McCann case 5

She tugged the high-viz a little over her big belly as they walked back.

A rattle in his throat. He dropped back a step, holding a hand up to show he was fine. He grogged green mucous on the shiny rain drenched brick.

‘That’s fucking disgusting,’ she said.

Dying for a pint. He wasn’t listening. But counting. He could smell his own stale breath, fag smoke and something else. He wasn’t sure.  After splashing a little water on his face in the toilet. Only another six hours and he’d be free. That was his plan.

She got a little ahead of him. Invisible to other shoppers who were pushing trolleys. Hurrying past singly and in bowed groups like pilgrims. Not feeling the slow, drizzling rain against the glass doors at the entrance, the smell of despair soaking into the very bricks of the building, and the taste of defeat in his mouth.

ASDA never smelled the same. Always some version of the same thing. Damp wool steaming off coats hurrying into the light and airy aisles. Bleach from a half-hearted mop job, fighting a losing battle in the toilets. Sanitised veg. Buffed floors erasing feet after feet after feet that had soaked into the walls years ago and given up trying to leave. Life shrink wrapped. Pine-scented, sharp, masking something deeper. The same trick funeral parlours used.

Just off the first aisle, a welcoming party. Wee McGrorty.  In his element among a cacophony of sounds of tills and beeps and shuffle of feet. His face had the shine of a boxer glove and his hunched figure standing sideways, inclining his head slightly as if expecting them to try and skitter pass like shoplifters. He smelled of cheap aftershave and his shirt and tie were painstakingly cut from the cloth of a man that watched the pennies. His large-framed black specs made his eyes look bigger as if he was descrying far off objects of interest, but which happened to be the temporary staff.

He made a peculiar noise before he addressed them that sound like ‘whssht’. A hierarchy of contempt shading the first mentioned name.

‘Ryan and Gallacher, office please.’

Rhona opened her mouth to speak but started wailing. ‘I didnae realise the time…It was all his fault…he used to be a social worker, yeh know.’

‘I very much doubt it,’ replied McGrorty. ‘He can’t even stack a pallet of beans on their proper shelves’.

 A security guard fell into step behind them. They followed McGrorty through the plastic flaps and across the warehouse floor. The unseasonal smells changed as they moved from cardboard and cold storage to the warm and yeasty bakery section and then to the sharp back-seas of fish counter, which wasn’t a seller and was being phased out.

McGrorty’s office was mezzanine, beside the security and cameras overlooking the tills. It was a glass box, all transparency and surveillance. No frosted panels here. No privacy. Just the constant, silent judgment of being two-places at once. A conjuring trick.

McGrorty sat behind a metal desk. He didn't invite Rhona to sit and there wasn’t room for all three of them. So he waited outside with the security guard.

He couldn’t hear much of what was being said. McGrorty tapping a pen against her file and the sound a nervous metronome, which she picks up and plays out in the way her body slumps, pleading.

His flat voice. The way her hand goes to her mouth and she can’t meet his eye as she marches past him and back to work.

‘Yer in next,’ said the security guard, the faint sheen of sweat on his upper lip, the excitement palpable.

He’d always felt a bit sorry for security guards. He was just a body to stack shelves, to scan items, to smile at customers with a fuck-you grin that never reached his eyes. Security was even lower than that but he was so fresh-faced he didn’t even realise that.  

McGrorty spoke in the measured tones of policy and procedure. Words precise. Sentences clipped as he studied form on the page. ‘Mr. Ryan, Eighteen months you've been with us. Eighteen months, and your file is a catalogue of warnings. Lackness. Lateness. Bad attitude. And now this. Three separate occasions of extended breaks. Fraudulent timekeeping. Effectively  you’ve been stealing time from us—and encouraging others to do the same.’

The sound of Barry’s breathing was loud in the quiet that followed. ‘I get it McGrorty.’

Barry stood with his hands in the pockets of his ASDA fleece. The over-worn fabric cheap polyester, slightly pilled from washing. It smelled faintly of the chip fat from the canteen. He could feel the rough edge of a hole in the pocket lining, his finger tracing the tear like a worry stone.

‘Do you hear me, Mr Ryan?’  

‘Aye, I hear yeh, McGrorty. Jist make sure my money is in the bank.’

‘You need to leave now.’

‘Fuck sake, man, get real. Who’s want tae stay here. The place sucks the life right oot of yeh. That’s how it’s ideal for you. Cause you’ve no got a life. Jist a job. Stabbing people in the back for a livin. Yeh’ve actually done me a big favour. I should be thanking yeh, but yeh no whit? I’m no gonnae. Cause only arselickers thank you. And if I ever sunk that low I’d probably fling mysel off the Erskine Bridge or get a job in management, like you.’

The security guard stepped over the threshold eyeing Barry.  

He turned and walked out. McGrorty, a smirk playing at the corner of his mouth.

The security guard fell into step beside Barry as they walked through the warehouse, towards the staff exit. He didn't bother looking at him.

The door opened onto the service yard. The Clydebank rain was falling, a thin, persistent drizzle that soaked into everything. The air smelt of damp concrete, diesel, and the sweet, cloying rot of the supermarket bins. Barry stood in the doorway for a moment, feeling the cold mist on his face. Feeling its freshness. He’d been a long time inside.

‘Yer fleece,’ the security guard said. ‘Yeh need to leave the uniform.’

Barry shrugged it off. But before handing it over he blew his nose in a sleeve and grogged on the inside of the fleece.

The security guard let it slip from his fingers and fall to the floor. ‘I could gee yeh a doing for that.’

Barry chuckled. ‘Maybe yeh could. Yeh look the type that goes tae Tai Chai or Kick-boxing or some shite like that, but yer forgetting one very important hing.’

‘Whit’s that?’

Barry pointed at the ceiling. ‘We’re aw cameraed up. They probably heard every word yeh’ve said. Yeh could lose yer job, like me. Maybe yeh already huv.’

He spotted the indecision in the lad’s eyes, which he covered with bravado.

‘I could take yeh into the yard and gi’e yeh a kicking, behind the bins.’

Barry sighed. ‘No yeh couldnae. Cause yeh seem a nice enough boy. And two words—Tam McCann. That’s a very good friend of mine.’

The security guard glanced at the fleece lying on the ground and at Barry’s face.

Barry brushed past him and back into the warehouse.

The security guard walking beside him. ‘Where dae yeh think yer goin?’

Barry pointed towards the plastic flaps that marked the shop front.

‘Yeh cannae dae that.’

‘I already huv. And I’m just a normal customer noo. Phone the police if yeh like and see whit they think of yer timewasting?’