Page 112 of Playing By Ear

“Buskers are weirdo magnets,” Ryan replied. “It’s okay, Jamie can handle himself with the numpties and steamers.”

Perry couldn’t see what the pest was doing, but based on the nervous laughter rippling through the crowd, he was making quite the scene.

“All these eejits recording that nutter with their phones,” Ryan said. “It just encourages him.”

Perry tensed, dying to swoop in and—what, rescue Jamie? Batter this interloper with a lightweight carbon-fiber white cane?

“On second thought,” Jamie said into the mic, “I will take that request.”

The annoying man whooped. “Ya beauty! We can sing it together.” A clonking sound came through the amp, as though the mic had been hit.

“Not that request.” Another clonk. “The one from my mate over there. Now out my road, pal, so people can see what they come to see.”

Jamie fingerpicked a familiar multilayered melody on the low strings punctuated by single-note high-string statements. He added a downbeat tap on the guitar’s body with his thumb ring.

“Abbie, he’s doing it,” Ryan whispered to his friend.

Perry had watched Jamie’s Glaswegian version of “Gangsta’s Paradise” on his YouTube channel, but hearing it live sent an electric zap up his spine.

Jamie hummed a rising and falling set of notes, then switched to playing chords to accompany the lyrics.

As he walks through the valley of the shadow of death

He takes a look at his life, sees there’s hee-haw left

“Oh my God,” Abbie said.

Runnin’ with a Young Team, chasin’ the wrong dream

E’en his maw says he’s a heid-the-baw, see…

Perry laughed with the crowd, his respect growing with each cutting statement. Like him, Jamie loved this city and hated those who corrupted it.

Glaswegians, most our lives

Trapped in a gangster’s paradise

Though he’d changed the original song from first- to third-person narration, Jamie sang with a bitter conviction that chilled Perry’s blood. Had he grown up in an area under the thumb of organized crime? Had he joined a Young Team himself to survive? So much about him was still a mystery.

Til one day, come the tide

Find him face down in the Clyde

Unwept, unsung

No one left to run from

Tell me, why are we so blind to see

That the yins we hurt are you and me?

“Brilliant,” Abbie said. “Plus it got Stoat Face to finally toddle off.”

For the first time since the quarterfinal, Perry thought of how the MacKrays had chased him out of officiating. The gangsters had to stick their fingers in every pie, ruin everything for everyone. As long as they kept a stranglehold on any part of Glasgow, the city would never reach its potential.

“Thanks very much,” Jamie said over the swelling applause that greeted the end of the song. “Sadly that’s my hour done. See youse next time.”

Perry waited for the crowd to thin a bit, then made his way toward Jamie.