The Glister by John Burnside Read Free Book Online

surprising ways, according to its own logic.
    So that night, when the phone rang, and his modest outlay had borne unexpected fruit, Smith wasn't altogether surprised. Things had been going well for quite some time, but the ugly little scene that Morrison had uncovered could easily have been the spanner in the works. The last thing Smith wanted was publicity, a more professional police inquiry, the press, some kind of public investigation. There had been times, over the last year or so, when he'd considered using Morrison in some minor way, but he had always held back and kept the policeman in reserve. Now, thanks to his patience, that small investment of time and effort had come good big-time, and Smith couldn't help feeling a little surge of satisfaction as he put the phone down and turned to Jenner. “I've got something for you,” he said, sitting back in his chair.
    Jenner nodded. “All right,” he said. He was trying not to look pleased, but not quite succeeding. He did this often, because he thought business was a serious matter, and he felt it would be unseemly to let Smith know how much he enjoyed the more unsavory tasks he was given to perform. It was endearing, this slight scruple, the true mark of a man of action. Even more endearing, though, was Jenner's gravity, the way his manner made it clear that he was capable of doing anything in Smith's service. Sometimes, Smith sensed his disappointment that he hadn't been called upon to kill anyone yet—to really kill someone, with his own hands—but that disappointment, merely hinted at, was always tempered by an unspoken agreement that it was only a matter of time before they came to that point in their work together. This was a possibility that Smith not only did not discount but found just as gratifying, for reasons of his own. For now, though, however exaggerated Jenner's gravity might seem, Smith knew it had to be respected and he adopted a suitably serious look. “This is something that has to be handled discreetly” he said. God, it was a privilege, being Brian Smith. The sheer pleasure of giving a man like Jenner work he could enjoy, the absurdly cinematic quality to this talk about handling things discreetly. For one dangerous moment, he almost allowed himself a pleased, yet ironic smile—but that would have spoiled the moment for Jenner, who did, after all, so look forward to the dirty work, in whatever form it presented itself.

MORRISON
    L ATER, MORRISON TOLD HIMSELF THAT HE'D MADE A SIMPLE, ONCE-IN-A- lifetime error of judgment when he'd called Smith. But that wasn't quite true. Mistakes don't happen in a single, decisive moment, they unfold slowly through a lifetime. They grow invisibly beneath the surface, running for years in the dark like the roots of some patient fungus till something erupts at the surface, some slick, wet fruiting body full of dark spores that stream out into the wind and travel for miles, tainting everything they touch. That was how it was with Morrison: his big mistake had been in ever having anything to do with Brian Smith in the first place, but there was no way he could have avoided that. The fact was that he was bound to Smith in ways that he hadn't even begun to understand and, on what he would come to think of as that fateful night, he was only doing what Smith had expected him to do all along. He was following his nature.
    It was a man who picked up, but it wasn't Smith. Morrison knew Smith's voice, and this man was someone else altogether, someone who spoke in a quiet, very formal way, quite unlike Smith's hearty, almost jovial manner. Morrison did not know this person but, whoever it was, he obviously existed as a buffer between Smith and the outside world, and the policeman had had to insist a little to get put through. As he stood waiting, hearing an exchange of voices somewhere in the background but unable to make out quite what they were saying, he remembered the visit Smith had made to him, the very first night