Gross Domestic Product:22

Chapter Twenty Two.

Daft Pete had struggled all day with what would be his next move. He knew he had to get out of Glasgow and knew that Portugal was his final destination but between those two points were a lot of “hows”. How was he going to get out of Glasgow was the least of his problems. All he had to do was get on a train. Somehow he landed in the Bonaparte’s bar in Central Station and sat deliberating as he watched the people below mill about to and fro. He knew some people in London, not well and they weren’t going to be pleased to see if he could find them, but they’d be able to set him up with some false documents. He could afford it. Thinking about that he once more looked into the bag with all the money and smiled. He could afford a lot of things and inevitably his mind turned to the thought of heroin, which meant his nerves prickled, his veins itchy, hungry for junk.

There would be time for that later, now he had to decide on his next move. His own indecision was frustrating him and he realised that was exactly the problem. It was as if Glasgow was some kind of trap for souls, as if when thinking about escaping it would use that very motivation to thwart the attempt. Pete knew if he had reasoned it out, he wouldn’t have gotten into the situation where he had nearly ten grand in his possession, nor met Skinner, nor been given a contact in Portugal. It had all been luck, or fate or something, nothing he’d actively courted.

Pete knew what he had to do. He finished his pint and scrambled down the stairs to the travel information and before long a bubbly young blond lass had booked his tickets to London and also arranged a reservation at a reasonably priced hotel near Euston. He even booked a first class seat and bunged the girl a tenner for her trouble.

He’d missed the last daily and so would be taking the midnight train which would get him into London the next morning. That gave him a few hours to kill, which he wasted in the toilets. He cooked up a small dose and nodded off, risking being discovered by the staff. Luckily for him the staff didn’t even seem to care.

When he re-emerged from his narcotic coma, it was half past ten. He went out, sat in one of the seats and waited, reading a copy of Select and smoking some cigarettes until the train arrived at the platform. He went in and was delighted to find himself totally alone in the first class carriage. He was even more chuffed that when they left the station, he still had the place to himself.

His next plan was to wait until his ticket was inspected, then he was going to shoot up in the toilets and crash out on the big comfortable seats until he got to Euston.

After a while the conductor came around and clipped his ticket. The man was barely back out the carriage before Pete dashed into the toilet and took out his works. He’d enough H left for about two more good hits and so prepared one, tidied the bag away, cooked, shot up and then packed everything up. He stumbled back to his seat before removing the tourniquet from his arm and being washed away by the warm comforting womb-heat of Morphia.

Something woke him up, gasping, startled. The carriage was dimly lit, outside the window a black empty wilderness whizzed by. It took him a few moments to recollect where he was. Panic shook him and he plunged between his feet to find the bag with the money was still there, then he relaxed. He wondered where he was. Outside the window he could see nothing but occasional twinkling amber lights of distant towns on the horizon. A grey industrial facility flashed by but that didn’t add anything to the location. He wondered what time it was and was about to try and nod off again when he suddenly became aware he was being watched. He slid his eyes to the right and noticed sitting in the seats directly across from him was a man. The bloke was staring right at him. Pete didn’t recognise him.

“You alright mate?” the guy asked. He had a Yorkshire accent. Still half awake, Pete turned to look at him properly, some guy in a suit, black hair, a floppy fringe.

“Aye.” Pete slurred, he could feel a trickle of saliva run down the left side of his mouth. He would have wiped it away if he could have been bothered.

The guy stared him suspiciously for a second then it seemed to dawn on him that Pete was a junkie. “Smack, eh? Why don’t you just kill yourself?”

“Why don’t you mind yer ain fuckin’ business?” Pete replied, stirring up as much anger as he could, which wasn’t much.

The man shrugged. “Fair enough. Sorry.”

“Aye, it’s fine.” Pete answered, he was beginning to get annoyed.

“It’s just… well we all have our demons, right? No use in trying to ignore them.”

Demons. Pete could have laughed, and got the notion the bloke was some kind of preacher, a good Samaritan type, who’d thought he’d lucked out and was intent in saving Pete’s soul. “Drap it pal, ye’ve nae idea.”

“You say that, but perhaps I have more of an idea than you give me credit for.” The man challenged. He got up crossed the lane and sat down across from Pete.

“Doubt it. There’s no many people seen the things I huv.” Pete said and got annoyed with himself for falling for the guy’s routine.

“You think?”

“I know.” Pete responded, as emphatic as his sluggish mind would allow. His irritation with this rude stranger was warming him up. It made him want to defend himself, to put the man in his place.

“See when I wis a wee boy,” he began, “some thing took oor ma toon. I watched weans, hunners of them, some as young as eight be lured intae the community centre and come oot different. I watched my school pals murder their parents, an’ no jist kill them, but butcher them, they set the toon oan fire, there were bits o’ bodies everywhere an’ this… this thing, “mammy” they called it, spread throughout the toon like a fuckin’ infection, so aye pal, I think I’ve seen a few things. Right?” The last word was delivered as angry punctuation.

