Scabby Queen Page 3

  ‘What are you saying, Neil? If you’re not interested in the story, I’ll take it to someone else. Plenty of journalists with open minds and the vision to see where this could go.’

  Brian McGuire, one of the old school, had chosen that moment to stotter past them to the toilet, the flaps of his grubby raincoat swinging about him.

  ‘A lovers’ tiff, eh?’ He stood behind Neil, drumming thick hands on his shoulders. ‘Just you come and have a chat with me, sweetheart. Just you come. And you will.’

  Clio glared at him till he turned and left them to it, wheezing out an oh-ho-ho as he pinballed down the corridor.

  ‘You’ve been at this rag too long, Neil. It’s killing your spirit. What are you going to do – file stories on love-rat local councillors and keep cashing the cheques? I’m disappointed in you.’

  She stood up, began gathering her many bags about her.

  ‘Clio. Come on. Look. Sorry. Hey. Where are you staying tonight?’

  ‘I’ll crash on someone’s sofa.’

  ‘Well, I’ve got to get back to it, but why don’t you take my keys, head back to the flat, have a bath? We can talk about this later.’

  ‘I’ll be fine, Neil. I’ve got plans.’

  She always had plans.

  By now, someone would have found her, surely. Four hours ago she was alive and sending emails, and he couldn’t have been the only person she’d contact. She wouldn’t still be living by herself; there would be flatmates, a man, maybe?

  Was she dead, then? All that hugeness, that person, that Clio, had it just stopped?

  Nine hours later he woke up to an alarm he vaguely remembered setting, under what had been Alan the sports editor’s desk on the abandoned second floor. It wasn’t the first time: the cleaners only went in weekly now, so he knew he wouldn’t be disturbed. He coughed, inhaled stale ethanol from his own breath and felt his gag reflex jerk. Early shift started in five minutes; he had time to stop by his desk and grab the toothbrush he hoped he still had in one of the drawers.

  ‘All right, mate? Need you in here.’

  Craig, the new editor – Neil would always think of him as the new editor, even though he’d been there almost two years – spoke in scrubbed-up laddish clichés, an approximation of cheery workplace banter spread thinly over the top of his management style. His clean-skinned head shone out round the office, the faintest trace of sculpted stubble extending from ear to cheekbone. Even now, leading the early shift at 5 a.m., he radiated the smug certainty of someone who had already run a 5K and digested his macrobiotic porridge before coming to work. Neil, at least ten years older than him, was always his ‘mate’ – all the men in the office were – and never convinced. He’d been brought in by management after the fourth round of voluntary redundancies, after Patrick, who had run the paper for twelve years and worked at it for forty, had finally had enough and walked out. Craig was returned from London, from the red tops, to raise a family with his much younger wife; had met the new owners at a party, been lured back home by house prices and schools. Craig was not one of the team; mind you, now their union rep had gone, nor was anyone really.

  Craig glad-handed the guy from ad sales who always sat in on editorial conferences now, as Neil took his seat in the circle, trying to keep a hand casually over his mouth.

  ‘Big news this morning. Z-list celeb suicide. Possible lesbian thing. You know the old pop singer, Clio Campbell?’ He puckered his lips, crooned. ‘“Rise up. People gotta rise up” – her? Yeah? Neil, mate, this is your beat? Arts. So I want you on it.’

  ‘There’s nothing out there about it yet, Craig,’ said one of the girls from the new intake, her phone lighting her face from below.

  ‘I’ve just had a pretty good tip, darling. This minute. Neil, here’s the address the body was found at – you’ll need the car, it’s a bit of a trek – her dyke girlfriend’s house, my source reckoned. Anyway, you’d probably want to talk to the girlfriend, maybe take Mike or whoever’s on today with you, be nice to get a teary shot. What else – yeah, Suz?’

  ‘Didn’t she used to be married to Danny Mansfield? I could pop down their offices and have a chat with him.’

  Neil looked down. He was holding on to the faded fabric over the knees of his jeans with both hands.

  ‘I should do that. I know Danny. I also know Gordon Duke, back from when he and Clio were an item. I’m your man on this one, Craig.’

  The boy two seats along was making a show of wincing at Neil’s breath, but Craig smiled, a thin baring of teeth.

