Resolution, page 1
About the Author
Irvine Welsh was born and raised in Edinburgh. His first novel, Trainspotting, has sold over one million copies in the UK and was adapted into an era-defining film. He has written thirteen further novels, including the number one bestseller Dead Men’s Trousers, four books of shorter fiction and numerous plays and screenplays. Crime and The Long Knives have been adapted into a television series starring Dougray Scott as Ray Lennox. Welsh currently lives between London, Edinburgh and Miami.
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Also by Irvine Welsh
FICTION
Trainspotting
The Acid House
Marabou Stork Nightmares
Ecstasy
Filth
Glue
Porno
The Bedroom Secrets of the Master Chefs
If You Liked School, You’ll Love Work …
Crime
Reheated Cabbage
Skagboys
The Sex Lives of Siamese Twins
A Decent Ride
The Blade Artist
Dead Men’s Trousers
The Long Knives
DRAMA
You’ll Have Had Your Hole
Babylon Heights (with Dean Cavanagh)
SCREENPLAY
The Acid House
Irvine Welsh
* * *
RESOLUTION
For Emma,
with all the love on this green Earth and beyond.
You shine in the light and glow in the dark.
The past is never dead. It’s not even past.
William Faulkner
Day One
1
Tunnel Dreams
You cannot move.
Holding you, those men are: those monsters. One of them – man or big boy – this demon, has gripped your hair in its fist, grinding your burning face into the gravel. A pain so intense, you’re certain your scalp will be ripped off your head and held triumphantly aloft by this ogre. Its thick, rancid smell of stale alcohol and cigarettes in your nostrils and throat chokes you. Your heart is thrashing. The blood is rime in your veins …
… the impotent snarling threats of your friend, also seized by the monsters, give way to desperate, defeated pleas for mercy, then high-pitched, disbelieving screams of torment. The headlight on your blue Raleigh bike, on its side, provides the only illumination in the dark tunnel.
— Noice boike!
The battery will soon run down. But you’ve ceased fretting that it will be stolen, stopped worrying about your parents’ wrath. The eleven-year-old you is already aware that something devastating and profoundly life-changing is happening to you both, and that things might never be good again.
— Open yawr fookin mouth …
2
Sleeping Together
— Open yawr fookin mouth or I’ll carve yawr fookin face up …
… the searing voice recedes into silence as the pain deep in the core of him retreats through his flesh, scuttling into the air. Its departure is so swift and emphatic that Ray Lennox can’t detect its source, as he blinks awake into columns of glittering dust trapped in the beams of light shooting between the blinds. Where did this winter sunlight come from? His large bedroom slowly pulls into focus. The archway leading to the en suite bathroom he is inordinately proud of. The sliding wardrobes: functional, but perhaps a bit too modern for the high-ceilinged Regency building.
He feels the heat, then its source: the form next to him. Leans over into the mop of collar-length brown-blonde hair, filling his nostrils with her scent. Nuzzling into Carmel Devereaux, he enjoys her waking murmurs as the erection he becomes aware of rakes up her spine. Hears a giggle, feels her hand going around her back. Patting his cock in appreciation. — Good morning … a low, throaty purr exacerbated by the cigarettes she smokes.
Listening to her is sexier than kissing her.
Guilt at that thought.
— Morning to you too. Can I do anything for you?
Carmel rolls around and arches a solitary brow. — Very tempting. She pulls back the duvet, her gaze sweeping Lennox. — God, you look good …
It is balm to the ego to be furnished with such information by a lover almost fifteen years younger, and Ray Lennox lets it seep appreciatively into him, on this Friday morning, on the cusp of a weekend awash with possibility. He is in more than decent shape. The south coast has been good to him. His obsessive-compulsive mindset facilitated a determined switch from harmful fixations like alcohol and cocaine to the beneficial ones offered by a fitness regime. He works out most mornings at a local gym he accesses after a run along the beachfront from his elegant flat in Kemptown’s Sussex Square. Has graduated from kickboxing classes to expensive but rewarding one-on-one sparring with Tom Tracy, a former marine and British champion. Drinking is now enjoyably controlled: he and Carmel have taken to splitting a bottle of wine over dinner maybe once a week, with a solitary glass and Netflix at either his or hers at the weekend. Also, the odd couple of pints of Stella with his business partner, George Marsden, over some pub grub. It will only get out of hand again if it’s not controlled.
