IT WAS Gus Ferguson's heavies who started the whole thing off. What they did to Donny Watson, that was well out of order and they deserved a real comeuppance for it.
It was them, and the spilt whisky, and the fact that right then everything was loaded against the bunch of friends. To tell the truth, everything was going wrong and there seemed no end to it.
That whisky. That and the hot summer sun, and those arseholes at the golf club. And then there was Alistair Sproat who thought he ran the town and now he was bailing out to the highest bidder. Selling out, selling everybody out.
It was all of these things, these people. The sell-out, the whisky, the arseholes, Donny Watson getting kicked black and blue and bloody, on his way home. They all made it happen, one way and another, because sometimes you get to the end of the rope and you've no choices left. But that's just the hindsight talking. If you're going to hear this story, you might as well hear it from the start.
Five of them, two cans of cold lager and a skinny greyhound with serious personal problems, playing a four-ball from the tenth to seventeenth. No medal, no handicap except the usual.
Jed Coogan had his cart and the old set of clubs his uncle had left him in his will. He'd pawned the shoes because the last time they'd caused big blisters that he burst with a needle until the water came out. Six of them, hunkered and sprawled down in the gorse and broom, waiting for a foursome of Ralph Lauren shirts and big check trousers to make their way to the twelfth, then a pair of loud women with wide round backsides in even louder checks, these daft gamblers' visors they wear these days and snooty Kelvinside accents that could grind glass to a bevel finish. Half way along the straight they looked round and saw the guys passing the cold lager back and forth and gave reproving sniffs and tut-tutted loud enough to hear. Everybody laughed. Just two minutes before, one of them had stuck her hand down and hauled the seam of her pants out of the crack of her arse. Ladylike it wasn't.
"That one's younger than your girlfriend," Donny said.
"Jealous git," Jed said. He was sturdy and dark, that Irish kind of way, and he was up to all kinds of stuff with the ex-wife of one of the town councillors who'd done the dirty with a young secretary from the council office. She was getting her own back and everything else from Jed several nights a week and some more at weekends. Truth to tell, Margery Burns might have been on the far side of forty five and getting some of the blonde out of a bottle to shade the fade but there wasn't one of them there, except maybe Jack Lorne, who wouldn't have jumped at the chance of a weekend indoors with Mrs B.
"You just can't get away from her," says Donny. " 'cause old women run faster. They only wear sensible shoes."
"And big loose cotton knickers."
"She doesn't wear knickers," Jed threw back. "Not when I'm there. And she never wakes me up after it and asks what I'm thinking. Not like your bunch of bimbettes." He went into falsetto: "Do you love me Donald, I mean really love me? Honestly?"
He reached into the bag and rummaged for the second can. Two between six was hardly a boozy afternoon, but it was still cold and on a day like this, you couldn't have gone nine holes without a refreshment. It was hot as anybody could remember..
"Oh, Mrs Robinson, you're trying to seduce me. Aren't you?" Neil was good with the accents.
"You couldn't get a scabby sheep to seduce you, Big Stuff."
Neil had a tight grip on the greyhound's leash. Every now and again she'd let out a little soulful whine and rub her backside along the grass..
"You couldn't even pull Fannieboz, here, and she's hot for anything."
Levenford Golf course is flat as a salt pan. On the north side there's some scrubby gorse and broom and straggly hawthorn butting up against Aitkenbar Distillery and its old storage sheds, bonded warehouses that give off a sweet heady smell some days when the wind is right. Then there's the big inlet, what they call Bruce's Harbour, where they used to load the whisky on to barrels and down the river to the big ships moored at the castle rock. They say King Robert himself used to stash his warship here, back when they didn't just talk hot air and politics in Edinburgh, but who knows? It was a while ago.
Along by the twelfth and thirteenth, the curve of the river shoves up against the big levee bulwark that's the only thing keeping the water out and the golfers in. You have to be a member on this course, which costs some fancy money and cash was something none of them had to waste, not this summer anyway.
This day the heat made the air twist and dance and shimmer way along the fairway, like half-seen ghosts in the grass. You could see pools of water sparkling along the flat in the distance and when you got up to them, they'd be gone. All illusion.
