It's hard to be good when living is expensive. And times are tough on the streets these days. Luckily for Rilke at Bowery Auctions the demand for no-questions-asked cash is at an all-time high, and business is booming.
When Rilke hears his old acquaintance Les is fresh out of prison, his inclination is to stay well out of his way. Letting sleeping dogs lie is one thing - but when one of Bowery's customers winds up dead on their tarmac, Rilke needs a bit of help from his friends to tidy things up. If only his friends didn't have such a habit of making things
.png)
The Cut Up by Louise Welsh was published on 29 January 2026 by Canongate Books. As part of this #RandomThingsTours Blog Tour I am delighted to share an extract from the book with you.
Extract from The Cut Up by Louise Welsh
The eye sees what the eye expects to see. What my eye saw
was a pile of rags fluttering against the north wall of Bowery
Auctions, in the blind spot where Rose’s CCTV spy lens
does not reach. It was four-thirty in the afternoon, October
dark. The working day was done, and I had locked the sale-
room doors. I almost walked away, but our district is on the
up, and gentrified neighbours had been complaining about
fly-tipping and removal vans blocking access. I cursed under
my breath.
I knew before I knew. It was just fabric, mussed and damp
from the intermittent showers that had punctuated the day.
But there was a familiar shape to it, an ancient outline.
‘Ah Christ,’ I swore again.
Now was the moment to turn my back and head for the
pint that had been hovering on the edge of my mind all
afternoon. The bundle was motionless, the man – for some
reason I knew it was a man and not a woman – sound asleep.
Glasgow has more than its share of rough sleepers. People
need somewhere to kip, so why not our place? But Glasgow
is not known as Tinderbox City for nothing, and old auction
houses like ours are prone to burning down, even in the
dank end of the year. The sleeper might wake and decide to
light a fire to warm themselves.
I paused on the edge of the shadow cast by the wall. ‘You
okay, mate?’
The bundle shivered but did not move. I drew closer, and
saw that it was his hair that trembled in response to the
breeze. The man was not huddled in a sleeping bag. There
was no cardboard cushioning the tarmac, no small dog to
raise the alarm. He was wrapped in a raincoat that, now I
looked closely, I thought I recognised. I squatted level with
him and saw that one hand was outstretched, the gold signet
ring set with diamonds still on its middle finger.
‘Are you okay Manders?’ A faint whiff of whisky scented
the air between us. ‘You can’t sleep it off here, Mandy. Sorry,
pal, time to head home.’ I reached out and touched his
shoulder. He did not move. The rain started, and I was
tempted to retreat, but it was cold and Mandy Manderson
was not a young man. ‘Fuck’s sake, Mandy. It’s been a long,
bloody week.’ I gave him a gentle shake. His face turned
towards me, and I saw the reason why Mandy Manderson,
jewellery dealer, man-about-town and thorn in many sides
was lying on the ground in the rain.
If I had been asked to take a bet on how Manderson would
snuff it, I would have put a heart attack top of the list, a
stumble down a pub staircase close second, followed by
a hit and run, some fast and joyless ride. He was obnoxious
when sober, unpleasant when drunk, but I would not have
thought him important enough for murder.
.png)
The Cutting Room, her debut novel, won the Crime Writers’ Association John Creasey (New Blood) Dagger Award and the Saltire First Book of The Year Award.
In 2018, she was named the Most Inspiring Saltire First Book Award winner by public vote.
She is a Professor of Creative Writing at the University of Glasgow.
In 2022 she published The Second Cut, which was shortlisted for the Bloody Scotland McIlvanney Prize for Crime Book of the Year and named by The Times as their Crime Book of the Year.
.jpg)
No comments:
Post a Comment