deephole.pdf

Scottish Short Stories

A Deep Hole

by Ian Rankin

I used to be a road digger, which is to say I dug up roads for a living. These days I’m a

Repair Effecter for the council’s Highways Department. I still dig up roads –sorry,

highways - only now it sounds better, doesn’t it? They tell me there’s some guy in an

office somewhere whose job is thinking up posh names for people like me, for the

rubbish collectors and street sweepers and toilet attendants. (Usually they manage to

stick in the word ‘environmental’ somewhere). This way we’re made to feel important.

Must be some job that, thinking up posh names. I wonder what job title he’s given

himself. Environmental Title Co-ordination Executive, eh?

They call me Sam the Spade. There’s supposed to be a joke there, but I don’t get it. I got

the name because after Robbie’s got to work with the pneumatic drill, I get in about

things with the spade and clear out everything he’s broken up. Robbie’s called ‘The

Driller Killer’. That was the name of an old horror video. I never saw it myself. I tried

working with the pneumatic drill a few times. There’s more money if you operate the

drill. You become skilled rather than unskilled labour. But after fifteen seconds I could

feel the fillings popping out of my teeth. Even now my spine aches in bed at night. Too

much sex, the boys say. Ha ha.

Now Daintry, his title would be something like Last Hope Cash Dispensation Executive.

Or, in the old parlance, a plain money lender. Nobody remembers Daintry’s first name.

He shrugged it off some time back when he was a teenager, and he hasn’t been a teenager

for a few years and some. He’s the guy you go to on a Friday or Saturday for a few quid

to see you through the weekend. And come the following week’s dole cheque (or, if

you’re one of the fortunate few, pay packet), Daintry’ll be waiting while you cash it, his

hand out for the money he loaned plus a whack of interest.

While you’re only too happy to see Daintry before the weekend, you’re not so happy

about him still being around after the weekend. You don’t want to pay him back,

certainly not the interest. But you do, inevitably. You do pay him back. Because he’s a

persistent sort of fellow with a good line in colourful threats and a ready abundance of

Physical Persuasion Techniques.

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I think the chief reason people didn’t like Daintry was that he never made anything of

himself. I mean, he still lived on the same estate as his clients, albeit in one of the two-

storey houses rather than the blocks of flats. His front garden was a jungle, his window

panes filthy, and the inside of his house a thing of horror. He dressed in cheap clothes,

which hung off him. He wouldn’t shave for days, his hair always needed

washing….You’re getting the picture, eh? Me, when I’m not working I’m a neat and tidy

sort of guy. My mum’s friends, the women she gossips with, they’re always shaking

their heads and asking how come I never found myself a girl. They speak about me in

the past tense like that, like I’m not going to find one now. On the contrary. I’m thirty-

eight, and all my friends have split up with their wives by now. So there are more and

more single women my age appearing around the estate. It’s only a question of time.

Soon it will be Brenda’s turn. She’ll leave Harry, or he’ll kick her out.

No kids, so that’s not a problem. I hear gossip that their arguments are getting louder and

louder and more frequent. There are threats too, late at night after a good drink down at

the club. I’m leaving you, no you’re not, yes I am, well get the hell out then, I’ll be back

for my stuff, on you go, I wouldn’t give you the satisfaction, well stay if you like.

Just like a ballet, eh? Well, I think so anyway. I’ve been waiting for Brenda for a long

time. I can wait a little longer. I’m certainly a more attractive prospect than Daintry.

Who’d move in with him? Nobody, I can tell you. He’s a loner. No friends, just people

he might drink with. He’ll sometimes buy a drink for a few of the harder cases, then get

them to put the frighteners on some late-payer who’s either getting cocky or else talking

about going to the police. Not that the police would do anything. What? Around here?

If they’re not in Daintry’s pocket, they either don’t care about the place anyway or else

are scared to come near. Dainty did a guy in once inside the club. A Sunday afternoon

too, stabbed him in the toilets. Police came, talked to everyone in the club – nobody’d

seen anything. Daintry may be a bastard but he’s our bastard. Besides, there’s always a

reason. If you haven’t crossed him, you’re none of his business…and he’d better not be

any of yours .

I knew him of course. Oh yeah, we went to school together, same class all the way from

five to sixteen years old. He was never quite as good as me at the subjects, but he was

quiet and pretty well behaved. Until about fifteen. A switch flipped in his brain at

fifteen. Actually, I’m lying: he was always better than me at arithmetic. So I suppose he

was cut out for a career as a money lender. Or, as he once described himself, ‘a bank

manager with menaces’.