Three weeks of solid rain and then two of a sunshine heatwave that left cracks where the shallow mud had been and the straight along by the built-up riverbank was lush and green, tangled with willow herb and that creepy wild rhubarb that grows in the damp, crawling with centipedes and earywigs. It was all alive. Warblers warbled non-stop and the drone of bees up in the high elms could put you to sleep if you sat down under them. The gorse and broom pods popped open with little crackles that made it sound like the bushes were on fire. Three small boys paddled about barefoot up to their thighs in the rough marsh, feeling for lost golf balls with their toes and feeding them into a big plastic bucket.
The four-ball took their time and one of them hooked a fast curver straight into the marsh. The nearest boy marked where it went and then looked the other way. There was no chance that pringle man in the while flat cap and the Payne Stewart knickerbockers was going to risk his spikes in the deep marsh. Every footstep set off a jacuzzi of nitrates and methane that smelt worse than old cow farts.
"Have you seen the ball, sonny?"
"No mister." A blatant lie. It had missed him by only three yards. "But I've got some spares. Sell you half a dozen."
Swift negotiation, and to the boys out there, it was a seller's market, always had been. Jed Cooper and Jack Lorne had done that job plenty of years before and had bought good bikes with the proceeds. Then they got a paper round and sold the golf franchise to two other boys from down the street and passed on the tradition. Good days.
"Supply and demand," Jack said. He always came out with these things. "Nothing changes."
Pringle man did his deal, keeping his black and white brogues away from the gassy muck and they sauntered on, rotund rotarian senior partners killing time. The fat-arsed women came by, hacking pretty wildly, and a stray ball smacked into the gorse nearby, sending up a thick, somehow exotic scent of coconut oil.
"Stupid cow," Neil said. "That could have brained me."
"You'd have ended up with more brains than you were born with."
Donny pulled a long black tube from the cart. It came out like a blunt sword.
"This is the piece of the resistance." He murdered a French accent.
"What's that?"
"A golf ball holder. Got it in a sale for two quid."
"Total waste of money," Jed said.
"Watch this." Donny thumbed off the plastic lid and put the top of the tube to his mouth. They heard the glug as the liquid went down.
"What the hell's that?"
"The angels share." Donny wiped the back of his hand across his mouth. "Want some?"
"But what the hell is it?" Neil wanted to know.
"Only the finest twenty-five-year-old Glen Murroch. Made before you were even a glint. It'll set you back fifty notes a bottle, maybe more."
"You ripped it off?"
"They're ripping me off," Donny came back. He smacked his lips. "That's what I call a drink. Take it while it's going, for it won't be going long."
That was true enough. The sun might have been high and the bees doing the sleepy thing up on the leaves, but it had not been the best of times, and from the looks of it, it was going to get a whole lot worse come the autumn.
Jack had summed it up. "You get screwed, and then they really fuck you." Jack wasn't really that given to swearing either, but he hit it right on the head.
Donny was screwed, one way or the other. He'd only been told two weeks back that he was on short time working and the distillery was going to shut for good. Him and another two hundred would be out to scrap, and then Alistair Sproat would make a fortune selling off the land for a useless shopping centre that was going to try to sell lots of things to people with bags of no money. It was worse for Donny Watson. He'd just been made up to chargehand, in the cooperage where they made the barrels, and there sure wasn't going to be a big demand for his services around here any more, not with Sproat aiming to get into the designer moonshine market that didn't need any years in oak conditioning doing nothing but getting smooth. It was much the same for the rest of them, even Jack, who everybody had said was the one most likely to make something of himself, but here he was, down in the gorse with the rest of them, Saturday afternoon and nothing much else to do. Soon they'd be able to play midweek, for the same reason.
He passed the tube untouched to Jed who lifted it up like he was playing a trombone and poured some down his own throat. His face went red and he started to cough and somebody thumped him on the back. "Lordy lordy, that's the real stuff. Smooth as silk."
"They'll be doing a last bottling sometime soon," Donny said. "Clearing all the old barrels out of stock. Sproat wants a special blend before the doors shut."
"Scraping the bottom of the barrel."
"No, this is real good stuff. It's been there for years. It was made for some boat, the Queen Elizabeth probably, and then it just got locked down in customs bond. The buyer went bust, years ago, so there's tons of it, all over-proof as well."
"And then you're out on your ear."
"Then we're all out," Donny agreed. "Life's a pure bitch." He grabbed the whisky and took another slug at it. Neil had a mouthful, then Jed and then Tam Bowie who hadn't said much because he was still working, at least until they finished the houses out on the east end of the town. It came back to Jack.
