Gross Domestic Product: 6

Chapter Six

Pete felt sick as he sat in the underground carriage. He felt like the rushing, rumbling, roar was about to consume him, as if it might vibrate his atoms apart and turn him into dust. The painful lag of reality was seeping into him fast now but he tried not to rock back and forth, he was in a bad enough state as it was. The cold sweat seemed to be the only thing stopping him from falling to pieces. He needed to go and shoot up somewhere, perhaps that tunnel in Kelvingrove would do. Later, he needed to use some willpower, he could get wasted later, he had a job to do.

For the second time in two days he got off at Hillhead Station. It was busy this time of morning, the plague of students skipped off in front of him chattering excitedly about expensive worthless shite, no doubt. There were so many of them, he suspected most of them would end up with crap jobs, even he, Daft Pete, knew the more you had of something, the less it was worth, except money.

Exiting onto Byres Road, he lit a cigarette, hoping it might help with the shakes. He needed to get his shit together if he was going to pull this off. He walked up the road, turned left and continued along the narrow lane until he was at the antique dealers. He paced about, trying to get in character and then, once ready, stepped through the door.

When the bell rang Montgomery turned from the gold fob watches he was placing under the glass counter and spotted the filthy, lanky, shambles swaggering towards him. The chap had lank brown hair that stuck to his colourless, pockmarked face like greasy rat tails. Another junkie by the looks of it, rougher looking, older than the one who’d had the lamp. Right away he was dismayed, he’d worried that dealing with the lad the day before would bring in all manner of trash trying to use him as a fence. That was the last thing he needed, still, he thought it better to be charitable. “Good morning, can I help you?”

Pete nodded. “Aye, mornin’, Ma pal wis in here yesterday, selt ye a lamp.”

“A lamp you say? I don’t recall buying a lamp,” Montgomery answered, determined to deter this wreck of a human from whatever game he was playing.

Pete scowled, he had his work cut out for him. The dealer wasn’t buying it. “Aye, well it wis yer mate, the wan wae the car reggy RTB1. Bri telt me you… whits the word… brokered the deal.”

Were he and the other working together Montgomery wondered. It didn’t matter, he’d give him nothing “I’m not really at liberty to discuss such transactions.”

“Good, so ye know exactly whit I’m talkin’ aboot,” Pete said, it felt like a win.

Montgomery smirked. This lad was sharper than his friend. “I suppose I do.”

“Excellent. Right, here’s the thing. Brian’s no’ the sharpest tool in the box but he’s a bit light wae the fingers. So the lamp right, it wis knocked,” Pete explained. He’d went over the tale again and again, he had to make sure he could manipulate this guy into giving him the address of the buyer, the poofy RTB guy.

“Stolen eh? He said it was found in his deceased mother’s attic,” Montgomery replied.

“Well he’s no gonny tell ye the truth when he’s tryin’ tae sling it, right? Anyway, that’s no the problem. The problem is who he stole it fae,” Pete said. He lifted up the little white porcelain Buddha on the counter. “Nice piece that.”

So that was his game, Montgomery thought, extortion. He was going to try and get some money out of him, claim he’d tell the police they were in receipt of stolen goods. It was a foolish gambit, all Monty would need to do was plead ignorance and that they confessed and off to the cells they would go. “Well I don’t see how that’s mine or the buyer’s problem,” Montgomery replied.

Pete gave a half shrug. “Normally it widnae, normally Brian would just end up gettin’ his heid kicked in or end up deid in a landfill, usual pish. However this isnae a normal situation. The guy he stole it fae is a serious fucker, if ye get my meaning.”

Montgomery felt a strange sense of apprehension. This didn’t seem to be going the way he suspected at all. “I-I’m not sure I do,” he answered.

Pete sensed he’d got the guy on the back foot. “Well, puttin’ it bluntly, the guy’s wan of them crime-lords that ye read aboot in the papers. Tommy Bryce, I’m sure you’ve heard the name. Sick fucker, y’know? The type that likes tae set fire tae peoples cars when they’re still in them, or cuts aff yer toes and feeds them tae his dugs, that sort of character.”

“Oh dear,” Montgomery replied. He had heard that name, one of those thugs that was always being cleared of any wrongdoing for the most lurid of crimes. Was this junkie in cahoots with such a thug, was that it?

