Butcher Read Free Page A

her so many years in silence he could go back to silence again. He’d be all right. He’d be OK, he was a survivor. But.
    He heard the whine of a vacuum cleaner inside the house. He got up from the bench and wandered the thickets for a while like a melancholic poet in search of inspiration. Lou Keats. At the first drop of rain he went back indoors where music played over the drone of the antique Hoover. Betty McLatchie smiled at him and gave him a thumbs up.
    â€˜I work better to music,’ she shouted.
    The song was ‘Hotel California’. The Eagles.
    Perlman picked up his raincoat from the back of a chair. ‘I’ll leave you to it, Betty.’ He fumbled in his pocket for his keys, slipped one from the ring, and handed it to her. ‘Here. You should have this. If I’m not around, be sure you lock the front door before you leave.’
    She took the key. ‘Fine.’
    He went down the corridor, stopped in front of the mirror and thought about brushing his hair but some days all the brushing in the world failed to improve his appearance. What was it Miriam had said about him? You have that just-out-of-bed look . He scowled at his reflection, stroked the stubble on his chin, then left the house.
    Outside, he saw no sign of his old Ford Mondeo and for one panicky moment he thought, some gonif ’s nicked it – but then he remembered he’d traded it for a used Ka only days ago, a balloon of a thing the salesman had talked him into buying. Very popular wee car, Lou. Easy on the juice, but zippy . Perlman understood zero about cars. A good car was one with a music system and a capacious ashtray. He drove down Dalness Street to Tollcross Road.
    The Jew zips out of Egypt, smoking furiously.

3
    Perlman walked through the Buchanan Street Galleries. Bright new Glasgow, scores of shops operating in a fluorescent haze. Mango, Next, Habitat. He looked in the window of Ottakar’s. He was tempted to go in and sniff among the stacks. He loved the smell of books. Sometimes he’d open one just to inhale the scent of the binding, the whiff of paper. But today he had a lunch with Sandy Scullion – the highlight of the week, the month.
    A kilted piper played ‘Amazing Grace’ outside the Buchanan Street subway. Perlman paused on the corner of Bath Street. His instinct was to turn right and walk where he’d walked more than a thousand times, up the hill to Pitt Street HQ. The magnetism of old reflexes. Not today, not tomorrow. He didn’t know when he’d go back. It was like being barred from a club you’d joined more than twenty-five years ago.
    He headed past the old Atheneum, formerly a drama college, a wonderful red sandstone building now occupied by a company called Townhouse Interiors. He glanced at the Church of Scotland on the corner of Nelson Mandela Place and went down Buchanan Street in the worst kind of drizzle, omnidirectional, swirled by a slight wind. Buses roared in his ears. Taxis went past in sleek sharklike streaks. Pedestrians bustled around him. The natives, faces determined and toughened and fatalistic, looked like descendants of foundrymen, shipyard workers, grafters.
    He loved the faces of Glasgow.
    He crossed the street. Sandy had said one sharp. Perlman would be punctual. He had no excuse not to be. His life, formerly so crowded, so intricate, was flat as day-old Irn-Bru.
    Princes Square was a flash place of boutiques and cafés under a glass Art Nouveau roof. He saw Scullion at a table outside the Café Gerardo.
    Perlman sat, shook Sandy’s hand.
    â€˜Good to see you, Lou.’
    â€˜Is that a wee tash you’re trying to grow, Sandy?’
    Scullion fingered his lip. ‘I’m giving it a shot. Madeleine likes it.’
    â€˜Wives are biased.’ Perlman picked up a menu. ‘I counted how many times in my life I’ve shaved. I got a figure of close to fourteen thousand. That’s a lot of razors plus a lot