  ‘Excellent, mate, excellent. Suz, you get out to this village, babes. You do the additional on this. Aidan, we’ll want pics from the archive – a couple from when she was young and sexy and the worst one you can find of her from nowadays, eh? I mean, it’s a tragic story. We should go big. Neil, mate, how do you feel about a tied-in obit? You’re probably pretty good on this one, right? Something appropriately sombre, you know the stuff. The lovers, the headlines, big beats: two hundred and fifty words. It’s not like she’s Kylie Minogue or anything.’

  In the corridor, after, Neil grabbed at Suzanne’s shoulder. She glared at him.

  ‘Suzanne. Don’t do it like that. Don’t doorstep a grieving woman, for God’s sake. That’s not what we do.’

  ‘OK, thanks,’ she said, turning away from him.

  ‘Wait! Wait. Craig was giving you the wrong steer there. She’s not a lesbian. I know – knew – her. Have done for years. It’s not a dyke thing.’

  ‘OK,’ she said again, and walked off to the car park.

  He wondered who the woman was – some friend of Clio’s, some paranoid, dreadlocked old protester with a kind heart and a spare room, probably. Poor cow. He thought of the name blipping across police radios, picked up by whichever old boy Craig was keeping in expensive whisky. It was comforting to know that some aspects of the fourth estate remained unchanged. The very worst aspects, right enough. The end of the world was coming and, even as the human-built institutions of the past two hundred years rotted away, their cancerous old bones still stood. Anything pure or graceful about this job was long gone, really, wasn’t it?

  Two hundred and fifty words.

  Linwood, 1989

  Gogsy Duke’s kitchen. A thin open galley with its bare light bulb, rusty hob and a sink jammed with mucky crockery. He’d woken up on the sofa by the doorway, covered in a pink crochet blanket, with a strong baccy scent in his nostrils and very little idea how he’d got there. They’d been in the Welly up at the new community centre, couple of drinks, and Gogsy had called him over, locked him deep into conversation. He remembered a stumble, a realization that he’d left his keys and his mum would kill him; he remembered Gogsy’s voice, an arm wrapped round his neck, a whiff of sweat.

  She was leaning on the kitchen unit, tapping a rollie into a mug, wrapped up in a rich green dressing gown; a streak of colour that shouldn’t have been there, in amongst the brown ordinariness of Gogsy’s house. All that red, red hair in a bundle on top of her head. He fumbled about for his glasses, and she swam into focus. Her skin was pink and he was struck by how very young she must be.

  ‘Hullo.’

  ‘Hullo yourself.’

  ‘Mind if I—?’

  ‘Go for it.’

  He squeezed past her, careful not to brush up against the dressing gown, tried not to breathe. He was conscious of the sticky film of sleep on his skin, the raw smell of himself, the stain on the leg of the jeans he’d slept in. The tap sputtered and farted water all over his hands, his T-shirt, everywhere but into the mug he’d held underneath it.

  ‘Fuck!’

  She laughed. Three notes, bell-clear.

  ‘That thing’s walloped. Don’t worry. I’ll get you a spare one of Gogsy’s.’

  She was back in a minute with a faded Deacon Blue tour shirt. She smiled at him, revealing a single deep dimple in her left cheek, big enough to stick his finger into.

  ‘I’ll give you some privacy.’

  She turn
ed her back, faced the cooker, laughed again.

  ‘Thanks.’

  ‘Are you wanting some breakfast?’

  He was battling with the T-shirt, trying to pull it over his head quickly, suck in his stomach.

  ‘Yeah … yeah, that would be great.’

  She hunted around the cupboards, found two eggs and the few end slices of a loaf of Mother’s Pride in a waxy bag. He liked the way she moved: quick, certain motion under the classy drape of her dressing gown. The deep green chimed off her eyes. When she stretched up to the shelf he realized that she wasn’t wearing a bra.

  ‘So, bit of a late one last night, eh?’

  ‘Eh. You’re not wrong.’

  ‘Youse must have stoated in at about two in the morning!’

  ‘Uh. Really?’

  Yeah, that’s a killer comeback, Neil. Killer.

  The eggs hissed as she cracked them into the fat.

  ‘I’m Cliodhna, anyway. Clio.’

  ‘Neil. I’m Neil.’

  ‘Hi, Neil. Do you want to get that bread buttered?’