"Life is a box of chocolates," Jed said. "You end up getting left with all the hard ones that break your teeth."
"Look at this place," Jack said. "We got a river, and a castle and the best pubs in the west. Fishing and climbing and everything else, wall-to-wall women and then the arseholes come along and totally screw it up."
"You'll be okay when you finish your college stuff," Jed said.
"Sure, I'll be rich as sin. I don't think. If I even get to finish, now."
Everybody knew Jack was paying his way through, working his way to some degree in business or management, studying after his morning shift in the dairy. Nobody really knew exactly what it was for and he never said much about it. He was up at four in the morning delivering milk, and then half the day cleaning out the tankers at the dairy and God alone knew when he had the time to study, but they all had to hand it to him. He was trying to pull himself up by the bootstraps, make something of himself like his grandad always said, and since his old man had died, it had been no easy garden stroll.
Now the dairy was teetering on the edge and Andy Kerr was staring disaster in the face. The two hundred grand he'd invested in new tankers had proved a bad bet after the big supermarket chain he'd been supplying for ten years pulled the rug and left him flat. They'd been trying to drive the wholesale price down to where even the dairy farmers would operate at a loss. Now Andy Kerr and the farmers, and everybody who worked for them were all going to lose.
On top of that, the Town Council had doubled the rent on the dairy site, and Jack said he was sure some of the councillors were on the take. You get Andy out and you've got five prime acres to build on and Asda and Safeway and Sainsbury's are biting each other's backs to get flat land to trade on. That was a sellers market. So the supermarkets won whichever way.
Eighteen prime acres when you threw in Bruce Harbour, where Sproat planned to bulldoze all the old distillery buildings and warehouses. Another piece of town history gone forever, but that was nothing new. What could you do?
"Bastards," Donny said, and everybody agreed with the sentiment. He had Irish red hair and freckles and his face was scarlet from the sun.
"Sure they are," Jack said. "They're tearing the heart out of the place. It's going to be like a ghost town. Five hundred out of work, and worse to come."
"How d'you figure that out? It's only two hundred at the distillery."
"Only two hundred," Jed butted in. "Get real!"
"Okay," Jack said. "You got the two hundred from Sproat's. Another forty from the creamery. That's the start. Plenty of people not earning, and not spending. That's going to hit the shops and the bars, and when they get hit, they lay off. So there's less rake-in to the council. So they start cutting services and jobs."
He shook his head. "Look what's happened after the banks crashed. Thousands of jobs wiped out. Less taxes for the government. So they start cutting costs. More jobs down the drain. Less taxes. It's a vicious circle."
"Bastard!" Donny repeated. "Somebody should do something about it."
Jack just nodded.
Jed got to his feet.
"Enough of this dismal crap. Come on and finish the game."
"Hey mister, you want some balls?" One of the boys held up a plastic bag.
"His granny's got them," Tam chipped in and everybody fell about.
"What's it like with her teeth out?"
"You'll never know. What's it like being a dildo?"
Tam lined up. He had the six iron and the wedge. Jed had the three and a big old wood. Everybody else had two clubs apiece. Tam hit a scorcher that went straight down the middle and nearly hit the woman who had pulled the gusset lining from her cheeks and she turned round to glare.
"Fore. . . . " he bawled.
"Sixty bloody four."
"That would be the only bang she'd get," Neil said.
"Not unless Jed catches her up."
"Shit upon you, gentlemen" Jed said, very agreeably. "Don't knock it until you've tried it, not that you're going to get the chance. The mature lady, she don't yell, she don't tell and she be grateful as all hell."
Jack hit a grass cutter that glanced off a handy rise and took off, almost catching up with Tam's ball on the middle. Neil managed all of twenty yards and scooped a two-foot gouge. Jed topped it hard and the ball dug in to a knoll, under the roots of a tree. Donny hit his a smack and his did a fast curve to the left. The greyhound whined and rubbed her backside along the grass again.
"Sliced and diced," somebody said.
"No. It was hooked."
The ball kept curving past the willow stumps and came down into the march, not far from the furthest swamp kid. Donny swore.
"Anybody got another ball?"
"There was some in the bag."
"No," Jed said. "I took them out for the lager."
"Oh, brilliant! That's me out the game."
"Want a ball mister? Ten for five. Brand new, no totties."
