Long Way Down (A Gus Dury crime thriller) Read Online Free PDF Page B

was never far away. I could hear it now as I turned the CD into my
pocket.
    'What the hell are you playing at, Gus?' that's what she
said.
    I wasn't playing at anything. The Game of Life had long
since ceased to be of any amusement to me.
    I was just going with the flow.
    Rolling with the punches.
    Maybe I'd be lucky and get some sense knocked into me.
Sure as shooting this business with Barry wasn't going to end without a few
tasty blows being struck. If past form was anything to go by, then I'd be on
the receiving end. The thought gored me, made me feel even more pity for Barry.
He'd had it tough enough without having friends like me.
    It seemed every shop in the street was selling cute and
cuddly pandas. Their sad eyes dug at me. I couldn't see past the fact that they
were captive beasts. There was something unsettling about a city getting so
excited about having the animals locked up in the zoo. Was I the only one who
saw how miserable they really were? Keeping them behind bars wasn't helping
them — it was helping us. It made us feel a little bit better about having
ballsed up the entire planet. In Paris during the war they ate all the animals
in their zoo — that shows what they really thought of them.
    From the pandas my mind latched back on to Barry's
plight: it seemed like he was actually better off behind bars. He'd gone from
the big house to the shit house in one fell swoop. Try as I might, I just
couldn't get my head around his drop. It had been gradual, a slow steering
towards the long way down but he'd hit rock bottom now. Nietzsche said you
needed to strike the lowest depths before you could bounce back, but Barry wasn't
bouncing anywhere from his dark pit of despair. Not unless it was back inside,
or worse yet, into Shakey's hands.
    I flagged a Joe Baxi and the driver in the Nigerian
footy shirt tapped in the Craigmillar address on his TomTom.
    'Cheers, mate ... and quick as you like, eh.'
    I checked my mobi for messages: zip. Unless you call a
text from my mate Hod with a link to Frankie Boyle's Twitter account a message.
It seemed the Pope had made his first tweet and the bold Mr Boyle had taken his
chance to address the pontiff directly about abusive priests. I smiled
inwardly; there was something about the direct approach, about speaking the
truth to power that I liked a whole lot.
    The taxi pulled over at the foot of the street like I'd
told him. I passed the fare through the hole in the safety glass and stepped
out.
    The rain had stopped.
    That was something.
    The address that Katrina had given me for Weasel was a
boarded-up council flat — the affectionately termed cooncil curtains. The whole
street was a tip. Awash with rubbish that had attracted a couple of scavenging
dogs: they eyed me like competition for a lick at the Lean Cuisine container
they'd liberated.
    'Grow sense, dogs ...'
    They growled.
    I stamped a Doc on the road and they took off, paving
the way for a feral gull to swoop down on the salvage.
    I was in no rush to crash Weasel's gaff so I sparked up
a cig and took myself to the sheltered side of the street where I could watch
the goings on from the lee of another derelict building. I was two draws in to
my red-top when my mobi rang.
    'Mac ... what is it?'
    'I'm glad I found you.' His voice was gruff.
    'Sounds ominous.'
    He took a sharp intake of breath. 'I just had word that
your friend is not in a good way ...'
    My mind spooled with images of a bloody and battered
Barry. 'What?'
    'Danny Murray's been done over.'
    Relief washed over me. 'Dan the Man ... fuck me, I
thought you meant Barry.'
    A tut. 'Yeah, well, the only reason Barry's not being
fitted for a cement overcoat I'd say is because he's managed to duck under the
radar ... but that can't last.'
    I was lining up my reply as a stocky figure started
walking down the path towards Weasel's flat. I ducked into the ruin as the pug
in trademark black leather stepped up to the door and slapped the rain from his
shaven head. I couldn't