“I see.” The man said. “So you became an addict to get away from that?”

“Don’t you fuckin’ judge me,” Pete barked.

“I’m not, I swear. I’ve no room to criticise,” the bloke sighed.

“Aye, well rail in the smug attitude, fur fuck sake,” Pete replied.

“Sorry. I just wanted someone to talk to, you see, your not the only one who’s seen horrors, though to be fair, mine are all my own fault,” The man explained.

Pete said nothing in return, it was as he had expected, just some lonely prick wanting to annoy someone else with ceaseless babbling about themselves. The man didn’t seem to notice and, unsurprisingly, continued.

“About three months ago I became fixated with this young woman in my work. I don’t know why, she wasn’t particularly good looking and to tell you the truth she had a snotty attitude. Anyway one night, at a work’s night out, I foolishly made a pass at her. She wasn’t having any of it and pushed me away. Not only was I too old for her, she said, but I was married, with kids. I wasn’t pleased by that and got blind drunk. That didn’t help, I stewed on it all night and when the party ended, everyone went home but me. I went to her house. I wanted to apologise, or at least I lied to myself that I wanted to apologise. I didn’t,” He looked down at the floor when he said that. “See what I wanted was to fuck her, fuck her really really hard and I wasn’t going to take no for an answer.”

“Mate, fuckin’ hell. I don’t want to hear this.” Pete protested.

“Shut the fuck up!” The bloke growled through bared teeth, barely able to contain himself. “I turned up at her door about the back of two in the morning, and there she was. For some stupid reason she opened the door and then looked at me up and down in disgust. ‘What do you want now?’ she asked mockingly. I just lunged at her, pushed her down onto the hall carpet, slamming the door shut with my foot. I couldn’t think straight, didn’t even care about fucking her or anything, I just put my hands round her throat and squeezed, and squeezed. She put up a fight, I’ll give her that, but I just kept banging her head off the floor, really hard, until she stopped. I kept strangling her until my thumbs had crushed her throat,” He paused and looked back up at Pete. “It was better than sex, that rush I got, seeing her lying there, knowing I had the power to do that, the power to do anything I wanted to her.

I lay down on her body as it cooled, like a child on its mother, basking in the high I’d got from it. It took a while for me to come to my senses.”

Pete stared out at the darkness outside, trying his best to ignore this psychopath but he knew the guy wasn’t finished.

“I’m not sure now I ever fully regained my senses, because I left her flat and went back home, went into the kitchen, got a carving knife and went upstairs. My wife was in bed asleep. I made sure she never woke up. I slit her throat, stabbed her countless times until everything just seemed to be covered in her blood. After that I went across to where my sons were. Five and two they were. Gary woke up as I approached, I lifted him, as if to cuddle him, then grabbed his head and twisted until I heard a crack and felt his body go limp. I took Simon’s head off with the knife. That was easy but the rush, that buzz going through my body was like I was made of electricity. Like you, I became an addict.”

“Hardly the same fuckin’ thing.” Pete replied, dismissively.

The man laughed. “I guess not, but here’s the thing, see we’re both on the same page, you want oblivion to stop the horrors you’ve seen, I’m seeking it to stop the horrors I’ve done. I’ve killed over a dozen people in the last month alone.”

“If ye think that, why don’t you jist open the fuckin’ doors and jump?”

“That was my plan.” He said, smiling and rose to his feet. “I just needed to tell someone.”

“Aye, well, message received and understood.” Pete sighed sarcastically.

“Well, no time like the present. Stay off the junk lad.” The man said and headed out towards the end of the carriage. Pete stayed where he was, but stretched to see the lunatic as he stuck his fingers into the rubber edges of the doors. He managed to pull them open with some effort and as the train alarm began to sound, he jumped, disappeared, swallowed by the night. The doors slammed shut but the alarm continued.

“Good fuckin’ riddance, arsehole.” Pete muttered to himself.

A few moments later, the train began to slow and the conductor burst into the carriage. He scowled at Pete. “Did someone open those doors?”

Pete shook his head. “Naw mate, they rattled a wee bit, then the alarm went aff. Woke me up to tell you the truth.”

For a second he looked at Pete suspiciously but changed his mind and plucked the walkie talkie from his hip. “False alarm,” he said.

The alarm stopped and the train began accelerating again. The Conductor looked at him, still frowning. “Sorry to bother you.”

“Nae bother, yer just dain’ yer job. Widnae want somebody fallin’ oot, eh?”

“No, exactly,” The conductor replied. “Cheers.”

“Nae bother,” Pete repeated wondering why this sort of shit always happened to him. He decided he would wait until the conductor had gone and then shoot up again.