The Blade Artist

  — But you, you dinnae care, Elspeth is roaring at him. — You never cared!

  — Elspeth, this really isn’t helping, Greg protests.

  — I’m trying to find out what happened to him, Franco says. — If I didn’t care, I wouldnae be trying, would I?

  — Aye, but you don’t care about him, Elspeth bubbles. — You didnae know him! He was a lovely laddie, Frank, a great kid, till the drugs got him, she states, almost breathless. — Had a smile for everybody and a great big laugh. I’m fucking sad he’s gone! Aren’t you, his fucking faither, aren’t you sad he’s gone? she begs. — Tell me! Tell me you’re sad!

  — What? Are you kidding me? Franco’s eyes narrow to creased slits. — We’ve no seen each other in five years, and you want me tae sit here and talk aboot how ah feel aboot my son being murdered, to you, now, wi the funeral the morn? Never gaunny happen, Franco says emphatically.

  — Elspeth, Greg pleads, — it’s Frank’s son. People process grief differently. Please, try to show a little respect, let’s just help each other get through this.

  — But he never even tried to help them! Look at him! Just sitting there like nothing’s happened!

  Franco sets his knife and fork down. — Look, ah made the decision that I had nothing tae offer them –

  — Even when you made it as an artist!

  — I have my own family . . . my other family, my new family.

  — But those boys needed a faither . . . n that other laddie, that River . . .

  — And they didnae get one. It’s shite, but it happens. Tae me. Tae you. Tae loads ay folks. I failed them, aye, but I couldnae make it right for them, he says firmly, waving his fork in the air. — That ship had long sailed.

  — So ye just wash yir hands ay the mess you created! Elspeth snaps. — That River, you’ve never even met that poor bairn, she bellows in accusation.

  Greg scrunches up his face, but Franco remains calm. — All I can do for them is try to live my life in a decent way. Show them the different consequences ay that. Show them that acting like a radge means a twelve-foot concrete box in Saughton, which is not good. But opening yourself up and finding what you’re good at and expressing yourself: that means a house by the beach in California, which is pretty damn fine. That’s the only lesson I can impart to anybody. I’m not going to preach. He lays down his cutlery and spreads his hands. — It’s all there for people to look at, if they would just care to open their fuckin eyes.

  Elspeth flinches at that, but continues to glare at her brother.

  — People grieve in their own way, Greg repeats, rubbing his wife’s arm. — I think Frank’s doing very well to hold it all together. It isn’t going to do any good for us to start freaking out at this stage. He looks at Franco, who is spooning up some mashed potato. — You don’t know what he’s going through inside.

  — Aye, naebody does, but we can guess! Nowt! Elspeth declares. — There’s a beautiful young laddie been stabbed tae death by a maniac, and naebody cares! Naebody!

  — I really think you should sack the peeve. It’s no helping anybody, Franco says, as he cuts off a piece of chicken breast and starts chewing on it.

  Elspeth looks first at him, then Greg, and rises to her feet, storming through to the front room. Greg turns to Franco, and makes to rise to go after her.

  — Let her go, Franco suggests. — Perhaps I’m wrong, mibbe a couple ay drinks might be what she needs. As you say, we all deal with things differently, and that’s obviously her way. There was a time when I’d be joining her, getting pished up and creating a scene, but that doesn’t work for me any more, he shrugs. — Now tell me something that’s been bothering me . . .

  — What? Greg says, lowering his voice and leaning in towards Franco.

  — Am I getting a faint trace of coriander in this sauce? and he half closes his eyes to savour the taste. — It’s very good.

  18

  THE FUNERAL

  Within five minutes of Juice Terry dropping him, Greg and Elspeth off in the drizzling rain at Warriston Crematorium, Franco feels uncomfortably wet. A cold dampness has settled under the collar of his shirt, seeming to spread between it and his skin. The Tesco phone appears to have mysteriously unlocked, and he manages to send Melanie a text, having little confidence that it will actually reach her. There are groups of people assembling, some who look gravely over at him. Elspeth, thankfully silent this morning (probably, he considers, due to a hangover), has started circulating with Greg. However, Franco is disinclined to make small talk with anyone, and is glad of Terry’s company as a deterrent. The scud-flick cabbie’s gaze has shifted to a girl with brown-blonde hair, who wears a black zip-up top and smokes an electronic cigarette. — Tried tae git that yin intae the Roy Hudd, he grins. — A right wee doady-basher. Gied it the message n even screen-tested it, but she’s an awfay pish-heid, n she’s tied in wi that Anton Miller boy. Your auld buddy Larry Wylie’s been there n aw, n thir sayin he’s goat the David Bowie, Terry rolls his eyes in disdain, sweeping the rain out of his curls, — so it’s a ‘steer well clear’ job.

