Irvine Welsh - The Blade Artist

Franco feels his spine stiffen. He sucks in a steady, slow breath. Always the way with these cunts. Ferreting for a weakness. He senses his stomach soft against Melanie’s naked back. One. . two. . three. . — Still at the same place?

— Naw, new hoose, up the Grange, Tyrone says, cursing a driver in a slow-moving Mini in front of them.

It is to the Grange they head. Tyrone drives with scowling impatience through the traffic, to the south side, and a leafy neighbourhood, where, behind prodigious stone walls, gravel driveways lead to grand villas. He stops at an enormous sandstone house that exudes wealth. Several cars are parked outside a garage, some covered in custom sheeting, indicating all belong to him. Tyrone was always daft about cars, Frank Begbie recalls.

Tyrone cuts the engine and unplugs Franco’s phone, which has stopped at 21 per cent charge, the battery icon barely in the green zone. The wallpaper has fired up, showing a picture of a smiling Melanie, with prominent white teeth of the sort almost unknown in Scotland. — Nice, Tyrone smiles, handing the phone back to Franco. — The missus?

— Aye.

— So is she still an art therapist, then?

Melanie is now employed part-time at the university, but mostly works on her own art projects. But this is none of Tyrone’s business. — Aye, Frank Begbie says, following him into a grand hallway that is luxuriously furnished, with paintings adorning most of the wall space. Franco doesn’t recognise the artwork, but can tell from the quality of the frames that what is inside them will have substantial value.

— You’ll appreciate this, being an artist, Frank, Tyrone says, with a self-styled raconteur’s delight, as he leads him through to a large drawing room, with a dining area to the rear, and two monumental, ornate chandeliers above. And there are more paintings. — One ay the biggest private collections of Pre-Raphaelite-influenced Scottish art. This one is a David Scott, and these two are by William Dyce. And I’ve got these original Murdo Mathieson Taits. He sweeps his hand over a wall festooned with several canvases of figures and landscapes. — No bad for a boy fae Niddrie Mains!

— Dinnae really git art, Franco says dismissively.

— But you’re an artist, man! Ye make your living by –

— Ever listened tae Chinese Democracy , Guns n’ Roses?

— What?

— A lot ay people say it’s overproduced. That it cannae be spoken aboot in the same breath as the likes ay Appetite for Destruction . I think that’s shite. Frank Begbie looks challengingly at his old boss. — You have tae use the production values available at the time.

— Dinnae ken that one, Tyrone says irritably.

— Check it oot, Franco smiles. — It comes highly recommended, and he moves over to the dining table, running his hand along the polished sheen of its surface. — Nice. Mahogany?

— Aye, Tyrone nods, gesturing at Frank to sit down, and he accordingly flops back into a well-upholstered couch. Tyrone then lowers his own bulk, with surprising daintiness, into the armchair opposite.

Frank Begbie looks around for traces that might help him ascertain who else lives here. Tyrone had been married, with grown-up children, yet there is no evidence of any cohabitee in this grand room. — So how’s things? You still wi what’s-her-name? he fishes.

The face on the man across from him barely registers anything, no indication that Franco has spoken, let alone that the subject is off-limits. Then Tyrone’s eyes suddenly narrow. — You know that your boy. . Sean, he says, stretching out the word to make it sound like yawn , — Sean was mixed up with that wee cunt Anton Miller?

— No.

— And this bird, Frances, Frances Flanagan, they say that she was there on the night he got done.

This is certainly news. Two new names. Anton Miller. Frances Flanagan . The police hadn’t confirmed anyone was with Sean, yet this makes sense; somebody had tipped off the ambulance, even if it was too late. Maybe the girl had been there, and had let in the murderer, not knowing what he was going to do, then panicked when he’d killed Sean, and perhaps ran away and called the police. Or maybe she’d set him up. Or even stabbed him herself. Yet Frank Begbie is suspicious. He’s heard this type of talk before, and it just isn’t in Davie Power’s nature to do good turns. — So why ye telling me this?

— It’s no just about old times’ sake. Tyrone shakes his head slowly, then cracks a smile of genuine delight. — And I won’t insult ye by even pretending that’s the case. See, I owe several bad turns to that wee Miller cunt. In fact, I wish nothing but a shower of shite to come down on him. You do bad very well, Frank, Tyrone says, trying to gauge Frank Begbie’s reaction. — He’s a nasty little cunt. Shooters, the lot. Cowardly drive-by gun-downs in the street. That’s not on, he says, shaking his head again. — And he’s behind your laddie’s death, as sure as night follows day. Sean was serving up for him. Drugs. So we have a mutual interest, he contends, rising and heading to an opulent-looking marble cocktail bar built into a corner of the lounge.

— If some wee cunt was bugging you that much, Franco says, watching him pick up a dimpled glass bottle of whisky from a shelf behind the bar, — you’d have done him by now. Aw they wide cunts that came through fae the schemes over the years, Pilton, Sighthill, Niddrie, Gilmerton. . you’ve done them all, he says, thinking about an old mate of his, Donny Laing, who had publicly challenged Tyrone and had then vanished. — What’s different about this boy?

— Miller is the epitome of cunning. Tyrone’s shaven dome bobs. — A whole new breed of schemie, a proper gangster instead of a mindless thug. He gazes at Franco a second too long. — He has brains and knows how tae play politics and build alliances. He’s united all the north Edinburgh mobs; Drylaw, Muirhoose, Pilton, Royston, Granton and even the new-build scheme part of Leith, doon by Newhaven, Tyrone explains, lowering the whisky bottle to the marble-topped bar.

Begbie nods. Leith has always been its own entity. The thought of it now being just an outpost, a territory owned by some young ned from a scheme, this dismays him much more than it should do.

— He and his mob have ambition and a certain entrepreneurial zest. Miller commands a strong loyalty among them. If I move on him, they’d all be on me. There would be a war, which would be bad for business, and bad for the toon, Tyrone advances, and Frank Begbie nods in understanding. Tyrone has always nurtured a perverse sense of civic responsibility. Edinburgh’s old gangsters were historically so successful because they were able to evolve from that status, integrating themselves into the respectable business community, and minimising the theatrics of violence. They largely avoided the turf wars, shootings, and True Crime confessional and finger-pointing biographies, replete with Daily Record serialisations, that characterised their Glasgow neighbours. They were safe, ordered and long-established. They recruited the brightest talents from the schemes, but crushed the emergence of any genuine mobs from these peripheries, anyone who might have designs on city markets.

Franco can see that a new firm who didn’t play by old rules would be a major headache to them.

And there is pressure on Tyrone from another front. — This new Police Scotland bunch are Weedgie-run, it’s basically the auld Strathclyde polis, and they are coming down harder on us than Lothian’s finest ever did, God rest their souls, he explains, then faces Franco with a conspiratorial stare. — But an outsider. . which you are now. . well, I would make it worth your while. You’d be getting revenge for your son, helping me out, getting paid, and ridding your home town of a very malignant force. You sorted out Craig Liddel. . Seeker. . Tyrone corrects himself and smiles, — you can do Anton.