Lennox hopefully reaches out, but Carmel pushes him firmly in the chest. — You can make me a cup of tea. I don’t have time for anything else. We have to do our run. Then I’ve a seminar to teach on the production of phenethylamine in the human body.
— Is that some kind of sex chemical?
— Nice try, Ray, but kindly fuck off and get me some tea please, Carmel cheerfully instructs, throwing the duvet from her, doubling it over him, as she springs off the bed towards the bathroom.
Lennox lets cheerful defeat mould his features. Besides, he likes to run, and he has a morning inspection in Eastbourne with George. Carmel finishes teaching early afternoon at the university on a Friday.
Perhaps later … or maybe you’re pushing too hard.
Last night was only the fifth time they’d slept together. They have entered that zone of exalted bliss, the dopamine smash isolating them from the myriad problems he knew they’d soon encounter; age difference, conflicting career demands, potential lifestyle clashes, those melodrama-prone family members and friends who always had a stake – but never a big enough one for their liking – in new relationships. They would also learn that they were both a little more complicated, baggage-laden and real on the inside than what was chirpily emblazoned on the tin.
Let that shit slide for now. Don’t borrow trouble.
He gets out of bed, walking through to the large open-plan kitchen-lounge conversion to switch on the electric kettle. Peers out those big windows on the north side of the square that look across the gardens to the English Channel; it’s a squally morning, and the sea is turbulent. In the reflection, his eyes seem baggier, the laughter lines deeper than he recalls. His hair receding at the front, but combed-back buzz cut in don’t give a fuck style. Looks through his image to the circling gulls, their squawking muted by the replacement windows, which fairly seal in the heat. From the bedroom, Carmel sings as she changes into the running clothes she brought over yesterday.
The flat also has a smaller boudoir, and a long hallway. Too much of Lennox’s income goes on the mortgage and all of his assets are tied up in it, but it is luxurious, and he has long believed that living well is the best revenge. He looks over his black leather couch and chairs, which Carmel describes as ‘too nineties man’, and runs his finger over the top of his stylish vintage 1960s cocktail cabinet. It needs dusting and polishing.
It’s the second time he and Carmel have gone on a run together. The first was more competitive than either acknowledged. He was dissonantly torn between chivalrously hanging back and taking no prisoners. Both seemed inept responses: one patronising, the other bullying, enjoying the advantage of a more powerful physiology. While he hesitated, she went for it. Lennox is a non-smoker but Carmel has youth on her side, and it will be a close-fought affair.
After a sparkling water and cup of tea, they set off, stepping out into the vanilla of the ornately pillared Regency square, to be swatted by a gelid, bracing winter gale. Carmel sets the pace, but Lennox feels he has her measure. Then, as they pass the tunnel at the bottom of the square, all the energy drains from his legs and he stumbles to a halt.
Aware of him seizing up, Carmel stops and turns to find him gaping at the black mouth of the underpass. — Ray?
His skin seems to be slithering away from him and he shudders to try and stop it. — Where does that go?
— It used to go under the road to the beach, and she wraps her arms around herself, jumping on the spot. — It’s a tunnel, long blocked up. Lewis Carroll was inspired by it to write Alice in Wonderland. C’mon! It’s fucking freezing!
She tears off, and Lennox follows, his pursuit compelled by the need to run off a deeper cold than the one from the air that prickles his skin.
The one that shivers his marrow.
3
Eastbourne
If the traffic is kind, Eastbourne is just under a fifty-minute drive away from Ray Lennox’s flat. Underdressed for winter’s bite in bomber jacket, jeans and T-shirt, he shivers, the Scot in him unable to comprehend that the south of England can get cold too. But the Alfa Romeo’s heating satisfyingly kicks in, and his body relaxes as he lets his eyes flicker lazily in the weak but welcome December sun.
