The Bullet Trick by Louise Welsh Read Free Book Online

the suits and studied casualness of the men. Bill said, 'I guess this is where I leave you to get on with it. Sam and me’ll be upstairs in my office when you’re ready to deliver.'
     
    Jacque and Shaz were on the floor, the men crowding round them now, shielding them from my view.
     
    I asked, 'Will they be OK?'
     
    Bill said, 'They’re whores. OK doesn’t come into it.' A second cheer went up. Jacque was standing in front of Montgomery, loosening his tie. The men beside him had pulled back. I watched the men’s eyes as Jacque worked her way down the Inspector’s body, sliding his tie between her legs. I finished my drink and made my way towards the bar as if in search of another. When I passed the knot of men I reached over and grabbed Jacque by the waist, pulling her towards me.
     
    'Any chance of a private dance, doll?' Montgomery got to his feet as I’d hoped he would, pushing me to one side. I lurched to the right, still holding the sweat-slicked girl in my grip, and dipped his pocket, feeling the envelope, sliding it out quick and sure, tucked between my thumb and index finger, then crabbed it in my hand and conveyed it to my own pocket, pushing the naked girl towards him as I did so. 'Hey, no harm meant pal.' Making my accent thick and drink-addled.
     
    One of the men gave me a shove, 'Stupid bloody Jock.' But the scene was quick to resume itself, Jacque flashing me a sharp confused look that might have spoken of suspicion or regret or perhaps just of disgust. I gave her the briefest of smiles, and then went to deliver my prize.
     

Glasgow
     
    MY FIRST MONTHS back in Glasgow I never once let daylight touch my face. I slept more than seemed possible and woke groggy-eyed from half-remembered dreams. It wasn’t hard for me to hide during the day. Apart from those mornings when train timetables heaved me from my pit, unshaven and blinking, to stagger with my suitcase into the predawn, I’ve rarely ever left my bed before noon.
     
    I perfected my practice method early in my career, around the age of nine, when I stumbled on The Boy’s Own Guide to Conjuring in the local library. I can still see the front cover of the book. A boy with dark hair cut in a side parting, dressed in a red school blazer and grey shorts, pulls a rabbit from a hat. On a table suspiciously swathed by a green cloth, reclines a copy of The Boy’s Own Guide to Conjuring. The boy on its cover is pulling the same rabbit from the same hat and the same book rests face up showing the same image, though it is more of a smudge now.
     
    If I positioned the mirrors on my mother’s dressing-table at a particular angle I could achieve the same effect, myself repeated over and over into infinity. It gave me a strange feeling to see all of these other Williams shadowing my actions. I felt that when I stepped from the glass these other boys did the same and moved on in their own worlds where everything was an inverted image of mine and these Williams were the braves or bullies of their school.
     
    It was a solitary pleasure. Every day when I got home I’d set the panes of the mirror at exactly the right angle, like a precocious teenage masturbator, then set to work. Under my command the army of other Williams stumbled through the same tricks until we had mastered one to perfection. I was the prince of illusion. And even though these doppelgängers might have been tougher or more popular in their worlds than I was in mine, in the world of mirrors it was my decrees that held sway.
     
    In time, the reflection aged into a thirty-three-year-old trickster, standing before dead-eyed hotel mirrors murmuring the patter beneath his breath. Sometimes I’d forget to whisper and my voice would boom across the empty room and into the lifeless hotel corridor.
     
    It was these practice sessions rather than companionship or money that I missed most in Glasgow, because, although I was used to making my fee stretch and sleeping alone in anonymous rooms, I