Once or twice Jodie came home with news of a Mo-Maw sighting. One of the ice-cream lickers had seen her in Haghill, or getting on the Barras bus with thick armfuls of shopping. These women had never spoken to her, they had just seen her, but they said she looked well, hale, freshly painted. Jodie would lie and smile and say, yes, yes, Mo-Maw was doing great. She was ecstatic to be a granny to Ha-Ha’s little Adrianna.
When she was safe at home, these comments made Jodie apoplectic. As she sprayed her work shoes with deodorant she called their mother filthy names that made Mungo blanch. She was harshest on Mo-Maw in a way that only girls were allowed to be. She said it felt like having a lost dog you couldn’t admit had run away, a wayward bitch that you hoped would come home when her heat broke. At first, these sightings were a small comfort to Mungo. For a brief flash they gave him hope that she hadn’t been murdered, that she wasn’t floating somewhere in the cloudy Clyde. But if she was alive, why didn’t she come home? And after a while he also came to hate receiving news of her looking happy, stories of her whistling round the Trongate.
Over half-term he kept a wide berth around Hamish. He avoided the council flat where Hamish stayed with his girlfriend, his new baby, and his sort-of mother-in-law. He skirted the waste ground where the boys played football and set up turf wars with the Catholics from Royston.
Since the incident with the flying brick, the polis drove up and down the tenement streets constantly. They would chap at the door of anyone who might tell them who the boys were that raided the builder’s yard. Almost everyone knew it was Ha-Ha, but nobody would take the risk of grassing. The polis officer was still in the hospital. His jaw had been mangled and was hinged with four metal pins; he was left with a clamped mouth that wouldn’t open wide enough for solid food.
There was a quiet, forgotten place behind the tenements, a scrabble of trees that sat between the edge of the motorway and the last row of sooty sandstone. The city council had fenced in as much land as they intended to care for, and opposite this the roads department had fenced in the rushing motorway. Between these two fences was a sliver of unclaimed grass, a purgatory only forty feet wide. Over the half-term Mungo sat on the grass, picking at the scraggly wildflowers, feeling guilty about the policeman. Sometimes old men with leash-less dogs would dauner by, but mostly, Mungo was alone. He took out his sketchbook and drew the grids and interlocking faces of the tenements. Without lifting his pen he filled a double page with a wall of bricks and windows with tightly packed venetian blinds. But the roaming pen could not calm his mind. He closed the sketchbook, and then his eyes, laid his chin on his clasped hands, and felt the breeze of the day trippers as the traffic sped past to Edinburgh.
There was a doocot at the far edge of the forgotten grass. A two-storey shelter, six feet by six feet, and fourteen feet tall. The rectangular turret looked hastily put up from old, corrugated iron, a set of heavy front doors and glossy melamine that came from dismantled cafeteria tables. The whole structure had a tottering angle but was sturdy enough; each seam was nailed or soldered firmly shut, and the roof was sealed from the rain with thick tarpaper. A sliding skylight was fixed on to this roof, and over this skylight was a wire basket that cantilevered and acted as a snap-trap of sorts. Although it was made of scraps, the tower had a house-proud feel. Whoever built it had taken great care; they had painted it in a drab olive colour, an unassuming tone that would camouflage it against the waste ground it sat upon. There was a working door mounted on to one face, and laid across this were three heavy iron bars each with a fist-sized padlock.
Mungo had been drawing in the grass for two days and now, on the third, the doocot door was finally flung open.
There was a young man, he was hauling his belongings out into the shy sunlight, as if to air them. He went through his routine with ease as Mungo watched him over the top of his sketchbook. The boy must have had a strong back to carry the large cages out of the doocot as easily as he did. Then he scuffed his toes, and stumbled with his long arms knocking at his side. From a distance, between his gangly arms and his skillful hands, there was conflict about him. He could be either a boy or a man, depending on how he turned, or how the light caught him.
He was wearing a heathered grey tracksuit of thick cotton fleece. On his head was a knitted fisherman’s cap of deep navy-blue. His ears stuck out like two pale cabbage leaves and he wore the cap above them, hanging loose as if he couldn’t force it down over them. He had a shock of dirty-blond hair and there was a look of the outdoors about him; a rosy colour flushed high on his cheeks from days spent in wind and rain. He reminded Mungo of a farmer: purposeful, solitary looking. He went about his routine with a semblance of deep contentment to be outside.
The boy had not seen Mungo, or had seen him and didn’t care. His face was turned to the sky, watching pigeons glide above the tenements. Something in the clouds caught his eye and he disappeared inside his tower. There were heavy footsteps on a ladder as the skylight slid open and he poked out of the roof like the captain of a wooden submarine. He was cradling something in his large hands. Mungo watched him caress it, whisper gently to it, and bring it to his lips for a kiss. He threw it into the sky and a pale pigeon fluttered away over the slate roofs of the housing scheme.
“Whroup, whroooup, whrooup.” He was cooing after the bird.
His little bird whirled over the sandstone. It followed the other birds and they dipped for a moment out of sight. When Mungo looked back towards the doocot the boy was still hanging out of the skylight but now he was glowering down at him. The boy dropped back inside. He came out of the low door and started striding towards Mungo.
“How long are ye gonnae sit there?” he asked abruptly. Mungo could see the strength of his face now; he had muscles that ran from under his broad cheekbones down to his jaw, and while he waited for Mungo to reply, they moved and pulsed with life.
“What’s it to you?” It was brave, and maybe a little stupid. His nose was still tender from Hamish and this boy was a good head taller than him.
What had looked northern and hale now puckered in uncertainty, and the boy looked his age again. His mouth was shaped like a wide bow, his teeth were large and white, but spread at intervals. “It’s just if ma hen sees you sitting there,” he motioned to the missing pigeon, “you might scare her off and she willnae come back.”
“How can a bird be frightened of me?”
The boy worried the sky. He seemed conflicted. It would be mean-spirited to ask a stranger to leave and that didn’t seem in his nature. “Listen, could you haud still? Put that book away, the flap of the pages might frighten it.”
Mungo nodded and closed his book. The boy beamed down at him with relief. He was funny looking: gappy teeth, sticky-out ears, and a bent, Roman nose. But when he smiled he was disarming. There was something uncomplicated about him. As his eyes returned to the sky the smile never left his lips, and Mungo found himself staring. It seemed like this boy could not have spent a day on the same streets that Mungo knew, never needed any of its callous posturing, the self-protective swagger, the dirty promise of hitting first. There was nothing guarded or fearful about him. Mungo couldn’t help but smile back up at him. “I’m Mungo.”