"How much for one?"
"Got to buy bulk, mister. Ten balls, five notes."
"That's bloody robbery. I'll wrap this six iron round your ear."
The boy shrugged. He was safe, up to his thighs in clinging mud. No club member would get near to him out there.
But Donny was no member.
"Screw it," he said, and maybe it was the whisky, or just the way Donny was. Once he got hold of an idea, there was no stopping him. His cargo pants were down at his ankles before anybody could say a thing.
"Just leave it," Jed said. "We can take shots each."
"It's only a bit of mud." He heel-toed out of his trainers and stood there in tee shirt and jockeys, surveying the scene. His ball had landed thirty feet out, close to a lone squat bush.
"It's too deep. You'll soak your pants."
"To hell with the pants." He pushed them down too and stepped out. His backside was pallid furred with golden hairs which contrasted with the dark tee shirt. He pulled the edge down to cover his balls and tried to wedge it between his thighs.
"Let it swing, Donny boy."
"There's piranhas in there. They go for worms."
Jack cupped his hands to his mouth and bawled to the women golfers who were just turning the bend at the end of the straight.
"You don't know what you're missing here, ladies."
Everybody laughed, even Donny. He scratched his backside and then started wading until the mud came up to his thighs. Every step made a gloopy sucking sound and set up and gobble of bubbles and sighed when they reached the surface.
"What a smell, man. That would knock you out flat."
"Let's make it a four ball," Neil said. "I'm not playing with him when he comes out."
Donny was bending down now, arms deep in the mud, white backside catching the sun, nose close to the surface.
"Use your feet," Jack shouted.
Donny stood up and held his hand up in triumph. His arm was black from fingers to shoulder.
"Got it," he called back, floundering to catch his balance, and then laboriously turned to make the long sticky walk back to the hard ground.
"Shit," Jed said. "That's what it smells like. That is rank rotten."
Neil laughed. "Momma always said, stupid is as stupid does."
Donny stood there and the black greasy ooze slowly slid down his thighs. The tip of his penis bore a black dot of mud.
Fannieboz strained at the leash and shoved her nose into his crotch.
Donny stumbled backwards. "Jeez, Neil. You got to get that bitch fixed."
"It's her hormones. Something wrong with her glands. She can't help it."
The greyhound mewled and rolled her eyes at Donny.
"That's one seriously screwed pooch," he said.
"Hey, mud man, you have to get cleaned up." Jed held his nose. "That's bog awful."
"Along here," Jack said. "If there's any water in the steam you can wipe it off."
They all sauntered off, taking shots when they came across the balls, Donny leaving black and smelly footprints on the green grass, until they reached the little runnel that crossed the fairway. There was about a foot of water, flowing slowly, with a thick candyfloss of algae on either side. Some water skaters skimmed the surface and a family of whirligig beetles madly made themselves dizzy.
Donny slid down the bank and into the water and immediately a trail of ooze washed downstream in slow whorls. He bent and started wiping the mud off.
"What's that smell?" Tam asked, sniffing the still air.
"It's the dog."
"No it's the ginger loony from the black lagoon," somebody said.
"Not that. I smell more drink."
Jack sniffed. "Me too."
"Look," Jed said. "Where did these fish come from?"
They all peered into the clear water upstream of where Donny stood. A half a dozen small fish, maybe brown trout, floated in a little pool that was blocked off by a fallen branch. They were pale and bloodless, floating belly up.
"It's whisky," Jed said.
"No. That's just because you're drinking the stuff."
"No, he's right," Donny said. "This must be where it came out. Man, the shit really hit. It was just last Friday, before a big decant. Somebody must have moved the wedges on the barrel stack and three of them rolled. They hit the concrete like bombs."
He laughed. "Sproat went berserk, but it's his fault for not making sure the barrels were checked. Some of the hoops had rusted in store, and when they hit, they just broke away. You ever see a hogshead explode?"
Nobody had.
"Malt whisky fountain, that's what you get. The decant tank drain valve was still open and all the spillage went straight into the pipe."
Donny stood up, cupping water in his hand to loosen the mud on his caked arm.
"It all went down the drain and that was that. Couple of hundred gallons. And believe me they get worked up if you take a half bottle for medicinable purposes."
"Sure, like you've got a dangerous case of being sober?"
"Imagine their faces when all that went down the swanney. You can still smell it down here."
