E-Book, Englisch, 384 Seiten
McSorley Paperboy
1. Auflage 2025
ISBN: 978-1-80533-546-7
Verlag: Pushkin Vertigo
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 6 - ePub Watermark
E-Book, Englisch, 384 Seiten
ISBN: 978-1-80533-546-7
Verlag: Pushkin Vertigo
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 6 - ePub Watermark
Callum McSorley is a writer based in Glasgow whose short stories have appeared in Gutter Magazine, Monstrous Regiment and New Writing Scotland. Squeaky Clean was his debut novel, inspired by his years working at a car wash in Glasgow's East End. With it, Callum won the prestigious McIlvanney Prize for best Scottish crime novel of the year. Paperboy is the second Ally McCoist thriller. It follows the reputationally-challenged detective as she investigates a murder linked to a confidential paper-shredding business and stumbles across evidence of police corruption - the sort of evidence that could get her killed if she doesn't handle it carefully...
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Weitere Infos & Material
Everybody called him Chuck though his name wasn’t Charles. He had curly ginger hair and wore corrective NHS specs throughout his school years, and his pals were wee pricks. Despite him now having a shaved, balding dome and favouring contacts, the nickname had stuck. He didn’t hate it any more though. He was nearly thirty now. He was at peace with it. It was a fact of life. It was his name. Secretly, he liked it better than “Stuart” and its attendant nicknames: Stu, Stewie, Stu Pot, Stupac Shakur. When anyone asked his name he said, “Evrybdy caws me Chuck.”
“Because that’s your name?” replied the old boy with a quizzical eyebrow tick.
“Because ae Rugrats. Ye mind that? Chuckie wae the glesses, ginger hair?”
The man shook his grey head and let Chuck into the house—not a place where children had ever lived judging by the furniture and decoration and complete lack of photographs, so it’s no wonder he’d never heard of the kids’ cartoon. They went through the kitchen—Chuck had been asked to come to the back door—and into the hall. “The stairs shouldn’t be a problem for a strapping lad like you,” the man said, creaking his way up the staircase, a brown, threadbare carpet runner covering chipped, white-glossed steps.
“Depends how many trips it takes.” Five years of hauling towers of confidential waste papers and the shredded hay bales his machines turned them into had taken its toll on Chuck’s knees and back.
“Just a few boxes for you. Having a clear-out.” They entered a bedroom which smelt of Eau de Auld Geezer and astringent bar soap. The room was spartan: a wicker chair coming to bits in one corner; a night table at the side of the yellowing bed with a few well-read paperbacks and the Bible; net curtains which gave the place a sepia filter, as if glimpsed through a brown medicine bottle.
A fitted wardrobe the length of one side of the room was open. The clothes hanging on the rail were divided in the middle into black vestments and civvies. The large, cardboard boxes were on the floor of the wardrobe. There were five, each one marked with a decade, sixties to noughties. “Just these, cheers,” the minister said. “Would you like a cup of tea? Coffee?”
“Nae thanks, pal, this willnae take lang.”
The first box was heavier than expected. Bad things twitched in the small of his back as he huffed it up to his chest. The stairs were precarious. He couldn’t see over the box, had to come down sideways to watch his steps, caught his knuckles against the wall—bastart!—as he turned at the bottom to head back out through the kitchen.
His van was parked at the garden gate, the decal on the side reading:
SIMPLY SHRED
secure document destruction mobile on-site shredding
He opened the side door and fired up the machine inside. The rolling blades at the bottom of the hopper churned together with relentless force, a gnawing, savage hunger. Chuck often thought of himself as a zookeeper, and it was feeding time. He hefted the box up and tipped it in.
Fifty pounds of glossy pornography tumbled into the hopper. Naked women being stuffed from all angles were chewed and swallowed by the shredder, its appetite as apparently insatiable as their own. Among the churning, ripping flesh were disembodied organs: shining nipples, a probing tongue, a cock as big as a baguette with rippling veins, dripping at the tip.
