Butcher by Campbell Armstrong Read Free Book Online Page A

Glasgow, three tenement blocks in Partick, two fish and chip shops, a dry-cleaning chain, one point nine acres of prime city-centre land licensed for commercial development – and, of course, the clapped out bowling-alley. He had his lawyers, Roman, Glebe & Hack, going twenty-four hours a day on all the paperwork, documents of ownership, deeds of exchange, the reassignment of which involved some serious diddlin and fiddlin – whatever it took. This wasn’t the old days when you could just seize whatever took your fancy, today you had to make it appear legal, so you needed inventive suits who knew the score. More, you needed layers of suits, solicitors and clerks and an assortment of other figures who worked for lawyers, but whose affiliation with the law was not easy to define.
    Chuck was blasted out of his thoughts by a sickening eye-scalding cloud of chlorine. Annoyed, he sought out Tommy Lombardo, who was in the ground floor gym training a muscular Romanian woman to lift weights.
    Tommy was urging her on in his enthusiastic way. ‘Concentrate, Slaca, concentrate, hold aw the air in yer lungs. That’s my girl. Aw the air, keep it in. Know when to release it. Hang on.’
    The woman sweated, trying hard to please Tommy. ‘So deefycull, Tommy.’
    â€˜You’ll get it.’
    â€˜Tommy,’ Chuck said. ‘A minute.’
    Tommy Lombardo looked round. ‘Mr Chuck, I didn’t see—’
    â€˜I telt you to go easy on the chlorine. Explain to me why the first thin I notice as I come through the front door is the heavy stink of the stuff? This place is mingin.’
    â€˜I musta used too much.’ Lombardo, who was six foot four inches tall, had gobbled enough steroids to make him the Muscle King of Glasgow. He also pumped iron every spare minute he had. Chuck was convinced the steroids had interfered with certain important cerebral connections, because Tommy was incapable of just about any task he was given – except that of attracting a certain clientele to the gym, gays who wanted look-at-me-sweetie muscle tone, butch lesbians who fancied themselves weightlifters, and assorted good-looking women who had nothing better to do than come down here and admire Tommy’s musculature and even touch it. They were groupies, these women. They kept the membership high.
    â€˜That smell drives customers away, Tommy.’ Chuck spoke slowly, as if to a child.
    â€˜I’m sorry, Mr Chuck.’
    â€˜And why is there nobody at the reception desk? I telt you, Tommy, make sure there’s always somebody to sign in the customers. Remember?’
    â€˜It’s Zondra’s fault, Mr Chuck. She’s always slipping out for a smoke.’
    â€˜Then deal with it, Tommy. Tell her don’t smoke. This place is meant to promote health .’
    â€˜Right, I’ll say to her. Don’t smoke.’
    Chuck patted one of Tommy Lombardo’s biceps. Hard as rock. Like his brain. ‘I don’t have time to be runnin round checkin on employees.’
    Chuck walked away quickly. When people don’t do the job you pay them for, if they don’t follow orders … Flashpoint. Business stress . Self-control wanted, Rube. He gulped air that tasted of bleach. He walked through the reception area and climbed the stairs to the upper gymnasium where a half dozen people were working the machines. A white-haired overweight woman pounded the Lifestride treadmill, and an elderly guy, his expression one of stark fear at the idea of cardiac arrest, rode the Sportsart bike.
    Chuck thought of this area as the Drop Dead Zone.
    He found Glorianna in a private room at the back. She was lying on a lounger, earphones attached to her head and an iPod on her flat belly. She wore white shorts and a blue singlet with the logo Number One Fitness. Her hair was curled, black with blonde highlights. Her espresso-brown eyes were just a shade too wide for her slender face, but Chuck thought