"Must have killed the fish. They'd have been swimming in it."
"What a way to go. Suberb. That's how I want it."
Jack stood at the edge and looked upstream. "So it all went down a drain and into this?"
"They tried to hush it up. Sproat got them to block it off. He's scared he'd get done for polluting the place. But if it got to the environmental people, I never heard."
"So three barrels, how much is that worth?" Jack had that look in his eye.
"Depends," Donny said. He was bending down again, now winning the battle. His legs were becoming paler as the muck washed off. "Depends on how old, what blend and whether the duty's been paid. That's about eighty percent."
"Eighty percent?" Jed said. "That's what they take? That's robbery with violence."
"Too true," Donny agreed. "Anyway, three barrels is about a hundred and fifty gallons."
"Six bottles to a gallon," Jack said. He was quick.
"And what's that over-proof thing?" Jed asked.
Jack stepped in. He was always good at pub quizzes, knew all the obscure stuff that wasn't music and football. "They used to test whisky with gunpowder to see if it was strong enough. If it exploded, it was. That was it proved."
"Yeah," Donny said. "A hundred proof is about sixty percent. The raw stuff they make in there is about a hundred and thirty, so that's eighty percent pure alcohol, twice as strong as normal, so you have to water it down."
"That would blow your head off."
Jack was still picking at it. "So that's like three hundred gallons, eighteen hundred bottles, all down the drain. No wonder they were pissed off."
"It was just the angels share," Donny said, almost clean. "You can still smell it down here."
"What's that?"
"Cooper's trade secret."
"Ex-cooper soon," Tam said, and that was true enough.
"Okay. Your barrels are made of oak, right? Whisky has to be stored in oak for three years minimum, to be real scotch. And some of it evaporates through the pores in the wood. They call it the Angels Share.
"Can't you make barrels with no holes?"
"No," Donny said, not bothering to explain. He hauled himself up to the bank.
"You forgot to wash your dick," Tam pointed out.
"Shouldn't have been looking, sweetheart." Everybody laughed. Donny started climbing back into his shorts and when he straightened he reached for the black tube, popped the top and took a big one. He gasped and wiped his mouth again, unaware that he left a wide grey streak from one cheek to the other. Nobody bothered to tell him.
"And this is the angels share too. Everybody gets a share."
"Like Catch 22," Jack said.
Everybody looked at him and none of them knew what he was talking about.
Donny pulled on the cargo pants and slipped his feet back in the trainers.
"Where's that ball?"
"Hey, you there! Are you members?"
It came from off to the left, back the way they had come. Tam was hacking away in the rough, not far in, close to a thin birch and he'd taken about ten fruitless swipes, cursing after every one of them, but the ball was still stuck in the long grass.
Another designer shirt came striding up, dragging a big red bag of Ping clubs with little woolly hats to keep them warm, even in this heat.
Donny was taking another drink of the amber stuff and Jed had the can of lager in his hand. They all turned.
"On you go," Donny said, waving them forward when he put the tube down. "You can play on through. We're not in any rush."
"I asked if you are members," the man asked. He had thin grey hair and a thick stubbly presbyterian moustache.
"Yes, we are. Of course." Tam hiccupped at the end of that and Jed giggled. It had been that kind of day so far.
"Oh really. And what is this, a five ball? And where are your clubs?"
Donny held up a driver and a wedge. The bag stood alone on its little wheels with only a black tube protruding from the top.
"You know the rules."
"What rules?"
"Or you would if you were members, which you clearly are not." He looked Tam up and down, taking in the jeans and the old Jesus sandals. "No denim, only golf spikes, and definitely no, repeat no low-life vagrants."
Jack knew the face. Jamieson Bell, one of the big-wigs on the council. Every one of them were in Alistair Sproat's pocket as far as he could tell.
"Who are you calling a low-life?" Jed stepped forward and stuck his chin out.
"What's the problem Jamieson?"
Jack recognised the voice and spun round. Gus Ferguson hove into view, bright in a yellow polo shirt and sky blue trews. He was stocky, with thick lifter's arms covered in black curly hair.
"No problem Fergus. These people were just leaving."
"Look, we said you could play on through. Just you go ahead. We're not bothering anybody."
"You're bothering me," Bell said. Donny had recognised him too even though Bell wouldn't have known him from Adam.
"Yeah. Get lost," Ferguson said. "You're cluttering the place up."
