ Richard said, as if that were some kind of explanation.
‘Do I have to guess? Animal, vegetable or mineral?’
‘I’d got all the material I needed for the pieces I’ve got lined up on Prole, and then I bumped into the lads here. Boys, meet Kate Brannigan, who, in spite of appearances to the contrary, is a private investigator. Kate, meet Dan Druff, front man with Glasgow’s top nouveau punk band, Dan Druff and the Scabby Heided Bairns.’ The redhead nodded gravely and sketched a salute with his chopsticks. ‘And Lice, the band’s drummer.’ Lice looked up from his bowl and nodded. I found a moment to wonder if their guitar players were called Al O’Pecia and Nits.
‘Delighted to make your acquaintance,’ I said. ‘Richard, pleased though I am to be sharing my evening with Dan and Lice, why exactly have you brought them home?’ My subtlety, good manners and discretion had passed their sell-by date. Besides, Dan and Lice didn’t look like the kind who’d notice anyone being offensive until the half-bricks started swinging.
‘My good deed for the year,’ he said nonchalantly. ‘They need a private eye, and I’ve never seen you turn down a case.’
‘A paying case,’ I muttered.
‘We’ll pay you,’ Dan said.
‘Something,’ Lice added ominously.
‘For your trouble,’ Dan added, even more ominously.
‘Why do you need a private eye?’ I asked. It wouldn’t be the first time Richard’s dropped me in it, and this time I was determined that if I agreed, it was going to be an informed decision.
‘Somebody’s trying to see us off,’ Dan said bluntly.
‘You mean…?’ I asked.
‘How plain do you need it?’ Lice demanded. ‘They’re trying to wipe us off the map. Finish us. Render us history. Consign us to our next karmic state.’
There didn’t seem to be two ways of taking Lice’s words. I was hooked, no question.
This was definitely a lot more interesting than rehashing the cockup of my gravestone inquiries. There would be plenty of time for me to beat myself up about that later. Dealing with the seriously menaced, even if they were barely comprehensible Glaswegian musicians, has always seemed a better way of passing the time than contemplating my failures. ‘You’ve had death threats?’ I asked.
Lice looked at Dan, shaking his head pityingly. Dan looked at Richard, his eyebrows steepling in a demand for help. ‘Not as such,’ Richard explained. ‘When Lice talks about being wiped out, he means metaphorically.’
‘That’s right,’ Lice confirmed. ‘Poetic licence and that.’ My interest was dropping faster than a gun barrel faced with Clint Eastwood.
‘Somebody’s