Pete widened his eyes with some effort and stared directly into the antique dealer’s eyes.“Aye, exactly. So he knows Brian’s knocked the lamp, efter all, Brian tried tae punt it tae awe and sundry before he turned up here,” Pete said. He thought he was doing quite well all things considered, the old guy was starting too look shook up now. All he needed to do was keep the whole act going, no mistakes.

“Is this some kind of threat? Is that it?” Montgomery said, nervously.

Taking a step back from the counter and raising his hands, Pete made himself look shocked, offended, helpful. “Aw, christ naw mate, nothin’ like that. It’s mer a warnin’. See Brian’s disappeared aff the face of the earth an’ if ye put two an’ two the gither, well its only a matter o’ time before he says he selt it to you.”

“But he didn’t sell it to me!” Montgomery protested loudly, hoping that this now was some fake tale and not in any way genuine. He’d prided himself in knowing the difference and couldn’t tell. He wanted to err on the side of caution but what was more cautious, dismissing that a violent thug might want to do him harm or being fleeced of some money? Uncertainty was gnawing at him.

It was time to play the pacifier, the problem solver, Pete knew, but better to just get one final dig in, just to make sure. “I know, ye said, but if some cunt comes in here an’ sticks a shotgun intae yer face, then you’d no doubt tell him who ye did sell it tae, right?”

“Obviously,” Montgomery said, immediately regretting it. That had been dragged out of him unwillingly and unwittingly and made him feel awful, to admit his own cowardice and eagerness to betray his friend.

Pete caught a whiff of Montgomery’s guilt. “Right, so you don’t want mixed up in this underworld shite,” He raised his hands up as if exasperated. “Neither dae I but I um. So, how about you let me know who the buyer is, so as I can get in touch wae him, warn him that he’s in possession of dangerous goods, so tae speak. If I can keep him and you oot of this, then that’s better fur everyone.”

Montgomery had been, admittedly, taken in by the lad’s tale, but something about that last part seemed to have, in his mind, over-egged this elaborate cake. “Hmm, I don’t know if I can do that.”

Pete expected this, had calculated it, practically engineered it and therefore pulled his ace out, or rather the large bundle of notes. He slapped them down on the table. “Five thousand, right? That’s whit he sold it fur. I’m no tryin’ fur a con here, pal. I’m here tae put things right, gie the guy his cash back, get the lamp back, gie it tae the aforementioned criminal nutjob an’ hopefully save you, me, yer pal an’ Brian fae a lot of unnecessary brutality.”

He took his hand off the bundle of cash, which did more to convince Montgomery that he was telling the truth than half of his story. Montgomery thought about it for a minute or two and said “Rupert, Rupert Baird. He’s an art historian at the University, hold on and I’ll call him.”

Pete breathed, a convincing but fake sigh of relief. “Finally! Aye good. Dae that.”

Montgomery picked up the phone and dialled. He smiled at Pete as he had the receiver at his ear. Pete gave him a wink and left the money on the counter, turning around to gaze at the various bric-a-brac and trash the guy was making mint from. Most of it was shite he judged, an ugly painting or two, some dusty old chairs that would have embarrassed his granny, a couple of tacky vases.

“Ah,” Montgomery said.

Pete listened from across the room.

“Yes, hello. I was… err. I was looking for Rupert, Rupert Baird? Oh. I see. Right, okay thanks anyway… No, no message. I’ll try him at home.”

Montgomery placed the receiver back on the phone and frowned, absently chewing on his finger as he did. He looked back at the junkie and shook his head. “He’s… not at work.”

“This is serious, mate. I’m tryin’ tae dae the right thing here, I could’ve just as easily took the cash and bolted. Tell us where he lives an’ I’ll go an gie him his money back.” Pete ordered.

Montgomery was reticent but he couldn’t help thinking about the shotgun held to his face comment, how he’d replied so promptly. If the lad was genuine, then it was better to get this sorted quickly, if he wasn’t, then it was best to get him out of the shop, let Rupert deal with him. He nodded. “Okay I’ll write it down for you, you know how to get to Milngavie from here?”

Pete nodded. “I’ll manage,” He said and put the money back in his pocket, it was all going according to plan.

