Page 90 of Playing By Ear

“Go and grab it.”

“If I bought every album I wanted, I’d have no money for rent, and then where would I keep my albums?” He craned his neck. “Hold on, is that the one packaged with the behind-the-scenes DVD? That was a limited edition.”

“Go on,” Perry said.

“You’ll be okay here?”

Perry gave him an exasperated look. “I know how to shop.”

“Aye, but these markets can be dodgy. You could get cheated or pickpocketed or⁠—”

“Believe it or not, I managed to function in society before I met you.”

Fair enough.

Jamie hurried over to the music stall, gripped by a shopper’s paranoia that someone else would snatch up the album.

Then it was in his hands, and it was the limited edition. “Ya beauty.” His finger traced the artwork, then arrived at the £50 price sticker.

Never mind, then.

He went to put Mr Beast back and spied another Mogwai. Their first album. He’d been eight when⁠—

“This’ll blow your mind, wee man.” Ritchie slid the Mogwai Young Team CD into the player. The drawer hummed shut. “It’ll expand your whole idea of what music can be.”

Jamie sat on his bedroom floor, examining the CD cover, which looked vaguely Japanese. “It’s not jazz fusion, is it?” When Jamie had started playing guitar, Uncle Pete tried to turn him on to—and into—Pat Metheny.

“God, no. It’s post-rock. Sounds like rock but only on the surface. Also, these yins are from Glasgow.” Ritchie sat beside him and pointed the remote control at the CD player. “Now, gonnae be patient and let it wash over you. It’s not like that Weezer shite you and Bel are always listening to.” He hit play.

“Weezer’s not shite,” Jamie said after a few moments.

Ritchie sighed and paused the CD. “Mogwai aren’t churning out hooks, they’re making actual fucking art.”

“Okay, okay. I’m listening.”

“You don’t listen to Mogwai.” Ritchie put his arm around Jamie’s shoulders and swept his hand to encompass the universe. “You experience them.”

Jamie blinked, then quickly covered Young Team with Mr Beast. He held it there with both thumbs, as though the older album might try to slither out and follow him home.

A man on his right was getting closer, browsing the N rack. Short and wiry, the guy had a face like a ferret, but not in a cute way, and he looked like he walked with a swagger. Jamie had grown up around men like him, men whose do-not-fuck-with-me aura made lesser folk scurry out of their path to avoid notice.

The man flipped past Nine Inch Nails and Nirvana, then paused on Noel Gallagher’s High Flying Birds long enough for Jamie to spy the silver signet ring on his left pinky: the letter C flanked by two corkscrewed snakes.

Jamie’s legs tensed, ready to run. But he wouldn’t let them. He had nothing to fear these days from a high-ranking member of the Coyles, right? As one of the three under-families, they were MacKray allies.

Still, instinct made Jamie step to his left, out of reach. He withdrew a random album from the L rack, then put his back to the stand and pretended to examine the song list while stealing glances at Ferret Face and scanning the bustling market for other surprises.

“That’s the arse of a thirteen-year-old girl.”

Jamie looked up, then around, as if the remark could’ve come from anyone but Ferret Face. “Sorry?”

“On the cover.”

Jamie turned over the album, Get Lucky by some band called Loverboy. The cover photo was a rear closeup of someone wearing tight red leather trousers.

“On the day of the photo shoot,” the Coyle guy continued, “they could only find one pair of red leather trousers. Too small for any of the band members, but they fitted the photographer’s daughter, so she became the model.” He shrugged. “It was a different time, the eighties.”

Feeling daft to be having this conversation with a gangster, Jamie pointed at the cover. “Then whose big hairy hand is this crossing fingers behind the arse?”