"Get yourself lost," Tam came back. "We're just having a game."
Ferguson came right up to them, passing Bell. He leaned in on them, bull-like and broad. He had some sort of share in the big scrap yard out beyond the railway bridge where Jed and Neil rummaged for parts for the stock-car bust-ups. He did a bit of car trading from a yard on the east side, and they were the only things he did that were anywhere close to being legit. Everybody knew he was into every mucky scam going.
"Listen, you low-life bunch of shite, get yourselves off this fairway or I'll fucking kick you off myself."
"You and whose army?" Donny demanded. Jack clapped a warning hand on his shoulder, but Donny was up for it. His freckles stood out like ink-blots on his skin, the way they did when he was losing it just a bit.
Ferguson leaned in further. "Do I know you? I do, don't I?"
"So what?"
"You're Skid Watson's boy, that right? Like father like son. Last of the great unwashed."
"You keep my dad out of it, you slimy bastard." Donny's old man had never been an outstanding success at anything, apart from football, when he had been noted for a vicious sliding tackle, but now he had bad arthritis that curled his fingers into claws and welded his knee bones into knots and was in a lot of pain a lot of the time.
"You'll amount to the same thing, Ginger boy. Nothing."
Neil Cleary broke in and Ferguson rounded on him, slab-faced, grizzle haired.
"You too, beef lard. See me after you've been to weightwatchers and got rid of the flab"
"Come on," Jack said. "We don't need this."
"Yeah. Take the rest of the dead-end kids and get to fuck out of my club."
That was enough for Donny.
"You're club? What club would have you? You're nothing but a fucking low-life, slimy, tuppeny-ha'penny dope dealing fuckin' shark. People like you give fuckin' criminals a bad name."
Ferguson whipped round to see how far off Jamieson Bell was. Maybe they had just been pitched together in the medal, and maybe Bell was too far up the social scale to know just who and what Ferguson was, but Donny had touched the spot all right. Gus Ferguson had built up his racket in the seventies and eighties when all the big Yank firms had pulled out to chase the dollar in the Pacific rim sweats, and after Thatcher yanked the plug on everybody else, when every other home in the schemes needed the tide-over loans the banks never dished out as low as the council house strata. Everybody knew Ferguson turned a dishonest buck here and there besides and under the Lacrosse polo shirt there would be enough dope rope to hitch a coach and four.
He leant in further and lowered his voice.
"You got a fast mouth ginger nuts. I'll remember you said that. And I'll remember the next time your Aunty Jean comes looking for a leg-up, like she does every other week. Her rate just went up. She gets a leg up when I get a leg-over her skanky arse, capice."
"Go fuck yourself and the horse you rode in on, you wide-boy skag."
"Aye, get lost Ferguson," Neil Cleary butted in. He was still stung by the fat boy remark. "That's well out of order."
Ferguson smiled that way hard men do, letting it even reach his eyes, like he was really having a laugh, but you know it's just the poison in them. He never took them off Donny.
He was right up against his ear and nobody else heard it except Jack Lorne.
"And you, you get to follow the old man. You're in a fuckin wheelchair, got me?"
Jack bit his lip, but Donny was too far gone with the insult.
"Fuck yourself on a sharp stick, arsehole."
Down at the edge of the rough, Jamieson Bell called up.
"Just leave them Angus. They're not worth the trouble. I'll call the greenkeeper."
He pulled out a little Ericson job the size of a penguin biscuit and flipped its lid. They heard the beep of dialling. He started talking loudly into it.
Tam Bowie pulled at Donny's arm. "Come on you. Ignore it. Just walk away."
Donny shrugged him off, ready to get waded in again, but Ferguson was walking away and all the fun had gone out of the game. Donny stood there, face still smeared in grey, whisky on his breath and his hands were shaking. He never did anything in half measures, drunk or sober.
"That slimy cunt. I could fucking have him."
"You and whose army?" Tam mimicked, all sarcastic. "You want to stay well clear of that bastard. He's a total loony and he's got a bunch of crazies backing him up."
Jack nodded. "Come on. They're just a pair of wankers."
Ferguson didn't even look at them as they pulled away to the side. Donny and Neil still wanted to go on with the game, and Donny looked as if he wanted to have a real go with the sand wedge, but the others pulled them back. The game was a bogey, as the kids say here. The ball was on the slates. They went back up to the gorse-covered hillock and sat in the sun, drinking the rest of the lager and the whisky and Tam threw a six iron at a pheasant that wandered out of cover and got the fright of its life. He missed by a hand span.
