Ugly Puggly 60

If I worked backwards with the broken stones of my mind, I find they must have come in two cars. Five men in Jeff’s ‘Disco’ Discovery Land Rover. Five men in another car. It would have had to be big, because they were all young and fit, athletes of hurting. They’d filed in the back door in mix-mashed pairs dressed casually in gym clothes. They met us the kitchen. Ugly Puggly had carried my washing downstairs. He dropped it at the door and I’d almost tripped over it as one of the Disco men weaved his way past me and pulled open the front door.

They were silent and well drilled. A flicker of faces followed his progress and waited for their boss to tell them what was required. Apart from his gold cufflinks, he was a grey man in his fifties of average height.

Jeff darted forward to explain and babbled about having done his part. He begged to be allowed to leave.

The boss glanced past him and through me. The flame of Dave’s hair and his desolate sobbing seemed to confuse him. He’d been squeezed against a wall, an orange in his hand. He hadn’t been hit. A signal from him and two men grabbed my arms and pinned them. They lifted me like a child taken from nursery school, and set me down again a few feet away, out of his pathway and harm’s way. Five or six of them closed in on Ugly Puggly. He could only retreat backwards, upstairs, but stood his ground.

‘A little bird told me you were a bit rough with one of my lads.’ He glanced at Jeff, who went to speak, but the boss held his index finger to his lips and the estate agent shut up. Even Dave’s tears had ceased.

‘We can’t allow that,’ the boss said. ‘You’re interfering with business. More importantly, you’re interfering with my business. We don’t allow that. You better get that into your thick head. Understood?’

Ugly Puggly nodded.

But that wasn’t enough for boss man. He stood and stared. A basilisk. ‘I want to hear your apology. Tell me you’re sorry.’  

Ugly Puggly shakes his head. ‘Nah, I’m no sorry. No in the way you mean.’

He’d crossed the border and hard men crowded into the lobby. Even the ones next to me, stepping forward, concluding rightly, I wasn’t much of a threat. Dave let out a wail.

The boss let out a snort of impatience. ‘You’ve got balls. I’ll say that for you. And I hear you’re smart. Very smart. I like that in a man. But I’m curious, where did you bury his body?’

Jeff sidled up close enough to hiss. ‘Out the back, under his patio.’

The boss stared hard at him, till he dropped his head and stepped away. ‘That wasn’t very smart,’ he tut-tutted.

‘No, we didnae,’ Dave piped up, for some reason, I didn’t understand. ‘We cremated the body.’

‘Cremated the body?’ The boss weighed the words on his tongue. He didn’t ask any other questions. ‘That was smart.’

Dave’s phone rang, which was unusual, because as the playboy reminded us, only old folk talked on the phone. He didn’t get a chance to answer it. One of the younger Disco men grabbed it out of his back pocket and crushed it underfoot with his heel.

A slight movement of the boss’s shoulders. ‘Did I ask you to do that?’ A shake of his greying head showed his displeasure and the young guy’s gaze dropped and he murmured an apology. ‘I’m sorry about that. Sometimes we get a bit—how shall I put it—careless. That’s right lads, isn’t it? Sometimes someone gets dropped from a very high height. Sometimes someone’s fingers and knees get crushed by a sledgehammer. Perhaps their girlfriend gets acid in their face, or sits in a bath until her legs melt.’ His voice adopted a more gravelly tone. He looked over at Dave. ‘And sometimes a young lad finds himself working in a brothel, selling his ass to pay off his debt.’

‘I don’t think so,’ said Ugly Puggly.

The boss’s fingers drummed against the frame of the door. ‘You don’t think so?’ He pondered aloud. ‘That wasn’t very smart. But…’ He couldn’t quite decide. ‘It would be a great pity if you act hastily. Go in the wrong direction. I’d advise you to be very careful what you say and do. But I’m a very busy man, with no more time to waste. I’m offering you a job, two grand a week, plus expenses.’

‘How long huv a got tae decide?’ asked Ugly Puggly.

‘I’ll tell you what, I’ll make it two-and-a-half grand if you give me your answer now?’

‘And if I don’t?’

‘A week.’

‘I’ll take the week then.’

The boss sighed. ‘That was smart,’ he admitted. ‘But just remember, I’ve taken a liking to you. But don’t get any stupid ideas because when I take a disliking to you, it becomes permanent.’

Jeff hurried down the stairs to hold the door open for him. He slipped out behind him. And that was the signal for the others to leave too.

I was holding my breath, my hands shaking, even after they’d left. They’d largely ignored me. But I too had been warned and would be part of the final reckoning. I needed a drink badly. To calm my nerves and go give myself renewed courage. I knew it wouldn’t be a fight, but a massacre.

Dave was shaking, his feet crunched on the broken phone as he staggered over towards Ugly Puggly. He took him in his arms and held him, rocking back and forth and rubbing his back and saying, ‘There, there.’

‘We could dae worse,’ I quipped. ‘Two-and-a-half grand a week. We could dae up this shitehole or move oot tae Bearsden and rent it tae some homeless people that ur used tae livin in utter squalor and degradation.’

‘Shut up,’ said Ugly Puggly. ‘And let me think.’

‘It’s no yer fault,’ Dave, raised his lips to get a peck of a kiss on them. ‘You’ve done everthin you could. And been real, dead, brilliant. But we need tae take the money. And I can get a new phone.’

Ugly Puggly pulled away from him. ‘And shite on everybody else?’ Push our problems ontae everybody else?’

I muttered, ‘It’s no as if yev got a choice.’ Then corrected myself. ‘We’ve got a choice.’