God knows how many people he’s murdered. Can’t be that many, or we’d all have

noticed. That’s why I thought all the information I used to give him was just part of his

act. He knew word would get around about what he was asking me for, and those

whispers and rumours would strengthen his reputation. That’s what I always thought. I

never took it seriously. As a result, I tapped him for a loan once or twice and he never

charged me a penny. He also bought me a few drinks, and once provided a van when I

wanted to sell the piano. See, he wasn’t all bad. He had his good side. If it hadn’t been

for him, we’d never have shifted that piano, and it’d still be sitting there in the living-

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room reminding my mother of the tunes Dad used to play on it, tunes she’d hum late into

the night and then again at the crack of dawn.

It seemed strange at first that he’d want to see me. He would come over to me in pubs

and sling his arm around my neck, asking if I was all right, patting me and ordering the

same again. We’d hardly spoken more than a sentence at a time to one another since

leaving school, but now he was smiles and reminiscences and all interested in my job of

work.

‘I just dig holes’.

He nodded. ‘And that’s important work, believe me. Without the likes of you, my car’s

suspension would be shot to hell’.

Of course, his car’s suspension was shot to hell. It was a 1973 Ford Capri with tinted

windows, an air duct and a spoiler.

It was a loser’s car, with dark green nylon fur on the dashboard and the door panels. The

wheel arches were history, long since eaten by rust. Yet every year without fail it passed

its MOT. The coincidence was, the garage mechanic was a regular client of Daintry’s.

‘I could get a new car ‘, Daintry said, ‘but it gets me from A back to A again, so what’s

the point?’

There was something in this. He seldom left the estate. He lived there, shopped there,

he’d been born there and he’d die there. He never took a holiday, not even a weekend

away, and he never ever ventured south of the river. He spent all his free time watching

videos. The guy who runs the video shop reckoned Daintry had seen every film in the

shop a dozen times over.

‘He knows their numbers off by heart’.

He did know lots about movies: running time, director, writer, supporting actor. He was

always a hot contender when the club ran it’s trivia quiz. He sat in that smelly house of

his with the curtains shut and a blue light flickering. He was a film junkie. And

somehow he managed to spend all his money on them. He must have done, or what else

did he do with it? His Rolex was a fake, lighter than air when you picked it up, and

probably his gold jewellery was fake too. Maybe somewhere there’s a secret bank

account with thousands salted away, but I don’t think so. Don’t ask me why, I just don’t

think so.

Roadworks. That’s the information I passed on to Daintry. That’s what he wanted to talk

to me about. Roadworks. Major roadworks.

‘You know the sort of thing’, he’d say, ‘anywhere you’re digging a big hole. Maybe

building a flyover or improving drainage. Major roadworks’.

Sure enough, I had access to this sort of information. I just had to listen to the various

crews talking about what they were working on and where they were doing the work.

Over tea and biscuits in the canteen, I could earn myself a few drinks and a pint glass of

goodwill.

‘How deep does that need to be?’ Daintry would ask.

‘I don’t know, eight, maybe ten feet.’

‘By what?’

‘Maybe three long, the same wide.’

And he’d nod. This was early in the game, and I was slow catching on. You’re probably

much faster, right? So you know why he was asking. But I was puzzled the first couple

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of times. I mean, I thought maybe he was interested in the ….what’s it, the

infrastructure. He wanted to see improvements. Then it dawned on me: no, what he

wanted to see were big holes. Holes that would be filled in with concrete and covered

over with huge immovable objects, like bridge supports for example. Holes where bodies

could be hidden. I didn’t say anything, but I knew that’s what we were talking about.

We were talking about Human Resource Disposal.

And Daintry knew that I knew. He’d wink from behind his cigarette smoke, using those

creased stinging eyes of his. Managing to look a little like his idol Robert de Niro. In

Goodfellas . That’s what Daintry would say. Me, I thought he was much more of a Joe

Pesci. But I didn’t tell him that. I didn’t even tell him that Pesci wasn’t pronounced

pesky.

He knew I’d blab about out little dialogues, and I did, casually like. And word spread.

And suddenly Daintry was a man to be feared. But he wasn’t really. He was just stupid,

with a low flashpoint. And if you wanted to know what sort of mood he was going to be

in, you only had to visit the video shop.

‘He’s taken out Goodfellas and Godfather 3 . So you knew there was trouble coming.

But if he’d taken out soft-core or a Steve Martin or even some early Brando, everything

was going to be all right. He must have been on a gangster high the night he went round

to speak to Mr and Mrs McAndrew. In his time, Mr McAndrew had been a bit of a lad

himself, but he was in his late seventies with a wife ten years younger. They lived in one

of the estate’s nicer houses. They’d bought it from the council and had installed a fancy

front door, double-glazed windows, you name it, and all the glass was that leaded criss-

cross stuff. It wasn’t cheap. These days, Mr McAndrew spent all his time in the garden.