  Franco takes an interest at the unsolicited mention of Anton Miller. — What’s her name?

  — Frances Flanagan.

  Those new names are once again featuring. Franco watches Frances Flanagan as she looks over at a group of swaggering youths. Wonders if they were friends of Sean’s, and if the other name he’s been hearing lately, Anton Miller, is in their midst.

  — Mo’s lassie, Terry notes. — Mind ay Mo Flanagan?

  That name rings several bells, and Franco nods, recalling Mo as an old YLT foot soldier back in the day. South Sloan Street suggests itself. Another recollection is that Mo hit the drink badly, and Terry informs Frank that he died several years ago. — Lassie’s got the same weakness as her auld man. Shame, cause she’s a wee honey n aw, he laments. — That’ll no last but, ay.

  Franco looks across at Frances Flanagan, now talking to two older women. She did possess a fragile, vicious beauty, her scraped-back hair highlighting lacerating cheekbones. He shivers as the cold, trickling rain seeps further into him. Thinks of California and dispassionately considers how much he hates this place. He checks the Tesco phone for any signs of Melanie, laboriously punching out another text to tell her he’s now at the funeral.

  There is a fair crowd gathering. From what he’s gleaned, Sean seems to have been a bag of drugs, perennially locked in to shady deals, but he was evidently popular enough. Or perhaps the crowd was simply about his youth. You could be a bad bastard, but if you died young, you were sort of forgiven; there was always the possibility of change, however realistic-ally remote. He thinks about the very first funeral he attended here, his old grandad, Jock Begbie, how that one could have been held in a phone box. Very little about the crematorium has changed in those thirty-odd years. The same functional buildings and landscaped gardens, tucked away in this secluded, inhospitable nook of the city. The constant rain.

  Then he sees June, kitted out in black clothes. They look quite expensive, like she’s really made an effort. Her sister Olivia is alongside her, recognisable by her trademark pensive expression. He recalls fucking her once, when she was babysitting the boys. He and June had returned home, and June, pished, had passed out cold on the settee. Franco had picked her up and deposited her into the bed like a sack of coal. Then he’d gone through to the living roon, nodded to the couch and said to Olivia, — Get them fuckin off, then. Me n you.

  She’d protested that they shouldn’t, and he’d countered that it was only a bit of fun. Olivia had looked at him strangely, but then started to undress. He was over to her and was guiding her onto the couch, then jumping on her and getting up her quickly, in a silent, aggressive cowp, groping roughly at her breasts as he pumped. It was over swiftly. Afterwards she’d started to cry, and he’d mumbled, — Fuck sake, youse cows ur daein ma fuckin heid in, and retired to bed.

  Olivia is now overweight, but not yet at June’s level of morbid obesity. The black ins
ect-dead eyes in her suety, pockmarked face gaze at him in much the same expression she’d dispensed back then. A visible shiver racks her plump frame. Franco is considering that the episode perhaps wasn’t as sordid as it seemed; what was youth but a violently puckish romp? If there have to be lamentations, he considers, poking somebody isn’t one worthy of inclusion on the list, especially as he can feel almost zero connection to that incident.

  Increasingly his life seems fractured, as if his past had been lived by somebody else. It isn’t just that the place he now resides in and the people around him are poles apart, it’s like he himself is an entirely different person. The overriding obsessions and foibles of the man he’d once been now feel utterly ludicrous to the current resident of his mind and body. The only bridge is rage; when angered he can taste his old self. But in California, the way he is currently living his life, few things can vex him to that extent. But that’s over there.

  June catches his eye and approaches. Franco would have raised a hand to stop her advance, had he anticipated that she would wrap her meaty arms around him. — Our laddie, Frank . . . she wails miserably, — our bonnie wee beautiful laddie . . .