  She gave him that smile again, all the way. A little curl was breaking loose from her topknot, slipping slowly down into her face as she wielded a spatula and the grease jumped and spat. He forced himself not to reach out and stroke it back in for her, concentrated instead on sawing chunks off a fridge-solid block of butter, a constellation of crumbs pushed into its surface.

  ‘So. Neil. Where did you come from?’

  He’d wanted to ask her the same question, actually – her accent wasn’t local at all. Could be Borders, could be Highland, could be something else entirely. But he didn’t get to ask or answer, as the atmosphere changed sharply. Gogsy pushed his way into the kitchen, soft in vest and Y-fronts, crooning Wet Wet Wet’s ‘Angel Eyes’ with transatlantic soul, shoving past Neil to slip his arms round her waist from behind. His smell – Brut, sweat, stale booze – filled the tiny space. Neil retreated to the couch.

  ‘See you’ve met ma wee honey then, eh?’

  He planted a big wet kiss on her neck. She was tall but thin; he was twice the size of her, his big arms. ‘Smart as a whip, this yin. Wee genius.’

  ‘There’s only two eggs, Gogs, so that’ll be breakfast for me and your guest.’

  ‘Aye, aye. No problem, hen.’ Gogsy bent down to the fridge, cracked open a can of beer.

  ‘Only one way I’m going to get through this, know what I mean?’ He burped, loud, nodded approvingly at the air around his mouth, then grooved over to the LP player and set the Clash spinning through the house, hooting along to the loose background sounds of ‘London Calling’.

  ‘Still drunk!’ said Clio, smiling that way at Neil again to include him in the joke, bind the two of them back together, as she served him egg and tough bread, lumpen with cold butter.

  Gogsy stood behind him as he ate, rubbing his shoulders. Gogsy was always this familiar, liked to touch everyone. Nobody minded; it was just Gogsy. It was just his way, they said. He never forgot a name, either; had started talking to Neil when he’d noticed him standing on the touchline of the pub league Saturday football game with a notepad, then called him over in the street one day.

  ‘It’s the reporter boy, isn’t it? Neil, aye? Good to see you, pal, good to see you. Listen, got a wee story for you as it happens. Me and the boys here are doing a wee bit of leafleting, all furra good cause, right now. We’re trying to raise awareness of whit the housin association are trying to get past on their tenants – it’s another rent increase, basically, while the lifts in they high flats have been stuck for almost six months now. There’s poor wee old ladies in there can’t get their shopping in because they cannae manage with the stairs. I mean, I’ve got my pals here trying to do messages for them when they can, but do you not think it’s a scandal? Thought mibbe a wee article in the local paper might do right by them, light a wee fire under certain backsides if you know what I’m saying?’

  Neil, who was new to the job and the beat, had just moved back in with his mum after a couple of years away, assumed at first that Gogsy was a wannabe gangster, trying to make a name for himself. He suspected protection rackets, worried what those old ladies were expected to give back out of their shopping in return for one of Gogsy’s ‘boys’ collecting it for them. He thought this might be the making of him, imagined smashing a profiteering ring, an exclusive, a press award, job invites in Glasgow or even London. His imagination roamed so fast and far that he was almost disappointed when the story revealed itself to be exactly what Gogsy had said it was: the housing association on the make. The photographer got shots of the old ladies, Gogsy grinning with them by their fireplaces. The local council elections were over a year away, but Gogsy was playing the long game.

  He’d pulled Neil into his circle; at first, some of the men had been suspicious of him, but Gogsy’s word was like a passport. These were factory workers and union men, most of whom had worked at the car factory until it had been closed down. There was no work for anyone in this town any more, and Gogsy had been clear with them; their anger would only serve them if they used it productively. It was the poll tax had given him purpose, though; a clear enemy, a line of fire. He organized one of the earliest Anti-Poll Tax Unions in the country and started reading groups to discuss basic Marxist texts. He got his ‘boys’ out blockading houses marked for warrant sales so the sheriff’s officers had to get back into their car, drive slowly away past jeering immovable walls of people. Then he turned his eye to the estate, to the work the council weren’t doing. The hardware store donated a couple of tins of paint, after the owner was mown down by Gogsy’s lightning-fast patter, so that the team could get to work tidying up ‘they clatty fences along the Glasgow Road’. Grievances were addressed, civic issues put to rights, and the day Gogsy’s boys filled in the pothole on the high street that had been left there for years went down in local history. There was never any doubt, when the election came around, that even lifelong Tory voters were going to put their crosses in the box by the local boy. And Neil had been there – a useful tool at first, sure, but very quickly a friend and even a believer – reporting on it all. The Daily Duke, some of the boys had started calling the local paper, as Neil’s editor didn’t really seem to notice the number of times his one reporter came to the same source for quotes. So Gogsy’s hands were on his shoulders? It was allowed. And it felt good.

