Irvine Welsh - Crime

She’s both delighted and irritated to be roused in this way. — Oh Ray… what’s up, baby? You’ve not been having those horrible dreams again?

— No, beautiful dreams of white brides, he says, reaching out for her.

Trudi snuggles into him, then after a pause, where she’s so still and silent he thinks she’s fallen back asleep, says, — At least give Stuart a bell, Ray.

— Later, he forces a smile, pulling one arm behind his head on the pillow, feeling the wastage and shrinkage of his biceps muscle and thinking gym, gym, gym, — we’re on holiday.

— Okay, she says, and gets out of the bed and heads to the bathroom. He watches her move with lithe, coltish grace, admiring the slender tautness of her buttocks, the blades of her shoulders and the smooth indentation her spine leaves in her back. Then she’s gone and he hears the water jets hiss.

Stuart .

What had happened to the elfin-eyed kid with the clear skin and golden-brown curling hair?

Their father’s funeral. Stuart’s face reddening after every whisky; that vile, sickening concoction. The pastry from the sausage roll he was eating flaking off into his glass without him noticing. Pulling Lennox into the corner at the funeral reception and whispering in a nervy excitement. Beetroot countenance and flaring nostrils in such proximity. How Stuart had no notion of personal space at the best of times and just how smotheringly close he got when he was drunk. — It was embarrassing having to go and tidy out his office. I found a porn stash in the desk.

Lennox had raised a tired eyebrow, wanting him to stop, but too weary to insist. His skin crawling from being up all night free-basing coke in his Leith flat, where he’d gone after he’d walked out on Melissa Collingwood and the counselling.

Stuart misread this sign as intrigue. — Everything in it, Raymie, I shiteth thee not. Couldnae believe it. Dad! I took Jasmine for a drink. She admitted she felt terrible because when she’d looked through his office window and saw him all tensed up, she thought he was having a wank. He must have been known for it! So she turns away sharpish, then she hears stuff crashing around. She opens the door and sees Dad lying on the deck. He hadnae been jerking off. He was huvin a fucking heart attack.

The poor old bastard. Trying so hard to find his sexuality, that cardinal component of the self, but buried by the pills that were keeping him alive .

Lennox looking at his young brother, seeing blemishes on the skin he’d never noticed before. They might have been new. Beholding a slack-jawed muppet; an actor, a performer, always onstage. The more fucking drama, the more spoiled wee Stu would absorb it, would thrive .

— Are you going to talk to Mum?

— Just keep her the fuck away fae me, he’d said, watching his teary mother. Trudi standing beside her, consoling her. Trying to explain the inexplicable. Why isn’t Ray talking to me, Trudi? He’d told Trudi, of course, but he wasn’t sure if she’d believed him or had put it down to a deranged fantasy to be placed in the ‘stress’ dustbin.

Then Jock Allardyce had moved across to him, and he was followed by Avril Lennox, her trembling hand unwittingly teasing a glass of red wine. Big Jock’s shock of white hair, lustrously gelled back, his sad, blue eyes. — Look, Raymond, I just want to say—

— You get the fuck out ay my face, Mr Confectioner, and take her wi ye. He turned to his mother. — Ma faither’s still fucking warm, ya sick bastards!

He recalls Jock’s horror and bemusement, and his tearful, oval-eyed mother trying to cough out some words, but breaking down instead, to be comforted by Trudi and Jackie. Even at the time he knew it was petty and inappropriate to call Jock by the nickname they’d given to the murdering paedophile Horsburgh. ‘Uncle Jocky’ had never been employed in this way, nor did he have a sweet tooth. Even Horsburgh hadn’t used candy to lure his prey, just fire and Sprite.

Then Stuart was over, chameleon face and gait trying to assume the shape of nightclub bouncer. — What’s the story?

— You love this, he’d sniped at his young brother. — Well, you can bond with stepdaddy here, I’m offski.

Stuart had rounded on him. He recalls his brother balling his fists up, standing on his toes, his whisky breath an inch from him. — You think that because ye work with shite in yir fascist job that ye ken everything about human nature? You’re a fuckin novice, Raymie. You dinnae have a clue what Mum needs or wants oot ay life!

And Avril Lennox repeating a closed-eyed prayer, — It’s ma fault, it’s ma fault, it’s ma fault…

Lennox had calmly planted his hand on Stuart’s chest, pushed him back a couple of feet. — I’m sure you do. Go and swap fucking make-up tips. He’d turned away and headed outside into the car park, his mood blackening like the dark clouds that swirled above. Walking for a bit, without knowing where he was going, he ended up back at the graveyard, sitting on a bench. Thinking how he couldn’t ever tell his dad, or any of them, what happened to him in the tunnel. Wondering what it must have taken John Lennox to let go of his own big secret.

After a while there was the sound of gravel crunching underfoot, and a thin shadow passed over Lennox, making him aware that somebody had joined him on the bench, parked a respectable distance away. Les Brodie, cigarette in hand, was staring ahead, squinting in the weak sun that was trying to reassert itself. Lennox was going to ask to be left alone, but Les was saying nothing, just looking up into the murky sky.

Lennox could feel the cold air on his neck now, which throbbed with his pulse.

Les eventually spoke. — Cauld yin, El Mondo.

His childhood nickname. Used only by the immediate family and Les. That’s how close we were, he’d thought. — Things are as fucked up as they can be, Lennox moaned, looking round.

— They can always be fucked up mair. Les Brodie shook his head. Then a smile played across his lips and he turned to Lennox, meeting his gaze. — But they can be made better as well.

— That cunt, and my old lady, shagging him, bringing him there while my old man’s still warm in his grave.

— Jock was his mate, Raymie.

— Aye, some fucking mate, eh, shagging his wife. And that wee cunt Stuart—

— Aye, folk can be a bit strange. Les Brodie nodded in the way people do on such occasions; banal and vacuous in the face of the insolvable riddle of mortality.

— Tell me about it.

— But you’ve got to let go, Raymie.

— How? How the fuck, Lennox began, and his mind shot back to the tunnel and a broken Les emerging into the light with his bike, — how can you let go?

Les cleared his throat. — You know what those cunts did to me, Raymie? They raped me. Two of them, one after the other. Never told you that, did I? Never came right out and said it. Two of them, he said again, his eyes creasing around the laughter lines. — Just when I thought it was over, the other started. I was waiting on the third, the young guy, but he bottled out.

— Fuck sake, Les, I – He couldn’t say any more. He’d gotten away. Should he have stayed, fought, screamed and taken his punishment – as they might say, like a man – by Les’s side? That question had tormented him all his adult life.

— I could go into more detail, but I won’t. Les fished out some smokes and offered one to Lennox, who declined. — I’ll tell ye about how angry I was though, how I was looking for people tae hurt for what happened to me, and lookin tae hurt myself. I went way, way off the rails, he smiled in bitter reminiscence. — All that hate, naewhere to go. I even hated you, for getting the fuck out ay there.