"Sliced it again," he said and everybody laughed and then they all got up, emptied the water out of the bag, stuck the clubs back in and started sauntering home along by the old distillery. Apart from Ferguson and that creepy Jamieson Bell, it hadn't been such a bad afternoon when there was nothing better to do.
Kerr Thomson, the customs man at the big distillery gate nodded to Donny as they passed and he waved back.
Jack turned to Donny. "What did they do when they spilled the whisky?"
"Nothing they can do. They had to write it off."
"Just like that?"
"Sure. It happens all the time. Sometimes a barrel will split a hoop and you lose the lot. You don't pay tax on what you haven't got. When it's in customs bond, it's like a duty-free zone, know what I mean?"
Tam and Neill headed off up to Overburn which looked out over the rest of the town down on the flatland, and the other three trundled on towards Drymains, on the other side of the main road, past the row of bonded warehouses and Levenford Dairy where the clanking of the bottles on the racks told them they were getting filled for the next day. Jed peeled away and the other two strolled down to the turn.
"Catch you in Mac's tonight."
"Not tonight," Jack said. "I got to hit the books. See you Friday."
Donny hitched the cart behind him and its wheels juddered over the rough road and then bumped back up onto the pavement. The sun had turned the back of his neck bright red, that raw Celtic way that needs factor forty on shady days and still hurts like hell the next morning.
Jack sauntered down the street, hands in his pockets, deep in thought. The sun was in his eyes as it began its slide down the slope of the Cardross Hills, getting more red-fevered as it sank, and Jack never really noticed the big Jag as it cruised past. He was vaguely aware of somebody turned to face him, but then it was gone. Only the low squeal of tires as it picked up speed at the far corner made him turn and take a glance. He turned back, hands in his pockets, thinking of the dead fish in the little stream and trying to work out the value of those lost bottles of whisky in his head, doubling up for dilution, charging at shop prices. It was one of those things that always snagged his brain, the way a tune will go through your head and you can't get rid of it. Jack always had a head for figures and if he hadn't left school early to get a job after his dad had died, he'd have got through college a whole lot sooner. He was converting gallons to seventy cubic-centilitre bottles in his head when he suddenly stopped dead.
He turned round fast again, looking up in the direction the Jaguar had gone.
Somebody had turned round to look at him and the sun had been in his eyes and he'd been doing mental arithmetic.
Somebody had turned. . . . .
Gus Ferguson's face spun right into sharp focus.
Jesus! Gus Ferguson. What was he doing here . . . . ?
Jack was running even before he completed the thought. The sun was at his back, sending a long shadow ahead. Two small boys on bikes scattered out of his way as he reached the corner, got a hand to the children crossing post and spun himself round it. Up at Crosswell Street the road took a bend as it narrowed, on the short cut through to the Orlett houses where Donny lived. There was a narrow stretch here, bounded on both sides by a hawthorn hedge, and a small field that used to be a paddock back when this had been farmland.
There was no sign of anybody. But the Jag had definitely turned up here. That meant it was up the lane. Jack was breathing fast, and he speeded up, trainers slapping the tarmac. Jesus.
"Donny," he bawled. "Watch your back." A woman at an upstairs window leaned out curiously as he passed and followed his run up the street. He got to the narrow part and just as he was turning, saw the back end of the Jag angled out of the gateway to the field. Off in the distance some boys were playing football. Two dogs were barking at each other. A blackbird bulleted out of the hedge with that daft alarm call they all have and clattered away into the bush at the far side.
Donny's golf bag was lying at the side.
On the other side of the thick hedge, somebody was taking a real kicking.
Jack skidded to a halt. Even from here he could hear the blows land, solid and meaty and of a sudden his heart was somewhere up in his throat.
Fuck! He couldn't think straight. The wheels on the little trolley were still spinning lazily. The tube was out of the bag and a few of the clubs had shot from the mouth to scatter on the track.
Donny called out and it didn't really sound like him at all. It was all froth and gulping.
Fuck! Jack was suddenly scared in so many directions his fear was three-dimensional. He was scared to go round that corner and face what was happening, scared that Ferguson would mark him out. But what scared him most was that if he didn't go round the corner, then Donny would end up like Ferguson had said, and that vicious bastard was mad enough to make it happen.