Then he’s jolted: an angry toot from a BMW tearing past him. He lowers his sun visor, and in the absence of the chewing gum he likes to keep in supply, sucks on his bottom lip.
The seaside resort retains a crusty air of decline. Unlike Bournemouth or Hastings, it’s yet to be injected with new life by an influx of the artists priced out of Brighton. But the town’s traditional old retirees are his bread and butter. Lennox has keyed the address into the GPS, and he turns into town past the golden-domed pier, gleaming in defiance as it sucks shards of radiance from a murky sky. Heading north, he halts at a set of lights.
A crowd of children mill around outside an old theatre with their parents. Lennox notices a board advertising Santa’s grotto. The waving Santa lumbers through a cheering crowd, a fat reality TV star, calibrated for disposable fame. Probably some nonce, Lennox scorns.
Fucking nonce bloaters everywhere; yo ho ho, yo ho ho … ah’ll yo ho ho ye, ya fucking paedo cunt.
Another blaring horn makes Lennox start before he pulls off, as a bus driver behind him shakes his head.
The centre beckons, a chalky, sprawling, low-rise structure, and he pulls into the sparsely filled car park in front of it. Lennox clocks George’s motor, as its driver exits. A six-foot-four mass of square-jawed, baton-backed imposition, his partner, sixty-two years young, full head of wavy grey hair, rugby-player build only reluctantly going to seed, is sensibly but stylishly clad in a long black cashmere coat, woollen scarf and leather gloves. The vehicle is a BMW and it crosses Lennox’s mind that it might have been George that tooted him.
Though an unlikely duo in many ways, representing the archetypal sensibilities of two men fashioned from English boarding school and Scottish housing scheme, the friendship and partnership nonetheless worked. George was another maverick ex-cop, driven by something other than salary cheque and a diffuse notion of service. In his world, things had to be done absolutely right. He exhibited little patience for a warped criminal justice and legal system that served up fudge, corruption and compromise, protecting wealth and power, dressed in shabby, bad-faith realpolitik clothing. In his world if you were guilty, you were guilty. It was as straightforward as that.
The two men regard the white pebbled-dashed building, replete with incongruous mock-Tudor sign:
ROSE GARDEN RETIREMENT COMMUNITY
Bordering a yard of paved flagstones is a strip of compacted earth, from which trellises run up the wall. They are entwined with dry, cracking twigs, presumably resurrecting in the summer to bloom roses. Ray Lennox doesn’t care where he dies, but knows he will never want to live one day of his allotted life span in such a place.
— Let’s get this done, George barks, as if endorsing his sentiment. — Leave the manager to me. Polly Ives. I saw her at the security trade conference. Dishy, he says, and Lennox has never heard anyone use that phrase outside of old Ealing comedies. — Have my beady eye on her. He rolls a brow.
A slight unease grips Lennox, as he recalls an intervention he was required to make, after relocating from Edinburgh to join up in business with George. His partner was having an affair with Millicent Freeson, one of their first clients. He opts to let it slide as they enter a musty reception hall, its central heating like the blast of a furnace. It feels like walking into a sauna, the mugginess extending into a lounge area bedecked with tables and chairs. Lennox waves his hand across his face in acknowledgement of the humidity, as the pungent trace of old sweat and piss permeates the air.
He suspects the staff and inmates (a veteran associate of closed institutions, he can’t stop thinking of the residents like that) will now be oblivious to this odour. A wheezing man on a walking frame stumbles by them, bellicose eyes bulging implausibly. A withering plant sits in a pot. At a table by a window, three old boys sit playing cards. One, as much due to his pompous, bombastic manner as his glasses and chubby frame, Lennox thinks of as Captain Mainwaring from Dad’s Army. He loudly pontificates about foreigners of some designation or another. — We got to get ’em out. We can’t even look after our own! Right, Brian?