  Franco looks over her shoulder, focusing on the stonework outside the Chapel of Rest. The stink of fags from June is so profound that no perfume could even begin to cover it up. If he had still been drinking, the effects of last night’s alcohol would quite possibly make him retch. — Aye, it’s a sair one, right enough, he says through gritted teeth. — Scuse me a sec, and he pulls her clinging arms from him. Fortunately Michael, wearing a charcoal-grey suit, has appeared and June fastens onto her second son, announcing in a high bleat, — MIGH-EY-KEL . . .

  This gives Franco the opportunity to slip back over to Terry. The cab-driving scud-merchant is chatting to a well-dressed woman who raises a flirty eyebrow at him. But as Franco approaches them, he hears a familiar voice rasp in his ear, — Ye should’ve got in touch!

  Larry looks pretty much the same, maybe pared down a little with age. It interests him in a morbid way, how the passing years chunk up some, while reducing others. — Larry, Franco acknowledges.

  — Ah kent Sean well, Frank. Larry moves in close and drops his voice. — Tried tae keep a wee eye on him. Steer him right, he mutters, blinking a little under Franco’s unwavering gaze. — But eh goat in wi Anton Miller n that crowd. Larry is now whispering, as his eyes swivel round to scan the attendees. — Notice he’s no here the day tae pey his respects, but, ay.

  Franco wouldn’t have known Anton Miller from any of the young men present, but it is good to have his absence confirmed. There are certainly enough of them. Some steal reverential glances at him; others offer cocky half-sneers, as if they fancy their chances. A year in London, five more in California, and another world has grown up in his absence. Or perhaps an oddly familiar one, merely staffed by different personnel.

  — So while yir here, consider anything ah huv at yir disposal, Larry says, with ponderous formality. — Ye want tae borrow the van, any time, it’s yours. Ye need a place tae stey, yir welcome at mine.

  — Cheers, Larry, Franco notes, still scanning the crowd, — but ah’m fine at ma sister’s.

  Michael stands a little apart from the groups, chatting with another young guy, flinty-eyed and with a fistful of sovereign rings. Franco sees them staring at the young woman, Frances Flanagan. But she doesn’t notice, as she is gazing at him and Larry. Larry turns and winks at Frances, beckoning her over.

  — Frances here kent Sean tae, Larry informs him as she joins them, — ay, doll?

  — Aye. Sorry like, she says to Franco. He concedes the girl’s beauty. A long, angular jaw gives her a sharpness and intensity perfectly congruent with her piercing eyes and their unusually arresting emerald green.

  — Heard ye were there at the time.

  Frances looks at him as if he’d just told her that she is standing in a field full of landmines. Frank Begbie can almost see a speeded-up movie playing in those expressive eyes. — Well, ah wis and ah wisnae . . . she says sheepishly.

  According to Fat Tyrone, though not known to the police, she had been with Sean when he was in the room, wasted on a cocktail of drugs so formidable it might well have destroyed him had his adversary not got there first. It seemed likely, as she explains to Franco, that she had woken up, after passing out with Sean, to find him dead in a spillage of blood, the door of the flat unlocked. She had understandably got the fuck out, then called the ambulance. — We should talk aboot this later, Frances says, aware of the proximity of Larry’s rapacious gaze.

  Franco sees the sense in that, but his brain is buzzing. Was her story true? Or did she know the killer and was protecting him, or was scared of him? Was it her? A lovers’ tiff over drugs or money? She’s slight and slender, but Sean was so wasted, as the cop, Notman, had said, he’d have been easy enough to finish off. — Aye, he agrees, — we should.

