Extract 10 from Chapter 18
Gillon smiled, a mean smirk that showed the yellowed staves in his mouth. ‘See, every time that paedo’s round here you become a bag of nerves… It’s like you’re a wee lassie again.’
Leanne looked away. She was reminded of that part of her, the place deep inside, that had died. She watched cars hissing by the window on the street below. There were people walking on the pavements, birds swooping in the sky. It always felt strange to know that there was a world of ordinary people and ordinary goings-on and yet Duncan Knox existed within that same sphere. ‘He came round.’
Gillon withdrew his cigarette and pinned back his lips; two hollows either side of his mouth became pronounced. ‘There, see… Wasn’t so bad, was it?’ He flicked his ash on the floor. ‘Now, what did he want?’
Leanne kept her gaze on the street. ‘Why? What does it matter what he wanted?’
Gillon’s voice rose. ‘It just does. Look, Leanne, tell me what he wanted.’
She turned her head and caught sight of Gillon’s anger growing behind his eyes again. ‘He told me someone had died.’
‘Who?’
‘Nobody really, just someone I used to know.’
‘And why did he tell you this? Why did he come round here?’
Leanne shrugged. ‘I don’t know.’
‘Tell me the name of the person who died, Leanne.’
Her throat constricted; it was as if the words wouldn’t pass. She wanted to say them, to get the name out in the open to show that he meant nothing to her. He couldn’t harm her: he was dead. ‘James Urquhart.’
Gillon pushed the chair back; the legs scraped loudly on the floor. In a second, he was on his feet pacing the kitchen.
‘That’s him… the man on the telly.’
Leanne watched her pimp, flapping his arms and walking the length of the room again and again. ‘Gillon, he’s dead, what’s the matter?’
He stopped still, moved towards Leanne and planted his hands on the table. ‘He’s dead all right, and so’s our fat paedo friend.’
‘What?’
‘Knox copped it out at the track… Place is heaving with filth, right now.’
Leanne felt a tingling sensation behind her eyes. It was as if she had been given a drug that released a sudden burst of energy. ‘Dead?’
‘Aye, Leanne… Both your wee pals have been knocked off; what do you make of that then?’
She watched the ash fall from her cigarette – the tobacco had burned nearly all the way to the filter tip. She raised the cigarette to her lips and drew deep. She tasted a burning sensation that chimed with the heat building inside her. ‘The police… They’ll want to speak to me.’
‘Why?’ said Gillon. ‘How are they going to know anything about you?’
Leanne touched the sides of her face, pressed her cheeks in.
‘The police will want to know who killed them… He was just here, Knox, he was here.’
Gillon closed down the space between them and threw his arms onto Leanne’s shoulders. He was shaking her as he spoke. ‘You just stay away from the police. You hear me? I’ll tell you how to play this. I’ve got other ideas and they don’t involve the police.’
Artefacts of the Dead by Tony Black, £7.99 paperback, Black & White Publishing.