Mainwaring has turned to an outsized but frail and buckled pyjama-clad man crushed into a wheelchair, the last of the flesh on his gargantuan shoulder bones wasting away as his feet steep in a basin of warm water. Something about his eyes deeply troubles Lennox, who decides it must be the utter defeat and hopelessness in them. The other card player, a skeletal man with a liver-spotted scalp, studies his hand intently.
— Look at the poor old bastards, Lennox spins to George as they wait for somebody to appear at the reception desk. — It’s all fear. Foreigners who want to take their jobs, even now they’re long past their working lives, socialists who want to give the homeless their money, even though they’re skint … what a fucking way to live.
— Of course, you do know their fear is our friend, Raymond, George observes. — Without it, we aren’t in business!
— Does it ever bother you? Lennox asks, noting the panting Zimmer Frame Man being joined by a toilet-emerging cohort on a similar contraption.
— Not at all. Compared to police work it’s a positively noble trade, George advances. — This is the south of England, Raymond. There are council estate dwellers here who would literally part with their life savings for the honour of having their offspring buggered by an Old Etonian, while wishing to set fire to a Pakistani who sat too close to one of them on public transport, he cheerfully observes, looking back over to the card-playing men, obliging Lennox to do the same.
Captain Mainwaring is on a roll. — They shouldn’t be allowed to wear those bloody veils. Let them go back to their own country if they want to dress like that, and he rubs at his reddening neck. Mainwaring looks close to seizure, but the big man disturbs Lennox more; to have carried the strength that frame suggests, and now manifest as little more than a vegetable … But perhaps the alternatives are worse. He trembles, fleetingly thinking of his mother in her slow but inexorable decline in his sister’s spare room in Edinburgh.
— Besides, George elaborates, — those tight, hoarding old bastards are my people. We need to be separated from our money: just give the lot to the banks so it becomes meaningless and we’re finally liberated!
Lennox’s head swivels, concerned that George’s booming tones have carried. — Fuck sake, you’re buoyant today. How did you get on last night?
— Left leg first, Raymond, George takes the hint, lowering his voice and winking, — Viagra is the best thing that’s happened to me. I’m praying it sufficiently weakens the heart in order that I can die on the job. To think I’d resigned myself to only having a couple of women on the go. Now I can manage a handful once again! Happy days!
Lennox is about to interject, but George’s urging eyes tell him that the centre manager has appeared. Polly Ives looks the epitome of stress. A nervous aspect and dowdiness cling to her, embodied in the shapeless pullover she wears, drawing attention from her fine features and cheekbones. Her half-shut eyes jump around, and a slight but visible tremor shakes her body. She ushers them to sit at one of the vacant tables in the lounge, close to the card school. — I’m afraid the office is being redecorated. They made rather a mess with the break-in.
While failing to see the Venusian attraction George insinuated, Lennox is grateful for Polly’s potential business. It was she who had called in Horsham Security Solutions after a second burglary inside a month had spooked the residents. — We believe it’s a gang from Brighton, or maybe even … she whispers the word as if it was Hades, — London.
As the two men with the Zimmers move past them, the wheezer man now upping his pace in the competition, Lennox tries to place her on his social matrix: a leftist social worker type or right-wing Christian do-gooder? Polly seems to straddle both camps. He can somehow picture her at both church and radical feminist group meetings.
— This used to be such a nice place, she ruefully muses.
It’s a fucking death camp, Lennox thinks, as Mainwaring, having run out of steam, lets his head slump into his chest. He surmises that Polly’s penchant for cheap fake nostalgia fixes probably places her on the right. Despite now being in this business over eighteen months, Lennox elects to remain silent, knowing to let George do the talking in such situations. His partner carries the air of empathetic authority that plays well with the old and, more importantly, their carers. A truculent joviality that stops short of buffoonery and pomp, George delivers his lines in refined public-school vowels given clipped urgency by employ in the Special Boat Service, the naval equivalent of the SAS, and the police force. — Alas, changing times, he nods, looking around in a sweep, before making strong eye contact with Polly. — It’s obviously of paramount importance that your residents, and his eyes flash across to the card school, then back to Polly, — and their relatives feel safe and secure.