At the front of the house he had some beautiful flower beds, with the back garden given

over to vegetables. In the summer, you saw him playing football with his grandchildren.

‘Just like’, as somebody pointed out, ‘Marlon Brando in The Godfather ’. This was apt in

its way since, like I say, despite the gardening Mr McAndrew’s hands were probably

cleaner these days than they had been in the past.

How he got to owe Daintry money I do not know. But Daintry, believe me, would have

been only too happy to lend. There was McAndrew’s reputation for a start. Plus the

McAndrews seemed prosperous enough, he was sure to see his money and interest

returned. But not so. Whether out of sheer cussedness or because he really couldn’t pay,

McAndrew had been holding out on Daintry. I saw it as a struggle between the old

gangster and the new. Maybe Daintry did too. Whatever, one night he walked into the

McAndrew’s house and beat up Mrs McAndrew in front of her husband. He had two

heavies with him, one to hold Mr McAndrew, one to hold Mrs McAndrew, either one of

them could have dropped dead of a heart attack right then and there.

There were rumours in the street the next day, and for days afterwards. Daintry, it was

felt, had overstepped the mark. He was out of order. To him it was merely business, and

he’d gotten the money from McAndrew so the case was closed. But he now found

himself shorter of friends than ever before. Which is probably why he turned to me when

he wanted the favour done. Simply, he couldn’t get anyone else to do it.

‘You want me to what?’

He’d told me to meet him in the children’s play-park. We walked around the path. There

was no one else in the park. It was a battlefield, all broken glass and rocks. Dog shit was

smeared up and down the chute, the swings had been wrapped around themselves until

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they couldn’t be reached. The roundabout had disappeared one night, leaving only a

metal stump in place. You’d be safer sending your kids to play on the North Circular.

‘It’s quite simple,’ Daintry said. ‘I want you to get rid of a package for me. There’s

good money in it.’

‘How much money?’

‘A hundred.’

I paused at that. A hundred pounds, just to dispose of a package….

‘But you’ll need a deep hole,’ said Daintry.

Yeah of course. It was that kind of package. I wondered who it was. There was a story

going around that Daintry had set up a nice little disposal operation which dealt with

Human Resource Waste from miles around. Villains as far away as Watford and Luton

were bringing ‘packages’ for him to dispose of. But it was just a story, just one of many.

‘A hundred,’ I said, nodding.

‘All right, one twenty-five. But it’s got to be tonight.’

I knew just the hole.

They were building a new footbridge over the North Circular, over to the west near

Wembley. I knew the gang wouldn’t be working night-shift: the job wasn’t that urgent

and who could afford the shift bonus these days? There’d be a few deep holes there all

right. And while the gang might notice a big black bin-bag at the bottom of one of them,

they wouldn’t do anything about it. People were always dumping rubbish down the

holes. It all got covered over with concrete, gone and quite forgotten. I hadn’t seen a

dead body before, and I didn’t intend seeing one now. So I insisted it was all wrapped up

before I’d stick it in the car boot.

Daintry and I stood in the lock-up he rented and looked down at the black bin-liner.

‘It’s not so big, is it?’ I said.

‘I broke the rigor mortis,’ he explained. ‘That way you can get it into the car.’

I nodded and went outside to throw up. I felt better after that. Curried chicken never did

agree with me.

‘I’m not sure I can do it,’ I said, wiping my mouth.

Daintry was ready for me. ‘Ah, that’s a pity.’ He stuck his hands in his pockets,

studying the tips of his shoes. ‘How’s your old mum, by the way? Keeping well, is she?’

‘She’s fine, yeah….’ I stared at him. ‘What do you mean?’

‘Nothing, nothing. Let’s hope her good health continues.’

He looked up at me, a glint in his eye. ‘Still fancy Brenda?’

‘Who says I do?’

He laughed. ‘Common knowledge. Must be the way your trousers bulge whenever you

see her shadow.’

‘That’s rubbish.’

‘She seems well enough too. The marriage is a bit shaky, but what can you expect?

That Harry of hers is a monster.’

Daintry paused, fingering his thin gold neck-chain. ‘I wouldn’t be surprised if he took a

tap to the skull one of these dark nights.’

‘Oh?’

He shrugged. ‘Just a guess. Pity you can’t…’ He touched the bin-bag with his shoe.

‘You know.’ And he smiled.

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