Tony Black: Truth Lies Bleeding

Vee held on to Tierney’s leg. ‘Did you score? Did you? Did you score, Barry?’

He shook her off, lashed out with his foot, caught her on the solar plexus. She gasped for breath, fumbling on the carpet with her fingers splayed as if she was looking for something. ‘Barry… I need some. Don’t, don’t…’ She seemed to find strength from somewhere and raised herself to face him. She grabbed the sleeves of Tierney’s hoodie. ‘Please, please, Barry… I’ll do anything.’

‘Settle that fucking kid.’

‘I will. I will. I promise… Just give me something.’

The sight of her disgusted him; he wanted her away from him. He didn’t want to look at her ever again. Her face reminded him of everything that was wrong with his life and why he needed to escape from it. Tierney delved into his pocket and pulled out a wrap. ‘There, get fired into that… Get out my sight.’ He watched her scurry like a rodent for scraps, padding the floor on her hands and knees. When she located the wrap her face changed instantly. She became suffused with desire. All the previous whining and begging had been for show, Tierney knew it. He hated her for it. When he was on the programme, a key worker had told him that everyone hates the one thing in others that they hate in themselves. He hadn’t understood her, had asked her to explain and was told it was like living with someone who pointed out your flaws all the time: they dragged you to the mirror and showed you them. When he understood, he hated Vee more; she made him hate himself, what he’d become.

Tierney knew it didn’t pay you to think. After all he’d been through, after all he’d seen, he didn’t want to think. He didn’t want to think about who he was or who Vee was because he knew they were both nothing. It was better not to think. Better to forget. To block it all out.

He took the remaining wrap from his pocket and went through to the front room. The curtains were drawn and the place sat in semi-darkness. He could hear the baby crying where she lay in the top drawer of the dresser, but he didn’t look to that corner of the room. He climbed onto the mattress and rolled up his sleeve. A burnt spoon and a lighter fell onto the floor as he manoeuvred. He picked them up, collected the rest of his works and bit the leather belt between his teeth.

As his eyes closed, nothing mattered any more.

When he was still in uniform, barely twenty and still pimply, Brennan had made his first visit to a Muirhouse crime scene. It was nothing like he’d imagined, growing up on the west coast and watching The Sweeney. It wasn’t supposed to be like this. The job, life. It was supposed to be better.

‘I warn you, it’s not a pretty sight,’ Wullie Stuart had told him.

They said young Brennan fancied himself back then, said he was full of it. A typical Weegie, even though he was from Ayr. Anyone west of Corstorphine was a Weegie to this lot. ‘I can handle it,’ he told the detective sergeant.

‘Are you sure, son? There’s no shame in holding back.’

‘I can handle it.’

The crime scene was in a high-rise. There had been a call from neighbours about a domestic. Loud roars, shouting and screaming. The usual. Uniform had attended and then CID had been called. Brennan had pestered the officers to get a hand-up. He wanted to learn at their elbow — it was the best way to learn anything, his father had told him that.

‘Okay, then. But take a hold of this.’

Brennan looked at the sergeant’s hand. He was holding out an old Tesco carrier.

‘What’s that for?’

‘Your lunch.’

‘But I’ve had my lunch, sir.’

‘Exactly.’

When realisation dawned, Brennan shook his head. ‘You’re all right… Keep it.’

‘Okay.’ Wullie nodded. ‘Okay.’

The young uniform followed the detective sergeant up the grimy stairwell. It smelled of piss and stale tobacco. The walls were daubed with graffiti, large illiterate swabs for or against Hibs and Hearts, numbers to call for blow jobs, threats of violence. None of it fazed the twenty-year-old, but something told him he was about to enter a new realm. He knew he was going to see something he’d never seen before. Would it change him? No, never. How could it? He was well equipped for anything they threw at him.

The door had been booted — the hinges hung on bent screws. Two panels had been caved in — knuckles maybe? He’d have said a shoulder or a firm kick, but there was blood smeared there. Knuckles, then, so a junkie perhaps… someone too out of it to know they’d broken every bone in their hand putting in the door. There was more blood inside. And a stench. A smell Brennan had never encountered before. It filled the nostrils and seemed to get right inside your head. He’d never known a smell like it; it came loaded with suggestions. It wasn’t an acrid smell or an uncomfortable smell, one that made you want to put your nose into your sleeve, but it wasn’t something he’d like to keep regular contact with. It unnerved him. Years later, he’d acknowledge it as the smell of poverty. The smell of lost hope, of squalor and abandonment and dissipation. Of all those things, and something else, something more sinister.

‘Oh, Christ!’

Brennan knew his mouth had drooped. He felt dumb, unable to move.

‘Get down!’

There was a flurry of bodies; a black flash crossed the room. There was a man at the window. He struggled with the handle, and suddenly it opened and a gust blew in. Cigarette ash flew into the room from a large smoked-glass ashtray by the ledge. Brennan felt lost.

‘Who let the fucking dog in?’ shouted Wullie. ‘This is a fucking murder scene!’

Brennan saw the dog, a small, stout Staffordshire bull terrier type. It was on the floor tearing at something. He didn’t get a full look at the dog — his eyes were fixed elsewhere. On the floor was a familiar form — it looked like a woman. There was a dress, floral-print. Yellow flowers, with white centres, splattered with dark red marks. There was a head, and hair. Pale brown hair; the colour of his mother’s. But there was something missing. The face. Where the face should be was a pulpy, black mess. The eyes were there, he could see them, but not the whites. The blood vessels had ruptured and the eyes sat like black eight-balls. There was no sign of any skin, only a prominent white shard of bone set in the middle of the face where it had supported the base of the nose.

‘No, leave it!’ Wullie grabbed at the dog; there were growls, Wullie roared, called the beast a bastard. He pulled at its collar. It took some time for Brennan to draw his attention to the ruckus. When he did it took some time for his mind to process what was happening. The dog was attached to the woman’s side, tugging with its mouth; it wasn’t about to let go. Sinewy, blood-red strands of flesh stretched like glue as the dog’s jaws were prised apart. The corpse seemed to move, almost come to life as the contest to extricate the animal continued.

Brennan heard sounds, words: ‘It’s the guts!’

‘ What?’

‘The dog’s eating the guts.’

‘Get away!’

‘I’m telling you…’

Brennan heard a cigarette being lit; one of the officers laughed at the scene before them. Then the dog broke free, ran for the door. Brennan felt it brush his trouser leg. He looked down, saw another black blur.

‘You okay, son?’ said Wullie.

Brennan felt his throat go dry; his head felt hotter than a coke kiln. As he lifted his gaze to the sergeant a tremor passed through him from the ground. When it reached his knees they seemed to lose all their strength, folded beneath him. He couldn’t remember his head hitting the floor.

It was a dark, dank lane. Not the place for a party. Not the place for a carry-out, dodging the school, getting drunk with friends. It was private, though. Brennan knew privacy had a high value amongst teenagers; in Muirhouse, a dark lane where they put the bins out was somewhere no one was going to bother them. He put himself in the girls’ mindset for a moment; poor girls, he thought. A few cans, a laugh, bit of messing… They wouldn’t forget this day for the rest of their lives. He hoped it didn’t scar them too much. But then, where they came from, they had every chance of more of the same to follow. Brennan knew it was the other girl he really needed to feel sympathy for — she wouldn’t get any more chances.