Irvine Welsh - The Blade Artist

He’d started to take the phone apart, realising that the battery must be loose in its mountings. Removing it, he placed the device in his mouth and bit under one of the pins, pulling it out. He felt enamel chip on the underside of his tooth, but when he eased up, the pin was sitting further out, and the reinserted battery seemed held more securely.

When he got to Elspeth’s, he opted to go to his room after dinner, and put the phone back on charge. He picked up his Kindle and started to read A Clockwork Orange . Sleep quickly took him, and he had the most peaceful and restful night he’d enjoyed since his return to Scotland.

He rises early the next day, blinking into a weak morning light filtering through the thin curtains. The room is cold; the temperature has dropped in the night. The Tesco mobile is charged, flashing at him in a green ‘come-hither’ wink. He grabs it and calls Melanie, thinking that she’ll probably still be up, enjoying some work or relaxation time with the girls asleep. A voice immediately tells him that he needs to top up the phone in order to make a transatlantic call. — Fuck yir transatlantic call, ya cunt, he replies to the unmoved robot voice. However, he has enough credit to phone Larry. — Need tae borrow the van. Like you sais at the funeral.

Larry’s silence indicates to Franco that he’s trying to conceal his annoyance that he’s been taken up on an offer he’d made under alcohol’s costly latitude. Eventually he coughs out a reluctant, — Sure. . come roond, and tells him the address. Franco slings his sports bag over his shoulder, as he hopes to get to the boxing club later, and heads for his friend’s place at Marchmont.

The biggest shock is Larry’s flat. It is spacious and luxurious. There must have been more money in the Edinburgh drug trade than he thought. Larry is hung-over, but grumblingly hands Franco the keys. — Right. . look eftir it but. . nae drivin oan the wrong side ay the road, he says in forced cheer.

It’s liberating to have wheels again, and Franco’s first port of call is Leith. Driving past Leith Academy, he once again recalls his torturous dyslexic days there. Hetherington soon gave up on him, bar the odd ridiculing disdainful comment such as ‘We won’t ask Francis to read. After all, we only have two periods, not two days’; the laughter would echo in his ears and he felt the fury rising inside him, while he fought down its eruption. His mind drifts to the time the teacher had asked Mark Renton to do the honours. — No, Renton had said.

— What? What do you mean ‘no’, Renton?

— I’m no reading it.

— Why not?

— Cannae be bothered, he said, as chuckles broke out in the class.

— Well, I’ll give you something to be bothered about. Hetherington’s voice went high, and he pulled out the tawse from his top drawer. — Read the passage, Renton, he commanded.

Mark Renton kept his eyes focused on his desk. — Nup.

— Right, come out here!

Renton rose and came forward, extending his hands, one on top of the other, to receive four of the belt. At every lash, Frank Begbie watched, gritting his teeth. Renton wore a half-smile, one which admitted to the intense pain, yet made it clear that he found the whole thing comedic and ludicrous. He sat down on his stinging hands. — Wanker, he whispered, so that only Franco could hear. Frank Begbie knew that Mark Renton’s gesture was one of solidarity with him. He loved Renton after that, and would have done anything for him. They were inseparable friends. Yet it had gone so bad between them. Drugs. They got Renton, just like they got Sean.

At Tesco’s in Duke Street, he puts thirty pounds on the mobile. The sales assistant, a different one, looks at him as if he is crazy. He dials direct to Melanie, only to have an American voice tell him: — Sorry, it has not been possible to connect you at the moment, please try again later.

— Fuck you, ya cunt! he again spits down the phone, then, looking to the assistant, stops to perform breathing exercises. Life could get at you through a million cuts as well as one manic plunge.

Gordon Court is another trip down memory lane. Agnes Duncan is happy to see him, it has been such a long time. The frail old woman expresses her sorrow at the death of Frank’s son, but is delighted when he shows her a photograph of the girls. It’s a little scuffed through being in his wallet, but as the ones on his phone are now in the city drainage system, it’s the only option, as he explains to her. — Aw aye, mair bad news, she says.

Bad news seems to hunt Ross Fallon down. Several years ago the death of a young man at a party in his house had triggered a tabloid spree, further fuelled by the lurid disclosures of mercenary rent boys. Frank Begbie vaguely remembers reading about it.

This Edinburgh businessman and former prospective Conservative parliamentary candidate (which in Scotland meant little more than no-hoper status) had been further tarnished since then. Not that the corpulent individual tucking into his food in Valvona & Crolla looks uncomfortable, with his gourmet pasta and glass of white wine. Frances Flanagan’s information about his brunching modus operandi was spot on.

Frank Begbie positions himself at a nearby table, watching Fallon shovel back his food. He can’t believe the aromas and range of produce in this wonderful place, which he has passed a million times and never set foot in. How it was assumed that it wasn’t for the likes of him. He speculates as to how different his native city might seem for somebody who habitually shops at Valvona & Crolla, rather than Scotmid.

When the waitress approaches, Franco enquires as to the possibility of an egg-white omelette, and she looks at him as if he has two heads. He settles for a vegetarian verdure breakfast, which he greatly enjoys, dispatching it swiftly as he sits behind the Scotsman . He’d heard Greg mention that the paper has decanted from its showcase, custom-built headquarters by the Scottish Parliament to a broom cupboard out at Orchard Brae. Sure enough, it has the shabby, beaten, depressive tone and content of a publication on its last legs. Every article seems either half-hearted and ill-considered or desperately overreaching, as if the journal is drowning in its own pointlessness, occasionally gripped by sudden, panicky bouts of awareness. He goes to the sports pages, but the exploits of Edinburgh’s senior clubs fail to excite. Fallon sits for a long time, himself reading a Financial Times. Do those cunts no have anything tae dae? he wonders, realising that he’s badly missing his studio. It dawns on him just how much he likes to get on with stuff.

Finally Fallon shifts his bulk and creakingly rises to settle his bill. Frank Begbie does the same, following him out to his car, then jumping into the van. As he pursues the landlord, it isn’t so much the driving on the left-hand side of the road that he finds strange, but the act of sitting there in the vehicle. Fallon heads out of town, Franco tailing him as far as a large villa, just outside Haddington. Watching him vanish down the driveway, Franco lets him go inside, before striding down the path and knocking at the door. When Fallon answers, Frank Begbie booms, — Fallon, landlord, and pushes past him into the house. — You rented a flat to Sean Begbie, ay?

— Who the fuck, Fallon protests, — you can’t come in here –

— I’m in already, so your statement makes nae fuckin sense, Franco says, heading into the front room.

— Get out, or I’ll call the police!

— Feel free. Franco picks up a heavy glass ashtray from a coffee table.

He sees Fallon hesitate. His instincts are correct: this guy doesn’t want the cops involved in his business. — You no gaunny call the polis then? he taunts.