Chuck looked again at the writing on the box: ’60s. Vintage. Lifting his jaw back into place, he went back upstairs. Seventies next. He almost wanted to lift the flap a little, take a keek at what a fifty-year-old scud book was like, but resisted. Confidentiality was the name of the game after all. Discretion. Legally binding discretion. And would he really want to touch any of these stiff, old jazz mags which had been kept by the minister for half a century? Should probly gee the machine a good rinse oot eftir, he thought.
A few more jaunts up and down the stairs and he’d caught up to the contemporary filth. Job done.
Almost.
“These too, son.” The minster held two laptops. One old, based on how thick it was, one a bit newer.
Chuck felt something cold trickle in his stomach, his world shift a little off kilter. He had a special hard-drive shredder in the van, it was part of his services, but it was usually only businesses that asked for it. One-off Joe Public punters like this were rarely in need of it. It was the smart thing to do, considering all the things Chuck had learnt about identity theft since getting into the shredding game, but most people just left their old laptops in a cupboard to gather dust. Chuck had a healthy prejudice against the holy professions to start with. Throw in the dirty-book archive and the question of shredding the computers, along with whatever was on them, raised the hairs on the back of his neck.
He almost asked why. But he didn’t. Because not asking was part of his job, and reliability was everything. He knew another guy in the game once—Harvey MacNeil, a small business solo operator like himself—who let slip a few quiet words about a customer he thought might be a nonce. And this boy, this wrong yin, found himself strung up by a vigilante mob, who battered his maw’s door down and dragged him into the street in the middle of the night, kicked every Dulux sample of shite out him and put him in a coma before the polis could show up. Justice done, maybe, but Harvey was out of business by the end of the year. Nobody could trust him any more. He ran a leaky ship and everybody knew it now, even if they felt he’d done the right thing.
Chuck was running enough risks as it was through his deal with Mr Jamieson, so he took the laptops without comment.
“Cheers, son.”
He held his phone under the wheel and flicked to refresh over and over, quick look up as he joined the expressway back towards town, then a glance back down. Moan tae fuck, moan tae fuck. Three minutes of stoppage time coming to an end. Fucksake. Fuckin bastarts. He prayed for a miracle. Please. Final whistle.
“Fuck!”
He slammed the wheel, causing the horn to blare and the driver in front to swerve slightly. Shower ae useless pricks! Fucking nil–nil. Hundred quid down the Tommy Crapper. He threw his phone into the stack of paperwork on the passenger seat, causing an avalanche on Mt Admin. Heart pounding, he crushed his teeth together and made growling animal noises, dredged up from his queasy stomach. Punched the horn again. The driver in front flashed their hazards and pulled onto the hard shoulder. A wee face in Chuck’s passenger-side wing mirror screamed, “Wit the fuck?!”
Chuck signalled left and the wee face shat itself, thinking he was stopping to have a word. Instead, he pulled back off the expressway at the upcoming exit, headed to the petrol station at the nearby retail park.
He filled up and stomped inside to pay. It wasn’t much because the tank was three-quarters full. He also bought a ten-quid scratch card. He had a green penny which lived in the dookit of the dashboard which had once proved itself lucky.
Not today.
The scratch card was tossed on the pile of paperwork. The silver rubbings lay dead in his lap. The coin went back to its home. He took slow breaths, feeling calmer. What was ten quid anyway? Couple ae pints. Didnae need those anyway, bad fir ye. There were other bets ready to pay out anyway. Ones that would eclipse the ton he just dropped. (Plus the ten spot.) And if all else failed, there was the Great Accumulator. A pension pot. A take-the-wife-and-fuck-off-to-Cancún pot. He had the feeling about this one, bubbling away in the background.
A horn peeped from behind. “Awright, awright.” He raised his hand, saluting with every finger rather than just two. Back in control. He’d need it to get through his last appointment of the day.
“Ye winnin, Chuck?” Not a greeting, and not meant as a joke. Jamieson was flatly serious. Always was. He was the only man Chuck had ever met who didn’t consider himself to be funny. Easily mistaken for a lack of ego, but it certainly wasn’t that. No, it was something else that was missing, something more vital.
“No yet, Mr Jamieson, but there’s always hope.” Chuck licked dry lips, forced a smile which was...