  — Right, she nods. Franco watches her depart, joining two other young women. She certainly is a good-looking girl. In the USA she would have perhaps taken the Greyhound bus to West Hollywood, done some waitressing jobs while she took acting classes and waited to be discovered or married. He thinks of young women like her whom he’s known, and what a strange currency feminine beauty back here could be. Many women were thankful that they had it, but were then determined to spend it as quickly as possible. It was more often treated like any other windfall, something to be pissed away before anybody else got their hands on it. Here, Frances would drink and drug her looks into a haggard mess. Despair seemed to cling to her. Then, he supposed, looking around the crowd, most men did the same with their own pleasing youthful features, and he was beset with a sudden awareness that it was only prison that had stopped him from peeving himself into a jakey mess. People led tough lives; they worked, were tired, often depressed, and didn’t have the time or money for spas or gyms or sensible diets. Over her shoulder, he gets a glimpse of Tyrone, with Franco’s old friend Nelly. A few feet away he hears a woman say something about the place being full of ‘hooks, crooks, hoors and comic singers’. That seemed about right.

  June is suddenly back at his side, pointing to the chapel. — We huv tae go in.

  The service tells Frank nothing about his dead son. The minister’s speech is all bland platitudes. Yet some draw obvious relief and comfort; June’s soft wails break out in gentle intervals, through the fug of her medication, flanked as she is by him and Michael. Throughout the proceedings, his second son’s lower lip sags, his eyes tarnished in sullen suspicion. Michael never looks at him, and Franco concedes to himself that he can hardly blame him, given how their last meeting had played out. Otherwise, there are plenty of old faces. Some are genuine friends, like Mickey and boys from the boxing club; others, many of whom he’s crossed over the years, seem basically along for a thinly disguised gloat.

  As well as June and Michael he has Elspeth, Greg and Olivia sharing the front pew with him. Joe sits behind them, looking bedraggled, pished and spoiling for a fight. The only alleviation from the minister’s dreary recitations comes from the Tesco phone; it suddenly explodes into a hurdy-gurdy ringtone, compelling Franco to answer it. — Aye?

  — Are you paying too much interest on your loans? a robot voice enquires. Franco snaps it off, June looking at him in her old-school wounded way. Then it’s time for everybody to leave. He sees Kate, another of his exes, who looks well, with her two sons, Chris, about fourteen, and River, around twelve, who is his own. More than any of Franco’s offspring, the kid, whom he’s never seen outside some infant pictures she’d sent him in prison, looks disconcertingly like him. He shakes the boy’s hand, asks him about school, tells him to work hard at it, and be good to his mum. It’s about all he can run to, and he’s relieved to be interrupted by his old neighbour, Stevie Duncan, and his wife Julie. He hasn’t seen them for years, and is delighted to hear that Stevie’s mum, old Mrs Duncan, is still alive and living in the sheltered housing complex at Gordon Court. It is the same one
his grandad Jock died in. He recalls that she’d knitted him his first ever green-and-white Hibs scarf. They are good people. — She would have been along, Frank, Stevie tells him, as they file outside into the cold. — It’s her legs, she cannae stand about for long.

  — That’s a shame. Ah’d love tae pop up and see her.

  — She’d like that, Frank.

  The funeral is followed by a reception in a hotel on Leith Links. People come up to him, many of them barely recognisable as old acquaintances. Gavin Temperley has ballooned. — Pittin oan the Coral, Gav, Franco observes playfully.

  — Good livin, Temperley smiles back with a faintly suppressed air of desperation.

  Then another voice in his ear, hesitant and cagey. — Awright, Franco . . .

  He turns to see a thin and haggard man, with a greasy mop of sandy-grey hair, under which sit two large dark eyes with a dull sheen, set far back into a face of ghostly pallor. — Awright . . . Franco warily responds. — How’s it gaun?

  — Ye see it aw, Franco.

  Spud Murphy looks so old and wizened to him that if he hadn’t spoken Franco wouldn’t have been able to confirm his identity. — Cannae be as bad as that, surely!

  A gallows smile pushes Spud’s features into some kind of animation. Then they tumble south again. — Sorry aboot Sean. It’s a bad toon, Franco. Aw changed. A bad toon now, likesay, Spud warns.

  Franco nods, as that couldn’t really be disputed. All towns have their bad sides; this one is no worse or better than any other. In California, they lived only a few miles away from where a film director’s privileged son had recently gone on a rampage, shooting people dead because he couldn’t get his hole. Thank fuck they don’t have guns here, he thinks mischievously, looking at poor Spud. Despite its movie representation, militaristic foreign policy and creeping racism, he finds America generally such a mannered place compared to here, but then they let lunatics buy guns, and that could change everything.