  ‘My man Neil here is the local hotshot reporter, babe. Maybe he could make you a star. Actually, couple of wee geniuses here the both of you. Clio went to the college like you. She was doing music, though. Neily the boy wonder’s got a proper diploma in journalism, haven’t you, pal? He can do all that shorthand stuff. He knows it.’

  Gogsy himself had gone to Glasgow University, but he didn’t like people to mention it.

  ‘I never got my diploma,’ Clio said. ‘Well impressed with you, like. My daddy’s a folk singer, and I found out they couldn’t teach me anything at the college I didn’t already know, so I ended up skiving off to do my own gigs. Bit different when you’re actually learning a trade, now.’

  The baton was passed back to Neil with a smile he got lost in, and he found he didn’t know what to say.

  The Welly, a Thursday maybe. Everyone pulling notes out of their giro envelopes, getting rounds, slapping backs. The boys from the Militant were over in one corner, some of their wives and girlfriends sitting bored nearby, sharing a packet of crisps and lighting fags for each other. Clio was amongst them, thinner and taller, her clothes and make-up brighter, her long fingers flexing around a half-pint glass. The jukebox had broken, so that auld wife off the Glenbrae had started singing – ‘Ohhh, Danny Boy’ – and the older ones across the room were clapping or thumping the bar in time, slurring along. And Clio was suddenly up and over there, as the final chorus ended, quick, small movements, kneeling at the side of the auld wife from the Glenbrae, holding her hand. They did ‘These Are My Mountains’ together, Clio’s voice pulling against and high above the old woman’s burr
, taking the whole room with her. Neil had never heard the Welly so quiet before, never seen such an explosion of applause afterwards. Gogsy was looking on, pleased; he pulled her in to him as she went back to the table and planted a wet, showy kiss of ownership on her neck, called out, ‘That’s ma girl! That’s ma girl!’

  Once you were Gogsy’s, you were Gogsy’s. Neil watched Clio walk down by the shops, afterwards, the heads turning like she was Madonna let loose on a housing scheme. Perhaps they would have done anyway; Clio didn’t look like anyone else round here. She went into the butcher’s and he decided his mum could probably do with some bacon.

  ‘Aye, well, it’s for Gogsy, intit?’ The butcher was winking at her as he went in, shaking his head at the proffered purse. ‘At boy sorted my brother out with a wee problem recently.’

  ‘He’s like the Godfather, isn’t he?’ Clio said, as they had a cup of tea together in the chippy. ‘I’ve hitched my wagon to a Mafia don. Go on, Neil, you can tell me.’

  Say something, he told himself. You need to actually talk to her.

  ‘Honestly? I thought so too when I first met him. But then I looked into it, and I realized, he’s just a very, very community-minded good guy.’

  ‘Yeah,’ she said, pulling a face. ‘That’s what I was afraid of.’

  Neil grinned at the sacrilege, began to relax a little.

  ‘I mean, don’t get me wrong. He’s got his eye on the prize, likes –’

  She puffed her cheeks, blew out a gust, warm on his face. ‘Tell me about it. He’ll be Councillor Duke before the ballot’s even counted. Right now I reckon the only problem he’s going to have is that nobody will be looking for the name Gordon on the paper …’

  ‘Do you mind me asking how you met him? It’s just, you seem so—’

  He didn’t know, in that second, what she seemed. She waited a grace note to see if he would finish.

  ‘Politics, politics. What else would it be? With this one? I went along to a poll tax meeting in Glasgow. He was one of the speakers, and of course, being Gogsy, he blew the rest of them away. I asked him a question afterwards; he asked me for a drink, course he did. I was dropping out of college, staying in a crappy hostel at the time, and he suggested I move in with him after something like two dates. So it goes.’