Stonemouth

D-Cup reboots himself and looks first at my face and then up to Powell’s. He seems confused for a moment, then he starts to register what the situation actually is. His already rather wan face goes appreciably paler, quite quickly. You rarely see that happen in real life. I was once on a ledge twenty storeys up on a sixty-storey hotel in Dubai with a couple of Pakistani fitters when a piece of staging — three tonnes of metal, free-falling — came whistling down with about half a second’s warning and just snicked one of the fitter’s hands clean off at the wrist as it zipped past. That guy went grey no faster than D-Cup’s whitey overtook him just there.

‘Ah, like, ah, ah, Ah wisnae—’ D-Cup begins, flustered now.

‘That not your moby, Stewart?’ Powell says quietly, nodding at my phone, which has found its way back onto the surface of the table.

‘Yup,’ I say.

Powell nods, and the first heavy-set guy quickly grabs the phone and looks about to chuck it across the table to me, but then suddenly appreciates the wisdom of coming round and presenting it to me himself, with a glance at Powell. I nod, breathe on the screen and polish it on my shirt. Meanwhile Powell’s picked up a red ball from their table and is bouncing it up and down in his big, meaty palm.

D-Cup is wittering now, a sheen of sweat on his face. ‘Aye, naw, naw, yer fine, aye, naw, aye.’ He’s saying this to me, though with frequent how’m-I-doin-here-big-man? glances at Powell. ‘Naw, nae problem. Nae danger. Naw, aye. Aye, nae problem, naw.’

Powell’s voice razors through this. ‘D-Cup, isn’t it?’ he says.

D-Cup gulps. ‘Aye, aye, aye, that’s me, aye.’

‘Can I show you a wee trick, D-Cup?’

‘Eh? What—’

Powell moves a few millimetres closer to D-Cup, towering over him. ‘Put your hand down on the table.’

There’s a lot of white in D-Cup’s eyes now. ‘Aw, shit, Powell, Mr Imrie, please—’

Powell’s voice is honey-smooth. ‘Just put your hand down. On the table. Flat.’

‘Mr Im—’ one of the two heavy-set guys says.

‘Shush now,’ Powell tells him. He spares each of the rest of us a very brief but very pointed look, then he’s back devoting all his attention to D-Cup, smiling at him. He takes the wee guy’s right wrist and places his hand flat on the baize for him. ‘Fingers together,’ he murmurs. He slides the gold sovs off D-Cup’s fingers and leaves them lying on the baize. D-Cup is swallowing a lot and sweating now too, staring at his right hand as though he’s never really seen it before.

‘M— m— m—’ he says.

Powell comes up close to him and lowers his head fractionally, mouth almost touching D-Cup’s nose. ‘Now close your eyes.’

D-Cup’s eyes go even wider. ‘What?’

‘No your fucking ears, son; your eyes. Close your eyes.’

Powell brings his left hand up to D-Cup’s face, index and middle finger extended and moving towards the wee guy’s eyes. D-Cup shrinks back and starts to move his hand off the table; Powell’s right hand flicks down without him looking and traps D-Cup’s flat again with a slapping noise. By now there isn’t an eye in the place not watching what’s going on. The quiet snick of ball hitting ball, the rumble of balls sliding down the channels inside the tables and the mutter of conversation have all died away.

D-Cup shuts his eyes. His eyelids tremble like butterfly wings as they close. I suspect D-Cup wants to whimper at this point but doesn’t dare. I don’t want to watch any of this, but there’s so much tension in the room, you just feel that standing still, saying nothing, and also not conspicuously looking away, is very much the safest, least attention-attracting thing to do.

When D-Cup’s hand is flat on the table without Powell holding it there, and D-Cup’s eyes are as tightly closed as they’re likely to get — quivering, under sweaty, jerky brows — Powell hooks his left leg behind D-Cup’s knees without touching him, then pushes him quickly on the chest with his free hand.

D-Cup yelps and starts backwards, falling over as he encounters the leg Powell has curled behind him. He falls flailing to the floor and lands with a thump and a strangled scream. He doesn’t bounce back up again immediately but it doesn’t look like he’s hurt himself either.

The whole hand-on-the-table thing was just distraction. Powell’s all grins now, visibly relaxing and winding down. He rolls the ball he was holding along the table. The tension in the room is evaporating. Powell looks round at the wee guy’s pals, then spares me and BB a glance too.

‘Good trick, eh?’ he says to nobody in particular. There is a rather too loud chorus of agreement from us all that it’s just the fabbiest fucker of a trick any of us has ever seen, ever, probably.