Wheelchair. . . wheelchair.
Just what right did Ferguson have to think he had the power?
Fuck! That thought punched through the fear and Jack bent down and snatched up the heavy sand wedge.
Jesus, they had only gone for a couple of cans and a swing at the ball. Just passing the time.
Behind the hedge Donny coughed again and it wasn't really a cough. Jack swung the iron and went through the gate fast. Somebody was in the driver's seat and he felt like taking a smash at him, but all he could think of was getting to Donny. Christ, hadn't they backed each other since they were four years old?
What fucking right. . . . . ?
There were two of them and they were kicking the shit out of him. One of them had an old baseball bat and he was swinging like a slugger, every one connecting in a dull meaty thud. Donny was down on his knees and he was coughing again. It sounded like an underwater sob.
He recognised the nearest man. Seggs Cullen, medium height, stocky, head shaved, thick as shit, but he was hard enough. Seggs waded in and put the boot in under Donny's ribs and some blood and snot sneezed out onto the dry flattened grass.
Jack heard a singing in his ears, a juicy little mosquito hum as if his blood pressure was building too fast and suddenly he was up on that high dry plane where everything is stark and clear and all motion seems to go treacle-slow. The fear shrank under the cool anger.
"Okay gentlemen, it's showtime. What's the par for this course?"
Seggs Cullen froze half way through a swing, taken completely by surprise. Jack stepped past Donny, aware on another level that the blood mixed with the grass turned it a sticky brown.
"Do I hook or do I slice?"
Jack swung the club up and took Seggs on the side of the cheek, just on the turn. It hit with the most satisfying crunch Jack could ever remember in his life. Jesus! No slice, no hook, just on the sweet spot. Seggs did a backward flip and sent up a cloud of dust when he hit. Jack swung, way beyond the fear now, riding on the anger and the sudden savage joy that had bloomed when he connected with the sand wedge.
The other man was turning, ready to swing again and Jack spun on his right foot, like a hammer thrower. Donny was on the ground, on hands and knees, dribbling blood all over the place, and a matt of it darkening his red hair. He made a horrible, scary little noise, the kind of noise you hear down in the slaughterhouse when they put the pin in the brain of a black Angus and then it paws and dribbles, not yet aware that it's gone forever.
". . . . oh. . " Donny just made that little bewildered noise and then a big gout of blood came out along with the beer and the whisky.
Jack swung like a clansman, pivoting fast to take the other guy straight on the chin. He put the weight on his left foot and stepped in the beer and snot, slipped sideways and the wedge missed by a mere inch. It slammed into the man's upper arm just as he was about to land another killer on Donny's kidneys. He let out a blurt of pain and the slugger went flying off into the hedge.
"What the fuck. . . .? "
Jack was still on the curve of the adrenaline roller, with that odd singing in his ears and everything was going in backlit slow motion like in one of those old Jap samurai films. He regained his balance, used the spin to follow through, turned, and sunk a fast boot into the man's groin. The thug doubled up and made an odd, gasping growl of sound. Jack brought the sand-wedge up and whipped it down as the guy bent over and the heavy face connected with his left buttock in a wondrous meaty whack.
The man roared like a bear.
"You get to fuck and take that garbage with you," Jack said, hearing his words come out in a snarl that didn't sound like him at all.
Donny was down again, unable to take his weight on his hands, snuffling like a pig in the dirt and all of a sudden a huge and overwhelming fury swamped Jack Lorne and he swung out again with the wedge, taking the other man on the ribs so hard that it doubled him over. Seggs Cullen was on his feet, holding his mouth, dribbling the same kind of blood and snotters and yelling in a mush behind his fingers. The second man gasped for breath, caught it and came forward, reaching for the club. Jack swung again, fast left and right and managed to catch a knuckle with a sound like stone on stone.
Up at the Jaguar somebody was bawling and Jack couldn't make out the words. The man with the sore knuckles and arm and balls backed off, growling and cursing incoherently and making sure he would recognise Jack Lorne if he ever saw him again and then they were up at the Jag and the doors were shut and it sizzled away, sending up dry earth and grass and a pall of blue exhaust.
Donny pushed himself up again and crawled around blind on his hands and knees, making a complete, confused little circle, and Jack caught him just before his arms gave way again.