Ian Rankin: A Cool Head

It was almost dark by the time I got back to him. My wheelbarrow was empty. I’d left it with the rake next to the digger. I kept my gloves with me. They would go home with me. They were good gloves.

‘Benjy? I’ve got to lock the gates now,’ I said. ‘Boss doesn’t like them left open. People come in at night. They leave things lying around. Sometimes they paint things on the headstones or try to start fires. There’s a big chain for the gates. Do you want me to move your car? Benjy?’

His shoulders weren’t moving. He still looked like he was praying. My mum used to pray. She would be on her knees at the side of her bed, hands pressed together. I did the same thing, and sometimes I still do. But I always whisper the prayer so the other people in the house don’t hear me.

‘Benjy?’

I placed my hand on his shoulder and watched as he fell forwards until he was face down on the pathway. I knew what that meant. And when I turned him over, his eyes were closed, his mouth wide open. I pulled up his shirt and saw the hole in his chest. Blood had stopped coming out of it. His skin was cold to the touch.

‘Bad,’ I said. It was the first word that came into my head. ‘Bad, bad, bad, bad.’ Five times for luck. There was a dog barking somewhere. Dogs like the graveyard. So do cats and foxes and rabbits. Birds, too, in the daylight. I’d never seen or heard an owl. Or a bat or a rat or a mouse. One old lady from the estate told me there were badgers nearby, but she couldn’t tell me where. She said she could smell them sometimes. I always wish I’d asked her what they smelled like, then I’d know.

‘Bad badger, badger bad,’ I said, liking the sound of it. Four more times for luck, then I looked inside the blue bag. It was a gun. It looked like a real gun. There was blood on the inside of the bag. The gun smelled of oil or grease. I’d hidden a knife for Benjy in the past, but never a gun. First time for everything, I thought to myself.

Then I noticed the car. There was a light on inside it, and that gave me a shock. But the door was open, and that had to be the reason. When you opened your door, a little light came on. I walked over to the car and looked inside. More sticky blood on the seat and the steering wheel, and a balaclava on the floor. The key was in the ignition. The car smelled of leather, and there was a little green tree hanging below the mirror. Benjy had forgotten his other bag. It was the kind people carried when they were going to play football or visit the pool. It was red and shiny and, when I opened it, it was full of bits of paper. I lifted out one of the bundles and held it up to the little light in the car’s ceiling.

It was money.

The notes all had 20 on them. That meant each one was worth twenty pounds. I put the bundle back in the bag and looked through the windscreen. Benjy was still there. So was the blue bag with the gun inside. He wanted me to hide the gun. But what about the car? What about the red bag?

And what about Benjy?

‘I’m not happy,’ Gorgeous George said.

This was true. But then he wasn’t gorgeous either. As Don Empson stared at his employer, he wondered how George had ended up with the nickname. Maybe it was ironic, a sort of joke. Like calling a glum bloke in the pub ‘Smiler’. Gorgeous George was as wide as he was tall, and he wasn’t exactly short. He always wore his shirtsleeves rolled up. His arms were hairy, with a lot of tattoos. The tattoos were from his days in the Royal Navy. There were thistles and pipers and naked women. George was completely bald. His scalp gleamed. There were nicks and scars on it, and more scars on his face and neck. He wore a large gold ring on each and every finger, right hand and left, plus a heavy gold ID bracelet on one wrist and a gold Rolex watch on the other. When he laughed, which didn’t happen very often, you could see a couple of gold teeth towards the back of his mouth. His eyes were small, almost childlike, and he had no eyebrows. His nose was red and pulpy, like an overripe strawberry. He sat behind his desk and drummed its surface with his jewelled fingers.

‘Not happy at all,’ he said.

‘You’re not the only one,’ Don told him. ‘How do you think I feel? Nice easy job you said. A simple delivery. I mean, someone sticks a gun in my face. I’m not happy either.’

Okay, so it had been his stomach rather than his face, but Don reckoned face would sound better.

‘Time was,’ George muttered, ‘you’d have taken that gun away from him and slapped him about a bit.’

‘Time was,’ Don agreed. It was true, he was getting old. He’d worked for George’s dad for the best part of thirty years. When Albert had died and George had taken over the business, Don had reckoned he’d be put out to pasture. But George had wanted him around, ‘a link to the old days’. Don hadn’t been keen, not that he’d said anything.

And now this.

‘You sure you didn’t recognise him?’ George asked again.

‘He was wearing a mask.’

‘And he was on his own?’

‘As far as I could see.’

‘And there were three of you? Three against one?’

‘Looked to me like he was the only one holding a shooter.’ Don paused. ‘Are you sure we should be discussing this here?’

He meant bugs. George was worried the cops had planted bugs in his office. George scowled at Don’s question, but then thought about it and nodded. ‘Let’s take a walk,’ he said, rising to his feet.

The office was a Portakabin and the Portakabin stood in the middle of a scrapyard. Don was wary. He knew what those words could mean, let’s take a walk. Didn’t always end well for people, the walks they took in this scrapyard, walks they took with Gorgeous George.

Don’s shoulders and arms were tensed as they stepped outdoors. The crane, the one with the big magnet swinging from its arm, had finished work for the day. The compactor sat in silence. In the past, it had crushed its fair share of cars. Sometimes those cars had contained evidence… and sometimes body parts.

‘I’ve told you,’ Don said to his boss, ‘I’m getting too old for this. World’s changing too fast. It’s younger guys like Sam and Eddie you should be relying on.’

‘But it comes down to trust in the end, Don,’ George replied, ‘and I wouldn’t trust either of them the way I trust you. My dad always told me, “Don’s the guy. Any problems, Don’ll sort things out.” ’

‘All in the past, George.’

George had slung an arm around Don’s shoulders. They were walking past the German Shepherds. The two huge dogs stared at them, tongues lolling from their mouths. But they didn’t bark. They knew better than to bark at George. If Don was on his own, they’d be straining at the leash, keen to sink their teeth into a leg or an arm. But right now, George was protecting him.

The two men were heading into the heart of the scrapyard. Cars and other vehicles were piled on top of each other. Many had been hauled here from the scenes of accidents. People would have died in those accidents. People would have lost limbs and loved ones.

‘So tell me again,’ George said. ‘Tell me how it all happened.’

Don thought for a moment and took a deep breath. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘I drove into the garage, like you told me. Hanley wasn’t there yet, so it was just me and Raymond. Raymond was working on a Bentley, polishing the dashboard, really doing a thorough job…’

‘He’s a car valet.That’s what he does.’

‘Not any more.’

George managed a sympathetic look. ‘Not any more,’ he agreed.

‘So anyway, I was talking to him, just the usual stuff… and then Hanley arrives. He drives on to the forecourt but leaves his car there, keeps the engine running. He wasn’t planning on sticking around. The bag was in the front seat of my car. Should only have taken us two minutes…’