Buer

It had spent the dark hours immobile, staring at the contraption known as television, drinking in the radiation and information it emitted like electronic spores. In those few scant hours it realised the human race was approaching the end of a great cycle. This was not one signified by the oncoming triple zeroes of a new millennium, but one expressed by short attention spans, immediate gratification, the ascendency of the self over all things. They had come staggering out of the meat-grinder it had made of the forties, to birth increasingly vapid, entitled and apathetic generations.

Once, in the time when they had ran from the jungles into the caves, they had been like this. Traumatised apes, with no long term awareness, just the immediacy of terror, where every shadow or noise could signify a predator. They had valued nothing but self preservation. Time, and safety in numbers had given them the confidence to apprehend this new world they found themselves in, richer food, fewer large cats, clean running water extended their lives, their reach and their height, considerably. They began to notice the stars, began to dimly understand the procession, delineated seasons, learned agriculture, trade, built cities, formed around things greater than themselves, gods, maps, flags, cultures. It recalled once that it had spent time with a human upon a great sea of hills and mountains, this one had set himself apart from the others. The human could sit there and for hour after hour stare across from him, contemplating nothing but every slope and crack and boulder mass. He was internalising a map of the territory and took great learning from it for a worthy cost. It remembered the multi-lingual children of nomadic traders, the polymath mystics of walled city states. It had been witness to their rise to the heights of city-state, nation and empire.

And now they could not sit for fifteen minutes without being told they were ineffectual, that the soap they were using was inferior, that their lives were dull because they did not sculpt their hair in the right way. It marvelled at the corrosion of the species, one it had no doubt accelerated, but not one it had initiated nor sustained. There were others here, it was certain of it. The humans had conquered their material world, at the same time as they denied there was anything other than it. No large cats were their predators now. It was, it and others like it. They sold themselves piecemeal to vacuous desires. Duped and manipulated by forces they did not even wish to credit with existence, they would once again crumble, as they did from their trees. It relished the thought.

It also noticed that its intrusion into the eco-system of cellular life that had complexified for mutual benefit, the human Olivia, was not without its side effects. The cells did not know how to deal with such an intangible invader as it, only foreign bodies, not foreign minds. Lesions were appearing on the epidermis. Some clusters hardened others pooled into raw weeping sores. The system was undermined by its presence. It needed to find another, smarter, more willing host.

It unwrapped a piece of itself from within the atrophying meat, uncurling from the restrictions of three dimensions to locate the Fire of Iraal. The human who had taken it seemed as sickly as Olivia but more industrious, stronger, more cunning. Locating the tingling light of the Fire of Iraal it shifted into another place, one where a fat ginger haired human was being gleefully fellated by a younger man, his catamite, it supposed. The Fire rested on a table and the ginger haired man spotted the light change colour, the two naked human men were now bathed in a rich fiery glow. The catamite did not notice this, like Olivia, like the intruder, his nervous system was dulled by a convoluted cocktail of chemicals. It checked the other trappings of this man’s domain, there was wealth here, knowledge, that would do.

Snapping back into Olivia, it rose from the darkened room. It was time to pay the man a visit, in the flesh.

The man, Baird was his name, was not happy to be woken at half past three in the morning by “some disgusting whore” as he referred to Olivia as but he was charitable enough to let her and it come inside his house. It had concocted a fable of assault, attempted rape which this Baird fellow seemed, at first, to accept. He even offered her a brandy, which it took, it had been over sixty years since it had tasted brandy. When Baird asked her if she wanted him to call the police or an ambulance is when it decided to reveal itself in its full transdimensional majesty. It had suspected he would be terrified, in awe, compliant. It did not expect that Baird’s heart would simply stop, and that he would collapse in front of it, right over an old table. It was displeased by this turn of events, very displeased and used Olivia to vent its rage on the dead man for the better part of an hour. It went upstairs to wash off the blood and found the young catamite slumped to his knees in the bedroom, in front of the bed. His hands had been bound in metal cuffs, a leather belt was tied firmly around his crushed throat, there was a pair underpants stuffed into his mouth and little bottles of some chemical strewn everywhere. His corpse was already beginning to rot. It was amused by this diversion but annoyed that it was no further towards finding a better vessel than the one it wore. It cleaned the blood of Baird from Olivia and left the abode. Soon it would have a small fortune to collect, once the bookies opened. It decided to make do with Olivia for the time being, there was nothing of her that could not be fixed, with a little effort.